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The Science Of Good Food

Male: Hey, everyone welcome back to Le Gourmet TV today were here with David Joachim, coauthor of “The Science of Good Food” and I got to tell you. Some people might be scared away but the word science on the front of the cool book but when you get into it absolutely incredible. David Joachim: Well the whole idea here is that science in powers you. Male: Yes. David Joachim: If you know what going on in the kitchen, you're in control you can cook better you can make better food, you can manipulate a recipe instead of just following it blindly. If you know what’s happening and why you would swap out one ingredient for another for instance the book is set up from A to Z so you can look for whatever it is your cooking or you’re interested in quickly and find the information you’re looking for. So it’s very accessible plus there are more than a hundred of recipe’s demonstrating signs and principles such as the principles of custard which we’ll be talking about today. Were making an orange flange a recipe from the book and that the custard is very sensitive because we’ve got eggs that coagulate they could scramble things can go wrong. So we have insurances to there to make sure – to make sure that that doesn’t happened we’ll talk about those but the first step in making this recipe is making a caramel. Essentially liquefying granulated sugar and browning it. so were going to mix together some granulated sugar. Male: Okay. David Joachim: With a little bit of cointreau or other orange liqueur, a little corn syrup, which is an invert sugar and this, helps to prevent the granulated sugar from re-crystallizing. A little bit of water just to get this nice and liquid the water is going to boil off were only adding enough water to make this liquid. Male: So that the change will not occur into the water if it was left. David Joachim: Exactly, browning the caramelization of sugar, which on called 1:41 this does not happened solely about 330-degrees, so you know that the water has to be boiled off because that’s getting to 212-degrees were talking about Fahrenheit. Now were putting this into microwave oven. Male: Okay and that’s in everybody’s kitchen. David Joachim: Yes. Male: No especial equipment there. David Joachim: And what we’ll do this for about four to six minutes in your microwave oven, often sugars caramelized on the stove top you would do this in a sauce pan but because sugar is so sensitive on a stove top you need to brush down the side with a wet pastry brush. You may put a lid on it to help trap some steam and keep those sugar crystals down in the liquid so they don’t re-crystallized. Well in a microwave oven, the whole process is a lot easier. You stick it in there for four to six minutes depending on the strength of your oven, you just let it go, and then you have this wonderful caramelized sugar. And this is the first step to flange recipe, you pour it into the ramekin and swirl it around very quickly it’s going to start to firm up and harden just like a lollipop or hard candy wood. Male: Pretty much immediately. David Joachim: Yes, you can see that happening right away. So you want to swirl quickly to make sure you’re covering the bottom a little bit off the sides if you can get it and the next step is making a custard. Which is a mixture of eggs and dairy products usually cream, that the reason that this is a difficult thing to monitor and to make successfully is the eggs are very sensitive? They coagulate typically blended eggs; scrambled eggs will coagulate at temperature between 166 or 188-degrees. Well when you add in some sugar and some milk the rest of the custard. You raise the coagulation temperature above a 180-degree. Male: Okay. David Joachim: So what happens is instead of the eggs scrambling and forming curds like they would in scrambled eggs you actually get all of the ingredients suspended in this wonderfully gelatinizes gel and that that’s the creamy luscious texture of custard. Male: I think it gets that wonderful mouth feeling. David Joachim: Right, so to make the custard where we’ve got three whole eggs, four egg yolks and were just going to whisk this all together. This is an orange flange so we’ve some orange juice and a little bit of salt. And you just want to whisk this until it’s nice and frothy. If you’ve got and electric mixer you could use that as well. It would be probably about a minute or so with an electric mixer. This should be good and frothy so everything is blended and what were going to do is very gradually add our cream mixture to that. This is a heavy cream and light cream. A little bit of sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and orange zest. Male: Okay. David Joachim: And we have heated this on the stovetop for just a couple of minutes until it’s steaming you just want to get that nice and hot. Now were adding this gradually here because we don’t want to scramble the eggs. So you want to raise the temperature of the eggs very gradually, so instead of them scrambling and heating very quickly you know that they’re going to start to form those curds about a 160-degrees. We want to keep the temperature below that. So were adding this mixture and very gradually slowly raising the temperature of the eggs and they wont scramble. And this is the first part of making the custard, it’s a very delicate suspension of all of this ingredients in a gelled network of protein and fat and water. So were going to add all that in there and then this is ready to pour into our prepared ramekin’s here, okay. One other step to making a super silky smooth custard is straining it first, that will get out any bits of un-mixed eggs some of the whites sometimes will not mix in so were going to strain this first. So we’ll just strain this right through at all strainer here. Male: Okay. David Joachim: Into our ramekin’s, now what’s going to happened when this cooks is the eggs are going to tighten up, the proteins are going to tighten up form that gel that I talked about. And to prevent them from scrambling we want to make sure that the oven temperature is not too high, were going to cook this at about 300-degrees Fahrenheit. Male: Okay. David Joachim: And it will take about 30 minutes for ramekins of this size. You could also do this in a large baking dish. If you want to do a single-family size serving, so we have a roasting pan that has been turned into a beanery or water bath. Male: Okay. David Joachim: It’s a lot easier to set the roasting pan in the oven an then pour the boiling water in and transfer all of your ramekins to it rather than doing the prep on a prep table and trying to move this very liquid container to the oven. Male: Yes. David Joachim: So, yeah it’s much easier to do at this way and then this will baked for about 30 minutes as I said at 300-degrees and the water bath helps to transfer the heat evenly around the sides and underneath the ramekins. So after about 30 minutes you’ve got your custard and this is I think this is one of the most delicious desserts you could ever have. It’s a Spanish dessert and this assurances that we have talked about the beanery the invert sugar and – the invert sugar helping to prevent the sugar from re-crystallizing. We’ve got ingredients in here and the methods here that keep it from cracking like a cheese cake crack. Because cheesecake is also a custard this helped to make sure that you’ve got a luscious creamy custard that doesn’t break. So now we’ve let this cool, were just going to give it a shake to loosen it up. we’ll un-mold it and what happens is you can see the caramel has now form a delicious sauce. So it’s gone from a stiff caramelized sugar which is used to make hard candies like lollipops into a liquid sauce and that’s because it’s mixed with the custard mixture and some of the liquid from that has loosened up the caramel and it’s a wonderful sauce. Male: It looks fantastic. David Joachim: Yeah, so we’ll be tasting a little bit of this and this has got some cinnamon, some nutmeg and you should also get a good dose of citrus orange flavor. You can taste that particularly with the zest that we used; the zest has citrus oil in it. The essential oil and none of the acids so you don’t get any of that sourness you just get the aroma and flavor of citrus. Male: This is fantastic and so there is a hundred recipes like this that talk about the science in this book. David Joachim: That’s right. Male: Plus all of the other science facts that I found fascinating. David Joachim: Yeah. Male: And it’s something that I think you know, it’s on your shelf and you pull it down and you look at it and you figured out why this is happening in front of you. David Joachim: That’s right, that’s the intend, it’s the type of book where if you were in the middle of a recipe you could open it up to whatever you’re cooking and if something is wrong let say it’s a cake. You can look up our cake trouble-shooting chart, which is under the cake entry, and figure out how to fix it. Male: That’s fantastic, thank you very much. David Joachim: All right, thank you. Male: And see you again.

