The Chef's Cabin

SAFETY OF AJI-NO-MOTO® What Is AJI-NO-MOTO®? AJI-NO-MOTO® is a product brand name of monosodium glutamate.  Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a flavor enhancer which has been used effectively for over a century to bring out the best flavor of food.  AJI-NO-MOTO® [MSG] is an Umami seasoning, which is made from the finest quality crops like sugarcane and tapioca through natural fermentation process. The safety of monosodium glutamate, as related to the corporate image of Ajinomoto, has been a point of discussion since its inception. The discussion began as early as 1910 in Japan, with unsubstantiated rumours relating to the use of serpents in the raw materials. Since the 1940s, safety concerns have been voiced several times by public institutions in both Japan and the United States. Additional concerns included the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome in the 1960s and the call for greater regulation on the use of MSG, which was based on the work of Professor John Olney, in 1969. In 199

While cooking continental recipes how many times have you felt that something is missing? Or the taste doesn't match the restaurant standards, almost every day right? There are a number of reasons why it is difficult to make restaurant style food at home. We face difficulty in pairing certain types of herbs and seasonings with varieties of vegetables or meat. Sometimes we also find it difficult to judge the amount of seasoning to be added. Moreover to control the overpowering of spices and salts becomes a challenge. To solve this problem and to help the home-cooks to prepare restaurant style dishes companies like Knorr formulated a finely-balanced blend of quality herbs & spices that enhances the flavor of foods without overpowering the taste. Aromat was introduced in 1953 as a 'seasoning mix'. With the introduction of the new seasoning, came new flavors of soups and sauces predominantly featuring the seasoning. As a popular seasoning in South Africa, it is f

Imagine trying to break a raspberry that you froze in the freezer: it would squish, thaw, and turn into a mass of pulp. But with liquid nitrogen you can make little beads of frozen raspberry, or raspberry powder.Because liquid nitrogen is so incredibly cold, it is used to freeze foods, which it can do almost instantly. But, with the exception of televised competitions where time is a factor, the speed at which liquid nitrogen can freeze foods is not its selling point. Instead, it's how liquid nitrogen freezes foods that makes it such a dynamic "ingredient." Since man’s discovery of fire, cooking has been mainly a process of subjecting food to high temperatures that chemically alter its color, taste and texture. But the invention of cryogenic technology has handed chefs an exciting new tool—liquid nitrogen—for transforming food in fun and surprising ways. In our culinary research laboratory, we use this ultra­-cold liquid to cryopoach oils, cryoshatter chees

Its all about the combination of science and art There are many branches of food science that study different aspects of food, such as safety, microbiology, preservation, chemistry, engineering and physics. Until the advent of molecular gastronomy, there was no branch dedicated to studying the chemical processes of cooking in the home and in restaurants. Food science has primarily been concerned with industrial food production and, while the disciplines may overlap, they are considered separate areas of investigation. Molecular gastronomy is a subdiscipline of food science that seeks to investigate the physical and chemical transformations of ingredients that occur in cooking. Its program includes three areas, as cooking was recognized to have three components: social, artistic, and technical.Molecular cuisine is a modern style of cooking, and takes advantage of many technical innovations from the scientific disciplines. The term "molecular gastronomy" was coined