Lab Gastronomy

I am calling it this because basically we are talking about the push now to use labs to pull apart cooking processes and enable new ways of producing food for the plate/palate. I just saw an episode of the ABC program Catalyst that catalysed my irkiness about some of the direction this can go in. Don't get me wrong - I am a BIG fan of Herve This and his ilk who investigate what happens when food cooks - hey, I have him to thank for the Maillard reaction info that I love throwing into the gab now when I do a cooking class and roast my spices, yakking on about how what happens when food goes brown under heat used to be generically called 'caramelising' but that's a misnomer and that what actually happens is this weird reaction that even Maillard didn't quite figure out.

Which leads me back to the Catalyst program which had a nanosecond look at some of the techniques that by now are frankly ho-hum like that thingy where you cook the food in the vacuum pack at low temps for a long time (I keep wanting to call it suisse but I know it isn't). Which again is precisely why this blog.

What they showed was an eager young boffin in a lab putting a nicely peppered and salted piece of steak into the 'special' plastic bag (like doh! I am going to put plastic plastic bags into hot water!), and then cooking it at I think something like 54C for some ridiculous amount of time (I keep thinking they said 32 minutes - nothing like precision in this noveau monde) so it all came out looking distinctly grey and apparently perfectly medium rare. But of course he smiling pointed out that it wouldn't taste like a steak till he blowtorched it to get the good old Maillard reaction, that is what we barbecue tragics call scorched earth and what is known in snootier circles as char-grilled.

And there I am thinking this is a ridiculous length to go to to eat a perfectly medium rare steak.

Let me be clear - I like my steak unpredictable. I like that sometimes  I get it spot on and sometimes I get it a tad Kalahari-like. Which is to say I love accident and imperfection and chance. I do not want this new form of standardisation/perfection. I mean, wasn't that one of the reasons why we objected to the Macdonaldisation of food? That we did not want the same product of someone's idea of perfection unceasingly when we fronted up to a plate?

Ditto the thought of cooking a bloody duck egg for 35 minutes (or was it 32?) so there is this just so balance between firm and runny and...

And the presenter actually had the gall to cast all of this as some advance that was changing food as fuel into food as tasty! Ceres only knows where she eats regularly but if I were her I'd be looking for some place that does tasty without the fuss and the price tag and the smugness.