Experiment 16: Sea Salted Caramel Brownies

Figure 1. Sea Salted Caramel Brownies

Introduction
It has become obvious that we are better at baking desserts than cooking healthy stuff.  While contemplating which sugar-packed recipe to make next, we happened upon this recipe for salted caramel brownies.  Though we had planned to make a sophisticated meal that day, we abandoned that idea as soon as we saw these brownies in a recipe online.

Figure 2. Our NFPA ratings for Sea Salted Caramel Brownies

NFPA ratings:
Difficulty: 4
Not too difficult, but you have to read the directions.  The results are well worth it!

Prep. Time: 2 hours.  This is an estimate, as we baked these some time ago and neglected to watch the clock.  About a quarter of this time will be spent with your tuchus glued to a chair waiting for the brownies to cook.  You will really need to use some strong glue because these brownies need to bake in peace.

Course:  Midnight snack for students.  Dessert for everyone else.  Also a decent breakfast!

Materials
Brownies
1) Unsweetened chocolate, roughly chopped - 3 ounces (85 grams)

Figure 3. Sizzling caramel

2) Unsalted butter - 1 stick
3) Granulated sugar - 1 cup

Figure 4. It's much easier to break off pieces of caramel than to cut it.

4) Eggs - 2
5) Vanilla extract - 1 teaspoon
6) Flaky sea salt - 0.25 teaspoons, heaping
7) Flour - 0.67 cups

Caramel
1) Granulated sugar - 0.5 cups
2) Unsalted butter - 4 tablespoons
3) Flaky sea salt - 0.25 teaspoons, heaping
4) Heavy cream - 3 tablespoons

Methods
Caramel
1) Melt sugar in a medium, dry saucepan.  This takes about 5 minutes.  Don't stop stirring!!  The sugar should turn brown.
2) Remove from heat.  Stir in butter, then the cream and salt.
3) Return to medium-high heat.  Simmer and melt any remaining solid butter.  The mixture should bubble.  When it darkens, pour it onto a parchment paper-covered plate and freeze it until it solidifies.  This will take about 30 minutes.

Brownies
1) Pre-heat oven to 350 ºF.  Line the bottom and sides of an 8 x 8 inch (ish) pan with parchment paper.  Butter or spray the paper so nothing sticks to it.

Figure 5. Mix the brownies and fold in the caramel.

2) This step requires a frying pan and a pot.  Boil water in the pot.  Put the chocolate pieces in the pan, and rest the pan on top of the pot.  This method is fit for students like us, but if you're a traditionalist, you could use a heatproof bowl.  Stir until the chocolate is fully melted.  Alternatively, you can microwave and stir (another option fit for the average student).
3) Add the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt.  Stir in the flour.
4) When the caramel is solid, remove it from the freezer and chop it into one-inch squares.  The caramel will be sticky and difficult to chop.  We found it easier to just pull it apart into pieces.
5) Fold most of the caramel pieces into the brownie batter and mix gently.
6) Pour the batter into the parchment paper-covered pan.  Place the remaining caramel pieces on top of the batter.
7) Bake for 30 minutes.
8) Eat and marvel at your neurochef skills!

Results
So delicious.  Fantastic taste, and not too difficult.  These brownies balance caramel with chocolate in a way that is sweet, but not tooth-rottingly sweet.  The flavors actually balance really well. You can keep your leftover brownies in the refrigerator or freezer, but make sure to heat them up before you dive back in, both to maintain the structural integrity of your teeth, and to prepare melted caramely goodness for your deserving palette.  Also, plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, and you will forget you are eating reheated frozen brownies.

In cooking this recipe, we learned that folding something into a mix is different from just mixing.  Previously, we just thought it sounded like some pretentious cooking term for fancy mixing.  However, this recipe required us to fold our caramel bits (that we broke because they were too sticky to cut) into our batter.  Folding (a similar motion as folding paper) really seemed to help here.  It helped distribute the caramel more evenly than plain mixing would have.

Discussion
This recipe, while dominated by a plethora of sweet tastes, e.g. sugar, caramelized and not, incorporated sea salt as a primary ingredient.  Of course, these brownies would have baked perfectly fine without the salt; it provides no structural or chemical support of the brownies themselves.  However, without the dash of sea salt, the brownies would simply taste different: the salt (sea salt or regular salt) actually alters the sensitivity of your tongue to other tastants.

One such tastant that benefits from the presence of sodium is glucose.  There's a reason why your caramel corn tastes so good.  The biological mechanisms that underlie the gestalt effect of combining sweet and salty tastes have only recently been elucidated.

It has been proposed that the sodium-glucose receptor/transporter (SGLT1) is responsible for the interaction between glucose and sodium.  SGLT1 is a transport protein, which means it floats around on your cellular membranes and pumps atoms or molecules across membranes into or out of cells.  It was originally thought to only reside in your stomach, but it has recently been found in the taste cells on taste buds as well (Toyono et al. 2011).  Transport proteins are very important, because just like how a water pump pumps water up against gravity to reach your shower, transport proteins work for you by pumping ions and molecules opposite from where their electrical and chemical gradients want them to go.

Figure 6. Sodium Glucose Transport - From Frank Boumphrey (2009)

SGLT1 is a co-transporter (Figure 6; blue).  It pumps one ion (sodium; yellow) and one molecule (glucose; orange) across your taste cell membranes (periwinkle).  However, it can only pump glucose into your taste cells when sodium is present.  The receptor begins open to the outside of the cell membrane.  Once the receptor receives both sodium and glucose, it change its conformation and opens to the inside of the cell, releasing the sodium and glucose.  Since both the sodium and glucose are required for passage into the cell, the salt in your brownies actually makes your taste buds accept more glucose, and in turn causes you to perceive a greater level of sweetness.  Who knew?

