Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (53 page)
Read Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food Online
Authors: Jeff Potter
Tags: #COOKING / Methods / General
PHOTO BY JOANNE HOYOUNG-LEE
Carolyn Jung started as a hard news reporter covering everything from plane crashes to trials. She then transitioned to food, working for the
San Jose Mercury News
for over a decade as a food writer and editor. With “the whole journalism media industry imploding,” she started her own blog at
http://www.foodgal.com
.
What’s a day in the life of a food writer like?
It’s one of the most fun, most creative, and most enjoyable professions there is. Food is this innocuous way to get strangers talking, and it’s a very innocuous way to educate people, and not just about food. It teaches people about culture, about history, about different ethnicities, about different places in the world, about politics, about religion. All of those aspects are what really make it interesting, much more so than people think at the outset.
Where does this recent fascination that people have for cooking come from?
A large impetus has been the Food Network, which has made food such a phenomenon. A lot of people who wouldn’t normally cook were attracted to shows like
Iron Chef
because it was almost like watching a boxing match or a football game. Who doesn’t dream about being the quarterback on their favorite team? Cooking shows have been the same; you imagine yourself in that contestant’s position. “Oh, my God, if I got a box with mushrooms and lemongrass and chicken and avocado, what the heck would I make?”
Why do you think the Food Network took off?
I was watching a documentary on the history of how it all developed. Apparently when it started it was a couple of people sitting at a desk, like regular news shows. As the audience started to grow and funding became available, they got people in a kitchen cooking on sets, but it was very rudimentary. I think what they said really made their number of viewers take off was when they started doing shows where they would go to the nation’s barbeque festival or the crawfish festival in the South, things where they showed food as a participatory event.
What’s been the most unexpected difference between your experience in the print world and your blog?
As a newspaper reporter, I was used to writing some very long, involved pieces. On the Web, people don’t have that kind of attention span. You have a shorter window of time to attract a reader online, but you’re also able to build a very loyal audience. If someone likes what you’re doing, they will stay with you.
Are there any particular blog posts that have had much stronger reactions than you expected?
I wrote about how to make preserved lemons, and how I got, as my husband calls it, almost obsessed with watching my lemons. It’s the simplest thing ever. All you do is make slashes into fresh lemons, fill the cavities with salt, and then pack these lemons in a sterilized glass jar. You top it with a little bit of fresh lemon juice and put the cap on it. As the days go by, the lemons start breaking down and getting softer, exuding more of their juice, and it brines itself in this mixture of lemon juice and salt. I remember the first time I made this, I would wake up every day and go look at my jar of lemons to see what they looked like. It was almost like a science experiment. The fun part is discovering all the uses there are once you have this jar.
All you need are washed and preferably organic lemons (either Eurekas or Meyers), kosher salt, and a glass jar with a tight lid that has been sterilized by running it through the dishwasher.
Make two cuts (lengthwise) in each lemon so that the quarters created remain attached. Stuff kosher salt into the crevices of the lemons. Then place the salted lemons tightly into the glass jar. If I have one or two leftover lemons, I’ll often squeeze the juice into the jar before closing it. But you don’t have to. This just gives the lemons a little bit of a head start.
Place the jar on a countertop and then just watch and wait. Over the next few days, more and more juice will exude from the lemons, filling the jar. You can give it a shake now and then — or not — to keep the salt blended well in the liquid. In about three weeks, the lemons will get very soft and the brining liquid thick and cloudy. Once that happens, you can store the jar in the refrigerator. As long as the brine covers the lemons, they’ll keep for about a year refrigerated.
To use, pick a lemon or part of one out of the jar with a clean fork. Give the lemon a quick rinse. Remove any seeds. Then, use the peel however you like — chopped or sliced in thin slivers. Some people discard the flesh, but others consider that wasteful. I always add some of the chopped flesh in with the rind in whatever I’m making.
Use preserved lemons in your favorite Moroccan chicken tagine recipes. Or stir it into tuna salad for sandwiches, pasta salad, bean salad, vinaigrettes, marinades for fish or Cornish game hens, or in couscous topped with toasted pine nuts.
For a fast and easy example of how to use these, try making quinoa in a rice cooker. Use kitchen shears to snip one of the lemon slices up into small pieces and mix in with the quinoa before cooking.
