Here is a video of chef Ferran Adria preparing an alcoholic sorbet using liquid nitrogen. This is an experimental food preparation technique also used by American chef and Food Network star Richard Blais, who recommends it as a way of impressing a date:
“You don’t need to know any fancy techniques to make a dish with liquid nitrogen. This is the ultimate science-guy-who-wants-to-impress-someone-but-is-fudging-it recipe:
1. Buy your favorite ice cream at the store.
2. Let it melt (in its container) on the counter.
3. Pour the melted base into a stand mixer.
4. Let it whip, and while it’s doing that, slowly add in the nitrogen.
5. When is it ready? When it’s ready! Look for the same consistency as regular ice cream.“You can even use liquid nitrogen to clean up after the meal. Sprinkle some on the floor and it collects all of the particles. It’s easier than a vacuum.
“Will the goggles kill the mood? Not if your girl is into the sexy-nerd look. Hey, while you’re at it, throw on a lab coat with nothing underneath.
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Today is a sad day for enterprising cooks, for the greatest possible food has now been invented. What could possibly surpass this invention by Smoking Meat Forums user Fire it up?
Link via Geekologie
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Louise Hill of Love to Cake is a London-based graphic designer and visual effects artist. That is her trade, but her passion is making fancy cakes. This sea turtle cake won her the gold medal at Britain’s 2009 Cake Show.
flickr photostream via reddit | Artist’s Website
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Psst – wanna lose weight while eating all you want and doing no exercise? No, it’s not a spammy Internet ad – it’s real science! All you have to do is live a while at high altitude:
Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off. The results appear in the Feb. 4 Obesity. [...]
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise other than leisurely strolls. The team measured the men’s weight, metabolic rate, levels of hunger and satiety hormones before, during, and after their mountain retreat.
After a week up high, the subjects lost an average of 3 pounds. A month later, they were still 2 pounds lighter. The sceintists’ data showed this was likely because they ate about 730 calories less at high altitudes than they did at normal elevations. They may have felt less hungry, in part, because levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, surged during the stay, while grehlin, the hunger hormone, remained unchanged. Their metabolic rate also spiked, meaning they burned more calories than they usually did.
A high-altitude weight loss strategy could be viable, though studies have shown peoples’ appetites bounce back after about six months at high elevation, Leissner said. “If you could do intermittent periods for one week, then go down, and then go back up, this might actually be helpful.”
Link (Photo Stephan A [Flickr])
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From the blog Today I Found Out, here’s something I bet you didn’t know about 7-11’s Double Big Gulp:
Today I found out that the 7-11 Double Big Gulp holds about twice the amount of fluid than the average adult human’s stomach. The average adult human’s stomach can hold reasonably comfortably approximately 32 ounces at any given time. The Double Big Gulp holds about 64 ounces of soda or Slurpee.
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Here are the perfect Valentine’s Day gifts for the lovable, arrogant bastards (and double bastards) in your life:
(L) Arrogant Bastard Ale Beer Bottle Tumbler (R) Double Bastard
Quantities are very limited! More BottleHood beer bottle tumblers over at the Neatorama Shop: Link
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What do you get when you cross Star Wars with disco and canned tuna? This ad for Hagoromo sea chicken tuna from Japan screams "crazy" in so many ways in just 30 seconds.
Too strange too miss. The Zeray Gazette has the YouTube video clip: Link | And if you like that, check out Star Wars Medley by Meco (1979). Now that’s music!
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I learned something new … and disturbing about our neighbors to the North. It turns out that you can buy milk in plastic bags in Canada.
How do you drink from plastic bags? Sheryl from Pinc Stuff explains in this short YouTube video clip over at TYWKIWDBI: Link
Crazy, eh?
Previously on Neatorama: Beer in a bag
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Last year, organizers at the Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney, Australia, made an enormous image of the Mona Lisa using thousands of cups of coffee lightened with milk (to varying quantities) in order to create different shades:
The different colours were created by adding no, little or lots of milk to each cup of black coffee.
It measures an impressive 20 feet high and 13 feet wide and took a team of eight people three hours to complete.
