Tweeting My Way Through Beard and Reporting LIVE!

I may not have been going to the beard awards for the past 13 years like @foodwriterdiary has- but I do agree that the press room even in the past three years has gotten crazy crowded. Hey @BeardFoundation, time to either get a bit more selective about who enters the press room OR-even better, get a BIGGER press room. Come on, this is a good thing! Finally Beard is getting all kinds of recognition from tweeters and writers and bloggers and spreading the word far and wide across the world about the great chefs from everywhere in the world  who make the best food and write the best cookbooks in the U.S.! I say make the awards ceremony in the press room and put the bloggers in the audience arena. It certainly seems like there are more bloggers than attendees anyway right! Regardless of the size and crowds, this year we had amazing press room food. Last year we had caviar and cheese and cocktails, but this year we were fed more substantial fare like #meatballshop meatballs on polenta to help absorb those crazy gin bitter lady cocktails! The Bitter Lady cocktails were made with egg whites, which according to the microbiologist/mixologist making them, the booze kills the salmonella. So I felt safe drinking it!

 Which brings up an interesting point-the awards are pretty expensive and @Groupon was a sponsor –but yet, you can’t buy a discounted Beard ticket through @groupon and @beardfoundation tickets are pretty pricy! This year they ran about $450 bucks a piece! So I was totally confused about the whole Groupon sponsor thing-I mean I guess they were trying to send a message that in general you can get good restaurant deals via groupon, but I am curious as to how many @beardfoundation award winning chefs actually use the groupon service??

 Let’s just hope next year that Groupon gets us all a really good deal to the award show-not that I buy a ticket since I am an established writer with many blogs and hard copy publications (I earned my press pass-years of tedious writing about food science and culinary arts for magazines that deal with food science stuff like @ift and #researchchefassociation topics)

 I went into @beardfoundation awards blind this year. I didn’t do my normal review of who the nominees were, I didn’t create a cheat sheet to follow during the show-I just figured it would come to me while on the green carpet.  It didn’t really and I had to be one of the many bloggers who bugged Bret Thorn –asking him repeatedly “who won”! By the way, you should read Bret’s dry humor coverage  of the awards I always like living the awards vicariously through Bret, even while experiencing them live myself! 

Since I didn’t know who the winners were, I basically stood there in my media spot on the green carpet and called out chefs like Wylie Dufrense,  @andrewzimmern, Ming Tsai and Duff Goldberg  (the ace of cakes guy-he needs a #twitteraccount) and stumped them with random food science questions.  Highlights of the night included @Andrewzimmern telling me about how exotic corn based snacks from Africa will be all the rage in 2012 and that he was wondering where all the best after hour @beardfoundation parties were going to be!

and Duff giving me a blank stare when I asked him what he thought of the commercialization of his cake products. In Duff’s defense, I am proud to note that he promises to join the  #researchchefassociation -he promised during our interview.

I tried to get Ming Tsai to discuss with me the commercialization of HIS products but he mostly wanted to discuss combating obesity in America:

which is cool-I mean that’s important too I guess. He mentioned his whole wheat and brown rice chips that #KellogsCereal manufactured for him. He said that he wanted them healthy and the only resemblance to #pringles is that they would be so good that “no one could eat just one” GO MING TSAI!!! I love that guy.  You can watch all my goofy movies that I made with my brother Rob (no twitter handle)and I made together. We do @beardfoundation #jbfa awards together every year , except last year when I went with my high school art teacher David Magana who I hadn’t seen since 1990.

