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In addition to sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, Australian scientists have found evidence that humans can also taste fat.
“We found that the people who were sensitive to fat, who could taste very low concentrations, actually consumed less fat than the people who were insensitive,” Keast told AFP. “We also found that they had lower BMIs (Body Mass Indexes).”
Alinea chef Grant Achatz describes what he witnessed the first time he ate and cooked at El Bulli in 2000.
Chef Keller looked down at the magazine and spoke softly: Read this tonight when you go home. His food really sounds interesting, and right up your alley. I think you should go stage there this summer….I will arrange it for you.
I don’t read Spanish and the translation is a little rough in spots, but the gist of this article from the Spanish newspaper El País is that Ferran Adrià says that El Bulli will not be closing permanently and calls what was published on Friday by the NY Times “a misunderstanding”.
In 2014 we will serve meals, but we will consider the format used and the booking system. But still two years of operation of El Bulli and four years to open the doors again.
Or perhaps the restaurant is moving to Austria? Or will become a McDonald’s franchise? Who knows what El Bulli news tomorrow holds! Stay tuned. (thx, susan)
Update: Here’s some clarification from The Guardian. The restaurant will cease to be a commercial enterprise and will instead be a non-profit foundation “similar to those that run museums and art centres”.
Adrià has given himself two years to think about what the new foundation will do. “We are open to suggestions,” he said. But he is absolutely sure it will involve cooking and serving food on El Bulli’s hallowed premises.
(thx, iñigo)
Update: The NY Times clarifies (is that even a word we can apply to this mess at this point?) Adrià’s earlier statements about closing the restaurant permanently…it sounds as though he doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing with it:
“There is nothing defined except that when El Bulli opens in 2014 it will be as a foundation,” he said. “We have not decided what the structure of that foundation will be,” he continued, noting that many culinary foundations “serve food to the public.”
Contrary to earlier reports, Ferran Adria now says that he will close El Bulli permanently, in part because it was losing 500,000 euros a year.
Sales of CJ Corporation’s snack sausages are on the increase in South Korea because of the cold weather; they are useful as a meat stylus for those who don’t want to take off their gloves to use their iPhones.
It seems that the sausages, electrostatically speaking, are close approximations of the human finger. Here’s the not-entirely-useful English translation of a Korean news article about the soaring sausage sales. (via clusterflock)
Update: More than one person has suggested that this whole thing is a hoax. Video or it didn’t happen? Feast thine eyes on someone playing a rhythm game on the iPhone with two of the meat sticks in question:
From an old advertisement posted by James Lileks, here are some of Heinz’s 57 varieties:
1. Heinz Oven-baked Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce
7. Heinz Cream of Green Pea Soup
14. Heinz Mock Turtle Soup
22. Heinz Peanut Butter
34. Heinz Fresh Cucumber Relish
And of course:
42. Heinz Tomato Ketchup
Hmm, I missed this when it came out last year: An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage. Standage has a post on his blog with more information about the book.
Foodprint is not your typical NYC food gathering. From Edible Geography:
The free afternoon program will consist of four panel discussions: “Zoning Diet,” about the hidden corsetry of policy, access, and economics that gives shape to urban food distribution; “Culinary Cartography,” a look at the kinds of things we can learn about New York City when we map its food types and behaviours; “Edible Archaeology,” about the socio-economic forces, technical innovations, and events that have shaped New York food history, in the context of the present; and “Feast, Famine, and Other Scenarios,” an opportunity to collaboratively speculate on changes to the edible landscape of New York in both the near and distant future.
The event takes place in NYC on Feb 27th; it’s free and the entire thing will be available online as well.
elBulli, the Spanish restaurant routinely named the number one restaurant in the world, will close for two years beginning in 2012.
Adrià and his team will still be working at elBulli, developing ideas and trying to figure out what comes next. But he says the restaurant’s current format is finished. “When we come back in 2014, it’s not going to be the same,” Adrià says.
Some breaking news that I missed the other day: Popeye admits to spinach use.
Popeye finally came clean Monday, admitting he used spinach when he delivered a savage and unlikely beating to romantic rival Bluto in 1998. Popeye said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used spinach on and off for nearly a decade. “I wish I had never touched spinach,” Popeye said in a statement. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never sailed during the spinach era.”
A-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah-gah-a-skinnamarino-ahhh.
This video deftly skewers the food industry’s current fixations, including This-Is-Why-You’re-Fat-grade hamburgers, fancy TV dinners, and junk food masquerading as wholesome:
We take the finest ingredients and put them in a bowl with salt and butter.
And “hide your salad” describes my salad dressing technique perfectly…it ends up more like ranch soup, really.
Not all calories are created equal, says Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham…humans get many more calories from cooked food than from raw.
Cooked food is more digestible than raw food. And not just by a little, but by a lot. Learn how to control fire, use it to cook your food, and you free up extra energy — plus time that would otherwise be spent masticating. Spend that time hunting, and your metabolic equation gets even better.
I’m sure this is well known within the raw food community but I had no idea. There’s more in a talk Wrangham did in Seattle and his book, Catching Fire.
Americans are cramming their kids full of snacks and that may not necessarily be a good thing.
Between 1977 and 2002, the percent of the American population eating three or more snacks a day increased to 42 percent from 11 percent.
Also, this is a great use of quotation marks:
Kara Nielsen, a “trendologist” at the Center for Culinary Development, a brand development company in San Francisco, cites the proliferation of activities, from soccer to chess club to tutoring sessions, that now fill children’s afternoons.
That’s actually not a “real” “job”, is it? (via @megnut)
Call it overrated if you’d like, but Ssam Bar is still the only place in NYC (or perhaps the world) where you can eat, using chopsticks, German-inspired cuisine served to you by a native Spanish speaker while drinking a glass of sparkling red wine and listening to 90s hip-hop in a restaurant conceived by an American junior golf champion from Virginia whose parents were from Korea.
A bunch of web sites described as food.
Fast food is not exactly what I’m going for here, but McNuggets are tasty so I’ll take it. (thx, nora)
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