Kitchen science

The guru of kitchen science Harold McGee writes about what happens when "When Science Sniffs Around the Kitchen" in a new occasional column, The Curious Cook, starting in today's New York Times:

It was 30 years ago in a university library that I first stumbled across the scientific approach to food in the pages of Cereal Chemistry, The Journal of Food Science and similar publications. As I browsed through a couple of issues I couldn’t help grinning at the incongruity of high scientific language and high-tech instrumentation being applied to utterly ordinary, everyday things. It was strangely exhilarating to see such intellectual firepower aimed at the kneading of bread dough or the grilling of a hamburger or the mitigation of the gassy effects of beans, to be confronted with startling scanning-electron-microscope close-ups of the bacteria in yogurt, the mold in blue cheese, the surface of cooked spaghetti....

This occasional column, the Curious Cook, will be a window on that big and busy world, on the endless intricacies of foods and the ingenuity of the people who make them and study them. The column is meant to share the buzz, to pass along news of interesting scientific research on food, cooking and eating. Because some of the larger issues are well covered elsewhere — nutrition, the influence of diet on long-term health, food production and the environment, genetically modified organisms — I’ll pay more attention to studies of particular foods, the kinds of subjects that originally drew me away from teaching literature and into the mysteries of emulsions and glutens and Maillard reactions.

Rose Levy Beranbaum has a blog

Go figure.

I've been a fan of Rose Levy Beranbaum's for years, and have used her Cake Bible as, well, my bible for about 15 years, but only this week I discovered her blog. And not only that, she answers readers' questions, just about all of them from what I can see. So if you haven't discovered it yet either, this is one of my gifts to you this holiday baking season, along with the advice that her other books, especially Rose's Christmas Cookies and Bread Bible, are as much fun to read as they are to cook from, especially if you enjoy the "kitchen chemistry" approach, which is especially handy for homeschoolers...

(Christmas Cookies also makes a very nice present this time of year, especially if you tie a cookie cutter or two onto the bow, or add in some pretty sprinkles or sugars. And don't forget to give it early enough so that the recipient can make use of it during the month of December!)

A new hunk to help in the kitchen

Last year at about this time my old Sunbeam Mixmaster (more plastic than chrome, unlike my late grandmother's Sunbeam, and which after 40+ years is still going, though not quite as strong) gave up the ghost after 12 years. Which made the usual Christmas baking routine quite a bit different -- some of the usual favorites I just abandoned, others I tried with the hand mixer or by hand.

Every so often, I'd open the Sears catalogue -- out here in the boonies my shopping options are pretty limited, and Amazon.ca is a shadow of its American self -- but couldn't get past the sticker shock; $160 for the usual Sunbeam, and $200 for the slightly more chrome "Heritage" model, and about twice that for the KitchenAids I'd been eyeing; the KitchenAid Artisan, with its 5-quart bowl, seemed especially appealing because whenever we doubled our favorite cake or cookie recipes, the dough would come crawling out the top of even the larger Sunbeam bowl.

Last week I hauled out the new Sears Wishbook and started dithering again over my choices. Then my mother phoned and in our chatting I mentioned my dithering to her. A few hours later my mother phoned back to announce that she and my father would be sending us an early present of a new KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer. How's that for generous, thoughtful, and absolutely wonderful?

Had a phone call yesterday morning from my friend at Sears to say the beast had arrived. Davy and I wrestled it into the back of the truck while the other two were at music lessons, and within an hour of arriving home I was making dinner and the kids were making cookie dough. I'm delighted to report that you can make a double recipe of cookie dough, with four-and-a-half cups of flour, without it coming out the top of the bowl. The power of the machine is a thing of wonder -- I've never creamed butter so well or with such good results. And unlike my old mixer, the hunky KitchenAid doesn't skitter gradually across the kitchen countertop; it's heavy and sturdy and doesn't go anywhere. It's a breeze to clean, though the nifty plastic collar is great for keeping too much mess from starting in the first place. I've already started thinking about our next project, something challenging enough for the hunk, and I think it just might be West Indian fruit cake...

