Why does bacon smell so good?

Now this is science teaching with a real purpose. The American Chemical Society, apparently the world's largest scientific society with more than 161,000 members has tackled that important question of: "Why does bacon smell so good?" In collaboration with the Compound Interest blog it worked to break down the science of the wonderful smell. The results are in the video

An American in Copenhagen

Noma’s Daniel Giusti: A chef at the top of the world: Dan Giusti, formerly of Washington’s 1789, runs the kitchen at Noma in Copenhagen, where his long days include reading the mind of executive chef and owner Rene Redzepi and managing the tight orchestration of service at what some call the world’s best restaurant.

A revealing insight from the Washington Post into the role an American chef now plays at the famous Danish restaurant Noma's.

... at Noma in Copenhagen, which recently regained the title of No. 1 restaurant in the world, the mistake is decidedly out of line. Giusti, the former Washingtonian charged with running the kitchen for executive chef and owner Rene Redzepi, knows that guests don’t travel thousands of miles and battle weeks for a reservation to dine on an incomplete dish, even if few would ever find anything wrong with it.

This is something the 29-year-old Giusti understands better than his charges: You cannot let the standards slip, no matter how insignificant some might seem to an outsider or even to a cook. A restaurant still striving for its third Michelin star can never compromise. It cannot compromise on service, plating, decor, ingredients and certainly not on the amount of lumpfish sperm required for a dish conceived by Redzepi in the test kitchen upstairs.

In 21st-century New York, the cutting edge of cuisine is the beet-heavy, cabbage-friendly, herring-loving diet of 19th-century Jews in Eastern Europe.

Everything New Is Old Again - NYTimes.com:

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Artisanal gefilte fish. Slow-fermented bagels. Organic chopped liver. Sustainable schmaltz.
These aren’t punch lines to a fresh crop of Jewish jokes. They are real foods that recently arrived on New York City’s food scene. And they are proof of a sudden and strong movement among young cooks, mostly Jewish-Americans, to embrace and redeem the foods of their forebears. That’s why, at this moment in 21st-century New York, the cutting edge of cuisine is the beet-heavy, cabbage-friendly, herring-loving diet of 19th-century Jews in Eastern Europe.
“It turns out that our ancestors knew what they were doing,” said Jeffrey Yoskowitz, an owner of Gefilteria, a company that makes unorthodox versions of gefilte fish and is branching out into slow-brined pickles and strudel. “The recipes and techniques are almost gone, and we have to capture the knowledge before it’s lost.”

Giving fish its silky, smooth texture when raw, and a flaky, light texture when cooked.

Sushi's Secret: Why We Get Hooked On Raw Fish : The Salt : NPR:

One fish, two fish, white fish, red fish: Muscles that depend on oxygen tend to be red, while those that don't are white. Salmon flesh is orange because of the food the fish eat.
Kake/

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But why do so many of us find utter bliss in eating raw sea creatures but aren't so inclined to chow down on uncooked birds, cows or pigs?
A big part of it is gravity — or the effective lack of it in the ocean, says biophysicist Ole Mouritsen, author of Sushi: Food for the Eye, the Body and the Soul.
"Fish are so soft. You can stick your finger through their muscles," he says. "Try doing that with a chicken or cow. Fish muscle is very different than that in land animals."
Why? Because fish can afford to be lazier than terrestrial animals. Fish essentially float all the time. So their muscles don't work constantly to fight gravity.
"Fish don't have to support their body weight," Mouritsen says, "so their muscle fibers are shorter and less tough than those in land animals." The same goes for the connective tissue holding the muscle fibers together: It's delicate and weak.
The result? Fish has a silky, smooth texture when it's raw, and a flaky, light texture when it's cooked.

The boom in goat meat

BBC News - Australia herds profits from feral goat meat:

Australia is the world's largest exporter of goat meat, and suppliers believe the trade is about to experience a boom.

"I can see it doubling. It's just got that potential to keep growing - the amount of feral goats," says Tim Walmsley, manager of the Ausgoat depot near Cobar in New South Wales.Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteThere are a lot of people making a living out of [goat meat] - Tim Walmsley Ausgoat depot manager 

"They say the Western division of New South Wales has a population of anywhere between a million and two million goats. It's a huge number of goats that can be supplied,"

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Oils ain't oils - It's the olives what do it

BBC News - Olive oil and salad combined 'explain' Med diet success:

"The combination of olive oil and leafy salad or vegetables is what gives the Mediterranean diet its healthy edge, say scientists.

When these two food groups come together they form nitro fatty acids which lower blood pressure, they told PNAS journal.

The unsaturated fat in olive oil joins forces with the nitrite in the vegetables, the study of mice suggests.

Nuts and avocados along with vegetables should work too, they say."



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France's battle of the baguette

It has been a losing battle for the boulangeries of France in recent years. Supermarkets with their pre-prepared frozen mixes bolstered with fast-rise additives have grabbed an increasing share of the bread market. The traditional baguette, baked from scratch on the premises from just flour, salt, water, and leavening, is now down to a less than 25% share of the market.
They tried back in 1998 to reverse the slide with legislation to prohibit the use of the word “boulangerie” on premises that didn't follow the old bread making principles or that used freezing at any point in the process. And traditional bakers have been running a promotional campaign to save the baguette from extinction by plastic wrapped sliced bread.

This week France launches the 19th edition of its annual Bread Festival across the country, a celebration of bakers who still hold dear the tradition of their craft. This year’s theme is centered around the crème de la crème of baguettes, called, suitably, the “tradition" as The Christian Science Monitor explains in a look at French cuisine on its website:

Top players in the bread industry continue to tout the benefits of traditional bread, says Jean-Pierre Crouzet, president of the National Confederation of Bakers and Pastry-Makers in France, who headed a 150-minute panel on this subject to launch the bread festival.
Bread’s decline has spurred a class of purists, like Fradette, and given rise to new experiments that could once again change French breadmaking – for the better.
Back in Provence, in the town of Apt, two giant bags of wheat indigenous to the region recently sat in the foyer of the Parc Naturel Regional, awaiting a local baker's demonstration for school children. It’s part of an initiative to revive a regional wheat that is long off the market but hardier and less in need of pesticide and fertilizer. The wheat’s lower yields, however, make it more expensive.
About 20 farmers are planting 150 hectares of the wheat, which is turned into bread sold in Provence at about a dozen bakeries. Public education is key to the project’s success, but so too are willing buyers. “We need to have consumers who are willing to eat it,” says the confederation's Nathalie Charles, acknowledging that the future remains unclear.