References
1) Salted Caramel Brownies. smittenkitchen.com. Feb. 2013
Toyono T, Seta Y, Kataoka S, Oda M, Toyoshima K. Differential expression of the glucose transporters in mouse gustatory papillae. Cell Tissue Res. 2011;345(2):243-52.

Experiment 15: Roasted Corn, Red Pepper, & Tomato Chowder

Figure 1.  See the little dots in the soup?  That's perfection.

Introduction
A little while back, we tried our hands at tomato soup.  As you hopefully don't remember, it wasn't one of our proudest moments (we provide you with the link to the associated article not to remind you of our results, but merely for the sake of continuity).  It was a bit of a disaster.  It took a good day or two to admit it, but we screwed up the recipe pretty badly.

But alas!  We are graduate students!  We are used trying and failing!  We can't give up!  Without the discipline of our graduate education in our back pockets, we may have succumbed to defeat.  But no, for us, the next logical step was to try something even harder, and prove to ourselves that it can be done.  Yes!  We can make tomato soup!  Tomato, roasted red pepper, corn, delicious!  LET'S DO IT!

Don't stop reading!   We didn't write this to flaunt our achievements.  We promise this one is a better story.  Actually, this soup was actually pretty delicious.  We even had a third, unbiased person taste it, and she loved it.

NFPA Ratings:

Figure 2. Our NFPA ratings for roasted corn, red pepper,
and tomato chowder.

Prep time: 2 hours.  This recipe took forever.  For something disarmingly complex despite its simple appearance, as this soup was, we felt that it took more time than it should have. Tons of chopping, too many steps, lots of places to mess up.  Fortunately, after all that, the result was super delicious.

Difficulty: 7.  Perhaps this ties into our rant over taking two entire hours to cook this.  It felt like a never-ending recipe with a million steps.  And then the blender issues....Oh, the blender issues.  Maybe we should take the difficult up to 8 or 9.  On the other hand, it might be better to just get a blender that has a lid (See Results).

Course: Dinner, lunch, whatever.  Soup is a side.  We tried eating this as a main course because we didn't feel like cooking anything else after putting so much effort into this soup.  Honestly, it was lucky that we also made sea salted caramel brownies that evening, because soup, no matter how many veggies you stuff into it, is not a main course.

Materials

Figure 3.  Photo cropped on purpose to hide pathetic grill.

Red Bell Peppers - 3 halved and seeded
Shucked Corn - 3 ears
Tomatoes - 1.5 lbs (about 4) halved, seeded, and peeled
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil - 2 tbsp
Chopped Onion - 4 cups (about 2 medium)
Fat-Free, Low-Sodium Chicken Broth - 3 14 oz. cans
Salt - 0.25 tsp
Freshly Ground Black Pepper - .25 tsp
Crumbled Blue Cheese - 0.25 cup (1 oz)
Chopped Fresh Chives - 2 tbsp

Methods
1) Set your grill on to medium  heat.
2) Arrange bell peppers, skin side down, and corn in a single layer on the grill rack.  Grill for 5 minutes, turning occasionally.
3) Add tomatoes to the grill, skin side down.  Grill for 5 more minutes, or until the vegetables are slightly charred.
4) Remove from heat, cool for 10 minutes.
5) Coarsely chop the tomatoes and peppers and place them in a medium bowl.  Cut the kernels from the corn and add them to the bowl.
6) Heat oil in a large Dutch oven (or pot with a well-fitting lid).
7) Add the onion and cook for 7 minutes or until the onion is tender.  Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

Figure 4. Tomato, corn, pepper, onion, sliced and seeded.

8) Increase the heat to high and stir in the broth.  Bring to a boil.
9) Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.  Cool for 20 minutes.
10) Place 1/3 of the tomato mixture in a blender, PUT THE LID ON, and process until smooth.  Put the pureed mixture into a large bowl.
11) Repeat step 10 twice (until the whole mixture is pureed).
12) Wipe Dutch oven (or pot) clean with paper towels.
13) Push the tomato mixture through a sieve/colander/strainer and discard the solids.
14) Place Dutch oven (or pot) over medium heat and cook thoroughly
15) Stir in the salt and pepper

Yield: Six 1.5 cup bowls of soup
Top each with 2 teaspoons of cheese and 1 teaspoon of chives (optional...aka we forgot this part.  We bought chives, but then forgot to use them.)

Results
Here's a useful tip: when you're cooking something, read the entire recipe carefully before you start.  When the recipe asks for a blender, don't just say "oh, I have that."  Make sure you have all of the components, including the lid.  When we reached step ten, we casually pulled out the blender, set it down on the counter, then stepped back in horror upon realizing that the lid was not present.

Figure 5. The effect of lid presence on the total kitchen
surface area splattered with boiling hot tomato-infused
chicken broth, as a function of the angular velocity of the
blender blades.

See, this is where being a scientist doesn't help.  Engineers build working systems from scratch, but as biologists, we are taught to take
the opposite approach, that of taking a whole working system and manipulating it in some way to see what changes.  Therefore, in this case, our graduate education does not apply to this sort of dilemma.  Don't worry, we don't lack quite enough common sense to "test" what happens when you use a blender without a lid and swirl sharp blades at a very high velocity through a boiling hot mixture contained within it (See Figure 5 for the predicted results from such an experiment).

No, we tried to come up with other kitchen supplies to substitute for a lid.  It was definitely one of our worst ideas thus far.  Enter: cutting board.  A small, smooth (minus a few slice marks), thick, plastic, board with rubber edges for a no-slip grip.  A perfect substitute for a blender lid?  Not hardly.

