Synthetic Food for Valentines Day

This is a coconut and white chocolate panna cotta made with agar.

The cherry at the bottom is not a cherry at all, but a pearl created by reverse spherification, filled with hibiscus syrup.

At the very bottom is a single synthetic caviar sphere produced by normal spherification. See my post from last year on this subject.

It was all delicious - if I do say so myself.

This dessert was based on a recipe on the Flavor Bender site.

With the panna cotta I followed the recipe fairly closely. I halved the quantities, substituted thickened cream for the half-and-half and agar for the gelatin. I used 0.75 g of agar powder, which is the bare minimum needed to hold the panna cotta together. Apparently this is how a panna cotta is meant to be, but it makes it really difficult to work with. You need to turn it out really gently on the plate and you can't move it around afterwards. Here's a photo of the same recipe using twice as much agar (1.5 g). The panna cotta still tasted good and was firmer and easier to work with, but the softer textured one was definitely better.

For the pearls, I used the syrup from a jar of Wild Hibiscus Flowers in Syrup instead of brewing an hibiscus tea, but otherwise followed the recipe closely. These Wild Hibiscus Flowers, by the way, are intended for dropping into a glass of sparkling (aka champagne) and if you haven't had these before I'd highly recommended trying them.

When I made the synthetic caviar (I made a whole lot more than the single ball shown), I used calcium lactate instead of calcium chloride in the setting bath just to see what it was like. You need to use twice the quantity (by weight) and it's a little more difficult to dissolve, but it makes a noticeable improvement to the flavour and I'll be using it from now on. With the calcium chloride, the caviar has to be washed thoroughly to remove the salty flavour imparted by the chloride, and often some saltiness remains. The lactate, by contrast, is virtually flavourless.

Soylent Green is Pancakes!

Soylent Green is Pancakes!

Recently I was given some Soylent to try out. Soylent is a powder that that contains all of the nutrients required to sustain life. You mix it with water and drink it. In principle at least, you could live off the stuff indefinitely. And, yes, the name is an ironic reference to the fictional Soylent Green.

At first sight, it might seem to be a solution looking for a problem. Why would you want to eliminate the pleasure of eating food from your life? Isn't that like using artificial insemination so that you don't have to have sex?

It seems to be advertised on the basis that it's quick and easy to prepare, yet cheaper and healthier than takeaway. The idea is presumably that the archetypal computer geek, assailed with hunger but unwilling to relinquish the joy of debugging the latest Linux kernel to prepare dinner, slugs down a glass of Soylent, rather than ordering in a pizza and coke.

But it has more potential than just a convenience food for the time-poor.

Given that it's light in weight, will keep a long time without refrigeration and can be prepared without any special equipment, it might be useful on expeditions or in remote communities with limited access to fresh food. It would be a good thing to pack away as an emergency ration. It would surely have a place in disaster relief. Also, it might be helpful for those with eating disorders where "normal" food would trigger binging.

It's not going to find a place on everyone's table, but it's potentially a useful product.

An Aussie version of Solylent

The product I tried was not the original American formula, but an Australian version.   The Australian version comes in two varieties; "Chocolate" and "Premium". These differ from each other (and both differ from the American version) in contents and nutritional breakdown. All are formulated for a 2,000 calorie daily diet (obviously you can vary this by eating proportionally more or less). Puzzlingly, the American version has a significant excess proportion of fat and a deficit of fibre. The Aussie versions come much closer to the recommended proportions.

Here is the comparison (the quantities are for a day's worth of servings):

	US Version		AU Version (Chocolate)		AU Version (Premium)
Fat	96 g	43%	52 g	23%	67 g	31%
Protein	84 g	17%	121 g	24%	101 g	21%
Carbohydrate	204 g	40%	261 g	53%	235 g	48%
Fibre	16 g		30 g		48 g

[% refers percentage contribution to total calories]

Mmmm, Soylent!

Here's what the stuff looks like in person. This is the chocolate flavoured version. The colour isn't totally accurate - it's a fraction more brown than shown - but it's much closer than the example on the aussielent web site, which looks like a photo of pure cocoa powder.

I made half of it up as per directions.

Soylent; like a chocolate milkshake, only crunchy floury

The flavour was neutral and not unpleasant. After drinking, I felt full; as if I'd had a normal meal. I had thought that it might make me feel starved afterwards, but it seems my body registered the calories and responded appropriately.

