Category — Food Science

Some flavor combinations are classic: parsley and lemon, beef and mushrooms, tomatoes and basil. Upon closer inspection, these foods share many of the same flavor and aroma molecules. These mutual molecules explain why the foods pair so well together and why these combinations have stood the test of time.

Today, food and flavor scientists have compiled the Volatile Compounds in Food Database. The VCF is an extensive list of the major volatile aroma and flavor compounds in popular foods and ingredients. Chefs and scientists alike can now use the information from the VCF to predict unusual but delicious new flavor combinations. Who would have thought parsley and bananas taste delicious together? or plum and bleu cheese? These are some new and increasingly popular flavor-pairings discovered because they share multiple aroma and flavor compounds.

Another great combination: Cauliflower and cocoa. The two together create a naturally sweet, savory, and vegetal flavor. This is a soup inspired by the new flavor combination.

The bowl contains crunchy, caramelized cauliflower along with cocoa jelly and a smear of caramelized cauliflower and dark chocolate puree. A velvety cauliflower soup is then poured over garnishes. The soup is very limited in ingredients but rich in flavor.

Cauliflower Soup:

• 1 Tb. unsalted butter
• 1/2 medium onion, sliced (about 50 g)
• 280 g cauliflower florets (about 1/2 head)
• 380 g cauliflower juice* (juice from about 1 head)
• 150 g whole milk (a bit over 1/2 c.)
• Kosher salt and white wine vinegar to taste

Sweat the onions in the melted butter until soft. Add the cauliflower florets and juice. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes, until the florets become very tender. Transfer the mixture to a blender and blend on high speed for 1 minute. Pass through a fine mesh strainer or a chinois. Add the milk and season to taste.

*If you don’t have a juice you can extract the cauliflower juice by chopping a head of cauliflower into a very loose paste with a food processor. Transfer the paste to a clean dish towel and squeeze out the juice. Discard the dry solids.

These stunning photographs were taken by Mike Boehmer.

Mike is a Chicago-based photographer and a regular contributor to The Windy Pixel. Please visit www.mikeboehmer.com for more fantastic photography!

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A very popular technique in modern fine dining is spherification. This technique allows us to encapsulate a liquid, such as cherry and raspberry puree, inside of itself. The key players are calcium and sodium alginate, which is a seaweed-derived gelling agent. When sodium alginate comes into contact with calcium it quickly forms a delicate but resilient skin that cannot be de-natured by freezing or excessive heating. However, when you apply light pressure to the orb with a fork or your teeth, the membrane breaks, releasing the liquid interior. This is illustrated in the photo below.

I made these orbs by first making a cherry and raspberry puree. I then thickened and seasoned the puree. I added calcium lactate to the puree and froze the mixture into spheres. Meanwhile I combined water, sugar, and sodium alginate to make a slightly sweet mixture. I boiled the mixture to expel the air bubbles and kept it warm. I dropped the frozen spheres into the warm alginate bath. The heat melted a thin layer of water on the outside which was immediately gelled. After a 2 minute soak, I carefully removed the orbs and rinsed them in a water bath. I then transfered them to a holding bath of cherry juice. Although the skin is resilient to heat and cold, it breathes and is permeable by the process of osmosis. Keeping the orbs in a flavored liquid adds to the overall flavor and prevents liquid migration from the orbs.

Top left to lower right: Frozen puree, spheres in hot alginate bath, spheres in water rinsing bath, spheres in cherry holding bath.

For a complete recipe with helpful information on where to buy and how to use sodium alginate and calcium lactate, please subscribe to my bi-weekly mailing list. Simply click the link below, enter your email address, and I will include the recipe in my next mailing (12/1/09). You can unsubscribe at any time and I will not flood your inbox. With each mailing you’ll receive a friendly update of what’s going on at Garrett’s Table with exclusive, subscriber-only recipes and content.

Stay tuned in the coming days to see how I use these cherry-raspberry orbs with the flavors of a classic New York pastry

Photos by Justin Kern.

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Pretzels, large or small, soft or crunchy, were meant to be dipped in mustard. In a never-ending quest to make life more efficient and more delicious, I decided to make a pretzel from mustard.

