A message from NYC

Hello all,   The March  meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective will take place on Wednesday, March 14, from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Chemistry Department at NYU, room 1003 (31 Washington Place, between Washington Square Park and Greene Street). You will need a photo ID to enter the building.    How Chocolate Gets Its Taste, with Clay Gordon Chocolate - one of the most chemically complex foods known to food science - is different from most other foods in many ways, but one of the key differences is that the vast majority of chocolate is made thousands of miles from where the primary raw ingredient is grown. This geopolitical and cultural disconnect leads (in part) to an enormous gap in awareness and appreciation (especially when compared with wine, for example) of the interplay between terroir, post-harvest processing techniques - which should be considered to be an inextricable part of terroir for many foods, not just chocolate - and manufacturing processes on the flavor of a finished chocolate. This presentation will cover the key aspects that affect flavor development in cacao and chocolate from the tree to a finished bar and will cover the individual and collective contributions that genetics, agricultural practices, post-harvest processing (including fermentation and drying), and manufacturing (specifically roasting and conching) processes have on the development of flavor in chocolate. Selected pairings of chocolates will be used to highlight how slight differences in terroir, magnified by the choices that chocolate makers make, can yield completely different finished products. Please RSVP at ecc032012.eventbrite.com. A link is also posted on our website. If you RSVP and can no longer make it, please let me know so that your seat can be released. Thank you.   All my best, Anne  ---- Anne E. McBride Director, Experimental Cuisine Collective

ABOUT THE EXPERIMENTAL CUISINE COLLECTIVE The Experimental Cuisine Collective is a working group that assembles scholars, scientists, chefs, writers, journalists, performance artists, and food enthusiasts. We launched in April 2007, as a result of the collaboration of Kent Kirshenbaum of the chemistry department and Amy Bentley of the nutrition, food studies, and public health department at New York University with Chef Will Goldfarb of WillPowder. Our overall aim is to develop a broad-based and rigorous academic approach that employs techniques and approaches from both the humanities and sciences to examine the properties, boundaries, and conventions of food. Visit the ECC online at www.experimentalcuisine.com.