TEDx Afterglow

[by Naveen]

Classes are over and I'm riding on a wave of inspiration and adrenaline after a TEDxCambridge event that left me nearly speechless. I feel honored to have been the equivalent of a line cook with the amazing team of various designers and other graduate students who put the event together.

There are probably other, far more comprehensive summaries of the event on the internet, so I'll offer a brief synposis of a few of my own take-away lessons:

• Kenji Alt: Don't follow recipes. Ask "why?".
• Wylie Dufresne: Meat glue is for much more than just meat (PhD topic?).
• Francisco Migoya: Everyday, chocolate can teach you something.
• Chandler Burr: Smell is one of the most under-rated senses.
• John Gersten: What you drink is less important than how, why, and with whom.
• Jeff Potter, Elizabeth Jarrard, and pretty much everyone else I spoke with at the reception: Cook more.

I'm ready for summer.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

[by Naveen]

As I struggle through the latest round of problem sets, it's easy to lose perspective and become entrapped in a web of partial differential equations. However, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution project has been on my mind a lot lately and helps me keep in mind what really matters. At the latest TED conference earlier this year, he proposed his wish to "to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

I feel totally disconnected from the public school system right now, but his message resonates me for several reasons:

• I'm helping develop the "Science of Cooking" class to be taught at Harvard this fall. The class itself is only open to Harvard undergraduates, but many other people have expressed interest in the course. I think that food is a great way to introduce all types of people (including elementary school students) to topics ranging from physics and chemistry to neuroscience and ecology.
• I'm also helping organize a TEDx event in Cambridge, inspired by Jamie Oliver's TED wish. I've already discovered many fascinating new ways of thinking about the issues he raised by reaching out to potential speakers.
• I recently finished reading Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, Born Round by Frank Bruni, and Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, which explore the intersections of food, psychology, and behavior change.
• One of my role models for giving effective presentations, Garr Reynolds, is similarly inspired by the Food Revolution project (see here or here, for instance) and his written several times about the contrasts between fast food in America and traditional Japanese cuisine.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts of Jamie Oliver's project, but now I need to return to the realm of reaction-diffusion equations.

Grass-Fed Beef

[by Naveen]

Last weekend was an interesting juxtaposition of food-themed events: the agricultural sustainability sessions at the Union of Concerned Scientists 40th Annual Symposium and the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. One of the highlights of the UCS meeting was the panel discussion featuring Bill Kurtis from Tall Grass Beef, who gave a compelling argument about how eating grass-fed beef is far superior to the current corn-fed product. Although the vegans in the Boston Vegetarian Society would likely disapprove of any sort of meat consumption, a recent article in the New York Times proclaimed the benefits of grass-fed beef. Large tracts in Brazil are being cleared for monoculture soy production that could end up in all sorts of vegan-friendly products, whereas pastures in this country could reduce soil erosion, increase biodiversity, and potentially sequester carbon dioxide. However, if the industrial meat production model in this country shifted to grass-fed beef, consumers would need to shift from viewing a burger as a convenient meal at a fast-food restaurant to an occasional delicacy to be enjoyed at a place like Craigie on Main. As a vegetarian who has never been to a ranch, I feel rather disqualified to offer any type of policy recommendation, but I would certainly be interested to learn more.

Agricultural Genetic Awesomeness

[by Naveen]

Genetically modified foods have gotten a lot of bad press lately and it's too bad they don't have a better PR effort behind them. Most people are opposed to GMO due to knee-jerk associations with global corporate agriculture and view it as the anti-thesis of the locavore trend. This misses out on the efforts of plant biologists and farmers in countries ranging from Mexico to the Philippines to Australia to produce crops that are drought-resistant, salt-tolerant, and safe from the latest viral or bacterial threat (see here, for example). It has also been criticized for being over-hyped about its ability to feed the world. After several weeks of researching these arguments, I tend to agree and suspect that better farmer education and food distribution in rural areas will be more important.

