5 posts tagged “food”

So, I was sharing a question that MEK posed on her site a few days ago to someone at work: what is it that makes food comforting?  Now, I framed this question, which has been asked so many times by people in the food industry, I think we might actually be approaching infinity, as the 'million dollar question.'  What indeed?  I think it falls into the category of, "Surely someone has answered this question by now," and no, we haven't... but we continue tirelessly in our attempt.

Aaaaanyway.  The person at work with whom I broached this topic is a person whose job it is to explore these types of emotional/sensory connections people have with food.  She said that a chef she works with at a flavor company has an intriguing hypothesis on comforting food: It all relates back to mother's milk.  Meaning: foods that we find comforting exhibit the same attributes in one way or another as breastmilk.  This relates to formula-imbibers also, because formula is formulated [whew, that felt redundant] based on breastmilk composition.

Let's think about mother's milk for a second, and give that hypothesis some space to really resound.  Attributes that I can think of off the top of my head are:

• Fatty
• Creamy
• Dairy
• Warm - sorry, that gives me the skeeves too

If you ask a food scientist to list "knobs" they can turn in a product to make it more comforting, increasing any of these four factors, either alone or in combination, would be some of the first attributes to be listed.

Is it possible that the idea of "comfort food" is ingrained that early in life?  Personally?  I think so.

Mintel, a marketing intelligence agency, has released their Flavor Forecast for 2009. 

What's a flavor forecast, you ask?  A team (typically) of people get together and pool their resources to identify what flavors will start appearing in food.  Flavors always permeate in a sort of trickle down effect.  Generally, haute cuisine dishes are at the very bleeding edge of the food revolution.  Then you'll start seeing three- to four-star restaurants showcasing the new ingredients/flavors.  Then the food network chefs or the food lover's magazines will start showing them off.  Next, your chain restaurants will have it in their dishes and more mainstream press will highlight an article about these flavors right about the same time that the consumer packaged goods industry gets to using them.

Mintel is just one of the companies that puts out a flavor forecast for the following year.  McCormick publishes one as well, and I know it's not limited to just these two.  Some interesting hits here.

• Persimmon: A native to Asia, this small orange fruit is sweet, tart and soft to pulpy in texture.  My college roommate used to make persimmon cookies every Christmas.  Delicious.
• Masala:  An Indian spice - or mixture of several spices rather - that is distinctive to Indian food.  It's often mistaken for curry, which makes me believe that I've had this and just have not realized it.
• Starfruit: This fruit, of the carambola tree, has a star shape when cut in a cross-section, hence the name.  A native of southeast Asia, but produced for the U.S. in Hawaii in south Florida.  Never eaten it, so I'm curious.
• Lavender:  We all know lavender, right?  I think of sachets and strong-smelling grannies, but actually consuming it?  Divine.  That is, if the chef knows what he's doing.  If introduced in the right proportions with ingredients that we are pretty familiar with already, lavender adds a really delightful floral note.  It pairs well with warm vanilla.  I've personally enjoyed this in creme brulée.
• Cactus:  Already a popular flavor in Latin America, this one is apparently about to make headway in the states.  I've had prickly pear, which is a cactus, and not enjoyed it at all, but I choose to withhold judgement until I see said cactus "in play".
• Chimichurri:  Yesssss.  Simple simon: A fresh herb (parsley and cilantro) blend with oil and some other seasonings.  Pairs well as a sauce with, well, pretty much any grilled meat you throw at it.  Put it on a sandwich, in a pita, over fish, steak is divine... I will eat it in a car, I will eat it near or far.  Chimichurri showing up more and more often?  Bring. it. on.
• Peri-peri (also piri-piri):  An African hot pepper sauce.  I've had it where the sauce delivers an exciting sweet-heat.  Put it over sweet potato, sounds strange, but it's delish.

One thing I've learned in my short stint in the food industry is this: The flavor progression has to progress in the way I've described above.  Trust me, we know about all the cool things going on in the world of food, but if I packaged up a bottle of yellow peri-peri sauce and put it next to some chipotle Tabasco or Cholula hot sauce, which are you going to reach for - not having anything but the bottles in front of your face to help you decide?  Generally speaking, folks in the chain-restaurant business and consumer packaged goods industry sell you something you've already been sold on (either by another chef or by word of mouth) elsewhere.

What does this list mean to you?  Not much now, but you'll likely be seeing more and more of these flavors/ingredients in play in the next year or more.  It's always fun to track the progress.  ;)

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?

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.