Category Archives: Food

Carbonylated Surf and Turf

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As a desperate strategy to fight insomnia, Th’ Gaussling often finds himself watching C-Span at 1 AM.  Congressional testimony or a televised speech at the International Museum Docent Convention by the Acting Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Stratosphere is often enough to initiate somnolence.

But early this morning was different. A panel of FDA administrators were before a House Committee on Commerce Chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. At issue was H.R. 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act. Apparently, the proposed law will remove requirements for certain kinds of food labeling, in particular the presence of certain additives may not be part of manditory labeling.

What has come to light is the industrial practice of exposing meats and fish to an atmosphere of dilute carbon monoxide (CO, ca 0.4 %) in order to maintain a red color in the flesh.  Meat naturally turns brown on exposure to air over a short period. Industry has been wrestling with this for a long time, adopting and subsequently abandoning various schemes for maintaining the reassuring red color of meats and certain fish. Carbon monoxide coordinates with iron in haemoglobin to afford a complex that renders the tissues red in color. The FDA defines CO as a fixative in this application, rather than a preservative.

As a result of the use of this scheme, it is possible to keep meats and fish with a saleable red appearance for much longer. This reduces store losses due to the non-marketability of brown meat.

The House Commerce Committee was split down the isle in terms of its concern for this matter. Democratic committee members voiced considerable concern over the subterfuge of artificially reddening meat, allowing unwary consumers to falsely conclude that the meat could be fresher than it really is. Republican members seemed disinterested in the matter and several voiced concern that the FDA should spend it’s time with Salmonella rather than CO. The honorable Republican member from Kentucky tried to suggest that as a “simple country doctor”, he was having trouble understanding the issues and pronouncing the words (Rep. Elmer T. Bonehead, R-KY).

Whereas many of the members soft pedaled their questions, Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan, offered no quarter to the FDA group. In particular he focused his attention of Director of Food Additive Safety, Laura Tarantino.  In earlier testimony, Tarantino was a picture of confidence. Her knowledge of the statutes and the Byzantine procedural details as well as her confidence and instant recall was impressive. However, when Dingell’s time for questions came along, he went after her with rapid fire questions, not allowing time for her to qualify her answers or fend off subtext.  “Just answer the question, yes or no”. It was interesting to see.  Dingell was obviously disgusted with the FDA.  The regulations and protocols that govern FDA movement are very complex and apparently even the administrators have faint grasp on much of it.

Director Tarantino stated that no specific rule-making concerning CO fixatives had been completed because it was still under study.  The working assumption was that CO was considered GRAS- Generally Recognized as Safe. These assumptions are often advanced by industry and accepted with scant examination by FDA.

When asked about the general safety of CO in the product, one FDA manager stated that the added CO posed no hazard. I have no reason to doubt this. But the real issue is consumer deception. I think even libertarians would have to agree that without disclosure of food additives, the market cannot rationally award its demand to preferred providers. You can bank on the notion that consumers are particular about meat and freshness. HR 4167 is a step backwards for consumers and we can only hope that good sense prevails in the House.

Enomagnetic Resonance

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Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopists have finally crawled down off their crosses and condescended to the application of their technology to something really useful- the study of wine NMR spectra. If you believe the attached article, a restaurant in NJ has purchased an NMR spectrometer for the purpose of determining the quality of wine.  Evidently, the contents of a cork-sealed bottle can be examined by proton and 13C NMR.

Jeepers.  I wonder if it is hard to get boxed wines to spin inside the magnet? \;-)

One question. Does the rotating frame turn the opposite direction for Australian wines? 

Rhubarbarita Organoleptic Trials

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Th’ Gaussling has been a lazy blogger lately.  Life has been intruding into my blogging time. 

This weekend I’m gonna try ginnin’ up a batch of Rhubarbarita’s. Rhubarb is a good natural source of oxalic acid (for the uninitiated, that was a joke).

Being from the Iowegian belt of middle earth, I have a fondness for porkchops and rhubarb pie.  I know- it’ll kill me eventually. 

Rhubarbarita Update.  I prepared ca 500 mL of rhubarb juice for formulation experiments. To a stainless steel 2 quart pot was added ~500 g of rhubarb stalks cut into chunks ~2 cm in length and taken to a reflx in a 2:1 mixture of water:Karo corn syrup with a lid on the pot to help retain volatile flavorants.  The chunks were boiled for 10 minutes whereupon they began to disintegrate.  The stalks were crushed and the resulting slurry was separated via metal strainer. The greenish solids were discarded and the resulting cloudy pink extract was charged into a sealable container and refrigerated. 