The only problem - and this is a significant problem which will need to be addressed if the stuff is going to achieve any sort of public acceptance - is the texture. It's horribly floury; to the extent that it's unpleasant to drink, despite the otherwise acceptable flavour.

It has been suggested that the texture can be improved by letting it stand for a while. Some say it's better at room temperature, and others prefer it chilled. I tried it after standing for a considerable period at room temperature and then in the fridge overnight. I also mixed it thoroughly in a blender. Nothing seemed to make any difference to the texture.

It tasted to me like diluted cake mix or pancake batter.

Pancake batter? Now that's an idea!

If life gives you pancake batter...

As an experiment, I mixed some of the remaining Soylent with water and made pancakes. Since I only used water, and not the usual eggs and milk, the Soylent pancakes would be nutritionally the same as the original Solyent - with the exception of a little extra fat from the butter used to grease the pan, and possibly minus a small amount of the vitamins due to the cooking process.

The darker colour of the batter meant that the lacy patterns from cooking weren't as noticeable, and also they were a little more brittle (presumably due to the lack of eggs) and had to be turned with care, but otherwise they came out the same as normal pancakes.

Eaten alone, without any toppings, Soylent pancakes are virtually the same as ordinary pancakes but somewhat more flavourful. That is to say, they taste really good. Unlike the original drink, they are something that can be consumed with pleasure.

Needless to say, the remainder of the Soylent was used for pancakes. The picture at the top of this entry is an example. Obviously this goes against the philosophy behind Soylent, but if you're of an experimental frame of mind, I'd recommend giving it a try. As currently formulated, this seems to be the best way to use the stuff.

And here's an idea for some entrepreneur; sell Soylent in the form of pancake-like wafers. You could call it Lembas (which has much more pleasant associations than the loathsome Soylent Green), and cash in on the popularity of the Lord of the Rings

Return of the Rainbow Flag

Last Valentine's Day I made a post which featured a rainbow flag made from synthetic caviar. Now is probably a good time to post an explanation of how it was done.

Synthetic Caviar

Technical Background

Synthetic caviar is produced by a process known as Spherification. This technique relies on an unusual property of the substance sodium alginate.

Before I go any further, sodium alginate is not a weird and sinister chemical synthesised in the laboratory of some evil food corporation, but a substance extracted from seaweed. You could think of it as a vegetarian version of gelatin. You will have eaten it many times before; amongst other things, it's used to create the "cherries" in fruit buns and the fillings in stuffed olives.

Sodium alginate has the same effect as gelatin (i.e. converts a liquid into a gel), but it achieves this by a different mechanism, and this mechanism can be exploited to create unusual food items.

When a small quantity of sodium alginate is dissolved* in water, it gives the resulting solution a syrupy texture. This solution is stable, and unlike gelatin, doesn't set when it becomes cold (although it will become noticeably more viscous). Sodium alginate is often used as a thickening agent in foods for this reason.

[* = technically, it doesn't actually dissolve but in fact disperses; the difference is academic from the point of view of cooking.]

Where the interesting part comes in is that when sodium alginate comes into contact with a liquid containing calcium, it converts to calcium alginate, which forms a firm gel. Once formed, this gel is stable, moderately tough and unaffected by temperature.

So what you can do is add sodium alginate to an appropriate liquid, drip blobs of it into a bath containing calcium solution, and then fish them out once the outside has firmed up. You end up with a sphere that's firm on the outside, but with a liquid centre.

You can also do Reverse Spherification where you drip a calcium-rich substance into a sodium alginate bath.

With the right ingredients, you can make not only synthetic caviar, but also a wide variety of other unusual foods.

Plusses

• Looks really cool.
• Not difficult to do. The process can be performed by a school child.
• It is unusual enough that it can be a science fair project, or can be an impressive party trick. The spheres are unaffected by alcohol, so you can make all sorts of weird cocktails with them. Try dressing up as a mad scientist and serve them up in test tubes, beakers, etc.
• Ingredients aren't overly expensive.You only need tiny quantities anyway.
• The main ingredient is extracted from seaweed and is environmentally sustainable, acceptable to vegans, Halal and Kosher. So (assuming you choose your other ingredients wisely) you're safe from offending pretty much anyone.

Minuses

• Can be time-consuming to make more than a relatively small quantity (you can buy special tools to make them in bulk, but these are fairly expensive).
• Must be used soon after preparation. The texture starts to deteriorate after a few hours (depending on the ingredients, the spheres either start weeping or harden up right through). You can make up the alginate solution the night before, but not the spheres.
• Ingredients aren't readily available at your local grocery store (although can be ordered on line fairly easily). 

