Fork on the Left

2012.01.15

Scientists find fat is the sixth human taste

A team in the United States has located a chemical receptor in the taste buds on the tongue that recognises fat molecules, and found that its sensitivity varies between individuals.

The finding may help to explain why some people consume more fatty foods, as they are less aware of the taste as they eat.

The researchers hope their discovery can be exploited to combat obesity by increasing people’s sensitivity to fat in their food.

I wonder what fat tastes like to other people. To me, unctuous foods are felt as much as they are tasted. When I think about unctuous foods, I associate the taste of umami…anyone else?

Posted at 12:44pm. With 99 notes. ()

2012.01.12

Champenois ditching flutes for wine glasses

“Flutes are too narrow and don’t allow the aroma and richness of the Champagne to shine as there isn’t enough air space,” Riedel added, revealing that flutes are often mistakenly filled to the top, leaving the wine no room to breathe.

Posted at 1:59pm. With 3 notes. ()

2011.10.08

#BCMKE6 Bagels! (Plus a few thought on Brooklyn and the myth of terroir.)

This year, for BarCamp MIlwaukee, I made a double batch of bagels. I used a basic recipe from the book Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day.

Proper bagels are rather particular. A proper bagel should be chewy and substantive without being too dense or dry. And this is the problem with most bagels. You see, most bakeries don’t boil their bagel dough before baking (and only let them steam in the oven) or only boil on one side, that is just wrong.

Most bagel connoisseurs will say that Brooklyn bagels are the best because of the Brooklyn water, the same way that most wine connoisseurs will say that the minerality of a particular field is what gives wines from certain wineries better. Well, that’s just crap. When it comes to flavor, minerals–on the whole–do not add that much depth of flavor, they’re simply not complex enough of chemical compounds. In actuality, what adds proper depth of flavor is the yeasts used. Beer brewers know this perfectly well, and proper vinters probably know this, even though all of them love talking about terroir, so next time you’re talking to someone who is talking about the importance of terroir and how that is the main component of flavor, nod politely and secretly remind yourself that the person has no understanding of food science at all. (Yes, geographic location, soil conditions, etc do affect flavor, but given two wines from fields that are at the same elevation, with the same like, with the same soil conditions, the major difference in flavors are almost definitely from the different yeasts each vinter uses…which is why they guard their yeasts so carefully).

The reason that Brooklyn bagel shops make such good bagels isn’t their water, it is the fact that they…unlike the rest of the country…usually mix their dough (and let the dough rise) in old wooden bowls that they never clean (this is also why they do poorly when the health inspector comes around). The yeasts have been in that bowl for who knows how many generations and have developed a complexity and depth of flavor that would be absolutely impossible in a clean metal bowl. This is essentially how the great sourdough bread bakeries do it, too.

(Editor’s Note: @vampdogdiaries on Twitter notes that it is not only yeasts, but also lactic acid bacteria that contribute to the flavor in sourdough.)

However, if you–like I–live near an artesian well, or good natural spring, it takes little extra effort to go and get some. For those of us who live around Milwaukee, I use the Hygea Spring and the Pryor Avenue Iron Well. When you drink the water you will notice a difference in mouth feel. The Hygea Spring is quite high in particulate (though still safe for drinking)…essentially like a mineral water (though with an unpleasant aftertaste), and the Pryor Avenue well will taste of iron, when it is first bottled there is some sulfer taste, but that goes away after it sits for a few hours. There are usually a good number of fresh water springs elsewhere for those who doesn’t live around Milwaukee.

On to the bagels!

This recipe usually makes about 18 to 21 bagels, depending on how you scooped the flour and the like (I use the basic scoop-and-sweep method). The nice though about this dough recipe is that you can make it and let it sit in the fridge for up to two weeks and only use it when you want to.

