Wacky Wonders (or, Chocolate Cheese Fudge? For Real?)

Things have been more than a bit hectic over here. We've just moved into our new house, one of our cats is sick (and needs to be coaxed into eating her foul-tasting pills twice a day), and work is in overdrive, with plenty of long hours including a sleep at work one evening. We've been cooking and eating out as much as ever; I just haven't found the time to blog about things, until I've waited so long that I've lost the inspiration. If you are interested, you can see a more timely update of what we've been up to on my Facebook page.

Poaching free range chicken breast for the sick animal.

Along with our new house comes the new experience of cooking with gas. It's amazing how quickly the stovetop heats things up, but frustratingly, it seems to be pretty difficult to cook at a low temperature, even when we place a spacer underneath the pot. When we tried to slow-cook beef bones and salmon frames into palatable jellies for the cat, we couldn't get the stock to simmer; it was at a furious boil for hours. When we made chili con carne using the unseasoned boiled mince the cat rejected, we managed to burn food on the sides of the pot. And the oven is so well insulated that it not only comes to temperature in a matter of minutes, we can barely smell whatever it is that is being baked. It takes some getting used to, our new kitchen, but it is an improvement on the one at our old flat.

The secret to a delicious chili, we've decided, is the addition of a bit of cocoa powder and a rich, flavourful sugar. We used malt syrup this time, but molasses sugar is also great, and other people add a square of chocolate instead. We also managed to use up the jar of pickled jalapeños that has been sitting in our fridge (a small triumph—the pickled cucumbers left over from our burger making experiments are next in the firing line).

Which brings us to what we tried making after that (hint: the title of this post gives the game away already). Now, I've seen some pretty wacky ingredients in my time. For vegans, I have produced a chocolate mousse tart using tofu, and a buttercream frosting made of avocados, the green colour of which makes me think it really ought to taste like mint, especially if you are pairing it with chocolate cake. Both of the above tasted of their respective ingredients, mainly because I couldn't bring myself to add as much sugar as it would take to drown the flavours out. Bean brownies are not so odd, if you are used to Asian bean-based desserts, and I am all geared up to try pizza with a cauliflower crust. I can understand why you might use unusual ingredients if you have dietary restrictions, but when I came across chocolate cheese fudge, I was astounded.

Chocolate cheese fudge.

I know people use cheese in desserts. In fact, I love cheesecake in many different forms. But we are not talking about cream cheese here. We are not even talking ricotta or mascarpone. What the recipe calls for is processed cheese, which you can't even buy in blocks anymore in New Zealand! Fortunately, we had some individually wrapped slices in the fridge, again left over from making hamburgers. Unfortunately, we only had one plain slice; the rest were smoked (or rather, smoke-flavoured). Seeing as putting cheese into fudge sounded ridiculous anyway, we ploughed on ahead.

Melting together the processed cheese with butter.

As you might expect, the processed cheese was rubbery and didn't really want to mix with the melted butter. But although it seemed like far too much icing sugar for the amount of yellow goo, the resultant crumbly mixture compressed into an oily Play-Doh-like clump, which set in the refrigerator into a smooth, firm block of fudge.

Mixing the cheese into cocoa and icing suagr.

Unsuspecting tasters thought the fudge was delicious, but commented it was saltier than usual, like salted butter caramels. On being told it contained processed cheese though, the reaction was generally one of disgust. And the smokey flavour is obvious once you know about it. When I shared a post about cross-cultural food preferences last week, a friend who opened a Western restaurant in China commented that his customers loved fruit pizza (yes, with cheese, and lashings of chocolate sauce!), although they would often eat around the cheese on the purely savoury pizzas. Who's to say what's weird, as long as it tastes good? What unusual recipes have you come across?

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month it is hosted by Marnelli from Sweets and Brains.

Messing with Mastic

Tears of Chios. Napoleon in Love. It all sounds terribly dramatic, doesn't it? Actually, what I have been up to recently (apart from being too overwhelmed by new eateries to write about any of them), is to try out a recipe that uses up a) a few more pieces of the mastic gum that has been sitting at the back of my fridge, b) all the egg yolks I had left over from trying to imitate Domain & Ayr's 20-minute souffle pancake, and c) a jar of rose petal jam that was forgotten about for far too long.

The "tears of Chios" part refers to droplets of mastic gum, a plant resin produced from the mastic tree. The Ancient Greeks used it as chewing gum as well as to flavour wines, and during the Ottoman rule of Chios (a Greek island famous for its mastic production), it was apparently worth its weight in gold.

A box of mastic (in large tears) from Chios.

