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!