Blogger and now cookbook author Deb Perelman insists you don’t need a big or gourmet kitchen to make good food. Since 2006, she’s been tracking down, testing and blogging about recipes she thinks pretty much anyone can make — all from her tiny New York kitchen.
http://www.npr.org/2012/11/01/163717135/smitten-kitchen-takes-the-fuss-out-of-cooking
Hot tea might not sound like the most refreshing of drinks for a 100-degree day. But neuroscientists say that receptors in your mouth may send a cool message when they detect hot foods.
‘Molecular gastronomy’ was coined in the 1991 as a suitably serious-sounding term that would help pave the way for a conference on culinary science.
Since then, however, it has become a convenient, catch-all-phrase to describe science-driven cooking. It explains little and misleads a lot.
In 2006 Heston was involved in producing a statement to explain how his motivations and intentions weren’t confined to the sphere of molecular gastronomy.
ONE
Three basic principles guide our cooking: excellence, openness, and integrity.
We are motivated above all by an aspiration to excellence. We wish to work with ingredients of the finest quality, and to realize the full potential of the food we choose to prepare, whether it is a single shot of espresso or a multicourse tasting menu.
TWO
Our cooking values tradition, builds on it, and along with tradition is part of the ongoing evolution of our craft.
The world’s culinary traditions are collective, cumulative inventions, a heritage created by hundreds of generations of cooks. Tradition is the base which all cooks who aspire to excellence must know and master. Our open approach builds on the best that tradition has to offer.
THREE
We embrace innovation - new ingredients, techniques, appliances, information, and ideas - whenever it can make a real contribution to our cooking.
We do not pursue novelty for its own sake. We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, dehydration, and other nontraditional means, but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.
FOUR
We believe that cooking can affect people in profound ways, and that a spirit of collaboration and sharing is essential to true progress in developing this potential.
The act of eating engages all the senses as well as the mind. Preparing and serving food could therefore be the most complex and comprehensive of the performing arts. To explore the full expressive potential of food and cooking, we collaborate with scientists, from food chemists to psychologists, with artisans and artists (from all walks of the performing arts), architects, designers, industrial engineers. We also believe in the importance of collaboration and generosity among cooks: a readiness to share ideas and information, together with full acknowledgment of those who invent new techniques and dishes.
http://www.thefatduck.co.uk/Heston-Blumenthal/Cooking-Statement/
Tagged with food cooking
We dug deep into the Mule Radio archives to find the earliest episode of Salt & Fat, recorded way back in the fall of 2011. Neven and Jim start off with a conversation about where the name came from, who’s who, still-in-season tomatoes, first recipes and what in the world a “larder” is.
Amazingly we’ve been followers of Neven Mrgan for years on various social media platforms and only recently found out that he, along with co-host Jim Ray, has started a new food podcast on Mule Radio to supplement their Salt and Fat blog. In the latest episode…
http://podcast.co.uk/salt-fat-podcast-episode-3-kitchen-manners/
Tagged with salt & fat podcast mule radio neven mrgan jim ray food cooking
Tagged with food cooking
Jay Rayner hosts a special edition of the food panel show recorded at Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This episode also features food writer and Scottish chef Sue Lawrence as a guest panellist.
Tagged with bbc food kitchen cabinet cooking
Can changing our dining utensils change the flavour of food? Simon Parkes investigates.