It was a beautiful piece of teamwork: one of us applied pressure to the cutting board while the other managed the controls.  Bzzz..bzzz..bzzzzzzzz.  It was working.  With every turn of the blade came greater confidence in our last-minute lid substitute.  But all of the sudden, "SPLOOSH!"  The blender hiccuped, and sprayed boiling hot tomato corn pepper soup puree through the air onto every surface in a two foot radius.  None hit the skin though, fortunately.  No, that happened during the first repetition of the first part of step 10.  It was only a minor burn.  It's all better now.

Don't try this at home.  Seriously, don't.

Figure 6.  Yummy in our tummies!

Where there is no harm, there is no foul.  Who is thinking about 1st degree burns anyway when they're eating such a delicious chowder?  It provided the taste buds with an immaculate mixture of flavors, with each ingredient making its presence known in a subtle but succulent fashion.  We forgot to peel the tomatoes, which produced a bit of a texture in the soup.  It wasn't bad; in fact, it added a little character to the dish (bowl?).  All in all, we feel that we redeemed ourselves from our previous effort at cooking tomato soup from scratch.  While the process itself could have used much refinement, the final product outscored and conquered our first iteration, wiping it clean from our minds (but not from the counter).


Discussion The kitchen is full of hot surfaces and substances, e.g. the pots on your stove, the racks in your oven, the boiling hot oils in your frying pan, and the silverware straight out of your dishwasher.  It is sometimes a wonder that we made it this far in the first place.   In this case, the burn came from transferring boiling hot chicken broth from a pot on the stove to a blender sitting a foot away.

So...this is kind of gross, but if you follow our recipe exactly, then it's only fair that we tell you a little about how to deal with a burn.  First of all, a first degree burn is a surface burn of the skin, and it can be caused by heat, radiation, chemicals, friction, or electricity.  In this case, the burn result from concentrated heat exposure.  Generally, with a minor burn, the affected skin will turn red and hurt.  Rest assured, these minor burns should heal in 2-3 days (Granger 2009).  For anything more serious, you would probably need medical attention.  However, unless you pour the entire pot of soup on yourself, you shouldn't worry about that.

Figure 7. Layers of the Skin

Your skin layers include the epidermis, which is the outermost layer, the dermis, which is the middle layer, and the hypodermis, which is the innermost layer of skin (Figure 7).  First degree burns usually only affect the epidermis.  Anything lower than the epidermis (muscles, blood vessels, etc.) would only be affected by a more severe burn.  Throughout these layers, for example in your fingertips, you have sensory receptors that help you feel things you touch.  These receptors indicate properties like temperature, texture, and pressure.  These properties are integrated in your brain, which allows you to identify things by touch alone.  Some receptors give you information about the onset, offset, and changes of these properties, and still others respond to prolonged, ongoing stimulation.

In the case of painful extreme temperature contact, the role of these receptors is to help you move away from painful stimulus in order to prevent injury.  The process is pretty cool, and doesn't even require your brain to get involved until after you're safely away from harm.  For example, think about accidentally touching a hot frying pan.  You jump back right away without even thinking about it.  Sensing and responding to the heat of the frying pan with a retraction of your hand is all mediated in the spinal cord.  It is only later (milliseconds later) that this sensory information is sent to your brain for you to become aware of what just happened and say, "Ow!  That hurt!"  The same thing happens when you blend boiling soup without a blender lid and it goes flying everywhere.  The soup hits skin, the skin burns, and you jump back in alarm, thus allowing even more soup to escape from the blender.  Yeah...we're awesome cooks.  :)

References
1. Weir J. "Roasted Corn, Pepper, and Tomato Chowder." myrecipes.com. June 2009.
2. Granger J.  "An Evidence-Based Approach to Pediatric Burns". Pediatric Emergency Medicine Practice 6 (1). January 2009.

Experiment 14: Red Velvet Cupcakes

We're back from our hiatus!  

Figure 1. A deliciously red velvet cupcake.

Introduction
For our birthdays, it was between cheesecake and red velvet cake.  Upon finding a cheesecake pan on sale, we decided on cheesecake.  Now, even though both of our birthdays have passed, we still sort of had a taste for red velvet cake, so we decided to revisit it, but this time in cupcake form.

Figure 2. Our NFPA Ratings for red velvet cupcakes.

NFPA Ratings:

Difficulty - This recipe was pretty simple, especially for how well it turned out.  We were afraid we were doing it wrong the whole time, because our mixture looked goopy and oily until it was cooked.  Additionally, all that red made our uncooked cupcakes look like blood.  Fortunately, our cupcakes puffed up in the oven, thus validating our process.

Course - Dessert, or sugary snack if your id compels you.  Also an acceptable midnight snack.

Prep time - It took us about an hour, but looking back, we are not sure why.  The recipe just involves mixing a large variety of ingredients together, pouring the mixture into cups, baking them, and frosting them.  In reality, it will probably take you 45 minutes.
  
Materials

Figure 3. The dry ingredients.

Cupcakes
1) All-Purpose Flour - 3/4 cups
2) Cocoa Powder (no Dutch Cocoa) - 1 tbsp
3) Baking Soda - 1/3 tsp
4)  Salt -1/4 tsp
5) Buttermilk - 1/4 cup
6) Red Food Coloring - 1/2 tbsp
7) Milk - 1 tbsp
8) Olive or Vegetable Oil - 1/3 cup
9) Applesauce - 1/8 cup
10) White Vinegar - 1/4 tsp
11) Vanilla Extract -1/4 tsp
12) Cupcake foil holders

Figure 4. The wet ingredients.  This is where it starts
getting creepy.