RECIPE USED BY PERMISSION OF CAROLYN JUNG
Sugar, like salt, can be used as a preservative, and it works for the same reasons. The sugar changes the osmotic pressure of the environment, leading to cellular plasmolysis and inhibiting the growth of microbial cells. This is why sugary foods such as candies and jams don’t require refrigeration to prevent bacterial spoilage: their water activity is low enough that there’s just not any free water for the bacteria.
Sugar’s osmotic properties can be used for more than just preserving food. Researchers in the UK have found that sugar can be used as a dressing for wounds, essentially as cheap bactericidal. They used sugar (sterilized, please), glycol, and hydrogen peroxide (0.15% final concentration) to create a paste with high osmotic pressure and low water activity, creating something that dries out the wound while preventing bacteria from being able to grow. Clearly, whoever said “pouring salt on an open wound” didn’t try sugar!
This is just plain fun. You can make fancy sugar sticks for sweetening your coffee or tea with very little effort. While probably not something you’d use on a daily basis, it’s a fun project to do with kids.
In a saucepan, boil until completely dissolved:
- 2 cups (430g) sugar
- 1 cup (240g) water
Allow the sugar syrup to cool. While waiting, fetch the following:
- 1 narrow drinking glass
- 1 small wooden cooking skewer
- Tape, such as masking tape
- Plastic wrap
Dip the first two or three inches of the skewer into the sugar syrup and then into dry sugar to create seed crystals on the stick.
Stretch a piece of tape across the top of the drinking glass and poke the skewer through the tape so that it’s dangling in the center of the glass but not touching the bottom. You might need to use an extra piece of tape around the skewer to keep it from dropping down.
Once the sugar syrup has cooled (to avoid thermal shock breaking the glass), pour it into the glass. Cover with plastic wrap. Set the glass someplace where it won’t be disturbed and check it every day as the sugar crystals grow. Remove the skewer when the sugar crystals have reached the desired size.
Note
- You can add food coloring to the water to make colored sugar crystals. Note that some food colorings are not suitable for vegetarians, such as red food coloring (cochineal or carminic acid), which is derived from the scales of an insect.
Marmalade is made by boiling sliced citrus fruits in sugar water and then adding pectin to cause the liquid to gel. For an intensely bitter marmalade — whether you like this style is a matter of personal preference — use Seville oranges. These can be hard to come by, which is why I suggest using limes here. Try this with other citrus fruits, or try a blend!
In a saucepan, bring to a boil and then simmer for half an hour or so, until the rinds are soft:
- 1 pound (400–500g) limes, cut in half lengthwise, then sliced thinly (about 6 to 8 limes’ worth)
- 2 cups (500g) water, at least enough to cover limes
- 1.5 cups (300g) sugar
Once the fruit has softened, remove from heat. The marmalade should be intensely bitter at this point; you can add a bit more sugar if you find it overwhelming. Add pectin, following the directions on the box. If you’re using a high-methoxyl (HM) pectin, keep in mind that some amount of acid is needed for it to set; in contrast, low-methoxyl (LM) pectin requires a sufficient amount of sugar to set. If your marmalade or jams aren’t setting, you’ll need to either add something acidic for HM pectin (e.g., lemon juice) or sugar for LM pectin.
Try making your own pectin! See
Chapter 4
for details. Once you have the liquid pectin, just add it into the marmalade, simmering to reduce the liquid if necessary.
Cool and store in fridge.
In a pot, bring to a boil:
- 2 cups (475g) water
- 2 cups (430g) sugar
- Orange rind from 3 to 6 oranges, cut into strips of width around 0.5 cm / ¼”
Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, until the rind is tender. Remove rind from pot, dry on paper towels, and transfer to a container. Add more sugar to container to help pull out moisture in the rind.
Notes
- The bitter compound in citrus pith (or as a biologist would call it, the mesocarp) is limonin, which can be neutralized either by heat or by steeping in a base. Sugar is used for its preservative qualities that prevent bacterial growth, not for counteracting the bitterness of the raw pith.
- Try other citrus fruits, such as grapefruit, lemon, lime, or tangerines; or fruits such as cherries, peaches, or apples. You can add spices such as cinnamon to the water as well, or substitute liquors such as Grand Marnier or dark rum for part of the water.
- You can chop up candied rind and use it in baked goods, or try dipping the candied rind in chocolate and serving it as a simple candy.
PHOTOS USED BY PERMISSION OF HERVÉ THIS
Hervé This (pronounced “teess”) is a researcher at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris known for his studies of chemical changes that occur in the process of cooking. Along with Nicholas Kurti and others, he started a series of workshops entitled “International Workshop on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy,” first held in 1992 at Erice in Sicily, Italy.
