Holiday happiness - infusing science into your holiday baked delights!

Happy holidays everyone -

The year is winding down slowly and there are many great things to look forward to:

1. More time to spend with loved ones. I'm taking a short vacation away from lab to hang out with my family up in Stockton and couldn't be more excited. I'm planning to stalk my mom around the kitchen and learn how to cook more Vietnamese style dishes (my goal: mam va rau - we'll see if it's possible).

2. More winter in southern California - or "fall" for those who actually experience snow and rain frequently during this time of the year. Some great things about December/January: piping hot tea, curling up under a throw, and doing night runs.

3. A new year happening - new resolutions, new beginnings, new goals. This summer, I made a goal for myself to get back into running. MOH decided to up the ante and make me create a concrete mile goal, so I decided to do 300 miles within 6 months. I'm two weeks away from finishing the year and less than 15 miles left, so I'm pretty excited. I think next year, I'm going to aim for 600 miles. Speaking of which, I need new shoes. I've been eying the Brooks Adrenaline GTS - I saw a review on them on Runner's World and drooled a little. I had the GTS11 and loved it for its lightness.

4. Indulgence at its best! This time of the year there are a ton of holiday parties, get-togethers, and that always means good food, good desserts.

And if you're particularly lucky, you have some friends who make great desserts that appeal to both your eyes AND mouth! Case in point - my friend Jaimie Ngo's wonderful gingerbread treats that would brighten up anyone's day. Jaimie loves to infuse playful designs into her baked creations at a bakery in San Diego where she comes up with the cutest designs for any season!

Photo courtesy of J. Ngo

Did I mention she can also make brains look tasty, too?

Photo courtesy of J Ngo

Gingerbread cookies are a common staple during the holidays. This year, brighten your treats by decorating them using a simple royal icing (basically powdered sugar and egg whites, or meringue powder and water). Make sure to decorate once your cookies are fully cooled, or be prepared for a hot mess of melting icing (unless you're trying to get that visual effect).

Not that great of a decorator or not that creative? No worries - inspiration and creativity can stem from anything! Whether it's modeled after a piece of art or a photograph, or a cool show you watch, or something you see in nature, creativity can stem from anything. First time decorator? Don't fret - Jaimie cannot stress the importance of taking your time - decorating is a form of art, and requires patience and time. If you're willing to put in the time to thoughtfully decorate your desserts, everything will fall into place. Having the right baking and decorating tools help, too.

Hope everyone's holidays goes great! May everyone enjoy great memories and happy eating!

Green goodness: herbs at their finest

I never understood how some people just don't like herbs or greens, for that matter. I know a handful of people who just can't eat pho with the cilantro/green onion garnish, or don't like the natural taste of a simple spinach salad, or even the taste of fresh mint and perilla in a spring roll. Maybe it's the taste, but I can't imagine a world where herbs didn't exist.

They're delicious AND healthy - who can refuse them? Sure, there's that slight bitterness to it, but isn't that what the good stuff's made of?

Herbs come in all varieties, shapes and sizes... and surprise, surprise, as anything green and pseudo-bitter, they come with a heaping amount of good health kicks. In relation to cognitive health, certain herbs have been found to promote recovery following memory loss. A recently paper in Plos One written by Zhang and colleagues used a memory-loss rat model* and treated these rats with a chemical cocktail of herbal medicine (extracts came from different herbs including an herb that's in the mint family). What they found was memory function was improved and several genes were activated that promoted brain recovery and function.

Yes, herbs are healthy and that's all great, but how do you reap the full benefits of something? Oftentimes, eating fruits and vegetables in their raw form offers you the most nutrients (cooking sometimes kills proteins and essential nutrients). For herbs, one of my favorite recipes is to do a variation on a thai salad, known as larb.

Larb plays on sour and salty and spotlights different herbs and greens at their finest - when they're prepared fresh, with no fuss. This is probably my go-to dish when I'm heading out to the potluck event or hosting a girls' night. It's simple to make and can be done within half an hour (including prep time!).

