Inside Insides blog has a collection of fruit and veg porn: MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) photos of fresh produce, animated in sequence to reveal a kaleidoscopic beauty.
Above is a cucumber from top to bottom. More at Inside Insides (via kottke).
July 21st, 2010
Rosemarie is for remembrance, between us daie and night
An unhinged Ophelia (Kate Winslet) recalls that rosemary is
traditionally for remembrance, in Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh, 1996).
A rose by any other name:
The botanical name Rosmarinus is derived from the old Latin for ‘dew of the sea’, a reference to its pale blue dew-like flowers and the fact that it is often grown near the sea. (Garden Guides)
Rosemary for memory:
Rosemary is said to stimulate the memory; both Greek and Roman students wore garlands of Rosemary to further learning in their studies. Rosemary also has a strong association with marriage and it was traditional for brides to carry sprigs of Rosemary in wedding bouquets; this was originally for its aromatic properties. Today, Rosemary is also associated with death; some European countries carry Rosemary at funerals and throw the herb into the grave. (Suite 101: Rosemary)
To wear a wreath of rosemary into an exam would be a fun tradition to uphold, I think.
I was looking for some kind of natural mosquito repellent and I read online some claims of rosemary to that effect. So I steeped a heaped teaspoon of dry rosemary in about 3/4 a mug of hot water, for an hour or so — maybe a bit longer. I strained the solution into a small atomizer in order to spray it on my skin before bed. And, lo and behold, I haven’t gotten a bite since, except for a night when I forgot to use it. I admit that’s hardly conclusive scientific evidence, but so far so good.
Rosemary in English folklore:
Rosemary was also popular as a Christmas decoration, an all-purpose disinfectant, and even as a hair rinse. As late as the 1990s people were still calling it the ‘friendship bush’: ‘You always had to plant rosemary in your garden so that you wouldn’t be short of friends’ (Vickery, 1995: 318). Nevertheless, a parallel belief states that rosemary only thrives where the woman of the house is dominant. A much older tradition, reported by Nuttall, holds that rosemary plants never grow taller than the height of Christ when he was on earth, and that when they are 33 years old their upward growth stops. (answers.com)
As for Rosmarine, I lett it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem of our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.
– Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) (Suite101: Remembering Rosemary)
More info about rosemary’s alleged medicinal uses at suite101.
July 15th, 2010
everything you didn’t know to ask about saltpetre
What’s saltpetre, I don’t hear you asking. Potassium nitrate:
Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula KNO3. It occurs as a mineral niter and is a natural solid source of nitrogen. Its common names include saltpetre (saltpeter in American English), from Medieval Latin sal petræ: “stone salt” or possibly “Salt of Petra” and nitrate of potash.
Sounds dull but you’re probably more familiar with it’s many uses than you thought. Apart from providing a natural source of nitrogen in fertilizers, it has the following uses also:
In the process of food preservation, potassium nitrate has been a common ingredient of salted meat since the Middle Ages, but its use has been mostly discontinued due to inconsistent results compared to more modern nitrate and nitrite compounds. Even so, saltpetre is still used in some food applications, such as charcuterie and the brine used to make corned beef. Sodium nitrate (and nitrite) have mostly supplanted potassium nitrate’s culinary usage, as they are more reliable in preventing bacterial infection than saltpetre. All three give cured salami and corned beef their characteristic pink hue.
Potassium nitrate is an efficient oxidizer, which produces a lilac flame upon burning due to the presence of potassium. It is therefore used in amateur rocket propellants and in several fireworks such as smoke bombs. It is also added to pre-rolled cigarettes to maintain an even burn of the tobacco.
Potassium nitrate is the main component (usually about 98%) of tree stump remover, as it accelerates the natural decomposition of the stump.
From wikipedia.
June 24th, 2010
curried marrow and mango soup
A marrow is a courgette (Americans read: zucchini) that’s getting on a bit.
Dad’s courgette plants are producing in overdrive and we have courgettes coming out of our ears at the moment. We’ve been searching for new ways to cook courgettes (and marrows, as the courgettes are maturing to their marrow stage faster than we can eat them). This soup was really easy to make and one of the most (unexpectedly) flavoursome I’ve had in a while.
serves 5-6
For the spice mixture (to be ground with mortar & pestle):
2/3 tsp cumin seeds
2/3 tsp coriander seeds
2/3 tsp black peppercorns
1 1/3 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp chilli powder (or to taste)
1/4 tsp ground white pepper (optional)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/5 tsp anis seeds
2 cloves(or cheat and use 2 tbsp curry powder and chili to taste — won’t be as good, though)
For the yoghurt mixture:
1 pot of greek style yoghurt (approx 2 tbsp).