Ingredients

The dough

  1. Mix yeast, salt, sugar, and water in a lidded (but not airtight) food container. Mix in the flour with a spoon (don’t kneed!), you may have to use your hands to mix near the end, but I don’t. The dough is supposed to be rather wet and formless.
  2. Cover and rest for at least two hours before refrigerating for at least an hour (the dough is much easier to work with when cold). It’ll last for up to two weeks, though it’s best if you use it within the first 10 days or so.

Forming

  1. Half an hour before baking, put an empty boiler pan on the bottom rack (the very bottom) and put the other rack in the middle (this is where your baking stone goes, you lucky bum). Preheat to 450°F.
  2. Dust the surface of the dough with flour and cut off a 3-ounce piece of dough (the book says that’s the size of a small peach, I find it’s a little smaller at the size of a large plum). Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape it into a ball by stretching and folding to the bottom and rotating. Work the dough as little as possible, this should only take about 15 seconds. (Note: I use a bread knife to cut the dough, but any well serrated knife works, wide serrations work better to keep the dough from sticking to the blade.)
  3. Repeat to make as many bagels as you want, refrigerate the rest. Cover loosely with plastic for about 20 minutes. The less you let them rest, the denser (but smaller) they’ll be.

Boiling

  1. Bring the water (with the baking soda and sugar) to a boil and reduce to a simmer (though I often let it actually boil). Prepare a kitchen towel dusted with flour to soak up the excess water.
  2. Punch your thumb through the dough to make a hole (bagel shape complete!), gently stretch so the hole’s diameter is triple that of the width of the dough wall.
  3. Drop bagel in boiling water, boil for 2 minutes on the first side, flip, and another minute on the second side (3 minutes total). Do not let the bagels touch, otherwise they’ll misshapen. (What I usually do is drop the dough into the pot in a circle to keep track of which goes in first, then I time my flips. It usually takes 10 to 15 seconds between drops. When they’re done, remove and place on the kitchen towel to dry (until they stop dripping boiling hot water).
  4. Sprinkle with your spices (my blend is at the bottom). Prepare a cup of hot tap water.
  5. If you are using a baking stone, slide the bagels directly onto the stone, if you’re not, sprinkle a baking sheet with corn meal, and place the bagels on the baking sheet, and slide the entire sheet into the middle rack. Whichever way you are baking, pour the cup of water onto the broiler tray and quickly close the oven door (this steams the bagels for extra awesomeness, do this with bread baking, too). bake for about 20 minutes, until deeply brown and firm.
  6. Enjoy with cream cheese and lox.

Tasty spices

For Barcamp, I did three kinds of bagels: poppy seed, sesame seed, and everything bagels, here is my everything spice mix (as usual, all my spices are from The Spice House).

I mixed everything except the poppy and sesame seeds in a mortar and quickly grind them before adding the rest, this let the caraway and fennel seeds crack a little bit to bring out the aroma a little more. I used a mortar and pestle to crack the seeds instead of a grinder which would just cut them, this keeps them whole instead of grinding them into dust.

Posted at 8:13pm. With 10 notes. ()

2011.02.11

Recipe: Scallion Pancakes

I’ve been trying to improve upon my father’s scallion pancakes recipe for a couple years and I think I’ve finally got it. This is a culmination of my father’s recipe (learned from a Taiwanese chef), recipes found online, and my personal experience. These are much more flavorful and flakey than any other homemade recipe I’ve found.

Makes 8 scallion pancakes. (This recipe can be doubled.)

