I've been reading Hervé This' book, Molecular Gastronomy. If you're not familiar with the term "molecular gastronomy," it refers to the application of science to cooking and is typified by the creations of Ferran Adrià at elBulli and Grant Achatz at Alinea. These chefs apply cutting edge, often high-tech techniques (many of which they invent themselves) to food.
You can read the complete article at Spot-On.
Kevin Weeks is a Gather food correspondent (Paisano), personal chef, cooking teacher, and writer in Knoxville, Tennessee who spends too many hours on his feet, cooking. "Paisano" is a column focused on peasant dishes from around the world. To read more of Kevin's writings or connect to him click here. His blog,Seriously Good, is read by 75,000 cooks a month and in addition he writes a weekly column forSpot-On.
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Comments: 8
Re: molecular gastronomy--we have a chef parent of a child in our school who has been doing a lot of this stuff where he works. Even better, he brought it into the classroom to share with the children, using science and food to create foams, ice creams, fizzy grapes, cotton candy, and other wonderful transformations with food. I've been meaning to get to his restaurant for a while now. I doubt I'll get to (or even in) elBulli any time soon.
I know that washing the cut potatoes and even soaking them in cold water makes a difference, by my concern about that has another source. In the 1960s I was taught about the vitamins. For fries, the important details are that potatoes have a good amount of vitamin C and that vitamin c is water soluble. Therefore, soaking in water leaches all the vitamin C into the water, which gets discarded, depriving the potato and its eater of it.
Rachel, shattering banana???