I learned all this while preparing for a public talk last week for the Science in the News lecture series. Two other grad students and I explained the history and biology of agricultural genetics, presented some case studies (Bt Corn and Golden Rice), then explored the role of genetically-engineered foods in solving world hunger (that was my part). While researching this topic, for which I felt increasingly under-qualified, I talked to Peace Corps volunteers, farmers, and Friends of the World Food Program. There is so much more to the history of edible plant biology than gets mentioned in the highly-polarized debate about GM Foods, so I thought I would share some of my findings:

• Wide crossing allows two different species of plants to breed with each other. The plant isn't too happy about this and tries to eject the hybrid embryo, but scientists can rescue it and grow it up in vitro to a viable new plant. Scientists did this in the 1970s to save the Asian rice crop from the grassy stunt virus.
• A floral toxin called colchicine causes a plant cell to double its number of chromosomes by messing with its microtubules (similar chemicals are sometimes used as anti-cancer drugs). The confused plant cells often end up producing seedless adults (e.g. watermelon, grapes). This chromosome doubling method was also used to create tritacle, a wheat-rye hybrid that I first learned about from a Kashi cereal box.
• During the pro-nuke days of the 1950s and '60s, a collaboration between the FAO and the IAEA sent out portable radiation sources to farms all over the world. By irradiating, for instance, 100,000 seeds, the second generation might have 30-50,000 adults, which can be whittled down to a few beneficial mutants. Supposedly much of the organic beer in Europe comes from barley that was a product of radiation mutagenesis.

The wide-crossing, chromosome doubling, and radiation mutagenesis are all decades old and (to the best of my knowledge) can still fall under the label organic. In fact, there was a debate in the late '90s about whether new genetic techniques would fall under the USDA certification, since they would not require external inputs like fertilizer or pesticides. For their credit, genetically modified organisms have done several good things for us lately, including producing insulin for treating diabetics and vegetarian rennet for making cheese.

For more info, I recommend these two books:

• "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food" by Pamela Ronald and R. W. Adamchak.
• "Plant Breeding and Biotechnology: Social Context and the Future of Food" by Denis Murphy.

I'm sure there are countless other resources out there and I encourage you to learn more about this fascinating topic. Please let me know if you find out anything else interesting.

geek bar

[by john, mike, naveen, david, aviv, and te]

get a couple drinks in any of us and soon we'll be fervidly discussing science or cocktails, and often both. science (science!) tells us why we like the tastes we do, how to make them better, and how to predict what you'll like next time. bold claims get bolder with each sip until we know that we (we!) can do those things better. yeah, we assert, we could totally open a bar, and apply science to make it amazing. psh, nevermind the economy and all those entrepreneurial hazards...science works.

thankfully, we always sober up, and none of us has quit his day job yet. good ideas have distilled out, though. here are the initial (feasible) ones; feel free to add your own.

atmosphere

overall: open, not too dark, led lighting, no kitschy beakers or lab coats

• back-lit plates of glass along the walls for scrawling equations
• bunsen burner mood lighting
• graph paper napkins
• low-key plasma screens showing real-time drink trending, and possibly kubrick or bergman flicks (or nova documentaries)
• polarized microscopy posters
• flash cards with tips/conversation starters for shy geeks seeking to chat up their attractive bar-neighbors
• bookshelf of textbooks
• overly simple web site hides the contact info and menu in the html comments

drinks

overall: lots of bartender interaction, backed with powerful statistical methods; restrained use of lab gadgets; precisely made classics and science-enhanced originals

• menu formatted in LaTeX
• touchscreen at tables with machine learning software to suggest drinks
• discreet use of liquid nitrogen when suitable
• vortex mixers
• titrated absinthe cocktails
• pipettes for busy nights
• geeky original drink names: 'feshbach resonance', 'mcmc', 'sag a*', 'mixture of gaussians'
• cocktail shakers with built-in thermometers and timers
• endothermic glassware (an r&d project for now...)
• pH meter for analyzing individual citrus fruits
• bartenders speak perturbative field theory ('i'll have a next-leading order manhattan.')

makes me dizzy just theorizing about it...

