Culinary Genius
You read in cookbooks that certain recipes turn out badly at high altitudes. I believe it. When water only boils at 95 degrees C, dishes will tend to be to be undercooked and dry. The solution, they tell you, is to use a pressure cooker when possible, and to adjust the recipes where necessary.
How parochial though. The best possible environment for cooking, cookbooks tell you, is the kind that you find in Paris. How convenient. There's no reason that should be so. Maybe some dishes cook better below atmospheric pressure. Sure, your spaghetti will be mushy and "overdone", but let us not be afraid of trying new things. It is a new experience, and in a world so jaded, maybe 60% atm. pasta is just what we need.
Of course, you could get the same results by cooking your pasta in 90 degree water at home. For the really exotic, you need to go below sea level. Has anybody ever tried cooking at >1 atmospheres of pressure? The Dead Sea is low, but only slightly lower than sea level. Even so, are the souffles that much sturdier? Is the pasta that much more savory? You don't hear this word used often with respect to Palestine, but I'm going to say it: Lucky.
With the technology available to us, surely we can do even better. Pressure cookers only seem to be used for disinfecting and moonshining. Has anybody tried cooking noodles at 110 C? They might be disgusting (but, as before, open minds please) but they might be even better than atmospheric pasta. We are told that the ideal temperature for brewing tea is 100 degrees C. For a long time, that was the best we could do. With a little technology, I am sure that it would be easy to brew tea at whatever temperature your heart desired.
And you thought food cooked adequately at sub-100 degree temperatures. Perhaps there are unheard-of, delicious chemical reactions that only take place under pressure. If you had told a caveman that eggs coagulate when you cook them, he would have called you a liar. Imagine what eggs may do at 150 degrees and beyond. We stand at the frontier.
How parochial though. The best possible environment for cooking, cookbooks tell you, is the kind that you find in Paris. How convenient. There's no reason that should be so. Maybe some dishes cook better below atmospheric pressure. Sure, your spaghetti will be mushy and "overdone", but let us not be afraid of trying new things. It is a new experience, and in a world so jaded, maybe 60% atm. pasta is just what we need.
Of course, you could get the same results by cooking your pasta in 90 degree water at home. For the really exotic, you need to go below sea level. Has anybody ever tried cooking at >1 atmospheres of pressure? The Dead Sea is low, but only slightly lower than sea level. Even so, are the souffles that much sturdier? Is the pasta that much more savory? You don't hear this word used often with respect to Palestine, but I'm going to say it: Lucky.
With the technology available to us, surely we can do even better. Pressure cookers only seem to be used for disinfecting and moonshining. Has anybody tried cooking noodles at 110 C? They might be disgusting (but, as before, open minds please) but they might be even better than atmospheric pasta. We are told that the ideal temperature for brewing tea is 100 degrees C. For a long time, that was the best we could do. With a little technology, I am sure that it would be easy to brew tea at whatever temperature your heart desired.
And you thought food cooked adequately at sub-100 degree temperatures. Perhaps there are unheard-of, delicious chemical reactions that only take place under pressure. If you had told a caveman that eggs coagulate when you cook them, he would have called you a liar. Imagine what eggs may do at 150 degrees and beyond. We stand at the frontier.
posted by apk01004 at 8:40 PM
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