Marmalade Surprise

Yesterday, there was a surprise in my tangerine.

It looked fine on the outside. No mold, no holes. I was sitting at my desk, excited for my citrus snack, when, upon splitting the globe open, found a clear slime. Liquidy, totally clear, and with an unsettling resemblance to...snot.

I shared my discovery with my officemate Rachel. After a little inspection, she stuck her finger into the goop, tasted it, and proclaimed, "It tastes like tangerine."

I, however, was not eager to taste the slime. The tangerine I had enjoyed the previous day was slime free. What if a bug or fungus made it? Rachel and I started to worry for Rachel.

We both googled tangerine goo, slime, gel. Nothing but Yahoo questions without answers.

But we're scientists. We don't stop at, huh, thats weird. Even better, I'm a food scientist. Citrus fruits are high in pectin, and pectin gels form in the presence of heat, acid, and water. There. A hypothesis. Thinking about my fruit, I realized I kept them in front of my heater. All the ingredients to make a pectin gel.

We hypothesized the remaining two tangerines might also have formed our suspected pectin gel.

Today's tangerine:

A well-controlled experiment? No. While we have but merely anecdotal evidence, I'm happy believing the slime is a pectin gel, unlike a rough, natural marmalade. And that's why I ate today's tangerine.

Tears of Gettysburg

Last weekend, Reid and I drove to my cousin's wedding in Charlottesville, VA.  On our way back, we stopped by Adams County Winery, where our friend August became head winemaker in January. He graduated with a Master's degree in Food Science, focusing on Enology, from Cornell.

Inside the winery, August and his wife Sara showed us the make room, and indulged all of our nerdy curiosities.

Adams County Winery makes over 20 (!!!) wines, many of them sweet and fruity, similar to styles typically made at cooler climate wineries. Their most famous is Yankee Blue, a blueberry ice wine that nearly always sells out. August showed us the blueberries chilling for their next batch. They handpick the berries from the winery's own blueberry patch, nestled under a bird net.

The winery boasts some cutting edge technologies, including a cross-flow filtration unit,

a new giant steam cleaner (with an enormous plug),

a fully automated bottling line that can bottle up to 1100 botttles per hour,

and a rocking chair made from an old aging barrel.

Inside August's lab, we saw the Spec 20 he's using for assays, and the green food coloring he uses to calibrate linearity, a la Gavin Sacks.

In the tasting room, we tried some of the wines. (August hasn't worked a vintage yet, so none of these wines are truly "his." He has made a Riesling, I think from frozen juice.)

After our sampling, we got a wine slushi (Tutti Frutti--notice it it Reid's hand), and checked out the milk vats the winery used to use for winemaking that now sit behind the barn in the PA sun.

The highlight of our visit was a sneak peak tasting of the winery's estate grown Lemberger. Deep red, fullbodied yet fruity with notes of raspberry, this wine will stand out in the flimsy cold climate red category.

August--with his intelligent approach to winemaking--is certain to produce some outstanding wines in the very near future.  I'm so excited for August and Sara!

American Gouda Lovers Beware

European health officials are testing fenugreek seeds for E. coli 0104, the deadly strain behind Europe's massive E. coli outbreak ("As of today 11 Jul 2011, the cumulative number of non-HUS [hemolytic uremic syndrome] STEC [Shiga toxin producing _Escherichia coli_] cases in the EU is 3041, including 16 deaths, and 757 HUS STEC cases, including 28 deaths."--ProMED)

Fenuwhaaaa? Fenugreek seeds are used for sprouts, but I know them better as an unexpected addition to some cheese curds and Goudas. The seeds have a nutty texture and a very subtle maple flavor. The seed is traditionally used in Indian cooking in curries. 

Egyptian official are denying that their seeds contained the deadly bacteria, but if there's anything we in the food safety community have learned in the past few years...cough Peanut Corp. of America cough...bacteria will surprise you. 

They sometimes survive in dry, arid environments and shatter our paradigms of critical control points.

Cheesemakers, beware! I recommend checking with your supplier for the source of your fenugreek seeds, or giving them a good roast.

Addendum: A loyal reader, DJ GosaGosaka (follow her on twitter @gosagosaka) noted that fenugreek is often used homeopathically to increase milk production in breastfeeding women. And hence I learned a new word: galactogogue! (A substance to increase milk production.) A quick Pubmed search found few clinical studies performed to test its effects...and some reported adverse effects like a maple-like odor to urine and sweat, diarrhea, and aggravation of asthmatic symptoms. Mothers, beware, too!

What happens when you age 2BuckChuck

I've never knocked Trader Joe's infamous Charles Shaw wines, aka Two Buck Chuck. I like value, and these wines generally tend to be somewhat drinkable, especially the third or fourth glass.

Last week my dear friend Steph brought over a bottle of Charles Shaw Chardonnay for our True Blood watching night. The ladies didn't get into it that evening, but a few days later I popped it open in a I-feel-like-a-Sunday-night-glass-of-anything moment.

Before I describe this wine, there's something you need to know about me. I loathe oaked Chardonnay. In fact, the words "buttery, oaky, toasty" send shivers down my spine. I prefer my butter on in a tub of popcorn, not in a glass.

But I'm trying to appreciate oaked Chard, if nothing for the fact that it's nine times out of ten the default white wine at a cheap open bar, like the ones you find at scientific conference receptions.

So when I tasted the wine, I was very pleasantly surprised. Oaked, sure, but subtly, like passing a leaf bonfire in the fall while driving fast in your car. Just a hint. And balanced, with rich apple and honey flavors balancing the oak. Wow, not bad I thought. And then I looked at the bottle.

(Full disclaimer: this photo is not mine. I recycled the bottle before I realized it would make a dramatic photo.)

2005! 2BuckChuck ages well.

Then I googled the 2005 "vintage" and read that it won the CA State Fair blind judging that year--a good year for Ole' Chucky Shaw. Still, what a value, not counting inflation.

Frenchmen Poetics

This week I was in New Orleans, LA for the Institute of Food Technologists' Annual Meeting.

After the IFT Student Association Mixer at Maison on Frenchmen St., Anne (a fellow food scientist) and I stumbled upon Matt, a Poet for Hire.

We hired him. To his surprise, our poetic prompt was "Food Science."

Here's what he composed in a mere 15 min.

Local is not always better

Efficiency is key to sustainability. A study from Cornell challenges that local is always better for the dairy industry. We have a complex food production and distribution system--learn about it!

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April11/FoodMilesStudy.html

Beer to Biogas

My latest article in the Cornell Daily Sun here, about microbial communities in brewery waste digesters.

A diagram of an anaerobic digester, from an excellent description of the process.