Apple Agar Filtration.

I heard through Chinese whispers about this last year from a Pastry Chef I used to work with, his friend was telling him about a Chocolate Consommé he was doing at The Ledbury in Notting Hill but the technique wasn’t revealed. We thought about it momentary and then kind of just forgot about. But a few months ago it seemed to be popping up everywhere on the internet, with Ideas In Food using compression on there gels for clarification. Within less than a day I believe a new and incredibly simpler method from Cooking Issues stormed onto the scene.

Again I stored it away in the back of my Cerebral Cortex with all stuff I’ll get round to doing? Till the other day I was thinking about an idea with caramelising a hot Apple jelly to go with some Apple Pie Ice-Cream. I ran the idea past Alex and we discussed the concept a bit. I originally wanted to keep the beautiful green colour of whole Granny Smith Apples in the hot caramelised Jelly. I can’t remember how, but the Agar clarification method popped into my mind. I went back to the web site and checked out the ratio and set to work.

At first after cooking the agar to fully hydrate it and then adding the cold green apple juice to it, I thought that I had done something wrong. Not enough agar? I expected it to show signs of stating it set at least, it was cold enough. I come back to it a minute later and gave it a quick stir and at that moment right before my eyes it instantly started to turn into curds with a clear liquid swimming around them.

I passed it through a J-Cloth and left it to hang.

The perfectly translucent colourless liquid collected in the jug was quite astonishing to look upon. I eagerly picked up my spoon and dipped it in.

I then immediately proceeded to pour myself a shot glass of it and knocked it back.

Yeah, it was good. Put a big smile on my face.

Before and after

Ratio 0.2% of liquid volume

I honestly didn’t expect the results I got, especially for the first test. I imagined less flavour with some of the ‘body’ of the apple being left behind.

With this base of Apple water I can instantly think of numerous uses to fool, surprise and arouse people’s taste buds.

I’m thinking for my dessert a soft gelatine based jelly would be best to let the fresh flavour of Granny Smith melt in your mouth and linger just that little bit longer….