I am not, as a rule, a gadget maven although my two favorite objets techniques of all time - you know, the ones I will grab before fleeing from a burning building - are my Smartyphone and my Kindle. And my iPad.
Three objets techniques.
I love my Smartyphone because of all the cool stuff it allows me to do. I can save myself a fruitless trip all the way upstairs by texting the Kid Squid from the kitchen to find out whether he wants to join me in a cup of tea or go for a walk. I can keep track of the gluten-free shopping and take pictures of all the exotic ingredients I require so others can reconnoitre the supermarket without me. I can play Angry Birds and Scrabble to my heart's content - much-needed relaxation after an afternoon wrestling with a g/f baking experiment. I am able, now that I have given in and paid the introductory fee of 99 cents, to follow all the latest happenings (and recipes!) as revealed by the New York Times. I can even obtain directions to that fabulous new boite that's been the subject of so much local buzz lately.
I'm just kidding about that last one: the Valley is scandalously short on boites and their ilk, but a girl can dream.
My iPad is necessary for streaming Netflix videos and downloading volumes with pretty pictures or diagrams - such as cookbooks and On Food and Cooking - which don't transfer well to Amazon's 'reads like a book' device. It is also useful for downloading photos when I am travelling, so I can free up valuable space on my camera's wee memory chip.
As for my Kindle, well, you know that I refuse to buy dead tree anything anymore and that's that.
But none of these devices, tragically, does it all. I don't really like reading novels on my iPad (there's too much glare and I don't like the tricky swiping maneuver required to turn the pages - also the battery doesn't last that long) while the Kindle is useless for movies and web browsing. The Blogger interface is compatible with exactly none of them, so when I think the mood will strike I have to ensure access to a computer: when we travel, that means I need to carry my little HP netbook or borrow the Squid's laptop when he isn't looking.
True story: when DMR and I presented ourselves at security at JFK in May before our flight to Johannesburg, I was taken aside and questioned at length by the TSA for having my iPhone, my Kindle, my iPad, and my netbook in my carry-on bag. 'You don't need all four,' the big scary guy exclaimed, while pulling them out of my bag and spreading them accusingly on the metal table. 'Why do you have all four?' I light-heartedly quipped that my husband had asked the same question while I was packing, ha ha ha, but the Uniformed One was having none of it. It was touch and go there for a bit, I kid you not, but I was eventually allowed to proceed despite the alarm-raising profile prompted by all my redundant technology.
Sometimes, though, one can't help oneself. From curiosity, or aggressive marketing, or the need to be au fait with the cultural currency (such as it is) of this modern age we live in, one finds oneself doing something outrageous. And that is why, despite the fact that I didn't really need it, I bought myself an early Christmas present this week: a shiny new Kindle Fire. It arrived fortuitously yesterday while I was lying on my Second Empire fainting couch, recovering from Sir's long-distance lecture about I-forget-what. I am pleased to report the improvement to my mental and physical well-being was instantaneous. I removed the device from its earnest-looking recycled cardboard box (it might have been constructed from the leavings of gluten-free bread manufacturing), charged it up, and stood back to see what would happen.
Joy of joys! My entire Kindle collection was already on its virtual library shelf in full and glorious technicolor. I discovered that I now have access to the New Yorker (an exclusive contract with Amazon, oh my), Saveur and yes, even Bon Appetit if I feel so inclined, without a single tree having to give up the ghost for the cause. My cookbooks look awesome and I can access the USDA nutritional database on the web if I need to do some sudden high-ratio baking. I can watch movies, hooray, and play Angry Birds to my heart's content.
But best of all, thanks to non-Apple technology I am now able to do this:
Huzzah for Androids: now I can blog on the go.
Did you know that molecular gastronomy is out? Neither did I.
Of course, in my neck of the woods it was never really in: this little pastoral corner of Pennsylvania has yet to experience so much as a glass of bubble tea, much less foams, airs, gelees, and other examples of alimentary arcana. That is why the gods invented spherification kits, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and Boeing commercial jets. Between the three, I have been able to keep up with cutting edge culinary trends to some degree.
Still, it comes as a bit of a shock to hear that yet another foodie fad has come and gone without so much as a ripple caused in the Valley's lakes of ketchup and barbecue sauce.
