TGRWT 8 - Roadblock

I'm a bit upset that I haven't found Caviar, the real deal, in this town... There's got to be a bit somewhere.

As for ideas, I had been thinking of making something like a white chocolate "beurre blanc". It's still on the drawing board...

In Memoriam: Sean Taylor

(Don Wright Photo)

Not having grown up in a place with an NFL franchise, I had usually been unstable in my support for teams. However I do tend to favor teams from cities I feel connections with or have lived in. And after a time in the DC Metro, it was very hard not to let the Skins grow on to me.

Today I was saddened to hear that young Sean Taylor passed away. He was one of the defensive leaders in the team and he was only on his 4th year in the NFL. It's sad to see him leave us, and it's even sadder when one thinks that he was only 24.

That's DOCTOR Adrià for you

Universitat de Barcelona is naming Ferrán Adrià Doctor Honoris Causa. This notion was put forward by the School of Chemistry and seconded by pretty much all the rest. It's the first time a cook receives such a naming from the University.

Naming ceremony will be December the 17th.

From: Directo al Paladar

Big Bake

Old school baking!

I got to admit, when I was making the mornay sauce for the gougeres I couldn't help thinking about setting it with xanthan gum instead of roux. I did end up with a texture somewhat similar to a xanthan thickened cream... I guess I'll have to scourge town for some gum.

The sound of Khymos

Food, the "improvisational electroacoustic jazz band" has released their fifth album called: Molecular Gastronomy. Amongst track names as "Heston", "texturas" and "spherification" there's a track named after Martin's website: Khymos.

Kudos to Martin for "making" it into fame, now in the world of music.

Volatile Compounds for TGRWT #8

M. pointed out that there's a third component in the TGRWT pairing: trimethyl amine. A quick google search showed that it's a compound associated with some utterly nasty smells:

"Trimethylamine is a product of decomposition of plants and animals. It is the substance mainly responsible for the fishy odor often associated with fouling fish, bacterial vagina infections, and bad breath." (From wikipedia)

According to our trusted Good Scents Company trimethyl amine occurs naturaly in cocoa and caviar. As do the previously mentioned substances. As for other ingredients that share the components, the list has been drastically reduced to five other foodstuffs: beer, cheese, fish, cofee and whiskey.

Just in case anyone was wondering about the previous list, it included: apple, arctic bramble, banana, beans, beef, beer, bilberry, brandy, bread, cabbage, carrot, caviar, cheeses, chicken, cider, clary sage, coffee, cranberry, currant, eucalyptus, fish, grape, guava, honey, hop oil, milk, peanut, peas, pecan, pork, potato, potato chip, soya bean, tea, tomato, turkey, whiskey and wine.

TGRWT #8

Next round is up!

Chadzilla brings us the next challenge, and it is well... challenging (duh!). The ingredients for number 8 are caviar and white chocolate. It's been done before, notably by Marc Veyrat and Heston Blumenthal.

As for the train of thought that might go into the making of this, I think I'm taking a very complicated route. So far I started by applying Martin's technique for searching for common volatile aroma compounds in food. I got two components from the search: valeraldehyde and butyraldehyde. Curiously, I had already found these two components for another dessert idea.

Anyway, I took the list of natural occurrences for each compound and cross referenced it. In all, I have 39 matches for the compounds (caviar and chocolate included). While it does present an interesting challenge for a multi-ingredient dish, there's also the risk of overdoing it. So far two choices are my top ones:

1. White Chocolate, Caviar, fish (or not), potato, vanilla (from the Used in part of the search).
2. Simply white chocolate and caviar.

Again, more on this as I get hands on.