The Science of Web Art, Design and Development

A few weeks ago I posted an article about food sites that I enjoy.

Those who enjoyed the mediterrasian link will be happy to know that mediterrasian book is available for pre-selling at Amazon.

Two excellent food links.

www.Mediterrasian.com is about gourmet living and eating based on Asiatic and Mediterranean ways of living. I usually get tired of “healthy food” sites because usually they utlimately try to tell you that the perfect nutritional ballance on food is automatically the source of flavor and love for food when that is actually… well… untrue.

However, it is actually possible to eat deliciously and nutritive food at the same time.  Maintained by a couple settled in New Zealand, mediterrasian.com manage to offer a way of living thas delicious and healthy at the same time, without that “monk-a-like” way of living, usually attached to the healthy issue. Worth to know for people who love to cook.

www.SlowFood.com is a site that I knew only this weekend, although Slow Food exists since 1986. Slow Food is a magazine aimed to prove that cooking and eating are not only primal animal necessities, but they can actually be two joyful and pleasant activities.

And as everything in life, must be done with the necessary

Wedding parties are often though as big parties, with plentiful amounts of food.

Two weeks ago, Anna and I went to the wedding party of Mariana and Jerônimo. A very small, though very sophisticated party.

For start, it all happened on their appartament, so the whole party wasn’t much bigger than a couple dozen people.

DJ Hisato’s music ranged from Bossa Nova to electronic, nicely chosen, matching with the whole concept. The concept itself was very modern.

Sometimes I wonder why people sometimes stick to traditions of centuries ago without giving them a touch of modernity. Not because marriage is a millenar tradition that one have to marry like people did centuries ago.

Now, in my opinion, what best showed the perfect blending of tradition and modernity was the buffet

The buffet was all pasta. Raviolli, Fetuccini, Spagetti and cappeletti lighly cooked, white souce, red sauce and a miriad of different things to put on, ranging from garlic and basil to a plentiful of different cheeses and, last but not least, two cooks to finish your plate, on real time.

It was like a small version of a big italian wedding. Cleverly joining style and the idea of a vast buffet over few ingredients, for few people almost reveal by itself that was a weding of a desinger with a computer scientist.

Are you fond of bread? Well, who isn’t?

Bread is one of the most eaten foods in the world, it exists in almost every culture around the world and through time. There are sweet breads, salty breads, plain, filled and so on. Some of them have religious or comemorative meanings, others are for everyday meals.

Complex as it seems, bread is basically just a mixture of water and flour.

Olivier Anquier, an excellent french boulanger who lives in Brazil would say that bread has four basic ingredients: flour, yeast, salt and water.

The secret of the bread resides more on how to work the dough than in what it contains.

There are even breads that don’t use yeast. The cristian wafer used in cerimonies may have or may have not yeast, depending on the church. In attempts of reintegrating Catholic church with the Orthodox church (circa Xth Century) this has been a major issue. Several day-by-day breads around the world don’t use yeast as well, and of course, they have to be very thin.

The salt increases the flexibility of the dough, which is important for it to grow properly instead of cracking and letting the gas go. And, of course, gives the salty taste to salty bread. But even sweet breads need a pinch of salt.

The important things about working the dough are (a) to exercise its flexibility by straining it (without riping it off) and (b) to air it by letting air go into the dough. There are plenty other techniques for this and that, but this will do for a fisrt time boulanger.

Making bread is actually very simple, you put a mountain of flour with the salt on a table (or a bowl), make a hole in the center, put cold water and the yeast in tiny pieces on the water. And start to work until all the flour has been incorporated. Keep working (airing and straining) the dough for a while, until it is very elastic.

Despite popular belief, cold water does work and makes the dough grow more slowly, but better. Don’t be afraid to use it, no matter how cold it is.

Master Anquier says the right proportion is

• 1Kg of flour
• 600 ml of water
• 20g of yeast
• 20g of salt

Hoever, there are different approaches to the subject.

The dough must remain in a comfortable place (like the oven, turned off and cold), covered with a humid cloth until it doubles its size, then you have to work it again, make the breads and let them double size again. Then you can put them on low pre-heated oven (about 180~190 Celcius degrees), until they are golden on the oustide.

That is a basic bread, that you can make automatically when you get used to it. A serious boulanger will see that is more important to learn the proper details of working the bread that seeking for new recipes and thinking in new things to add to it.

However, there are plenty good things to add to the bread, a simple google search will reveal a miriad of possibilities. And this is when the title of this article comes in.

Last week I had the idea that adding to bread a taste of gorgonzola, fine herbs and a little olive oil.

Fine herbs is a french mixture of arsley, chervil, chives and tarragon, that you can buy combined or combine yourself, either fresh or dry. A fine olive oil and a good gorgonzola cheese are essencial for a good result.

Put about 4 tablepoons of olive oil per Kg of flour, and put the grated cheese and herbs to your taste while working the dough. Make sure you work enough the dough so the cheese and the herbs are evenly distributed.

Have fun!