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Mix flour with the hot broth until it forms a smooth dough. After lightly sifting the dough, I pour in the broth and mix with a dough scraper until it is well mixed and knead by doubling the dough over and pressing it down repeatedly. When you’re done, the dough should be smooth and very elastic.
  2. Coat dough very lightly in oil (I use grapeseed for this), and let it rest in the bowl covered with a damp cloth for about 30 minutes.
  3. Finely chop the scallions. Have them ready along with a coarse salt, table salt works if you don’t have any others, but a coarse kosher salt works best.
  4. Cut the dough into quarters. Liberally flour your work surface and roll the dough into a thin rectangle (about 12 × 9 inches).
  5. Lightly brush the top with sesame oil (if you brush too much, the dough will be hard to handle later, but if you use too little it won’t flake properly), sprinkle evenly with chopped scallions and salt.
  6. From the long end, roll the dough up tightly. Squeeze out the air and stretch a little until the dough is no more than .5 inches in diameter. Cut into equal parts.
  7. Coil each half into a round bundle, flour the top and bottom and flatten into a smooth round pancake, at least 8 inches in diameter (the thinner the tastier). You need to be extra careful during this part. Since the dough is filled with hard particulate (the scallions) and oily, it tears easily. Stop to flour the rolling pin, work surface, as well as the top of the pancake (to be) often. It may be easier to start flattening the pancake by hand before switching to the rolling pin. The end will often disconnect from the rest of the coil as you are rolling out, just pull it back and try to stick it under the rest of the pancake, layers are good.
  8. Repeat steps 4 to 7 for all of the dough.
  9. Heat a large (at least 10-inch) skillet over medium to medium-high heat, add the cooking oil when the pan is hot (not before! To check, you can shake a few water droplets onto the pan and they’ll dance around before finally boiling away). When the oil shimmers, gently place a pancake in the pan. It should sizzle without burning. Cook until golden-brown (it should take about 2 minutes a side, I flip often to make sure it is cooked evenly.) If the pancake comes out hard, turn down the heat. you are likely cooking it too quickly.

To freeze: store each uncooked pancakes between well-oiled sheets of wax paper in a gallon sized freezer bag. They should freeze for at least a month, defrost for a few minutes (until they’re soft) when you want to cook them. Warning: if you store for too long, they eventually freezer burn and end up hockey-puck-like when cooked.

Kitchen Notes

Posted at 10:15am. With 1 note. ()

2010.12.22

Perfect

A good martini is Serious Business.

Posted at 3:25pm. ()

2010.11.24

A proper corkscrew.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, many people will be doing a bit of partying. That means people will be drinking wine and other delightful boozahols. To get to all this tasty goodness we need bottle openers and corkscrews. Now, if you’ve read any of my writing, you’ve probably figured out that I’m a bit of a snob about—well—everything. Bottle openers, and corkscrews are of particular interest to me because they are  objects that have a very specific use. Their utility is directly tied tied to how easily they function, and so must their form. Yet it seems that every time I go to a store there is a new model of some fancy wine bottle opener with more arms, levers and gears than a Swiss watch.

The problem is that every grocery store sells crappy red plastic corkscrews for 99 cents. In a society where price is valued above all else, utility is lost. The one thing those pieces of crap are good for is for making stabby motions in a comedy sketch, and not one either. Those crappy red corkscrews are wastes of metal, plastic, and the environment. Whomever designed that thing should rot in hell.

Because the cheap corkscrews are so useless, many consumers think all corkscrews are unusable and buy the complicated $100 corkscrews with wings and gears. Extra parts are extra complications. You shouldn’t need an instruction manual to open a corkscrew. Oftentimes they come in giant box sets with a foil remover, wine collar, a spare screw attachment (really? an attachment?) and who knows what else. But you know what? You shouldn’t need multiple tools to do one simple task. One is enough. If we can open wine bottles with a shoe, we shouldn’t need a damn tool that looks like it was designed by Rube Goldberg.

Instead, find yourself a good two-stage corkscrew. These things should fit well in your hand, while still have enough weight and heft that you don’t feel like you’ll snap it just by looking at it. As an added bonus, you can easily slip it into your pocket or bag if you’re going out on a hike.

Personally, I’m partial to Pulltap, but there are plenty of others. They basically have three working parts: a knife, the lever, and the screw. The knife on some are serrated (like on the Pulltap), others are not. It’s mostly personal preference, but I find the serration usually catches better on tricky foil (it’s not the serration that does it, it’s the shear number of pointy bits).