If you’re a regular reader of Garrett’s Table, you know that I’ve been recently obsessed with puffed tapioca chips, as seen in puffed tomato chips with basil pesto. Puffed tapioca chips don’t sound very delicious but I assure you they are. They’re made by steaming a flavored tapioca starch dough. The cooked dough is then dehydrated. Once dry, you fry the chips at 400° F. The residual moisture in the gelatinized starch cells turns to steam, causing the chip to rapidly expand, creating a tender but crispy puffed chip. Making a puffed tapioca chip is a somewhat laborious process but watching a tiny, nearly inedible, dry pellet inflate into a tender, crispy, and delicious chip is a huge pay off.

This week I’m introducing something new to Garrett’s Table: Video! This video was shot on my iPhone. It’s certainly crude, but there must be a first for everything. The soundtrack is awesome though! Watch to learn how to turn your favorite mustard into a crispy pretzel chip. I’ve also included a recipe below the video.

Puffed Mustard Pretzel:

• 240 g water
• 80 g stone ground mustard
• 8 g salt
• 10 g white wine vinegar
• 20 g ground mustard seed
• 5 g onion powder, with 10 threads saffron
• 2 g xanthan gum (optional)
• 380 g tapioca starch
• 10 g kosher salt
• 10 g mustard seed
• 5 g powdered sugar

Combine the water, mustard, 8 g salt, vinegar, ground mustard, onion powder, and saffron in a blender. Blend on high speed. Add xanthan gum and blend for 1 minute. Add liquid mixture to tapioca starch and carefully combine with your hands or a rubber spatula. The dough will be a non-Newtonian fluid, which means it acts as both a liquid and a solid. When you handle the dough gently it will flow as a liquid, but when rapidly compressed it will stiffen and resist as a solid. This consistency is desired.

The next step is rolling the dough into thin sheets. I like to tape silpats to my work surface as spacers for my rolling pin. Place a layer of plastic wrap over your workspace, with the ends overlapping the silpats slightly. Place a thin log of dough in the center of the plastic and carefully place a second sheet of plastic over the first. Press down firmly in the center of the dough log with the rolling pin and roll upward and downward slowly to achieve a uniform thickness of about 1/16.'’

Place one dough sheet at a time in a steamer. Steam for 10 minutes, or until translucent. Allow the dough sheets to cool to room temperature. Once cooled, remove the plastic wrap and lay the dough sheets on a cutting board. Cut into pretzel shapes with a cookie cutter. Lay the shapes on the tray of a dehydrator and dry on low heat overnight, or until dry and brittle.

In a spice gringer, grind the 10 g kosher salt, 10 g mustard seed, and 5 g powdered sugar into a fine powder. This will be the final seasoning for the chips.

Heat a pot of oil to 400° F. Drop 3 dry chips into the hot oil. Use a spider or slotted spoon to completely submerge them in the oil as they puff and rise to the surface. Fry for 10 seconds and transfer to a paper towel. Lightly dust with seasoning mixture.

Keep visitin Garrett’s Table in the coming days for a wild recipe using these puffed pretzel chips!

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And now for something completely different. These are crunchy yet tender puffed tomato chips with a basil pesto dip. The chips taste intensely of sun dried tomatoes and are perfectly complimented with a creamy, blended pesto. It’s gourmet Italian junk food made with an unusual technique…

I made the chips using my oven dried tomatoes The chips themselves begin with a dough made from dried tomatoes and tapioca starch. The dough is rolled thin between plastic wrap and steamed. The cooked dough is then cut into shapes and dehydrated. When fried at 400°, the tiny amount of moisture remaining in the starch turns to steam and puffs the chip dramatically. Here are some pictures of the process:

The cooked, cut, and dehydrated tomato chips

When fried, the residual moisture puffs the chips into delicious Italian junk food

The process sounds strange but we’re actually quite familiar with it. Popcorn and puffed rice cereal are both common examples of puffed starches that Americans eat on a nearly daily basis. Here’s my recipe for puffed tomato chips with basil pesto:

Tomato Chips:

• 75g oven dried tomatoes
• 400 g water
• 15 g kosher salt
• 30 g balsamic vinegar
• 680 g tapioca starch

Blend the tomatoes, water, salt, and balsamic vinegar until smooth. Pass through a fine mesh strainer to remove any solid particles. Carefully measure the tapioca starch into a large mixing bowl and add the tomato liquid. Slowly incorporate the liquid to form a dough.