13) Muffin Tin

Frosting
1) Unsalted Butter - 4 tbsp / 1/2 Stick, softened
2) Cream Cheese - 1/2 bar (4 oz)
3) Confectioner's (a.k.a. Powdered) Sugar 2-2 1/2 cups
4) Vanilla Extract - 1/2 tsp

 
Procedure
Cupcakes
1) Preheat your oven to 350º F.
2) Put the buttermilk in a mixing bowl.
3) Add in the food coloring, milk, oil, apple sauce, vinegar, and vanilla extract, and mix it all together (Figure 4).
4) In a separate bowl, sift the flour, cocoa  powder, and baking soda (Figure 3).  Add salt and mix in.

Figure 5. The final mixture.  Yum....NOT...yet... 

5) Combine the wet and dry ingredients in one bowl and mix with a spatula just until combined
(Figure 5).
6) Line a muffin tin with foil cupcake holders.
7) Divide the batter evenly among the wrappers (Figure 6).
8) Place your muffin tins on the top shelf of your oven.  Cook large cupcakes for about 20 minutes, and mini cupcakes for approximately 10 minutes.
  
Frosting
1) Whip the butter and cream cheese together for 3-4 minutes
2) Add the sugar in small increments and the vanilla extract.  Mix until it's not too thick, but before it becomes to soft.

Figure 6. Don't pour to the top.  Leave room for puffiness.

Cupcakes
9) Remove the cupcakes and let them cool completely (Figure 7).
10) Pipe on or spread frosting
11) Store in refrigerator.

Recipe will yield 6 large cupcakes or about 15 miniature cupcakes. 

Results
Before we get into our results, we have to admit to a tiny indiscretion.  Instead of making the frosting as described in the recipe, as easy as said recipe looks, we decided to use store-bought cream cheese frosting.  We won't lie...it was goooood.  All things considered, actually making the frosting ourselves would not have been much more of an addition to our responsibilities.  Whatever, this was faster.

Figure 7.  Baked cupcakes.
They look brown...but it's the lighting

Anyway, these cupcakes were tasty!  They were soft, moist, and delicious!  Unfortunately, they turned out a bit more rust-brown than red, even though the blog that owns this recipe guaranteed this wouldn't happen.  Regardless, steps 2-4 resulted in a murder scene-esque mess on all of our utensils.  Adding that much red food coloring into something of that viscosity makes whatever you're cooking look like a mixing bowl filled with blood.  Truly, everything before the final product of this recipe looks very unappetizing. Don't be afraid; just go with it.  It will turn out fine.

Note: While these are delicious straight out of the oven, these are equally, if not more, delicious straight out of the refrigerator the next day.

Other noteworthy points about this recipe are that 1) it has way less sugar than other stuff we've baked, and 2) you don't really need the sifter.  We don't have a sifter and our cupcakes were still light and fluffy.

Figure 8.  The final product, complete with our store-bought frosting.

Discussion

You may think that all you have to thank for the red velvet cake's rich redness is the food coloring it contains.  Big deal, right?  Add a few drops of red food coloring into anything, and voilà, you have red velvet everything you ever wanted!  Red cookies?  Food coloring.  Done.  Red pancakes?  Food coloring.  Done.  Red celery?  Food coloring.  Done.

But wait, red velvet cake contains something special that brings the redness forth independent of the food coloring.  Part of that red color comes from a chemical reaction that happens right in your mixing bowl.

Cocoa contains a chemical called anthocyanin.  Anthocyanin is an antioxidant and natural pigment that is found in plants.  It is present in all sorts of berries, purple grapes, red cabbage, pomegranates, several flowers such as violets and pansies, and, of course, the cacao tree.  The color anthocyanin emits depends on the pH of the environment in which it is found.  In low pH conditions (i.e. in acids), anthocyanin emits a bright red color.  As you raise the pH, it shifts to purple, takes a turn past blue and green, and ends up at a bright yellow (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Anthocynanin over a range of pH values.

How are you going to lower the pH to get that bright red color for your cupcakes?  The buttermilk and vinegar of course!  Buttermilk is acidic because bacteria in the milk ferment the lactose and turn it into lactic acid.  Vinegar, the prototypical acidic agent in your kitchen, is composed of acetic acid and water.  Acetic acid comes from the fermentation of ethanol.  You probably thought it was weird that this recipe called for vinegar, but now you know why it did.

It is absolutely wrong to use Dutch cocoa for your red velvet cupcakes.  Why?  Dutch cocoa is alkaline because of how it is processed.  If you use Dutch cocoa, your cupcakes will turn brown.

Figure 10.  The leftovers...

References
1. Beaird A. ""Chemistry in Cake: Putting the Red in Red Velvet Cake". ChEnected.  October 2012
2. Lassi(e) C. "Eggless Red Velvet Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting".  Pan Gravy Kadai Curry: Tasty Tales from a Flexitarian Foodie.  July 2012.

Experiment 13: Tomato Soup

Figure 1. Tomato Soup

Introduction
Although the year is new, the winter is not.  It's cold and dark (but not much snow!)  We wanted to make something simple and warm, just enough to bring us back from the winter doldrums.  We chose a simple tomato soup.

We dream to eventually cook a fancy and complex soup, with roasted and pureed vegetables, something that takes more than a couple steps.  However, it's winter, and it was a long day, so we decided to push our dreams off for some other day.  How's that for a cheerful, uplifting thought?

Figure 2. Our NFPA Ratings for tomato soup.