I didn’t ask @RickBayless any questions, I did tell him that for the first time I was able to get served at one of his restaurants without a reservation, that would be his new Frontera Grill in terminal B (Gate B10 United airlines) at @ORD airport! Amazing Tortas. He was happy that I picked his place over @McDonalds -right next door-#mcdonaldsfriesaremyweakness

 I didn’t really know who the nominees were but I kind of didn’t care too much. Everyone who is nominated totally rocks anyway and its just splitting hairs right-they are all winners. But if you must know who technically won, here is the official list without bias or opinion, posted by the @beardfoundation folk .  I just reviewed the list of winners and can totally see how @Uchiaustin in Austin and @Cochon555 in New Orleans won awards. I love both those places! Years ago –back when I used to work at a Japanese company that encouraged expensive customer dinners, I took a customer to Uchi and we got to cook our own meat on a rock, which was quite avante garde back in 2007-but now I guess everyone cooks their own food at the table.  I was happy to see that @lotusofsiamlv won, I actually ate there per @d_rosengarten recommendation back in 2006.  Although several bloggers like @chandrasplate @foodwritersdiary noted that Tyson Cole  (@uchiaustin) was none too pleased that he had to share his award with @lotusofsiamlv.  I have also eaten at Cochon several times and I always get this crispy red fish dish that is so good that I encourage everyone to go there and order it at the @ift AKA www.ift.org conference in New Orleans this summer #tradeshowsrock @iftmedia!!!!   Lastly, I have been to @zingermans (best chef, great lakes) but not lately so no comment on that.

Wylie didn’t win best chef, but he did tell me all about a new edible egg made out of clay, a new exciting food science inspired dish that he is serving up at @wd50

 All in all, a great time was had by all. I didn’t stay out too late because I accidently got stranded after the first party at @dbnewyorkny , had been hanging out with Wonder boy AKA @greg_grossman who is this up and coming rising culinary superstar who can’t legally drink yet. Greg and I had dinner at El Bulli in January, thanks to Gerry Dawes who somehow miraculously got us a last minute reservation. You can read about that HERE! and part TWO of that Bulli Story HERE

Since I am not from #NYC , and since @beardfoundations did not exactly PAY for me to be a media attendee, I had to pay for this trip myself. How much did it cost me?

Total COST!!! PRICELESS  -#foreverythingelsewegotmastercardright! IT was @BEARDFOUNDATION awards for foodssake!!

 Can’t wait till next year!!

The James Beard Awards are coming up. Last year I got to chat with Andrew Zimmern about food safety. Who will I speak to this year on the red carpet???

Super High in Omega's!

It’s official! Spain has been deemed the “New France” for foodies, and Spanish gastronomy has become one of the hottest international cuisines in the U.S. It started with the tapas craze in the 1990s, but since then Spanish main dishes and ingredients have caught on quickly, filtering down from fine-dining to fast-casual venues. More important, the acceptance of Spanish cuisine has been a gateway to the cuisines of other regions, such as North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, whose fare had previously been limited mostly to pioneering urban-chic restaurants like minibar in Washington, DC, and Oleana in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now that the trends are finally catching on with mainstream foodies, the time is right for food scientists, chefs, and product developers to start tapping into the unique flavors and ingredients of the Mediterranean table.

Mediterranean fare like tomatoes, garlic, peppers, olive oil, and nuts are all produced in the U.S. and available industrially, which allows developers to easily recreate authentic Mediterranean-style soups, sauces, and spreads. Global sauces have been exploding in both the retail and fast-casual markets because of their versatility, crossover capability, and customization potential. Sauces are a multitasking menu component: They can be manufactured in a concentrated form but can also be diluted at the dining establishment or by the retail customer and transformed into a soup or a spread. A base sauce can also be enhanced with additional ingredients such as vinegars, herbs, and fresh vegetables.

Using nuts to thicken sauces was originally an Arab technique that now is a staple throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Walnuts are an ideal choice for a nut-thickened sauce because their polyunsaturated fats contributes to a smooth and creamy mouth feel, and the finely ground nut flour has superior thickening power. Most Mediterranean countries have their own unique versions of nut-thickened soups, sauces, and condiments, but they clearly all shared the same realization that walnuts not only contribute a great flavor and texture, but they also add nutritional value to the sauce as well. In addition to the antioxidants and essential ALA/omega-3 fatty acid, an ounce of heart healthy walnuts provides a convenient source of protein and fiber. California walnut meal is an inexpensive, largely untapped industrial ingredient that allows developers to create a value-added sauce without substantially raising the cost. Flavor inspiration can be found in restaurants serving food from Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Turkey, and other parts of the Middle East.