Ingredients:
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes (or one large tomato)
- 1 bundle of green onions, chopped
- 1 bundle of cilantro, chopped
- half a head of napa cabbage, shredded
- 1-2 bundles of mint leaves, chopped coarsely
- Three bundles of dried vermicelli
- 2 limes or 3 lemons (more sour, the better)
- 1/2 of dried red pepper (or fresh peppers) - used to add spiciness
- 1/3 cup Fish sauce, use more to taste
- optional: ground meat or mashed tofu for protein punch (I didn't add it into this particular batch, but I like to sometimes boil tofu and mash it up into tiny pieces and infuse into the dish, similar to adding gorgonzola onto spinach salad). Alternatively, you can do ground meat.

Protocol:
1. Toss vermicelli into boiling water for 1 minute - immediately remove and toss the noodles into cold water. Let the noodles sit in cold water until ready to use
2. Chop up greens and throw them into a large mixing bowl - the bigger the bowl, the more flexibility you have to mix ingredients together

3. Once all greens, tomatoes and garlic have been chopped, add in vermicelli. The noodles should be cold and expanded. Toss the noodles in and mix the ingredients all together.
4. Squeeze lime/lemon juice and start with 1/3 cup of fish sauce - mix everything together.
5. Depending on how sour/salty you want your larb to be, adjust the amount of lime juice or fish sauce
6. If in a spicy mood, garnish with red pepper flakes or fresh chilis!
7. Serve immediately, or keep chilled - larb stays good in the fridge for a few days, but you may need to adjust the flavor since lime juicy becomes less potent over time.

Hopefully you guys like this dish - it's a great light dish to have and packs a lot of flavor, making for a great dish to bring to holiday parties!

Until next time, happy eating all!




***Supplemental information regarding the cited paper:
Rats were treated with Ibotenic Acid (IBO), a drug that causes severe injury to site of injection and leads to neuronal loss. In this paper, they tested memory function using Morris Water Maze (a platform is submerged under water and rats have to learn where the platform is in order to avoid getting wet for a long period of time) and differential gene regulation was observed using DNA microarray.

References:

Zhang J et al., 2013. Ameliorative effects of a combination of Baicalin, Jasminoidin and Cholic Acid on Iobetenic Acid-induced dementia model in Rats. Plos One.

Guest post: An unlikely pair - banana and parsley

Hey everyone, this week, I'm featuring a guest post from a fellow kitchen experimenter, none other than my sister. Some background - she's currently based on the east coast working at an International Development company. In her spare time, she enjoys hot yoga, playing with babies, and cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Hope everyone enjoys this post - more to come in the future!

Until next time, happy eating all!

~

Hey y'all, it's The culineuroscientist's lil' sister the Wankstronomist. I'm the wanksta of gastronomy. If that still doesn't make sense, watch this and instead of 50 Cent rollin' up in a hummer, imagine Morimoto with the honey Ina Garten next to him chucking deuces like a boss. Or simply put, I'm the Ja Rule of the ballin' food world (no offense to Ja Rule, I love the man's music). 

That being said, I am particularly obsessed with the world of Foodpairings. Foodpairings is a SCIENCE, it's not as easy as taking citrus to a random piece of fish and going, "wowza, pops in my mouth". Foodpairings go together because these two noms share the same chemical compound.

This can lead to some interesting combinations with foods you never would have thought go well together (ie. passion fruit and oysters). Check out unusual foodpairings here, and keep your eye out on this blog for some fancy molecular gastronomy.

I decided to take on the two noms banana and parsley for some vegan banana parsley bread. SAY WHAAA?

Yeah, check it. Awesome foodpairing blogger Martin Lersch wrote this post on banana and parsley. After homie searched on The good scents company, he found out (Z)-3-hexen-1-yl formate and linalool are present in both banana and parsley. Basically, try cooking with parsley--if you have a gifted nose from the Gastronomy Gods, you can smell a waft of banana. 

Because my big sis is all hip and tries things vegan now, I decided to make a vegan dish as a nod to her healthy life style.

And I semi-failed.

