Discover Magazine – February 2006

Tonight’s Special: Edible Books and Balloons

by Corey S. Powell
Ink jet printing is not an obvious culinary tool, but at the Chicago restaurant Moto, the ink is made of soy and the paper made of edible starch. A customized printer put the finishing touch on a delectable dish called cartoon sushi, an emulsion of snapper and mako wrapped in starch paper emblazoned with 20 photographs of maki rolls. Chef Homaro Cantu, a whimisical practitioner of the science of molecular gastronomy is keen to embrace technology not often found in American cuisine. Liquid nitrogen, a centrifuge and high pressure chambers all fit comfortably in his kitchen – cum – lab.

In Cantu’s hands, for example, the liquid nitrogen becomes a tool for coalescing a pureed head of romaine lettuce into flavorful pearls of caesar salad, chilled to -273 degrees fahrenheit. Carbonation adds fizz to real fruit; an orange bubbles like orange crush soda when squeezed. The result of hours of compression in a carbon dioxide tank at 60 pounds per square inch. Sea bass arrives raw in a heat retaining resin box heated to 200 degrees. Cooking to perfection on the table while two other courses pass by. Dessert is the most impressive course of all. Cantu fills a sphere with the juice of yuzu (a japanese citrus) and spins it while it is chilled with another dose of liquid nitrogen. What emerges is a thin, spherical shell, almost and edible balloon. All that is missing is helium to make the balloon float, and Cantu hopes to add that touch someday soon. Behind the scenes, Cantu continues to experiment: A medical centrifuge, designed to separate blood proteins, could clarify rich, thick meat stocks. A high powered laser could cook beef with a precision impossable on a grill. Cantu also sees a humanitarian end to his culinary trickery. He envisions dispensing vitamin-enriched edible books in regions where people suffer from malnutrition; each page would be both food and information about when and how best to eat it.