4 tbsp mango chutney (I used the “Patak’s” brand).The main ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 medium sized onions, chopped coarsely
2 medium-large marrows, peeled and largely diced
500 – 750ml vegetable stock (depending on how thick you want your soup — save some of it and add later if necessary)
a few handfuls of fresh spinach (optional, adds depth of flavour)
The onions are sautéed in the oil and spices until they’ve softened*. Then the stock is added with the diced marrow (with salt to taste), and it’s left to simmer for 20 minutes**.
Then the spinach is added (if you have it) and left for another 10 minutes. Then the whole thing is blended smooth and the yoghurt mixture is stirred in.
*If the spices mop up too much of the oil and the pan becomes dry… add more oil!
**If, during the previous stage, there are spices clinging to the pan, you can loosen them with a dash of vinegar.
Adapted from this recipe (whose portion sizes are very mean; I doubled most things and it was about the same number of servings, in my opinion).
June 14th, 2010
garlic and chocolate… an introduction to flavour pairing
Garlic and chocolate. Yum?
The blog food for design on flavour pairing:
[...] basil tastes like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),… So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel.
The people behind the food for design blog have started a new website called foodpairing.be, which provides a database of foods with information on their flavour components and flavour partners.
Apparently peas and strawberries have flavours in common and would be good partners, as would chocolate and oysters or chocolate and sauerkraut. Even more interesting is that you can use their theory to match two otherwise unmatching foods by using a third food with common flavours to both:
Like chocolate and garlic. The trick then is to search for a third food product that has something in common with chocolate and with garlic. An example is coffee. Coffee has flavour components in common with garlic: Dimethyl disulfide and with chocolate: Methyl pyrazine.
Sounds fun. They hasten to add:
This is just a tool to inspire you. You still need as a chef the craftsmanship, the experience,…to translate this inspiration into a good recipe. It is not only mixing two components together. The balance between the two is important.
May 6th, 2010
under the influence and canopy of the linden
Above: Lindenallee, Berlin, circa 1961. Johann Stridbeck.
The [linden tree] was a highly symbolic and hallowed tree to the Germanic peoples in their native pre-Christian Germanic mythology.
Originally, local communities assembled not only to celebrate and dance under a [linden] tree, but to hold their judicial thing meetings there in order to restore justice and peace. It was believed that the tree would help unearth the truth. (wiki)
I remember studying the poem “Under der linden” by Walther Von Der Vogelweide at university:
Under der linden
an der heide
dâ unser zweier bette was
dâ [muget]1 ir vinden
schône beide
gebrochen bluomen unde gras
vor dem walde in einem tal!
Tandaradei
schône sanc diu nahtegal.
The full text can be found here in the original Middle High German, with an English translation.
There are many interpretations of the poem on YouTube. I don’t know which of them would be considered most faithful to the original pronunciation or most appropriately accompanied musically, but certainly these were amongst the most harmonious:
And this was perhaps the most original interpretation I came across:
I was led back to the above poem today after drinking a cup of “tila” and orange leaf tea here in Spain and not knowing exactly what the tila part was. Tila, I have learned, is the Spanish for “Linden”. So it was tea made from the blossoms of the Linden tree. The clue would have been in the latin name for all trees in this family: Tilia.
According to some web sources, linden tea is commonly drunk in South America, particularly in Mexico and, historically, by the Aztecs who claimed its possession of the following medicinal qualities:
* Tranquilizes the Nervous System,
* Cures Insomnia,
* Favors Digestion,
* Calms Menstrual, Hepatic and Renal Cramps,
* Disinflames the Digestive Tract,
* Is a Laxative,
* Sudorific
and
* Diuretic
* Useful in Bronchitis Cases
Apparently the species Tilia cordata is used not only in landscaping in Central Europe and the former Yugoslavia, but also traditional herbal medicine.
Wikipedia has a (rather impressive) paragraph of the purported health benefits of Tilia:
Tilia flowers are used medicinally for colds, cough, fever, infections, inflammation, high blood pressure, headache (particularly migraine), as a diuretic (increases urine production), antispasmodic (reduces smooth muscle spasm along the digestive tract), and sedative. New evidence shows that the flowers may be hepatoprotective. The flowers were added to baths to quell hysteria, and steeped as a tea to relieve anxiety-related indigestion, irregular heartbeat, and vomiting. The leaves are used to promote sweating to reduce fevers. The wood is used for liver and gallbladder disorders and cellulitis (inflammation of the skin and surrounding soft tissue). That wood burned to charcoal is ingested to treat intestinal disorders and used topically to treat edema or infection such as cellulitis or ulcers of the lower leg.
