Today in lab meeting the phrase 'kitchen sink' came up, as in, 'you've thrown everything including the kitchen sink at this project', indicating everything has been attempted. i was curious about the origin of this phrase (despite being the one who popped out with it). In short, it seems to be traced to the early 1900s. A few sites cite the WWII homefront scrap metal drives as a source, in that they would recycle all metals thus excluding porcelain kitchen sinks, so that was all you'd be left with. However, other folks have found evidence of this phrase in earlier literature; they link it to references of women having on (wearing?) everything but the kitchen range, which is a lovely bit of wordplay.
The lovely Holly recently posted a link to loaded nacho grilled cheese recipe, which in turn reminded me of this NPR Sandwich Monday post of a 32-layer dip. While looking for that article, i turned up a Sandwich Monday review of a yogurt marketed for guys; a 'brogurt'. i gchatted this to Bryan, who commented that the flavors displayed there (mango, apple cinnamon, strawberry, blueberry acai) weren't particularly manly, so we brainstormed for a few minutes regarding more 'manly' flavors. Barbecue, bourbon caramel, and chili were the resultant top picks (with the chili using whole wheat oyster crackers in place of granola, of course). Bryan brilliantly looked into this, and it turns out that yogurt can be cultured from the stems of India chilis.
Bryan: apparently using chili peppers to start yogurt cultures is a thing
God intended them to be together
Sent at 12:49 PM on Thursday
Bryan: "You mentioned a great deal of possible natural sources for yogurt cultures, some of which, like ant eggs, I was not keen on trying. However, you did mention that in India chili-pepper stems may be used as a source for yogurt cultures. This was something I was willing to try. So, I bought a package of red chili peppers from the store. I heated one liter of whole milk to 180F, and let it cool gradually to 110F (I let it cool slowly, over 2-3 hours). I briefly rinsed the chili peppers, and cut the stems off a dozen. I place the stems in a container, and added the milk. I placed that in my yogurt incubator. After 10 hours, nothing had happened. I decided to let it continue fermenting. After about 13 hours, the magic happened, and the milk had gelled! In fact, it had over-fermented a bit, and split. I had a layer of whey at the bottom, on top of which floated a very thick curd. I cooled it in the fridge, and it tasted like spicy, chili-flavored yogurt. I used one teaspoon of this yogurt to inoculate a fresh batch of milk."
i suggested that we pilot this some point during Sunday football, but neither of us has a crockpot (that can hold temperature) or yogurt incubator.
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