The Rainbow Flag of caviar [click for larger image]

The Recipe

If you think you might want to give it a go, a good starting point would be to download the Texture - A hydrocolloid recipe collection, by Martin Lersh from the Khymnos blog.

Don't be intimidated by the size and technical detail. Go to the "Sodium alginate" section and look over some of the recipes for caviar.

For a pictorial description of the process (with some incredible photography) check out the Luxirare blog. Don't let the professionalism of this site put you off, either; you can achieve amazing effects without any special technical skills or equipment. It's really easy, in fact.

The synthetic caviar featured on this blog was made as follows:

1) Firstly, a 1% solution of sodium alginate was made (1 g of sodium alginate in 100 ml of hot water).

This is actually the most difficult part of the whole process. Sodium alginate doesn't dissolve in the sense that sugar or salt does, but it basically absorbs water and swells up into a lumpy mass of jelly, with hard bits in it. Left by itself this mass will keep absorbing water and most likely will eventually attain an even consistency, however this would take a very long time and you need to give it some help.

Some people use a blender to dissolve the sodium alginate. This is easy to do and works very quickly, but beats an enormous amount of air into the mixture, which means it has to be left for several hours for the air bubbles to clear.

I used very hot water (just off boiling), and slowly added it to the alginate, mixing by hand all of the time. A flat tool like an ice-cream stick or the blade of a butter knife works best for mixing for mixing; with a fork, lumps get stuck between the tines.

After about 10 minutes of mixing, the mass was nearly all broken up with a few harder lumps floating around. When left to sit for half an hour, the lumps had dissolved and all of the air bubbles had cleared. I'm not sure whether the hand mixing put in fewer air bubbles, or whether the hot water made them clear faster.

BTW, This solution is stable and can be kept in the fridge for at least a few days.

2) The solution was then portioned out into a number of small glasses, one for each colour and appropriate colourings and flavourings (rose water, grape juice etc.) were added. The original alginate solution was made more concentrated than was required in order to allow 50% or so extra liquid in the form of flavourings to be added.

You will have to experiment with what works best for you here. I found that simple food colours and essences were easiest to deal with, and they would be recommended as a starting point. I found that very acidic (lemon juice) or sticky (mango nectar) liquids were hard to deal with. I tried to use sodium citrate to reduce the acidity of the lemon juice, but it didn't help much and simply added a salty flavour.

3) 2 g of calcium chloride was then dissolved in 200 ml of warm water in a glass.

Calcium chloride can impart a (very slightly) salty taste. This is not generally noticeable, but may be an issue when using very subtle flavourings. In this case, you can substitute calcium lactate.

4) The spheres were created by dripping the appropriate solution into the calcium chloride solution with a 10 ml syringe. Approx 5 ml of solution was used at a time, after which the spheres were retrieved from the solution with a sieve, rinsed in water and set aside. The spheres only need to sit a short time in the solution (say 30 seconds) to firm up.

The Ingredients

The Main Ingredients

In Australia, you can get the ingredients from Gourmet Goldmine and The Red Spoon ^co.

It's best to get the smallest size packs, which are around 80 g. An evening's experimenting might only require around 2 g, so even 80 g will go a long way.

You'll also need scales capable of measuring down to about 0.1 g and a 10 ml syringe. You can get the syringe on line or from a chemist. Don't be scared; it is not illegal to buy syringes in Australia.

Throw another Quorn on the barbie

This post is about Quorn. Not the town in the Flinders Ranges, but the food. Never heard of it, you say.

Barbecued Quorn

The story of Quorn starts in the 1960s. This was the time of books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb. People were looking at the future and worrying. One of the concerns was that there would be a food shortage, and more specifically a shortage of protein, within a couple of decades.

One food company decided that it would be a good idea to research mycoprotein for human consumption. The idea was that rather than the inefficient process of raising animals for food, you instead took some cheap feedstock (in this case, starch-based waste products from cereal manufacture) and fed it into a fermentation vessel where it was used to grow a single-celled organism, such as a yeast or a fungus. With an appropriately chosen organism, you could produce a nutritious, protein-rich food on an industrial scale. Just what was needed to feed the starving, overpopulated world that many had predicted.

Had things worked out differently, they might have virtually saved the world, and become immensely rich in the process. As it happened, they ended up producing a niche product, unknown to the majority.