Romesco and muhammara are both classic examples of tomato- and pepper-based nut sauces. Romesco is a classic Spanish dipping sauce with nuts, olive oil, bread, vinegar, garlic, and nyora peppers, which give the sauce its red color and a hint of heat. In Spain it is served with blackened calçots (green onions), but its versatility allows it to go well with seafood, pasta, and roasted vegetables. Muhammara, a thick and spicy Middle Eastern red sauce that can be used for dipping or as a spread, has many variations. The core ingredients are pomegranate, roasted red peppers, ground walnuts, and bread crumbs. Muhammara is simultaneously sweet, salty, spicy, and tart — and tastes great with grilled fish, on a sandwich, or with pita chips. Both romesco and muhammara can be used on a pizza or as a dip, but the end user can also thin them out for a pasta sauce or add vinegar to make a dressing.

The heat stability of the ingredients, all of which are available industrially, enables red nut-based sauces to be made into cost-effective shelf-stable products. They also can work as a non-sterile refrigerated item with a shorter shelf life. For a product to be commercially sterile, it must be heated to 185°F to 200°F for several minutes and must have a final-equilibrium pH below 4.6, which inhibits the outgrowth of Clostridium botulinum. If your nut-based sauce has more than 10% non-acid ingredients (such as red pepper, walnuts, and garlic), the pH of the finished product may exceed 4.6. To make this product shelf-stable, take three essential steps:

• Establish the thermal process with a processing authority.
• Acidify the product with an FDA-approved acidulant like citric acid or lemon-juice concentrate to bring the pH below 4.6 (possibly making the sauce slightly tangier than the gold standard).
• File the product with the FDA as an acidified food.

FDA rules on acidified-food manufacturing can be found in Chapter 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 114. A refrigerated version allows the manufacturer to use little heat during processing and have better control over the final flavor profile. No acidification is required because refrigeration is the microbiological inhibitor. However, this product’s shorter shelf life compared with the shelf-stable version is likely to dictate a higher selling price, and it will need to be shipped and stored at a temperature lower than 40°F.

Some pureed dips should not be heat processed at all because too much heat will break down the carbohydrates and leave the finished product with a mealy texture. Greek skordalia and Armenian bean and walnut spread are both comfort foods that combine walnuts and garlic with a bulky base. Skordalia brings together walnut meal with garlic, potato, vinegar, bread crumbs, and olive oil. It goes well with fish, spread on bread or as a simple side dish. Armenian bean and walnut spread is a blend of walnut meal, red beans, onions, dill, garlic mint, and pomegranate. These purees can be made and distributed as a refrigerated food service or retail item. The acid ingredients such as vinegar and pomegranate will naturally extend the finished product’s shelf life.

The ingredients in these sauces are familiar, but sometimes the names can be intimidating to Americans who have not come across words like muhammara and salbitxada. Instead you can use consumer-friendly names that accurately describe the sauce, such as “red pepper walnut puree” or “tomato-walnut pesto,” without discouraging customers from taking a chance on a new dish. Once they taste the amazing flavor and texture of a nut-based sauce, they will quickly become repeat buyers!

A Happy California Cow

Way back in 1991 my college friends and I drove to Washington DC (a typical college roadtrip). I was not quite a food scientist yet but I knew that Washington was where the F.D. A. lived and it was an important organization that I would probably need to know more about in my future. I walked for miles trying to find the building, found it, walked in the lobby-and realizing that it was mostly just offices –left. It was one of those zen food science moments and the only thing I remember about that trip.

For years I never had a reason to question the FDA or doubt anything they said about food.  They told me how to label products, they told me what claims I could and could not use on my labels and they confused the heck out of me with their vague instructions on filling out form 2541A   the FDA food process file for all methods except low acid aseptic!

