It started with me asking a simple question: “What about centrifuged figs?” The answer from Sam, one of the exceptional Modernist Cuisine chefs in the Cooking Lab was positive, and by the afternoon, three containers of figs appeared miraculously in the lab for me with which to experiment. I blended them:
(wish I had one of these at home)
Then I transferred them to a plastic bag to pipe into a centrifuge container:
Then I took a long video of the centrifuge machine (forthcoming) and how it works. And then the machine ripped apart the fig into three distrinct layers:
That dark part is the thick, syrup fig juice, the lighter part in the middle is the fig fibre (pulp? starch? solids? Not sure of the terminology, but the part that isn’t juice), and the third on the very far left that’s hard to see are the seeds. The juice was beautiful. Silky smooth and sweet. And the “fig butter/solids” layer was creamy and also smooth. When you take a spoonful of it with the seeds it’s like the bet fig jam ever (though it could use some lemon juice and maybe a tiny bit of sugar to make the flavour pop). Fig butter, or fig jam (with the seeds), or just fig juice. They’d never centrifuged figs in the lab before. It’s kind of like an umeboshi plum flavour when you use the dark figs like these. They’re in season now, and the California ones don’t have far to travel, so they’re a really wonderful flavour.
Today’s goal: Sous vide mackerel with my black sesame marshmallows, and grainy creole mustard. Yesterday’s 2nd success: dairy-free vanilla-macademia nut icecream sundaes with sous vide caramel sauce and soy-caramel jellies (though too salty and too macademia-y, they were pretty cool).
With thanks! Awesome stuff!