The food looks like something from a NASA mission or a science- fiction flick with a culinary bent. Foams, spheres, gels made of food – these are all hallmarks of what's called molecular gastronomy, or techniques that use a bit of science to re-imagine the textures and presentations of food.

You'll generally find this style at higher-end restaurants; it's a signature of such famed chefs as Ferran Adrià and Grant Achatz. Now, a $59 cooking kit called Cuisine R-Evolution allows the home chef to dabble in these techniques for the next dinner party. Look for it online at www.molecule-r.com.

How well does this all work? For that, we took the kit to the downtown home of Andrea Thompson, about as fine a home chef you'll find in Sacramento. She was trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and worked as a recipe tester for Williams-Sonoma. With bags of fresh groceries, and packets of various powders from the kit, we got set to cook molecular-style.

"Some of these techniques are gimmicky, but some are here to stay," said Thompson, as she prepared her molecular mis en place. "They're surprising ways to utilize or present food and are pushing boundaries – and that's not a bad thing."

First, here are some of the key ingredients we worked with from the kit:

Agar: A vegetable gelatin derived from seaweed. It's used to make various jellies, and used in the kit to turn liquids into solid, Jell-O-like forms.

Soy lecithin: Extracted from soybeans, this ingredient allows oil and water to blend, and creates stable foams.

Sodium alginate: A seaweed extract that's used as a cold gelling agent to make caviarlike spheres.

Calcium lactate: The salt of lactic acid used for "reverse spherification," which creates spheres that have liquid inside them. This technique is commonly used for dairy products.

Mmmmmm, just like Grandma used to make, right?

Anyway, it's one thing for food to look cool and camera-phone ready. But ultimately, the flavors and textures have to be enjoyable and stand on their own. How did the Cuisine R-Evolution kit hold up? Here's a "molecular menu" we put together, along with our results.

Cocktail: Crunchy bloody mary

Key ingredients: Vodka, tomato juice, celery, Worcestershire sauce, celery salt.

Molecular touch: Gelification with agar.

Process: Add a packet of agar to bloody mary ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour mixture down the center of a celery stalk and let cool. When liquid turns solid, cut the celery into bite-size chunks.

Taste: Mostly like celery. The thickness of the celery dwarfed the taste of the bloody mary. This might have been a good thing. Alone, the gelified bloody mary mix tasted too bitter. The recipe is heavy on the alcohol to compensate for some that'll be burned off during cooking.

Difficulty: Fairly easy. The trickiest part is cutting and trimming the celery so it lies flat.

Tips: "Find a recipe you like for a bloody mary first," said Thompson. "Then, take that recipe and apply it to this process. I could see myself serving this if it had a better recipe."

Amuse-bouche: Molecular egg

Key ingredients: Puréed mango, milk, vanilla yogurt.

Molecular touch: Spherification with agar, sodium alginate and calcium lactate.

Process: Add agar to milk and bring to a boil. Pour mixture into a container, add vanilla yogurt and stir well. When this mixture cools it becomes like Jell-O and can be poured to look like an egg white. The "yolk" is actually puréed mango, which gets spooned into a calcium lactate bath to form spheres. Add this "yolk" to the the top of the "egg white," and voila – molecular "egg."

Taste: Like eating Jell-O on top of Jell-O. While this finished dish indeed looked like a sunny-side-up egg, the overall texture was too gelatinous to enjoy. Nice visual gimmick, but that's about it.

Difficulty: Moderate. A couple of the "yolks" broke while being transferred to a dish. This one takes a little practice to get a well-formed mango sphere.

Tips: Though the recipe DVD shows the mango spheres being formed with a tablespoon, use a silicone mold for better results and uniform shapes.

Salad: Arugula 'spaghetti'

Key ingredients: Arugula, water.

Molecular touch: Gelification with agar.

Process: Blend arugula with water. Add to pot with a packet of agar and bring to a boil. Siphon the bright green mixture with a syringe and plunge into a curly tube. Detach tube from syringe and let the tube rest for three minutes in cold water. Use the syringe to plunge the mixture from the tube – and presto, curly arugula "spaghetti."

Taste: There's really not much of one. The final result looks like strands of Sour Patch candy but tastes like watery arugula. To boost the flavors, Thompson paired these "noodles" with fresh cantaloupe and Parma prosciutto.

Difficulty: Fairly easy, but tedious. Forming the "spaghetti" with the syringe was a little tricky at first. The kit only has three tubes for creating the noodles, so making enough for more than two people will take a while.

Tips: Experiment with different greens, especially those with more pronounced flavors. "I would try a basil 'spaghetti,' or use a strongly flavored herb," said Thompson. "I'd be interested to try something with sage."

Entree: Molecular burger

Key ingredients: Ketchup, mustard, ground beef, bun and toppings, cold vegetable oil.

Molecular touch: Gelification with agar.

Process: In separate pans, bring ketchup and mustard with agar and water to a boil. Using a pipette, drop small beads of the ketchup and mustard mixtures into a container with cold vegetable oil. Rinse in a water bath. Use these "caviars" of ketchup and mustard as condiments on your burger.

Taste: Like ketchup and mustard. The effect looks kind of cool, but after you've taken a picture of this burger and posted it on Instagram, it's all over when the caviars get smashed by the bun after you take a bite.

Difficulty: Tricky and time consuming. These little caviars were kind of delicate, and some fell apart when being transferred to the water bath. Distributing nearly a cup each of the ketchup and mustard mix with the pipette would also take a loooong time.

Tips: Make sure the oil is very cold and poured in a deep container. The water bath will get slick with oil after transferring the ketchup and mustard caviars, so be ready to skim some from the top. The caviars can also be fished out with a strainer and rinsed with hot water to remove excess oil.

Dessert: Strawberry foam

Key ingredients: Strawberries, sugar, milk, water.

Molecular touch: Emulsification with soy lecithin to produce foam.

Process: Blend strawberries, sugar, milk and water. Pour into a container and add soy lecithin. Aerate and mix with an immersion blender to create foam.

Taste: Like sweet strawberries. This foam had a pronounced flavor that could work well with many different desserts. Thompson created a mousse from melted chocolate ice cream and topped it with strawberry foam and pieces of strawberry. Yum!

Difficulty: Easy. Out of all the recipes and techniques, this one tasted the best and we could see it being used on the most regular basis.

Tips: Use a square glass container to create the most foam. Also, use the immersion blender at a 45-degree angle and place it in a corner of the container instead of directly on top.

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