Which is why I am so conflicted after attending a “Share the Secret” presentation on raw milk dairy products, presented by Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pasture Dairy Co www.organicpastures.com . Mark made quite a few convincing claims about raw milk and the FDA and the food industry in general that contradict what my text books, university professors, and food science friends say, but actually resonated quite well with my organic free range happy cow loving non food science friends that I hang out with at the farmers market with every weekend.

Here are a few “facts” that Mark McAffee presented to a seemlingly organic audience (little did he know that the non rule breaking food microbiologist/intrepid Culinologist was hiding in the audience!)

1. We are bacterio sapiens-We have more bacteria in our body than genetically human cells. We have to feed and nourish these protective colonies of good bacteria.. Modern medicine has depleted our beneficial bacteria colonies resulting in immune depression.
2. The FDA is sterilization happy. They have turned us into germaphobes, and their efforts have resulted in all of us having weak depressed immune systems.
3. He vaguely implied that Nestle seems to own the FDA and plays a role in their raw milk rules and regulations.
4. Lactose Intolerance should be renamed “pasteurization intolerance” because the lactase enzyme that is created by the beneficial bacteria that should be in our body, is not always there-however, drinking raw milk will allow the good bacteria to re-colonize our system, produce lactase enzymes and allow lactose intolerant people to drink milk once again.
5. Organic Pastures Milk is safe. Mike spends over $2000 dollars a month on mandatory testing that only applies to raw milk sold for human consumption. The results of the raw milk testing must pass the same bacteria count standards that are required of pasteurized milk.
6. To date, not one pathogen has ever been detected in raw milk!

Marks 400 + cows live on a 585 acre farm grazing on forever green grass and are never given antibiotics, hormones or GMO’s. When one of the seminar attendees asked “what do you do if a cow gets sick” Mark replied “we just let it die… naturally”.

Always the skeptical “I have to defend my field and the FDA and my whole career” food scientist I did alittle reading to see what my *text book peeps had to say.

* Microorganisms in Food 6, 1998 Blackie Academic and Professional

1. Raw milk receives no processing, thus there is no opportunity to reduce potential health hazards. Refrigeration prolongs shelf life but does not eliminate the hazard.
2. Refrigeration of raw milk can slow down spoilage growth, but encourages  psychotrophic (cold loving bacteria) growth-which has rancid, malty, yeasty, bitter fruity flavor producing enzymes
3. Consumption of raw milk was the cause many of milk-born disease outbreaks in the 1930’s, including typhoid fever, salmonellosis, septic sore throats, tuberculosis and diphtheria. Pasteurization decreased these outbreaks dramatically.
4. Listeria, Campylobacteriosis, Yersinia Enterocolitica, Escherichia coli, Staph aureus and assorted viruses have all been isolated from raw milk.

(however, Mark will be happy that my food microbiology text confirmed that a 1987 study showed that the percent  Listeria isolated from raw milk across the U.S. was around 4.2%, none were isolated from Californian samples!)

My textbook concluded that raw milk can and often will be contaminated with pathogens, even from certified “pathogen free” herds.

Is it possible for small highly controlled dairy farms to produce safe raw milk for human consumption, probably yes, but the measures are strict and expensive.

1. Animals must be healthy, and fed pathogen free feed
2. Regular cow screening of milk from individual quarters of the udder and proper antiobiotic therapy
3. Regular cleaning of tail, udder and all equipment surfaces that come in contact with milk before milking
4. Fresh drawn milk should be chilled immediately to slow microbial growth
5. A very sanitary personnel staff
6. A strictly enforced HACCP program

Organic Pastures Farm (San Juaquin Valley, CA) does follow the utmost extreme sanitation and safety practices, and because of this, you can buy their milk at Whole Foods and other natural stores in California for the low price of $9 dollars per half gallon. The benefits of drinking raw milk (AKA a “living food”) are endless. Strengthened immune system, elimination of lactose intolerance and ear ache free children.  Cheaper than medicine, it can (according to Mark) reduce your health care bill and provide you and your children with strong immune systems!