Recipes to be posted later as time allows.

Poetry as broccoli, and a wrap-up for National Poetry Month

With apologies to Joyce Kilmer (poems are made by fools like me):

I think that I shall never see,
A poem lovely as a tree,
Unless it is my broccoli.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
Nearby a child with mouth, too, pressed,
'Gainst vegetable with ranch sauce dressed...

In her Young Readers column last week, the Washington Post's Elizabeth Ward (tip to Kelly at Big A little a) took National Poetry Month to task for rendering the subject thoroughly unappetizing to kids:

The American Academy of Poets obviously didn't consult children when it decided in 1996 that poetry deserved the kiss of death as much as black history or crime prevention and gave it its own official month. The result has been a decade of Aprils reinforcing the idea of poetry as broccoli: You'd like it if you'd only try it, kids, and besides, it's good for you!

Erm, maybe yes, maybe no. I can see Ward's point, which is much the same as my father's curmudgeonly take years ago upon discovering National Children's Day -- "What on earth do they mean? Every day is children's day!" But for the kids who aren't going to have any broccoli or poetry at all unless someone reminds the adults in their lives once a year, a national month isn't such a wretched idea. And you can't really blame the Academy for trying to fill the breach -- as we've seen, schools are busy redesigning and/or gutting curriculum (poetry got the old heave-ho a long time ago); compared to iPods, poems are hopelessly old-fashioned, compared to X-Box hopelessly boring; and, I could be wrong about this, but I have the feeling that not too many parents read poetry to or with their kids. Not to mention the fact that poetry can often take some time and effort, and the former at least seems to be in very short supply these days. So what's an Academy to do, short of sneaking into kids' rooms at bedtime?

Of course, I come at thoughts on the subject from a decidedly peculiar vantage point; I have kids who enjoy both broccoli and poetry, and sometimes, over lunch, even at the same time. And it didn't happen by accident, though it didn't require a lot of work either. In fact, I suspect that my kids like both broccoli and poetry, for many of the same reasons:

• Broccoli and poetry have each been a fixture and a staple of our daily diets, so the kids have just grown accustomed to the fact that they're around, in the air, in the fridge, on the table, on the shelf. It just wasn't an option, as far as my husband and I were concerned, not to offer our kids the same tasty treats we enjoy (this is part of that old chicken nugget theory, by the way). I'm also a big fan of poetry for every occasion. If you have Favorite Poems Old and New selected by Helen Ferris on the shelf, you can find poems for and about the seasons, holidays, historical figures, not to mention cleaning the house and getting the mumps.

• I try to serve up each tastefully. Raw broccoli can look like trees, or trees with snow (dip or ranch dressing), or keep other brightly colored vegetables company on a pretty plate. When I cook it, I try not to overdo it into grayness and mush (this is also useful to remember when helping your kids learn something by heart, too). For very special heart attack occasions I'll even make Blender Hollandaise for drizzling. When it comes to poetry, especially for young children, illustrated books, spoken poetry, well-written poems, on subjects that are particularly appealing (though not necessarily gag "relevant") can make all the difference. Poetry Speaks to Children (book and cd), Caroline Kennedy's new A Family of Poems, and My Kingdom for a Horse are all marvelous examples of poetry that can appeal to children on many different levels, certainly not just as printed words on the page.

• The kids have a say and a hand in what and how much poetry and broccoli they consume. Daniel prefers his broccoli raw, and his poetry fairly muscular; Davy enjoys his broccoli both raw and cooked, and prefers poetry more moving and pastoral (erm, about transportation and farming); Laura is stretching her wings to include such things as hollandaise sauce and Shakespeare, though she's always happy with something about horses and fairies.

Here are some recent Farm School posts on the poems and poetry books our family has enjoyed lately:

*Something different, the list from at right of What We're Reading, Watching, Listening To & Playing With: The Poetry Month Edition

*Adding even more poetry to your life, just in time for National Poetry Month

*Poetry Is Life

*Poetry sings

*Poetry festival selections I

*Poetry festival selections II

*Poetry festival selections III

*Irving Layton, 1912-2006