The resin can be difficult to work with. Once you get it on a stainless steel pot, it is nearly impossible to remove, a bit like the sticky polymerised mess you get if you've baked oil into a jelly in the oven. And like Blu-Tack, it softens when warmed up, so you can imagine the challenge you are faced with when your recipe tells you to grind the stuff. Diane Kochilas recommends grinding mastic with a pinch of salt or sugar, but what I found much easier was to freeze the resin pieces until they are hard, then put them in a plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin.

Tip 1: Keep mastic away from your pots and pans, at least in its soft and sticky form.
Tip 2: Rather than grinding the resin with a mortar and pestle, freeze and smash it into powder.

In terms of flavour, I found mastic to be a potent taste of pine resin: fresh and green, yet also very dominating. You only need a tiny bit to realise it is there! Most recipes I found use it in desserts, though apparently the Egyptians use it for savoury dishes as well. It must be a pretty common ingredient in that part of the world, because there is even a recipe for almond and mastic gum cake from Nestle Egypt.

The recipe I tried out was for making "napoleons in love". I had no idea what this was supposed to be at first, but I came to realise that "napoleon" is another term for what I knew as mille-feuille, and the love part comes from the use of pistachios and rose, as well as the shape of the final pastries.

Assembled "napoleons in love", only a quarter of the recipe here, if that.

Making these sweet treats is relatively easy, but there are quite a few steps involved. You can make both the mastic-flavoured custard filling and the pistachio praline ahead of time, then on the day you want to serve these, bake the flaky pastry and assemble everything. I thought it was quite misleading that the recipe states it makes 4 napoleons though. I had enough filling and topping to pair with 4 sheets of frozen puff pastry. Perhaps these hearts were supposed to be much bigger than I had cookie cutters for?

I did have a bit of drama in the kitchen, though nothing too disastrous. I decided to be lazy and skip the steps of straining the pastry cream and cooling it in an ice bath. Only when I realised the custard was starting to separate did I whisk everything back together and cool it quickly.

Tip 3: Follow the steps in the recipe. Straining the custard will give you a smoother texture, and cooling it in an ice bath will help it set and not separate.

The custard was not as smooth as it could have been.

When making the pistachio praline, I had trouble getting the sugar to dissolve in the tiny amount of water specified. Oh well, I thought, the granules will probably disappear once I heat everything up. I can help it along by stirring it. I was wrong.

The bubbling syrup still had sugar crystals in it.

Take a look at what I ended up with, instead of a golden-coloured syrup!

I was left with sugar granules after the water evaporated.

Fortunately, all was not lost. I added more water to the pot, this time properly dissolving the sugar, then gently heated it again, without stirring, until it caramelised to a rich brown. I then poured this over my toasted pistachios.

Tip 4: To make molten sugar candy, make sure the sugar is completely dissolved in the water, and do not stir while heating, to avoid crystalisation.

Making of pistachio praline.

Perhaps I should have let the molten candy cool ever so slightly first, because some of it flowed away from the nuts before hardening. The next day, I discovered what had become a brittle solid had now absorbed moisture from the air, and was getting soft and sticky again. My solution this time was to dry the pistachio praline in the oven, chop it up as soon as it cooled, and store it in an airtight container.

Tip 5: Make sure you store your praline in an airtight container, to stop it getting soft and sticky.

Baking the pastry shells sounded like the easiest part of the recipe. Unfortunately, even using store-bought puff pastry, I had a dose of fail, because the baking sheet I placed on top was too light to stop my shapes from puffing up too much, sometimes unevenly.

Heart-shaped pastries: before and after baking, then brushed with rose jam and sprinkled with praline.

Tip 6: If you don't want your puff pastry to rise too much while baking, place a baking sheet over the top, and weigh it down with a roasting pan or similar.

Finally, it was time to assemble all the parts. Heating the rose petal jam made it runnier and easier to remove the flower petals, but I don't think I should have added water to it, because the praline did not stick very well to the pastry using such a thin "glue".

Rose petal jam.

Apart from the heart shapes, I tried putting whole sheets of puff pastry together. While this was more efficient time-wise, I did have trouble cutting the dessert into pieces without squeezing out the custard filling or flattening the pieces in the middle.

The squares in the middle got a bit squashed.

And the verdict? Not everyone will like the taste of mastic (the pine fragrance can be reminiscent of cleaning fluids) or rose (which in large quantities can make it feel like you are eating pot-pourri), but if you don't have an aversion to these ingredients, you will fall for "napoleons in love". This dessert has a balanced mingling of flavours, and a variety of textures, from the crunchy/chewy praline to the flaky pastry to the soft custard. Try it and see for yourself!

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month it is hosted by Marija from Palachinka.