What was the original reason you and Dr. Kurti had for picking the name “molecular and physical gastronomy”?
Nicholas Kurti was a retired professor of physics. He loved cooking, and he wanted to apply new technology in the kitchen, ideas from the physical lab, mostly vacuum and cold, low temperatures. For myself, the idea was different: I wanted to collect and test the old wives’ tales of cooking. Also, I wanted to use some tools in the kitchen that were already in chemistry labs.
For many years, when I was doing an experiment in Paris, he was repeating it in Oxford, and what he was doing in Oxford, I was repeating in Paris. It was great fun. In 1988, I proposed to Nicholas to create an international association of the kind of thing that we were doing. Nicholas said to me that it was too early but, probably, it would be a good idea to make a workshop with friends meeting together. This is why we needed a name, so I proposed molecular gastronomy, and at that time, Nicholas, who was a physicist, had the feeling that that would put too much emphasis on chemistry, so he proposed molecular and physical gastronomy. I accepted the idea only because Nicholas was a great friend of mine, not because I was convinced scientifically.
In the beginning, I published a paper in a main journal in organic chemistry, and in this paper I made the confusion between technology and science. In 1999, I realized that a clear distinction should be made between engineering and science because it is different.
How does the work that you do with molecular gastronomy differ from what a food scientist does who publishes in journals such as the
Journal of Food Science
?
It is a question of history. At that time [1988], food science was more the science of food ingredients or food technology. You had papers on, let’s say, the chemical composition of carrots. Nicholas and I were not interested at all in the chemical composition of carrots, in the chemistry of ingredients.
We wanted to do science, to explore the phenomena that you observe when you cook, and cooking was completely forgotten at that time. In the previous centuries, Lavoisier and others studied how to cook meat broth. This was exactly what we are doing. Food science had drifted; cooking was completely forgotten. Recently, I took the 1988 edition of
Food Chemistry
by Belitz and Grosch — a very important book in food science — and looked at the chapters on meat and wine. There is almost nothing about cooking wine or cooking meat; it is very strange.
It seems like there is much confusion about what you mean with the term “molecular gastronomy.”
Molecular gastronomy means looking for the mechanism of phenomena that you observe during cooking processes. Food science in general is not exactly that. If you look at the table of contents of the
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,
you will see very little material referring to molecular gastronomy.
So, molecular gastronomy is a subset of food science that deals specifically with transformation of food?
Exactly, it is a subset. In 2002, I introduced a new formalism in order to describe the physical organization of colloidal matter and of the dishes. This formalism can apply to food and also to any formulated products: drugs, coatings, paintings, dyes, cosmetics. It has something to do with physical chemistry and, of course, it has something to do with molecular gastronomy. So it’s true that molecular gastronomy is a particular kind of food science, but also it’s a particular kind of a physical chemistry.
It’s fascinating to see how easy it is to make inventions or applications from science. Every month I give an invention to Pierre Gagnaire. I should not, because it is invention, not discovery, but I can tell you that I just have to snap the finger and the invention is there. I take one
idea of science, I ask myself, “What can I do with that?” and then I find a new application. It is very, very easy. The relationship is of use, and this is probably the reason why there is so much confusion between science and technology. We’ve been studying carrot stocks. We were studying what is going out of carrot roots into the water and how is it going out. One day, I came to the lab. I was looking at two carrot stocks made from the same carrot. One stock was brown, the other was orange. It was the same carrot, same water, same temperature, same time of cooking, and one stock was brown; the other was orange. I stopped everybody in the lab saying, “We have to focus on this, because we don’t understand anything.”
We focused on this story, and it was due to the fact that one preparation was made in front of light, and the other was in the darkness, and, indeed, we discovered that if you shine some light on the carrot stock, it will turn brown. So we explored the mechanism, how it turned brown. It was a discovery, not an invention, and thus it was science. At the same time, the application is of use, because cooks want to get a beautiful golden color to stocks, and in order to get the brown color, they grill onions and they put them in the stock. I can tell cooks now: avoid the onions and just add some light. So you see, the discovery is leading to invention immediately.
Tell me more about your collaboration with Chef Pierre Gagnaire.
I don’t know if it is a collaboration, it’s a friendship. Pierre’s wife told Pierre more than 10 years ago, “You’re crazy and Hervé is crazy, so you probably could play together.”