Recipe IF YOU DARE:

Three ripe bananas (I used four...BIG MISTAKE)

1 cup of rice flour (I would adjust and do 1 and 1/2 cup)

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup of chopped parsley leaves (no stems)

1 teaspoon of baking powder (apparently not all baking powders are vegan)

2 tablespoons of oil -- 1 for the batter, one to cover your baking loaf

1 tablespoon of chia seed (substitute for egg)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 415 degrees F
• Take 1 tablespoon of chia seed and mix with 3 table spoons of water. Put aside - in five minutes, it'll turn into a tapioca-like thick mix
• Wash parsley and take only the top stems and leaves.Finely chop. Set aside.
• Mash the bananas well. You can even blend them if you want.
• Mix all ingredients together with remaining items: chia seed, parsley, banana, vanilla extract, baking powder, oil.
• Cook in the oven for 45 minutes. Depending on your oven, I'd watch closely until it gets golden brown.

Notes:

1. If batter is too dry, add a little bit of water. If batter is too wet, add more vegan flour. My bananas were super juicy that it didn't need additional liquid.
2. If your banana bread is golden brown (close to burnt edges), but still a bit wet on the inside--take it out and let it rest. After it cools (it should flatten considerably), cut into squares and cook at 350 degrees F in a toaster oven. DON'T JUDGE, I don't have 1379373 bananas and parsley to find the right heat balance.
3. Don't overdue bananas. Three ripe bananas are perfect. Doing four is overkill and makes the batter too wet.
4. I wouldn't recommend going with rice flour, unless you like gelatinous results. Should have read this post about vegan baking from the Gluten-Free Goddess.

If there's anything you can reap from this post, it's this:

1. Foodpairings are awesome. Who cares if the last page you witnessed was an atrocity to baking.
2. Banana and parsley tastes great together. Try it raw, make it into a smoothie, whatever...don't let this post ruin it for you. I just can't bake. 'Cuz I'm a wankstronomist.
3. My sister is doing an awesome job sticking to her vegan diet. My support is measured through my LOVE not my vegan baking, OK?

Alright, I'm out heading into the mean streets of Arlington-Yuppie Virginia. If this post gets enough likes, maybe my big sis will invite me again to do a post that isn't a big mess up like this one.

NEXT FUTURE POST: Dried apricots and harissa. 

PEACE

The Wankstronomist.

Thanksgiving blessings and thanks to readers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hopefully everyone is enjoying the long weekend and spending lots of time just relaxing, eating good food, being with good company. It's the time of the year when you think of family constantly and can't wait until the next time you're able to see everyone. For me, the next time will be during the December holidays - I'm super excited because I'll see my sisters again (one of them lives on the East Coast now, so every time with her is precious), and get to catch up with the rest of my family!

Family comes in all forms and shapes. They can consist of those related to you, or even those who you've come to share life's moments with. That said, I just wanted to do a special thanks post for the readers, my extended virtual family - I've hit 1000 page views meaning that I've managed to interest some of you into tuning in to my regular postings. I can't say how grateful I am to everyone for supporting this blog! This blog began with a small thought I had while out on a hike with MOH months ago. I had expressed a desire to start a writing portfolio of fusing two of my passions in life (science and food) but just couldn't find the motivation or catchy enough title to start. MOH finally gave me the push (and name of blog's title) and it's been half a year and the blog is still up and running, thanks to all my continued support from you all. I can't say it enough, but thanks for hanging around and reading my ramblings!

This Thanksgiving, MOH and I decided to branch out and switch up some of our usual dishes for new items. We usually do green beans, ham (for MOH), wild rice stuffing, yams and corn. This year, we kept the ham and wild rice as our oldies-but-goodies, and added on sweet potato and MOH's first ever pumpkin pie (gluten free crust baby!). Everything was so delicious and even without having turkey, we have fallen victim to the dreaded food coma. It's 10 PM and we're still feeling the effects. You'd think that a Thanksgiving without turkey would avoid the food coma, but even after taking a long 6 mile hike, MOH and I still couldn't escape the food coma.