Here’s how you use one:

  1. Flip out the knife hook the blade under the bottom lip of the bottle (I don’t think it has any special name). Holding it tight against the bottle, turn the bottle until you’ve sliced through the foil. Even if it isn’t fully cut, it should be pretty easy to pull off.
  2. Twist the screw into the cork down as far as you can. If you aren’t drinking the whole bottle, take a little care to make sure you don’t go all the way through.
  3. Put the shorter notch on the lip of the bottle and pull the cork up. Once it is as far as it can go, switch to the longer notch and repeat, the cork comes out in seconds every time. No wings, gears, or clamps. Simplicity at its finest.

(Editor’s note: This adapted from a comment on Metafilter.)

Posted at 2:53pm. ()

2010.11.23

Good food need not take a long time, but this recipe does. It starts at least 24 hours before serving. My recipe starts with a good old fashioned brine, not terribly healthy, but there are worse foods out there. Brines give us juicer, and more tender meat. Many people say that what happens when you brine something is that salt water enters the ingredient through osmosis, which results in saltier, juicier foods, that’s not the whole story. In short, the brine allows the cells of the meat to hold more liquid, so while much of the water is cooked off, enough will stay in the meat to keep the turkey tender and juicy instead of turning into jerky. When I made this last year, the turkey breast (which I normally hate with a passion), was delightfully succulent and as flavorful as the dark meat. But I’m getting ahead of myself: The brine: The basic brine is 1 cup salt to 1 gallon water. Everything else is optional, I suggest including sugar, and at least a few spices, here is what I use: Allspice Bay leaves European Basil Sweet California Basil Ceylon True Cinnamon Chervil Chives Cloves Coriander Cumin Dill Dried Tomatoes Dried Carrots Dried Celery Dried Cabbage Dried Spinach Dried Bell peppers Garlic Crystalized Ginger Fennel seed French Thyme Star Anise Lavender Lemon Peel Majoram Orange Peel Oregano Onion powder Parsley Black Peppercorns Green Peppercorns Pink Peppercorns White Peppercorns Pomegranate extract Rosemary Sage Savory Shallot Powder Scallions Tarragon Vanilla Instead of sugar, I use honey and brine for around 24 to 36 hours for a 10 pound turkey. However, you should brine for at least 5 hours.  Roasting When cooking the turkey, I use a basic mirepoix (equal parts onion, celery, and carrots), you can follow the classic roast turkey on Cooking for Engineers (a site you’ll find me referencing all the time). However, I do something slightly different in my pan: instead of water, I use a mix of red wine, broth, and honey. After tying the turkey, I brush the turkey with a mix of honey and butter, and put it in the oven breast side down. The last bit is tremendously important, dark meat needs to cook to 170 degrees, while breast meat finishes at 165, in fact, if the breast meat hits 170 degrees, it will be terribly overcooked and dry. Putting the turkey breast down at first will give the dark meat a head start.  I take the turkey out about every 30 to 45 minutes turn the turkey, baste with the jeux and add more honey (I use about half a cup of honey for an 11 pound turkey), and a little more butter (I use about 4 tablespoons in total). Now, many people suggest a certain amount of time per-pound of turkey. Since every oven is different, I tend not to trust those numbers. Instead, I have a good food thermometer and check the breast and thigh temperature every time I baste the turkey, though it is roughly 2.5 hours for a 13 pound turkey. Finally, don’t cut into the turkey immediately, like a good steak or pork chop, the meat needs to rest. This is when magic happens. As the inside continues to cook (since it is at a lower temperature than the outside), juices flow from inside out as the temperature equalizes, the moment you cut into the meat, it stops cooking. Let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes, it’s not going to get cold, and it’ll be worth the wait, I promise. Links Brining, Cooking for Engineers Classic Roast Turkey

Good food need not take a long time, but this recipe does. It starts at least 24 hours before serving.

