Cooking, Cakes and Chemistry

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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Not strictly chemistry - but fun and useful!

This hits my other love - power tools!

Cooking with Power tools: Stuffed Zucchini











Makes coring a zucchini or any other veggie a bit easier.
Part of the "Duh! why didn't I think of that!" category.

Molecular gastronomy is bringing constant temperature baths, vaccuum sealers and many other "power tools" into the kitchen...
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key words cool stuff, equipment, vegetables

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Unusual soft drinks

The New York Times recently highlighted a couple who are using their daytime work skills to create a new afterwork business: designer soda drinks!

A Chemist, an Artist and a Lot of Fizz

By day, Antonio Ramos is a medicinal chemist at the drug maker Sanofi-Aventis in Bridgewater, N.J., where he helps develop molecules for prescription drugs. In the evening, he puts his chemistry skill set to a different use: developing formulas for Brooklyn Soda Works, the artisanal soda company he started last year with his partner, Caroline Mak. 
The flavours they have concocted include:

  • cucumber, lime & sea salt
  • grapefruit, jalapeno & honey
  • apple & ginger
  • Concord grape & fennel seed
  • strawberry, hops & pink peppercorn
  • raspberry & green peppercorn
and more are coming each week.

You can follow their progress and experiments with new flavours through their blog:
Brooklyn Soda Works

Making your own unusual sodas is as easy as getting a soda siphon and some juice!  You can buy the siphons and cartridges of CO2 at many cooking stores or online.

You can also make fizzy drinks using baking soda:
But what if you didn’t have the money to buy soft drinks? What then? Believe it or not, people used to make their own soft drinks! Yep, right at home in their kitchens. Mostly, it was lemonade or limeade, or other fizzy or sweet drinks made from the juice of various citrius fruits. You took lemon-juice, sugar, water and baking-soda (that’s Bicarbonate of Soda or Sodium Bicarbonate) and mixed the ingredients in correct quantities. You left the mixture to stand for a while, to give the baking-soda time to react with the lemon-juice and the other ingredients, the result being that it fizzed up, to create fizzy lemonade. You can still make homemade lemonade like this, and recipes are available on the internet. Some substitute the baking-soda and water for soda-water instead, but the results are all similar. Fizzy, sweet, lemon-flavoured goodness on a hot summer’s day.
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key words baking soda, CO2, juice, soda siphon

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The chemistry involved in making beer (not drinking it!)

Another webinar from the American Chemical Society
Advanced Chemistry of Beer and Brewing    Live on March 31, 2011

Do you like your beer malty? Hoppy? Smooth? Light? Dark? How about in a chilled glass with a side of chemistry, instead of bad bar food? With over 1,500 professional breweries and many dedicated home brewers, the United States takes the lead in producing this popular alcoholic beverage. Whether you’re a seasoned home brewer or just like to go “where everybody knows your name,” you don’t want to miss Dr. Charlie Bamforth, brewskie extraordinaire and Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting & Brewing Sciences at UC Davis, as he brews up advanced insights and explanations about the chemistry behind beer brewing!
“Advanced Chemistry of Beer and Brewing” A short presentation followed by Q&A with speaker Charles Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting & Brewing Sciences at UC Davis.
What You Will Learn
  • The chemistry that underpins the quality of beer (foam, color, clarity, flavor).
  • The chemistry that makes beer the healthiest of drinks.
  • Differentiate between beers based on their chemistry
  • And much more…
Webinar Details
Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011
Time: 2:00-3:00 pm ET
Fee: Free
Register Now!
(https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/961101282)

All webinars are available as recordings afterwards too if you can't make the "live show"
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key words ACS, beer, webinar

Monday, March 14, 2011

Meat stocks examined

Imagine doing a PhD in the kitchen? No, you don't get credits for cooking for the family or yourself everyday!

Martin Lersch from the Khymos blog just wrote an interesting post about a conference paper on meat stock. Pia Snitkjær studied meat stocks and how the cooking times and temperatures affected the outcomes.  The thesis is downloadable from here: http://curis.ku.dk/portal-life/files/32448394/PHD.0111.pdf


PhD Thesis
It may not give you a recipe for the "perfect meat stock" but it might give you ideas as to what effect temperatures and times will have on the flavours you are seeking!

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key words links, meat, properties, stocks
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      • Not strictly chemistry - but fun and useful!
      • Unusual soft drinks
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Who and Why

Patricia
I am a chemistry librarian but I studied as a chemist (once upon a time). I also enjoy cooking and with the relatively new field of "molecular gastronomy" exploding on the interwebs, I thought there was some call for explaining the chemistry of everyday cooking as well.
Who is this blog for? Anyone who is interested in the why's behind the recipes - young and old.
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