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For Rob Mifsud, it started innocently enough.

The Toronto computer programmer wanted to wow his wife on Valentine's Day, and the recipe he found for white chocolate and caviar sounded effortless as well as decadent. "It took me three seconds to make the dish. It was great," he says.

Encouraged by that success last year, Mr. Mifsud soon got into the harder stuff: like sodium alginate and calcium chloride, which he used to create his proudest culinary achievement yet, "liquid pea ravioli." These spoon-sized spheres of gooey green "filling" - where the outside pasta casing is implied but not actually present - he discovered in the El Bulli restaurant cookbook.

Today he thinks nothing of dipping into his pharmacy-like pantry for a scoop of lecithin to impress dinner guests with a frozen chocolate "air" -- a block of gourmet-grade dark chocolate that's been whipped up with bubbles to resemble an Aero candy bar.

Mr. Mifsud, 33, is part of a small but growing band of intrepid home cooks experimenting with molecular gastronomy, the surrealistic cuisine pioneered by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià and now brandished at cutting-edge restaurants the world over.

"This is food that has a wow factor," Mr. Mifsud says.

Controversial for its use of industrial chemicals and sensational for its unorthodox flavour combinations and trompe l'oeil presentations, the culinary movement is transforming home kitchens into makeshift science labs.

In a technique that could be described as "Look, ma, no oven," Clement Lo, a 28-year-old engineering graduate and marketing specialist with a courier company in Toronto, recently "baked" a chocolate soufflé with the help of his fridge. "It was pretty neat," he says.

Mr. Lo first made a simple mousse, then stirred in some Knox brand gelatin powder and scooped the mixture into the bottom half of a ramekin, which he placed inside a FoodSaver-style vacuum chamber resembling a salad spinner.

"It's basically one of those containers where you can store your lettuce and you suck all the air out and your lettuce remains fresh," he says.

With the air pumped out and the internal pressure decreased, the mousse expanded like rising dough. To prevent it from falling, he placed the whole chamber in the fridge, hardening the gelatin. "It will stabilize and so you'll have a sort of cold soufflé."

Mr. Lo says he got the inspiration from the writings of Heston Blumenthal, chef of London's famed The Fat Duck and one of the leading apostles of the molecular movement.

That list also includes French physical chemist Hervé This and Chicago chefs Hamaro Cantu and Grant Achatz of "sci-fi" dining temples Moto and Alinea, respectively.

Like Mr. Adrià, whose El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona has inspired several cookbooks and a gruelling public-speaking schedule, Mr. Blumenthal has taken to popularizing molecular gastronomy's techniques, mainly through columns in London newspapers. Both men recently participated in a molecular gastronomy convention in Barcelona that enabled home cooks to listen in over the Internet.

Adding more recent impetus to the home invasion is the emergence of online sources for the chemicals and contraptions behind molecular gastronomy's greatest hits. Most notably, El Bulli has launched the Texturas line of powders that can turn such items as potatoes and oysters into foams, and liquids such as mango juice into caviar-like globules. Also recently entering the fray are U.S. distributors LEpicerie.com, Terraspice.com and Willpowder.net, which have launched their own branded lines of similar ingredients, including xanthan gum, an emulsifier, and agar, a gelling agent, which are also commonly available in health food stores.

"We have had orders from hundreds of end-users," says Will Goldfarb of Willpowder.net in New York and a former apprentice to Mr. Adrià at El Bulli. Mr. Goldfarb's products range from $6 (U.S.) to $15 for a supply that would last most home chefs many years (a fraction of Texturas' prices).

"Caviar is the top. We sell a surprising amount of sodium alginate and calcium lactate," Mr. Goldfarb says. "I don't think it's a rarefied thing for high-end chefs at all any more."

Beyond chemicals, a company called PolyScience has been enjoying brisk sales of a device called an Anti-Griddle, which flash-freezes the outside of a liquid while leaving the centre hot and gooey.

Other increasingly popular gizmos include cream whippers and cartridge-charged soda siphons, which can be used to carbonate high-water-content fruits while preserving their outer shell. "I bought an iSi gourmet whipper, which I've used to make carbonated grapes," says Martin Lersch, a PhD chemist and self-described foodie in Oslo, referring to a popular brand.

