Genius

Have I talked to you guys about Food 52 yet? Started by two New York Times food writers as a project to create the world’s first “crowd-sourced cookbook,” the site is a pretty fantastic resource for recipes, handy cooking tips, and equipment reviews. Think Cooks.com meets Serious Eats with an Gourmet aesthetic and you’ve kind of got the idea.

They have this feature that I am totally in love with called Genius Recipes. The basic idea is that they’re supposed to come from the stars of the food world and really change the way you think about cooking. What I like about them, however, is how shockingly easy so many of them are – which I guess DOES subvert the idea that for something to be great cooking it needs to be complicated. Many of the entrees appear to fall under the “five ingredients or fewer” category, which makes them ideal for a busy weeknight.

However, I didn’t get around to trying any of them until I saw this one. What was so special about it? Well, for one thing, I just bought the book that it came from, Judy Rodgers’ Zuni Cafe Cookbook, this summer at the flea market. I bought it because it was a dollar, and because it contains inside it one of the most magical recipes for chicken I’ve ever enjoyed, as prepared for me by good friend and excellent cook Eric Lintz. And yes, I made that chicken and yes, it was amazing, and yes, I will share that recipe with you one day, but not today, because today is all about the applesauce.

Which gets to the other reason that this was the Genius Recipe that finally got me cooking – I’d bought 10 lbs of apples for $7 at the Farmer’s Market, and there are only so many pies a lady can bake.

(Though, I will say it, this was freaking amazing pie.)

The apples were Ginger Golds from Kimball’s Fruit Farm, and they made such a good pie that I knew they’d make great applesauce, and this recipe seemed to be the one to go with – simple, letting the apple flavor shine through.

So I peeled them, then cut them with my handheld corer/slicer.
Normally I like to use my crank peeler/corer/slicer, but I needed bigger pieces for this.

These were tossed with the tiniest amount of sugar and dotted with butter slivers. Into the oven they went!

Here they are all roasted up:

I mashed mine with the potato masher, and voila:

Easily the best applesauce I’ve had in my life. The roasting gave a caramelized, toasty flavor to the sauce that, combined with that little bit of buttery richness, was borderline addictive. And it all took about 45 minutes, mostly right in the oven. Truly genius!

Cocktails and Science

In previous posts I’ve outlined my love of food science, and of Harold McGee particularly. And of course, my affection for cocktails is well-documented. So it will come as no surprise to hear that when I had the opportunity to hear the man himself talk about the science of cocktails, I was all over it.

I gave the heads up to my friend Jess, another avid cocktail fan, and we set out to get schooled. Joining Mr.McGee was Dave Arnold, the Director of Culinary Technology at The French Culinary Institute. Basically, the way the lecture worked was that Dave would do something crazy onstage, usually involving fire, then hand out the resultant samples while Harold would talk about the science of taste and the physical properties of alcohol. In other words, it was awesome.

This was bourbon mixed with the very essence of banana – banana juice, if you will. It was uncanny.

Scotch with all of its impurities removed (but not its flavor). It was weird – the skeleton of Scotch.

The best part of the night came when Dave made his recipe for Red Hot Ale, a drink that dates back to Colonial times. First, he demonstrated the method with a hot poker – the drink was traditionally made by sticking irons from the hearth into a mug.

Clearly, that’s no longer a practical option, so Dave invented his own hot poker. Alas, it’s not really ready for the average bar just yet.

So then he showed us his stove-top method, which was…dramatic.

That’s Harold and a lab assistant, singeing off their eyebrows.

This was easily the most delicious drink of the night, despite (because of?) the fireworks. Here’s a recipe if you’re interested – I’ll admit I have a slight fear of burning alcohol. Maybe one day I’ll get brave enough, though, because the caramelized beer and cognac is truly remarkable.

They also played around with making stable oil emulsions with pumpkin seed oil, making for a thick, fatty drink that won’t separate:

A combo of gum arabic and xanthan gum achieves this magic. I wasn’t incredibly into this particular drink, but the idea of making truly stable emulsions is intriguing – perhaps a different oil would have been more enjoyable.

My favorite actual science moment of the night came when Harold explained why adding water to spirits like whiskey enhances its flavor – something that has always fascinated me. Essentially, it all comes down to the fact that ethanol, the alcohol we drink, attracts aroma molecules. Aroma molecules (remember, most of taste is really smell) hang out little molecular cages on the ethanol because they’re similar in structure to it.This stops them from reaching your nose. On the other hand, they HATE water. When you add water to a drink you drop the concentration of the alcohol and these aroma compounds, break free from their cages for us to enjoy. Here’s a more coherent explanation from Harold himself.

Speaking of which, this post took me so darn long to get out that I’m leaving it mostly pictures. Here’s a better recap of the actual science at the lecture by Frederick Yarm, who is a far more dedicated cocktail blogger than I am. (If you are at all interested in mixology, and especially if you live in Boston, you should be reading his blog.)

Harvard does a whole series of these lectures using McGee’s On Food and Cooking as the text, and the guest lectures, all by amazing chefs and food scientists, are open to the public. If you’re local to Cambridge check them out!