In 2012, Dillon Lockwood, a soda jerk at the Ice Cream Bar and Soda Fountain in San Francisco, created a new specialty called the Passion Project. The soda is a chai base with turbinado syrup, cream, lactic acid and a unique finishing ingredient: Hemingway pipe tobacco.
“A fine stream of soda is used to mix everything in the glass, and to create large bubbles in the cream on top of the soda,” owner Juliet Pries said. “Tobacco tincture is sprayed over the top of the bubbles, just before it is served, so that you can smell it as you’re drinking the soda.”
What was then considered a strange addition reminiscent of a spate of tobacco-in-food experiments about a decade ago has now blossomed into a full-blown foodie trend.
Related: Tobacco added in to the cocktail mix
Tobacco is hitting menus throughout the world, whether it’s in a chicken wing sauce at the Morris House Bistro in Cheyenne, Wyoming; made into flour to dredge onions in like at JK’s Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; infused into sugar as Naomi Gallego does in her post as Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s pastry chef; or even as whole leaves added to chocolate bars, as at London-based Artisan du Chocolat.
Chefs adding tobacco to food are often looking to take advantage of a more complex flavor profile. Los Angeles home chef and lawyer Robert Lu, who grew up with restaurant-owner parents, began infusing pipe tobacco in his food on a whim after seeing his grandfather smoke heavily. With it, he created ice cream, panna cotta, crème brulée, custard, and smoked duck and chicken.
“It has a bit of liquid smoke flavor,” Lu said. “It gives the food a nice dimension so it’s not so flat. In Chinese cooking, we use tea leaves, and even when you use the wood chips, there’s a sort of earthy undertone to it. Tobacco is an extension of that. It’s just a leaf. It’s not like we’re cooking with meth. Cooking is just a natural extension of what you can do with tobacco. But it’s not something I’d give to children, and you have to tell people what they’re eating.”
And always remember – as with most strong ingredients, less is more.
“You really have to tone it down and be very judicious in how you use it,” Lu said. “A little bit goes a long way, like saffron. If you put in too much, it turns into a bitter mess. If you think you’re not using enough, use a little bit less and you’ll be OK.”
Of course, the biggest thing anyone cooking with tobacco needs to realize is that overdoing it can be toxic. Nicotine naturally comes as part of the tobacco plant, and too much is basically poison, causing a whole slew of negative side effects like cramps, arrhythmia, headaches, vomiting, even comas. Preventive measures need to be in place to prevent too much of that nicotine seeping into the food.
Some chefs use tobacco leaves in a smoker to get the overall flavor into meat. At El Celler de can Roca in Girona, Spain, the chefs pass a cigar-themed dessert through cigar smoke for a tobacco essence. The team at the Ice Cream Bar makes their tobacco tincture and spritzes a little over the finished drink so the tobacco is still there, just not at a toxic level.
Another method is to soak the tobacco leaves overnight –the water draws out all the nicotine and toxins. Dump out the water, rinse the leaves, dry them, and then add to food at will.
Resource: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/03/cooking-with-tobacco-food
“A fine stream of soda is used to mix everything in the glass, and to create large bubbles in the cream on top of the soda,” owner Juliet Pries said. “Tobacco tincture is sprayed over the top of the bubbles, just before it is served, so that you can smell it as you’re drinking the soda.”
What was then considered a strange addition reminiscent of a spate of tobacco-in-food experiments about a decade ago has now blossomed into a full-blown foodie trend.
Related: Tobacco added in to the cocktail mix
Tobacco is hitting menus throughout the world, whether it’s in a chicken wing sauce at the Morris House Bistro in Cheyenne, Wyoming; made into flour to dredge onions in like at JK’s Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina; infused into sugar as Naomi Gallego does in her post as Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s pastry chef; or even as whole leaves added to chocolate bars, as at London-based Artisan du Chocolat.
Chefs adding tobacco to food are often looking to take advantage of a more complex flavor profile. Los Angeles home chef and lawyer Robert Lu, who grew up with restaurant-owner parents, began infusing pipe tobacco in his food on a whim after seeing his grandfather smoke heavily. With it, he created ice cream, panna cotta, crème brulée, custard, and smoked duck and chicken.
“It has a bit of liquid smoke flavor,” Lu said. “It gives the food a nice dimension so it’s not so flat. In Chinese cooking, we use tea leaves, and even when you use the wood chips, there’s a sort of earthy undertone to it. Tobacco is an extension of that. It’s just a leaf. It’s not like we’re cooking with meth. Cooking is just a natural extension of what you can do with tobacco. But it’s not something I’d give to children, and you have to tell people what they’re eating.”
And always remember – as with most strong ingredients, less is more.
“You really have to tone it down and be very judicious in how you use it,” Lu said. “A little bit goes a long way, like saffron. If you put in too much, it turns into a bitter mess. If you think you’re not using enough, use a little bit less and you’ll be OK.”
Of course, the biggest thing anyone cooking with tobacco needs to realize is that overdoing it can be toxic. Nicotine naturally comes as part of the tobacco plant, and too much is basically poison, causing a whole slew of negative side effects like cramps, arrhythmia, headaches, vomiting, even comas. Preventive measures need to be in place to prevent too much of that nicotine seeping into the food.
Some chefs use tobacco leaves in a smoker to get the overall flavor into meat. At El Celler de can Roca in Girona, Spain, the chefs pass a cigar-themed dessert through cigar smoke for a tobacco essence. The team at the Ice Cream Bar makes their tobacco tincture and spritzes a little over the finished drink so the tobacco is still there, just not at a toxic level.
Another method is to soak the tobacco leaves overnight –the water draws out all the nicotine and toxins. Dump out the water, rinse the leaves, dry them, and then add to food at will.
Resource: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/03/cooking-with-tobacco-food
No comments:
Post a Comment