Home cooks who've traded their aprons for lab coats are quick to defend their use of supposedly intimidating chemicals, all of which have been used in processed foods from baloney to fast-food milkshakes for decades.

"Maybe postmodern gastronomy is a better term [than molecular] because it's all about deconstructing dishes," says Mr. Mifsud, who lists recipes and Canadian sources for many other ingredients on a weblog called Hungryinhogtown.com.

It might also be called ironic cuisine for its amusing twists on classical preparations, like melon "caviar," tiny pear-like globules of fruit juice whose only connection to the ocean is its gelling agent, sodium alginate, a byproduct of seaweed.

Mr. Adrià's most sensational dish at El Bulli, Kellogg's Paella, is a twist on the famous rice dish of Spain, made by toasting regular rice in a frying pan until it pops into Rice Krispies-like buds.

"That I made a few times, people love it," says Arley Sasson, 34, a Wall Street trader by day who estimates he's made more than 100 molecular recipes in his Manhattan apartment.

Chefs versed in laborious molecular techniques remain skeptical about the mass-market potential. "People who do this at home must have a lot of time to cook," says Michael Steh, executive chef at Reds restaurant in Toronto's financial district. His creations include a foie gras "milkshake" and he is experimenting with fruit caviar.

Indeed, El Bulli is reputed to have a cook-to-customer ratio of one-to-one on the busiest nights, which may explain its reputation for losing money and making it up with consulting fees and, now, consumer spinoffs.

Time isn't the only hurdle. Another is the paucity of recipes, though that's changing. Mr. Goldfarb of Willpowder, for one, is planning a three-ingredient molecular cookbook for home chefs.

Perhaps the biggest impediment, though, is the fact that most molecular dishes are designed to be one- or two-bite experiences, which is why meals at El Bulli typically run to about two dozen courses. "That will tax even the most generous and hard-working dinner party host," Mr. Mifsud says.

Still, he's committed and says he'd love to get his hands on some methyl cellulose, which has the unusual property of enabling liquids to turn solid when heated. "We're used to things hardening as they freeze and melting as they cool. This does the exact opposite," he says.

His goal: hot ice cream - potentially the quintessential Canadian dessert.

"Unfortunately, the summer's coming," he says.

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Laboratory vocabulary

Molecular gastronomy is the application of industrial technology and chemicals to haute cuisine. The term "molecular" is rejected as too clinical by some practitioners, notably Ferran Adrià of El Bulli restaurant in Spain. Here are some other words in the molecular glossary.

-Agar-agar Natural gelling agent extracted from algae.

Foam Abstract presentation in which natural ingredients, from potatoes to espresso, are mixed with a gelling agent or emulsifier, placed in a pressurized canister and forced out with the help of nitrous oxide.

-Lecithin Popular emulsifier, derived from eggs and soy, available in powdered form in many health-food stores.

-Sous vide Cooking method that preserves moisture and texture, in which ingredients are heated moderately - usually in water well below boiling, roughly 60 C - for hours in airtight plastic bags.

-Spherification Technique of combining a liquid with sodium alginate and submerging it in a bath of calcium lactate or calcium chloride to form a sphere. Typically used to make fish-roe-like pearls of fruit juice, such as mango "caviar."

-Sodium alginate Extract of seaweed used to help gel liquids into spheres.

-Tapioca maltodextrin Modified food starch that thickens and stabilizes fatty compounds. Used to create flavoured powders out of such ingredients as bacon fat, peanut butter and Nutella.

-Xanthan gum Derived from fermented corn starch. Thickens soups and sauces, enabling them to suspend solid ingredients on their surface for an artful presentation.

Beppi Crosariol

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Where to stock up

North American stores and distributors that sell molecular gastronomy ingredients.

DC Duby (Richmond, B.C.)

Dcduby.com; orders@dcduby.com; 604-277-6102

L'Epicerie (New York)

Lepicerie.com; customer_service@lepicerie.com; 1-866-350-7575Rogers International

(Portland, ME.)

Rogersintl.com; info@rogersintl.com; 207-828-2000

(North American distributor

of Texturas products from El Bulli)

Terra Spice Co.

(Walkerton, IND.)

Terraspicecompany.com;

info@terraspicecompany.com; 574-586-2600

Willpowder (New York)

Willpowder.net; info@willpowder.net; 212-941-5405

Beppi Crosariol