Posts Tagged ‘food’

It must be ultrasonic month here at Seattle Food Geek headquarters, ‘cause I’ve got another high-frequency food hack.  I recently bought an ultrasonic mist generator to use as a humidifier for a meat curing chamber I’m working on.  These little devices emit ultrasonic waves (around 20KHz) which cause the surrounding water to cavitate into a very fine mist without raising the water temperature.  Since the mist is so fine (about 1 micron) and is instantaneous and low-temperature, I thought it might be a great way to disperse aromatics around a food or beverage.  I ran a few experiments to see if it would turn alcohol into mist, but unfortunately most of the results were very poor. 

Rum did bupkis.  Whiskey gin were the same.  Dry vermouth produced a small amount of mist, and absinthe on it’s own produced a decent fog.  However, since Absinthe is meant to be consumed with added water anyway, the cocktail you see above was the best result I achieved in my limited testing.  From what little I can gather, I think the mist generator relies on a relationship between the frequency of the emitted ultrasonic wave and the speed with which sound travels through water in order to produce the mist.  Sound waves will move at different speeds in liquids with different densities, so perhaps tweaking frequency of the transducer would allow me to directly mist other liquids.  Just a theory. 

The mist generator has a ring of garish, color-changing LED lights built in – this is not part of the intended effect.  However, the mist produced above the drink does add something nice to the act of drinking it; the aromatics of the absinthe are amplified by becoming airborne, so you get a pleasant hit of anise aroma before you make contact with the drink.  I think there’s potential to this technique, but until I can make mists out of whatever liquid I want, and without having to submerge a plastic doodad in your cocktail, I’ll consider this to be a “promising prototype.”

This turned out to be one of the more dangerous machines I’ve ever built.  The goal was to make a cotton candy machine out of parts I had lying around.  The finished product was an aggressive, 1/2 horsepower, 4000°F beast of a machine that lasted long enough to prove itself before dying of awesomeness. 

If you want to build a cotton candy machine at home, all you need is:

• A tin can, like a tuna or dog food can
• A drill with a very small drill bit
• A motor (ex, your drill, an old CD player, a blender)
• A heat source, such as a propane torch, a lighter, or the coils from an old toaster
• A bucket to catch the cotton candy, or alternately a sheet of paper to wrap around the assembly
• Sugar

Follow the steps in the video to see just how easy this machine is to build.  Oh, and don’t forget… safety first.  My favorite part of this project was setting up a blast shield in front of the camera before we turned on the machine.

Special thanks to Victor (@sphing) for filming!

The season of giving is upon us, and that means it’s time to start Christmas shopping for the food geek in your life.  Let’s face it: he (or she… but who are we kidding, it’s a he) is hard to shop for.  He already owns 4 kinds of microplanes, he’s got more cookbooks than Barnes & Noble, and his spice rack is organized by atomic weight.  A waffle iron just isn’t gonna cut it this year.

For just that reason, I’ve rounded up the best and geekiest kitchen gifts of 2010.  And, if you’re feeling extra generous, I also threw in a few “luxury items” sure to induce a Christmas morning nerdgasm.

Books

2010 was a great year for cookbooks.  In fact, all of the books below are new this year, with the exception of Modernist Cuisine, which is available for preorder but won’t ship until March.  At $475, it’s not exactly a stocking stuffer, but you can spread out the joy by wrapping each of the five volumes separately. 

• Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet – $475
• Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes by Harold McGee – $19.23
• Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi – $32.97
• Sous Vide for the Home Cook by Douglas Baldwin – $25.95
• Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food by Jeff Potter – $20.71
• Modern Gastronomy: A to Z by Ferran Adria – $43.90

Modernist Cooking “Ingredients”

If the food geek on your Christmas list is dying to pull off the latest techniques, he’ll need some ingredients.  I’ve found the WillPowder brand to be a great value for the price.

• For spherification (you’ll need all three): Sodium Alginate – $27.69, Calcium Chloride- $15.08, and Sodium Citrate – $13.62
• For gels: AGAR AGAR – $52.35, Methylcellulose F50 – $28.64
• Thickeners: Ultratex 3 – $13.42, Ultratex 8 – $18.12
• For foams: Versawhip 600K – $36.08
• For powders: Tapioca Maltodextrin – $14.13

Essential Kitchen Gear

Who doesn’t like playing with new toys?  Over the last year, prices of induction cooktops have plummeted.  They are a great way to expand your stovetop capacity, and they’re extremely energy efficient for heating small quantities of food. 

• Max Burton 6000 1800-Watt Portable Induction Cooktop – $99.99
• Whip-It! Professional Cream Whipper – $49.99
• Infrared Thermometer – $47.96
• Distilling Apparatus – $55.12
• Bernzomatic Self-Igniting Torch – $20.89 (fuel sold separately)

In My Dreams…

Some guys dream of sports cars, some guys dream of rotor/stater homogenizers.  Here is the equipment in the kitchen of my dreams. 