NFPA Ratings:

Prep time: One hour and 20 minutes.  Most of that time is spent dicing tomatoes and cooking.  The steps in between don't take up much time.  The recipe claimed it would take much less time than it actually did.

Difficulty: 5.  The recipe was a bit confusing.  Maybe our reiteration of the recipe will knock this rating down a point or two, but we want to report our experiences as they happened.  (Get ready to read about some weird soup.)

Course: Dinner or lunch, but it needs to be paired with a main course.  We suggest grilled cheese.

Figure 3. Simmering the Diced Tomatoes

Materials
Tomatoes - 4 cups, diced (Figure 3)
Onion  - 1 slice
Cloves - 4 whole
Chicken Broth - 2 cups
Butter - 2 tbsp
All-Purpose Flour - 2 tbsp
Salt - 1 tsp
White Sugar - 2 tsp (or to taste)

Methods 
1. In a stockpot, over medium heat, combine the tomatoes, onion,  cloves, and chicken broth
2. Bring to boil, and gently boil for about 20 minutes to blend all of the flavors.
3. Remove from heat and run the mixture through a food mill into a large bowl or pan.*  Discard leftover bits from the food mill.
4.  In the stockpot, melt the butter over medium heat.
5. Stir in the flour to make a roux,** cooking until the roux is a medium brown.
6. Gradually whisk in a bit of the tomato mixture, so that no lumps form, then stir the rest.
7. Season with sugar and salt, and adjust to taste.

*We used a strainer and mashed it through.  Big mistake.  (See Results)
**A roux is a homemade thickening agent that is common in French cooking.  Just stir until it is evenly mixed.

Results
Well...okay.  Let's talk.  It's not like we didn't try.  We were just so excited about cooking that we failed to read the recipe closely in advance.  If we had, we would have noticed that we needed a food mill.  Instead, we skimmed the directions, and as a result, were forced to improvise after we learned of the integral role of this mystical apparatus.

Figure 4. NOT a substitute for a food mill.

What is a food mill?  It's part blender, part juicer, and part strainer.  Basically, it's used to make purees by blending vegetables into a liquidy pulp. And neither of us has one.

Coming off of a string of successful cooking escapades, our hubris overcame us, and we thought we could somehow manage without the food mill.  We quite mistakenly thought we could mash our tomato mixture through a strainer and get similar results, mostly because we had not idea what a food mill was.  Don't try it.  It won't work.  Basically, 75%  of the taste of the soup came from the chicken broth, and only 25% came from the tomato mixture.  This happened because more of the tomato was supposed to be blended into the broth.  Because of our half-baked idea (pun intended) to substitute a plastic strainer for the raw power of metal blades, the chicken broth remained the dominant flavor in the soup.  Put simply, our tomato soup tasted like chicken.  Yikes!

That is not to say it did not taste good.  It was still rather tasty...but maybe a bit salty.  Actually, it only tasted good when we dipped the grilled cheese in it, which toned down the chicken flavor and put the emphasis on fried bread and cheese.  Grilled cheese was really our saving grace in this endeavor.  This recipe seemed like a lot of work for basic tomato soup, but maybe that's just because we didn't have a food mill.

Figure 5. Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

One last comment.  About the cleanup - it was odd.  The soup sort of gelatinized and stuck to all of the dishes.  It was very gooey and hard to scrub.

Was it worth it?  We leave that to you to decide.





Discussion
One ingredient we found surprising and problematic in this recipe was chicken broth.  Why would tomato soup use chicken broth?  Isn't tomato soup supposed to be a vegetarian dish?  Why not just use water?  So we decided to look further into the matter.

First of all, do you know what's actually in chicken broth?  It's a little gross...you might not want to keep reading.  Chicken broth is full of gelatin, which you'll know is made from hydrolyzed collagen if you read our post on thickening agents.  Remember the gummy bears?  Gelatin is a shared ingredient between chicken broth and gummy bears.  Doesn't sound so tasty anymore?  Then you should additionally know that collagen can be found in bones, tendons, cartilage, connective tissues, etc (Priest 2010).  A vegetarian's nightmare!  Good thing neither of us is a vegetarian.  Actually, don't get up-in-arms about this apparent travesty just yet.  Sources tell us that store-bought chicken broth doesn't contain as much hydrolyzed protein as homemade broth.  Yes, you read that right.  Store-bought broth has less bones, tendons, cartilage, connective tissues, etc. than the homemade stuff.

Figure 6. Chicken Broth

So, why is chicken broth so much more commonly used than vegetable broth?  At first we thought that using vegetable broth would have been nice because our tomato soup wouldn't have tasted like chicken.  However, after reading a Cook's Illustrated review of store-bought vegetable broth, we understood why it may be "disastrous" for your recipe.  According to this article, vegetable broth flavors vary widely (Cooks Illustrated 2008).  Some are loaded with salt, some are sweet, some have floating veggie bits in them, some are opaque, some are clear, some are bland, and others are overpowering and leave a weird aftertaste.  That's quite a lot of variation to introduce into your recipe, especially if you don't know which particular flavor of vegetable broth you have.  The article also points out that vegetable broth is often made from the worst vegetables just before they spoil, like KFC's chicken (Cooks Illustrated 2008).  In other words, if the vegetable isn't good enough to be sold as a vegetable, then it gets made into broth.  In terms of quality and uncertainty, vegetable broth seems like a bad choice.

Figure 7. Vegetable Broth

Our other question, "Why not just use water?"  Well, there seems to be no consensus on that.  It could either be great or disastrous.  Some people add water to their soup anyways to add more volume to it.  The chicken broth camp claims that the bits of tendons and bones and chicken guts boost the soup's flavor (Priest 2010).  To be honest though, we did not like that our tomato soup tasted like chicken. It was weird.  Next time, we will either get a food mill, or we will just try water.

