aurelius

While fishing in the blue lagoon,
I caught a lovely silver fish,
And he spoke to me, "My boy," quoth he,
"Please set me free and I'll grant your wish;
A kingdom of wisdom? A palace of gold?
Or all the fancies your mind can hold?"
And I said, "O.K." and I set him free,
But he laughed at me as he swam away,
And left me whispering my wish
Into a silent sea.

Today I caught that fish again
(That lovely silver prince of fishes),
And once again he offered me,
If I would only set him free,
Any one of a number of wishes,
If I would throw him back to the fishes.

He was delicious!!

--Shel Silverstein, "The Silver Fish"

For Food Nerds

Last week, I finally received my copy of food scientist Harold McGee's remarkable new second edition of On Food and Cooking. It's absolutely astonishing. It's got, for starters, diagrams of different kinds of fat molecules, a chart of the chemical properties of all known onion varieties, and incredibly in-depth explanations of all manner of cooking techniques from a scientific perspective. Even I, someone who never took a single chemistry class, was able to understand most of it.

Baking

I think I am going to make this, probably this week sometime. I really wish I had the money and, more importantly, the space, for a KitchenAid. The last time I did any significant amount of cake baking, I had to make do with a friend's handheld electric mixer. I had her hold the mixing bowl with both hands, while I attacked the contents (a bit over half a pound of butter, in that case) from different angles, in a roughly orbital motion, while periodically rotating the bowl. This is all very difficult to explain, and it was sort of a pain in the ass to do as well. Eventually, her arms got pretty tired, as did mine, but by that time the butter had been adequately whipped. With a KitchenAid, this would all be trivial. Two Thanksgivings ago, I was baking at a different friend's house, and his mom had a KitchenAid, and the chore of preparing a crust for pumpkin pie (a proper layered pastry crust, not a graham cracker one) was made immeasurably less onerous by the thing.

Chocolate Taste-off Results

On the topic of chocolate (and, really, are there any other worthwhile topics?), I completed the last round of dark chocolate comparison testing at work on Tuesday. The two male participants picked Scharffen Berger 82% Extra Dark. The two female participants picked Michel Cluizel 85% Grand Amer. Given the limited tester sample size, no conclusion as to gender correlation was drawn.

The general consensus was that the Cluizel has a richer, smoother, almost buttery texture and a flavor that develops into full roundness after the first few bites. The Scharffen Berger, meanwhile, comes on very strong with a bitter "punch" and a rather unique, slightly acetic quality which at first can be a bit disorienting (this appeared to be the aspect which the two women found most objectionable, one having described it as almost "chemically"), but expands upon chewing into a quite exciting pepper-like bouquet. It also has a pungent and complex aftertaste, which the two men seemed to find especially satisfying.

The greater sharpness of the Scharffen Berger is somewhat surprising given that its cacao content is slightly less than that of the Cluizel. One hypothetical explanation for this is that the Scharffen Berger beans are roasted longer, but I have no idea whether this is in fact the case. Clearly, further inquiry on this subject is called for.

It is unfortunate that I was unable to round up a larger group of testers for this experiment. You'd think it would be pretty damn easy, but this proved not to be the case. Consequently, I do not believe it is appropriate to state a definitive conclusion at this time as to which of the two subject chocolates is objectively "better."

Going forward, there are several areas in which I'd like to see improvement in the testing protocol:

• Sample size. Obviously, to get any sort of meaningful empirical data, we need a lot more than four people tasting.


• Controlling for demographics. By this I mean we ought to control for gender, age, cultural/ethnic background (which is likely to correlate to taste preference and influence subjective narrative response data), and possibly other factors. We need this both to ensure a reasonable degree of experimental validity and to provide a baseline for future demography studies.


• Controlling for order of tasting. This, I believe, may be the single greatest flaw in the present protocol. Anecdotal evidence suggests that participants can be strongly influenced by the order in which they encounter the specimens, and that the nature and extent of this influence is highly irregular. The potential for confoundment is therefore a very real and very serious problem.


• Improved presentation conditions. Similar to the order problem, the possibility of introducing extraneous data as a result of inconsistent presentation of the specimens in the testing environment presents a significant challenge.

We've yet to decide what our next round of testing will seek to address. I am interested in comparing chocolate confections made with different spices. There are a lot of fairly exotic candidates in this area. Do you have any other ideas?

Slow Food

To change subjects a bit, if you're not familiar with Slow Food, you may want to check out the Slow Food USA website. Slow Food started in Italy in the 80s as an association devoted to fostering the local production of food and thereby protecting regional ingredients, flavors, dishes, and culinary traditions; promoting community-scale agriculture and the economic livelihood of independent producers; and preserving natural resources through ecologically-oriented land stewardship. Since then, it has expanded into a worldwide movement, with chapters (called convivia) all across the U.S. The U.S. convivia have been especially active in bringing exciting international tastes to American tables and working to restore the availability of indigenous foods such as bison, turkey, and a variety of organic grains and produce. One of the more interesting projects undertaken by U.S. Slow Food members has been the formation of cooperatives with Native American communities to bring to market bison raised on reservation land by tribal youth in accordance with traditional animal husbandry practices. Slow Food also sponsors the Slow Food in Schools program, an idea of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, where public school children grow, harvest, and cook with foods from small organic gardens on school grounds, learning about the gastronomic, environmental, and nutritional benefits of the Slow Food approach.

I cannot say enough good things about Slow Food, and I won't even get into the international food conferences and markets they put on. I strongly encourage you to learn more and consider joining the national association and your local convivium. Oh yeah, and they also have a bunch of amazing tasting events for members throughout the year...

Have a wonderful week, everybody!