Homemade Coconut Milk from Fresh Coconuts (and Some Uses For It)

Have you ever noticed that the coconut milk you buy at the supermarket is, umm, recursive? The tins are labelled "coconut milk", and the ingredients lists also contain within them "coconut milk". For instance, Woolworths Homebrand Coconut Milk is made of "Water, Coconut Milk (32%), Thickeners (412, 466), Emulsifier (435)"—my goodness, it's mostly water!—while Dole's one consists of "Coconut Milk (70%), Modified Starch (1450), Stabilisers (412, 415, 407)".

Cans of coconut milk - at least this brand lists "coconut extract" rather than "coconut milk" as one of its ingredients.

To find out what coconut milk tastes like without all the additives, I decided to make my own. I had spied some fresh coconuts at the supermarket. It can't be that hard, right? And indeed it was a simple process, albeit a labour-intensive one. For someone like me, without prior experience or the right tools, it was only through sheer stubbornness and background shows on TV that I got through the repetitive actions and minor injuries to write to you today.  That, and the beautiful aroma of a freshly grated coconut.

I didn't get off to a good start. I threw my coconut into a dark cupboard and forgot about it for two weeks. By the time I took it out again, I could not hear any liquid from within. I guess it must have been old to begin with, because you should it able to store a fresh coconut for up to four months at room temperature. After an initial attempt to saw it open with a sharp knife, I did some research on the internet, and succeeded in cracking it in half with the back of a cleaver, as demonstrated on YouTube. I did not have high expectations, but I have to admit I was still disappointed to see the cracked flesh, dark spots and the beginnings of mould growth.

Insides of a coconut that has been around for too long.

Not to be deterred, I went back to the supermarket and bought two new coconuts, the largest I could find. The sloshing of the water inside was music to my ears, and after some determined whacks with the cleaver, I had nearly a cup of clear coconut water from each furry ball, as well as reddened palms and bits of brown fibre (known as the coir) from the husk strewn all over the kitchen.

Coconut water from two coconuts.

Turns out that was the easy part. It took me two evenings to pull the white coconut meat (known as copra when dried) from the shells. Breaking the coconut halves into smaller pieces was difficult enough, but once I managed that, I still faced the task of separating the flesh from the husk, then from the brown skin that encased it. I had the best results when I freed the edges with a knife, then used a spoon to prise the husk away, before removing the skin with a paring knife (you can also use a vegetable peeler). If there is a next time, I might try the technique recommended by David Lebovitz, putting the halves into a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.

A friend from the Philippines told me of a device her family used at home, called kudkuran ng niyog ("coconut scraper") or kabayo ("horse"), which basically involved a round grater attached to a stool, on which you could sit while you shredded the snowy innards. [Added 26 September 2015: I discovered you can buy one of these in Auckland too, in New Gum Sarn!] Whoever invented that is a genius, because they basically bypassed the slow and painful step that resulted in me cutting myself. I was also constantly washing my coconut pieces down to remove the bits of brown skin—this not only took up time, but probably meant I ended up with less coconut extract than I could have expected.

Coconut pieces are not the easiest to deal with.

At this point, most people would stick the cleaned coconut pieces into a food processor and be done. As I do not possess such an advanced piece of kitchen equipment, I went on to grate the coconut by hand on my third evening at this game. I started off with a fine grater, but as you can guess, I gave up pretty quickly and just used a cheese grater instead. The two coconuts produced a vast amount of coarse shreds, about 13 cups filling a large mixing bowl.

Grating the coconut pieces into shreds.

On day four, I briefly entertained the thought of making coconut cream without adding water. As I only had a small stick mixer though, I blended the shreds in batches, adding the water from inside the coconut, and about an equal amount of boiled water. To make a thicker milk, I scooped out the fibrous pulp and blended new batches of coconut shreds into the liquid left behind. I then squeezed any further milk from the pulp using a several layers of muslin. I obtained a litre of creamy coconut milk from this first pressing.

Coconut pulp in a sieve lined with muslin.

I then repeated the process, this time pouring properly boiling water into the pulp to produce nearly another litre of coconut milk, this time a thinner one from the second pressing. In the meantime, my thicker coconut milk had separated into a cream layer and a watery layer.

Thick coconut milk from the first pressing (left) and thin coconut milk from the second pressing (right).

When I finally went to use the thick coconut milk after another day or so, I was surprised to discover that there was not as much of the cream layer as I thought, and it mixed readily back into the rest of the liquid to form a fragrant blend. On top of the jug with the thin coconut milk though, there was a hard, solidified film of fat, about 2 mm thick, which cracked and floated around like little icebergs.

Stirring the surface revealed the cream layer was not actually that thick.

Although it had taken me days to make, the coconut milks tasted fresh and flavourful. I am not keen to go through the same process again with that much manual labour, but with some new equipment, or perhaps starting with dessicated coconut instead of fresh, it would definitely be worth the extra effort. I would recommend you try to make this in one go though, unlike me, because this did not keep well, and I began to notice off flavours shortly afterwards.