BUT even Mark cannot guarantee pathogen free milk. He states in his literature “We have never detected a pathogen in our raw milk, although we cannot guarantee this will continue forever, we can guarantee that if you consume bio-diverse living raw milk your immune system will be stronger than ever…”

I cautiously drank a glass of raw milk during the seminar and it was pretty tasty. I admit, I liked the idea of healthy gut improving microbes taking over my immune system. I felt fine the next day, no side effects at all.

 I know I can’t hold a wine writer accountable for what they perceive, but I firmly believe that wine would be a whole lot more approachable if descriptions were based on readings and perceptions were described as exactly that-with the logic of those perceptions written in a book somewhere as well. There are wine writers out there who do just that-describe their wine objectively and accurately using words that are well known in the wine and science world. Karen McNeil, chairman of the CIA Greystone wine department and writer of the award winning The Wine Bible is one of those writers.

Most words like salt and acidity have the same meaning for both the wine novice scientist (me) and the wine writer. But one word in particular can be very confusing-viscosity.

 In the world of R&D, viscosity, as it relates to food is a very specific measurable quality that is applied to that food. But because there are different ways to measure viscosity, the terms “high viscosity” or “low viscosity” are not a good way to describe what viscosity really is- the measure of the resistance of a fluid.

 Examples will help clarify this confusing point:

 Everyday terms: Viscosity means “thickness” thus honey, which is thick, has a high viscosity, but water, which is “thin” has a low viscosity.

 When wine writers are describing a wine that is “full bodied”-they are referring to high alcohol, which in turn, they refer to as “viscous” or “high viscosity”. But something with a thick mouth feel might not necessarily always be high in alcohol, so a viscous wine does not always mean “full bodied” or  “high alcohol”, which is why no assumptions can ever be made when reading a wine writers words, everything has to be taken in context and related to anything else being said about the wine.

 Brookfield Terms: Brookfield Engineering  is a Massachusetts based company that sells equipment that measures viscosity. They describe viscosity as “ The internal friction of a fluid, caused by molecular attraction, which makes it resist a tendency to flow”.  Viscosity = sheer stress/sheer rate

 When using a brookfield unit to measure the viscosity properties of food, one generally can see that thicker products (like honey and corn syrup) will have higher readings than thin products like water or rubbing alcohol.

 Which is why, when the wine reader says that high alcohol = full body = high viscosity, the scientist is confused. We automatically start thinking of honey and how the Brookfield readings on honey would be much higher then that of a glass of wine. But honey has no alcohol…

 Bostwick Terms: Lastly, to confuse matters even more, is when viscosity is measured by a bostwick. Bostwick measures the distance a material flows in a given time interval. Viscosity, when measured with a bostwick is reported in centimeters. In this case, if something is very thick (like honey) it does not flow very far in a given period of time, as compared to something very thin, like water. Thus in bostwick world, the higher the reading, the LOWER the viscosity of the material!

 Thus, when the wine writer says that a wine has a high viscosity, the food scientist who regularly uses a bostwick to measure materials (like I did when I worked in the tomato sauce industry) will automatically think that they mean very thin and runny. But actually, if the wine writer is being constant with the standard wine writers definition, it would really mean the exact opposite.

 There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to viscosity, but it is important to always define the terms and equipment using to measure a material. It’s also important when comparing two products side by side, you use the same measuring device (be it the general verbal technique, bostwick or Brookfield) on both samples.

 In conclusion, its easy to see how a strict food scientist who has not done any time in the wine world can be very confused when presented with a wine writers description of the word viscosity. Culinologists, get out there and take a wine class because I don’t see the scientists/wine writers and technical experts at Brookfield Engineering getting together any time soon to have a conference on how to make it easier to understand this concept and terminology!

