Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Geek No More
Everybody knows I am a chemist. I am not sure most know that I love to cook. I have always contended it is because chemistry and cooking are pretty much the same thing. Now, the NYTimes confirms it.
But my favorite processed food story is from my dad. Fat in food is gonna kill us all, we all know that, Right? Years ago, my mom brought home fat-free ice cream. If you have had it, you are smiling already, if you have not, don't bother. The texture is completely wrong and hard? Oh dear Lord. Whatever that stuff is, it is not ice cream. Anyway, mom brought it home and a couple hours later, my dad called me. "John, you're the chemist. How do you get this stuff out of the container. It's hard as granite." I suggested the mircowave. My father called back a few minutes later and reduced me to stitches, "Problem solved. I took the whole container down to the bandsaw, cut off a hunk and wrapped the remainder in Saran Wrap."
Here is the point I really want to make though. It's not what you eat that matters, but how much. Chef's are now using industrial additives in high end food. A little REAL ice cream, occasionally, will not kill you.
So it is with out lives in general. We set hard and fast rules. "I NEVER drink." "I CAN'T watch television." You know, what I am talking about - modern day legalism.
You know what I hate about legalism. It is not that I want some of my pagan pleasures every now and then, it is that such legalism negates the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us. With the power of the Holy Spirit, I can drink without drunkness, I can watch TV and sort the wheat from the chaff. Like the chefs that are learning the value of industrial additives, the Holy Spirit can make is destructive, constructive. He can make the bad, good.
And he starts with us, if we will only let Him.
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And rightly so. Cooking is chemistry, after all, and in recent decades scientists have given much closer scrutiny to the transformations that occur when foodstuffs are heated. That has debunked some longstanding myths. Searing meat does not seal in juices, for example, but high heat does induce chemical reactions among the proteins that make it tastier. The experimentation with hydrocolloids represents a rare crossover between the culinary arts and food science, two fields that at first glance would seem to be closely related but which have been almost separate. Food science arose in the 20th century as food companies looked for ways to make their products survive the trek to the supermarket and remain palatable. The long list of ingredients on a frozen dinner represents the work of food scientists in ensuring shelf life and approximating the taste of fresh-cooked food.Food science is interesting stuff, but sometimes it is really funny. Tomatoes grown for canning, for example are square and green, and lack acid. That is all added at the cannery, they are grown for pulp and mechanical handling.
“Ten years ago, or maybe a little more than that, no chef in a serious restaurant would be caught dead using these ingredients,” said Harold McGee, author of “On Food and Cooking” (Scribner, 2004) and the “Curious Cook” column, which appears in the Dining section of The New York Times. “Because they were industrial stabilizers for the most part.”
Then a few chefs like Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England started experimenting. “They asked what can you do with these ingredients that you can’t do with other ingredients,” Mr. McGee said.
But my favorite processed food story is from my dad. Fat in food is gonna kill us all, we all know that, Right? Years ago, my mom brought home fat-free ice cream. If you have had it, you are smiling already, if you have not, don't bother. The texture is completely wrong and hard? Oh dear Lord. Whatever that stuff is, it is not ice cream. Anyway, mom brought it home and a couple hours later, my dad called me. "John, you're the chemist. How do you get this stuff out of the container. It's hard as granite." I suggested the mircowave. My father called back a few minutes later and reduced me to stitches, "Problem solved. I took the whole container down to the bandsaw, cut off a hunk and wrapped the remainder in Saran Wrap."
Here is the point I really want to make though. It's not what you eat that matters, but how much. Chef's are now using industrial additives in high end food. A little REAL ice cream, occasionally, will not kill you.
So it is with out lives in general. We set hard and fast rules. "I NEVER drink." "I CAN'T watch television." You know, what I am talking about - modern day legalism.
You know what I hate about legalism. It is not that I want some of my pagan pleasures every now and then, it is that such legalism negates the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us. With the power of the Holy Spirit, I can drink without drunkness, I can watch TV and sort the wheat from the chaff. Like the chefs that are learning the value of industrial additives, the Holy Spirit can make is destructive, constructive. He can make the bad, good.
And he starts with us, if we will only let Him.
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