Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category
Modernize Your Holiday Traditions
December 15, 2009
There are few times of the year that are as tradition-heavy as the current holiday season. And it makes perfect sense: What better way to welcome a new year than with a return to our roots? Traditions are a way to remind us of our origins. They often take us back home, return us to the cultures in which we grew up, and help to keep us grounded.
They can also get pretty repetitive if you aren’t careful.
Repetition is, of course, at the heart of tradition, but that doesn’t mean you can’t infuse your rituals with a little creativity. Bringing something new to your holiday celebration can help keep your traditions relevant and it means you won’t confuse the traditional with the blasé.
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Molecular Gastronomy Is Out, Zero-Gravity Cooking Is In
April 16, 2009
At Ubi Ubi, we’re always on the look out for avant-garde trends. And it looks like we’ve identified the next culinary frontier—space. As space flight and space tourism continues to gather steam with new ventures like Virgin Galactic and RocketShip Tours, bleeding-edge chefs will need to reconsider the instruments and conditions under which they prepare meals for space-venturing customers.
American astronaut Sandra Magnus has now become that de facto space-age pioneer in more ways than one. During her four months on the International Space Station (November 2008 through March 2009), Sandra Magnus developed dozens of recipes that can be cooked in zero gravity, and, in the process, created a new spin on the culinary arts. To provide more interesting meals for herself and her crewmates (which they all so desperately desired), she adapted existing ready-to-heat meals by using available tools and ingredients. One of her primary innovations was in the use of duct tape, which she used to hold down unprepared ingredients; it also happened to serve as a tidy trash strip. Zip-up plastic bags were used for mixing sauces. Russian equipment, such as used dehydrated food packets, were recycled and transformed into foil cooking packets for use in the on-board food warmer.
Unfortunately, that warmer only cooked at a low temperature, and for just 30 minutes at a time (for safety reasons), so many grueling hours and cycles were needed to fully cook any ingredient. Among the dishes in of Magnus’s space shuttle menu were mesquite-grilled tuna, “space salsa,” and Russian chicken with vegetables combined with sun-dried tomatoes and pesto.
Sandra Magnus’s under-the-radar cuisine is definitely noteworthy. Now we’re just left to wonder what the food critics will think….
Source: “Astronaut experiments with space cooking,” MSNBC.com.
Photo courtesy of: www.examiner.com.
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