Because the world LOVES irony

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

halleyscomet checked his email via cell phone on the drive back from Baitcon. We were at the Ludlow rest plaza and he had to read one of the emails aloud to me because he knew that it would make me happy. The email was from a friend who's husband is in the military. After a long deployment, he's recently come off rotation and was allowed to go visit family in Turkey on his way home from active duty. halleyscomet mentioned in passing that it would really make my day if her husband brought back some Salep.

Yes, that's right, there's now 100 grams of Salep waiting for me somewhere in Florida. Traditional recipes say that I should only need 2 grams per recipe.

I foresee a small comparison taste test party in my future. Hope that some of you will be able to come join me to see how accurate my faux molecular gastronomy version is compared to the real thing......



JB, Kimberly, Sam,
I especially look forward to hearing you laugh your collective heads off when you see this......

Comments

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

This year's Baitcon was my first introduction to Salep. Wow.

So, of course, I hit the web to find more info. Here's a 2007 report from the NY Times: "Ice Cream that's a stretch"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/dining/01curi.html

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

See the byline on that report?

Harold McGee is one of the professors I support at work for the Science & Cooking that made headlines this past fall. His was the recipe I was working off of to create the faux Salep Dondurma we had this year. (Speaking of which, they will be running the class again this fall, along with the free companion public lecture series. You should go to at least one lecture.)

Since they are prepping for that class over the summer, I plan to take BlackAnvil's Salep beating rod to work with me on Wednesday to show the course staff along with some of Coraline's photos of the recipe being made "in the wild". I suspect Professor McGee will be blown away at the thought and MIGHT ask to see a demonstration. He might also ask to have a beating rod of his own.....

[blackanvil.livejournal.com]

He has only to ask.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

There will be more. The drive home consisted largely of a brainstorming session about what other flavors would work well with the molecular gastronomy version of salep. There's also talk of getting a group of interested people together to split a purchase of the necessary ingredients.

We may just be entering a new phase of experimentation at Baitcon. We've been having fun with flavors for ages. Now it may be time to do some exotic experimentation with textures. :)

I'm also interested in using some of these ideas to get a more consistent freeze out of the alcohol containing sorbets and ice creams. At the very least I want to work out a chart of alcohol content / sugar additions to get a reliable, consistent freeze.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Developing that chart sounds like a useful project (and a tasty experiment)