Link via Digg | Photo: EpicFTW | Previously on Neatorama: Mona Lisa in Coffee (as a Paint)
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How can you possibly have a bad day when you start it with rainbow pancakes? Link -via Buzzfeed
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We may not be at the top of the food chain, exactly, but we at least have our inanimate food conquered. Bread, veggies, milk – these things don’t pose a threat to our existence. At least, not usually. On at least a couple of occasions, some faulty (or just old) construction has resulted in freak accidents that caused a lot of death and injury. Here are the two most famous events.
If you’re going to go out, you might as well go out doing something you love. You hear that saying a lot, but I doubt even the most die-hard beer-drinker would have enjoyed drowning in 232,000 gallons of suds during the London Beer Flood.
The year was 1814, and a very old vat at Meux’s Brewery containing 135,000 gallons of fermenting porter finally decided to give in to old age. One of the metal hoops surrounding the vat snapped; the resulting noise was heard up to five miles away. As if that much on and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it knocked over a bunch of other vats, causing a grand total of nearly 1.25 million liters of beer to spill out onto Tottenham Court Road and other surrounding streets. The gush was so massive and powerful that two houses were entirely destroyed. At a nearby pub – which had probably previously enjoyed their proximity to Meux’s Brewery – a wall caved in, killing a teenage girl who worked there. The Brewery was located in a poor part of town called St. Giles Rookery, which was a bunch of tenements and low income housing. Entire families lived in basements of these buildings, and when the beer suddenly rushed into through windows and walls, people were unable to get out and drowned. All in all, eight people were killed that day. Another person is said to have died from alcohol poisoning the following day.
People capitalized on the tragedy, though – many of the residents ran out to the streets with pots and pans to salvage whatever free alcohol they could get their hands on. And shockingly, some people took to exhibiting their dead friends and family for money. Obviously this was quite the freak accident and people outside of the area were curious. To raise a little money, enterprising citizens decided to show the corpses for a fee. The police had to put a stop to this practice when too many gawkers crowded into one house, which was structurally unsound from the flood. The floor collapsed, dumping the lot of them into a basement that was still half-full of beer.
Despite paying for the funerals of the drunkenly departed, the Meux Brewery was still sued for neglecting their equipment, especially when it came to light that an employee had previously alerted a boss to a crack in the vat that eventually erupted. However, the judge presiding over the trial declared the whole tragedy an Act of God, finding the company free of fault. Something tells me the ruling would be a little different today.
You think drowning in beer is bad? At least you could attempt to swim through the beer. Trying to fight through a sea of molasses would be all but futile.
And that’s exactly what happened in 1919, when a vat of the sticky stuff exploded at the Purity Distilling Company in Boston. The tank was 50 feet tall, 90 feet in diameter and held 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Much like the vat of beer in London, the tank just gave out. First-hand accounts from people in the area said the rivets popping out of the tank sounded like a machine gun being fired. And then came the wave – a solid, 15-foot-tall swath of molasses, 160 feet wide and moving at an astonishing 35 miles an hour. When you consider that molasses is the epitome of “slow,” 35 miles per hour is nearly unthinkable.
It happened at 12:30 p.m., just as a bunch of workers at the factory were taking lunch. They were among the largest group of fatalities, which also included two 10-year-old children and a 65-year-old woman who was just sitting on her porch when the entire house was smashed on top of her. Two entire blocks were practically flattened by the tsunami of syrupy sweetness – buildings in the immediate vicinity were completely knocked clear of their foundations and fell to rubble in a matter of seconds. When it settled, the molasses was waist deep, making it almost impossible for rescuers to wade through and try to save survivors.
Sadly, this disaster definitely could have been prevented. The tank was hastily constructed thanks to the increasing demand due to the war – back then, molasses was used in gunpowder. The foreman who oversaw the construction of the tank had no background and apparently couldn’t even read a blueprint, according to multiple sources. He was in such a hurry he didn’t even bother to test the tank for leaks with water when it was complete, as was standard practice. The vat was immediately filled with molasses, and you’d better believe it started leaking almost immediately. It leaked so much that neighborhood kids could stop by, fill up cans with syrup, and take it home to their mothers. In response to complaints about the leaky monstrosity, the company had the vat painted brown so the leaks wouldn’t be so noticeable. Pretty responsible, huh?
The company tried to make the public believe that the “sudden” explosion was the result of dynamite deliberately planted by anarchists, but the public didn’t believe it – and neither did the judge and jury. It took nearly six years of investigation, but the report found without a doubt that the company had been extremely negligent. U.S. Industrial Alcohol was ordered to pay the families of the 21 victims a total of $1 million. Boston smelled of molasses for decades afterward; some residents say it still permeates the air on the right day with the right wind.