The purpose was to obtain a rhubarb syrup suitable for formulation with various liquors, Tequila in particular. Corn syrup was chosen for sweetness and viscosity. Some observations from the organoleptic trials-

  • Rhubarb juice prepared in the fashion described (vide supra) has a low flavor potency with only a small amount of tartness. It has a distinct flavor and agreeable color, but does not jump out at you.
  • Rhubarb juice has little natural sweetness, so a sweetner must be added to provide the expected mouthfeel and sweet aspect worthy of a drink fitted with an umbrella.
  • The 2:1 ratio of water to syrup is not satisfactory in regard to sweetenss or viscosity.  A 1:1 ratio should be tried.
  • As the sole flavorant, the rhubarb extract is not flavor-intense enough or exotic enough to expect repeat consumption from foo-foo umbrella drink consumers when used for Margharita formulation.
  • A properly formulated Margharita on the rocks should have good mouthfeel with sweet and tart attributes as well as a jab of citrus in addition to the exotic agave flavor of the Tequila. 
  • The addition of lime juice was found to markedly improve the organoleptic test. 

In summary, the experimental Rhubarbarita described above was judged to have an acceptable flavor, though hardly exciting or memorable.  It was found empirically that the addition of fresh lime juice contributed substantially to the overall impact of the formulation. The impact of a “bottom shelf” Tequila for the experiment is unclear at this time.

Colloidal Porcine Lipids with Capsaicin-Lambda Max 550 nm

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As a gastronaut, I have been in pursuit of the perfect chili verde for quite some time.  Fundamentally, chili verde is a type of gravy: a dispersion of lipid phase (preferably pork lipids), a dispersant (starches), an aqueous phase, phytochemicals (capsaicin, cumin extracts, etc), pork, and assorted plant tissues.  It is called green chili mostly because it is not red.  That is, it lacks red chili’s.  It is more or less green by default owing to the minor jalapeno or other chili components. 

Chili verde can be consumed as a soup with or without tortillas. It is also a wonderful sauce to drown a burrito or other variations of foods wrapped in tortillas.  When used as a sauce the rheology is quite inportant.  The chili verde must flow readily, but it must also coat the burrito or enchilada in a fashion so as to form a layer substantial enough to impart flavor and release enough heat to melt any cheese that might be applied. 

I’m an experimental gastronomer, not a theorist.  Much can be said about what constitutes authentic Mexican food.  I happen to prefer what tastes best, not what is stringently authentic.  When we use the word “authentic”, what do we really mean anyway?   Mexican food is now a kind of gastronomic diaspora- it has been dispersed in all directions (well, except for Europe) and is evolving.

Here is the latest revision– To a large stock pot is added 454 g of pork sausage or diced pork.  As the pork is browning, one half of a medium onion is diced and added to the browning meat.  Several cloves of minced garlic are added to the mix.  After the meat is browned, 6 cups of water is added and the mixture is heated to a gentle boil.  To the vessel is added 1 tsp of NaCl (or to taste), 1 finely diced jalapeno pepper, 1/3 cup diced Anaheim pepper, 1 tablespoon of cumin, 1 teaspoon of ground chili pepper, 1/4 cup corn meal, and one finely diced tomatillo.  The mixture is allowed to simmer for 30 minutes.  To a cup with 1/4 cup of warm water is added 2 tablespoons of corn or arrow root starch and the solids vigorously dispersed in the water (no lumps).  The starch slurry is added to the pot and the resulting mixture is simmered at low heat for 10 minutes to afford a mixture that should have the consistency of a gravy. Beware-  it is possible to overheat the composition and wreck the dispersion. 

Comment on the above lot:  Pretty good, I’d give it a 9 out of 10. Perhaps a bit more cumin.  Actually, a fresh salsa with cilantro & jalapeno would do the job on a burrito.

In a later post I will discuss fabrication techniques related to the burrito. For now, bon appetit!

UV-Vis Spectrum of POM Pomegranate Juice

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Below is a link to a UV-Vis spectrum of POM brand Pomegranate Juice.  The graph shows two spectra- one is a simple dilution of POM-brand pomegranate juice. The other, lower extinction, spectrum was a simple dichloromethane (DCM) extraction of undiluted pomegranate juice as it comes out of the bottle. The extraction was done with a 1:1 v/v ratio of DCM to juice. Notably, the DCM extract contained no visible color. The layers emulsified and had to sit for ~10 minutes to separate. The DCM extract was dried over a bit of magnesium sulfate and filtered.  The undiluted extract was submitted directly to analysis. The dashed curve is the spectrum of the extract.

