The joy of deep frying!

Deep frying in an ancient method of preparing food. It is all around us, like French fries. Whole franchises have been built on the art of deep-frying (KFC anyone?) Yet time and again we are presented with deep fried food that is soggy, dank and makes your esophagus revolt. Why? I think people have lost the art of deep frying.

For a long time, I had an electric deep fryer. It did an OK job frying French fries, but it bombed with other things such as Pooris. I decided I had had enough and tossed the deep fryer and started frying in a huge cast iron wok. It made a world of difference. The food came out crisp, light, bright and refreshing. That is because one of the major purposes of cooking, no matter how it is done, is to get rid of the water in the food. When the oil is as hot as it should be, the water in the food is transformed to steam and gushes outward at such speed that oil can't get inside your food. Oil can only penetrate the outermost layer of your food. Deep fried food is not necessarily more unhealthy. I fry only in peanut oil, which has no trans fats and does not decompose into gunk when it's heated. If you have the money, you can use clarified butter for deep frying, which is the best. However, deep frying can be expensive.

I am attaching some photos of deep fried wontons I made recently. I know I used Gyoza skins instead of proper wonton skins, so they don't have long ears.

Sichuan Beef

The Sichuan a.k.a Szechuan province of China is known for its fiery cuisine. A common ingredient in Sichaun cuisine is crushed red chili pepper -- seeds and all. That is interesting because chilies are native to the Americas and reached China only in the 1600s. Before the chilies arrived to China, a native spice, the Sichuan pepper was common. The taste of the Sichuan pepper is not hot like the chili or pungent and clean like black pepper, but a little lemony and rather vague. You could not import Sichuan pepper to the US until recently.

I made a popular dish recently, called the Sichuan Beef. I used top sirloin steak and sliced it as thin as I could, but it is clear to me that I need more practice dicing things finely with a cleaver. The kitchen got a bit oily with all that frying in batches. Two pounds of top sirloin lasted of all 3 hours for 3 persons and a toddler.

What are you eating today?

This is a transcript of a speech I recently gave at my local Toastmasters Club. I have a PhD in a related field that supposedly gives me some credibility in this area. The title is a pun on Joyce Carol Oates frequently anthologized short story Where are you going? Where have you been?

What are you eating? What have you eaten?

So what did you have for dinner? What are you planning for lunch? Are you eating healthy? Do you think you are eating healthy on the Low-carb diet? The low-fat diet? Expensive pre-cooked entrée? Do you have any idea what you are pouring or shoving down your gullet? Today I will discuss some major misconceptions we have about our food. I promise that you will look differently at the food you put on your plate at the end of this talk.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
HFCS. It’s in every industrial food product you can lay your hands on. High fructose corn syrup sets America apart from rest of the world. Does Mexican Coca-cola have HFCS? Nope. Anywhere in Europe? Nope. People have called it sugar on crack. Some studies have shown that you can consume high amounts of HFCS without realizing it. It’s not that HFCS is cheaper than sugar. It is cheaper in the US largely due to import quotas and tariffs on sugar. It is advanced because it makes logistical sense. It does not spoil, and pound for pound is sweeter. You ever wonder why it is so cheap to super size your soda? That is because restaurants get SYRUP to which they add water and fizz and bring to your table. It costs a restaurant 9 cents to make a 16 oz drink for you. You probably pay $2 for it. HFCS is here because it makes industrial sense, even though it tastes decidedly worse.


All Natural or 100% Natural
You probably feel good putting stuff labeled all natural onto your shopping cart, thinking your children are eating healthy. Cadbury Schweppes was labeling 7 Up as "All Natural" or "100% Natural", despite containing high-fructose corn syrup. While the U.S. FDA has no definition of "natural", there is nothing natural about HFCS due to the high level of processing and the use of at least one genetically modified (GMO) enzyme required to produce it. In 2007, Cadbury Schweppes agreed to stop calling 7 Up All Natural. They now call it 100% Natural Flavors. Mamma Mia! Even if anything is derived from rotten insects, it can still be labeled all natural. As a matter of fact, Tropicana is bugging your food, literally. Bug juice and carmine is what makes their grapefruit juice red. Buyer beware!

Trans Fats
If you remember your Chemistry lessons, you may know of cis- and trans- forms of a molecule. In trans form two groups are on the opposite sides of the molecular backbone but in the cis version they are on the same side. This simple difference makes a HUGE difference to their qualities, especially in how human body treats them. Trans fats may be monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. You may not even know that you are eating trans fats. Your food may say it contains hydrogenated fat or palm oil or corn oil. Trans fat remains in the blood stream for a much longer period of time and is more prone to arterial deposition and subsequent plaque formation. It has many other deleterious effects such as an increased likelihood of diabetes, coronary disease, liver dysfunction, obesity, and more. Why is it used? Better shelf life. You can fry in them for much longer before they go rancid.

