Chefs As Chemists 266
circletimessquare writes "Using ingredients usually relegated to the lower half of the list of ingredients on a Twinkies wrapper, some professional chefs are turning themselves into magicians with food. Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England have been doing this for years, but the New York Times updates us on the ongoing experiments at WD-50 in New York City. Xanthan Gum, agar-agar, and other hydrocolloids are being used to bring strange effects to your food. Think butter that doesn't melt in the oven, foie gras you can tie into knots, and fried mayonnaise."
Old old old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two cents worth... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take baking, for example. For those who've never tried it, baking is a very precise exercise. You have to add precise amounts of reagents, mix them together in a certain order, and add a precise amount of heat for a precise amount of time. That whole undertaking is very chemical in nature. If you time it wrong, add the wrong amount of heat and/or reagents, then you're going to end up with some pretty disastrous results. The chemical reactions that make a cake or a loaf of bread is not very different than making a vinegar/baking soda volcano.
The whole "molecular gastronomy" trend is simply applying the same strategy to "warm" dishes. Instead of adding a "dash" of salt or a "pinch" of pepper, you're now adding precisely X mg of chemical Y. I know we usually don't think of food and cooking as endeavours relating to chemistry, but I don't see why so many people are so surprised when that fact is pointed out.
Regardless, I think this is a very good thing. I love food and I love science. Now I can eat food that's created by using scientific principles!
Re:How is this different than a food chemist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, cooking is an art, baking is a science.
Why do they call this food? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds worse than McDonald's to me. Yuck.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit... (Score:3, Insightful)
Life feeds on life. This is necessary.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans are omnivores, not carnivores.
On a side note, your little tirade didn't really seem to address the point the GP was making: Do we really need to torture animals before killing & eating them?
health effects (Score:1, Insightful)
i do hope food scientists begin to turn their guns on making food safer. everyone who gets put on a restricted diet becomes unable to eat these creations.
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq77ET5af5U [youtube.com]
While I don't really like how animals are treated in large scale farms, I don't think vegetarianism is really the answer. People need a little bit of respect for the things they put in their bodies. Maybe eat a little less meat and buy from local farmers who raise and slaughter their own livestock. It is probably a little bit better for you, and actually has taste (especially chicken).
pedophilia was never natural (Score:3, Insightful)
meanwhile, teenagers are biologically mature enough for sex. now in modern times, certainly, the issue of TEENAGERS being verboten for sex with adults is a new thing. but that's because we respect the notion of mental immaturity nowadays. so let them experiment amongst themselves, and keep the predatorial adults away from them
seems like progress to me
Good Eats with Alton Brown (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Foie Gras is some nasty shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
We kill 9 billion chickens in the US every year. 9 BILLION. Our selective breeding is so effective that meat chickens go from birth to slaughter in about 8 weeks.
The meat and poultry industry is a nasty, nasty business. Any illusion that we treat meat animals with any sort of dignity goes out the door when you learn how fiendishly optimized the whole affair is.
It is a peculiar thing that we think it's OK to eat animals. I eat meat because it's acceptable to do so in my culture and because I like the taste. I make no claims of moral righteousness. If you're not willing to face up to what needs to happen to get you your meat, you shouldn't be eating meat. I absolutely respect vegetarians (I know several) and particularly vegans for the choice they have made. It is not my choice, but it is one that I can easily justify.
When you really, really get down to it, there's little more inhumane than the breeding of animals for the sole purpose of their later slaughter. How we treat the animals has ramifications for our safety and health, and it is often the most graphic effect of the system. It does not, however, have much to do with the morality of the situation.
In essence, when we have billions of animals created essentially as expendable meat factories, force feeding a few geese seems like small potatoes.
Re:French cooking is like this too (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're making bread it -matters- if the temperature of your liquids is 30C, 38C or 50C. If you're making lasagne it does -not- matter, well theoretically you may need to leave it for 3 minutes longer in the oven... If you triple the amount of chili in your chili con carne the result may be non-edible for non-dragons, if you triple the amount of estragon on your pizza, you get sligthly-more-estragony pizza, nobody will even really notice. (it'll taste a bit different, but not inedible, probably not even bad)
If you're making buns, they'll in general (up to a point anyway) be better if you work the dough more vigorously, perhaps letting them rise multiple times with workings of the dough between. To the contrary, if you're making any kind of sponge-cake where the airness comes from beaten eggs, then you should stir as little as absolutely humanly possible after adding the flour, since otherwise you'll beat-out all the airiness.
So, in short, cooking ain't in general hard at all. There's certain details that you need to pay attention to. It takes some practice or teaching or both to learn which, precisely, that is. You probably need to mess up these things a few times to really learn them. Most people I know have tried the trick of baking pizza with too-warm water once -- most people don't need to do that more than once to get the idea....
Re:French cooking is like this too (Score:4, Insightful)
Auto mechanics ain't in general hard at all. It's just knowing which nuts and bolts to undo, in which order, and on which part.
Assembling one's own computer ain't in general hard at all. It's just knowing which parts are compatible with which parts, plugging components into each other, and knowing when you are in danger of frying a component due to static electricity and when you aren't.
It reminds me of an anecdote I've heard attributed to Henry Ford but couldn't find after an exhaustive 30 second search on Google. Henry had some equipment that was malfunctioning, and his engineers couldn't figure out what was wrong. He decided to call in the guy, let's call him Bill, who had designed the equipment. Bill spent 45 minutes working on the equipment, got it working, and left. A couple weeks later Henry received an invoice from Bill for $10,000. Henry called Bill up and said, "I know your time is valuable, but don't you think $10k is a little much for twirling a few knobs and bolts?". Bill agreed and said he'd adjust the bill. Henry got an adjusted bill soon afterwards that said, "Adjusting a few knobs and bolts: $1000. Knowing which knobs and bolts to adjust: $9000."
So I've babbled on enough, and I agree with you that once you get into cooking, much of it isn't that daunting, but neither are most other pastimes once you've figured them out.
Re:Food? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yet another defender who completely ignores... (Score:4, Insightful)
We FORCE chickens to live in pens. Some chickens are FORCED to live in small cages. We FORCE cows to take hormones and antibiotics so they can produce more milk than is natural without becoming diseased. We FORCE veal calves to live in small cages. We FORCE sheep to be sheared. We FORCE cattle, chicken and other animals into corrals for slaughter. We FORCE electricity through their heads, or FORCE bolts into their heads or force cleavers or saws through their necks to kill them for processing.
See, this is what eating meat is all about: FORCING animals to do certain things so that we can eat their flesh, milk and eggs and use their by-products. Just because people look at gavage and say, "that must really hurt the animal," doesn't make it so. In fact, from all evidence available, it isn't detrimental to the animals' health. It certainly doesn't cause "exploding livers" as one poster put it.
In light of all this, it is absolutely relevant that foie gras animals are treated better than the average chicken raised for meat. We force animals to do a lot of things and from all evidence available, forced slaughter is still the most detrimental to the animal.
This "issue" is simply an attempt by animal rights extremists to open the door to further limits on society's ability to use and eat animals (even keep them as pets). It is a gateway issue for them. Don't be suckered into their little games.
Taft
Re:Yet another defender who completely ignores... (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the thing... after the duck has been feed using gavage, they will typically go around and pick up any pieces of corn that have dropped on the floor and eat that too. The farmers are simply using technology to improve the efficiency of the process... left to their own devices, the ducks would "force feed" themselves without any help from us. Like I said before - quality of the product is inversely proportional to the stress that the animal is under. It is not in the farmer's best interest to stress these ducks out.