I certainly feel tranquillized. And the tea is very agreeable to the tastebuds. I may start drinking it more often.
May 5th, 2010
I believe in grass
The biblical statement ‘all flesh is grass’ is almost literally true. Grass is the staple diet of nearly all human beings. Wheat, rice, barley, millet and corn are all grasses, and cattle, sheep and goats (our main sources of meat) survive entirely on grass.
May 1st, 2010
“big farma” and big ignorance
A. A. Gill @ The Times:
The industrial processes we complain about are what first attracted Victorian housewives. Packet food was sterile, controlled and predictable. The joy of branded ingredients was in their consistency and purity. You see that in all the early advertisements that emphasise the safety of ingredients, that they could be offered to infants and invalids.
…
Anyone who has travelled to India knows that vomiting, diarrhoea, fevers and worse are constant concerns. That’s what eating everywhere was like before processed food. The fact that we so completely trust the volume and ingredients in packets of food is a great thing; the fact that we can feed 60m people three times a day without poisoning them is an even greater thing and is the triumph of the past century.
Read the full article: School trips to the slaughterhouse.
April 29th, 2010
meat love
Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others.
Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague at the time of writing.
Švankmajer’s trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.
More of his imaginative short films (like Food) are available to watch on youtube. Thanks Femi
April 22nd, 2010
food that digests itself for you
The alien pods of the Chickpea plant, Cicer arietinum L.
Photo by wikipedia user botbin.
Raw chickpeas apparently increase significantly in nutritive value when left to sprout. But I read that uncooked chickpeas contain chemicals that inhibit protease — the enzyme in our bodies required to digest their protein. So how can one benefit from the sprouted chickpea if you can’t even digest it?
Apparently when the chickpea sprouts, it effectively begins to digest itself for you. It turns its protein into digestible amino acids which it uses to fuel the plant’s growth. Therefore one doesn’t need to cook a sprouted chickpea to make it digestible, as one does an unsprouted chickpea.
[anti-nutrients] are substances that bind enzymes or nutrients and inhibit the absorption of the nutrients. The commonly alleged anti-nutrients are protease inhibitors, amylase inhibitors, phytic acid, and polyphenolic compounds such as tannins. With proper soaking and germination, none of these are anything to worry about. Around the world, studies have been and are being conducted on the use of germinated seeds as a low-cost, highly nutritive source of human food. It is well established that when legumes are properly soaked and germinated, their nutritive value increases greatly, usually to levels equal to or exceeding those of the cooked bean. (Nutritive value is the ability of food to provide a usable form of nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals). This has been shown for mung bean, lentil, chickpea (garbanzo bean), cowpea (blackeye pea), pigeon pea, fava bean, fenugreek seeds (a member of the pea family), green & black gram, kidney bean, moth bean, rice bean, soybean, and legumes in general. The increase in nutritive value in the raw sprouted seed is due to an explosion of enzyme activity, which breaks down the storage-protein and starch in the seed into amino acids, peptides, and simpler carbohydrates needed for the seed to grow. The seed is literally digesting its own protein and starch and creating amino acids in the process. Because of this process, sprouted seeds are essentially a predigested food. At the same time, the anti-nutritional factors such as enzyme inhibitors and other anti-nutrients are greatly decreased to insignificant levels or to nothing. Soaking alone causes a significant decrease in anti-nutrients, as the anti-nutrients are leached into the soak water. Soaking for 18 hours removed 65% of hemagglutinin activity in peas.Soaking for 24 hours at room temperature removed 66% of the trypsin (protease) inhibitor activity in mung bean, 93% in lentil, 59% in chickpea, and 100% in broad bean. Then as germination proceeds, anti-nutrients are degraded further to lower levels or nothing. Soaking for 12 hours and 3 – 4 days of germination completely removed all hamagglutinin activity in mung beans and lentil. Soaking for 10 hours and germination for 3 days completely removed amylase inhibitor in lentils. Normal cooking removes most or all of the anti-nutrients.
(via living-foods)
April 21st, 2010
mother HUBBARD
A Golden Hubbard squash (species Cucurbita maxima, a large variety of winter squash).
Photo by wikipedia user badagnani.
April 17th, 2010
never has a chart flowed more sweetly
This flow chart visualizes the difference in processing between teas made from the camellia sinensis plant.