I first made this wild rice dish last year after seeing it featured in the Bon apetit magazine. I cut the recipe in half since it was my first time making it and I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. One hour later and a scorched pot fulled browned through, I had this dish that tasted so hearty and had this great depth of flavor full of fresh thyme. This year, I made some slight modifications, mostly due to me not wanting to deal with washing a burnt pot. I used a rice cooker to cook the wild rice/white rice blend in broth and sauteed garlic/onions. Then, once the rice was finished in the rice cooker, I scooped it all out and finished off the rice with a touch of lemon, thyme, and chives. This rice dish is an amazing substitute for the traditional go-to bread stuffing, especially for those who want to try a gluten-free alternative.

Normally, I like to make a coconut, sweet yam dish and mashed potatoes. You can't go wrong with delicious starches on Thanksgiving, but when there's such a great variety of squash/yam/sweet potato dishes, why not branch out? Gluten free goddess recently posted a Thanksgiving recipes post which featured this great recipe for a sweet potato black bean enchiladas that just looked amazing! It was great timing because MOH was hounding me about the numerous canned beans I had in the pantry. The enchiladas were so delicious. Using corn tortillas as a base, the enchiladas have a black bean/sweet potato lime stuffing that goes great with green enchilada sauce. Not your typical yams and marshmallow that are mostly featured during the fall, but good nonetheless. For added texture, I added onions and bell peppers and topped my serving with some tapatio sauce, yum.

I won't say too much about the honey glazed ham since this was more in MOH's realm, but MOH has been munching on his little ham pieces all night. He'll bring a piece at a time and just munch on them while we watch our TV marathon. Then, he'll saunter over to the kitchen and grab another piece - call me lazy, but I prefer to just stack my plate with a hefty helping and just gorge. I haven't tried it, but the glazed top looks amazing and it sure smells good.

And then the final touch to end our feast - pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is my favorite pie, hands down. People can attest to the apple pie, pecan, or blueberry pie, but pumpkin pie is just too special to compare. Simple in nature, the filling is so simple, but has this great spice combination. We went to Mother's Market, this awesome organic, natural foods grocery market to check out their Thanksgiving items. This store offers a wide variety of gluten-free options such as pie crusts! We bought pie crusts and dairy free chocolate chips (if you're lactose intolerant, TRY THESE, they are so delicious and melt great after baking) and MOH baked a pumpkin pie that tasted so good!

Overall, another year, another Thanksgiving of good food. Hopefully everyone's start of the holidays have gone well!

Until next time, happy holidays, and happy eating all!

Pre-Thanksgiving thanks and noodle-mania

It's Thanksgiving week, which means I can take a second to just breathe and count my blessings.

Whether it's enjoying the year-round beauty of Southern California weather, my supportive family who gets my hectic school schedule, my culture that has helped ignite my passion for food, or even you for browsing through this blog of my raw subconscious, this year has much to be thankful for. 

This past weekend I was craving noodles and vegetables and thought to make a dish that's super easy and called bun tom va dau phu xao (vermicelli with sauteed tofu and shrimp). Now I know what you're thinking - what? No Thanksgiving centric dishes?!?! Trust me though, this dish would serve as a great intermediate between Thanksgiving snacking. You can sandwich this meal between Turkey day Thanksgiving and Saturday leftovers. On top of that, this dish is simple to make and is super flavorful. Another added bonus - this dish can be customized to please any eater's palate. Although I made this dish with tofu and shrimp, the dish would be just as delicious with tofu only, shrimp only, pork, or even beef.