Cooking with Coconut

Laksa was probably the first thing that came to mind, when it came to using up my coconut milk. I remembered it was quite a lot of work to make though, and I wanted to try some new recipes too, so I went with some other suggestions.

Recipes Using Thick Coconut Milk

With my homemade thick coconut milk, I made a really easy coconut ice cream. It's vegan, so it is technically not an ice cream, but it tastes amazing, and you only need three ingredients—coconut milk, sugar (I reduced the amount used after reading other people's comments) and vanilla essence! You do not even need an ice cream maker. I did not add any thickeners to my coconut milk, and this produced something in between an ice cream and a sorbet, smooth and quick to melt. You can scoop it straight from the freezer, as an extra bonus! This was not only the easiest, but also the tastiest dish, out of all the coconut recipes I ended up making.

Easy, refreshing and delicious homemade coconut ice cream.

I also made a Thai Chicken Curry Pie. This time, I mixed in a couple of tablespoons of cornflour into my coconut milk, to ensure it would thicken up on cooking. I only had a nasty, cheap, green curry paste which tasted mainly of chillies and salt, but learning from past experience, I greatly reduced the amount used, and it could not detract from the glory of this recipe. Taking inspiration from Marion's Kitchen, I turned the pot pies into proper little pies by lining a large muffin tray with savoury shortcrust pastry, and also sprinkled sesame or poppy seeds on top. In hindsight, I should have added a bit of sugar to the filling, but this made an excellent meal anyway.

Thai chicken curry pie.

Recipes Using Thin Coconut Milk

With the thin coconut milk, the first thing I cooked was coconut pancakes. As the batter was so runny though, I ended up adding a lot more flour than instructed, and still my creations were not as puffy as those pictured in the original blog. These were nice, certainly much better than the gluten-free coconut flour ones I had attempted on another occasion. Still, I can't say I preferred these over plain pancakes, mainly because soft pancakes appeal more to me than ones with the fibrous coconut shreds inside.

Coconut pancakes with clotted cream and maple syrup.

I also made the iconic Malaysian dish of nasi lemak. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain pandan leaves (the shop said there would be another shipment next month), but that was just as well, because I brought the coconut milk rice to the boil over too high a heat, so that the bottom burnt and the top was too wet. Although I did not make the best rendition of the central component, it went well with the usual condiments like fried shallots and peanuts, hard boiled egg and cucumber slices, and sambal.

Nasi lemak.

Recipes Using Leftover Coconut Pulp

I was left with 10 cups of pulp after making the coconut milk. Using these tough granules up, now that they have been drained of flavour, was always going to be difficult. My coconut pancakes seemed to prove that they could only detract from an otherwise good recipe, but I did not want to simply throw the leftover coconut shreds out.

Although the recipe for kale chips with toasted coconut calls for large coconut flakes, I thought the my coconut pulp would work just as well, because it would go crisp that much quicker, and absorb the dressing more readily too. This recipe turned out pretty well, though through my neglect, the leaves were unevenly dried. For the most part they were tasty, but I also had some browned leaves with a somewhat burnt flavour, while other ones were still damp and limp.

Kale chips with toasted coconut.

Cookie+Kate's Oaxaca chocolate banana smoothie is fantastic exactly as is, but I found its texture a bit thin, more a milkshake than a smoothie. Adding half a cup of shredded coconut made it into a thick and chunky drink that could be a meal in itself. I really enjoyed this, apart from the fact that my coconut pulp had been sitting in the fridge for too long by now, and left an unpleasant aftertaste to an otherwise very enjoyable beverage.

Choc banana smoothie.

I needed no further encouragement to discard the rest of the coconut pulp, but I am glad that I discovered many new and delicious uses for coconut milk and the resulting roughage up to this point. I also have a greater appreciation for coconut milk creation, and how much a product can vary from brand to brand. It's been quite a journey, but well worth the effort at least once. I can certainly picture myself making more fresh coconut milk once I purchase a proper food processor!

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month it is hosted by Stacey from The Veggie Mama.

Review: Golden Steamboat (鍋色天香)

Now that the cold weather is truly upon us, I often have a craving for something hot and soupy. And if you want to connect with family and friends rather than hibernating for winter, there is no better meal to have than a Chinese steamboat experience.

Chinese steamboat.

It ticks all the boxes really. Also known as a hot pot, a steamboat meal starts with a large simmering pot of stock in the middle of the table, and you cook your food in it yourselves. You are allowed to be loud and raucous, the young ones can play with their food, the grandparents can warm their achy bones and boil their portions to mush so they don't need to chew, and everyone gets to pick and choose, not only what they put into the soup base for cooking, but also how long it is cooked for, and with what sauces it is flavoured afterwards. It is conducive to conversation, because everyone is interacting constantly, with food arriving at the table, being dropped into the pot, and being scooped out again, being passed around, dipped in sauce, eaten. You can revel in a hive of activity.

