Molecular gastronomy through the eyes of cultural studies

It is fascinating when someone else analyses the things you're interested or involved in from a different perspective. Recently, a paper emerged in European Journal of Cultural Studies called "Liquid nitrogen pistachios: Molecular gastronomy, elBulli and foodies".

The paper gives a short historical description of molecular gastronomy and goes on to describe MG as a phenomenon from three different perspectives.

• Firstly from the scientists point of view, represented by Hervé This (google transl.)
• Secondly, through the eyes of the chef; Ferran Adría of elBulli
• Finally, the foodie blogger Rob (Hungry in Hogtown), has his perspective analysed and commented

"Culinary precisions" and/or "Kitchen stories" at science education conference

Last week, I attended the IOSTE XIV symposium. The topic of my presentation was a follow-up of three previous blogposts on culinary precisions: a framework on teaching "nature of science" (argumentation and inquiry) using culinary precisions.

The biannual conference was hosted by IOSTE, the International Organization for Science and Technology Education. It involved more than 200 participants from 47(?) countries from all continents, located in the beautiful Slovene town of Bled. A true pearl.

BACKGROUND

A year ago I wrote three posts on these matters, and these are the background for an exciting new collaboration with researchers from Finland (links below). The posts were:

- Culinary precisions part 1:3. Collecting statements about food and cooking

- Culinary precisions part 2:3. Analysing statements about food and cooking

- Culinary precisions part 3:3. Students as "culinary mythbusters"

Foolproof chocolate Chantilly, part 3:3. Dark chocolate mousse w/orange

This is the third post on chocolate mousse; pure and clean

containing only chocolate and flavourings. The process is very straightforward, although this dark variety might be the most tricky one among the three published. However, 'tricky' is not really that tricky...

This post is the last on chocolate mousses for now: white-, milk- and dark chocolate. Previous posts are

• Part 1 - White chocolate mousse w/ginger
• Part 2 - Earl Grey milk chocolate mousse with coffee/cocoa nibs

Refer the two previous ones for discussions on the how's and why's on this way of making chocolate mousse. This time, I'll get to the point right away.

Foolproof chocolate Chantilly, part 2:3. Earl Grey milk chocolate mousse with coffee/cocoa nibs

Numerous blogs, web sites and newspaper articles have picked up variations of the "molecular gastronomic recipe" for making chocolate mousse with only chocolate and water first presented by Hervé This. However, most these recipes tell you to try-and fail. I have for some time felt that there is a need for making this recipe foolproof. And on top of it all, it's quite straightforward to make as long as you're precise with the measurements.

This post is the second out of three on chocolate mousses: white-, milk- and dark chocolate. Part 1 was white chocolate mousse w/ginger. I've chosen to give recipes for mousses with added flavours rather than the pure ones. Hence, the recipe might not work out properly if other ingredients, or pure water, is used as liquid.

The main reason for doing these experiments is that most of the recipes on the "molecular gastronomic mousses" tell you to try and fail until you're satisfied. That's ok if you are to serve the mousse right away. However, the mousse will firm up upon storage, starting after 1-2 hours I want a recipe I can trust even when the mousse is kept in the fridge, not having to make it or, even worse, repair it while the guests are waiting.

Video shows texture of mousse after one night in the fridge made according

to recipe below. Also some microscope pictures of the same mousse

EARL GREY MILK CHOCOLATE MOUSSE/CHANTILLY

4 portions

"The fun-flavoured way to learn science"

Paulina Mata and her colleagues in Portugal have produced a very interesting booklet on "Experiments for the family to do together" (...in the kitchen).

In a previous post on inquiry-based teaching methods and promoting students' argumentation skills I referred to a European Commission report. In this report, it is referred to two best practice examples, one of them being the project Pollen (EU Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006). Slightly embarrassed, I must admit not knowing that a part of this was a resource for families to learn experimenting with and through food.

The Portuguese Pollen team together with Paulina Mata have developed the booklet "The fun-flavoured way to learn science - Experiments for the family to do together" in Portuguese and English.

The booklet is written in a very simple language and seems to be aimed at a general public, both children and adults, in order to stimulate adults to experiment more at home together with their children (or vice versa). It starts out with some general comments and recommendations on experimenting at home, and goes on with a number of very simple and straightforward experiments. One might say that many of the experiments are overly simple ("Why does an ice cube float?", "Do vegetables contain water?" etc.). However, I think that such a "low-level" approach might be a very good idea of several reasons:

Foolproof chocolate Chantilly, part 1:3. White chocolate mousse with ginger

Numerous blogs, web sites and newspaper articles have picked up variations of the "molecular gastronomic recipe" for making chocolate mousse with only chocolate and water first presented by Hervé This. However, most these recipes tell you to try-and fail. I have for some time felt that there is a need for making this recipe foolproof.

