Penthouse Cafe

18/12/2016

20/06/2012

15/06/2012

Our foods are mostly water. We don't think
of them that way, but in the context of cooking, we should. Virtually all fresh foods have very high
water contents. Most fruits and vegetables are
more than 80% water by weight; many are more
than 90%. A carrot (88%) has roughly the same
proportion of water as milk, and a fresh cucumber
(95%) contains more water than many mineral-
rich spring waters do.

12/06/2012

The actions of energy are central to a cook's
concerns. Energy heats food, and energy cools it; energy transforms flavors, textures, and colors. To
cook is to transform food by putting energy into it,
and to eat is to get energy out of food by trans-
forming it in a different way.

08/06/2012

The sagas of fiber, fat, and salt teach us that it is
very difficult to get the truth about the health implications of dietary choices. Three main
factors cloud the issues. First, it takes a long time
and a lot of money to rigorously test the benefits of a dietary system. Second, industrial food
companies and advocates can make a very good
living promoting claims, substantiated or not,
about dietary systems. Third, even when ideas are proven to be false, they tend to linger as part
of the conventional wisdom or popular view-point. Advocates want to keep selling diet books,
nutrition experts hate to admit that they are wrong, doctors and health organizations want to
maintain an aura of authority, and food companies want to keep selling products for which they
can claim health benefits.

08/06/2012

Gum arabic is made from the sap of a tree, and locust bean gum comes from, yes, the locust bean. Most hydrocolloids, in fact, have their origins in either plants or bacteria. Agar, alginate, and carrageenan come from seaweed. Pectin is made from fruit skin (mainly that of oranges squeezed for orange juice). Xanthan gum and gellan-just like yogurt and vinegar-are derived through fermentation by bacteria.

08/06/2012

Modernist ingredients like gellan, xanthan gum,
and other exotic-sounding compounds have led
some to voice concerns that Modernist food might
pose health risks. We are frequently asked, "Aren't
your dishes chock full of chemicals?"
We respond to that question with the honest
answer, "Of course they are-just like all food."
After all, everything in food is a chemical com-
pound. Just 90 elements occur naturally on Earth.
All matter on Earth is made from those elements,
linked in various ways into compounds-that is,
chemicals. All food, even the most natural or
organic, thus also consists entirely of chemical
compounds.

08/06/2012

Speculation about the role of diet in heart disease has spawned several very different dietary systems over the years. In one common view, all fat is bad for you, so a low-fat diet is healthiest. Others single out saturated fats, trans fats, or both. Still others praise unsaturated fats such as those in extra-virgin olive oils and omega-3 oils from salmon and other cold-water fish.

06/06/2012

Clearly, cultural and political factors impinge on decisions about food safety. If you doubt that, note the contrast between the standards applied to pork and those applied to beef. Many people love rare steak or raw beef served as carpaccio or steak tartare, and in the United States alone, millions of people safely eat beef products, whether raw, rare, or well-done. Beef is part of the national culture, and any attempt to outlaw rare or raw steak in the United States would face an immense cultural and political backlash from both the consumers and the producers of beef.

01/06/2012

Unfortunately, chefs have little legal recourse in cases such as this, because in most countries copyright laws restrict only the publication of cookbooks or recipes elaborated with commentary or detailed guidance; neither copying the simple list of ingredients nor making the dishes themselves is covered. Most artists retain the copyright to individual works: writers own their short stories, photographers own their images, and composers own their songs, even when these works appear on the Internet. Chefs do not have the same kind of ownership of their recipes. Thus, copying in cuisine is mostly a question of professional ethics.

31/05/2012

He made a number of novel ice creams and sorbets and served them at his restaurant, where he mixed liquid nitrogen into the ice cream base tableside with great drama, just as Marshall had suggested. Daguin also prepared liquid nitrogen-cooled dishes at dinners around the world, including a banquet for the prestigious international gastronomic society Chaine des Rotisseurs at The Pierre hotel in New York City. Daguin was the
first chef to write about the cryogen: he included a recipe for liquid nitrogen ice cream in his 1981 book Le Nouveau Cuisinier Gascon.

27/05/2012

Modernist dishes take on many forms, reflecting the diversity of culinary visions at work among their creators. The appearance of the dish is often an integral part of the dialog between chef and customer. Surprise, drama, humor, and even misdirection are part of what makes Modernist cooking so unique-both to make and to eat.