Weekly Roundup of Science and FOOD

Week of November 28-December 4, 2011

Less talk, more links!

***Update: I totally forgot to include Naveen’s wacky story about how he passed his PhD quals using chocolate. Click!***

News

• Ferran Adrià and José Andrés are going to be at Harvard tonight, December 4th. Naveen has been busy helping the chefs prepare and also brainstorming future awesome projects ^_^. Be sure to check out a video of the event once it is out. In the meantime, here is a goodwriteup of why this will be an awesome talk.

Gifts

• Jet City Gastrophysics shares their list of molecular gastronomy books that make perfect gifts.

Nutrition

• Think MSG is bad for you? “people who vociferously claimed to be MSG-sensitive have proven unable, in double-blind studies, to reliably tell whether food has MSG in it.” Here’s the proof.

Hacks

• Did your prosecco go flat? Why not just recarbonate it? We continue our collaboration with DrinkFactory with this post on carbonated cocktails.
• Simple, but clever – How to make rice without a rice cooker, and store it for months
• Remember how we said we used evernote to organize recipes?  Apparently the rest of the world agrees
• When you taste a fine wine, is “grape” the only flavor that comes to mind? Maybe you should try using apples to improve the sensitivity of your palette?
• Just in time for Hannukah: The trick to perfect potato latkes? Instant mashed potato flakes
• This is pretty similar to a hack that Alton Brown did on Good Eats a while back with his pepper mill, but still worth sharing: Hack a Manual Cheese Grater to Run via Cordless Drill

Inspiration

• Using a pressure cooker to caramelize carrots (and pumpkin, and squash…) is now pretty well-explored, but how about caramelized cream?
• We’re really excited that Tim Ferriss, NY Times best-selling author and all around clear thinker of thoughts, is getting into the food world with his new book, The 4-Hour Chef.  Case in point? This clever cigar-infused tequila hot chocolate, courtesy the folks at Aviary.
• Dehydration can create unique textures ranging from crunchy foams to brittle “glass” to intensely-flavored powders.  Molecularrecipes goes over the technique and share some terrific recipes.
• Matthew Kayahara proves that it doesn’t take much to make cool textures and interesting presentations. Just check out this microwaveable red velvet sponge cake
• Coconut bubbles, gruyere, and candied apricot – via MolecularRecipes