More fun with Dry Ice
When you are finished in the Lab or foundry after a hard days splicing and crafting, one hardly wants to spend more arduous time at your salt-and-ice chilled hand cranked ice-cream maker.
Especially if you have a little one, be they strapped to you or not. What you want is to be able to end your labours with a flourish, with SCIENCE!
And so, gentle readers, I give to you:
"Instant" Cryogenic Dry-Ice-Cream:
We have been lucky enough to have this, at Squire Walker's and it was both a delight to watch, and to consume. The slight effervescence was an added bonus to the dish, and the spectacle was second to none in the cold-confection field.
food, now with SCIENCE!
In the interests of expanding our horizons as to the Steamyness of our tables, let me offer the following link to entertain and educate:
Cooking for Engineers
I first encountered this whilst looking for a recipe for Gravlax but they also have loads of bountiful and intriguing articles such as comparing different Chef's knives properties.
Back to the gravlax for a moment: salt and sugar cured salmon, typically of Scandinavian origins, quite delightful, and so easy to achieve. No elaborate smoking system required, just two of the most basic, and essential ingredients, a herb or two for flavour, and fresh fish.
The science comes in like this: both salt and sugar are dehydrators, they act to draw water out of the fish, essentially by an osmotic gradient, and the salt and sugar enter the fish by the same method. The high concentrations of salt and sugar in the resulting slurry are not conducive to bacterial growth, and once "cured" the salmon flesh will remain good to eat for quite some time. Please follow good aseptic technique and the guidelines for storage and keeping. If you take a bloody flux, i don’t want to know, or be held responsible!
That said, i have made gravlax and kept it, in the compressed gas cyclic chiller box, for several weeks, carving off portions as needed. For a more exotic (as if you can get more exotic than delectable orange fish-candy!) flavour, one could substitute the regular dill flavours for wasabi (with thanks to the ever delicious and oh-so saucy Nigella.)
How one serves their transmogrified salmon delights is up to the gentle reader, but upon cracker, abed rice or simple eaten daintily as-is, having taken a slab of fish, sodium chloride, and simple carbohydrates, alone with some basic herbal accompaniments, you can create a magnificent addition to any Neo-Victorian table!
Cooking for Engineers
I first encountered this whilst looking for a recipe for Gravlax but they also have loads of bountiful and intriguing articles such as comparing different Chef's knives properties.
Back to the gravlax for a moment: salt and sugar cured salmon, typically of Scandinavian origins, quite delightful, and so easy to achieve. No elaborate smoking system required, just two of the most basic, and essential ingredients, a herb or two for flavour, and fresh fish.
The science comes in like this: both salt and sugar are dehydrators, they act to draw water out of the fish, essentially by an osmotic gradient, and the salt and sugar enter the fish by the same method. The high concentrations of salt and sugar in the resulting slurry are not conducive to bacterial growth, and once "cured" the salmon flesh will remain good to eat for quite some time. Please follow good aseptic technique and the guidelines for storage and keeping. If you take a bloody flux, i don’t want to know, or be held responsible!
That said, i have made gravlax and kept it, in the compressed gas cyclic chiller box, for several weeks, carving off portions as needed. For a more exotic (as if you can get more exotic than delectable orange fish-candy!) flavour, one could substitute the regular dill flavours for wasabi (with thanks to the ever delicious and oh-so saucy Nigella.)
How one serves their transmogrified salmon delights is up to the gentle reader, but upon cracker, abed rice or simple eaten daintily as-is, having taken a slab of fish, sodium chloride, and simple carbohydrates, alone with some basic herbal accompaniments, you can create a magnificent addition to any Neo-Victorian table!
Steamy drinks and churning ices!
At the recent Time Travellers’' Picnic I included two contributions to add a level of "Steampunk" to the festivities bounty.
Dry Ice: as supplied by my laboratory (no, really) and walked over to the site in a heavily insulated box, which stayed cold till at least the next afternoon . . . Adding a pellet or two to your beverage adds a bubbling white smoke to any drink, but beware! Adding dry ice to a pre-carbonated drink leads to epic science-fail and spilt sarsaparilla! The dry ice as it sublimes partially dissolves into the solution, leading to a slight carbonation tingle to your drink, and a delightful chill but is otherwise harmless. Don't drink dry ice, it can burn with cold, and will produce copious volumes of CO2 gas. Looked fabulous, I thought. Could be used in single serves as we did at the picnic, or dropped occasionally into a punchbowl for an exciting ongoing centrepiece.