According to John Lanchester and The New Yorker, it is now passe to use the term 'molecular gastronomy' when describing the sort of cooking pioneered by Nicholas Kurti back in the 60s and since taken up enthusiastically by such luminaries as Sts. Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Grant Achatz, and Wylie Dufresne. Not to mention *shudder* Marcel Vigneron on his new Syfy series, Marcel's Quantum Kitchen (DVRd but as yet unseen by me).
I do understand the reasons why the descriptor has fallen into disfavor. All cooking is molecular, whether you are boiling rice or baking a gluten-free cake. The benefits of, say, copper bowls for whipping egg whites have been known (if not properly understood) since time immemorial. You can't cook without a certain appreciation of the chemical arts.
So 'molecular gastronomy' is now 'modernist cuisine'. The new designation may be more strictly accurate but it is also less self-explanatory. It emphasizes inaccessibility and mystique, to be sure, a break from locavore enthusiasts and ingredients mavens who value the simple (albeit flawless) presentation of fresh proteins and veg. Like many modernist movements, it widens the gulf between the steely-eyed professional and the wide-eyed amateur by stressing the sad truth that it is no longer possible for home cooks to emulate a fine restaurant meal at home, if the restaurant in question happens to have anti-griddles, rotary evaporators, and centrifuges.
All of which philosophizing brings me round to my current conundrum: how badly do I require a copy of the latest herniating foodie folio, Modernist Cuisine, by Nathan Myrhvold and his team?
When I last looked, this definitive account of the very latest developments in kitchen tech was unavailable for Kindle, which is too bad because the dead tree version weighs in at 46 pounds and 2,438 pages. Amazon is hawking it (or them, really, since the work is contained in five volumes) for the super-low discounted price of $461. There are currently no copies available to purchase online, so somebody must be buying.
I would have to sell my first-born to be able to afford it, but that might be a reasonable sacrifice considering the riches contained within. Exquisite photographic cutaways of pot roast set-ups and cross sections of woks in action! Exhaustive explanations of low-acyl gellan and carboxymethyl cellulose! Why, I bet in the index one can even find Gluten (why it is evil) under G and Lactose (friend or foe?) under L.
Even without buying the book, I have uncovered in its reviews a most valuable piece of validating information. Remember January's caramelized white chocolate panna cotta episode? Of course you do. Turns out, I was not imagining that the choice of roasting vessel could double, or even triple, a recipe's estimated cooking time. According to Myrhvold et al (in their discussion of wet bulb temperatures) the choice of bakeware can cause variations up to thirty-six degrees. And don't forget humidity! At the time of my crisis I didn't even consider that as an operational nonconformance factor, but it can cause an additional variation of up to eighteen degrees. By my calculations, that's a possible error of fifty-four degrees, even without relocating oneself to a higher altitude!
I wouldn't have been so nonplussed and demoralized during my sea-level snafu if I'd had the wisdom of Modernist Cuisine by my side.
The Kid Squid had better beware.
Those of you who know about the strong feelings I have for my precious Kindle will appreciate that it was a momentous occasion when I broke down and bought my first dead tree book in ages and ages. Yes, Campers, I am now the proud owner of a shiny new copy of Christine Ferber's Mes Confitures, full of famously imaginative (and dare I say it? terribly French) recipes and food porn of the very highest caliber. Hankering after some Strawberry with Pinot Noir; Fig and Gewurtztraminer with Pine Nuts; or White Peaches with Saffron? This is the book for you. It's definitely not your grandmother's jam, unless your grandmother was a boo-teek preserver of unusual refinement and sensibility.
Mes Confitures is also the most maddening cookbook I have ever used and only its great expense has kept me from flinging it against the wall in frustration (which is French for 'frustration').
Take Praline Milk Jam, a kitchen escapade from two weekends ago, before lactose was so rudely taken off the menu. Seven hours of my life were devoted to this crazy project and I still have no idea whether or not it was successful. Oh sure, I have delectable, creamy, hazelnut-scented confiture that reminds me heart-tuggingly of chilly afternoons in Montmartre, where on the pavements they sell candied nuts from giant copper kettles. But is the ambrosia filling my jars what Madame intended? C'est un mystere, vraiment.
Everything about this recipe was problematic, starting with the ingredients list.
Four and half cups of whole milk? Check.
Six cups of sugar? Shocking, but check.
Nine ounces of ground almonds? Check.
Nine ounces of praline powder? Excuse me!?