Visual thinking for gastrophysicists

[by Naveen]

After spending too much time last week sitting through PowerPoint presentations, staring at math equations, and reading technical papers, I decided on a trio of visualizations for this post:

I. Insatiable curiosity is a desirable trait for a scientist, but can lead to problems in everyday life. Mundane tasks expand to fill valuable time as I ponder what brand of toothpaste or breakfast cereal (or granola or museli) to buy in the store. The psychologist Barry Schwartz has written extensively about the Paradox of Choice (see his TED Talk here), which prompted the idea for this table:

II. Since taking a class at the Harvard Business School this semester, I am more frequently brainstorming for business ideas. Here is one that I had a while ago for a customized mini-muffin bar. It would have the personalized, "just-in-time" feel of a good cocktail bar, since batter could be quickly mixed and baked within minutes. Multi-grain muffins could appeal to the more health-conscious crowd, seasonal ingredients could attract locavores, and decadent chocolate options could draw people from the cupcake demographic. This idea seems full of potential, but I know enough about opening a restaurant (i.e. don't do it), that I'll stick with grad school for now.

III. After outings to several of the numerous beverage establishments in Boston, I see potential for numerous synergistic restaurant co-localizations that capitalize on the modified palate after a night of imbibing. Many types of global cuisine can be tailored for this particular market, as illustrated below. I know it's far from comprehensive or accurate, but I hope it gets people thinking. As diners explore more cuisines, I think that we could see an expanding definition of what is considered "drunk food." I could go for some South African food after my next cocktail adventure, or perhaps just make peanut butter-Fluff-banana sandwiches back at home.

Smart Choices Program for Bacteria

[by Naveen]

The blogosphere has been swept by an epidemic of debate regarding the new Smart Choices program laid out by the country's major food corporations. Critics point out that Froot Loops, over 40% sugar by weight, gets the green check mark of approval. Proponents claim that it will help consumers navigate the plethora of choices in the grocery store aisles. Since I'm an applied physicist and microbial enthusiast, rather than a nutritionist, I'll offer my unique perspective on the issue:

Growing biofilms in a petri dish isn't easy. The label above is adapted from the mix of nutrients that I use to feed the Bacillus subtilis that I study. It's a pretty odd assortment: the controversial flavor-enhancer MSG, the supposedly sleep-inducing protein tryptophan, the diet drug component phenylanaline, the B-vitamin thiamine, and various metal ions.

Not growing biofilms outside of a petri dish is also difficult. If we aren't careful to keep things sterile in lab, an invasion can sweep through the incubator. Pretty much every surface around you (e.g. your teeth, contact lenses, intestinal linings...) can be a home for a symbiotic coalition of bacteria.

If it's this hard to know exactly what makes a single, well-studied species of bacteria survive (one of the vanishingly small minority that we can actually culture in a lab), I think that we still have quite a ways to go to catalog all the substances in the plant and animal kingdoms that keep us healthy. On the other hand, human beings seem to be pretty adaptable, capable of surviving on diets ranging from raw vegan to arctic carnivore. Evolution may need a little help, though, when it comes to new creations like KFC's Double Down "sandwich" or deep-fried butter.

More thoughts on Menus

[by Naveen]

John's forays into menu analysis have sparked my own curiosity. While looking through various options for Restaurant Week, I visited several of the venues' websites to examine their offerings. One of the first things that came to mind was a recent post on Presentation Zen about typography, a ubiquitous and often overlooked aspect of presentations. The top restaurants generally showed restraint in their menu design, with a limited color and font scheme coupled with a fearless use of white-space. For comparison, I also checked out some totally different dining establishments, with different economic considerations. The contrast between places like L'Espalier and Rialto, as opposed to The Cheesecake Factory and Taco Bell was quite striking (see here for another example). I realize that my small sample size does not come close to any type of systematic data analysis, but it did make me think more seriously about menu design, as well as the use of graphic design in my own presentations.

At the end, I decided to have a little fun, and made a hypothetical menu (inspired by this):

Teranga: a meta-review

[by Naveen]

After reading several recent reviews about the restaurant Teranga in the South End and talking with a computer visualization-savvy friend, I thought of showing the articles as a word cloud (generated by www.wordle.net). This is far from scientific, but could be the start of a new way to read about local dining establishments.

