Hungry Scientist

Jennifer 8. Lee’s blog in today’s Times about Roni-Sue’s bacon-covered chocolate reminded us of one of our beloved long-lost recipes from the book. (Backstory: most of the straightforward “food” recipes had to be cut because of—ahem—marketing concerns.) With our cromagnon love of combinations of sugar and salt, we originally included a simple but orgasmic treat of baked dates wrapped with bacon. Now that we’ve started pushing liquid nitrogen ice cream all over the airwaves, we’re big fans of bacon-espresso gelato. (Freezing it with LN2 keeps the bacon bits extra crispy.) Like many DIY foodies, aside from the veggie subset, we seek total bacon bacchanalia.

Covering bacon with chocolate is easy — cf Instructables. Included below is a slightly more involved bacon-chocolate situation, trolled from A Good Appetite, And for good measure, here’s an archive of bacon grease recipes. It really is an extraordinary ingredient.

Dark Chocolate & Bacon Cupcakes

8 slices good thick-cut bacon
1 c unsalted butter
1/2 c Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa
3/4 c water
2 c granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 c well-shaken buttermilk
2 T vanilla
2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 24 muffin tins. Chop bacon into about 1/2-inch pieces. Cook over med-high heat in a skillet until bacon is brown & crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Pat any remaining oil off the bacon. Set aside.

Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then whisk in cocoa. Add water and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat. Whisk in separately sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the cocoa mixture and whisk until just combined (it will be a little bit lumpy). Stir in bacon.

Fill muffin tins to about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean. It’s a moist cake, so don’t worry if a few crumbs stick to your tester.
Allow cupcakes to cool.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

1/2 c unsalted butter
2/3 c Hershey’s Special Dark
3 c powdered sugar
1/3 c milk
1 t vanilla extract

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla.
Makes about 2 cups frosting.
Frost the cupcakes & sprinkle with a little Fleur de Sel right before serving.

One of the chapters in our book is a collection of drinks one can make with dry ice, including fizzy lemonade, root beer, and martinis. CO2 is a gift to mixology for a couple reasons. At regular atmospheric pressure, it sublimates directly from a solid to a gas when the temperature rises above -109.3 degrees F. So, it drops the temperature of alcohol lower than frozen H2O can, and it does not dilute the cocktail it leaves behind. The result is a wicked-strong chilly-willy drink.

When the Times reported came to cover the book, we thought we’d fancify our recipe in an effort to woo our lovely guest. In pursuit of a Halloween ‘tini, a bottle of Crème de Violette came down from the top shelf; a bit of dust was blown off its sides; and half an ounce of the purple potion joined a half ounce of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, 2 ounces of dry gin, and 3 pellets of dry ice to create a lovely libation.

She ran the recipe (it really was the only one the Dining Section could handle) and asked for a spooky name. These are the options we hastily came up with: Shrinking Violet, Purple Rain, Jealous Ghoulfriend, Ultraviolet Cryotini, Violet Riot, Purple Posie or Poison, Smoky Violet, and Purple Haze. Can we keep the list going?

P.S.: The drink is really delicious—delicate, fragrant, but not perfumey. Highly recommended for Halloween harlequinade.�

We can hardly see straight we’re so overcome by the New York Times running Julia Moskin’s story and Gabriel Stabile’s gorgeous photos on the cover of the Dining Section today. We entertained the two of them last week at home (Lily’s home; not Patrick’s. We are NOT married!) and nervously demonstrated our geekoid tricks for the reporter who schooled Pinkberry for its use of chemicals in its au natural-tasting frozen yogurt product.

We stayed up till 4am the night before making a giant blue cake with our high school friend/mistress of cake-i-tude Alpana Choudhury, lacing it with licorice wrapped in edible silver foil (see post below), and studding it with LEDs. Julia was gracious and tolerant of our playfulness, though when we served her a slice of the blue bomb she ate the devil’s food and then put down the plate, saying, “I’m not a frosting person.” We’re delighted she covered our heros, Windell Oskay and Lenore Oskay, creators of www.evilmadscientist.com, and ran their recipe for edible googely eyes.

After our session winded down, Ms. Moskin commented, “Someday I hope to have the kind of time to do these things with my kid,” then walked out the door. We heartily welcome her and the legions of serious eaters/Dining Section readers to join us “amateur lab rats” in our own delicious revolution.

P.S. We don’t just blow stuff up! We do actually care a lot about the way food tastes.

We spent last weekend at the Maker Faire in Austin and made, as our pal Alex Polvi who helped us out a LOT said, a crap-load—as in, five HUNDRED—servings of ice cream with liquid nitrogen. 

And here is Alex’s snazzy time-lapse documentation of the phenomenon. Watch it.

We recently came across a token in memorium of the Father of Science in the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. We hope it was not a result of a kitchen accident, but rather a final rebel yell against the authorities that tried to quash his free thinking and scientific pursuits.

We’ve seen a lot of fruits in our time, but a visit to the local crunchie food co-op this weekend yielded a queen we had never before seen. A monstera deliciosa, or “delicious monster”, beckoned from the exotic fruit table, daring us to shell out the $5.99 the store was asking for it. Never weak in the face of a challenge, we swallowed the price and took the very strange, phallic-shaped, green-scaled fruit home. 

Turns out the 5.99 was nothing–for a fruit that takes a YEAR to mature. It’s the fruit of a philodendron, which has become a common decorative plant here in the States but is native to Mexico and Guatemala. The outer casing of the fruit is made of soft, green hexagonal scales that peel back, top to bottom when the fruit is stood on end, as it becomes ripe. Inside are fuzzy, white kernels that are soft and slippery when they’re extracted, and their flavor is the MOST DELICIOUS combination of pineapple and banana. Pure heaven.

But the monstera is not without its fangs. In fact, the whole fruit is completely poisonous until the moment the scales peel away by their own accord. The plant is full of oxalic acid (H2C2O4), a toxic member of the carboxylic acid family that converts insoluble iron compounds into soluble complex ions and is particularly useful as an acid wash in laundry detergents. How much of it is in the philodendron is unclear as yet, but it’s commonly known that rhubarb leaves are loaded with it, and that eating around 11 lbs of them will kill ya. 

So…. a burning sensation was definitely felt in the mouth and lips after eating the monstera fruit, but one doesn’t recall whether it was before research into its chemical makeup had been done–or after.

Our friend Kai got her hands on The Hungry Scientist Handbook. This is what happened:

http://2.recordertheapp.com/1cb95b237ddf0288ed78

We don’t know what happened next. We hope nothing blew up.

We’re working on making her an edible hockey puck. Any suggestions for an insanely durable yet edible material?