2 posts tagged “food”

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?

I made the radio last night.  When I was in my car about 5 minutes from home, the DJ was talking about how she only had butter in her house because it was natural and she felt like it was better for her and her family than margarine.  Trans fats be damned, I'm going back to natural.  I sped home the rest of the way and wrote in - couldn't find the station number.  The DJ talked about my email on the air.  Nothing too exciting, but at least I got the message out.

This is such a hot button issue for me.  The whole natural thing.  If you look at any food on a molecular level EVERYTHING - from butter to margarine to sugar to aspartame - looks like a bunch of scary chemicals.  And it's very hard to tell them apart.  Now I'm not - and have never claimed to be - a nutritionist.  That's not my bag.  But, I can look at a food's molecular structure and get some sort of idea of its properties and how it will behave in the body.  In fact, hell, I won't use sucralose (or Splenda) because it's chlorinated sugar.  I don't believe that I need to be consuming chlorine on a regular basis.  That is a complete gut feel that is not backed up by any human study data - it just gives me the skeeves.

Long story short, I'm not going to judge anyone for making the food choices that they do.  You're putting it in your (and your family's) bodies, and that is one of our most basic human rights.  What I want to try to avoid is the general population being afraid of the food they eat or otherwise making unnecessary or incorrect choices based on some half truths.

So here we go.  A few years ago, the FDA had gathered some very conclusive data that trans fats are bad for you.  Walk down a busy street and ask anyone about trans fats, they'll tell you the same.  The world has gotten the message - hallelujah!  Except... it seems we can only remember a few food-related health facts in our brains at once.  So now, everyone has seemed to have de-throned Saturated Fat as the major evil-doer and has put Trans Fat in its place as Public Enemy #1.  As such, we as consumers have been making a MASS exodus from things that contain trans fat and have lovingly embraced Saturated Fat once more.  So for once and for all:

Saturated fat is STILL bad for you.  Or rather, trans fats and saturated fats are equally detrimental to your health.

Okay?  Choosing butter over margarine gains you nothing.  Both potentiate heart and other circulatory disease.  Both have the same amount of calories.  Oh and here's a kicker, butter has cholesterol and margarine doesn't!  Plus, nowadays a lot of margarine companies are reformulating to yield little to no trans fats in their finished product, making it much better than butter ever could be.  Well, healthwise anyway - butter is still yummy, from a culinary standpoint of course.  That's an entirely different issue.

The moral of the story is this:  Choose heart healthy oils - like corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, or olive oil - when cooking and all will be well as far as your heart is concerned.