References
1. Priest, C. Feb. 2010. "DIY Chicken Stock." Food/Science.
2. May 2008. "Vegetable Broth." Cook's Illustrated. 

Experiment 12: Bruschetta Bagels

Figure 1.  Can you say delicious?

Introduction

Tonight for dinner, we decided to go through the refrigerator, combine some stuff, and come up with our own, original recipe.  At first, we wanted to make garlic bread on bagels.  Then we decided to add some cheese.  Our third addition was tomatoes, because there were about five left over from...ohh...you'll see.  Then we remembered that we don't really like tomatoes.  Well, we like them better when they're cooked.  Throw in some spices and spoonfuls of minced garlic, sauté it, and life is good!

Figure 2. Our NFPA Rating for Bruschetta Bagels

Our NFPA ranking:

Preparation Time: 40 minutes.  This recipe came together as we cooked; therefore, the prep didn't seem too time consuming.  40 minutes will do it.

Difficulty: 3.  As we said, this recipe came together as we cooked.  That means it can't be that hard, right?

Course: The herbs and spices say dinner, but this would also make a luxury lunchtime meal.

        Figure 3. Buttered Bagels

     Figure 4. Chopped Tomatoes

Materials
Bagels
1) Bagels - 2
2) Butter - (See below)
3) Pepper - less than a dash*
4) Sea Salt - less than a dash*
5) Mozzarella Cheese - 1.5 sticks of string cheese

*Amount per piece
 
Bruschetta
5) Tomato - half
6) Minced Garlic in Pure Olive Oil- 2 spoonfuls
7) Onion Powder - a dash
8) Italian Seasoning - a dash
9) Sea Salt - a dash
10) Pepper - a dash

Methods
1) Slice the bagels, cut them in half again, and spread butter over each (Fig. 1).  Add some sea salt and pepper.
2) Dice the tomato and sauté it with pepper, sea salt, Italian seasoning, and onion powder.
3) Add two spoonfuls of the minced garlic.

When the mixture gets watery and the tomatoes look less solid, it's ready.

3) Spread a spoonful of the bruschetta mixture over each quartered bagel.
4) Place a few strings of string cheese to the top.
5) Bake at 350 ºF for 15 minutes.

Figure 5. Cooking the tomato mixture

Figure 6. Assemble the Bruschetta and Bagels 

Results
Tasty!  For just combining a bunch of stuff from the refrigerator, this turned out really well!  The flavor was nicely balanced between the tomatoes, garlic, pepper, and bagel.  Admittedly, the cheese never actually melted, which made the bruschetta a bit difficult to eat.  The string cheese we used might have been low fat (not sure), and that could have caused this problem.  After a quick Google search, it turns out that the fact that string cheese doesn't melt is common knowledge among amateur cooks.  So...we guess we missed that one. We recommend using a higher quality cheese that has all its fat to avoid this problem.  Regardless, the unmelted cheese did not affect the flavor.

Figure 7. Bruschetta Bagels

Discussion
Over the course of this blog, we've told you about taste, perception, and memory.  None of that would matter if external stimuli (e.g. the food) couldn't somehow be converted into a signal that our brains could understand.  For example, we told you a little about the taste transduction process with Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and Mexican Style Chicken, and scent transduction with Potato Latkes.  But the question still remains: once these chemical stimuli (e.g. taste and smell) are converted into electrical signals, how do these signals make it to the brain?

They travel down neurons.

To be honest, we picked this topic for discussion because we are Neurochefs, and we like neurons.  No, there were no neurons used as ingredients in this recipe, because that would be gross.  Still, neurons are cool, so we're gonna tell you a bit about them.  There are many different kinds of neurons, but we're going to tell you about a stereotypical, "general" neuron (Figure 8).

Neurons have a soma, or cell body, in the middle.  In one direction, branches of dendrites extend from the cell body.  Think of them like tree branches, but really tiny.  In the other direction, a long, thin axon extends.  Like in a wire, information is sent down a neuron with an electrical signal.  These electrical signals usually travel from dendrite to axon.  Signals enter a neuron in its dendrites, and it travels through the soma and down the axon to the end, where it travels on to other neurons.

Figure 8. A typical neuron.  Signals enter the cell through the dendrites, travel through the soma, and down the axon to the axon terminal, where the cell communicates with the dendrites of another cell.

Figure 9.  When an electrical signal reaches the end of an axon, it causes the

release of neurotransmitters, which bind to the next neuron and initiate a new

electrical signal.

Neurons communicate with each other either through chemical or electrical synapses, but chemical synapses are more common, so we are going to focus on those.  A chemical synapse is the 30 nm (30 billionths of a meter) space between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of another, across which different chemical messengers carry signals.  When an electrical signal reaches the end of the first neuron's axon, it causes these chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, to be released, and these bind to receptors on the dendrites of other neurons, which in turn induce an electrical signal that propagates down the next cell.

Your neurons don't travel in a series of single-lane roads.  They often bundle together in parallel to form nerves.  Taste is carried to the brain by the trigeminal nerve and odor is carried by the olfactory nerve.  What happens once these signals reach the brain?  That's another story.

References: Recipe
None!  Original recipe!

References: Discussion
Our brains!

Experiment 11: Fried Rice

Figure 1.  Fried Rice.  Delish.

Introduction

What do you do when you have an extra four pounds of sushi rice sitting around?  Either you make way more sushi than you would want to eat, or you find another recipe that uses rice.  We chose to cook fried rice and created our own recipe.  After looking at some different fried rice recipes online and eating fried rice in a bunch of different restaurants, we figured out what we liked and didn't like to eat with rice, and chose what we wanted for our recipe (Fried Rice 2001, JingBat 2010).

