Tip of the tongue

Backstory Upon seeing the deep dried insects, instead of being disgusted by the insects themselves, we are more shocked by the blackish oil. As we know, degradation of oil can happen under oxygenated environment, heat and light, creating substances with unpleasant smell and taste. Which surely happens in those reused "thousand years" oil for street food. We can already imagine why would they always add excessive spices to cover the rancidity of oil. In fact, we can even see in many restaurant, the usage reused oil can be seen by the weird precipitate on the bubbling oil, which are mostly carcinogenic. Here we want to investigate the effect of long term heating on rancidity of oil in deep frying processes. Theory Oxidative rancidity is associated with the degradation by oxygen in the air. The double bonds of an unsaturated fatty acid can be cleaved by free-radical reactions involving molecular oxygen. This reaction causes the release of malodorous and highly volatile al...

Why Insects are Commonly Eaten in Thailand? They have no other choice The origin of Entomophagy (Insects eating) can be traced back to the North and Northeast part of Thailand. People living in these two particular areas were relatively poorer, they had no money to invest in crops and meats from regular animals. For this particular reason, insects eating is highly correlated with lower income people main dishes but as time develops it started to become a nation-wide dish. Although a lot of people is still against the idea of eating insects, it is becoming increasingly popular as numerous insects are edible and have unique tastes. Cooking insects with soy sauce and white pepper are considered necessary as the combination will eliminate any undesired taste and smell contained in the insects. Ingredients: -Insects -Soy sauce -Fish oil -White pepper -Breadcrumbs (if preferred) Benefits: -Combat obesity -High in protein, healthy fats, iron, calcium and lo...

Digging Deep to Understand Gudeg Gudeg has been around since the early 1500s in the Kingdom of Islamic Mataram, which located in Kotagede, a neighborhood in Jogjakarta. During this period, the building of the kingdom resulted in significant deforestation. Amongst the trees being chopped down, there are jackfruit and coconut tree. Before it came to waste, soldiers and workers took upon the leftover jackfruits and coconut to consume. However, they soon bored by the taste of jackfruits and coconuts and started the idea of processing/cooking them. Using the same ingredients, the unripe jackfruits are cooked with coconut sugar and coconut milk, which in the end produce a cuisine which is now known as Gudeg. This is an interesting story of how people of that time, with the simple ingredients, could come up with something that people 5 centuries later enjoy.  Islamic Mataram Kingdom  Although the discovery of Gudeg is very coincidental, it has scientifically proven hea...

More On Cow Brain Curry UID:3035493024 Marco Brian Widjaja               The history and cultural background of the Indonesian gulai is not well known. But some sources have speculated that the Indonesian gulai initially originated from Sumatra, Indonesia and that the dish was a local rendition of the Indian curry. The Indonesian gulai is a complex dish made with many different ingredients and herbs that gives the curry a flavourful taste. Some of the different spices and herbs used to make the curry are cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, garlic, cumin, coriander, ginger, candlenut, lemongrass. The ingredients are usually blended into a spice paste and is slowly cooked and simmered with coconut milk. The resulting texture is a thick, brown-yellow, sauce that could be served with many different types of meat. In this case, it was served with the cow brain. The cow brain is actually made of 29% of fat and very high cholesterol content (3...

One of the weirdest drink in my mind is vodka. It basically tastes like nothing, but the burn inside your throat. But it is the most popular alcoholic beverage in Poland, Russia and other Eastern European countries.I never get it why the Russians love it so much that they even name it water of life.Then I looked it up, turns out "Vodka" in slavic language is a morphism of "woda" or "voda"[1], rings the bell right? But knowing the lingustics doesnt give us the history, in fact, scholars have been debating the beginnings of vodka.It is a contentious issue because very little historical material is available.[2] But at least, we get to know its science. Vodka is a clear spirit which can be produced from anything containing starch or sugar,which is often called a neutral grain spirit because the standard method for making it is by fermenting and distilling grain, which could be corn, rye, wheat, or any other grain. Other bases for vodka include beets and...