The Owl - Feedback

[kingoffighters]

I love the ashtray. Fuck the haters.

[icarusfall]

The bottom is the olive oil just so that it would stand up.

[Josh]

I think he's asking about the bread crumb looking business. Unless that is weirdo freeze dried deconstructed olive oil.

[icarusfall]

powdered olive oil

[Type Ryan]

Interesting.

[sedition]

really fucking cool. Inspirational.

If I'm ever down that way, I'm stopping by.

[Doc Holliday]

I want to see an owl barbeque sauce with that orange ash.

[Satsuki]

I think it's great, but some people were not amused.

Not to get too esoteric, but it challenges what we perceive as food - presenting a great tasting dish in a disgusting manner.

that's lame. people get scared when there isn't a hamburger readily available.

I think the whole avant garde food thing is amazing. I don't like to cook, i don't even like to eat that much, but seeing the art that an accomplished chef can create is a joy!

[Fe 26]

- presenting a great tasting dish in a disgusting manner.

other than an absurd amount of calories, this sums of southern cooking.

Shitheads on food network want to call it "rustic" cooking, but I think you've summed it up better. And it is interesting to see someone take it to the extreme.

[icarusfall]

First draft thing for the article I was asked to write. Supposed to be 700 or so words.

Molecular Gastronomy.

Let's talk about a carrot.

If you cook a carrot tender and throw it in a blender, now the carrot is a puree. If you take the same carrot and run it through a juicer, now it's a liquid. Add something called lecithin, hit the juice with a stick blender, and it'll turn into a carrot flavored foam. Cook the carrot sous vide at 83ºC with beet juice and lamb fat, and you'll get a red carrot that tastes like meat. Mash it into a patty, add a gelling agent, sear it on the outside and it looks like a steak.

Welcome to Candy Land - Things Are Not as They Seem.

People like to call us "mad scientists," or "avant garde." I just think I'm a cook exploring my craft. I never went to culinary school, so to me this stuff is no different than learning about cutting up fish for the first time. "Oh, agar needs to be heated first to hydrate and disperse in whatever…?" Great. Now I know a little more about agar.

All cooking is science to some degree. When you brown meat you're facilitating the Maillard Reaction (the combination of an amino acid and a reducing sugar with heat) and changing the make-up of the steak. There's nothing magic about modern food. 1+1 never equals 3.

A great amount of the magic dusts in my Cabinet of Curiosities are things used in industrial food applications. The difference between the uses is that we're trying to amplify flavor and texture in an artful way, and the food companies are just trying to maximize profits. I can use xanthan gum to bulk up an otherwise thin liquid so that I use less. I almost never use it in that way though. I reduce a sauce until I achieve the desired flavor and then thicken it with xanthan or gellan so that the sauce has more body and coats the tongue better while the taste remains the same.

The thing with modern technique is that no amount of transformation matters if the result doesn't taste good. Modern cooking is as much about knowing what flavors work together as it is knowing how much Gellan Gum it takes to achieve a desired texture. When I put powdered olive oil on your plate, it's as much for the effect of seeing a pile of white powder (most people think it's grated cheese until they taste it) as it is wanting to add olive oil to the dish. We don't just throw things together hoping that it tastes good. These are just tools. Like the (much misunderstood) microwave. Using it for everything makes for bad food, but using it judiciously (like cooking creme brûlée custard in 5 minutes) can be like performing culinary magic tricks.

"The custards are done already!"
How?
"Modern cooking! …and they're funny colors… and they taste like meat."

It's a fun time to be alive.