From top top bottom:

(1) June 6th, 2009: Teranga report on Chowhound

(2) June 16th 2009: First Bite: Teranga post on on Chowder

(3) July 29th, 2009: Teranga review on the Boston Phoenix

(4) July 29th, 2009: Teranga review on Boston.com

Marketing and Restaurants

[by Naveen]

After enjoying several excellent meals with my parents last weekend (The Friendly Toast, Garden at the Cellar, Highland Kitchen, and Toro) and thinking ahead to Restaurant Week, I've been pondering the situation from the restaurant's point of view. If you are a major corporation, like The Cheesecake Factory, a traditional media advertising campaign works well enough for drawing in many customers to enjoy good, but sometimes insipid food (according to Michael Ruhlman). However, smaller-scale endeavors need to pursue a different strategy, so I thought of some criteria that people follow when choosing a restaurant.

• Reputation: Barbara Lynch (No. 9 Park, drink, et al.), Frank McClelland (Harvest, L'Espalier), and Todd English (Olives, and much more), have proven their contributions to the Boston restaurant scene in the minds of numerous critics and diners. I chose a dinner at Toro partly based on Ken Oringer's experience at Clio, which was apparently good enough for Ferran Adria.
  
• Avoid the Middle: On the inexpensive side of the scale, homemade meals, potlucks, "happy hour" specials, and the like can be thoroughly satisfying. On the other side of the spectrum, an occasional meal at a fine dining establishment can fuel further gastronomic curiosity and exploration. Insipid mid-priced restaurants seem to me like an economic drain. This falls into Ramit Sethi's conscious spending philosophy.
• Reviews in the weekly periodicals: These aren't necessarily the most insightful critiques, but everyone else reads them, so it's a good way to take the pulse of the city's culinary zeitgeist.
• Recommendations from friends: This is the best way to find new venues, but it does require steadily increasing one's circle of acquaintances and seeking out people with similar tastes. For instance, now I wish that I went to Maynard James Kennan's wine bottle signing at Whole Foods earlier this year, since I probably would have met an interesting subset of the population that is a fan of TOOL and intrigued by wineries in the middle of the Arizona dessert.
  

Advertising good food, a random best of Boston award, or a standard three-course prix-fixe menu does little to convince me to make a visit. However, I'd love to hear about ideas for future dining expeditions or new tools for restaurant recommendations (e.g. similar to Netflix personalized recommendations).

Running without a Map

Why are there 18-wheelers all around me? Why am I surrounded by warehouses? Where is the Boston skyline? I'm bringing a map next time. - Me, three weeks ago, while losing myself in East Boston on a morning run.

This road seems a lot longer than before - I don't recognize any of the buildings. Oh crap, Arlington Heights. I'm definitely bringing a map next time. - Me, two weeks ago, after making a wrong turn on the Minuteman trail.

I remember seeing green on the map somewhere around here, but it's suburban sprawl in all directions. I'll just follow this sign and check out Malden. - Me, this Saturday, doing a terrible job of following my own advice.

My approach towards cooking often ends up similar to running: an ambitious goal fueled by enthusiasm and curiosity leads to a comedy of errors from a lack of formal or methodical training. A marathon of cookie-preparation leads to shortbread cookies that are almost too crumbly to pick up. Arrowroot barely salvages an attempt at yogurt from fat-free milk. Mistakenly making vegan "mayonnaise" with silken, instead of extra-firm, tofu leads to unappetizing yellow goop. Whole spice garam masala is ground finely and added at the wrong time in a recipe. Each of these experiences inspires me to learn more about the particular technique, which to me is far more interesting than following a recipe and making something that's just "good."

However, one of the greatest things about being a home chef (and a grad student) is the ability to fail often and with relatively minor consequences. This isn't pediatric neurosurgery. No paying dinner guests or restaurant reviewers are tasting my food. A failed experiment in lab just means I'll need to try again the next day. I'm looking forward to making as many types of mistakes in my cooking and research as I can over the next several years, before entering the "real world." This is prime-time to practice my mistake-making skills, so I don't end up in a rut of making the same mistakes.

John: You should really carry a map or some directions with you next time.
Me: Yeah, I'll do that.
John: That was totally unconvincing.

