The Umami of Tomatoes

As most of you know, umami or the savory taste, has only recently been accepted as a basic taste by the scientific community that concerns itself with matters of human neurology. Umami is generally considered to be caused by glutamic acid and it’s salts e.g., monosodium glutamate or MSG (And YOU thought MSG [...]

Bread Starter Test Update no. 2

After 47 hours of incubation the samples were all actively fermenting and beginning to show signs of exhaustion of starch supply. All of them had separated into a mat of gaseous foamy starch on top of a layer of relatively clear water and a layer of stringy, insoluble gluten on the bottom.
None of the samples [...]

Bread Starter Update

This morning (8.13.09) at 5:00 I checked the bread starter samples and took a bunch of photos. Unfortunately, I cannot post the pictures because the camera’s battery fizzled out before I could download them to my computer (When is someone going to build a high quality camera that can do direct uploads?). So until [...]

Bread Starter Test

Way back in July (7/21 to be precise) Michael Ruhlman posted about a method of kick starting sourdough starter. The method, which he learned from Carri Thurman of Two Sisters Bakery in Homer, Alaska called for the addition of a red cabbage leaf to a mixture of flour and water.
Both Ruhlman and Thurman, as well [...]

On the Need to Know

I never thought I did an especially good job of leading my students at The Culinary Institute of America to understand that knowing why food behaves in the ways that it does when we manipulate it, is just as important as knowing how to cook. I think at best I probably reinforced the belief [...]

Acai SuperFood BS

Why are we so willing to believe health claims about foods that are not supported by strong empirical evidence? Is our desire to be healthy without having to think too much about what is required to maintain good health so strong that our innate skepticism buckles whenever an earnest friend, slick salesman or too-eager-to-write-good-copy journalist [...]

Food Science Out of The Box:

If you see marbling in pork you are less likely to buy it
Data from Experiment 1 indicate that an increase in IMF [Intra Muscular Fat or marbling] level is associated with an increase in visual perception of fat and a corresponding decrease in the willingness to eat and purchase the meat, when expressed before tasting.
[...]

The Real: Fond blanc de Veau

It was not that long ago that I would have shrugged my shoulders and said something like “Whatever, I should be so lucky” if someone told me that I’d be slaughtering a calf on one day and making veal stock from it’s bones the next. But I don’t dare say that now.
Last Friday we slaughtered [...]

The Real: Fond blanc de Veau

It was not that long ago that I would have shrugged my shoulders and said something like “Whatever, I should be so lucky” if someone told me that I’d be slaughtering a calf on one day and making veal stock from it’s bones the next. But I don’t dare say that now.
Last Friday we slaughtered [...]

Salt this

A few weeks ago a guy stopped by the kitchen while I was making sausage to ask me if there was any salt in one of the dishes I prepared. I told him that, yes, I used a type of sea salt that was pure sodium chloride and occasionally, Kosher salt. The sea [...]