My recipe starts with a good old fashioned brine, not terribly healthy, but there are worse foods out there. Brines give us juicer, and more tender meat. Many people say that what happens when you brine something is that salt water enters the ingredient through osmosis, which results in saltier, juicier foods, that’s not the whole story. In short, the brine allows the cells of the meat to hold more liquid, so while much of the water is cooked off, enough will stay in the meat to keep the turkey tender and juicy instead of turning into jerky. When I made this last year, the turkey breast (which I normally hate with a passion), was delightfully succulent and as flavorful as the dark meat. But I’m getting ahead of myself:

The brine:

The basic brine is 1 cup salt to 1 gallon water. Everything else is optional, I suggest including sugar, and at least a few spices, here is what I use:

Instead of sugar, I use honey and brine for around 24 to 36 hours for a 10 pound turkey. However, you should brine for at least 5 hours. 

Roasting

When cooking the turkey, I use a basic mirepoix (equal parts onion, celery, and carrots), you can follow the classic roast turkey on Cooking for Engineers (a site you’ll find me referencing all the time). However, I do something slightly different in my pan: instead of water, I use a mix of red wine, broth, and honey.

After tying the turkey, I brush the turkey with a mix of honey and butter, and put it in the oven breast side down. The last bit is tremendously important, dark meat needs to cook to 170 degrees, while breast meat finishes at 165, in fact, if the breast meat hits 170 degrees, it will be terribly overcooked and dry. Putting the turkey breast down at first will give the dark meat a head start. 

I take the turkey out about every 30 to 45 minutes turn the turkey, baste with the jeux and add more honey (I use about half a cup of honey for an 11 pound turkey), and a little more butter (I use about 4 tablespoons in total).

Now, many people suggest a certain amount of time per-pound of turkey. Since every oven is different, I tend not to trust those numbers. Instead, I have a good food thermometer and check the breast and thigh temperature every time I baste the turkey, though it is roughly 2.5 hours for a 13 pound turkey.

Finally, don’t cut into the turkey immediately, like a good steak or pork chop, the meat needs to rest. This is when magic happens. As the inside continues to cook (since it is at a lower temperature than the outside), juices flow from inside out as the temperature equalizes, the moment you cut into the meat, it stops cooking. Let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes, it’s not going to get cold, and it’ll be worth the wait, I promise.

Links

Posted at 11:28pm. ()

2010.11.17

Cooking for many dietary restrictions.

During college, I often cooked for many different dietary restrictions at a time. For dinner parties, I was often cooking for three our four different sets of restrictions at a time. It was a challenge I enjoyed and it always made cooking more interesting. This Thanksgiving, I won’t have any special restrictions to cook for, but I mentioned it on Twitter, one person replied with an interesting set of restrictions, and I thought I’d take a stab at an imaginary menu.

I believe to properly satisfy for different dietary restrictions, it isn’t enough to have a side dish that is vegetarian or vegan. Everyone should be able to have a good meal, not just a couple side dishes.

For this menu, I’ve also included restrictions for kosher and vegan. The goal of the menu is to make sure any person must be able to eat at least three substantive dishes for the main course, as well as one dessert.

Furthermore, I actually have to be able to pull off cooking this meal in my kitchen, which has four burners one convection oven, and a pizza oven.

Appetizer

First course

Main course

Dessert

Many of these are recipes that I’ve done before, though not all of them. The one recipe I’d worry about most is a vegan pie crust for the pumpkin pie. For some unknown reason, I’ve had notoriously bad luck with pie crusts.

The second biggest problem is finding the oven space for everything that requires an oven. Luckily, all the desserts need to be made earlier and chilled (the day before), however that still means the following things would need oven space:

Sadly, my oven does not have a separate broiling drawer (what I would do for one) for the roasted vegetables, otherwise space would not be a problem. However, I think if I par-baked the dinner rolls (which I will actually be doing this year) and cook the stuffing first on the stove, I can finish all three in the oven pretty quickly, without the turkey growing cold.

Of course, this is an imaginary menu, the actual menu is slightly less audacious because I don’t have that many people coming over, which I will publish in a few days.