Vegan Cookie Invasion

[by Naveen]

Me: "The food processor isn't working."
Jeff: "Did you put in the blade?"
Me: "No."

While struggling to get some results for lab meeting presentation #3 this month, one of my lab-mates asked if I would "volunteer" for taking care of next week's coffee break: every weekday at 3pm our lab congregates around a small table for caffeine, cookies, and conversation. Any sane person would have requested a postponement until after lab meeting presentation #4, but my time-management skills leave much to be desired. As if that wasn't bad enough, I decided to bake my own cookies, hoping to add some variety to the endless stream of Milano's, Oreo's, and Chips Ahoy. However, as my house-mate pointed out, it's hard to make anything taste bad with butter, flour, and sugar, so I decided to take on the challenge of making all vegan cookies.

After my group meeting presentation and a microbial journal club meeting, I stopped by Shaw's to get the raw ingredients and then set off to a marathon of cookie prep. I had done some background reading from Shirley Corriher's Cookwise, which offered a plethora of great information. Some samples:

• Cookies made with butter (which has a fat content around 85%) spread out more than cookies made with shortening, since the texture changes more rapidly as a function of temperature.
• Cookies made with brown sugar will brown more than table sugar (I guess that's not surprising). Honey is somewhat hygrosopic, so will absorb water after cooking, resulting in a chewier cookie.
• Lower protein flour will lead to a lighter, more cake-like cookie.

I also read a related article in the Boston Globe about pie crusts, which dicussed the merits or butter vs. lard vs. olive oil vs. shortening. Vegatable oil fared surprisingly well. Michael Ruhlman also offered some insight from his Ratio philosophy. However, I couldn't find any data about coconut butter, which I would be using in several of the recipes.

Although the recipes varied in the specifics, the basic outline was:

1. Mix together flour (spelt, brown rice, or whole wheat), oats (if needed), flax seeds (if needed), baking power and/or soda, and spices.
2. Separately mix the sweetener (maple syrup, sucanat, etc.), fat (i.e. coconut butter, olive oil, peanut butter, or tahini), and apple sauce (if needed).
3. Combine the dry and wet ingredients (food processors are amazing) and stir in the raisins, chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, etc., if needed. I ruined one of the batches by doing this all in the food processor, which turned the beginning of a gorgeous batch of chocolate chip-oatmeat-walnut cookies into brown sludge.

I now have five batches of dough sitting in the freezer, ready for a (hopefully) epic week of cookies.

Me (looking at five fist-size blobs of dough in separate Tupperware containers, after two hours of work): "I don't think this going to be enough."
Jeff: "Yeah."
Me: "I think I'll need to make a trip to Star Market."

Greens

[by Naveen]

I'm currently experimenting with the Dogma Box from Boston Organics, which features produce that originated as close to Boston as possible. The shear quantity of greens that has been passing through the kitchen lately was at first daunting, but is now a welcome challenge. To briefly summarize my plan of attack:

1. Lettuce: doesn't keep very long. A good excuse to experiment with salad dressings. A failed tofu "mayonnaise" turned into a decent vegan caesar salad (capers helped a lot).
2. Bitter greens/kale/etc: also don't keep very long. These are great for stirring into bean stews. Beer or adobo chili lead to great sauces.
3. Cabbage: works well when cooked with rice. This week I added pine nuts, currants, and dill to some black rice that I had in the cupboard.
4. Collard greens: great for wraps, after briefly dipping in boiling water.
5. Bok choy: I plan to try braising these tomorrow.

I already have a deeper appreciation for fruit as a result of the experience (that includes tomatoes). I have to confess that I still buy bananas every week from Shaw's, so I'm far from being a true locavore. We'll see how I deal with a bounty of root vegetables in the winter: I've already spoken with several Dogma dropouts.

Not Eating at Alinea

[by Naveen]

After a month of six group meeting and journal club presentations, I'll be completely ready for a rejuvenating weekend in Chicago to see Lollapalooza with my college roommate. I've been listening to all the bands on the line-up and asking friends for recommendations in anticipation of the big event.