Photo from http://edp.org/molasses.htm.
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If there’s one food that most people in China simply haven’t developed a taste for, that would be chocolate. Given that China represents over a billion potential customers, that simply won’t do, according to the chocolate industry (if there’s such a thing).
So, what do they do to promote chocolate? Behold the World Chocolate Wonderland, the world’s first theme park where everything is made out of the sweet stuff.
Damian Grammaticas of BBC News takes a look:
Up to 80 tons of chocolate was used in the creation of World Chocolate Wonderland, organisers said. The exhibition also boasts a life-size replica army of chocolate terracotta warriors, chocolate flowers and a chocolate car.
Link [Flash video]
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Can you get fired over a slice of cheese? Apparently so, if you work at McDonald’s!
The waitress was fired last March after she sold a hamburger to a co-worker who then asked for cheese, which she added.
The fast-food chain argued this turned the hamburger into a cheeseburger, and so she should have charged more.
The fired employee sued, and won:
The fast-food chain had argued that the waitress – who was employed at a branch in the northern town of Lemmer – had broken staff rules prohibiting free gifts to family, friends or colleagues.
But the court said in its written judgement: "The dismissal was too severe a measure. It is just a slice of cheese," reports AFP news agency.
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Putting Weird Things in Coffee is a food blog about one man’s quest to find tasty and unusual ingredients to put in coffee beyond the traditional cream and sugar. These include salmon, blue cheese, and peanut butter. Pictured above is a mixture that he did not invent: juustoleipä, a Finnish cheese made from reindeer milk, that is often dipped in coffee before eaten.
What unusual things have you mixed in your coffee?
Link via Amanda Bensen (who notes that her family used to brew coffee with reindeer bones)
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This beautiful short film shows you how to make a perfect espresso.
It’s the first part of an ongoing series of videos from The Department of the 4th Dimension that documents the search for the ultimate tastemakers.
Link [Vimeo] – Chris Glass via SimpleBits
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Vinegar and milk, together in one commercially-available drink in Japan. Only those who can read the Japanese label will see that it also contains grapefruit juice. Link -via Arbroath
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January is National Hot Tea Month, and to celebrate, we at Neatorama invite you to brew a cup of your favorite variety and curl up for some good old fashioned facts about one of the most popular beverages in the world — second to only water. Before we begin though, let’s make one thing clear; herbal teas (including South African red teas) are not real teas because they are not made from the Camellia sinensis a.k.a. the tea plant — sorry chamomile fans.
While there really is no consensus on exactly where the earliest tea plants were grown in Asia and how people got the idea to drink it, there are a number of myths concerning how tea originated and why people started drinking it. One story says that a Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, was meditating for nine years, at which point, he fell asleep. The story says he was so upset that he cut off his own eyelids, which took root and grew into the first tea plants. Other versions of the story say that Buddha himself was the one who cut his eye lids off and started the first tea plants.
The story of how tea was first consumed says that Emperor Shennong was drinking a bowl of water when leaves from the plant blew into his water. He tried the concoction and was quite happy with the drink’s flavor. Another story says that Shennong was testing the medicinal properties of different herbs and when he discovered an herb was poisonous, he used tea for an antidote.
While the history of the plants and how they started to be consumed as beverages are the stuff of legends, there are certainly a few well documented facts about the brew’s history. The oldest known still cultivated tea plant grows in the Yunnan Province in China, it is estimated to be over 3,200 years old. Records of China’s tea consumption go back all the way to 10th century BC. At one point, bricks of tea were actually used as currency in the realm, particularly in areas that were very rural and devoid of coin currency.
Chinese Buddhist monks introduced the drink to Japan, where it quickly became a favored drink of royalty. Within no time, seeds were imported into the country and cultivation began. Centuries later, tea ceremonies were introduced by Buddhist monks as well, where they slowly evolved into the highly formal tea ceremonies that Japan is known for today. In the sixteenth century, the tea ceremonies played a big role in feudal diplomacy.
Tea wasn’t introduced into Europe until the 17th century, when it was first brought to Amsterdam. Around this period it was introduced to France and Russia where it was quickly made popular in both countries. It’s introduction into English society was perhaps the place that it had the biggest impact though.