Posted at 11:30pm. ()

2010.10.22

3 packages of Oscar Meyer Classic Wieners 3 packages of Oscar Meyer Bologna 3 packages of Oscar Meyer Lunchables $19.95 of pure America. I think I feel ill.

$19.95 of pure America. I think I feel ill.

Posted at 9:40pm. ()

2010.10.15

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

(Editor’s note: This is the second in today’s series on water, read the first at Sneak-Attack Philosophy.)

Water. It covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, yet only 3% of that is freshwater. Of that, only .3% is surface water. Luckily, we have wells to get to the 30.1% that is ground water. But the vast majority of our freshwater comes from glaciers, a whopping 68.7%. In the past, that was enough. We could take water from rivers all we wanted-we couldn’t use it all-but now when we are thirstier than ever, we find that we have less and less.

Humans are 60% body water, and as we use and release it, we need to constantly replace it. In fact, with out it most humans would die within a week. The food we eat also needs water, lots of it. Modern agriculture is powerfully demanding on water resources, just ask California where farmers and cities in southern California (ie Los Angeles) fight over water rights every year. And yet, we keep polluting our water sources by pouring pharmaceuticals into our water systems, and melting our glaciers. And while that is happening in our back yard, where anyone who lives near a mountain can see the changes, we argue on whether climate change is happening. We argue when we should be acting. Want to know how to get all the Representatives and Senators to get on the boat? Send all of them on a trip to Antarctica, let them see the damage first hand. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Even if the glaciers melted, we in the developed world would likely be fine. We have other ways of getting potable water. We have the technology, and we have the money. Would it be expensive? Yes. But could we do it? Yes. But what of the developing world? Therein lies the problem.

In the three and a half minutes it takes you to read this post, 5 children will have died from lacking clean, potable water. How can we, in the developed world spend all our time worrying about our little issues when others in the world lack this most basic of foods?

Many people need to carry water miles every day from the source to their homes. In Africa alone, they spend 40 million hours, carrying water. Even worse, oftentimes the water is unsafe for consumption. Resulting in loss time and disease. How can any person be expected to grow and learn and raise themselves up in a world like this?

We need to do something, in the developed world, we have excess time and excess resources. We have skilled laborers, the production capacity, and most importantly, we have the brain power. We have the excess food to feed ourselves, we should be spending that food and that labor building, not for money, money and currency has never had intrinsic value, no matter its form. We should be doing it to benefit everyone’s well being, their quality of life. Production should not be pursued for production’s sake. We should be doing it to help ourselves, fix our problems. Help our fellow humans, help our planet. Isn’t that what Jesus and Mohammed preached?

Why have we let religion turn into a force of destruction? This confuses me mightily. The right-wing in America and the fanatics all over the world have turned what was supposed to be a force for uniting and helping people into one that divides and subjugates. I am not religiousn, I am a staunch atheist, and yet the same people who preach charity and helping your neighbor waste their time and their productivity calling us sinners while doing little to actually help others.

No, this is not how it’s done, this is not how we make good in the world. 

This is not a problem of lacking resources, we have the resources. This is not a problem of production capacity, we have the productivity. This is not a problem of the lack of ideas, we have the ingenuity. This is a culture problem.

We have all the things we need to make sure every person on this planet has access to good water, proper sanitation, and a good education. But do we have the will? Instead of preaching about all the people who are sinners and all the things that will make a man go to Hell, and chasing profits, we should be teaching how to live a virtuous life, why we should help our neighbor, how to be good. This is a culture problem.

We need to take a good look at ourselves, money and currency is not the point, it never was. The point is to live a better life. Wars affect our lives in profound ways that we cannot easily measure, even wars that occur on the other side of the globe. But if we work together to help our neighbors, our fellow humans, and when my neighbor does better, so do I.

Find out more at http://blogactionday.change.org/.

Links:

Posted at 10:37am. With 1 note. ()