Ffs! Spherified peas....

[BigBirdsFriend]

and all the other gastro, molecular cooking bollocks!
I mean, why cook them, take off the skin, sieve them, mix in more stuff and then make them pea shaped again!

[walks off to cook pie and chips] emoticon

Harumph

DH and I had a lovely meal at L'Enclume a few years ago. Eggs disguised as razor clams served with razor clams in eggshells for instance, it's a terribly witty food joke don't you know.
The food was in fact utterly gorgeous except for one course (there were, like, 14 or something) which was supposedly inspired by lamb hotpot: you got a little cup of lamb broth in which were floating one globule of lamb flavour, one of mash potato flavour and one pea which was not a pea but a spherified pea. Unfortunately the whole dish tasted like Essence of School Dinner so dh uses it as an excuse for why we're never going to go and eat any other molecular gastronomy ever again

You must be channelling me I said exactly that last week!

I raised an eyebrow laughed like a drain last week when he tried to spherify fat and it went wrong. I myself have no problems at all getting ginormous globules of fat to float in my sauces and gravies. Obviously this makes me an extremely talented superior chef! all these years and I never knew

Oh tunip, part of me wants to try it, but a big part of me wants really well cooked food that looks like what it is....

Pom, you goddess!

yeah it made me realise that part of what I like about eating is not just the sensations, but also the knowledge that you're eating something decent. The really extreme molecular gastronomy seems to divorce the sensations of eating from nutrition, because you don't really feel like you know what you're eating. It's fun but in the end I probably prefer the sort of River Cottagey approach to good food where it's about getting the best of the flavour out of the ingredients as they are rather than being clever-clever.

OTOH there are molecular gastronomy techniques that can be used to enhance the flavour of decent food - foam is v trendy but there is some point to it in that it makes the food pass across the palate more slowly so you get the nice flavour for longer than you would if it was just a liquid.