• You know all the locations of all the casual dining chain headquarters in the U.S.
•  You think it’s normal to use industrial ingredients at home to boost the flavor, viscosity and acidity of your dinner
•  You have been invited to participate in yet another fast food chain “ideation” session
•  You now receive  Food Product Design, Plate, Flavor and The Menu, Stagnito, Food Technology, and Prepared foods magazine, but you don’t recall ever requesting a subscription.
•  You’ve had a conversation with Sandra Frenzki
•  You own at least 3 magnetic cows from DariFair.
•  You have a shelf full of National Starch and Kelco Gums, and a freezer full of McCain IQF vegetables in your lab.
•  You have hung out at the RCA Show hospitality Suite till 4 AM and still made it to your 9 AM morning panel on time.
•  You analyze every meal you eat, wondering how you could mass produce that concept
•  You have been profiled in Culinology Magazine
•  You get annoyed that pH 4.6 keeps messing up your shelf stable R&D plans
•  You have been asked to do a matching project without any formula information or ingredient statements, and its due in 3 days.
•  Your company salesperson has unreasonable expectations
•  Your love when ingredient suppliers post their specifications, nutritionals and allergen statements on their website.
•  You feel conflicted when you watch movies like Food Inc. and Fast Food Nation or read Omnivore’s Dilemma, and wonder if you are part of the problem or the solution.
•  You stop telling people on planes what you do for a living-because you know it will lead to endless questions….
•  You have travelled extensively to Dallas, Ann Arbor, Southern California, Tarrytown, Englewood Cliffs, Bentonville, and Kansas City.
•  You know all about the “World of Flavors” conferences at CIA Napa
•  You have a perfect match in your formulation library to every top sauce on the retail market, except the one you have just been asked to match…
•  When you BBQ, you wonder which Red Arrow smoke flavor could duplicate that scent… exactly.
•  You struggle with what title to put on your business card
•  Lastly-you know you are a Culinologist when…
• Your feel like you are in constant battle with a foods natural pH, brix, water activity and viscosity and your job is all about manipulating those properties…
• Did I miss any? Please let me know in the comments section below!

IFT 1994-En Route to graduate school!

The Daily Collegian –May 11, 1994

(food sci article collegan 1994)

Food Science Letter-A Dream Come True

To the editor:

When I tell people that I am a food science major, the first question they ask is “are you a nutritionist?” Food Science is one of the smallest and least understood majors on this campus. I am graduating in two weeks, and for the past two years I have been planning to write an article about this terrific field that nobody knows anything about. Now this dream has become a reality and the article is actually being written.

First, I want everyone to know that I do not study nutrition, HRTS, food service, cooking or meat stamping. I do study chemistry, calculus, physics, biochemistry and microbiology. Food science, like like environmental or polymer science, is an applied science. Students in the program take all the basic pre-med classes in their first two years, and in the last two years take classes in food microbiology, food chemistry, food processing and food engineering. We learn how to analyze foods for microorganisms, how to find out what the chemical structure of a food is, how to freeze-dry coffee and how to package food. The food industry is huge. Every day new products are coming out, and for food companies it is a competitive business. They hire food scientists to invent new products and make sure they are safe. Many activities go on behind the scenes in a food company that the average consumer does not know about.

There are many questions that must be answered before a new product goes on the market. Is it microbiologically safe? How long is its shelf life? Will it stay crunchy in milk? What kind of packaging should be used? It is important that the food scientist knows all about food, its chemical components and how it interacts with the environment.

The Umass department of food science is considered one of the best in the United States. We have many well-known professors who are involved in cutting edge research. The classes are small (usually 8-14 people per lecture), and there is lots of interaction between the professors and the students.

This is a great field to get into, and I just don’t understand why there are so few undergraduates in the department. It is one of the few fields that has guaranteed job placement after graduation. I have a friend who works for Veryfine Juices, and other people in my department have worked for Nestle, Nabisco, Kraft, Ocean Spray and General Mills.

So if you like science and you like food, maybe this is the field for you. One great thing about our department is that food companies often come to recruit students, and they always leave us with free food and samples to eat! The American food supply is one of the safest and cheapest in the world, and it is the food science and technology that has helped create and keep it this way.

Rachel B. Zemser

Senior, food science

Pondering the soul of food

I am one of the lucky few who made it to Club El Bulli  before closing 7/2011-I got a lucky break and knew people who knew people and managed to snag one of the last few reservations available to humankind!

