“But the entrance is sealed with a stone wall called the Door of Time. And, in order to open the door, it is said that you need to collect three Spiritual Stones.” - Princess Zelda, The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D

Inspiration

In playing through The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time you must first collect three spiritual stones to open the Door of Time in the Temple of Time. Time, time, time. What is it with this game and time? It’s like it’s in the name or something. Want to know what else takes time? Spherification. The process by which you can make things into spheres. I was so inspired by the concept of time and the Spiritual Stones, that I decided to try my hand at creating a deconstructed gin and tonic with little tonic balls colored to each stone. This blog post details the attempt.

Workshopping

Spherification?

In the world of molecular gastronomy (fancy word I know), you can do some pretty awesome things with food and drinks. I can’t remember how I got to thinking about spherification but I was curious enough to do a bit of research on it. There are two main types, and although I’m not well versed on them (yet) it kind of comes in two flavors - direct spherification and reverse spherification. I believe using Agar Agar makes this direct spherification. If you’re interested in a rundown of both types, might I direct your attention to the Molecular Gastronomy YouTube channel for details on both methods!

Spirual “Stones” - Tonic Caviar

The process that I followed to create the stones:

• To 355 ml of tonic water add 3.55 g (1%) of Agar Agar powder (beware the bubbling)

• Heat up the mixture until the Agar Agar completely dissolves

• Separate the mixture into three containers and add food dye to each one (one green for the Kokiri’s Emerald, one red for the Goron’s Ruby, and one blue for the Zora’s Sapphire)

• Using a pipette, drip the colored solutions into chilled neutral oil allowing the droplets to increase in size until they sink

• Strain out the tonic caviar, separating it from the oil

• Carefully wash the caviar (we don’t want them to break)

Now, I’m certain that this process could be improved upon. I’m curious if any fellow mixologists out there have done more experimenting with this technique. Have you? Let me know!

Gin + Tonic

Whereas your typical gin and tonic is made by pouring tonic water into gin (or vice versa I guess), this one adds gin to lime juice and places the tonic caviar in after the fact. I’ll admit that I did not do much ratio testing with these since the livestream was my first attempt! The technique was new enough to me that I wanted to share it with y’all live first.

Flavor Analysis

A very light lime and light gin libation. The slightest bitterness is imparted by the tonic caviar into the drink’s body. The caviar itself has a bittersweet tang to it (your mileage will vary depending on the choice of tonic water).