Quorn has a bit of an image problem. It's essentially a mould that has been processed in a factory to resemble meat, so it immediately evokes the response "Ewwwwww!". Which is illogical; we eat mushrooms which are a fungus. We eat bread and cheese and drink beer and wine, all of which are synthetic foods produced by fermentation. We even eat processed meat products like sausages, whose production would make the average person physically ill to witness. Much of the stuff we eat already comes from nameless factories. For instance, the "cherries" in a fruit bun are most often made from Calcium Alginate (extracted from seaweed) with artificial colouring and flavouring.

Because Quorn is something that's manufactured, it doesn't have any intrinsic flavour any more than - say - a car has an intrinsic colour; it's a case of "tell us what flavour you want". This is a problem. If you tried to create a strong distinctive flavour for it, most people would reject it as being unfamiliar, and it would rule out many traditional dishes which are expected to have specific flavours. If you try to emulate an existing flavour - say lamb or beef - you'll never do as well as the original article. You can try to make the flavour as neutral as possible, but then people will taste it and say "Meh" and "Why bother?".

The creators of Quorn have tried a mixture of the second and third approaches, with a surprising amount of success.

Nevertheless, Quorn seems to have few supporters in Australia.

The "average" Aussie, used to steaks and roasts, would reject Quorn as some weird hippie nonsense (although they would most likely not phrase it this politely). Why eat some meat substitute when you can eat Real Meat? they would say.

Whereas the hippies in turn would look in askance at this strange and possibly sinister synthetic food - one step short of Soylent Green - and stick to their organic tofu and lentils.

Foodies, although more willing to try the unusual, would probably not be so interested in an inauthentic ingredient which has (intentionally) an unexciting taste.

Fast food outlets could probably use the stuff very efficiently, but it seems they have to appeal to the masses and make a big deal of using "100% beef"*.

[* = I would never make the libellous suggestion that this means they use 100% of the cow; tail, hooves, eyeballs and all.]

The "Housewife" (and I'm afraid that this is still a valid title in this backward country) has probably never heard of it, and would be doubtful about introducing such an alien product to her family.

So Quorn falls, unloved, between the various camps.

Which is a pity, because the rationale behind this food still holds; it's a high-protein food similar to meat, but can be produced without the inefficiency (and often cruelty) involved with farming animals. Also, unlike factory farming practices (and even sustainable/organic farming for that matter), the process is under tight control, so you virtually eliminate the possibility of disease.

I eat Quorn myself.

I understand the virtues of growing your own food or buying it fresh from a local market, but here in the Brisbane suburbs it's a case of the local Coles/Woolies or fighting your way into the city to get to a market that's barely any better. So if you're going to buy stuff from an amoral faceless corporation like Coles Group, you might as well go the whole hog and get a completely artificial food.

The price of Quorn is comparable with free-range chicken. The economies of scale are such that Quorn could be very much cheaper than this if it were more widely eaten, but since it's a niche product, you have to pay a premium price.

Quorn comes in a number of different forms, the majority of which are aimed at the convenience food market (the holy trinity of the corner store - Pies, Pasties and Sausage Rolls - are there). This is not the emphasis that I personally like, but it's understandable under the circumstances.

My favourite variety, for reasons of taste and versatility, is Quorn Pieces.

Quorn Pieces

These are meant to substitute for chicken pieces and are intended to be used in a sir-fry. In terms of taste, texture and appearance they are almost indistinguishable from chicken, however I find them to be overall superior because they are easier to prepare and they absorb flavours much better. This is where Quorn beats tofu hands-down. Tofu has a texture like synthetic rubber and actively repels flavourings. It takes a first-class chef to make tofu taste any good, whereas anyone who can put together a meal can get good results with Quorn.

Quorn pieces cooking in a very well seasoned wok

When stir-frying, Quorn pieces can be cooked in pretty much the same way as chicken. Cook them from frozen (there's no real advantage in thawing them first, although you can do this if you want to), and use a little more oil than you would normally use for meat, since they are almost devoid of fat. Cooking time is about the same.

The standard (I believe) method of cooking a stir fry (cook the meat first, set it aside to rest while cooking the vegetables, and then add it back in at the end) works well with Quorn. I usually drizzle the Quorn with kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) and sprinkle with spices while it's resting - Quorn absorbs the flavours and they seem to come through better than when the spices are added separately to the wok.