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Male: Hey, everyone welcome back to Le Gourmet TV today were here with David Joachim, coauthor of “The Science of Good Food” and I got to tell you. Some people might be scared away but the word science on the front of the cool book but when you get into it absolutely incredible.

David Joachim: Well the whole idea here is that science in powers you.

Male: Yes.

David Joachim: If you know what going on in the kitchen, you're in control you can cook better you can make better food, you can manipulate a recipe instead of just following it blindly. If you know what’s happening and why you would swap out one ingredient for another for instance the book is set up from A to Z so you can look for whatever it is your cooking or you’re interested in quickly and find the information you’re looking for. So it’s very accessible plus there are more than a hundred of recipe’s demonstrating signs and principles such as the principles of custard which we’ll be talking about today.

Were making an orange flange a recipe from the book and that the custard is very sensitive because we’ve got eggs that coagulate they could scramble things can go wrong. So we have insurances to there to make sure – to make sure that that doesn’t happened we’ll talk about those but the first step in making this recipe is making a caramel. Essentially liquefying granulated sugar and browning it. so were going to mix together some granulated sugar.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: With a little bit of cointreau or other orange liqueur, a little corn syrup, which is an invert sugar and this, helps to prevent the granulated sugar from re-crystallizing. A little bit of water just to get this nice and liquid the water is going to boil off were only adding enough water to make this liquid.

Male: So that the change will not occur into the water if it was left.

David Joachim: Exactly, browning the caramelization of sugar, which on called 1:41 this does not happened solely about 330-degrees, so you know that the water has to be boiled off because that’s getting to 212-degrees were talking about Fahrenheit. Now were putting this into microwave oven.

Male: Okay and that’s in everybody’s kitchen.

David Joachim: Yes.

Male: No especial equipment there.

David Joachim: And what we’ll do this for about four to six minutes in your microwave oven, often sugars caramelized on the stove top you would do this in a sauce pan but because sugar is so sensitive on a stove top you need to brush down the side with a wet pastry brush. You may put a lid on it to help trap some steam and keep those sugar crystals down in the liquid so they don’t re-crystallized. Well in a microwave oven, the whole process is a lot easier. You stick it in there for four to six minutes depending on the strength of your oven, you just let it go, and then you have this wonderful caramelized sugar.

And this is the first step to flange recipe, you pour it into the ramekin and swirl it around very quickly it’s going to start to firm up and harden just like a lollipop or hard candy wood.