This post is the first out of three on chocolate mousses: white-, milk- and dark chocolate. I've chosen to give recipes for mousses with added flavours rather than the pure ones. Hence, the recipe might not work out properly if other ingredients, or pure water, is used as liquid.

The main reason for doing these experiments is that most of the recipes on the "molecular gastronomic mousses" tell you to try and fail until you're satisfied. That's ok if you are to serve the mousse right away. However, the mousse will firm up upon storage, starting after 1-2 hours. I want a recipe I can trust even when the mousse is kept in the fridge, not having to make it or repair it while the guests are waiting.

Video shows texture of mousse after one night in the fridge made according to
recipe below. Also some microscope pictures of the same mousse

---

One major and one minor literature reference on Molecular gastronomy

At last(!) there is a comprehensive and broad focussed review on molecular gastronomy (MG) in the scientific literature. Also, I stumbled over another scientific paper on the same topic from 2007 which has missed my attention until now.

An important (and seminal?) contribution

Martin at khymos has written a short post on the most recent and comprehensive addition to the scientific publications on MG: "Molecular Gastronomy: A New Emerging Scientific Discipline" written by eight(!) researchers in the field, and is open access. What a gift!

Since it was mentioned already in a paper from 2008 (van der Linden, McClements & Ubbink, ref. here), I've been waiting for this paper for at least a year. It is incredibly welcome that others than Hervé This writes about MG in scientific papers, and now we have several contributions with slightly different viewpoints on the same phenomenon.

December issue of school science magazine on food

The last issue of the Norwegian science education magazine "Naturfag" (equivalent to "School science") has several articles on food previously posted here on fooducation. The magazine is in Norwegian and free for download.

Issue 2/2009 with mostly Christmas- and winter related content includes the following articles based on fooducation posts. Most of them are updated/revised versions and are also found as updated versions on the Norwegian Centre for Science Education "gastronomic school science" web pages www.naturfag.no/mat (Google translation here):

1. "Christmas dinner trimmings - a hot potato?" (part 1 and part 2) and "Green vegetables and chlorophyll revisited" combined
   
   
2. "Deciphering an old preserves recipe"
   
   
3. The effect of added sugar, salt and high temperature on microorganisms/yeast. This is not previously published on fooducation, but a time lapse video with captions in Norwegian can be seen on YouTube. It is self-explanatory, i guess. The purpose is to show an easy to set up experiment for testing conditions under which microorganisms thrive or die. Relevance is to baking (you want to promote the yeast) and preservation (you want to suppress or kill microorganisms)
   
   
4. "Leavens in cookies - theory and practice"

The latter also made it into the news section of "Nysgjerrigper", a science knowledge project from the Norwegian Research Council.

Of course there are several other interesting topics in the issue as well, such as "Gingerbread house architecture" "Catch sight of and predict the northern light" and more.

Merry Christmas

Low-temperature cooking might save restaurants money

Last year, I had the pleasure to act as a co-supervisor for two students at in their final project for the Food and beverage management study at the University of Stavanger. The focus was low-temperature cooking.

The students, Eirik Nestavoll and Martin M. Stokkan (both chefs), attended this as a continuing professional development study. The aim of their experimentally angled final project was whether "new cooking methods" might give economic gain to hotels.

Blue cheese and plum soft ice cream (TGRWT #18)

Pastry chef Aidan Brooks has posted the invitation to join in on episode #18 of "They go really well together" (TGRWT). The idea is that foods with one or more flavour compounds in common will taste well in combination; the concept of flavour pairing. This month's ingredients are plum and blue cheese.

I've found that simple dishes such as milk shakes, smoothies and ice cream (this post) provide excellent matrixes for testing flavour pairings. Things are kept simple allowing for the pure flavours to come out, not being swamped by lot of (distracting) flavours from other ingredients. As such, milk and/or cream pose a good base. So this time, I went for a very simple straightforward recipe for soft serve ice cream. At the same time, it gave me the opportunity to test our new Bamix immersion blender (a common blender or smoothie machine will probably work well too).