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Chefs As Chemists
circletimessquare writes "Using ingredients usually relegated to the lower half of the list of ingredients on a Twinkies wrapper, some professional chefs are turning themselves into magicians with food. Ferran Adrià in Spain and Heston Blumenthal in England have been doing this for years, but the New York Times updates us on the ongoing experiments at WD-50 in New York City. Xanthan Gum, agar-agar, and other hydrocolloids are being used to bring strange effects to your food. Think butter that doesn't melt in the oven, foie gras you can tie into knots, and fried mayonnaise."
I have to say that this is why I like watching Alton Brown's Good Eats. He actually understands the science of cooking, and is able to explain how it works without turning off the average person.
I'm betting "molecular gastronomy" is going to REALLY take off within the next five years or so...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
What a despicable thing to do to an animal just to make it tastier to eat.
The photos of tubes being put down the throats of ducks certainly look horrific, but animal rights activists have a tendency to over-dramatize things. From an article in Time magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1669732,00.html
The debate is centered on the practice of gavage, in which corn is force-fed to farm-raised ducks through a funnel down their throats. Some argue that gavage is inhumane, while others counter that the physiology of a duck is not the same as a human. "It seems terrible if you don't know that a duck's esophagus is lined with a very thick cuticle, if you don't realize that baby ducks are fed by their mother pushing her beak down the baby's throat," says Ariane Daguin, owner of D'Artagnan, the largest foie gras purveyor in the U.S. Recent studies by Dr. Daniel Guémené, a leading expert on the physiological effects of gavage, have shown that ducks with young in the wild were under more stress than the ducks being fed through gavage. And both The American Veterinary Medical Association's House of Delegates and the American Association of Avian Pathologists have concluded that foie is not a product of animal cruelty.
Also, here's an abstract of research by Guémené:
http://www.edpsciences.org/articles/animres/pdf/2001/02/faure.pdf
The debate on welfare issues related to the force feeding of ducks and geese involves understanding the reactions of the animals to the force feeding process. Two types of experiment were performed. Ducks and geese were trained to be fed in a pen 8 metres away from their rearing pen and were then force fed in the feeding pen. The hypothesis was that if force feeding caused aversion, the animals would not spontaneously go to the test pen. There were some signs of aversion in ducks, but not full avoidance, and there were no signs of aversion in geese. In another experiment, the flight distances of ducks from the person who performed the force feeding and from an unknown observer were measured. Ducks avoided the unknown person more than the force feeder. Their avoidance of the force feeder decreased during the force feeding period. There was no development of aversion to the force feeder during the force feeding process.
What an ill-informed statement. Here's a few facts about this so-called "despicable" treatment: 1. Ducks (and geese) are not human. Things that might be uncomfortable to one species are perfectly fine to others. Anthropomorphism is bad, mmm-kay? 2. Ducks (and geese) are designed with a crop, no gag reflex, and an esophagus that is lined with stuff similar to what our fingernails are made of. Why? Because thy are designed to swallow really freaking huge things... like live fish that are flipping around with their tails still protruding from the bird's mouth. Does the bird care? Of course not... it will digest it when it's damn good and ready. 3. Migratory birds are designed to store *tremendous* amounts of fat prior to migration. They do NOT store fat on their hips and thighs (remember the anthropomorphism thing in note #1...). These birds store fat in their liver... it's what they do. It's not "diseased", it's simply stored. Once they stop eating and begin migrating, the fat is used, and the liver goes back to normal. Except, birds on foie gras farms aren't allowed to migrate, for obvious reasons. 4. Commercial chicken farms are far more cruel than foie gras farms, except you don't ever see people picketing restaurants trying to ban the serving of chicken. Odd. 5. There is a direct correlation between the amount of stress on a bird raised for foie gras and the quality of the foie that's produced. The result of this is that modern production methods pretty much dictate that the birds are treated like royalty during their rather brief lives. At Hudson Valley Foie Gras, for instance, once a person has been assigned as the feeder for a group of birds, that person is the *ONLY* person that can touch them... switching the person who is responsible for them just stresses the birds out. Bottom line: when I come back, I hope it's as a foie gras duck, because it pretty much guarantees that I'll live like a rock star, and then die young. Isn't that all anybody really wants? 6. Sheeple that regurgiate PETA bullshit should be thrown off a cliff, because their lack of ability to apply their own critical thinking to a situation is a big part of the reason common sense is being bred out of our gene pool. 7. I just got home from a 6-course foie gras dinner. It was orgasmic. Thanks. Carry on.