There are plenty of steamboat restaurants in Auckland, but the one we have been going to is Golden Steamboat, upstairs in the middle of that strip of restaurants on Dominion Road in Balmoral. You want to go with a group of people, because that all-important pot of stock is going to set you back about $20 already. After that, though, it is all too easy to keep adding to your order, with a plate of meat balls for $4, meat slices for $6 - $8, vegetables for around $3, herbs and bowls of dipping sauces for $1 or $2, and cooked food like fried dumplings for $7.

There are a good number of soup bases to choose from, and you can also have half-and-half, which we like to do, to cater for spice lovers and heat-avoiders alike, or meat-eaters and vegetarians, as the situation arises. The vegetarian mushroom soup base seems to hold a special status. If you order this for your stockpot, a staff member will ladle out a bowl for each person at the table as an appetiser. And it makes sense too, to savour these beautiful fresh mushrooms before their delicate flavour is submerged in everything else you throw into the pot.

Mushroom soup base, served before the stock is polluted with other food.

Then the frenzy begins! One by one, your orders come out, until there is no space left at the table. The staff will refill your pot when the liquid begins to run low, but otherwise, you are now in charge of your own dinner.

Prawn paste and beef slices, on the side as there was no room on the main table.

Fresh whole fish, and various sauces.

Wheat glutem balls.

I like to drink the soup from the pot, but if you are still thirsty, there is not only Chinese beer and wine available, but also a wide variety of fresh juices (diluted with water, the way I like it). For $5 - $8, you can have not just a glass, but a whole jug!

Kiwifruit, grapefruit and pomegranate juices.

The food at Golden Steamboat is fresh and varied, and it's great fun to have a hands-on dining experience. With nearly everything simply simmered, it is both healthy and very reasonably priced, and your meal is never cold!

Panda Recommends

The important thing here is variety. Don't get three different types of meat balls; try to order something from each section. The exception is the vermicelli. You will probably be too full to eat any starch, and you can always order the noodles afterwards if you find you are still hungry.

Vegie Pandas
Who would have thought you can safely share a meal with friends without ordering something just for yourself? Here, you can have half a pot of the mushroom soup base, and cook in it any number of things, including six different types of tofu, four varieties of mushroom, and an assortment of Chinese vegies, from lotus root to tong ho (if you have not had garland chrysanthemum before, be aware it has a pungent flavour). Warning: Do not eat the Golden Steamboat Special Sauce—it has meat in it. And the mushroom dumplings in the meatballs section is there for a reason—it is basically a fish ball with a mushroom filling.

Menu - English

Menu - Chinese

Restaurant Details

Golden Steamboat (鍋色天香)
Level 2, 551 Dominion Road, Balmoral, Auckland
(09) 638 8268

Opening hours:
Mondays to Sundays 5:30 - 11pm

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Blue Corn Tortillas: an Expensive Experiment

We were worried we wouldn't make it to Wellington last weekend, as wild weather forced Wellington airport to close temporarily. Fortunately, things were pretty much back to normal before we were scheduled to fly, although it was busier at the airport than expected. As usual, we stay at a serviced apartment diagonally across from road from the treasure trove known as Moore Wilson's. This time, a packet of organic blue masa caught my eye, and came back to Auckland with us along with a variety of raw milk cheeses, Mussel Inn feijoa cider, and a container of malt extract. (Oh yeah... we also bought all the duck liver mousse, made by brilliant little French restaurant Le Canard, that they had on hand.)

The ingredients listed for the blue masa was "organic blue corn, trace of lime". It turns out this did not mean the type of lime that looks somewhat like a green lemon, but rather referred to slaked lime, or an alkaline solution of calcium hydroxide. Upon further research, I discovered that the process of preparing corn in limewater is called nixtamalisation, and ancient civilisations have been doing this as long ago as 1200-1500 BC! This process not only improved the flavour and colour of the corn, but provided niacin, which unprocessed maize is deficient in. European settlers did not adopt the same process, leading to poor people in the southern US developing pellagra in the early 20th century.

To be honest, this flour from blue corn did not look so much blue as a kind of pale grey. I decided that I would make corn tortillas with it, using the recipe on the packet, and serve it with a vegetarian bean chilli. This is no stew for the poor, as I went and bought such exotic and expensive ingredients as dried ancho poblano chillies imported from Mexico, and the organic masa harina was pretty dear to begin with!

Blue masa, chipotle peppers and ancho poblano chillis, which cost me $11.50, $3.09 and $7.49 respectively.

