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Foam
WHAT?
A sea
change in cooking. Food scientist and Washington Post
columnist Robert Wolke defines foam as “a suspension of
gas bubbles in a liquid.” Since he was first given the
gift of a whipped cream canister, abstractionist Spanish chef
Ferran Adria has been suspending nitrous oxide gas in all sorts
of strange and wonderfully flavorful liquids to make espumas
(“foams”), including coconut milk, liquefied foie
gras, tomato juice, potato purée, and seafood infusions,
at his Michelin three-star restaurant/culinary laboratory outside
Barcelona. Chefs around the world have taken up the challenge
of inventing other things to foam. It’s not enough just
to put the bubbles in the liquid, Wolke explains, a stabilizer
has to keep them there. (Without it you just have froth.) Popular
stabilizers are proteins, such as gelatin (from meat), albumen
(from eggs), and casein (from milk). Soap works too, but it
doesn’t taste so good.
WHEN?
May 5,
Jeannie
Pierola, Awards Gala Reception and May
3, Rick
Tramonto and Gale Gand, Tru
Hors d'Oeuvre
[or DERV]
WHAT?
Doots
and dabs. French for “outside the main work,”
the term hors d’oeuvre was first applied to little
tasty morsels served before a meal sometime in the 17th century.
(English usage dates from the 18th century, when they were alternately
called “whets.”) Today on Beard House menus you
will see hors d’oeuvre interchanged with other French
terms, such as amuse-bouche or “mouth teasers”
(note that amuse-gueule is considered vulgar in French),
and Italian terms, such as stuzzichini or “little
things to excite you.” Beard, whose first culinary enterprise
was the Manhattan cocktail party catering company Hors d’Oeuvre,
Inc. and whose first cookbook was Hors d’Oeuvre and
Canapés, was adamant about not adding an “s”
to the plural, as is done (or not done) in French. So are we.
WHEN?
Any night of the month.
Jelly Bean
WHAT?
Sweet
peas. Although
Republicans and Democrats still can’t agree on the effectiveness
of President Reagan’s economic policies, no one can deny
the positive effect he had on the economy of jelly beans. Reagan’s
fondness for the 19th-century confection—he preferred
the Jelly Belly brand—created a jelly-bean feeding frenzy
in the early 1980s. The technique of thickening fruit juice
with grain starch and coating droplets of the mixture with hardened
sugar predates 1861, when an advertisement for William Schrafft
of Boston suggested sending jelly beans to soldiers in the Union
Army during the Civil War. Some confectionery historians link
jelly beans to a continuum of jelled sweets that starts about
2,000 years ago with Turkish Delight. But jelly beans are as
American as Reaganomics and apple pie.
WHEN?
May 21,
Tory McPhail,
Commander's Palace
Café
Brûlot [ka-fay
BROO-loh]
WHAT?
Not your
regular brand of coffee. You can’t deny the appeal
of sitting in a restaurant and watching a waiter set something
on fire beside your table. Brûlot is French for
“fire branded,” and Café Brûlot is
a flaming after-dinner coffee drink popular in New Orleans—think
Irish Coffee or Caffe Valdostana. To make it, dark coffee is
flavored with citrus, spices, and brandy, and heated in a chafing
dish. The alcohol is set alight, and to increase the drama of
the presentation, the flaming brew is usually ladled onto a
spiral of orange rind held up with a fork. Although some references
attribute Café Brûlot to the famed French gastronome
Brillat-Savarin, in The Physiology of Taste he writes
that he prefers his coffee made “à la Dubelloy,
which consists in placing the coffee in a porcelain or silver
receptacle pierced with very small holes, and pouring boiling
water over it,” a technique today we called “filtered.”
WHEN?
May 27,
Ross Eirich, Galatoire’s
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