Sense and Sensuality at Ultimo Science Festival

Wendy Zukerman, Asia-Pacific reporter

Gastronomic artists who ground up beans only to put them back together again. A historical tour through science and design - which revealed some pretty peculiar prophylactics and highlighted the fascinating fact that the tin can was invented whole decades before someone dreamed up the can-opener. While the Ultimo Science Festival in Sydney had already wowed me with stories of dance lessons from Richard Feynman and a researcher who had figured out how to use old tires to create steel, I soon learned that more extraordinary science was in store.

Dessert anyone? (Image: Georgia Blue Photography 2011)

At Wednesday's "Weird Food Dinner", hosted by Ultimo College, for example, daring chefs exploited the techniques of molecular gastronomy to extraordinary effect.

Our appetiser, created by Diego Mu?oz, a chef at Bilson's Restaurant in Sydney, was prepared through spherification, a process that, as you might guess, creates bubble-shaped bites. "It's an amazing technique," explained Paul Hickey, a culinary lecturer at the College, who assisted in the kitchen for the night. "The inside of the food remains soft, but the outside forms a skin."

Mu?oz had used it to recreate a white bean. He first pulverised the bean and then added calcium chloride. Meanwhile, alginate, which had been extracted from brown seaweed, was mixed into water and set overnight to remove air bubbles. He then dropped the calcium chloride and bean blend into the alginate mixture.

Ions in the calcium chloride then went to work refashioning the long-chain alginate polymers into cross-linked polymers, which created a gel. Since the calcium chloride/bean mixture dove into the alginate as a droplet, the gel retained that circular shape.

In this case, it looked like an extra large white bean. "He has basically turned the bean back into a bean," said Hickey. This resurrected legume was soft and flavourful.

Other intriguing products included dehydrated olives which tasted like salty Panko crumbs, and a warm sorbet made with methylcellulose powder as a setting agent. Unlike most things - like jam or cheese - that melt with heat, methylcellulose becomes thicker when heated.

Yet despite using plain old cooking techniques, the dessert (shown top), created by Ultimo lecturer Nathan Griffiths, was certainly the highlight. A playful twist on burger with fries it consisted of a bun of caramel bavarios, which is basically custard and gelatine, a 'meat' of chocolate tart and a pistachio sponge for the lettuce.

This delicious meal was metaphorically matched by the feast of curiosities I discovered on a tour of the basement at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum of science and design.

All manner of strange artefacts filled the cabinets in the building's bowels, gathered as they were in haste after a fire engulfed the museum weeks prior to its scheduled opening in 1882. It took the curators nine months to buy and beg enough bits and bobs for the museum to open. As part of the festival, I had the rare chance to explore - under the supervision of tour guides Campbell and Geoff.

Watched over by a rocking horse and a stuffed ram, Campbell held up a can of tinned soup from the 1800s, informing me that the invention of the can opener came several decades after the tin can was patented. Until then, he explained, hungry soldiers were forced to open their meals with an axe.

Pr?servatif pr?serv? (Image: Penelope Clay/Powerhouse Museum, Sydney)

We moved through the storage cabinets, gazing at ancient clocks, foot powered dental drills and, it turns out, a preserved pr?servatif - a condom from the 1880s. Gobsmacked, I leaned in to touch it. "This condom was reusable," warned Campbell. I quickly retracted my fingers.

Made from the lining of sheep intestine, the antique condom was, somewhat amusingly, donned with a pink silk ribbon at its open end. According to Campbell, lovers would wet the device and warm it by the fire before using it. After they were finished, the condom could be cleaned and pinned on the washing line, ready for next time.

The Ultimo Science Festival wraps up this weekend. And it's a shame. In the name of science, I was getting quite accustomed to high dining and treasure fossicking.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/17b4a84d/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A110C0A80Csense0Eand0Esensuality0Eat0Eultimo0Escience0Efestival0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

capgemini capgemini spartan tar baby jezebel jezebel st louis cardinals