The recipe went like this:

To make tortillas combine 500g of masa, 1 teaspoon of salt and 300ml of warm water to form a dough.
Roll the dough into equal sized balls and press each ball flat to about 4mm thickness. Cook tortillas on a pre heated frying pan for 30 seconds on each side then stack them on top of each other and wrap in a tea towel to stay warm.

It sounded pretty simple, but I had questions straight away. How big should each dough ball be, and how hot the pan?  Do you use oil? And 4mm sounded awfully thick! Recipes on packets generally turn out well though, I reasoned, as companies want you to keep buying the product, so I ploughed on ahead. I made a rather dry and hard lump, which looked very different from the description and pictures in Mexico in my Kitchen.

The dough was a bit hard even when I added more water. I ended up adding significantly more.

I tried flattening the dough balls between two sheets of baking paper, pressing with a saucepan on top of a chopping board. Because the dough was so hard though, it didn't really want to spread, and I had to flatten it a bit more with a rolling pin and before putting it on to cook. As you probably guessed, it was a failure. The heat did not transfer well to the dry lump, and the inside of the tortilla did not cook through, at least not in the short timeframe suggested.

First attempt at a blue corn tortilla did not turn out well.

I tried adding more water to make a softer dough, I played with the heat, and tried actually making a 4mm thick patty, but no matter what I did, nothing seemed to give the result I was looking for. Although I heated some for as long as 5 minutes, the insides never seemed to cook properly. The most edible versions were those that I pressed thinner, but even they were not particularly inspiring. I only managed to make one tortilla that puffed up a little bit. A lot more practice required, methinks! And maybe with cheaper ingredients first.

Chilli sin carne, served with blue corn chips.

My chilli fared much better, but also lacked a depth of flavour. Perhaps it will improve overnight, as the recipe suggested that it would. [Added 10 July 2013: It's amazing but true. This went from something slightly anaemic to a full-bodied, sophisticated chilli after a week.] I managed to rescue my tortillas by chopping them up into triangles, and baking them in the oven until there were no more wet dough innards. Although they were now edible, they were definitely more hard than crisp. I shall have to trawl the internet for tips and tricks, before attempting to make corn tortillas again.

This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event aimed at inspiring us to try new things. This month it is hosted by Chandler from The Chef With Red Shoes.

Notes: Cafe Scientifique: Waiter! There's nanotechnology in my soup!

Wow! What a young, passionate, inspiring and knowledgeable speaker! I was not sure about spending my evening at the bottom of the Horse and Trap pub, but it was roughly on the way home, and Auckland Museum's Cafe Scientifique page suggested that there would be food mentioned. Dr Michelle Dickinson, who runs New Zealand's only nanomechanical testing laboratory at Auckland University's Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, did not disappoint, sharing how nanotechnology, although we may think of it as "futuristic", is actually very much present in our lives, for good or for bad.

Dr Michelle Dickinson in action.

Fortunately, the talk did not begin absolutely on time, so even though I got off at the wrong bus stop and was running late, I was able to admire the beautiful venue with exposed brick walls and wooden counters, and order some snacks for dinner as well, before the presentation started.

Surprisingly delicious vegies (brocollini, bak choy and green beans with black and white sesame), and crispy brocolli and cheese balls with beetroot relish.

What is nanotechnology?

You know how wide a metre is, right? A nanometre (nm) is one-billionth of that in American English, i.e. 1nm = 10^-9 m. As Michelle points out in her TEDxAuckland speech, to put this into context, one strand of your hair is 80,000nm wide. And nanotechnology is the science of matter with a dimension of 100nm or less.
So she is constantly working with material that cannot be seen.

What is it used for?

Nanotechnology has a wide variety of applications, from cosmetics, to nutrition, to electronics, to solar panels. Like all things, it can enhance human lives or harm them, depending on the purpose for which it is used.

Michelle's research has been in the field of medicine. You can make nanoparticles that deliver a substance to cancer cells, which allow you to then take an image of the patient's body and see where the cancer sites are. This material will heat up if you use a certain kind of light on it, so you can selectively kill off the cancer cells. This is a much better approach than chemotherapy, where you basically try to destroy the cancer before you kill the patient.

Outside of the research lab, you can already find silver nanoparticles in Samsing washing machines, used for their antibacterial properties. However, what happens when those particles are washed down the drain? They could end up killing microorganisms in our environment, including those that are beneficial.

Remember how sunscreen used to leave white streaks on your face 20 years ago? The reason you do not see it today, after smoothing the cream onto your skin, is that the zinc oxide and titanium dioxide particles have been reduced from micro- to nano-sized.

The speaker even found "nano soap" being sold at Pak 'N' Save for $4.99, though who knows what it is made of or how it works.