What is interesting about the extract is that the absorption maxima do not align with the maxima of the whole juice.  The DCM soluble fraction is quite different electronically from the balance of the components. Indeed, the extinction drops off to 0.026 by 350 nm and drops to near zero thereafter.  It is important to note that the absorbance of the extract is based on a much more concentrated solution, so a direct comparison of absorbances with the highly diluted whole juice is not valid. Focus instead on the wavelength of the maxima.

I ran the spectrum of the whole juice as a 500 to 1 dilution in distilled water.  No attempt was made to buffer the pH of the water or to filter the juice. I fully realize that there are experimental control issues to contend with here- i.e., pH dependence, turbidity, oxidative degradation due to air exposure, etc. 

POM Pomegranate Juice UV-Vis

According to the literature, pomegranate juices contain varying amounts of polyphenolic, tannin-type species not just from the juice, but also material that is released from the rind in the pressing process.  So further experiments should try to obtain juice that is pressed in a way to discourage the inclusion of materials from other plant tissues.

According to one source, the components of pomegranate juice can stabilize the level of PSA in men who have prostate cancer.  Whether it works via the anti-oxidant properties or some other more specific interaction is unclear.

Just what is the point of running these spectra?  My original interest related to the visible part of the spectrum. I wanted to know what the visible spectrum of this intensely colored juice looked like.  What is evident is that for all of the extinction in the visible part of the spectrum (>350 nm), the UV band is much more intensely “colored”. That is, the extinction is much higher in the UV range (<350 nm). Why UV-Vis spectra?  Because, silly, I don’t have an NMR. But I do have a UV-Vis spectrometer.

Well, that’s not quite true. I can run a proton NMR of the crude material, but given that pomegranate juice is a plant fluid, all I’m going to see is a forest of peaks.  Actually, more to the point, others have isolated components from this fruit.  My interest is in the reduction capacity of the pigments.

Extracting structural data from a UV-Vis spectrum is not really possible. UV-Vis spectroscopy is about electronic transitions and a wide variety of species overlap appreciably, so structural determinations of components in complex mixtures is out of the question.  Furthermore, pomegranate juice is sensitive to oxidative degradation and is likely to be quite sensitive to pH (next on the agenda), so it’s thermal and O2 exposure history may be important (i.e., has it been Pasteurized, etc).  So it’s back to the drawing board.  

Gastronaut

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I’ll admit to being a “Gastronaut”- someone who is driven to seek out and explore new dining and food experiences.  I enjoy the fine and unusual restaurant experience. I like good service and exquisite food. One of my favorite foodies is Anthony Bourdain. He wrote a book a few years ago called “Kitchen Confidential“, the gastronomic biography of a hard working, hard drinking cook and graduate of the CIA. Bourdain understands food and what motivates people to seek an unusual dining experience. He is a gastronomic cognoscenti who can cuss and spit like a sailor. 

Having been in the sales game, I have had the chance to dine in some really fine restaurants all over the northern hemisphere.  I’ve dined in a fantastic Georgian restaurant in Moscow featuring armed guards and metal detectors, London’s Indian restaurants, steak houses in Houston, BBQ joints in San Antonio, haute cuisine in New Orleans, Las Vegas (yeah, baby!!), & Tokyo ($$$), perogies in South Bend, god-knows-what in Taipei, pork tenderloin in Iowa, salmon in Seattle, cheese in Holland, really expensive Cognac in Paris, vodka in Perm, pastrami in Manhattan, and on and on.  My god it’s been a great ride.

I’ll never forget the transcendental gastronomic experience I had on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was a dish featuring a hard boiled egg with the cap sliced off exposing the yoke, nestled on a slice of toasted bagette with truffle shavings and a truffle sauce. With it I had a glass of a fine Merlot.  I can still recall the comingled flavors of truffle and the smokey/woody/currant aspect of the Merlot.  Jesus, I’m drooling on the keyboard …

But what I really miss when I travel and what I crave when I get home to Colorado is some good, hot & sassy Mexican food.  The kind that is titrated with jalapeno and crinkles your cheeks like hot cellophane when you eat it. If you don’t have sweat running down your forehead and you’re not suckin’ down icewater like a fiend, you haven’t hand the full experience.