(via reddit/r/food)
March 27th, 2010
Liu Ling the poetic drunkard
I always thought it was a shame that Alan Watts died at such a young age (58). And how incongruous, I thought, that he should die from alcohol-related health problems. But then again, maybe it’s not so strange!
From an interview with one of Watts’ associates, Gia Fu Feng:
Q. You’ve mentioned Alan Watts several times and I know that you’ve been with him when he was teaching. What was he like to be with?
A. You see Alan Watts was very creative. When he drinks he’s very clever. He was in a class, you know, at night time, he was all drunk. But his lectures were never boring. He was a tremendous entertainer. He said, “I’m an entertainer, I’m no Buddhist philosopher.”
Q. Alan Watts actually died from alcohol, didn’t he?
A. Oh yeah. At that time he drank whisky by the bottle.
Q. But how could that tie in with the Tao?
A. That’s from the Tao! The fact that he drank is totally in tune with the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove-his utter disregard for convention. One of the sages, a famous poet called Liu Ling, had a servant who followed him carrying a jug of wine and a spade. In this way he always had some wine to drink and his servant would be ready to bury him if he dropped dead during a drinking bout! It’s in the Tao. So Alan Watts’ drinking is quite Taoistic.
I stumbled upon this (here) when looking for info regarding his untimely end, expecting further tragedy. And yet — what a terrific story! I need to get myself one of those jug carriers.
Coincidentally I learnt earlier today that a wine jug is called an oenochoe!
March 16th, 2010
the killer triangle: salt+fat+sugar
A killer burger. Fantastically communicative photo by Johanna Parkin.
David A. Kessler on our creeping diet:
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s “thermostat” was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn’t explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed.
More at the Guardian.
March 5th, 2010
what the world eats
China: The Dong family of Beijing
Food expenditure for one week: 1,233.76 Yuan or $155.06
Favorite foods: fried shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce
Seeing the weekly diet of families all around the world gives an insight into how much we and our diet are affected by economic, social, and political factors. Reasonpad blog:
Come see What The World Eats. A few years ago photographer Peter Menzel and his wife Faith D’Aluisio started to photograph what family’s around the globe eat and wrote down what their weekly expenditure is. In 2005 they published an award winning book called Hungry Planet: What The World Eats.
This project turned out to be so educational that he’s currently still giving lectures at universities about this very subject. A current exhibition is held until May 9, 2010 is hosted by the Bell Museum of Natural History at the University of Minnesota.
As you look at the photographs and see what they spend per week, you can draw a lot of different conclusions about their dietm their surroundings, their personal/economic circumstance and how globalization has influenced what people eat.
Reasonpad have put all the images from this Time article on one page, and provided the info for how much was spent, where the families are from, etc.
February 21st, 2010
this wine tastes like mouse urine to me
I don’t believe this image exists. Thanks google image search.
The wikipedia page on wine faults describes with scientific detail all the things that can go wrong with wine, and describes the processes and causes.
I love the terms lightstrike, ladybird taint, ropiness and mousiness. The following is about ladybird taint:
Some insects present in the grapes at harvest inevitably end up in the press and for the most part are inoffensive. Others, notably types of ladybirds, release unpleasant volatile compounds as a defensive mechanism when disturbed. In sufficient quantities this can affect the bouquet and taste of wines. With an olfactory detection threshold of a few ppb, the principal active compounds are methoxypyrazines, or pyrazines, that are perceived as rancid peanut butter, bitter herbaceous, green bell pepper or cat urine.
More at wikipedia.
February 7th, 2010
love in a mist
Photo by wikipedia user queerbubbles
Plants of the genus Nigella are commonly called “devil in a bush” or “love in a mist”, presumably due to their spiky collars. And their seeds are very flavoursome. From wikipedia:
The seeds of N. sativa, known as kalonji, black cumin (though this can also refer to Bunium persicum) onion seed or just nigella, are used as a spice in Indian and Middle Eastern cuisine. The dry roasted nigella seeds flavor curries, vegetables and pulses. The black seeds taste like oregano and have a bitterness to them like mustard-seeds. It can be used as a “pepper” in recipes with pod fruit, vegetables, salads and poultry.
More at wikipedia.
January 9th, 2010
porridge deviation
I am deviating from normal blog activity to report on the best porridge (ever).
A debt of gratitude is owed to Mother Beaton for this recipe (I must get my experimental streak from her), whose secret is in the milk.
I’m aware that almond milk and goats milk are not exactly common in most parts of the world. Well, neither is the best porridge (ever).