I think there are always, in cooking and indeed, in any field, two types...one being the Mr/Ms Perfection, and the other being the slapdash just-put-things-together-and-it-will-work person who is the utter despair of the perfectionist. And they will live side by side, each never really understanding the other viewpoint.
I am a firm belonger to the slapdash cooking method. OK, so I will try and get the best ingredients, but I am not going to PAIN myself so utterly as to bring in rocket-science into my kitchen! But when the rocket-scientist chef does make something, I can appreciate it, too, and admit that it tastes much better than my shabby results...! But...I am happy to be the way I am, and leave the precision to those who want it. Deepa. On 10/11/07, Gautam John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There's a picture gallery here... > > http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/30a9f39472685110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html > > > THE FUTURE OF FOOD > Doctor Delicious > > Ted Allen > > For a closer look at the amazing high-tech gadgets found in the kitchens of > today's most adventurous professional chefs—as well as some ingenious tools > you can use at home—launch the photo gallery here > Dave Arnold would like to fix you a gin and tonic. Sound good? It will be. > It will be very, very good. It will be like no gin and tonic you have ever > seen or tasted in your life. It will also be considerably more involved, > shall we say, than cracking open the Tanqueray and Schweppes. > > First, Arnold believes, he must clarify the lime juice. Why? Because his > uncompromising conception of culinary perfection requires that gin and > tonics be completely, crystalline clear, that's why. And so, from a closet > in the back of a teaching kitchen at the French Culinary Institute in New > York City, behind a door labeled Caution: Nitrous Oxide in Use, Arnold > wheels out a cart piled high with laboratory equipment—a rotary evaporator > (rotovap) that he salvaged from Eli Lilly on eBay, cheap, and that he has > jerry-rigged for just this sort of thing. At his side, FCI chef and V.P. > Nils Noren supports a somewhat wobbly condenser as Arnold pours a liter of > freshly squeezed lime juice, pale green and cloudy with pulp, into a > teardrop-shaped Pyrex vessel. Because heat would destroy the flavors and > aromas of the elixir, Arnold brings the vessel just above room temperature > by partially submerging it in a bath of precisely regulated warm water. He > then connects it to a vacuum so that the juice will vaporize at low > temperatures. > > Arnold flips the switch. The machine gurgles and hums, the vessel spins > merrily, the lime vapor drifts up into the condenser, and an absolutely > clear liquid begins dripping into a beaker. The result smells like lime, but > it's lost much of its punchy flavor in distillation. So Arnold works to > bring his clarified juice back into balance. From a series of plastic > bottles, he adds 4.5 percent powdered citric acid, 1.5 percent malic acid > and 0.1 percent succenic acid to the solution, places the beaker atop an > electromagnetic stirrer, drops in a little Teflon-coated magnetic bar, and > flips the switch. Instantly, the bar begins spinning, whipping up the liquid > and dissolving the powders. Voilà! Clearlime, Arnold calls it. A touch of > quinine powder and some simple syrup (2:1 sugar and water), some water, and, > after a couple hours of labor, he's halfway there. > > Now he custom-makes his own "gin," really just a neutral spirit infused with > whatever aromatics are catching Arnold's fancy and then distilled (the > latter part of which is, in fact, illegal—but hey, it's all in the name of > science). Today it will be two cucumbers, celery ribs, roasted orange > slices, and one bunch each of cilantro and Thai basil, all coarsely chopped > and added to a fifth of Absolut vodka. Everything goes into the vessel and > back onboard the rotovap, and another beaker is filled. > > The two liquids are combined about 1:1, heavily carbonated with a healthy > injection of CO2 (Arnold loves carbonation), and chilled for 20 minutes to a > blistering cold in a freezer (he hates it when ice melts in his drinks). And > so, sans rocks, sans garnish, Arnold pours the concoction into champagne > flutes and serves it. > > "I like my drinks stiff," he notes, and he is not kidding. This take on the > G&T is, literally and figuratively, a distillation of the classic's flavors. > It's