TheBanyanTree: Is there a food chemist in the tree?

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

It’s Sunday here, still the 16th of September (my least favorite month)


Say folks,

	I am puzzled. Some would say I am perplexed. But we’ll leave that to Spinoza.  I am trying to figure something out to do with cooking.  And I am doing that while the dinner is waiting to come out of the oven (some of it is on the stove, some in the fridge).  

	I make a thing for Jewish holidays that I call, "ParParvicevice".  That’s an abbreviation for Pareve (pronounced: PAR-veh) Ice Cream.  Pareve is the middle ground for the "do not mix meat and milk" Godly edict.  You know, from the biblical commandment: do not boil a calf in its mother’s milk.  (Yes. A great part of Kashruth has to do with that little sentence in the Torah. See, we have a 5,000 year old case of OCD and here we are.)  ANYWAY.  Parvice is a non-dairy ice cream that can go with either a milchik meal or a fleyshik meal (milchik = dairy — fleyshik = meat). Pareve, as I said is the in between. It can go with either in a meal.  Fish is also pareve. Go figure.  Ask a vegan.

	Honest, this Parvice is astonishingly good.  It’s like eating a sweet cloud.  I make it with whipped egg whites and usually berries.  Imagine a cloud of strawberries you can consume, not too calorious either.  Okay.  So here’s where the food chemist comes in.  For some reason, berries of any kind (so far) : strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, etc. work beautifully. The egg whites and sugar whip up so that two measly little egg whites makes almost two whole gallons of parvice.  BUT. If I try this with other fruit, it doesn’t work.  Well, it will kind of.  But it’s denser and won’t fluff up.  It’s an intense work out.  Good, but not what I aimed for originally (though I’ll say that the chocolate Parvice knocked my socks off, so dense and chocolatey).

	So what is it about berries and the whipped egg whites.  It’s the only difference in the recipe.  When it’s berries, it works.  When it’s other fruit: stone fruit, pineapple, mangoes, anything else, and it doesn’t fluff up.  What’s in berries that reacts with the rest of the ingredients?  Tell me and I’ll give you the recipe.  You yourself will have your socks knocked off for one fraction of the calories and zero fat.

Tobie

and the dinner calls me

"Might makes right."     Old proverb

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."    Matthew
: 5:5

"Make a fist."     Phlebotomist to patient


Tobie Shapiro
tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>