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Fresh wasabi: ugly but health giving

Fresh Wasabi with the perfectly cooked salmon. It’s all about chemistry really.

I’ve been eyeing-up the fresh Tasmanian wasabi from the potato man at Prahran Market for a while now and finally bought a $10 knob of the stuff.
It’s a scrawny, black warty root with diminiative leaves and it came wrapped in some damp paper. It doesn’t look anything special at all but is worth over $300 a kilo.
It’s quite difficult to grow, the best grown in cool running streams rather than in the ground.
It is a member of the cruciferae or brassica family which includes Horseradish (its nearest relative), mustard, cabbages, brussel sprouts and the sputnik-shaped kohlrabi all of which cost considerably less.
Under the knobbly black skin the flesh of the wasabi graduated from pale green to white.
On it’s own this plant is nothing. But when a cell is destroyed – when it is cut, for instance – two ripsnorting sinus-clearing chemicals are released the natural pesticides sinigrin and myrosin. The same thing happens when horseradish is cut or black mustard seeds crushed.
When you buy a tube or jar of wasabi it is unlikely that you’ll be tasting the real stuff. Often it is a mixture of horseradish and/or mustard and dyed green to get the right look.

Sinigrin, it turns out, is one of those miracle chemicals now thought to kill pre-cancerous cells, especially in the colon. To some degree all brassicas contains these chemicals which give them a unique flavour.
Until this weekend I didn’t know that all these vegetables were related. Butt it may explain why I’m crazy for all of them and many children aren’t.
So to any mums and dads out there whose children won’t eat their sprouts I would suggest you explain the consequences of colon cancer, not least the discomfort that I am told is felt after a visit to the proctology department.

RECIPE: Molecular salmon with fresh wasabi

One of the problems in cooking fish is not to overcook it. A simple waay to the perfect piece of fish is to cook it at a lower temperature, in my inaccurate oven somewhere between 60 and 70C.
This technique is building on my previous experiments with molecular cuisine or gastronomy slow cooking lamb chops and beef. I simply bathe it on olive oil. The scret is to keep checking the texture. When the lawyers of muscle start to seperate it is done.

Popularity: 26% [?]

I’m about to embark on the next of my molecular gastronomy experiments with Heston Blumenthal’s roast chicken which will take several days to prepare. But first a survey of other chefs’ approaching to roasting chicken.

It is perhaps apprpriate to kick-off with this one which I found in The Futurist Cookbook, first published in 1932. I particularly like Elizabeth David’s opinion on the slim volume as a “publication of preposterous new dishes”.

by futurist Aeropainer Diugheroff:

“Roast a chicken emptied of its insides. As soon as it is cold, make an opening in the back and fill the inside with red zablione on which are laid two grams of silver hundreds and thousands. Attach cockcombs all around the opening.”

Popularity: 25% [?]

The future of cooking: In the kitchen at Interlude 

A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon in the kitchen of Robin Wickens and his chefs at Interlude. He was developing a new lamb dish which involved spraying coffee in the air while eating it (you may recall later that night I sucked on the glass straw). This weekend my account of that afternoon and subsequent meal was published in The Australian.

Local chef George Biron points me towards Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a fascist and founder of the Futurist movement, who published his manifesto of cookery La Cucina Futurista – futurist cookery – in 1932. Apparently, the book had stuff like a meal where while dunking salami in coffee, you stroked a cat and had perfume sprayed in the air to the sounds of Wagner.

Marinetti’s thought diners were weighed down by pasta which filled stomachs. he also thought it made people placid and sceptical if it was eaten too frequently. In short pasta was subversive stuff.

According to Ask Oxford:

“This absurd gastronomic religion, he said, must be abolished immediately.”

“Predictably, these ideas provoked uproar in the Italian press and among the general public. In every restaurant and in every home there were arguments about the benefits or otherwise of a diet of pasta. The Mayor of Naples declared that vermicelli al pomodoro was the food of the angels; Marinetti’s reaction was that, if that were the case, it simply served to confirm the boredom of life in paradise.”

Everything was prescribed to be sensual. Ingredients included flowers, exotic fruit, coffee, raw eggs, and cloves and perfumes were to be sprayed in the dining room.

“…and the diners were given materials of different textures such as velvet and sandpaper to stroke with their left hand. Sweet was combined with savoury to produce startling effects, and bitter and sour tastes were given their place: sardines with pineapple, mortadella with nougat, cooked salami with coffee and cologne. An aphrodisiac cocktail was devised, consisting of pineapple juice, eggs, cocoa, caviar, red peppers, nutmeg, and cloves…”

I’ll leave the fascism alone for now. But I have a cat, Wagner and an atomiser.

More experiments in futuristic cooking coming soon. In the meantime, anybody got a copy of Marinetti’s book for sale?

Popularity: 30% [?]

…or molecular cooking experiments: part one

Can you tell which was cooked for 30 mins at 60C?

You have to wonder how Istanbul Halal Meats (609 Sydney Rd) does it on price. I picked-up five excellent and cheap Frenched lamb chops today for $5. You’ll pay at least $2 to $3 a chop anywhere else in Melbourne.

It was a strange experience because I bought a cheese pie and a Lebanese pizza next door at Tabet’s for $5 and crossed the road and randomly chose some Baklava, Lebanese sweets and Turkish delight which also cost $5. Does everything cost $5 here?

Whatever, the scene is set for the first of experiments in molecular cuisine on lamb chops which I shall serve with a foolproof Greek salad, which I’ll deconstruct that another time.

Usually I’d stick the chops on a blazing hot griddle. if I’m lucky, I’d remove them early enough to be rare. I’d then rest them for about ten minutes before serving. This method can be hit and miss. Sometimes the lamb is a little undercooked, sometimes a little overcooked. Getting the perfect pink centre can be tricky, especially if you are cooking for a large group.

But I’ve been learning how I can cook meat either in a low oven (Heston Blumenthal will cook a big steak for 18 hours at 50C) or in a ziplock bag in water at 60C. Tonight I’ve decided to cook three of the chops in the oven at 60C. I’d expected the lamb to take about 15 minutes but it was nearer 30. You have to check to see how they are doing and I took them out when they were starting to look slightly pink.

Then I slapped them on a smoking griddle for less than 30 seconds each side - enough time to seal them. You could do the same on a BBQ which will ensure perfect results each time.

So, was there any difference between the chops? The chops that had been cooked entirely on the griddle leaked juice while they were resting. If anything they were a little drier than the slower cooked chops. The slow cooked chops were slightly more moist and leaked no juice. We were both impressed with the results.

And the answer to the above question? The two chops of the right were cooked slowly; the one on the left entirely on the griddle.

Tonight’s experiment: tuna steaks.

Lamb chops go into the oven.

25 minutes later…ready for the griddle

Popularity: 29% [?]