a pure, Platonic ideal of the G&T, strong as a martini. The sensation > is not so much of drinking something as it is of breathing it, the > effervescence unusually intense and refreshing, the flavors and aromas > magnified, permeating the palate and nose with a sharp, aggressive, limey > crispness, underscored with soft notes of cilantro, roasted orange and cuke. > And it only took three hours. > > "It's a crazy level of things you have to do to get the product I want," > Arnold says, "but here's what happens when you do everything possible to get > something the way you want it. Yeah, sure, it's ridiculous, but. . . " > > You should see how he cooks a steak. Bigger Motors > Dave Arnold is the man behind the curtain of today's hottest movement in > cooking, molecular gastronomy. He's the Q to James Bond as embodied by > esteemed mad-scientist chef Wylie Dufresne. A former paralegal, performance > artist and, briefly, Domino's Pizza driver, Arnold has become the go-to > gearhead for machines and techniques to help chefs realize their wildest > culinary fantasies. And wild they are: Carbonated watermelon. Gelatin > spheres with liquid centers that pop in your mouth. Broths and sauces > whipped into foams. Shrimp flesh extruded into "noodles." Hot-center > desserts with exteriors flash-frozen by liquid nitrogen. Vanilla beans > sizzled tableside with lasers. (It should be noted that Arnold disapproves > of sizzling things tableside with lasers, because of safety concerns—which, > for reasons that will soon become clear, is funny.) > > All those culinary pyrotechnics can't happen without a lot of R&D. That's > Arnold's specialty. The 36-year-old, salt-and-pepper haired, wildly > enthusiastic food lover is part artist, part scientist, part self-taught > machinist and, of course, exuberant cook. Armed with a B.A. in philosophy > from Yale and an MFA from Columbia but largely self-taught in the areas of > cooking and engineering, he was hired at FCI in 2005 as director of culinary > technology, a new department augmenting the school's traditional instruction > with scientific techniques, tools and rigor. He instantly became one of the > most popular instructors there. > > Perhaps that popularity has something to do with his unbridled excitement at > the power of technology to create deliciousness. Take, for example, how he > goes about improving the immersion blender—the handheld blender "stick" that > allows cooks to puree foods in saucepots and bowls. For Arnold's purposes, > the blenders on the market are far too weak, so he rigged one together using > an 18-volt battery and the motor from a DeWalt cordless drill, resulting in > a stick blender as strong as a commercial milkshake machine. "Just > unbelievably powerful," he says. "I get such a huge vortex, I can make stuff > as smooth as you can in a Vita-Mix." > > Or consider his take on the humble corn dog. "The problem with them is, one, > you don't get that high-heat, cooked flavor in the sausage, and two, the > batter is never cooked right next to the sausage." His vision, inspired by a > classic German cake called baumkuchen, which is baked in layers on a > rotating spit: Skewer the dogs on a rotisserie, get a little char on them, > and then apply batter in thin coats so that each one is perfectly cooked. > > It's this kind of ingenuity that has propelled him into the kitchens of the > most celebrated chefs cooking today. On a given afternoon, he could be > showing David Chang how to carbonate sake at one of Chang's Momofuku > restaurants in New York, or creating a syringe for Johnny Iuzzini, the > pastry chef at Jean-Georges, also in New York, to layer a hot flavored > gelatin atop a cold one for a modern take on the pousse-café. Or ripping > apart his espresso machine and modifying it to mimic a hand-pulled shot. > "He's nothing shy of a genius," says chef Charlie Trotter, of the legendary > Chicago restaurant that bears his name, who met Arnold at a fusion-cooking > conference in Madrid last year. "He's helping chefs take their food to the > next level." Try Anything > Poised with a lance and wearing a welding jacket, his wife at the ready with > her camera, Dave Arnold is preparing to face off with a dragon. Actually, > with a snow blower. A snow blower that he has mounted on a tripod and rigged > to spray flaming kerosene vapor. At himself. > > This is during art school, you'll understand. > > "The idea was that if I could jam the lance into where the blower was going, > I could stop