• Torbeo Hand-Held Homogenizer – $841.00
  For blending sauces into a consistency that is unachievably smooth using a conventional blender
• Ultravac 250 Vacuum Chamber Packaging Machine – $4600.00
  Step aside, FoodSaver, this is a vacuum sealer for the big boys.
• Polyscience Sous Vide Professional – $799.95
  Hands-down the best sous vide machine I’ve ever tested.
• Vacuum Rotary Evaporator – $9230.00
  For distilling and extracting essential oils.  No more store-bought vanilla extract!
• PacoJet – $3950.00
  Best known for making extraordinarily smooth and creamy desserts.
• Freeze Dryer – $2,000-20,000
  DIY astronaut ice cream!
• Centrifuge – $7000
  For separating and clarifying stocks and sauces.
• Laser Cutter – $30,000
  For making templates, etching and cutting foods

Sure, you claim to avoid fast food chains and only shop at the farmers’ market. But the numbers tell another story. Data recently made available from data.mint.com shows where the people of Seattle are spending their food dollars. The data is based on the credit and debit transactions of Mint.com users in the greater Seattle area.

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2009 has been a great year for food in Seattle, but with the new year just around the corner, I thought I’d share my guesses insight into what we’ll see in restaurants and home kitchens 2010.  Some of these may be national trends, but as Pacific Northwesters, we tend to be the canaries in the coalmine, especially when discussing what we put in our bodies. 
As always, there will be a balance of healthy, socially-conscious eating and perverse gluttony (see Bacon Explosion). 

Seattle will go sous-vide crazy

The fancy restaurants have already been doing it for years (though, perhaps illegally).  But in 2010, I predict that sous-vide preparations will start showing up on restaurant menus everywhere (like The Keg and McCormick & Schmick’s), not just at cutting-edge gastropubs.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, sous-vide describes a cooking method where food is vacu-sealed and heated very slowly (hours or even days) in temperature-controlled water baths.  The method lets cooks achieve heavenly textures not achievable with an oven, stove or fry-o-lator.  2009 saw the release of the SousVide Supreme, the world’s first home-use water oven.  But at $499, it only appeals to serious food geeks (even I don’t have one yet).  I predict that 2010 will give us the “George Foreman Grill of sous-vide”, an afforable, mass-market water oven, complete with late night infomercial.

Homemade Pasta is the new Canvolution

There’s nothing new about homemade pasta.  Nor is there anything new about canned foods.  Both are oldschool, inexpensive, and very social ways of preparing food.  2009 gave rise to a huge wave of canning parties, covered under the umbrella movement of “Canvolution”.  I predict a similar wave of ad-hoc food gatherings next year, and I think homemade pasta could be the recipe of choice.  Making pasta – particularly rolling and cutting noodles – is a fun group activity.  Plus, dried pasta lasts forever and makes for a great gift (just like canned goods).  Stock up on Semolina flour – it’s gonna be a carb-tastic new year!

Sliders Out, Rillettes In

You know sliders are falling out of fashion when they appear on the menu at Jack-In-The-Box.  Although the mini-burgers enjoyed  their time in the spotlight at almost every restaurant in the city, it’s time for us to move on to the next “it” dish.  My prediction: rillettes.  Sure, they lack the mass appeal of a very small hamburger, but these spreadable potted meats are a total rustic treat.  The first rillette I ever tasted was a creamy little pot of salmon at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in New York.  Let me tell you, it left an impression.  Although pâté may be hopelessly off the mainstream, I think rillettes have a fighting chance.

Other Predictions, Hopes and Ramblings…

1. Cupcakes are over.  And so are the Pinkberry knockoffs.  Please, let’s move on.
2. Sustainable sushi will be the new norm.  With more and more diners checking sustainable seafood watchlists at the dinner table, we can no longer gorge on unagi without social consequences.  Bravo to chefs like Hajime at West Seattle’s Mashiko for leading the charge.
3. Salts on the rise.  Look for specialty salts to play a major role in restaurant menus.  Oh, and regular table salt is so last decade.  If it’s not Chardonnay-smoked, truffle-infused, or from an obscure seaport town in France, I’m not interested.
4. We get it: bacon is delicious and makes for ironic kitsch.  Let’s find a new punch line in 2010.  How about blowfish?
5. Seattle chefs embrace (or at least tinker with) molecular gastronomy.  It may not be for everyone, but molecular gastronomy – sciencey food made through extremely geeky methods – is still turning heads around the country.  There are a number of brave Seattle chefs are already having fun with science, but in a city with so many artists, I have to believe the best (and weirdest) is yet to come.

 
Making dinner for your date this Valentines day?  No?  Really?  You might want to reconsider.  Here are some excellent aphrodisiac recipes to let your partner know it’s business time. 

The Travel Channel’s Man v. Food visits Seattle this week for amazing showdowns between Adam Richman (eater extraordinaire) and some of the biggest piles of eatin’ our city has to offer.  Adam starts by tackling Red Mill Burgers, home to some of the best burgers (and onion rings) in the country.  Then, he’s off to the waterfront classic Crab Pot, where he’ll undoubtedly use his 4 rows of teeth to tear through a wheelbarrow of seafood.  Next, Adam bets the farm when he devours the infamous 12-egg omelet at Beth’s Cafe.  Will he have what it takes, or will Seattle’s biggest appetites show him up?

Man v. Food
Wednesday, Feb. 11th
7 PM (PST) on the Travel Channel