A helpful footnote suggests that I might get some at my local bakery. Well, since I do not live in La France, local bakeries are not only rather thin on the ground, but I would bet my last euro not one of these hypothetical establishments would offer praline powder for sale, or even know what it was for that matter.
When I came to think about it, I realized I didn't even know what it was.
So I improvised. I roasted 2 cups of hazelnuts at 350 deg until they were toasty and delicious.
I whipped up a quick caramel by dissolving one and one-half cups of sugar in a few tablespoons of water and then cooking it until it was brown and bubbly.
I dumped in the hazelnuts and spread them out on an oiled baking sheet to cool.
I weighed out nine ounces of the praline lumps and whizzed them in my food processor until they were crushed to smithereens. Was praline powder the result? You be the judge - but it seemed likely.
Praline powder, check.
Madame then told me to put my milk and sugar into a double boiler.
I was instructed to cook it slowly over 'moderate heat' (in a double boiler, is there any other kind?), stirring occasionally. I was assured that after just four hours (!) the milk jam would develop the texture of thick honey and take on a lovely caramel blond color. Well, it wasn't thick as honey, but in my opinion the requisite hue had been achieved.
Check. Ish.
I added the praline powder to the jam and cooked it for another hour. At this point, I was sure I had gone wrong and didn't bother to take a picture of the resulting gloop, which consisted of a layer of hazelnuts stubbornly floating on top of the caramelized milk. It refused to emulsify no matter how energetically I stirred it. I feared that my entire Saturday had been spent in vain, but pressed on uwilling, as always, to admit defeat.
After the hour was up, I added the ground almonds (actually, almond flour I found in the freezer, no doubt a remnant of previous macaron and frangipane fabrication).
Miraculously, the mixture came together into thick delightfulness. I poured it into my favorite round-bottomed saucier and brought it to a boil.
At this point, I was told to decant the jam into jars. How many? Who knows? When one is being Ferberized, one is left in the dark about these crucial details. I estimated that it would be about four 8 oz. jars' worth, got it wrong, and had to prepare two more at the last second.
Check. But it was painful.
The final product tasted utterly delicious: nutty, not to sweet, and exceedingly complex. I discovered that if it's kept in the fridge, it gets a bit stiff (should it be kept in the fridge? who can tell!) but zapped in the microwave for 10 seconds, stirred, and zapped again, it turns creamy and spreadable - like a very adult, extremely sophisticated chocolate-free Nutella with bits in. Madame offers no description or photo of the final result, so I am providing one below:
Check.
But is it Praline Milk Jam? I guess we'll never know.
Addendum. Since I had more than the nine ounces of hazelnut praline lumps required for powderization, we snacked on handfuls of the unCuisinarted leftovers during movie night whilst enjoying Eric Bana chew the scenery as an evil Romulan. Both the praline and the scenery were way, way better than popcorn.
My yearning for banana jam has become so strong that, unless some appears in my kitchen soon, my life - and, I regret to say, the lives of those around me - will not be worth living. You know how it is: when something like that gets in your head, there's no shaking it until the hunger has been assuaged. And pity the poor soul who gets caught in the erstwhile maelstrom of discontent and high dudgeon.
For all our sakes, I am taking drastic action.
I related previously how, unlike my effortless research for carrot jam, I had a wee bit of bother finding authoritative internet guidance on preserving bananas. A search through my cookbooks had previously yielded nothing. Fortunately, I had one further means of data-trawling at my disposal - Amazon's wonderful 'Look Inside' feature, one of my favorite electronic conveniences of all time. In the time it takes to say Gigabyte! I was able to locate two promising-looking preserving books by sensible-sounding women who no doubt have the editors, test kitchens, and other paraphernalia required for Recipes that Work. Each of these books claimed to have at least one prescription for banana preserves.
Pay dirt!
It was the work of a nanosecond to have the works delivered wirelessly to my iPad, my preferred medium for electronic culinary references. My Kindle, although totally awesome in just about every conceivable way (I plan to be buried with it), doesn't do photographs or diagrams all that well. For example, Harold McGee is disastrously difficult to follow in his Kindled form, a state of affairs that just won't do when one requires the the scientific names of edible seaweeds, chemically-accurate representations of starch molecules, or the family tree of classic French sauces tout de suite. Cooking for Geeks, with its myriad text boxes and inserts, is similarly incomprehensible in the Amazon reader's configuration.