By some type of coincidence, I recently read the latest article in a series of posts by Grant Achatz, the chef of the cutting-edge and controversial restaurant Alinea in Chicago, which brought up some interesting parallels with the music world. He actually starts his article about "when a chef gets famous" with the analogy to seeing Bono live for the first time. Now many chefs have rock-star status as the Food Network and other media outlets have catapaulted them into the realm of celebrity. This has its downsides, since it means less hands-on time in the kitchen, leading to dissapointment by some diners.

On the other hand, this trend is great for people like me. Even if I ate at Alinea (which would be considerably more expensive than the Lollapalooza tickets), I almost certainly wouldn't get to talk to the chef. However, through magazine articles, his recent cookbook, and numerous other sources, I can start to understand his approach towards food. I haven't gone so far as this woman, but it has still led to several great conversations about whether this style of cooking is a worthwhile exploration at the frontiers of food or nothing more than a collection of "molecular gastronomy" gimmicks.

I see another analogy to music. A butterfly-collector can buy tickets to listen to all of the Top 40 bands live. However, I doubt that he would enjoy the music at the same level as a long-time fan of a particular band who has been following the evolution of the their sound over time, keeping track of tour dates, saving money for the tickets, and sharing his enthusiasm for the music with friends. With restaurants, is the diner trying to amass a collection of eating at the "best" restaurants in the world or is he sincerely intirgued by the chef's work?

Food, Inc.

[by Naveen]

I read Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma soon after each of them arrived in bookstores, so it's unsurprising that I went to see Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan in Robert Kenner's latest film. The attempt to present multiple sides of such a complex and emotionally-charged issue was quite well-done.

I especially appreciated the portrayal of the tough choices many Americans have to make when deciding between 99 cent cheeseburgers and far more expensive produce at the local supermarket. It's easy for me and many others in the Cambridge area to jump on the local/organic bandwagon and enjoy cooking at home, but the movie reminded me of the millions who work far more than 40 hours a week to struggle to feed a family. It cetrainly makes my troubles with grad school research seem trivial by comparison.

The other interviews were similarly enlightening: an industrial food scientist demonstrating the chameleon-like versatility of corn, the CEO of an organic company that "sold-out" to WalMart (in some people's minds), the founder of an idyllic farm that refuses to compromise his principles (and may never spread his vision beyond elite foodies), a seed cleaner who was sued for patent violations, a food safety advocate who lost her son to a virulent strain of E. coli., a union organizer for slaugherhouse employees...

Like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," the movie ended with some cute typography giving out a plan for action. I'll keep shopping at the local Farmer's Markets and figuring out creative uses for the contents of my weekly Boston Organics box. I already don't drink sodas or eat meat. I could sign some petitions, write to Congress, and be a more active citizen in general. I'm still struggling with the question of what I could do that would actually make a difference versus cosmetic, "feel-good" changes.

If you see the movie, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you need a little extra incentive to see it, Chipotle is offering free screenings across the country.

My personal test kitchen

[by Naveen]

A recent presentation to my research group led to the hiatus in posts lately. I'll be giving at least four more related presentations this week, and I'm actually looking forward to the opportunity to get feedback from my colleagues. In grad school it's possible to go for weeks without any type of clear indication of whether one is on the right path. After weeks or spending far too long in front of my computer doing finite element modeling simulations, I desperately sought out the clarity offered in the kitchen.


For instance, I've been enjoying the challenge of using up the weekly assortment of vegetables (and tomatoes) from the Boston Organic's Dogma Box. I was excited to get a bag full of garlic scapes, which I had never used before. I had seen a recipe for a garlic scape soup over a year ago that I've wanted to try since then. However, what should have been a simple, refreshing summer soup turned into a two-hour ordeal in the kitchen. I didn't pre-cook the scapes enough ahead of time, so the immersion blender ended up getting clogged with a green fibrous mess. I tried transferring to a miniature food processor, which was too small and only spread the green goo further across the kitchen. I didn't have spinach leaves, so I added some other leafy greens from the box, which turned out to be some type of extremely bitter plant and totally ruined the flavor. Every chef these days seems to talk about "ingredient-driven" cuisine, but now I'm really understanding how a failure to understand the properties of a ingredient can ruin a dish.



























