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. 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. Cavalieri says one of the reasons the discovery is so exciting for him is that it's an example of just how connected the natural world is and how humans rely on this interconnection in ways we simply cannot perceive.
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. “EASY TO DIGEST!” 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.
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. 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.
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. The batter-frying tempura technique (used typically for vegetables and shrimp) was borrowed from Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and traders in the 15th and 16th centuries. 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. One place to start trying to understand the appeal of crispy foods is to look at their sources in the natural world. John S.