the blower and I would win," he explains. Instead, the dragon > won, and Arnold was engulfed in flames. "I learned that what happens when > you catch on fire is you don't 'stop, drop, and roll,' " Arnold says. "You > start running around to try to get away from yourself. Luckily, I had a > bunch of friends there who tackled me. I ended up having to go to the > hospital." > > Arnold's typical projects, though no less extreme, aren't always quite so > hazardous. Harold McGee, author of the seminal 1984 classic on the science > of the kitchen, On Food and Cooking, recalls a long day spent with Arnold > trolling exotic markets all over Manhattan, solely because Arnold insisted > that McGee experience an ingredient he had just discovered: giant-water-bug > essence from Thailand. "It smells like a combination of really strong pear > aroma with a little bit of nail polish in the background," McGee says. "He > just wants to find everything and experience everything." > > That kind of fearless curiosity came early. Growing up as an only child > (until the age of 15) in the New York area, Arnold says, "I ate everything." > He also took up culinary experimentation early. Aside from his childhood > specialty, chicken cooked in parchment with his own proprietary spice mix, > he was the self-styled "breakfast king," getting up early on weekends to > make breakfast in bed for his parents. Among his more ambitious adventures: > deep-fried beignets. "Looking back," he notes, "I don't think fifth graders > should deep-fry by themselves while their parents are asleep." > > Arnold has tech in his genes: His mother is a doctor and his father an > engineer, as were both of his grandfathers. He had always imagined an > academic career in science. But at Yale, he went with liberal-arts > coursework, attributing the decision to boredom and "a little bit of A.D.D." > As a junior, he started dating the woman who is now his wife—Jennifer > Carpenter, then an architecture student interning with Cesar Pelli—and > thought it might be smart to dabble in coursework related to her field > "because then I would have something else to talk to her about." So he > signed up for a sculpting class. "They taught me how to weld, and I was > like, 'This is amazing.' I was like, 'What? I can make big things from metal > that move and spin?' " > > He fell in love with building machinery. He also decided to go to art > school. While at Columbia, food occasionally found its way into his work—one > performance piece he contemplated was fashioning a model of the city > Nagasaki from gingerbread and blowing it to pieces. > > As it happens, the work with arc welders and flaming snow blowers proved to > be useful training. In the late 1990s, he and Carpenter moved into an > illegal loft on 38th Street that lacked a kitchen. Using a dorm fridge, a > hotplate and a utility sink from Home Depot, he created a rollaway kitchen > that could be hidden in case the landlord came sniffing around. When Arnold > and Carpenter noticed that the landlord never actually did come around, they > became emboldened—and Arnold discovered restaurant-equipment auctions. > > "The first thing I bought was a double-glass sliding-door deli case" for > $65, he recalls. "That thing changed my life. You could see all the food in > it. I had a party once—and this was before I had a soft-serve machine—and I > had something like eight cases of soft-serve, five cases of beer, three > cases of champagne, a ham, a turkey and all the noshes for everything, and > the thing wasn't even full." Soon thereafter, he bought a four-gallon > commercial deep fryer from a shuttered Mexican joint in the financial > district and rolled it home on a hand truck—in the snow. Then he got a > commercial broiler, known in the trade as a salamander. Then a convection > oven. He also began customizing his equipment, starting when the salvaged > convection oven didn't perform to his liking. > > It was around this time that he discovered WD-50, Wylie Dufresne's acclaimed > experimental restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Arnold quickly > became a regular. He asked Dufresne for a kitchen tour, the two hit it off, > and before long, they became friends. (It didn't hurt that Dufresne had > become interested in Arnold's sister-in-law Maile Carpenter, who he had met > in her capacity then as Time Out New York's food editor; the two are now > engaged.) > > "He was the one who said, 'You can take your tech and machine knowledge and > your cooking knowledge and bring them together," Arnold says. Dufresne was > (and still is) interested in sous vide and other methods of cooking food > slowly in liquids, at low temperatures, until the exact moment it is done. > Early in his work with Arnold, he complained that doing so with traditional > equipment was too difficult. