The Arrival of Sosa Alphabet of 200 flavours.

This week saw me experimenting with quite a few new techniques and the arrival, finally, of the Sosa Alphabet of 200 flavours.

First the experiments. I used Dark Buckwheat flour to create what looks like edible parchment.  I have ordered some pens that write in edible ink and I think these will become a great novelty. The first batch were a little 2 salty and we also tried 2 flavours, lime and stout beer/Guinness. In both attempts, and we didn’t have much time we failed to put in enough flavour so we will have to go back to the drawing board on this one a little.

Our Sous Chef here at the Hotel, Bridgeen is getting married in February and we have been talking daily about what is going to be on the menu and ‘befores and afters.’ We came up with idea of a cocktail for guests on arrival that is chosen by the bride and groom. We are rather hoping that the bride and groom will be able to put a story to this cocktail. Bridgeen and I have been going round and round on this and recently I was watching a program on a bar in Chicago called Aviary. Having watched this I started thinking about what I’m going to call ‘Solid Cocktails.’ 

We’ve started on the first one which are for want of a better description boozy fruit. We take a fruit that is fibrous, suck all the air and water out of it and then slam the booze into where the air and water was. Our first 8 combinations are seen in the photo:

My favourite so far is the Malibu and pineapple and, with the last of the seasons apricots paired with Southern Comfort. The boss like the cucumber G&T and the apple with Crested 10 Whiskey. I will report back on the other ‘solid’ cocktail and let you know how we got on.

On to the Sosa alphabet of 200 flavours. Ferran Adria, when he closed down El Bulli Restaurant in 2011 has gone on to do several amazing things with the knowledge and techniques that he developed in the ‘Best Restaurant in the World.’ One of these ventures is a company called Sosa. A Spanish bases company that by using rotary evaporator technology has created concentrates that are becoming indispensable in getting that extra bit of flavour in to cooking that you couldn’t always achieve. Sosa have done a presentation case of 200 of these flavours/concentrates/extracts. 

We have now got the full selection and the sky is the limit. I will try to keep a dairy of what we have used them in.