The real story is that, in 1998, Pierre opened a new restaurant in Paris. He was launching the restaurant with lunches for the press, for the media, for politics, etc., and I was invited. I did not know him, except from reputation at the time. One year passed, and I was asked by the newspaper
Libération
for recipes for Christmas — scientific recipes. I told them I’m not a chef, and that I should not give recipes. I proposed, instead, that I would invite two wonderful chefs to do recipes from ideas that I would give to them, and Pierre Gagnaire would be one of the two chefs.
When I was in the cab driving to the restaurant for the interview and the picture, I realized that beer can make a foam. It means that you have proteins that are surfactants that can wrap the air bubbles. If the proteins can wrap the air bubbles, it means that they can wrap oil. When I arrived in the restaurant, Pierre was there; immediately I asked him, “Do you have some beer, and some oil, one whisk and one bowl?” He looked at me, and he asked for the ingredients and the hardware, and I told him, “Please, put some beer and then whisk the oil into the beer; I can predict that you will get an emulsion.” And he got it. He tasted the emulsion, and he found it very interesting, and he decided to make the dish after this wonderful emulsion.
One year later I was invited to lecture at the Academy of Sciences. I proposed to them to make the lecture with a dinner from Pierre. We worked for three months, meeting every Monday morning between 7 and 10. It was so fun that we decided that we had to play on and we never stopped. It’s not collaboration, it’s just playing together, where we are children.
It seems like some of the more novel cuisines that places like elBulli or Alinea do are removed from the normal dining experience. How much of that experience is created by taking scientific discoveries and applying them to a meal, as opposed to a chef having a concept and coming to a scientist and asking is there a way to make this?
Well, there are many questions in that one. I have the feeling that we don’t cook the way we should. For example, we are still roasting chicken. Is it a good idea? I don’t know. We ask the question, “Should we go on as we always have?” Many chefs are changing their ways. Many of my inventions are free on Pierre Gagnaire’s website (
http://www.pierre-gagnaire.com/francais/cdthis.htm
), and I know that chefs go there to get ideas for the kitchen. I publish the ideas for free; there are no patents, there is no money involved. It is all for free because I want to rationalize the way we cook. We don’t cook in a rational way. We are still roasting chicken.
For one of the books that I published, the title was translated as
Cooking: A Quintessential Art
, but in French it was
Cooking: Love, Art and Technique
. The idea that cooking is an art was not even admitted some years ago: “Real art is painting or music or sculpture or literature.” I remember talking with a minister of public education in France. He was saying, “No, no, no, it’s not art. You’re just joking; it’s cooking.” It’s love first, then art, then technique. Of course, technology can be useful only for the technical part, not for the art, and not for the love component. Nowadays, Ferran of elBulli and Alinea’s Grant Achatz are using the technique, but there are a lot of possibilities for improvement. They will make their own interpretation, and then science has nothing to do with that. It is personal interpretation; it is feeling.
Do you think that elBulli and Alinea, or restaurants like them, are able to sufficiently use all three components: love, art, and technique?
The love component of cooking is not really formalized. The science needed is still not there. I have the idea that we need to do some science on the love component. Because I’m a physical chemist, it’s not very easy for me to make this study. It’s still very primitive. Currently, the chef behaves intuitively with the love component. If someone is friendly, he will greet you at the entrance of the restaurant, “Ah, here you are, very happy to have you,” and you are happy because you’re greeted as kind of a friend. But this is intuition. What I’m saying is that we need to scientifically study the mechanism of phenomena of this friendship. We don’t have this mechanism currently.
It almost sounds like psychology or sociology.
It is, exactly. My way of doing molecular gastronomy is to do physical chemistry, daily, at the lab, but I’m producing the concepts so that other people can pursue them in their own way. Their own way can be psychology, sociology, history, geography; we need the knowledge to understand the mechanism of phenomena that we observe in cooking. It is a very foolish idea to think that we cannot investigate all the phenomena. It can be done. Imagine that I discover, or someone discovers, a way to give more love to a dish. It means that the guest will be happier. But imagine that you give this knowledge to a dishonest guy, then the guy would use the knowledge dishonestly, and this will increase the power of dishonest people. If you give the same knowledge to kind people, they will do their best. This is the same question as with nuclear physics. If you are acting poorly, you will make a bomb; if you try to act for the good of humankind, you will make electricity. Science is not responsible for the application; you are responsible for the application.