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to keep > water at a constant, very low temperature for hours and hours on a stovetop. > Dufresne asked Arnold if he could find him an immersion circulator, a > thermostated water bath common to the most rudimentary chemist's workshop. > Arnold replied, "Well, I don't know what one is, but I guarantee I can get > it." He took Dufresne's money and started scouring eBay. A collaboration was > born. > > I recently toured WD-50's kitchen to get a look at the arsenal of tools that > Arnold has made or modified and that have become essential to Dufresne's > cutting-edge cuisine. Observing that fish proteins coagulate at 125 to 135 > degrees ("That's when the muscle begins to contract and squeeze out that > white, milky stuff, and that's when fish begins to dry out"), Dufresne told > Arnold that he wanted to cook fish very slowly in a moist environment until > the precise moment it reached those temperatures, in a much > lower-temperature environment than the 212 degrees necessary to create > steam. Arnold took parts from a humidifier, which converts water to vapor > with sonic pulses rather than heat, added a heating coil to produce the > moderate temperatures Dufresne was after, and, in effect, built him what is > now called a vapor oven years before they were widely available. "And so," > Dufresne says, "we're able to cook a moister piece of fish." > > Nearby, sous-chef Jeffrey Fisher is experimenting with a vacuum fryer, > modified by Arnold with a condenser and hoses to remove water vapor. The > vacuum permits liquids to boil at much lower temperatures, a property that > Fisher is exploring to fry chips of apple, garlic and potato in oil without > browning them. "The goal is, green things stay green, white fruit chips stay > white, that sort of thing," Fisher says. Unfortunately, he notes, the fryer > is still retaining too much moisture—you can see droplets condensing on the > underside of the clear lid—and as such, the chips are coming out squishy. > Arnold took one look at the problem and announced that the lid should be > dome-shaped rather than flat, so that water droplets would slide to the edge > rather than falling on the food. > > Not long after he began tinkering with Dufresne's equipment, Arnold was > working up a proposal for a food museum and writing stories for Food Arts > magazine. Editor Michael Batterbury noticed his interest in technology and > tapped Arnold to write equipment reviews. Then, two years ago, > administrators at the French Culinary Institute (Dufresne's alma mater) > decided to create a new department focused on molecular gastronomy and went > looking for a department head. Batterbury recommended Arnold for the job. > "You don't want a chef to do this position," Arnold says. "You want someone > who can figure out what the chef really wants, talk to the science and tech > people, and be the liaison between the two. That's what I do here." Magic > Meat Glue > Perhaps the most fun to be had with experimental cooking comes from the > magic potions known as hydrocolloids, a class of ingredients familiar to > anyone who's perused the labels of processed foods—cellulose, xanthan gum, > agar, alginate, carrageenan, gelatin—but that, until recently (with the > exception of gelatin), were not a fine cook's ingredients. Generally, > hydrocolloids are used to thicken, gel, or stabilize liquids; they can also > be used to great effect to change texture, enabling a chef to produce a foam > that won't collapse or, in Arnold's case, to make a "sponge cake" with > methyl cellulose that can be shot from a compressed whipped-cream canister > onto a plate without requiring baking. > > Despite their negative associations with junk food, most hydrocolloids > actually come from natural sources. Agar and carrageenan are derived from > seaweed, gelatin from cow and pig bones, and pectin from citrus and apples. > Some of these additives, such as agar, a common thickener in Thai cooking, > have been around for centuries; others, like transglutaminase (known in the > industry as "meat glue") are newer and can be used for some pretty out-there > stuff—attaching chicken