Making bread was slightly more successful. I made my own sourdough starter, which started smelling quite pungent after a couple days. This Saturday I got around to actually making the bread. After making no-knead bread several times before, I initially forgot to knead the dough before shaping the ball. On top of that, I made the mistake was using all whole-wheat flour without any type of compensation, which yielded a dense product that overwhelmed any flavors from the patiently cultured microbes. Fortunately, there's more started int he refrigerator, so I can look forward to more experiments.















I was really looking forward to making a buttermilk summer squash soup. However, the ingredients list on the side of the carton dampened my enthusiasm. I'm still on the lookout for real buttermilk, but have yet to find any.

On the subject of dairy, I'm now a fan of powdered yogurt-starter: it yielded my best batch yet.
















I'm not the only one interested in food. All the free local weekly periodicals seemed to have gastronomical-themed cover stories. I'm planning to see Food, Inc., later this week, too.















After missing the Taste of Somerville (lab meeting), Taste of Fort Point (rain), Taste of Cambridge (journal club), I was really looking forward to the Taste of Allston, which seemed like a great way to discover new restaurants on the other side of the river. Moreover, it was much less expensive than the Cambridge event (which offered a "taste of Cambridge" in terms of prices as well). However, I ended up feeling like a butterfly collector. Potlucks (and food-themed microbial science events) are far more satisfying experiences.

Miscellaneous observations:

• Was my last post too "emo"? The question has been haunting my thoughts recently.
• Am I also butterfly-collecting when I seek out the most unusual beverage in a cocktail bar? I appreciate the patience of the Boston bartenders and will have a more thought-out request on my next excursion.
• I'm starting to like Southern food more, but it'll be a while before I'm cooking like Paula Deen.
• Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes), featured in the first photo, are now my favorite root vegetable.
• When you love to cook, the world becomes a potluck.
  

The cocktail: a flow-chart

[by Naveen]

"Distilled alcohols are some of the most intensely flavored foods we have." - Harold McGee



I know far less about cocktails than my fellow bloggers, but I do enjoy making flow charts. I decided it was finally time to try to make sense of the language of mixology. The whole field is due to the inability of yeast to survive in alcohol concentrations higher than about 20%. To get around this biological limitation, people figured out how to heat up a fermented liquid to extract the components with a lower boiling point (especially ethanol). There's some danger involved, since methanol, a poison, has an even lower boiling point. Longer-chain molecules can give the final product an oily consistency. However, there are numerous substances with similar boiling points that give each distilled spirit its characteristic flavor.

What about flavor components with very different boiling points than the ethanol? It turns out that ethanol is a great solvent, so adding herbs, sugars, or other flavorings gives rise to the diversity of flavored alcohols, liqueurs, and bitters that go into making a cocktail.

I realize that this diagram is far from complete, since there is much more to add about the sources for the various base alcohols (e.g. corn, wheat, potato) and the psychology of balancing flavors. Any suggestions for future visualizations are welcome.

Tribes

[by Naveen]

How do you change the world?

It's easy to feel trapped in grad school - learning more and more about less and less. A recent TED talk by Seth Godin, one of my numerous sources of inspiration, got me thinking about the big picture. He has spent years thinking deeply about how the nature of marketing has changed over the past hundred years. This doesn't apply just to selling toothpaste or pain-relievers: it applies to ideas. I often contemplate how to apply this to the spread of scientific information, but the culinary world provides more readily-accessible case studies.

To summarize his argument, at the turn of the last century, the economy was driven by mass-production: faster machines, more efficient labor, etc. By the middle of the century, this model was supplanted by the mass-advertising age: swamp the market with advertisements for your product to capture the market. This went on for decades leading to a saturation of people's attention. Now the key is to capture the attention of a small group of people who are especially receptive to your message and to create a tribe that spreads outwards through word-of-mouth (or the modern, electronic equivalent).