A Quorn stir-fry

A quick and easy meal is to stir-fry some Quorn pieces and wrap in pita bread, along with lettuce and tomato and whatever sauce you favour (a home-made Caesar dressing works well, as does sweet chili sauce and sour cream). This is essentially a donner kebab. It's very tasty and can be done at a moment's notice.

You can also thread Quorn pieces onto a skewer and cook under a grill or on a barbecue. The trick is to select the biggest pieces from the packet and stir-fry them first for 3 to 4 minutes to firm them up. You can then marinade them and thread onto the skewer. Simply thawed, they are too brittle and can break when skewered, but a little cooking first makes it much easier.

Tandoori Quorn with steamed vegetables

The Tandoori Quorn above and the barbecued Quorn at the start of this entry were both made this way. The barbecued Quorn was simply marinated in store-bought barbecue sauce.

There are a couple of other varieties of quorn which can be used as basic ingredients (as opposed to those varieties which are essentially prepared meals):

Quorn Mince

This is meant to substitute for minced beef. You could use it in a dish like spaghetti bolognaise and most likely no one would be able to tell the difference. I've also successfully used it in spring rolls.

Quorn Fillets

These look like fish fillets, but are meant to substitute for chicken breast, although they seem a little denser in texture. They are not quite a 1:1 substitute for chicken (e.g. if you simply fry one up and present it with minimal seasonings, as shown on the packet, you'll be able to tell that it's not chicken), but I can attest they work really well in a parmigiana. Don't try to flatten them with a mallet (they're already flat enough and tend to disintegrate when hit), but thaw, coat in beaten egg and bread crumbs and proceed as with a normal parmigiana.

To sum up:

Quorn isn't a wonder-food that's going to cure all of your ills and turn base metals into gold, nor is it some incredible taste sensation that will have the gourmets writhing in ecstasy. It is, however, an extremely under-appreciated and versatile ingredient, which is convenient to use and very easy to get good results with.

If you want to cut down on your (or your family's) meat intake for health or other reasons, it gives you an easy option because it can be directly substituted for meat in many dishes.

A Rainbow Flag of caviar

A Rainbow Flag of caviar [click for larger image]

To say that people should be allowed to love one another sounds like a soppy platitude, but in some places in the world this is apparently such a controversial and provocative statement that you can be thrown in jail for saying it.

So, yes, I am taking a poke at Putin's ban on "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors".

Normally, I try to give rational arguments in support of my beliefs, but sometimes it's pointless. This is 2014 and if by now a person thinks that that there is something inherently bad or evil about being gay (or bi or trans or whatever), they are simply not thinking rationally. Either they are suffering from some emotional reaction akin to a phobia, or more likely, they have been infected by a destructive (most probably religious) meme. In either case logical argument isn't going to work.

In fact, the whole concept of "teh evil gays corrupting the youth" is so silly, that I feel there might be more to it than meets the eye -  Putin didn't get to be the president of a powerful and somewhat chaotic nation without being well versed in all that Game of Thrones stuff.

It could be a distraction tactic: You deliberately do something outrageously offensive. This draws the attention of the media and gets all of your opponents busy attacking you. Once everyone is distracted, you can then quietly go ahead with your real, and more sinister, objective without any scrutiny.

Alternatively, and possibly more likely, it could be an attempt by Putin to boost his popularity by provoking attacks by the West. The superpowers have, after all, had a long history of using fear and hatred of each other as a tool for domestic political purposes.

Yet whatever the motivation, the fact is that this is an idiotic and regressive law, which will cause harm in itself (beyond whatever harm is caused by the underlying political maneuvering) and deserves ridicule.

The scary thing is that Russia is still actually fairly progressive in terms of LGBT rights compared to some other countries. It's not (yet) illegal to be gay in Russia, whereas in a total of 71* other countries it is. In a total of nine countries it attracts a death sentence, and I should add that one of these countries is Saudi Arabia, whose political system was considered so important to protect that the West fought a war on their behalf.

[* = The exact figures are a matter of debate; some countries have laws on the statute books that are not enforced, whereas others enforce general-purpose morality laws against gays.]

So remember this Valentines Day; there are couples out there having candle-lit dinners only because they're hiding a in cellar and afraid to show a light.

What was the photo about?

This was some synthetic caviar in the colours of the Rainbow Flag I made for Valentines Day. I don't suppose it's a protest that will make Vladimir Putin exactly soil himself with fear, but any attempt to counter a bad meme is better than nothing and anyway it was a fun thing to make. I might post the recipe on this blog some time.