Take a small handful of dough (about 1/4 cup) and roll it into a log. Place between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll to 1/16′’ thick. Steam the dough in the plastic wrap for 10 minutes. The dough will now be translucent. Repeat this process with the rest of the dough.

Allow the cooked dough sheets to cool and carefully remove from the plastic wrap onto a clean work surface. Cut into shapes and dehydrate overnight, or until dry and hardened. Store dried chips in an airtight container.

Tomato Seasoning:

• 2 Tb. tomato powder
• 2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 tsp. powdered sugar
• 1/4 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Combine ingredients and grind to a fine powder using a spice grinder.

Basil Pesto:

• 2 oz. basil leaves
• 1 Tb. balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tb. water
• 4 walnuts, toasted
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 Tb. grated parmesan cheese
• 1/4 tsp. lemon zest
• 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 c. vegetable oil

Place all ingredients except oils in a blender and blend until smooth. While spinning, drizzle in oils to emulsify. The pesto should be thick and creamy. Hold in the refrigerator.

To Finish and Serve:

Bring a pot of oil to 400° F. Drop 3-4 chips in the oil and fry for about 20 seconds, or until puffed and crispy. Drain on paper towels and dust with powdered tomato seasoning. Serve with a side of basil pesto dip.

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The flavor of vanilla is hard to describe. It’s dark, robust, fruity, and absolutely unique. Vanilla beans owe their flavor to a very long and labor intensive fermenting process and a special flavor compound called vanillin. The “vanilla” flavor most Americans know is actually not vanilla but vanillin extracts derived from guaiacol or lignin, which are wood pulp byproducts of the paper processing industry. Doesn’t sound very tasty to me. Real vanilla beans are the fruit of the vanilla genus of orchid native to mexico. Bitter, green tasting, and nearly inedible when picked, the green vanilla beans are meticulously picked and laid carefully on woolen cloth to bake under the hot sun. At night, workers roll up the sacks and the beans begin their fermenting process. This process is repeated day by day and, once dark, the beans are dried for several months where chemical reactions finish creating the dark and robust vanilla flavor. The entire process can take up to a year. It certainly justifies the hefty price tag on whole vanilla beans and forces you to savor and admire the incredible flavor unique to whole beans.

To use a fresh vanilla bean carefully split it in half lenthwise using a sharp paring knife. This will expose the dense and dark filling of seeds. Using the back of the knife, scrape the seeds from the pod and use them to flavor your vanilla ice cream (and to add those nice black flecks).

Of course you’re then left with the question of what to do with the bean’s hull. It’s probably not very nice to chew on but you paid top dollar for that tiny bean. There are two common practices which are equally delicious. The first is to make vanilla sugar. To do this simply pour some sugar into an air tight container, a mason jar for example, and bury the bean in the sugar. Allow the bean’s flavor to permeate the sugar and add more beans as you use them. Vanilla sugar is great used to sweeten your coffee or tea or used in your favorite baked good.

The other option is to start your own vanilla extract. True vanilla extract is grain alcohol that has been steeped with vanilla bean scraps. As it turns out, the vanillin is extremely soluble in alcohol and the result is an intense vanilla liquid. For this application I used Vodka. Simple place your used vanilla beans into a bottle of vodka and allow to steep for a few weeks or up to a year. For this picture I used a whole vanilla bean but I’ve been chopping up the beans I’ve added since to extract the flavors more quickly. Instead of waiting a year, use the extract as needed and add more vanilla and vodka as the weeks pass. The vodka will turn a dark brown and smell richly of vanilla. The best part about this extract is that you can use it to flavor your cookies and you’re cocktails without feeling the unpleasant burn of grain alcohol.

Whether you make vanilla sugar or extract, please don’t throw away those beans!

Photo by Justin Kern.

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