Salt
Ah, the staff of civilizations. We need it, but too much of it can cause severe problems such as kidney stones, porous bones, high blood pressure. It can kill you too: Salt solutions have been used in China as a traditional suicide method. Back in the US, three slices of a 14” Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Stuffed Crust Pizza have 1,560 calories. Well it sounds like a lot, but wait there is more: they contain a whopping 5 grams of Sodium. All you need in a day is half a gram. They give you enough salt for TEN DAYS in one meal. Wow. What do you think of desserts, eh? Raspberry Scone from the Atlanta Bread company contains 1.75 grams of sodium, same as seven servings of bacon. Too much salt makes you angry, unproductive, depressed, thirsty and dumb.

Your food is becoming like cardboard, because though it has become cheaper, it has lost its soul as well. It’s being prepared like cardboard. The next time you go grocery shopping, read the labels carefully. There is nothing natural about 100% natural. Genetically modified foods are not Just what nature intended. Just because an advertisement said something is healthier, it doesn’t make it so. Remember: if fat doesn’t kill you, sugar will, and if you survive sugar, salt will. If you are feeling beat up, bloated, fat, cantankerous, have a murderous headache and an unquenchable thirst: look to your food for clues.

Why Olive Garden Sucks

Worthless place with pathetic food, needless snobbery and full of pretenders who think they know fine dining! I recently went to OG after a hiatus of four years, and was quickly reminded of the the cause of my long rejection.

Service was so-so, the ushers were bitchy-snobbish and wore a rubbery smile and flashed cold eyes and then rolled their eyes like a perverse urban Madonna.

First up were free breadsticks. This was an improvement to their earlier super-salty, soggy and oily bread, but it was still too salty and too margarine-y. You think they use butter? Ha!

The minestrone soup had a distinct taste of canned tomato paste and the kidney beans and garbanzo beans came from cans and were overcooked. The Tuscan sausage soup was the high watermark of our meal, it was creamy with a hint of bacon and contained slices of potato. That would do as a passable appetizer.

The appetizers were fried a million times (mille fois frié, a pun on mille feuille). You could kill with those chicken fingers, even stab. Yep, they were that hard! So dark was the crust that I thought I had fallen into a fresh dug grave. Toasted raviolis were over-toasted, many times over, generating only a slightly lighter hue. The fried mozzarella squares were all right, but how can you screw THAT up?

Up for entrées, the lasagna was all right, if a tad too oily and salty. The Fettuccine Alfredo Chicken sucked in all three measures. The fettuccine were overcooked for 3-4 minutes, so in stead of being al dente, they were al gum. As a matter of fact, at the bottom of my pile of noodles, some were COLD. This means the noodles were boiled, thrown into a colander to stay, and they were not tossed with the sauce! The sauce was floury and lacked the delicacy of fresh grated Parmesan cheese. But what do I expect when I know their sauces are shipped frozen. Eyes wide? Aghast? Tsk tsk tsk. To top it off their chicken was cheap quality and watery, no spring to it. The grilling lines were tasty though.

House Special
My wife had "Tour of Italy" which had Fettuccine Alfredo, of which I would say no more. The second item was lasagna, which I have already commented on. Finally, it had what Americans think is true Italian food: Chicken Parmesan. Now once again the crust was hard and dark. And if you pressed the patty, it did not give or spring back: in cooking school, that means you have fucked up a chicken breast, and should be ashamed of yourself. There wasn't much chicken inside either due to heavy use of meat tenderizer. It was an overfried schnitzel with thrice-thick breading.

My daughter wanted a dessert but I vetoed it. I told her I would make the real Zabaglione at home with real Marsala wine. This evening I made Chicken a la Milanèse with Sauce Parisienne and we ate well. It however brought to mind what I hated about OG and why I stopped going there.

If you are a gourmet, stay the hell away from here. If you want to impress those who are not foodies or gourmands even, bring them here. It's like pouring Seagram 7 out of Chivas Regal or Glenfiddich. If they don't know it, it won't hurt 'em.

Surfer dude and unified theories

The holy grail of Physics is a Unified Theory, i.e. a theory that describes different but fundamental forces, such as electromagnetism, the weak interaction and the strong interaction. Except for String theory, no Unified theory has been proposed. And String theory apparently cannot be tested.

A surfer-dude named Lisi (he holds a PhD in Physics from UC San Diego) has proposed such a theory, called An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything. See original coverage here.

It looks simple and elegant, and came from someone outside the academic circles. Do similarities to Einstein end there? Only time will tell.