However… even though I MADE it to El Bulli but I didn’t actually get to eat there!

The night before my dinner at El Bulli I ate at 10 different tapas restaurants in the old city of Madrid. I had mussels and sucked freshly cooked crawfish heads, sardines, patatas bravas, olives, sardines, potatoes with runny egg, lots of Rose wine and some sweet cherry boozy stuff for dessert.

Runny Eggs-all part of the tapas crawl

Sucking Crawfish Heads (photo: Gerry Dawes)

The next morning i was sick at the train station, passed out on the AVE (high speed train) to Barcelona and sick again at the rest stop on the way to Rosas. I went to the PHARMACIA in Rosas and they were very nice and gave me an assortment of over the counter drugs -but I was still so ill, I just wanted to curl up and die…

But!! I had to do it-I wasn’t going to let some silly food poisoning get in the way of my only chance to eat at El Bulli! So over the hill and through the woods.. to Ferran’s house we went, me and Boy Wonder (AKA Greg Grossman). 

Over The Hill and Thru the Woods-to Ferran's House We Went

 We took the obligatory pictures outside the restaurant and with Ferran-he was expecting us and we got to have a few minutes of chat with the master of modern cuisine! We then sat down and began our culinary journey through the Ferran’s 60+ dishes.  It started with a pillow like cocktail made with cotton candy and freeze dried pineapple, frozen alcohol and what appeared to be dipping dots! We then moved into the mojito apple flute (AKA the methylcellulose sandwich).

MethylCellulose Sandwich AKA Mojito and Apple Flute

There was an olive oil chip that I suspect was made with sugar-alcohols (not good for people with gatro-distress, but looks way cool!). Then there was a very simple no tricks boiled shrimp-I stared at it for awhile, trying to figure out what the science secret was, turned out it was just boiled shrimp. Simple and perfect! we had octopus Shabuway-boiling tiny itty bitty octopus then dipping them in freeze dried red pepper powder (available from Van Drunen Farms actually-they carry organic and conventional).  

I thought alot about that meal and even though I didn’t get to eat much, I did get to observe and taste. I could definitly see hints and accents of all the same ingredients that I use in my R&D lab and I saw techniques used that were clearly borrowed from manufacturers (IE cod fish crust was all puffy like a 3-D Dorito and freeze dried fruits and aerated chocolate (just like the AERO bar from England…) -seeing these techniques and ingredients used to make restaurant food didn’t impress me too much, after all-I have had to use similar techniques and ingredients AND get some serious shelf life out of the dish as well… BUT I do have to say that Ferran’s food has one thing that all my manufactured items don’t have…

They got Soul! I can create the most sophisticated shelf stable soft centered dry outside cake and use every modified food starch, gum and hydrocolloid on the market but at the end of the day no one is ever moved by a poptart or a box of retorted soup or even a jar of Paul Newman tomato sauce (yes, food science went into that… ).  But at El Bulli, every dish that was placed in front of me (and hardly touched) connected me to something-made me think of something, related to me, called to me, bonded with me in some way.  Every dish was connected to a time (in my life) or a place (that I have been) everything was familiar but twisted up to be unexpected.

This is the difference between him and us-same science, same equipment-but emotionally.. his food is alive and manufactured food is dead.

I rest my case!

People have been eating frogs for thousands of years and in France the estimated annual consumption is between 6 and 8 million lbs! I don’t want to be a hypocrite and say its ok to eat chickens but not ok to eat frogs because who am I to decide which animals deserve to live and which ones deserve to be eaten! However, I do eat chicken (and steak and lamb) but I won’t eat frogs. I can’t eat frogs because I am the proud owner of a California Pacific Tree Frog, AKA Hylla Regilla, AKA Pacific Chorus frog named Sawyer. I have had Sawyer for two years and his quiet but meaningful existence has inspired me to share a few words on their significance and impact on this planet.