First of all, I want to thank all comments on the first post. It is always wonderful to know people are reading and enjoying, but above all, it is good to learn from the readers as well.

Taylor’s comment made me think about a new subject to talk about. For those who can’t raed italian, I’ll explain. Taylor is wondering whether it is better to mix all cheeses into a sauce, instead of eating them “as they are” while drinking good beer, if there is a Synergy on the final product”.

Synergy

As a starting point, the word synergy seems extremely appropriated to talk about cuisines.

Synergy is the phenomenon of joining things toghether to create a final product of more impact that the sum of the parts.

Of course in kitchen is all about synergy. Take for instance the pasta itself.

Pasta is usually no more than flour, semolina, water and eggs. While we can drink water and eat a scrambled egg, it is dificult to imagine flour and semolina being good by themselves.

Even the scrambled egg would probably had salt, joining eggs and salt certainly creates synergy.

To complete the discussion take spices. Spices are not meant to be eaten by themselves, ultimately, the role of spices is to increase the synergy of the dish.

Synaesthesia

Some specialist say that all our taste is based on four basic tastes that our tongue is capable to detect through srtuctures called taste buds.

We have taste buds to detect Salty, Sour, Sweet and Bitter (There is controversy about a fifth one called Umami, but that is irrelevant to our discussion).

What industrialized, artificially flavored food does, is to recriate the levels of the basic tastes, and through that you car really fell strawberry flavor on any cheap youghurt.

However, real taste is a lot more complex than that. Even if you could map all tastes and create an exact replica of your favorite food, taste takes a lot more things into account: texture, humidity, smell, even the ambiance.

At this point I want to introduce a word to complement the discussion: Synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is the neurological mix of senses. For instance when you think a color is “screamming at you”.

Kitchen is also all about synaesthesy. That is why this blog is about food and lifestyle, is not possible to talk about the food without the lifestyle, because eating and cooking are synaesthesic processes.

What about the cheese discussion?

And what about Taylor’s wonderings? Well, eating cheese while drinking good beer or wine is something I love. I would probably be eating cheese and drinking something while I prepare the sauce. But the sauce is supposed to use on pasta, bruscheta or whatever you like, so it is suposed to be all mixed up and mix with other flavors.

besides, you have the texture, that is very important. Mixing all those ingredients confuses the taste in a very pleasant way. Just to do a very synaesthesic comparison, the cheese sauce is like listen to an orchestra, while eating cheeses separately is like listening to each instrument.

The choice of doing the sauce or not is all about synergy and synaesthesy.

Have fun!

Yesterday, Anna and I were comming back from work and, as usual, discusing what dinner would be.

We usually like to make food “from the scratch”, but Carl Sagan said once: “In order to make an apple pie from the scratch, you must first create the universe”. Nothing could be more true, that is why, despite a lot of gourmets claim that things have to be done “from the scratch”, I refuse this concept.

In our kitchen we always keep a wide range of ingredients from very elementary things, like several kinds of flour and semolina to industrialized good food, like Barilla pasta.

In the middle of this, we have dozens of spices and we grow our own basil, but this is more like a hobby that anything else. We are often buying basil, because we can’t grow enough at the apartament. But is nice to have ours in a vase, because it is easier to go there to get some, eventually, than going to the market.

However, above all, cooking is a lot o fun. So it is really unimportant if your food is from the scratch or not, the important is that it tastes good and that you had fun cooking as well as eating.

But how fun can be gourmet cooking dinner every day after a whole day of work?

One thing is spend a saturday afternoon cooking for a dinner party. Cooking for hours every day is something else. However, gourmet cooking is not about spending hours in the kitchen, it is about appreciating, understanding and inventing your food. With the right company and ingredients at reach you can invent your own formaggio sauce in a matter of minutes,

So we decided to cook Barilla’s Bucattini we had at home and create owr own cheese sauce.

I decided to put this sauce as the first post of our blog, because that is a really nice way to introduce it. We very rarely follow recipes strictly, and is is true in the kitchen as well as in about everything else. Gourmet cooking, gourmet living, and that is what this blog is about.

It is almost impossible to ruin this sauce, and is almost impossible to say that there is a version that is the best, it is all a matter of taste. Some things in the kitchen and anywhere else are impossible to ruin by improvise with a little understanding, and this sauce is one of those.

For the cheese sauce you must put on low fire a mixture of

• Sour cream
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Provolone
• Mozzarella
• Parmisan
• Gorgonzola
• A Soft cheese (I used Catupiry)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I used an aromatic oil with pepper and cardamom we prepared at home)

The sour cream is important for the texture and to keep the sauce liquid. The Olive oil is good for the texture and flavor. The cheeses are just a matter of taste.

Put everything together, the cheese should be grated. Take it to melt in low heat while moving gently with a wooden spoon and use it immediately after is all homogeneous.

How much of each ingredient? I don’t know, how much you like them? Almost any proportion of them will give a nice sauce. Some proportions could be better that others, guide yourself by taste.

Have fun!