Ingredients for nuoc mam (dipping sauce), modified from Ravenous Couple:

- 1/2 cup of water

- 1/8 cup of fish sauce 

- 2.5 tablespoon white sugar

- 2.5 tablespoon lime juice

- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped or mashed

- 4 chilis chopped

Ingredients for vermicelli tom dau phu xao:

- 1/2 pack of extra firm tofu, cubed

- 6 pieces of tiger prawns (or shrimp of your choice), deveined and cut into 1 inch length pieces, or kept whole

- 4 garlic cloves, chopped

- 3 tablespoons of oyster sauce

- 1 tablespoon of sesame oil

- 2 stalks of lemongrass, chopped

- 1 onion chopped longways

- Bundle of noodles

- 1/2 red or green lettuce washed and chopped 

- 2 cups bean sprouts washed

- 1/2 bundle of cilantro washed

- Your choice of herbs (mint, basil, perilla)

Protocol:

1. Boil vermicelli noodles until cooked through - drain and set aside

2. Combine ingredients for fish sauce (ingredient list 1) and set aside - adjust accordingly to how sour or sweet you want the sauce

3. In a bowl, combine garlic, tofu, lemongrass, oyster sauce and sesame oil - let sit for at least 20 minutes or in fridge to let marinade sink in

4. Heat skillet and add a dash of vegetable oil

5. When hot, put in ingredients from (1) and stir fry until tofu browned

6. Once tofu browned, add in shrimp and onions

7. Sautee until onions and shrimp are cooked through - set aside

8. Create your dish using your favorite fixings (if you like more green, pile on the herbs and vegetables, followed by noodles and sauteed tofu/shrimp; if you want a more paleo treat, omit rice noodles)

Happy eating all!

When cooks try to bake

Some of us are blessed to be considered good cooks AND bakers.

This week, I realized I cannot bake for my life. I used to bake pretty frequently when I first started college. Food was an outlet that I found out was a great stress reliever. Whether it was exam grades, looming deadlines, or just the blues, cooking and baking was this time that I had for myself which was totally in my control. I couldn't control how a curve would be set in my statistics class (ugh ANOVAs how you KILL ME!), nor could I control how my experimental result would pan out, but I could plan out what I wanted to eat, or how I wanted to flavor it.

Photo courtesy of Infrogmation

We're in the middle of fall, which means pumpkin recipes are floating around the internet and being featured in magazines galore. I love pumpkin. In general I'm a fan of most squashes (I love making a great squash bake). But this week, I was craving some pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread. I followed a seemingly simple recipe, but in my haste, forgot one key ingredient - brown sugar. HA. The pumpkin pie filling smelled great baking in the oven - the taste on the other hand, it had this awful aftertaste of too much cinnamon that would have been ignored had I put in some sugar. It was so sad. Some people are just not fit to be bakers. Myself in particular, I lack the structure or discipline to follow the strict recipe - I usually end up eye-balling measurements, throwing things here and there, hoping it will turn out okay. I think after today, I'm going to leave the baking to MOH (he makes the best gluten free, vegan, oatmeal raisin cookies!) In cooking, there's much more flexibility. You can work off the backbone of a recipe and add your particular flair without being too concerned about something turning out badly.

I think to be a great baker, you need to have the eye for creativity, but the knowledge of chemistry in order to create something wonderful. The correct measurements and ratio of flour: eggs: sugar are so key and often mean the difference between something tasting too "eggy" versus "airy," "dense" versus "light," or in my case, "good" versus "gross."

Carrot cupcakes courtesy of Jaimie N - these cupcakes taste as good as they look!

Luckily for most of us non-bakers, we often surround ourselves with friends and family who are AMAZING bakers! I'm fortunate to have friends who bake some of the most beautiful and tasteful desserts. The photo above is from Jaimie N., a friend from San Diego who does some of the most creative desserts. Like what you see? If so, you're in luck because Jaimie will be featured in a December post spotlighting some of her favorite desserts!

I decided to redeem myself and tried to make a pumpkin bread this time. I had blown through a can of pumpkin puree, didn't satisfy my pumpkin craving, and needed a pick-me-up after a long week. I used the backbone of a recipe but decided to make modifications of my own because I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of using 4 eggs and 4 cups of flour for a bread recipe - seriously? The end result was a hybrid between a pumpkin bread/pumpkin bread pudding that tasted pretty good! It reminded me of a pumpkin version of Vietnamese souffle cake, this soft, moist cake. Happy mistake on my part for the extra surprise, and I'll take it!

