The Wide, Wide World of Web - Monday, April 28th
Posted by Sheryl Kirby in news and media, on the web, wide, wide world of web on April 28, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Yesterday I watched Heston Blumenthal on the Food Network figure out a way to make ice cream hot on the outside but still cold in the centre. After much experimentation and chemical intervention, he found a way to do it, and I congratulated him through the screen, pointing out that he was now qualified to run the deep-fried ice cream station at ChiChi’s.
Which is to say that I’m not a fan of molecular gastronomy, mostly because it seeks to waste time finding solutions to problems that don’t need solving. Blumenthal’s quest for the “perfect” Baked Alaska was moot. His experiments comparing the insulating properties of various types of cake against roofing insulation were amusing but unnecessary. Hundreds, even thousands of chefs before him had already done the work. So despite the write up at Torontoist, I won’t be one of the folks lining up to see Dr. Herve This discuss the wonders of foam and meat glue. However, Torontoist has a post about a more down to earth food item with some vintage ads for bread.
At BlogTO, Tim stands up for Pam’s Roti against the big guys like Gandhi and Bacchus, and Paul professes his love for Deep Blue Fish and Chips. At Menumental, Eric offers some recipes for hothouse cucumbers to tide us over until the other vegetables are ready.
Malcolm of Gremolata interviews Michael Green, wine consultant at Gourmet Magazine, and Zoltan discusses wine cocktails. Noelle interviews Colette Murphy of Urban Harvest.
At Toronto Life, James Chatto recaps the first dinner in the Green Gastronomy Series at the ROM, while David Lawrason celebrates the wines of California.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
As the person who wrote the Herve This post at Torontoist, I thought I was being pretty neutral/tongue-in-cheek about the molecular gastronomy issue, but I guess not.
Anyways, I love TasteTO, read it every day, and heard about the Herve This lecture from this site, so thanks!
April 28th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Funny, I just got up from watching the tv to check this post. Can you guess which show had my undivided attention?
I watched Heston make the perfect chili con carne. At first, I thought that this would be one of his simpler recipes (compared to the baked alaska, the peking duck, ), but the recipe just went on and on. It was a perfectly realistic recipe, but it just seemed like it was missing the point. Who wants to spend an entire day making a bowl of chili….anyway. I still love this show, and his 2 minute pizza is soon going to be adopted as a weekly dinner item at my place.
In regards to Molecular gastronomy, I marvel at what it can produce but I still don’t ‘get it’. I put it in the same category as all the geeks who spend hours trying to super cool their computer systems by attaching some gawdy nitrogen cooling system so they can show off their amateur engineering skills on digg.
Anyway, fun read :)
April 29th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Hey Karen, I got the tone of your post, absolutely. I just needed a segue to include my ChiChi’s comment. ;).