By 1750, tea became the national drink of Britain. Unfortunately, Britain developed a need for Chinese goods, but China largely had no use for English goods. For a while, England sent out silver bullion, but it wasn’t long before they began trading opium (grown in India and still illegal in China) for tea. Thus, tea played a major role in the Opium Wars and the treaty for the war actually required the Chinese ship tea to England in exchange for the drug.
At the same time, the Brits decided that they needed to stop being dependant on the Chinese for their supply of tea, so they hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to steal a tea plant from China and then cultivate it in India. The plants fared well in this new environment and now India is one of the biggest producers of the plant.
Image via Okinawa Soba [Flickr]
Most people prefer to make tea from tea bags, but tea purists consider the tea from the bags to be far inferior to loose-leaf tea. Part of the reason is that the small bits of leaves used are often just the waste products left behind from loose-leaf tea. Another problem is that more of the leaf’s surface is in contact with the air, allowing it to lose flavor faster. Some people also claim they can taste the flavor of the bag when they drink it this way. Others claim that tea bags are too small to allow the tea to properly diffuse in the water, which is why Lipton released their line of Pyramid Teas to counteract these problems, but many tea aficionados still don’t like them for the other reasons listed above.
Image by Wikipedia user Andre Karwath.
As I said before, real tea is only made from the Camellia sinensis, which means that red tea and other herbal teas don’t make the cut. Even then though, there are still six different varieties of tea, each created by a different processing method. The tea plant’s leaves wilt and oxidize very quickly after it is picked, and each type of tea is made through drying the leaves at a different point of the leaf’s cycle. White tea is wilted and unoxidized. Green tea is unwilted and unoxidized. Yellow tea is unwilted and unoxidized, but allowed to yellow. Oolong tea is wilted, bruised and then partially oxidized. Black tea is wilted and fully oxidized. Post-fermented tea is created by allowing green tea to ferment, it is largely reserved for medicinal purposes and not casual drinking. There’s a cool visualization of the process here.
While each type of tea naturally has its own distinct flavor, most teas you buy at the store have their own flavoring made by mixing different blends together or by adding other flavors to the mix. Some of the more popular tea flavors include:
Source Image by Wikipedia user lateasquirrel.
Tea contains a number of different antioxidants, one of which, catechins, actually makes up 30% of its weight. This antioxidant can help fight tumors. White and green teas contain the most antioxidants. On the other end of the spectrum, black tea has the most caffeine. Caffeine makes up about 3% of black tea’s dry weight, more than even coffee. The reason coffee gives you more of a buzz when you drink it though is that it’s less diluted than tea. Tea also has fluorine, which prevents dental decay.
Studies have shown that tea can help normalize your blood pressure, lower your stress levels, prevent heart disease, reduce depression and prevent diabetes. It also has germicidal properties that help you prevent sickness(which shows just how terrible my immune system is, given that I drink tea daily and still get sick all the time). A study released last year showed that white tea can boost your metabolism, reduce fat cells and help you lose weight. Another study that came out last year showed that drinking tea daily can reduce your chances of having a stroke by as much as 21%.
The tea plant grows year-round and though it prefers tropical and sub-tropical climates, it has survived as far north as England. Only the top one to two inches of a mature plant are used for tea. These parts of the plant are called flushes and the plant grows a new flush every week or so during growing season. The Chinese believe that a higher elevation makes for better tea plants because the plants grow slower, allowing the buds to become more flavorful.
The evergreen plants are sort of like poinsettias, in that those that aren’t properly cultivated will naturally grow into a tree.
Image by Wikipedia user Dave Oceano.
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Photo: daryl mitchell [Flickr]
Why waste all those shells from your lobster dinner when you can turn them into art? Here’s Lobster Man, as spotted by Daryl Mitchell in Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada.
That is all. Now you know what’ll be in my nightmare tonight! Link – via Rue The Day
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If you love Futurama, then you’ll certainly appreciate these adorably gross brain slug cupcakes. Just hope they don’t take over your mind after you eat them.