Ingredients:
- 15 ounce pumpkin puree
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup oil
- 1/6 cup of water
- 3/4 cup of gluten free all purpose flour
- 1 tsp of baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger

Protocol:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Celsius
2. Mix pumpkin puree, eggs, water, oil and sugar
3. Add in rest of dry ingredients, making sure evenly distributed
4. Pour onto a greased loaf pan
5. Bake for 50 minutes or until cooked through
6. Let cool - bread tastes even better if left out overnight.


Hopefully you guys like this rendition of pumpkin bread! If you like your bread not as moist, I'd suggest halving the amount of pumpkin since I actually doubled the normative amount of pumpkin.

Until next time, happy eating all!

Follow your gut: how slime molds map railways more efficient than most people

Whether a friend is asking for your thoughts on a career change, or maybe you hear a radio caller questioning their partner's faithfulness, or perhaps you have your own MOH asking those life altering decisions ("Hey, should I have oreos, nachos... or BOTH?!") a common phrase tossed around is "what does your gut tell you?"

What does that even mean? My gut talks to me all day. It's not anything philosophical and more tummy rumblings than anything, but sometimes the gut speaks the truth. Like how some breakfasts should start off with hot cereal!

Sometimes breakfast just needs something other than yogurt!

MOH is taking core graduate courses which suck for him, but are great for me because he tells me about really cool science-y stuff happening around the world. I don't know about other grad students, but I often get stuck in my little bubble of research, that I miss some interesting finds.

Slime mold - isn't it beautiful? (Photo courtesy of frankenstoen)

Case in point: slime molds, when following their gut, are pretty smart. Scratch that, slime molds are GENIUS. This is an oldie, but real goodie. 

Science published an article in 2010 (Tero, A. et al.) in which they looked at how organisms establish biological networks through computing their energy input, food source, and environmental obstacles - in particular, how does slime mold map out the most efficient way to get to all their food sources? If you think about trying to get to multiple places (say you are running errands on a Saturday), you ideally want to map out the most efficient route. To do so, you take in consideration different things: how far do you need to travel (should you hit Costco first, or do it on the way home?), how much gas it will cost you, and what physical barriers stand in your way (maybe there is more traffic on University at 5PM because it links to the freeway). It is a constant struggle of balancing everything in order to find the most feasible, least stressful solution to getting to your endpoint.

Even one of the most basic organism, slime mold, does this mental calculation. Slime mold naturally will seek out food sources by sending out tons of feelers into their environment (see photo below). The slime mold sends out giant nets, almost. Eventually, the slime will trim down its numerous feelers in order to direct most of its energy towards the high food sources. This redirection is a result of using the least amount of energy in order to hit all its food hot spots. 

Figure 1 from Tero paper showing slime mold calculating best trajectory to get to food sources

The slime mold is so efficient at making this calculation, that the researchers decided to put the mold to the ultimate test - if given a representative complex food source map, such as the city of Tokyo, could the slime mold map out an efficient way to hit all its food sources?

Figure 2 from Tero paper

What researchers actually saw was crazy - the slime mold was able to map out its projections to an almost spot-on map of the Tokyo rail network. In the photo above, the slime mold initially mapped out a trajectory shown in A, which doesn't quite match up to D (the actual Tokyo rail line). To simulate Tokyo's dynamic landscape (combination of high and low altitude), researchers shined a light on the areas of high altitude and put dim light on areas of low altitude, and found that the mold rerouted its trajectory to a spot-on layout to the Tokyo rail line.

Slime mold is super basic. It has no actual brain or nervous system, and is a large, single cellular ameboid organism. Its main goal in life is to troll around and find a food source. Yet, given the opportunity, slime mold can perform a complex computation solely driven by its gut response. Imagine if our guts were that smart. We should be so lucky.

This weekend I'm heading to San Diego for the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting! Planning to post some cool findings from there if I make it out alive!

Until next time, happy eating!

References:

Tero, A., et al., 2010. Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design. Science. 327(5964): 439-442