Seth Godin asked three questions to people who want to start a movement. I thought it was interesting to apply these to local trends that I've seen or heard about:

"The first one is, who exactly are you upsetting? Because if you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo. "

The fastest way to the answer is to look at Yelp. Amateur reviewers complain that Drink has no cocktail menu. Vegetarians in San Francisco complain about the lack of options in sushi restaurants. Bargain-hunters in Harvard Square complain about the cost of Sweet cupcakes.

"The second question is, who are you connecting? Because for a lot of people, that's what they're in it for. The connections that are being made, one to the other."

Going back the the previous three examples: Drink unites people who are passionate about cocktails, high-end sushi joints attract people who care about fresh, seasonal seafood, and Sweet attracts people looking for a particular social setting.

"And the third one is, who are you leading? Because focusing on that part of it, not the mechanics of what you're building, but the who, and the leading part is where change comes."

Barbara Lynch was a driving force behind Drink. Michael Black and Danny Dunham at Sebo led a movement to bring authentic Japanese sushi to a region that knew little more than salmon and California rolls. Courtney Forrester brought Sweet cupcakes to Boston (and now Harvard Square). In their own ways, each of these people is part of a growing movement.

I highly recommend watching the original presentation, since I admire Godin's unique delivery style and great use of visuals.

Hungry for Conversation

[by Naveen]

How much of your enjoyment in life do you get from food? Is it like 90%?

The question posed by my friend at a recent outing to Tory Row has haunted me over the past few days. Am I a little more than an obsessive foodie?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how little I care about the food itself. To put it in simplest terms, I like food because I like talking to people. Wherever I go, I can compare notes on local restaurants, new recipes, or food science facts. I enjoy talking to local businesses as I organize Science Cafes and various food science events. I'm just as comfortable chatting with vegans about the controversy over raw foods as I am conversing with omnivores about how to cook the perfect short rib. I have as much fun drinking PBR with my former classmates as I do when I have some of the best cocktails in Boston.

I'm fascinated by the sociology of food. Eating habits can be a window into a person's psyche. The dining hall at Dudley is a menagerie of food-related rituals: the friendly conversations with the sandwich man, the stressed-out students nibbling on grapes and drinking Diet Soda, the group of friends walking over together from lab, the hurried workaholics who rush out the door with their brown bag lunches to sit in front of a computer, and so on. My unofficial personal trainer in the gym urges me to eat more and try protein supplements. At lunch that day, I end up sitting with some dorm-mates who talk about dieting and skipping dinners.

What type of drink would you like? Beer? Wine? A cocktail? Fruity, dry?

I have no idea how to respond to the bartender's question. I can't think of any intrinsic preferences. As Bourdain has shown, drinking is a nearly global form of bonding and I value the resulting conversations and insights far more than the beverage itself.

Seeking inspiration

[by naveen]

I haven't posted for a while, since nothing that I did seemed blog-worthy at the time. However, looking back, many of my activities are part of a quest for gastronomically-inspiring experiences:
1) For my computer science class about data visualization, I'm working on a method to easy compare different review sources (e.g. Boston Magazine vs. Boston Globe). My inspiration was this article about the Top 50 Restaurants.
2) Flatbread: I was inspired by Mark Bittman's recent video, so I used a spare hour this morning to try out his recipe. Despite having only four ingredients (flour, olive oil, salt, water), I managed to mess it up. I mixed the oil directly into the batter, resulting in a thin pancake-like product that was crisp on the outside and very moist on the inside (cooking at 450 F instead of 400 didn't help).
3) No coffee for two weeks has surprisingly little effect on my circadian rhythm. I really enjoy the taste of coffee, the experience of hanging out at a cafe or chatting with lab-mates during a coffee break, yet the caffeine seems to do nothing for me. My office-mate, on the other hand, can't sleep at night if she has coffee in the morning.
4) Tacos de rajas y papas with one of my dorm-mates. Roasted poblanos are now my favorite food of the moment and I'm on the lookout for good mexican food. My experiences at Boloco and Felipe's did not satisfy this need.
5) The Microbial Appreciation Society at Harvard is planning an event to promote the positive aspects of bacteria (e.g. bread, yogurt, wine, beer) at the end of May and I'm certainly going to help out. I'll post details once I know more.

Any recommendations for future culinary adventures?