This recipe was pretty painless to make.  Either it was a simple one, or we're getting better at cooking.  Just for fun, let's assume our neurochef skills are improving.  Here are our NFPA ratings for this recipe:

Figure 2. Our NFPA Ratings for fried rice.

Difficulty: This recipe gets a 2 because it wasn't that difficult.  Sure, you have to chop a few things, and mix a few things, but it's not that much work.  Furthermore, we had fewer vegetables to chop because we used pre-chopped, frozen carrots.  Don't judge, it saves time.

Preparation Time: 45 minutes.  We worked pretty efficiently on this recipe.  Of course, it helps to have four hands chopping and frying, but the entire production fit neatly into a 45-minute window.

Course: We ate our rice for dinner, but it could also make a great lunch.  Really, it's a fairly complete meal - chicken, rice, and vegetables.  For some people (mostly students), fried rice could even make a nice breakfast item.

Materials

Figure 3.  Vegetables: chopped, mixed, and cooking

1) Broccoli - around 8 pieces
2) Scallions - 4 stalks
3) Olive Oil - just pour some in the pans
4) Soy Sauce - 2.5 tablespoons
5) Frozen pea & carrot mix - 0.75 cups
6) Yellow Onion - half a chopped onion
7) Salt - just add some and guess
8) Rice vinegar (We forgot this one.)
9) Garlic - 3 cloves
10) Chicken - 2 breasts
11) Sushi Rice - 3 cups
12) Crushed Red Pepper - As much as you want

Procedure

Figure 4. CW from top right: rice, veggies, chicken, and pot

of unknown origin

1) Cook the sushi rice using the directions on the package.  Set aside.
2) Dice the chicken into .5 inch pieces.  In one frying pan, add some olive oil.  When the olive oil is warm, add the chicken to the frying pan and cook it.
3) Chop the broccoli, scallions, garlic cloves, and onion.  Heat some olive oil in a separate frying pan.  Add the peas, scallions, garlic, carrots, broccoli, and onions and cook them (Figure 3).
4) Add some salt and the crushed red pepper to both frying pans.
5) When everything is cooked, combine the chicken, vegetables, and rice into the largest frying pan and mix.  Add the soy sauce and continue mixing.  Best eaten hot.

Figure 5.  Everything mixed together.

Results
We were quite pleased with the very tasty results of this recipe (n=3), which was exciting because it was one of our first original recipes.  While eating, we compared our fried rice with restaurant fried rice.

At first, we thought the fried rice could have used a bit more seasoning, mainly salt.  Almost right away though, we realized that we were simply accustomed to eating salty fried rice at restaurants, and that our recipe was pretty delicious without all the extra salt.

We noted that in addition to being less salty than restaurant fried rice, our recipe was less greasy.  The only time we used oil was a small amount of olive oil in each frying pan.  When the oil looked like it was nearly used up, we added water (about one cup) to each frying pan.  Adding water prevented overcooking, kept everything moist, and reduced the amount of oil used.  Though many recipes used butter, we decided to leave it out since we weren't sure what it would add.

A third difference between our fried rice and restaurant fried rice is that we decided not to use eggs.  Rather than using some sort of egg substitute, like another thickening agent, we just left out the eggs.  It didn't seem to hurt the recipe at all.

Discussion

Why fresh vegetables taste better than frozen vegetables.

Fruits and vegetables are mostly water.  When these delicate plant products are put in the freezer, the water in their cells turns into ice crystals and expands, which causes the walls that define the structure of the cell to rupture.  Cell walls are unique to plants and some bacteria, and they serve several functions.  First, cell walls keeping the contents of the cell in place and control the transmission of molecules between areas.  Second, since cell walls are rigid, which keeps plants rigid, and therefore crunchy.  When a fruit or vegetable is frozen and its cell walls rupture, enzymes that normally break down cell waste migrate to places they are not supposed to be - remember, cell walls keep these sorts of things in place (Figure 6; America's Test Kitchen, 2012).  When said fruit or vegetable is thawed, these enzymes become active and wreak havoc wherever they have ended up.  As a result of the cell wall rupturing and enzymatic degradation, your fruits and vegetables turn into off-color, off-flavor, off-texture versions of their pre-frozen selves.

Figure 6. The effects of freezing and thawing tobacco leaves. A) Fresh tobacco

leaf cells. B) Frozen leaf cells, exhibiting extensive rupturing. C) Magnification of

B, showing collapse of cell wall (arrow).  D) Thawed leaf, showing complete

disruption of cell structure.  Borrowed from Pearce, 2001.

This seems like a problem, right?  It looks like nature's way of continuing to ensure that nothing comes easy.  Sometimes you don't have the patience to cut up vegetables when the pre-chopped frozen alternative is a few aisles down.  Or, you might not have the energy or time after a long day at work to refine your knife skills with endless chopping, slicing, and mincing.  So how do you solve this conundrum?

Fortunately, vegetable manufacturers have solved this problem for you!  When you buy frozen vegetables at the store, they come blanched (America's Test Kitchen, 2012).  Blanching is the process of dipping a frozen food into boiling water, and then removing it after a short time and putting it in cold water to stop the cooking process.  Blanching breaks down all of the enzymes that would otherwise destroy your foods from the inside out without cooking the food itself.  The vegetables therefore maintain their color and taste - this is why your peas, carrots, peppers, broccoli, and other vegetables are brightly colored when they come out of the bag.

Problem solved!