What are the properties of nanoparticles?

It turns out that when you reduce something down to tinier than tiny, they start behaving in very different ways. A sheet of glass will shatter if you drop it onto the floor, but a nano-sized piece of glass would simply bounce. Gold is useful for its non-reactive properties, but a gold nanoparticle is highly reactive. This is due to the high surface area to volume ratio.

What benefits could there be?

Apart from treating cancer, nanotechnology could be used in food. For instance, if you had very fine particles of salt, you could cook a tasty dinner while using lower amount of it. You could create mayonnaise with much less oil by reducing the size of the oil particles, thereby making your meal somewhat healthier.

Do you have a child who refuses to eat vegies? Companies have already produced a vitamin spray which you can point at their tongue. Tasting of blueberries, the vitamin nanoparticles are absorbed quickly into the blood stream.

There are other advantages too. You can buy razor blades which give you "a closer shave", because they are coated with 4nm wide diamonds. Nanotechnology also allows us to make smaller electronics, smaller sensors which can be used to diagnose.

What risks are there?

Nanotechonology is used in everyday products, and little research has been done on what effects this may have on the environment or on human health.

Of particular concern is the use of fullerine or carbon 60 nanoparticles in some cosmetics. Also known as "buckyballs", they are supposed to have "anti-aging" properties. However, they have displayed toxicity in mice, and more independent research, done by those not driven by an agenda, is needed.

Amazingly, nano silver is also used to coat baby bottles to kill germs, even though we do not know whether it could harm people, and young infants are amongst the most vulnerable.

What the public should be pushing for

Although nanotechnology sounds like something from the future, it is already being used all around us. Further research is required to determine how safe it is, and consumers should be pushing for legislation so they can make an informed choice on the products that they buy. Studies done so far have either been funded by corporate interests, showing positive results, or by the opposite camp, showing negative results, but using unrealistically high levels of nanoparticles. We still do not know the their effect at expected levels.

Some companies are proactive about disclosing their use of nanomaterials.  For instance, Blistex has notified the EPA it uses nano silicon dioxode in its lip ointments. However, there is no requirement to do so until 2015, when labelling will be mandatory in cosmetics, though not in food.

Nanotechnology has the power to do great good, but it can also have a dark side. We need to put processes in place to ensure its safety, and channel funding towards research on health and environmental impacts, not just encourage business-driven goals such as the development of faster computers or other products.

Promotional description of the presentation on Cafe Scientifique page.

Questions and Answers

The main presentation was a great overview of nanotechnology in our lives, but the audience had some excellent questions which made the evening all the more interesting. I have tried to paraphrase them below.

Why have we not seen nanotechnology used to treat cancer?

Animals with stage 4 cancer, from dogs to horses, were donated for our research in the States. Our cancer treatment is very non-invasive. Basically, after sending the nanoparticles through, you just shine a lightbox on the animal, and we have had a 100% success rate (on 28 animals?). There was only one that died, and that was due to another reason.

However, the nanoparticles do not leave the body afterwards. They collect in the liver and we cannot prove that they will not harm you in some way in the future, even though none of the animals we tested showed any signs of being the worse for it. There has been no testing on humans, because the FDA will not approve a treatment in which something introduced to the body accumulates in it, even though the person may be in better health than before treatment.

How do you produce and collect nanoparticles?

We use our knowledge of chemistry to move atoms to where we want them to go. Another way of producing nanoparticles is to use a high powered laser, breaking the material up into tiny fragments. We hold them simply in the usual containers, even though the nanoparticles will be oozing through the pores of the container. They are produced in such quantities that it does not matter if some are lost.

Of course, they are not really lost. We just can't see them. Work has been done to electrospin nano fibres to weave filters for nanoparticles. Nano fibres are actually cheap to make, and there is a startup making filters with them for heat pumps. But collecting nanoparticles is the easy part. The hard part is to work out how to let water molecules through at the same time. Other research has looked at capturing nanomaterial chemically as well as physically.

Do nanoparticles exist in nature?

Yes, our bodies contain organic nanoparticles. The main concerns have been with the use of inorganic ones.

Will nanoparticles break down over time?

Some will and some won't. For instance, zip-lock bags have nano silicates which are antimicrobial, and these will break down over time. However, nano silver and gold do not break down.

Genetic modification (GM) is highly politicised. Why is the same not true of nanotechnology?

Perhaps the nanotechnologists saw what happened to GE and are careful to keep it quiet. Certainly there is less public awareness of the prevalence of nanotechnology in our lives. This may be due to the fact that companies are not required to disclose their use of it. That is why I think labelling legislation is very important as a first step.

Would you say that nanotechnology is well developed already, since it is already used in so many different ways?

