Molecular gastronomy is the process of using science and chemistry to prepare food. It’s a modern movement of cooking that often changes the physical makeup of cuisine by using ultra creativity to come up with completely new and often abstract dishes and flavors. I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a Thai fusion meal where a molecular gastronomy chef cooked up a series of fusion Thai dishes for us to sample. Our meal, which was served in courses dish by dish, was a creative modern take on Thai cuisine.
We started off with a tom yum shrimp cocktail. Now as you probably know, tom yum shrimp is one of Thailand’s most famous soups, but serving it as a cocktail beverage, laced with alcohol, is a completely different twist to the dish (now drink). Just like a normal bowl of tom yum soup, the cocktail was full of lime juice, but that’s where the similarities ended. The cocktail included a splash of gin, soup stock, and for the shrimp, rather than being added to the cocktail, it was grilled on a bamboo skewer and used as the mixing stick for the beverage. The chef instructed us to give the drink a whirling stir with the shrimp skewer, eat the shrimp in a single bite, and then sip down the cocktail as we pleased. While it indeed reminded me of any Thai tom yum soup, it was so contrastingly different at the same time. Continue reading “Molecular Gastronomy in Thai Food”