RECIPE: Mango Caviar Pearls

1 cup mango (or other) juice

1 teaspoon sodium alginate

1 cup water

1 teaspoon calcium chloride

1. In a small saucepan, add the sodium alginate to the juice, gradually sprinkling while whisking vigorously over medium heat. If you have one, use an immersion blender instead of the whisk before turning on the heat.

2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for one minute.

3. Remove from heat and pour through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl and let cool to room temperature. A short stint in the freezer will expedite the process.

4. Combine water and calcium chloride in a bowl, stirring to dissolve.

5. Pour cooled juice into a plastic squeeze bottle or large syringe and drip it into the water until the bottom of the bowl is covered in a solid layer of spheres. Let sit one minute while you clean the goo out of your strainer.

6. Place strainer over a second bowl, then pour the contents of the first bowl through the strainer.

7. Rinse the pearls in the strainer and transfer to a kitchen towel to dry.

8. Repeat until you run out of juice.

Serve within an hour, because when I nipped one the morning after, it had gelled all the way through. Not bad, but not as exciting.

Note: another interesting variation is the mango noodle. Rather than dripping, I put the tip of the syringe into the water and pressed the plunger steadily while moving the tip back and forth. The resulting strand was over three feet long, but I could only lift out foot-long lengths before it broke. Like the pearls, it was liquid in the center, essentially a gummy straw filled with juice.