Watching Channel 4’s Iron Chef on Tuesday, I saw a really interesting chefey technique I’ve not seen before.  On the show, the chefs are asked to make dishes showcasing a specific ingredient (there’s more to the show than that, but more on that another time).  Chef Judy Joo as part of a dish created “spring onion pearls”.  These appeared to be vibrant coloured little jelly balls, in appearance looking much like a green version of salmon eggs (popular as sushi).  They looked great and I’m sure added a really interesting texture.  Judy used spring onions, but I’m sure you could use the idea with plenty of other ingredients.

The technique involved juicing and sieving the spring onions to make a juice, adding gelatine as a gelling agent, putting in to a squeezy bottle and cooling slightly – then squeezing out blobs on to the surface of chilled oil, chilling again before removing the now shaped pearls.

It sounds a bit fiddly, but it looks amazing – I’m certainly going to have to try that one!  I should think that most fruit and some veg could work that way, and probably consumé.