Category: food

Change misery

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… by tinkering in photosynthesis

“…microbes—the group known as cyanobacteria—had mastered a peculiarly powerful form of alchemy. They lived off sunlight, which they converted into sugar. As a waste product, they gave off oxygen. Cyanobacteria were so plentiful, and so good at what they did, that they changed the world. They altered the oceans’ chemistry, and then the atmosphere’s. Formerly in short supply, oxygen became abundant. Anything that couldn’t tolerate it either died off or retreated to some dark, airless corner.” – newyorker (in the print edition of the December 13, 2021)

“… if we can work out how to improve photosynthesis, we can boost yields. We won’t have to go on destroying yet more land for crops—we can try to produce more on the land we’re already using.”

Related:

The Hy1810 yeast in the Expanse.

“Prax worked on and surreptitiously leaked research for the modified yeast which contained an artificial chloroplast that was reverse-engineered from the protomolecule to make energy from a wider range of radiation than natural flora” – “The Expanse: Babylon’s Ashes“, Chapter 24.

… we can also make art–the poetic and the beautiful–more available.

Leonardo, chef

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Leonardo was a mad chef. He enjoyed kitchen contraptions, of his own designs; but, how would it run? “By wind or by water? By cogs and by cranks? By oxen or by peasant-power?”  In the late 1490s, most things ran via peasant-power.
Assassin’s  Creed did a good job shaping my image of Leonardo; I don’t see him as an old man anymore.  Leonardo in the game loves a puzzle, old language and of course, puzzles buried n old language. This blog  post on The Kitchen Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , HarperCollins Publishers; First Edition edition (April 1, 1987), has also informed that image.

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Molecular Gastronomy

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This is the new-ish cuisine which takes in scientific processes and is focused on the delivery of flavor to the palette. One(taken from this NYT article featuring Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea in Chicago) of the many experiments/ideas involves ‘solid sauces’.

For some time now, Achatz has been experimenting with jellies to create “solid sauces” — thin, flavorful liquids given mass and viscosity through a variety of techniques. The sauces evolved, he explained, from a recent period using vegetable purées to accompany meats and fish. “I thought it would be interesting to turn a sauce into a purée,” he said. “To make a purée, you just stick a solid in the blender. The challenge was turning a liquid into a purée. To purée a liquid, I realized I had to turn it into a solid and then purée the solid.”To create his solids, he works with different gelling agents, from gelatin to seaweed extracts like agar and carrageen. Achatz’s first solid sauce was a yuzu fluid gel, which he made by heating the fragrant citrus juice with agar, cooling it to set, then puréeing the resulting jelly into a puddinglike sauce, which he served with sugar snap peas, yogurt and ham.

With solid sauces, Achatz explains, “flavor release” is key. Jellies are essentially flavor elements suspended in a neutral medium. Bound in their carrier matrix, the flavor molecules are relatively inaccessible to the taste buds, so the jelly is first experienced primarily as texture. At a certain temperature, different for each agent, the molecular mesh relaxes and the flavor is released. With gelatin, this occurs at body temperature; in Achatz’s Mussel Cream With Mint and Chamomile Jelly, the herbal flavor blooms in the mouth as the gelatin melts.

For many sauces, Achatz uses agar, which remains firm at body temperature; puréeing the set jelly keeps the sauce thick while allowing flavor release. The resultant liquid gel is intensely flavored but thick and glossy, like his jet black soy liquid gel, which he recently served as part of a casually deconstructed Thai salad with Kobe beef, melon and cucumber.

This all sounds cool and all. But I think this might be useful in many a sci-fi kitchen. It seems to be something a food replicator should be able to synthesize.