Do you want sprouts with that? This article was taken from the September 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. The big dude with the tattoos and the bad case of five o'clock shadow served roasted kabocha squash, organic Brussels sprouts, and free-range chicken breast. None of this would have been notable had the dish been prepared by just another hipster chef, during just another lunch hour here among the food-obsessed in Palo Alto, California.
But this dish was something else. It was the future. We had come to the artisanally fed vale of Facebook and Tesla to sample the first fruits of Lyfe Kitchen, a soon-to-be-chain of restaurants that might just shift the calculus of American cuisine. For the moment the only Lyfe Kitchen is here on Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto. There is one overriding reason to believe that this venture will work. Thank The Simple Wasp For That Complex Glass Of Wine : The Salt. Hide captionThe European hornet, or vespa crabro, helps make wine by kickstarting the fermentation process while the grapes are still on the vine.
Otto Hahn/Getty Images/Picture Press RM The European hornet, or vespa crabro, helps make wine by kickstarting the fermentation process while the grapes are still on the vine. The next time you take a sip of your favorite wine, you might want to make your first toast to hornets. Or, more precisely, European hornets and paper wasps. That's because those big scary flying insects whose stings can be especially painful may be the secret to the wonderful complex aroma and flavor of wine. "Wasps are indeed one of wine lovers' best friends," says Duccio Cavalieri, a professor of microbiology at the University of Florence in Italy. Cavalieri and his colleagues discovered that these hornets and wasps bite the grapes and help start the fermentation while grapes are still on the vines.
"Everything is linked," he adds. Future foods: What will we be eating in 20 years' time? Volatile food prices and a growing population mean we have to rethink what we eat, say food futurologists. So what might we be serving up in 20 years' time? It's not immediately obvious what links Nasa, the price of meat and brass bands, but all three are playing a part in shaping what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it. Rising food prices, the growing population and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have organisations - including the United Nations and the government - worrying about how we will feed ourselves in the future. In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets. "In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat," says food futurologist Morgaine Gaye.
"Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. So what will fill such gaps and our stomachs - and how will we eat it? Insects Insects, or mini-livestock as they could become known, will become a staple of our diet, says Gaye. Algae. Why don’t we drink other animals’ milk? The dairy of camels, buffalo, pigs, sheep, and goats. Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Walk down a dairy aisle and you may start to notice how little we've done with the whole concept. Worldwide, there are about 6,000 mammal species, each with its own unique milk, but Americans get at least 97 percent of all our dairy products from one animal.
(That would be the cow.) Even at my local Whole Foods, purveyors of exotica like shad roe and that kombucha stuff, there was only a single brand of goat’s milk. Over at the cheese counter, the situation was a little better. “There's a buffalo-milk mozzarella over in the refrigerator section, but yeah,” the cheesemonger told me. Abroad, things are a little more diverse: Various foreigners drink the milk of the camel, the yak, the water buffalo, the reindeer, the elk, and a few other animals.
The three dairy animals familiar to Westerners were domesticated between 10,000 B.C. and 8000 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent. In America, cows never had any real competition. Why Humans Are Crazy for Crispy - The Chronicle Review. By John S. Allen At any run-of-the-mill Japanese restaurant in North America, the menu features such traditional items as tempura, tonkatsu, and kara-age chicken. This crispy trio has long had an important place in Japanese cuisine. But it is surprising to find out that all three are cultural borrowings, some dating back to time periods when Japan went to great lengths to isolate itself from foreign influences.
In The Babbo Cookbook, the celebrity chef and restaurateur Mario Batali wrote, "The single word 'crispy' sells more food than a barrage of adjectives. ... The hypothesis that crispy foods are innately appealing is a fascinating one. Eating has been as critical to human survival as sociality, language, and sex and gender roles have, but it has not received much interest from evolutionary psychologists and other scientists interested in behavioral evolution. One place to start trying to understand the appeal of crispy foods is to look at their sources in the natural world. John S.