5 posts tagged “culinary”

Oh didn't I tell you?  I have a new job.  Okay, not with a new company.  Same company, still in R&D, no promotion.  I basically just switched teams and now have an entirely new set of projects.  In my old role I was involved with the final execution phase of product development, working with products and brands that are currently on the market.  Take the prototype, scale it up, and launch.  Launch, launch, launch.  It's not a bad place to be, because at the end of the year you can tally up all the money you've made for the company and make a tangible case for just how well you've done.

In my new role, I'm not going to be launching any products for quite some time.  Now I'm supposed to explore new areas that our company may venture into, to seek out new concepts and new product formulations, to boldly go where our company has never gone before.  :)  Part of the reason I got this job was a) because I'm a food scientist [and not a chemical engineer] and b) because I've started the program to get my culinary certificate.  Woot!  See?!?!?  Starting those culinary classes was a good idea.

Now, I've been charged to become a foodie.  I'm not sure that don't fall into this category already, but I definitely come to my love of food from a different angle.  I am excited by new food ingredients and flavor combinations, new and different cooking methods, but I'm fascinated by it from a scientific perspective primarily.  I'm not sure you can ever "learn" an appreciation for food, but, at the very least, you can learn what motivates those who come by it naturally.  ;)

I need to know what simple things like tapenades are (yes, I actually do know what this is) when someone says that word, so I need to expand my food vocabulary into a completely different category.  What foods go well together?  What don't?  What may if given the right opportunity?  I need to know different wines, cheeses, breads, etc.  I need to go out in the marketplace and understand what our target consumers are buying.  "Do you think you're up for that?" my new manager asked.  Um, yeah.  I'll sign up for that anyday.  Plus I have close to carte blanche to do it.  This is such new territory for everyone, there's no tenured scientist in the company I can go ask these questions.  We have a chef in-house now, which is helpful, but I can say that I need to go spend a week in Napa to take a course at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America, not the other) without making anyone blink.

Ahhh... I think I'm going to like it here.

If any of you foodies have suggestions for magazines, websites, books, or other resources I might look into, the suggestions are much appreciated! :)

Heard of Molecular Gastronomy?  How about Violent Gastronomy?

Chefs around the world are constantly seeking out inspired ways of creating new flavor sensations in our foods.  If we ever had an Honorable Mention award in the culinary arena, this new product would be the winner.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I invite you to take a journey with me.  You're a game hunter.  You've woken up early in the morning, packed your biggest gun and your sharpest knives, and driven with your dog and your best buddies to your local wilderness in search of anything with fur or feathers and a heartbeat.  Hours you've sat, in the grass or in a tree, and finally you spot it.  You shoot it, the dog retrieves, and smack in the middle of a field dressing you think - gosh I wish I didn't have to put time and effort into seasoning this little bastard.

And thus Season Shot was born.

Pumped full of flavor!

It's quite simple really.  Instead of using elementary metals to make buckshot, you tightly pack the seasoning of your choice into a hydrocolloid shell that is the same size and shape as buckshot.  Still hard enough to pierce the flesh, yet gentle enough to sink your teeth right into.  See, the hydrocolloid melts in the presence of heat, so when you roast the meat, the shell goes away and the flavor's here to stay.  (I know, I know.  I should be in marketing.)

The folks at Season Shot (all hunters, by the way) have outlined the pure simplicity and the sheer genius of this idea.

From Gun to "Yum" in 3 Easy Steps!

Need a basil-flavored turkey for Thanksgiving.  BLAM!  How about tarragon?  BOOM!  And for those budding hunters-turned-culinary artists, you could always have your buddies each load up a different flavor and play target practice on the same bird.  Hell, there may not be much meat left, but oh the flavor!  Why do I get the feeling that it all tastes just a liiiiiiiiittle smokey?

In five minutes, I have a meeting with my boss.  In it, I am going to ask if I can take an opportunity to rotate jobs within our division.  I'd still be R&D, and I'd still be a research scientist at the same level.  It's not a job change per se, but everything about my current job would change.  The new team that I'm interested in moving into is working on products with more of a culinary focus.  More fuzzy front end type development that uses my culinary and food science background/interests.  Instead of the more banal stuff that I currently do (which don't get me wrong I do enjoy).  But this job would stop the incessant traveling so that I can actually be at home long enough to finish the culinary program I started!

I learned one very important takeaway from culinary class last night: Hollandaise sauce is not easy to make.  I'm sure it will come with time, but for Day 3 - kind of a challenge.  Everyone in the class had trouble.  Chef even had to make a fix during his demonstration.