Flickr Link Via Craftzine
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As they say, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” With this calendar, you get an apple every day of the month and it helps you keep up with the days as well. The Serviceplan advertising agency of Munich, Germany created the apple calendar for AOK health insurance. Every month, fill it with 28, 30, or 31 apples and adjust the numbered calendar behind the transparent tube. Then eat one apple each day and see the calendar advance. Too bad the calendars aren’t for sale, but you may see them in AOK branch offices. Link -via bookofjoe
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McDonalds in Japan is selling a series of hamburgers called Big America. There are burgers named for Texas, California, New York, and Hawaii and they look really big. Too bad we don’t have them in America! Link
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Atari
Joystick Gum - $3.95
Ah, remember Atari? Now you can ruminate the good ol' days of video games by chewing on this Atari Joystick Gum (comes with a collector tin shaped like the retro controller).
From the Neatorama Shop: Link | More Offbeat Mints & Candies
Back in Stock:
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Olivia Putnal of Woman’s Day has pictures and descriptions of eight unusual chocolate-covered foods, including crickets, Fritos, beef jerky, and squid. Pictured above is a chocolate-covered onion, which photographer Jean-Paul de Guzman described as eating a raw onion “followed by a bite off of a Hershey’s chocolate bar.”
Link via The Presurfer
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Iberico ham began selling in London for £1,800 for a 15-pound leg joint. It’s the world’s most expensive pork, raised in western Spain and delivered in luxurious conditions:
The pigs were fed on a diet of acorns and roots to give the ham a distinctive flavour.
After being slaughtered their ham was salted and cured for three years, before going on sale in a hand-made wooden box wrapped in an apron made by a Spanish tailor.
Link via J-Walk Blog | Photo: BBC
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A woman named Lukka Sigurdardottir made this edible wedding dress. Or, alternatively, a wearable wedding cake.
Link via Digg | Image: Gather and Nest
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Dew Dew, Scallop and Squid candy, Gummy Collagen? While they are certainly strange – I’d be willing to try any of them.
If you thought the food in Japan was a bit strange, have you ever seen Japanese candy? Not everything is sweet or made of chocolate and sometimes the things made of chocolate are very surprising. Say what you will about Japanese cuisine, but they are extremely adventurous when it comes to new flavors, especially in candy. Whether you like your candy sweet, chocolaty, sour, or maybe even a bit savory there’s a Japanese candy out there that you’ve got to try. (We’ll be honest, there’s plenty to avoid too). Take a look at this sampling of Bizarre Japanese Candy and decide for yourself what sounds delicious or disgusting.
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Zombie Brain Gelatin Mold – $6.95
You know what’ll make a great after dinner dessert? How about … (you know it’s coming) braaaaaaaaains?
The Neatorama Shop has just gotten our shipment of the Zombie Brain Gelatin Mold (with recipes on how to make your very own creepy realistic gray brain gelatin, and worm infested zombie brain gelatin): Link
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Lee at Serious Eats spotted three different vendors in Thailand who sold ice cream sundaes served in hot dog buns.
The dessert was delicious: the bananas were chewy, the pineapple sweet and tart, the coconut ice cream rich, cold, and creamy, and the peanuts added the perfect amount of crunch and toasted flavor and the drop of milk brought all of the flavors together.
The bun? It got soggy pretty quickly (as I suspected) and if I ate it any slower, we would have had a real mess on our hands.
But it was a nice take on a portable sundae, minus the paper or plastic cup to throw out at the end! I kept thinking that it would have been interesting with a toasted bun.
If you toast that bread long enough, pretty soon you’ll invent the ice cream cone. Link -via J-Walk Blog
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Years ago, chef Dave Arnold expressed a desire for a substance that had the consistency, texture, and applicability of chocolate, but wasn’t chocolate. He wanted to be able to coat food in ketchup as one coats, for example, cherries in chocolate. After some experimentation, he was successful. Here’s his recipe:
1 kg de-odorized cocoa butter
325 g powdered tomato (spray dried or freeze dryed)
60 grams malt vinegar powder
25 grams salt
Spices to taste (onion powder, garlic powder, etc)
60 grams mycryo (to temper)
At the link, you can read about the preparation process, as well as see photos of the results. Pictured above are bits of chicken coated in the substance.
Link via J-Walk Blog
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My sister hosts a big game party every year, mostly non-video games (word games, board games etc.) This year she made 100 cupcakes, each with a decoration referring to a game, video and otherwise. Have a go at guessing them all! (keep your own score manually)
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