Noodles, reinvented

Behind the science
Transglutaminase works by cross-linking two amino acids -- glutamine and lysine -- to create a bond between protein surfaces. Sold in powder form, it can be sprinkled on a side of meat or fish, or mixed together in a slurry and then applied.

Approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, forms of transglutaminase occur naturally in humans and in food animals, and so it is considered safe.

It can also be useful, says Joe Regenstein, a Cornell University food science professor, in finding ways to bundle together little scraps of meat or fish that otherwise might get thrown away. It also allows food manufacturers to create uniform portion sizes for some foods.

"You're not looking at your neighbor's plate and saying, 'He got a bigger steak than mine,'" Regenstein says.

All sorts of uses
The tricky part to transglutaminase cooking is the ratio: just one percent by weight of powder to protein. Even when mixed with water, it accounts for a tiny, tasteless smidgen of the finished product. Dufresne's shrimp pasta are said to consist of nearly 99 percent shellfish.

Activa was meant to be sold to large food manufacturers, and it only comes in one-kilo batches (to be used on 220 lbs. of meat) but crafty chefs have tracked down plenty.

Sean Brock, executive chef of the Capitol Grille at Nashville's Hermitage Hotel, hunted down a batch about a year ago. Like Dufresne, he'd heard about Blumenthal's efforts at the Fat Duck.

"We got some immediately and went nuts," Brock says. "Every day, I would do three or four things."

One of the most successful results: "lobster Cheetos," a light-as-air crustacean take on the classic cheese puff, fried in olive oil and served by the bowlful with dipping sauces.

Joyce George WD-50 Chef Wylie Dufresne hopes to patent the noodles, but isn't interested in manufacturing them himself.

Dufresne, too, keeps sketching out new uses for meat glue: thin sheets of chicken meat wrapped around an egg yolk. And he has a handful of plans to expand his starchless pasta repertoire.

He has, for instance, tried pastas made from milk or sesame paste.  Dark chicken meat could be used to make a very different take on chicken noodle. In fact, he'd like to cook an all-poultry ragu Bolognese: chicken pasta, chicken sauce and crispy chicken skin for texture.

With his patent application outstanding, Dufresne hesitates to describe the exact process for preparing his noodles. And though he may commercialize it, don't start boiling water yet. He has no plans to sell them as a supermarket item, a la Wolfgang Puck.

He'd rather stay in his kitchen on Manhattan's Lower East Side and find new ways to tinker. "That's more important to me than being known as the guy who invented shrimp noodles," Dufresne says. "My hope is to have an interesting restaurant that makes good food."

Should you want a taste, the shrimp noodles are available on WD-50's tasting menu. Nine courses are $95.

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