Male: Pretty much immediately.

David Joachim: Yes, you can see that happening right away. So you want to swirl quickly to make sure you’re covering the bottom a little bit off the sides if you can get it and the next step is making a custard. Which is a mixture of eggs and dairy products usually cream, that the reason that this is a difficult thing to monitor and to make successfully is the eggs are very sensitive? They coagulate typically blended eggs; scrambled eggs will coagulate at temperature between 166 or 188-degrees.

Well when you add in some sugar and some milk the rest of the custard. You raise the coagulation temperature above a 180-degree.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: So what happens is instead of the eggs scrambling and forming curds like they would in scrambled eggs you actually get all of the ingredients suspended in this wonderfully gelatinizes gel and that that’s the creamy luscious texture of custard.

Male: I think it gets that wonderful mouth feeling.

David Joachim: Right, so to make the custard where we’ve got three whole eggs, four egg yolks and were just going to whisk this all together. This is an orange flange so we’ve some orange juice and a little bit of salt. And you just want to whisk this until it’s nice and frothy. If you’ve got and electric mixer you could use that as well. It would be probably about a minute or so with an electric mixer. This should be good and frothy so everything is blended and what were going to do is very gradually add our cream mixture to that.

This is a heavy cream and light cream. A little bit of sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and orange zest.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: And we have heated this on the stovetop for just a couple of minutes until it’s steaming you just want to get that nice and hot. Now were adding this gradually here because we don’t want to scramble the eggs. So you want to raise the temperature of the eggs very gradually, so instead of them scrambling and heating very quickly you know that they’re going to start to form those curds about a 160-degrees. We want to keep the temperature below that. So were adding this mixture and very gradually slowly raising the temperature of the eggs and they wont scramble.

And this is the first part of making the custard, it’s a very delicate suspension of all of this ingredients in a gelled network of protein and fat and water. So were going to add all that in there and then this is ready to pour into our prepared ramekin’s here, okay. One other step to making a super silky smooth custard is straining it first, that will get out any bits of un-mixed eggs some of the whites sometimes will not mix in so were going to strain this first.

So we’ll just strain this right through at all strainer here.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: Into our ramekin’s, now what’s going to happened when this cooks is the eggs are going to tighten up, the proteins are going to tighten up form that gel that I talked about. And to prevent them from scrambling we want to make sure that the oven temperature is not too high, were going to cook this at about 300-degrees Fahrenheit.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: And it will take about 30 minutes for ramekins of this size. You could also do this in a large baking dish. If you want to do a single-family size serving, so we have a roasting pan that has been turned into a beanery or water bath.

Male: Okay.

David Joachim: It’s a lot easier to set the roasting pan in the oven an then pour the boiling water in and transfer all of your ramekins to it rather than doing the prep on a prep table and trying to move this very liquid container to the oven.

Male: Yes.

David Joachim: So, yeah it’s much easier to do at this way and then this will baked for about 30 minutes as I said at 300-degrees and the water bath helps to transfer the heat evenly around the sides and underneath the ramekins.

So after about 30 minutes you’ve got your custard and this is I think this is one of the most delicious desserts you could ever have. It’s a Spanish dessert and this assurances that we have talked about the beanery the invert sugar and – the invert sugar helping to prevent the sugar from re-crystallizing. We’ve got ingredients in here and the methods here that keep it from cracking like a cheese cake crack. Because cheesecake is also a custard this helped to make sure that you’ve got a luscious creamy custard that doesn’t break.

So now we’ve let this cool, were just going to give it a shake to loosen it up. we’ll un-mold it and what happens is you can see the caramel has now form a delicious sauce. So it’s gone from a stiff caramelized sugar which is used to make hard candies like lollipops into a liquid sauce and that’s because it’s mixed with the custard mixture and some of the liquid from that has loosened up the caramel and it’s a wonderful sauce.

Male: It looks fantastic.

David Joachim: Yeah, so we’ll be tasting a little bit of this and this has got some cinnamon, some nutmeg and you should also get a good dose of citrus orange flavor. You can taste that particularly with the zest that we used; the zest has citrus oil in it. The essential oil and none of the acids so you don’t get any of that sourness you just get the aroma and flavor of citrus.

Male: This is fantastic and so there is a hundred recipes like this that talk about the science in this book.

David Joachim: That’s right.

Male: Plus all of the other science facts that I found fascinating.

David Joachim: Yeah.

Male: And it’s something that I think you know, it’s on your shelf and you pull it down and you look at it and you figured out why this is happening in front of you.

David Joachim: That’s right, that’s the intend, it’s the type of book where if you were in the middle of a recipe you could open it up to whatever you’re cooking and if something is wrong let say it’s a cake. You can look up our cake trouble-shooting chart, which is under the cake entry, and figure out how to fix it.

Male: That’s fantastic, thank you very much.

David Joachim: All right, thank you.

Male: And see you again.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services