Dabbling with Texturas

On my recent visit to Barcelona I stopped into Solé Graells, a culinary-focused shop that sells just about anything related to cooking. They also happen to produce and distribute the Ferran and Albert Adria line of Texturas which are some chemicals they use in their kitchen for spherification, gels, foams, caviar, thickening, stabilizing, etc. I bought the basics for spherification (sodium alginate and calcium chloride), sodium citrate to control the ph level, and some xanthan gum for thickening. My first experience with spherification was with the earl grey tea ravioli which is supposed to have a little cube of lemon juice in the middle, which didn't really work out too well. The taste seemed a little watered down for me and the amounts seemed a little off when I was making the ravioli, I ended up having to add more sodium alginate than the recipe called for. The caviar worked a little better, but still a little bland. I heated up some whole milk and added some miel de caña (sugar cane honey) which ended up being pretty tasty combined with the caviar. I'll let the photos do the talking for now and this weekend I'll try experimenting a bit more and have something more worthwhile of detailing.

Tea Ravioli (above)
Tea Caviar
Tea Caviar with Milk and Honey
Tea Caviar hanging out with some Deformed Ravioli Outcasts

My first dabble had some limited success but the lemon cubes kept melting before the ravioli solidified, making a mess. I'm guessing I need to freeze them at a lower temp. and it took me a while to get a hang of making the actual "raviolis."