skin to a piece of fish, say, or gluing a piece of > skate wing to a slab of pork belly. In his appearance on Iron Chef in 2005, > Dufresne used transglutaminase to bind pureed fish into "noodles," which > were toothsome and delicious, not to mention clever. (Full disclosure: I > served as a judge on that episode. I voted for Dufresne to win, but my > colleagues overruled me and gave the nod to Mario Batali.) > > "The problem," Arnold says, "is these [additives] have been used for decades > to make products with a longer shelf life, to reduce the fat, to make > something that you can freeze, to make something that ships farther, to make > something that's cheaper. And these are all things that, in the end, reduce > quality. Chefs have started looking at these ingredients as a quality > enhancer, something to be proud of. Most of the top people are using these > products, because they make food better. Hardly any of them talk about it, > because it sounds gross. There are a couple of people who, like Wylie, they > talk about using these things because they love the products and they're > trying to rehabilitate their image. So there's use of these products for > economy, and there's use for effect, and these chefs are using it for > effect." > > "Sometimes it's just about learning," Dufresne says. "It's about > understanding. That's why bringing traditional chefs together with > scientists is infinitely interesting, because even if, at the very least, > all they do is help explain things, and help us understand what's happening > while we cook, then we're becoming better cooks." > > The New Ways > When FCI hired Arnold, the plan was to build him a lab, which has yet to > happen—he has his closet and a cubicle, and he scavenges most of his > equipment used. ("I picked up a really good vacuum controller for cheap > because some sucker listed it in the wrong category!") He's now in the > market for a centrifuge, figuring that it will speed up the > juice-clarification process, and he particularly dreams of getting a deal on > a 3-D rapid-prototyping machine. Budget is an issue, not to mention the > storage constraints of the two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and > two young sons on the Lower East Side. > > Down the road, Arnold is hatching plans to open the ultimate high-tech > cocktail bar with pastry chef Iuzzini, focusing not on the retro, golden-age > drinks favored by most mixological temples but on an ultra-modern paradigm: > still wines and juices carbonated to order with tongue-tingling intensity; > rows of magnetic stirrers merrily whirling people's drinks in a chilling > bath; rotovapping herbs and fruit for intense flavors; bourbon with soft, > sweet nitrous-oxide bubbles; extremely cold drinks without the corruption of > ice, super-chilled cocktail stirrers. . . . "There are always new things you > can do that are really delicious that no one is trying," Arnold says, > "because they're so hyped up on getting back to some other place." > > To his mind, this kind of problem-solving isn't any sort of radical culinary > departure. "People ask, 'Is this a fad?' I hope that the idea of trying to > use everything at your disposal to make something better is never considered > a fad, you know?" As Dufresne puts it, "I mean, an oven is technology. At > one point, people were throwing sticks at animals and holding them over a > spit, and that was a huge breakthrough." > > McGee harkens back to Arnold's relentless quest for the perfect G&T. "He has > this ideal of the french fry, the gin and tonic, so many things, and he's > always trying to get to that ideal," he says. But ultimately, McGee > ventures, he himself would probably prefer the old-fashioned kind: "For me, > a gin and tonic is a tall drink that you sip. It's not a martini; it's a > drink to quench your thirst. So I kind of like the standard one, with some > Schweppes. I like the bursts of acidity from those little lime bits." > > Of course, he knows, "if I were having this conversation with Dave, he would > be saying, 'Well, if you like those little bursts of acidity, we can put > some gelatin pearls in there, infused with Clearlime, so that whenever you > bite one . . ." > > Ted Allen is a frequent judge on Top Chef and Iron Chef America, the food > and wine expert on Queer Eye, and the author of The Food You Want to Eat. > > > http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/83b8d7f2faa85110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html >