Resultingly, I felt that my new jamming books, including as they do photographs of setups and vital equipment - not to mention risque and libidinous depictions of luscious, quivering compotes and confitures - would be better suited to the whole glorious technicolor shebang, especially for a canning novice such as myself.
Now, although I have been berated for my slavish Kindle devotion by some of my nearest and dearest (not Sir, thankfully, who shares my passion as a loyal spouse should), more enlightened pals think it is just about forgivable to read eBooks, especially when travelling. On the other hand, nobody - but nobody! - can understand how I am able to abide my iPad in the kitchen. But really, it makes total sense. I don't have to worry about propping it open (and thus ruining the spine); if I splash goo all over the screen it's a simple matter to wipe it off (my dead tree copy of Delia Smith is positively crusty with residue, and while this might be seen by some as a suitable memento of cooking adventures past, I think it's gross); and the ability to download a chapter or two helps avoid the later-regretted purchase of a less-than-perfect cookbook.
And that is how, in less time than it took me to boil the kettle, I came to have in my possession trustworthy recipes for banana jam (with rum and raisins, no less - another use for my treasured Hunza beauties) and banana and date chutney. Not to mention gingered pear jam, red pepper orange jelly, sweet cherries in almond syrup, cantaloupe preserves with cinnamon, chestnut cream, and five-fruit ketchup - all courtesy of Mary Anne Dragan (the title of her book, Well Preserved, would have been too good to pass up under any circumstances) and Linda Zeidrich, putter-upper and preserver par excellence.
Thanks to this praiseworthy pair of pickling personages, Amazon, and my iPad, I should have banana jam in the pantry by Monday. And for that, the rest of the family can be truly thankful.
Seeking some new books for my Kindle, I was browsing Amazon for exciting new culinary ideas and chanced upon a tome that could have been written just for me: Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food. Was there ever a more fortuitous publication in the history of the world? What riches! The work contains a good deal of info on gluten and its mysterious ways, which I will be scrutinizing in the days to come. Although I have not yet had the time to study its wisdom in great depth, some thoughts on gluten and cake-baking immediately leaped out at me from its electronic pages.
Clever Jeff conceptualizes cakes and their gluten content in terms I have never come across before and that I anticipate will be extremely handy during my baking experiments in the months ahead. He distinguishes between high-ratio cake batters and low-ratio cake batters and defines them as follows. A high-ratio cake is one where there is more sugar than flour (by weight); more eggs than fat (by weight); and more liquid than sugar (including the liquid in the eggs : guess how that is measured). Low-ratio cakes, presumably, are all the other ones. His point is that high-ratio cakes don't contain a high proportion of gluten-producing flour and that gluten development itself is hindered by the high percentage of sugar and fat. Isn't that cool? His conclusion is that the texture of high-ratio cakes will have a finer crumb than others.
My conclusion is that high-ratio cakes might necessarily lend themselves to gluten-free flours. Interestingly enough, two of my most successful baking experiments (frangipane and financiers, neither of which required xanthan gum for a successful outcome) were high-ratio cakes, or near enough, although I didn't know it at the time. Eureka - a whole new way of looking at gluten-free baking possibilities!
In a serendipitous, simultaneous development, my FRiV (Field Researcher in Virginia) last week carried out extensive pancake studies involving King Arthur Gluten-Free Flour and reported encouraging results. Although I had purchased some KAGFF during my Whole Foods trip of a few weeks back, it has since languished untried in my pantry, my attention having been distracted by all the boxed mixes I purchased during the same expedition. Somewhat disheartened by these products, I have been reluctant to undertake new g/f baking challenges, but this aligning of the stars inspired me once more.
I retrieved one of the unopened boxes and compared its ingredients to those of Bob and his Red Mill. They were different, all right. The KAGFF is made from rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and whole grain brown rice flour. It lacks the chickpea flour, white sorghum flour, and fava bean flour that I think makes Bob's product a little too assertive for butter cakes and other plain fare. A winner, perhaps?
Armed with Jeff's recipe for high-ratio Pumpkin Cake, a fresh box of KAGFF, and a cup of pumpkin puree left over from Thanksgiving's dessert mousse, I set to work with new-found confidence and the joie de vivre that comes from a couple of days off work. Tune in for my next exciting installment, where I reveal the degree to which my theory about adapting high-ratio recipes holds true under the cold light of day.
