From New York

The March meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective will take place on Wednesday, March 23, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Astor Center, 399 Lafayette Street (2nd floor, above Astor Wines). This event is only open to ECC members (so recipients of this email) and will require checking in.


Chef Ferran Adria of elBulli, author and journalist Lisa Abend, and former elBulli stagiaire Katie Button will discuss the role that stagiaires play in the creativity process at elBulli. This focus stems from Lisa's new book, The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria's elBulli, which follows the stagiaires of the 2009 season. Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing.

Please RSVP at eccastormarch2011.eventbrite.com. No need to print your registration---we will have a list of attendees at the check-in table. Please arrive between 3:40 and 4 p.m. At 4 p.m., seats available and standing room will go to people on the waitlist. If you RSVP and can no longer make it, please let me know right away so that your seat can be released. Thank you.

All my best,

Anne

PS: The book's publisher has organized a recipe contest, with a deadline of March 15. It's been posted on our website, but click here if you missed it and would like to enter.

PPS: We will not hold a meeting in April, to focus on the organization of our daylong symposium on Monday, May 16. The preliminary program is posted on our site.

Next French Meeting

Dear Friends,

here is the message that I displayed today on the blog "Gastronomie moléculaire". It is an invitation for the next "seminar", the 21rst of March, in Paris.

Chers Amis

Après notre merveilleuse session qui s'est tenue sur le Stand d'AgroParisTech, au Salon de l'agriculture, notre Groupe d'étude des précisions culinaires reprend ses quartiers à l'ESCF (Merci!) du Centre Jean Ferrandi de la Chambre de commerce de Paris.

Pour ceux qui n'ont pu nous rejoindre, nous présenterons donc les résultats lors de la prochaine séance, mais également, nous explorerons deux questions :

1. Bernard Loiseau, chef de La côte d’or, à Saulieu, indique dans Trucs, astuces et tours de main, p. 103, que, pour éviter que l'huile d'une fondue bourguignonne ne saute quand on y plonge la viande, il faut “y mettre une belle queue de persil”. PD Cécillon signale que épouse fait de même quand elle cuit du foie de veau.

2. Il a été souvent écrit que le sel durcit les légumes secs.


Dans les deux cas, il faut trancher définitivement. Au plaisir, donc, de vous retrouver au 28 bis rue de l'Abbé Grégoire, 75006 Paris, le lundi 21 mars de 16 à 18 heures.


Vive la gourmandise éclairée

From Maria Esther Abreu, in Cuba

We are very happy because in the TV Program Sitio del Arte we discuss molecular gastronomy and molecular mixology.
Is the first time that here .....there is a TV program with these topics .....
Viva el conocimiento

From the French: the monthly seminar on molecular gastronomy

Chers Amis

Je suis heureux de vous redire que notre prochaine réunion du Groupe d'étude des précisions culinaires se tiendra lundi prochain sur le stand d'AgroParisTech, au Salon de l'agriculture.
Les heures ne sont pas changées : 16.00 /18.00

Le thème :
Dans le temps disponibles, nous explorerons le pistou et les crèpes.

Vive la gourmandise éclairée!!!!

Hervé This

It happened recently

It happened recently!




The 26 th of January 2011, in Paris, during an evening party organized the The Dow Chemical Company, official partner of the International Year of Chemistry (officially launched in UNESCO the next day), the team of the catering company Potel & Chabot, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Biffi, with the participation of his sous-chef Francisco Bouza, served to more than 100 guests an exceptional menu: a "Note by Note Cooking" menu. During the dinner, Pr Hervé This, physical chemist IINRA/AgroParisTech, described the menu and emphasized its importance for the history of cooking.

"Note by Note Cooking" is a new way of cooking, that will be next after Molecular Cooking. It was proposed by H. This in a Scientific American issue n in 1994.
Up to now, it was achieved only by the French chef Pierre Gagnaire, the 24 th of April 2008 in Hong-Kong, for one dish, by the Alsatian chefs Hubert Maetz and Nadine Kuentz, in Strasbourg, for two dishes shown during the French-German-Japanese Meeting of JSPS Alumini, by professors of the Cordon bleu School of Paris during a private evening for students of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Gastronomy (HEG).


The menu that was served by Jean-Pierre Biffi and his team was:



Tapioca d’huîtres,
Bavarois mousse d’amylopectine, tapioca citron vert
Gelée d’eau de mer, crème d’huîtres et cristal de vent
-
Soufflé de homard,
Sauce Wöhler et gelée d’agar à la framboise
-
« Fibré » de bœuf et carottes,
Cappellini, tonnelets de carottes,
Joue de bœuf à jus brun
-
Eruption à la poudre de cassis,
Boule cassis
-
Pain à la graine de courge
Miche Potel

Service du café
« Nespresso » et « Mariage Frères »




These dishes were not done using directly meat, fish, vegetables and fruits, but instead compounds or simple mixtures of compounds, from which the chefs made all aspects of the various dishes: shape, consistency, color, odor taste, trigeminal sensations...
One detail: please remember that "chemicals", or "chemical compounds" do not exist. There are compounds, that can be synthetized or extracted: such are water, sucrose, ethanol, etc. In many circumstances, it is probably a better choice to extract compounds from plant or animal tissues, as one does not forget that the synthesis of vitamin B12 needed hundreds of skilled chemists working for years.
Sometimes, compounds can be prepared using processes such as lyophilization, reverse osmosis, drying, etc.


Some useful definitions : Molecular Gastronomy is the branch of physical chemistry that looks for mechanisms of phenomena occurring during culinary transformations. This "Note by Note" menu had nothing to do with it!