It is widely used, but in terms of understanding its health impacts, it is still at its infancy. I inspected a Chinese factory recently, in which electronics with nanotechnology were produced. The workers were walking around with dust masks, thinking they were well protected! There were no safety protocols in place.

The problem is that it is easy to get funding to make faster computers, but ideally, we want to have money set aside to research the implications of this on our health and environment too.

[Audience input: Radioactivity took 100 years to regulate. I used to work with <a radioactive substance> and they gave us little film badges to wear and told us it would be safe!]

There are ways to destroy GM material. You can burn it, or pour bleach on it, but there is no equivalent in nanotechnology. Gut instinct is your only control. I will never work with, or allow my students to work with, something that I think might be dangerous, even if it promises lots of funding.  For instance, I would say no to testing lead nanoparticles. Others are not as fortunate as me. Chinese researchers are pressured to publish every year, and get forced to do research they do not want.

Like radioactivity, nanotechnology is hard to see and test.

What are your plans? What will you be doing for the next year or so?

I am a failure engineer. I like to pull, push and squash things at a nano level. I want to break malarial cells and see how they compare with normal red blood cells. If we can measure the difference between a disease state and regular living cells, we can learn more about conditions such as tuberculosis or Alzheimer's and work towards treating them.

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If you would like to hear Dr Michelle Dickinson speak in person, she will be giving a short presentation at the Auckland Girl Geek Dinner next Tuesday 2 July 2013.  Don't worry: men are also welcome!

Book Review: The Colour of Food

When I was at school, I never understood why anyone would want to study history. Maths and science will help you get a job, art was relaxing and fun, but history?  Sure, I enjoyed reading novels, including those set in the past, but I had no interest in memorising dates and events. In my infinite wisdom, I chose to study the dead language of Latin instead.

These days, I am much more likely to read non-fiction than fiction. Information about kitchen science, for instance, or the news, or research on the web. With the prominent changes taking place in Auckland, I have suddenly become interested in how it once was here. It was fascinating to discover that some units down the road used to be the premises of a shop, dwelling and stables. We went to MOTAT to look at photos of Auckland in the 1950s, when trams still ran down Queen Street and Dominion Road. I pored over old cookbooks purchased from school fairs, and was amazed by the recipes using such unusual ingredients as brains and calves' tongues. In New Zealand the Beautiful Cookbook*, edited by Tui Flower, I even found a recipe using pukeko (pretty much identical to this one published in the Dominion Post), which I thought nobody ate!

* There was no publication date printed in the hardcover book published by Shortland/Weldon Publications, but though I would have guessed a 1970s timeframe, various websites suggest it was published in 1993. One description claims it was first published in 1984, reprinted twice in 1988.

When a representative from AWA Press sent me a review copy of a new eBook, I thought no more of it for two weeks. I had plenty enough other books waiting to be read, and I was under no obligation to give free publicity to anyone, even if it was vaguely related to food. After flicking through just a couple of pages, however, The Colour of Food: A memoir of life, love and dinner by Anne Else had me hooked.

Of course, it helped that the author grew up just up the road from me, living above a grocer's shop at the corner of Valley Road and Mount Eden Road. I loved hearing about what she ate as a child, from her grandmother's chokos, which she hated (I had always assumed it was a foreign vegetable because hardly anyone I mentioned it to seemed to know what a choko was), to her mother's homemade cape gooseberry jam, to the classic bread and Marmite. "Chicken and pork were rare treats, saved for special occasions. Mostly Mum served us hogget, or a round of chewy beef criss-crossed with wooden skewers and tied up with string." I hadn't even heard of hogget before, and had to look the word up.

We went to the same intermediate school, and as with Julia Child also, we didn't learn to cook until after leaving home (I am still learning, with a long way to go). But it was really her captivating narrative that kept me reading. Food has always been an important of Anne's life, and she skilfully weaves it in to her story.

More than anything, I am impressed by this woman. I thought I was well-travelled, but Anne has lived in Albania, which even now is not a common destination. She has had her share of challenges in her life, but nothing seems to knock her back for long. And for someone whose family didn't even have a refrigerator until she was five, I am amazed that she now runs multiple blogs, with her memoir available as an eBook only.

There are recipes at the back of the book, which link to the milestone phases of the author's life. But even without these, I would happily recommend The Colour of Food. It reads like a novel, but it is real, touching and insightful. It is an absolute gem, especially if, like me, you are interested in food, New Zealand from an earlier era, exotic faraway lands, and tales of love and sorrow.

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The Colour of Food is available at:
Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/The-Colour-of-Food/book-6YpOb5zMxUWHkJHuvamHCA/page1.html
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Colour-Food-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00D0UTIT6
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/the-colour-of-food/id655597089