Frogs are of course part of our food chain, especially when sautéed in butter, battered and deep fried, or served Cajun style! However, more important then providing gourmet treats for us, frogs are a critical part of our delicate ecological food process that involves big creatures eating smaller creatures and the smaller creatures eating even smaller ones. While the frogs feed on algae, plants, and insects, they are the food source for birds, snakes and alligators. Take the frog out of the system and the end result can be disastrous. For example, a single African dwarf puddle frog, Phrynobatrachus, eats over 100 mosquitoes a night and saves the agricultural industry millions of dollars a year on pesticides! They are essentially free fly paper. The California red-legged frog Rana aurora draytonii was once so widespread that it was actually a major food source in northern California. During the second half of the 19^th century Americans started moving west in search of gold. The gold seekers needed to eat and worked their way through about 80,000 frog legs each year. The red-legged frog was nearly driven to extinction and in 1996 it was placed on the U.S. Endangered Species List.

 Frogs are constantly being researched because they produce all these naturally occurring compounds that allow it to have all of these great life-adapting qualities. The tire industry has studied their sticky toes for biological inspiration in traction research. Scientists are exploring the ability of the African Claw Frog Xenopus Laevis to produce a white substance on their skin in response to inflicted wounds that is filled with antibiotic peptides that prevent the frog from becoming infected. This “Frog Band-Aid” had lead to the discovery of new antibacterial drugs.  Frogs are also environmental indicators and if we start to see frog populations dying off, that should serve as a warning to get to the root cause before other beings are affected as well.

A few years ago I found a tiny California Pacific Tree Frog sitting in a box of unwashed lettuce that was about to be cleaned and turned into salads for 300 passengers on an international flight to Germany. It was the middle of winter and I didn’t know where he came from or even how old he was but he came home with me and now lives a life of luxury. He burrows in soft mossy grass, soaks in a clean water bath, sits under special timed UV lamps and is fed calcium and vitamin dusted crickets. In return he stays alive, appears healthy and will sometimes keep me up with non-stop croaking at 2AM.

* Sawyer died on March 8. 2011 in lieu of flowers, please make a donation to www.savethefrogs.com They are dying out quickly!

Remembering those cool Orbiz Drinks!

Over the past six months I have written several articles about the type of cooking commonly and incorrectly known as “molecular gastronomy”. As a food scientist I have some pretty strong feelings about it-A part of me feels like the chefs stole our tools and pretended like they invented freeze dried food and xanthan gum. But then I read Coleman Andrews book “Ferran” and Heston Bluenthals’ “The Fat Duck Cookbook” and saw that those guys are not hiding the fact that they studied with great food scientists, its just that the restaurant critics and people who eat at their laboratory- restaurants don’t really care. And that is sort of the fault of the food scientist and the food industry. We tend to keep our methods and processing techniques a secret because we don’t want people to think of their poptarts as a science experiment, we want you to think that Betty Crocker baked it up nice in her kitchen just for you. But the chefs were smart, they took modified food starches and used them in ways that were impressive and made their creativity very clear to the world! And thats why the chefs make the big bucks and the food scientists (equally as smart and creative) get squat!

I talked about this in the following blogs:

Food Scientists Vs Molecular Gastronomists-whats the diff?

Molecular Gastronomists Without Even Trying

I had an article published a few weeks ago in the “World of Food Ingredients on the future of Molecular Cooking“  I know it won’t win me a Beard Award or anything and actually it was proabably published in the wrong place-Here I am preaching to the choir (World of

Photo Credit Gum Technology (sodium alginate cocktails)

Food Ingredients is a food industry trade journal read by other food scientists) and I should be telling it to people who read Saveur or Food and Wine or Nations Restaurant News. Those are the ones that need to know that the food scientists… we did it first!

YES, we did it first! Food companies, please stop gagging us and not letting us tell people how food is really made. We need to debunk the silly theories put out by Michael Pollan in his Food Rules book and Alice Waters and start setting the record straight on who really was doing food science first!

If a food scientist got the same respect as a Ferran and Wylie, we would be charging you $150 bucks for a box of poptarts and twinkies! If one only knew the research that went into those great works of art-you would probably pay it-respect it-and love us for creating it!