Agar Agar
June 25th, 2006 | by Loretta |After sifting through many different themes, I finally decided on “Blueberry Boat.” In doing so, I also thought of a decent tag line and of course, could not help but say to myself that enough is enough, I need to get things posted. At the moment, many food pictures are already backlogged on my camera’s memory card, so I better get moving.
Whenever I use agar in cooking, it reminds me of the few experiments we had at my over-priced institution doing DNA fingerprinting. In a nutshell, DNA fingerprinting uses gel eletrophoresis, in which small wells are molded into slab of lab-grade agar (aka, don’t eat this…ever) for small DNA samples to sit it. An electric current is applied and in about 30 minutes, nicely separated DNA should result, granted that your lab group can follow directions and work carefully.
While my days with micropipettes are on hold, my time spent in the kitchen is ever-increasing, since it is summer after all.
For me, summer means avoiding baking as much as possible. As an alternative, most of the desserts I make for myself and my family lately are gelatinous. My preference is to use agar agar, a seaweed-slash-algae that sets well and does not melt at room temperature. This is the beauty of using plant-based gelatin. Regular gelatin, as found in Jell-O, is made from animal cartilage, so it’ll set up, but it has to stay cold.
So what have I done this Sunday?
It’s a little bitter, because I hardly sweetened the green tea.
To go with the jelly, I made a basic syrup out of cane sugar and shredded ginger; the dried apricots were added towards the end, just for garnish and something more to chew on.
Why eat agar? Well, from the little research I’ve done on the internet, it’s supposed to be beneficial for your digestive tract. Yay. And also, since it is a seaweed (ok, or algae) it’s a good source of iodine and other trace minerals. Why bother with iodine and other minerals? If I remember correctly, they’re good for metabolism and hormones.
Overall, jelly is a nice and light dessert to have after dinner, especially because it does a good job at cleansing the palate. But understandably, not everyone enjoys green tea. The beauty about gelatins is almost any liquid or puree can be used.