Chemistry is a science that looks for the mecheanisms occurring during atoms rearrangements, what is called somewhat mistakenly "chemical processes". Please note that there will never be any chemistry in the kitchen ! Only perhaps some compounds obtained by synthesis will be used... if the chefs -and only them- decide to use these compounds.

Molecular Cooking (or Cookery) is a culinary trend whose initial idea was to rationalize the culinary activity. Indeed the definition (given in the Encyclopedia Britannica) ne forme de cuisine, une tendance, qui consiste à utiliser de "nouveaux" outils, ingrédients, méthodes. of Molecular Cooking is "cooking using new tools, new ingredients and new methods". We have to add that "new" means here "what was not present in Paul Bocuse kitchen in the 70's. For example, ultrasonic probes can make emulsions (think of the mayonnaise sauce) in some seconds; agar-agar produces gels of consistency different from gelatine gels; "chocolate chantilly" is a chocolate mousse without using eggs (and if egg whites are not useful, it is a waste to use them!).
This new trend will disappear, not because we have enough of it, but because when the rationalization of culinary activities will be done, it will be time to move to new art territories.
And this is why it is probably important to consider...



Note by Note Cooking, as it is a way of cooking using compounds to build dishes: as musicians of today can use synthetizers instead of piano and violin, cooks can build any aspect of dishes.









And the 26 th of January 2011, the dinner was really good!

It happened recently

It happened recently!




The 26 th of January 2011, in Paris, during an evening party organized the The Dow Chemical Company, official partner of the International Year of Chemistry (officially launched in UNESCO the next day), the team of the catering company Potel & Chabot, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Biffi, with the participation of his sous-chef Francisco Bouza, served to more than 100 guests an exceptional menu: a "Note by Note Cooking" menu. During the dinner, Pr Hervé This, physical chemist IINRA/AgroParisTech, described the menu and emphasized its importance for the history of cooking.

"Note by Note Cooking" is a new way of cooking, that will be next after Molecular Cooking. It was proposed by H. This in a Scientific American issue n in 1994.
Up to now, it was achieved only by the French chef Pierre Gagnaire, the 24 th of April 2008 in Hong-Kong, for one dish, by the Alsatian chefs Hubert Maetz and Nadine Kuentz, in Strasbourg, for two dishes shown during the French-German-Japanese Meeting of JSPS Alumini, by professors of the Cordon bleu School of Paris during a private evening for students of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Gastronomy (HEG).


The menu that was served by Jean-Pierre Biffi and his team was:



Tapioca d’huîtres,
Bavarois mousse d’amylopectine, tapioca citron vert
Gelée d’eau de mer, crème d’huîtres et cristal de vent
-
Soufflé de homard,
Sauce Wöhler et gelée d’agar à la framboise
-
« Fibré » de bœuf et carottes,
Cappellini, tonnelets de carottes,
Joue de bœuf à jus brun
-
Eruption à la poudre de cassis,
Boule cassis
-
Pain à la graine de courge
Miche Potel

Service du café
« Nespresso » et « Mariage Frères »




These dishes were not done using directly meat, fish, vegetables and fruits, but instead compounds or simple mixtures of compounds, from which the chefs made all aspects of the various dishes: shape, consistency, color, odor taste, trigeminal sensations...
One detail: please remember that "chemicals", or "chemical compounds" do not exist. There are compounds, that can be synthetized or extracted: such are water, sucrose, ethanol, etc. In many circumstances, it is probably a better choice to extract compounds from plant or animal tissues, as one does not forget that the synthesis of vitamin B12 needed hundreds of skilled chemists working for years.
Sometimes, compounds can be prepared using processes such as lyophilization, reverse osmosis, drying, etc.


Some useful definitions : Molecular Gastronomy is the branch of physical chemistry that looks for mechanisms of phenomena occurring during culinary transformations. This "Note by Note" menu had nothing to do with it!

Chemistry is a science that looks for the mecheanisms occurring during atoms rearrangements, what is called somewhat mistakenly "chemical processes". Please note that there will never be any chemistry in the kitchen ! Only perhaps some compounds obtained by synthesis will be used... if the chefs -and only them- decide to use these compounds.

Molecular Cooking (or Cookery) is a culinary trend whose initial idea was to rationalize the culinary activity. Indeed the definition (given in the Encyclopedia Britannica) ne forme de cuisine, une tendance, qui consiste à utiliser de "nouveaux" outils, ingrédients, méthodes. of Molecular Cooking is "cooking using new tools, new ingredients and new methods". We have to add that "new" means here "what was not present in Paul Bocuse kitchen in the 70's. For example, ultrasonic probes can make emulsions (think of the mayonnaise sauce) in some seconds; agar-agar produces gels of consistency different from gelatine gels; "chocolate chantilly" is a chocolate mousse without using eggs (and if egg whites are not useful, it is a waste to use them!).
This new trend will disappear, not because we have enough of it, but because when the rationalization of culinary activities will be done, it will be time to move to new art territories.
And this is why it is probably important to consider...



Note by Note Cooking, as it is a way of cooking using compounds to build dishes: as musicians of today can use synthetizers instead of piano and violin, cooks can build any aspect of dishes.









And the 26 th of January 2011, the dinner was really good!

A move

Received from Anne McBribe :

My apologies for the previous, wrong message! The February meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective will take place on Wednesday, February 16, 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.



H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of Ideas in Food (the blog and the recently published book) will discuss the idea that creativity cannot occur in a vacuum, and how working with other people makes one more creative.

Please RSVP at ecc022011.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.