Lately I have been experimenting with new molecular recipes and this is one of the recipes I created. One of my best friends loves when I make caviar for molecular recipes and he kept urging me to make caviar with soda. I decided to tried it and it worked really well. This makes a beautiful small appetizer for formal parties and other events. The two food additives you will need for this recipe are agar agar and soy lecithin. I use agar flakes which can be purchased at whole foods and the soy lecithin that I use was purchased from amazon.com for about $8.00. You will aslso need an oil for this recipe. I prefer to use olive oil because it freezes fast but any kind will work. All of the oil will wash off so the quality of the oil doesn't matter. Enjoy!
Step 1: Ingredients
Ingredients:
Soy Lecithin
Agar Agar
Rootbeer
Vanilla Ice cream
Vanilla extract
Sugar
Olive Oil (any kind of oil will work but olive oil freezes faster) \
Materials:
Immersion Blender
Pan
Bowl
Jar
Syringe
Collander
Spoon or melon baller
Soy Lecithin
Agar Agar
Rootbeer
Vanilla Ice cream
Vanilla extract
Sugar
Olive Oil (any kind of oil will work but olive oil freezes faster) \
Materials:
Immersion Blender
Pan
Bowl
Jar
Syringe
Collander
Spoon or melon baller
Step 2: Root Beer Caviar
Fill a jar at least halfway with olive oil and place in freezer for about half an hour. In a small pan boil 1 cup of rootbeer and then add 1/2-1 tbs of agar agar. Whisk together for 1-2 minutes or until the agar agar has dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat and wait a few minutes for the rootbeer to cool. Remove the olive oil from the freezer and fill a syringe with root beer. Hold the syringe over the jar parallel to the table. Slowly squirt the root beer out of the syringe. They should look like little spheres once they are submerged in the olive oil. Once all of the root beer is gone, use a collander to strain the root beer caviar. Rinse with water until all of the olive oil is has been washed off. Place in a bowl and set aside.
Step 3: Root Beer Foam
There are three components to root beer floats: Ice cream, root beer, and foam. I am not sure why it happens but when the rootbeer mixes with the ice cream it always makes a foam that stays on the top of the root beer float. Because of this I thought it was very important to make some kind of a root beer foam to go on the ice cream. In a large bowl i whisked together 3 tbs of sugar, 1/2 cup of milk, 2 tbs of root beer, 1 tbs of vanilla extract and 11/2 tsp of soy lecithin. Then I used an immersion blender to turn the mixture into foam. It took about 5 minutes before it was really foamy.
Step 4: Presentation
Use a melon baller or spoon to scoop a tiny scoop of ice cream and then place it in the small bowl or spoon you have chosen to present the root beer float in. Poor a little spoonful of the root beer foam over the ice cream and then add the root beer caviar. Enjoy!
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Do you think you can reuse the oil? I'd hate to waste that much, especially as I try to only use organic and good quality oil in my kitchen.
Also: to make it truly vegetarian, you can use soy ice cream (I recommend the following: http://www.turtlemountain.com/products/soy-milk-ice-creams/creamy-vanilla ) and I'm certain soymilk would work well for the foam - Trader Joe's Unsweetened Soymilk (refrigerated) is the most milk-like of the soymilks.
I implore everyone to try to avoid Silk products as their company not only engaged in deceptive marketing practices when they switched from organic to conventional soybeans, but are owned by Dean Foods, who owns Hersheys milks, who refuses to eschew the use of chocolate that has been harvested by child slaves.
( http://www.xocoatl.org/harvest.htm )
I don't regard dairy and eggs as being 100% vegetarian, as they are animal products and cause animal suffering in their production.
I'll try keeping the oil. I can always strain it through a very fine strainer, or even a coffee filter if necessary.
One other question - did you measure the actual quantity of oil you used? I'm wondering why so much.
Really, all you need is enough to make sure that your caviar can form into little balls and collect on the bottom. If you can use less, GREAT! If you use more, GREAT! It really doesn't matter or affect anything other than the time it takes for the oil to get cold, and I'm not sure that it will even make a huge impact there.
BTW, just curious, but since chickens lay eggs (some 2+/day) regardless of whether they are fertile, and regardless of what becomes of them, how is eating an infertile egg causing suffering to the chicken? All an infertile egg will do if you don't eat it is rot, which could actually do more harm than good. Same for dairy products, cows begin producing milk when they give birth, but, if they are milked regularly, they can keep producing milk for a long time, even after the calf is weened.
While I understand you idea, I think you may benefit from clarifying it, eating fertilized eggs, or dairy products from cows whose calves have not been weened, cause the animals to suffer.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, or start a flame war, I'm just attempting to make a point, and provide a point of clarification.
I am actually not sure why so much oil is used but that is how I learned to make these. I usually use 3/4 a cup of olive.
Sunshiine
Does it aid in the foaming or keeping the foam from deflating?