Hervé This Drops Humor, Science on Your Mindburger [video]
French gastrochemist Hervé This recently gave a lecture Imperial College London in which he performed experiments on egg whites, bet the audience cases of champagne against any number of theories, and basically charmed the pants off everyone. For example, imagine the following statement delivered in a French accent: "We transformed liquid, yellow, transparent product into [...]
Molecular Gastronomy Starter Set
ThinkGeek's $59.99 Molecular Gastronomy Starter Set is a kit with "everything you need to get started in spherification, thickeners and foaming agents," which means all the necessary chemicals (such as agar, sodium alginate, calcium chloride, carrageenan, ascorbic acid, and citric acid) and equipment, including a syringe, pipettes, and silicon tubes. It's an inexpensive alternative to [...]
Wallpaper* Magazine on the Future of Food
September issue of Wallpaper*. View larger
Food Printer. Photo via wallpaper.com
The September issue of Wallpaper* explores the future of food (see also the associated slideshow) as imagined by Philips, the consumer electronics company, including a Nutrition Monitor scanning wand that can measure the nutritional value of food paired with a sensor you ingest to achieve optimal [...]
Strict Interdisciplinarian: Building a Meal by Hervé This [review]
French gastronomic chemist Hervé This's new book, Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism (buy on Amazon) is as much an exploration of cultural culinary traditions as it is scientific ones, full of intentionally provocative speculations like "Every departure from one's culture is a piece of daring, a deviation—indeed, a perversion."
Structured along [...]
New Book from Hervé This: Building a Meal
Photograph by AP/Alexandra Boulat/VII
French molecular gastronomist/mad scientist Hervé This has a new book out entitled Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism (buy from Amazon) where he considers the preparation of six bistro favorites—hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise, simple consommé, leg of lamb with green beans, steak-frites, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate mousse—and "isolates [...]
Heston Blumenthal Hires a Magician
Appearing at last week's inaugural Tokyo Taste ("the world summit of gastronomy"), crazy genius Heston Blumenthal offered a glimpse at what's coming up next from the chef who makes diners listen to iPods while eating:
At the moment, he's working with a magician to find a way to ignite his signature flaming sorbet with a snap [...]
Spherical Caviar in a Jar [molecular gastronomy]
Forget having to spend tons of money on Ferran Adria's volumes and expensive kits to get your molecular gastronomy on. Forget trying to hustle a reservation at El Bulli and get rejected again and again. Now you can just buy some Spherical Caviar in a jar, courtesy of Just Gourmet Food out of Spain. They [...]
The Peanutbutterjellydonutholesonjackswithcottoncandy at Eat Drink Design in the Netherlands [Food Art]
Peanutbutterjellydonutholesonjackswithcottoncandy by Maarten Baptist and Chris Fraass. Photograph by Joep Lennarts.
The third annual Eat Drink Design, a "food design project," part of the Dutch Design Week 2008 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, ran from October 18th - 26th, 2008. The project brought together seven Dutch chefs from restaurants in Eindhoven with seven Dutch designers to create [...]