References
1) 2001. "Fried Rice." Television Food Network, G.P.
2) JingBat. April. 2010. "Meegol's Fried Rice." VegWeb.
3) America's Test Kitchen. 2012. The Science of Good Cooking. Brookline, MA: America's Test Kitchen. Print.
4) Pearce RS. 2001. Plant Freezing and Damage. Annals of Botany 87: 417-24.

Experiment 10: Cheesecake

Introduction
When the clock struck midnight on New Years Day, that marked the halfway point between our two birthdays.  What better way to spend the afternoon before that moment to make cheesecake?

We pulled the crust and cake recipes from two different sources.  The cake recipe does not include any eggs.  In its stead, we used cornstarch, which, if you read our article on thickening agents, you'll know can serve as a perfectly ample substitute.  The crust recipe (naturally egg-less) works with not only cheesecake, but any pie that suits your fancy.

Our NFPA Rankings:

Prep time: The bulk of your time will be spent waiting for your cake to bake. Mixing the ingredients and constructing the cake only take about 20 minutes total. 

Difficulty: This recipe is easy.  Crust?  Mix all of the ingredients together.  Cake?  Mix some of the ingredients together, bake it for a while, mix the rest in, and bake a little more.  It is really hard to make a mistake.

Course:  Cheesecake.  It's what's for dessert.

Figure 3. Stick your graham crackers in a zip-lock bag 

and crush.

Materials and Methods
Crust (Bottom Layer)
Cinnamon graham crackers (GC) - 1.5 cups (1 package of 9-10 GCs)
Sugar - 0.33 cups
Butter - 6 tbsp (melted)
Cinnamon - 0.5 tsp

1) Crush the graham crackers into very fine crumbs (Fig. 3)
2) Mix all of the ingredients together
3) Using the back of a spoon, press the crust into the bottom of a springform pan

Figure 4. Middle Layer of Cheesecake

Cake (Middle Layer)

Cream cheese - 8 oz
Sugar - 1 cup
Cornstarch - 1 tbsp
Vanilla - 1 tbsp 

1) Mix all of the ingredients together
2) Pour into the pan spread it evenly over the crust
3) Bake for 35 minutes at 350 ºF
4) Let it cool for 5 minutes after baking (IMPORTANT!!!)

Figure 5. Top Layer of Cheesecake

Cake (Top Layer)
Sour cream - 1 pt
Sugar - 0.5 cup
Vanilla - 1 tsp
Strawberries

1) Mix all of the ingredients together
2) Spread on top of the first layer
3) Bake for 10 minutes at 400 ºF
4) Chill in the refrigerator
5) Slice some strawberries and arrange them on top of the cake in an aesthetically pleasing pattern.


Results
How can we describe this cake?  To put it straight: this is the most amazing dessert we have ever made, and quite possibly one of the best desserts we have ever eaten.  The cake itself was sweet, but not overpowering, as the tartness of the sour cream balanced out the sweetness of the rest of the cake.  The graham cracker crust was moist and not grainy, sweet and not bitter.  We are definitely happy with our decision to purchase cinnamon graham crackers at the grocery store (as opposed to honey), as the sharp taste of cinnamon proved to be the perfect addition to our smooth, sweet cheesecake.

Figure 6. Our Completed Cheesecake

We also debated as to whether or not we needed to build the crust up on the sides of the pan, or if it should just cover the base.  We opted for the base-only crust, and....wow, was it a great choice.  The sugar on the edge of the cake caramelized when it baked, which serendipitously yielded a sweet, chewy, caramel crust that we could not have come up with on purpose if we tried.

To put it simply, it is not possible to describe how we felt when we consumed this confection.  If we were to try, we would only shame ourselves and disrespect the cake itself.  Each bite brought us closer to enlightenment, and reaching the crust was our awakening.  You should really sit down if you want to eat this cake.  We're not exaggerating.  Try this recipe and you'll see.  If you need a break from life, take in the intoxicating taste of this cake, and let all of your stress melt away.

Discussion

Figure 7. Sucrose

In our cake, the sugar that made contact with the pan caramelized.  What happens when sugar caramelizes? For a long time, it was thought that what happened as a result of heating sugar was that it would turn brown and become a liquid; that the chemical change of sugar molecules breaking apart and reforming into something different is initiated by the heat.  A simple chemical change, end of story.

Figure 8. Caramelized Sugar

However, Professor Shelly Schmidt's research group from the University of Illinois recently found out that it's a bit more complicated (McGee 2012).  Interestingly, they learned that sucrose doesn't just have one melting temperature like most solids.  Instead, two processes occur at two different temperatures.  At one temperature, the individual sucrose molecules break apart and become caramel, and at a higher temperature, the molecules break from each other, causing liquification (Schmidt 2012).  According to Professor Shelly Schmidt, the ranges at which these two processes occur are 290 ºF and 380 ºF, respectively.  Also, the slower the sugar is heated, the more of a chance it has to caramelize, and this reduces its melting point.

It is difficult to determine the exact chemical process that occurred in our oven.  First, the cake cooked at two temperatures, 350ºF and 400ºF, or just below and just above the melting point for sugar, respectively.  Second, ovens tend not to be entirely accurate in setting their temperatures, therefore the exact relationship between our cooking temperature and the chemical state of our cake can not be resolved precisely.  More cooking and testing must be done to fully understand the dynamics of caramelization.  However, we're not going to repeat this experiment a bunch of times because we want to make other foods.

References
1) McGee, H. September 2012. "Caramelization: New Science, New Possibilities." Curious Cook
2) Schmidt, S.J. Exploring the sucrose-water state diagram.  Manufacturing Confectioner, January 2012, 79-89.