For those that don't know, Hollandaise is an emulsion sauce.  It's a little vinegar, water, egg yolk, and a lot of clarified butter.  Here's the step-by-step as I remember it.

1. Crack up 1/4 tsp peppercorns, put them in a skillet with 1 oz cider vinegar, and reduce the vinegar to, well, nothing.  But don't burn it.  Set aside.  Consensus: Easy.
2. Separate three egg yolks in a medium stainless bowl.  Break yolks with a whip.  Add 2 oz water to the vinegar reduction and deglaze the pan.  Pour deglazed liquid - peppercorns and all - into the egg yolks.  Whip into a froth.  Consensus: Easy.
3. Set stainless bowl on simmering saucepan of water (aka make your own double boiler).  Whip.
4. Whip whip whip.
5. Whip whip whip whip whip whip whip - alternately removing from heat and returning to heat as the consistency dictates.  Consensus: This is where "the eye" comes in handy.  Whenever the food starts to dictate its readiness with consistency, experience is priceless.  Color is easier to read.  We, as a class, did not have said "eye," thus, this step was a problem.  We mustered through it OK, nonetheless.  The whipping and heat is all about evaporating off the water in the egg mixture.  You don't want to remove all of it, or so I gathered.  This is where things started to become fuzzy. 
6. Now, once you've acheived your desired consistency, you slowly drizzle and whip in one entire cup of clarified butter.  Consensus: Impossible.  We all got about 2-3 fl oz of butter into our mixture and all was looking great, then the emulsion "broke."  This meant that the viscosity of the sauce got really thin all of the sudden, and the egg and butter just separated into a disgusting gloppy mess.  Every single student broke their emulsion.  Some of us were able to recover by quickly whipping up another egg yolk over heat and adding the broken emulsion back into the new egg, but most ran out of time.  This step was excruciating, not just because of the breaking emulsion, but because it required constant whipping with one hand, and drizzling butter with the other.  All the while your bowl is sitting on a pot of simmering water, and the bowl needs to be removed from heat and returned to the heat.    So you whip whip whip, drizzle, whip whip whip, drizzle, set down butter, grab your towel, remove the hot bowl, whip whip, drizzle, whip whip whip, set down butter, grab towel, return bowl to heat, drop towel, grab butter, drizzle, whip whip whip.  You get the idea.  Most of us were so slow that we evaporated off too much water over the heat, so I ended up needing to add back quite a bit of water to thin out the consistency.  Argh.
7. The final step is to stain the emulsion through a chinois (really, really fine strainer) into a new container.  Add some Kosher salt, white pepper, and squeeze half a lemon into it.  Only four people in class got to this point.

All that whipping... Mental note: Train yourself to be ambidextrous, so that whipping arm doesn't become Rambo-huge while the drizzling arm stays Olive Oyl-skinny. 

I don't even like Hollandaise.

Hi.  I'm Debbie, and I'm a food scientist.  My Uncle Mark has been on Vox for awhile, and just about every time we exchange communication - he tells me I need to get on here.  My excuse for not Voxing is, I think, a good one.  I maintain an entire website about myself (and my husband) which includes a blog and photo albums.  That site was created to keep friends and family posted on our goings-on since having moved to Texas (from Illinois).  For two single people who work 8 to 5 jobs there isn't a whole lot to talk about - arguably not enought to necessitate an entire website devoted to their daily activities.  Thus, a Vox account has always seemed excessive.

That is, until I started culinary school this last Monday.  But we'll get back to that.  You know how I mentioned I was a food scientist?  I work for a major food company that has consumer products found worldwide.  I'm a product developer for them, which is an unbelievably fun job.  It's also extremely hard work, physically and mentally.  I have two degrees in Food Science.  (Yes, that's actually a degree.)  Day to day, my responsibilities as a product developer are to develop formulas (or recipes) for a new product, to figure out how the different ingredients will react with one another when exposed to heat and other process variables.  I know the chemistry side of it, but chemistry doesn't teach you what flavors pair well together.  And it doesn't really foster "thinking-outside-the-box"ness.

So, on to culinary school!  I figured it might be halfway interesting to some to hear an account of a scientist trying to become a chef.  I've always been curious about what exactly goes on in culinary school, and I find myself enamored with just about everything I've had to do in my classes thus far - including having to wheel around a mop bucket around the kitchen to clean the floors after class. 

Anyhow, we'll see where this blog takes us.  I just hope that someone, somewhere will find it halfway interesting.  :)