It could also be used to power some sort of laboratory glasswork and tubing setup, but that’s just not cooking!
Hand Cranked Ice-Cream: I have a wire bound wood bucket with crank ice-cream maker; the mixture (we used vanilla custard and dark chocolate chips) goes into the churn-vessel, with a special slotted paddle. This is then placed in the bucket, and the crank attached off the top. The mixture is chilled with an ice and rock-salt mixture which drops the temperature of the vessel below freezing, and with the cranking, ice-cream is made. The wood and wire look, combined with the hand-cranking action led to, in my opinion, a very Steampunk affair. Not to mention neither the exciting organic chemistry of custard nor the baffling physical chemistry of the salt-ice interactions!
One could even, given sufficient quantities of dry ice, combine the two for a bubbling, super-chilled rapid hand cranked ice-cream bonanza!
Dry Ice: as supplied by my laboratory (no, really) and walked over to the site in a heavily insulated box, which stayed cold till at least the next afternoon . . . Adding a pellet or two to your beverage adds a bubbling white smoke to any drink, but beware! Adding dry ice to a pre-carbonated drink leads to epic science-fail and spilt sarsaparilla! The dry ice as it sublimes partially dissolves into the solution, leading to a slight carbonation tingle to your drink, and a delightful chill but is otherwise harmless. Don't drink dry ice, it can burn with cold, and will produce copious volumes of CO2 gas. Looked fabulous, I thought. Could be used in single serves as we did at the picnic, or dropped occasionally into a punchbowl for an exciting ongoing centrepiece.
It could also be used to power some sort of laboratory glasswork and tubing setup, but that’s just not cooking!
Hand Cranked Ice-Cream: I have a wire bound wood bucket with crank ice-cream maker; the mixture (we used vanilla custard and dark chocolate chips) goes into the churn-vessel, with a special slotted paddle. This is then placed in the bucket, and the crank attached off the top. The mixture is chilled with an ice and rock-salt mixture which drops the temperature of the vessel below freezing, and with the cranking, ice-cream is made. The wood and wire look, combined with the hand-cranking action led to, in my opinion, a very Steampunk affair. Not to mention neither the exciting organic chemistry of custard nor the baffling physical chemistry of the salt-ice interactions!
One could even, given sufficient quantities of dry ice, combine the two for a bubbling, super-chilled rapid hand cranked ice-cream bonanza!
Steamy food
Much has been said about the fashion, music and culture of Steampunk, but not a whole lot has been made of the cuisine!
So i would like to address this, in some small way.
To me, the basis of all Steampunk is that it is a fusion of cultures, a blend of neo-Victorian and current fashions, materials and aesthetics. Food is a natural extension of that.
When i think of Steampunk food, i think of the feast on the Nautilus in the 1954 film "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" where a variety of exciting dishes are laid out, none of which being -quite- what they seem. Traditional recipes with exotic ingredients, or a blend of cultures, making up a harmonious whole.
Fusion cuisine:
Think of a Sunday roast, with game as the meat, sweet potato mash, satay skewers as entree and a coconut pudding for desert, all on fine china, with banana leaf placemats.
Steampunk cuisine always brings to mind colonial era cookery, making the tastes of home mesh with the local ingredients.
More ideas to follow
So i would like to address this, in some small way.
To me, the basis of all Steampunk is that it is a fusion of cultures, a blend of neo-Victorian and current fashions, materials and aesthetics. Food is a natural extension of that.
When i think of Steampunk food, i think of the feast on the Nautilus in the 1954 film "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" where a variety of exciting dishes are laid out, none of which being -quite- what they seem. Traditional recipes with exotic ingredients, or a blend of cultures, making up a harmonious whole.
Fusion cuisine:
Think of a Sunday roast, with game as the meat, sweet potato mash, satay skewers as entree and a coconut pudding for desert, all on fine china, with banana leaf placemats.
Steampunk cuisine always brings to mind colonial era cookery, making the tastes of home mesh with the local ingredients.
More ideas to follow
Posts
