Author Archive

Father of Modern Day American Gastronomy

James Beard

American food and cooking expert James Andrews Beard promoted excellence and variety in dining experiences.  A native of Portland, Oregon, he was born on May 5, 1903 to Mary Elizabeth Jones Beard and Jonathan A.  Beard, a shipyard appraiser.  His mother taught him cookery of all types, including informal dishes suitable for picnics, backyard feasts, and barbecues.  In the introduction to The Cook’s Catalogue (1975),  Beard quipped, “I grew up in the Iron Age of American cookery.  We had a cast-iron wood stove.… For stove top cooking we used iron skillets, iron Dutch ovens, and iron stew pots.” He declared iron the king in his mother’s kitchen in Gearhart, seventy miles northwest of Portland, but conferred some culinary credit on “earthenware, tin, some copper, and the ghastly enameled pots known as graniteware.” Read the rest of this entry »

cosas de picar, cazuelas & pinchos

After Mohammed’s followers gave up gambling, pork, and alcohol following his death in 632, the spread of Islam reduced the number of places in the Arab world where alcohol was available.  In Muslim Spain, laws forbade the serving of alcoholic drinks except as an ingredient in cooking or an accompaniment to food.  Barkeepers began serving drinks in mugs capped with a lid, or tapa.

From the practice of placing small morsels of food on the lid came the Spanish tradition of tapas, small dishes of bar food that made drinking legitimate. As described by the Spanish food critic Alicia Rio, these tasty bites encouraged diners to admire the cook’s art and to engage in genial conversation.

Today, the small savory servings come in three types: cosas de picar (finger food) such as olives, pinchos served on toothpicks, and cazuelas (small servings), dishes topped with sauce.

Happy New Year!

The author at the World Food Expo 2009

Been busy these past few months preparing for my ServSafe® Food Protection Manager (FPM) certification  so I haven’t updated my blog since.  Anyways, the good news is, I passed the FPM exams and  also passed the advanced training for ServSafe Instructor/Proctor exams so I am now a ServSafe® Certified Instructor & Registered Proctor aside from being a  Certified ServSafe® Food Protection Manager. I am currently working as a culinary instructor for food safety and will be having ServSafe training and exams the whole year.

For this year I’m gearing up on giving you tons of culinary articles related to food safety, kitchen science, food trivia and history, quick tips, delectable recipes and more. Follow me on  twitter for my latest tweets,  http://twitter.com/davincicook and let us explore the art & science of the food we eat. Happy eating everyone.    -The Davinci Cook

A Popsicle

History has it that the Popsicle was invented (or discovered) by an 11-year old California boy who accidentally left his soda, with a stirring stick still in it, outside on a cold night. The next morning he had frozen soda on a stick. He called it an Epsicle, a play on icicle and his name, Frank Epperson. It took him nearly 20 years to obtain a patent for the Epsicle ice pop, which was later renamed “Popsicle“by the encouragement of his kids.

Popsicle has come a long way since the days of Frank Epperson. Instead of soda, the ingredient list contains sugars, stabilizers, colors, and flavors. Color and flavor are important for consumer appeal, but it’s the choice of sugars and stabilizers that governs the physical attributes of the Popsicle. Without sugars and stabilizers, it would just be a colored ice cube.

Sugars reduce the freezing point of water. That is, sugared water freezes at a lower temperature than pure water, which means that, even though it seems pretty hard, there is still some liquid water in a frozen Popsicle. A Popsicle is essentially a bunch of ice crystals held together by a slush that contains dissolved sugars, colors, and flavors. The more ice (less slush), the harder the Popsicle.

Frank Epperson

The manufacturing process is also much more high tech than what Frank Epperson did. Thousands of Popsicles are made every hour in modern continuous automated Popsicle freezers. The sugar concoction is deposited into molds and then submerged in a very cold brine (saltwater) to induce rapid freezing. Sticks are added just as the mixture freezes. This type of freezing, called quiescent freezing because there is no stirring, results in long, needle-like ice crystals. They form initially at the mold surface where it’s coldest and then grow radially inwards, toward the center of the mold. All ice crystals lead to the stick. Next time you bite into a Popsicle, check out the pattern of ice formation.

Popsicles have also developed beyond the single stick variety. There are numerous variations to the traditional one-stick Popsicle of Frank Epperson. There are twin pops, with two sticks and two Popsicles, joined at the hip. There’s the rocket pop, a multicolored ice pop made by sequentially freezing three or four different layers of sugar syrup. There are Popsicles that glow in the dark, with a glow stick inserted down the middle. You can even make your own frozen ice pop, just like we did as kids, by pouring liquid Jell-O, Kool-Aid or fruit juice into molds and letting them solidify in the freezer.

Next time you pull one out of your freezer, study the ice crystals while you enjoy the cool refreshment. A Popsicle may be a simple treat, but there is still a lot of science involved.