One of the good things about living in Oslo are the coffee bars. Norwegians drink a lot of coffe (a healthy dose of 9.9 kg anually per capita, only second to the Finnish) and perhaps that is one reason why there are so many coffee bars around. One of the best (if not the best) is Tim Wendelboe at Grünerløkka. Tim Wendelboe is a previous WBC champion (2004) who now owns a coffee bar and a micro roastery bearing his name. If you visit Oslo and the Grünerløkka area you should definitely walk the additional 200 m from the crowded “Kaffebrenneriet” at Olaf Ryes plass to his shop. And if you live outside Oslo you can buy freshly roasted coffee directly from his website and read more about his coffee adventures in his blog. If you read Norwegian you might also be interested in his recent book “Kaffe”. I’ve enjoyed a lot of coffee from Tim Wendelboe, both in his shop and as beans at home on my Rancilio, and having finished my post “A pinch of salt for your coffee, sir?” I decided to send Tim an email and ask him about his experiences with salt and coffee. I got a very kind reply were he invited me to come and do some tests in his shop. Now that’s an offer I couldn’t refuse!
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A small sprinkle of salt will suppress bitterness – and in some cases it can benefit the overall coffee flavor. I’ve tried it with an espresso and somehow it works, but it’s difficult to describe the flavor.

I prefer my coffee black, and politely decline when offered milk and sugar. However, if offered salt I would probably smile and say “Yes, please!” Salt???! It turns out that adding salt to coffee is not as weird as it may sound at first. There is a tradition for adding a pinch of salt to coffee in Northern Scandinavia, Sibir, Turkey and Hungary. And when available, such as in coastal areas where fresh water from rivers mixes with the salt sea, one would simply use brackish water when preparing coffee. This water typically has a salt content of 0.5-3%, which is lower than the average 3.5% in seawater. This results in a more intense taste and more foaming. And if living far from the sea, the Swedish food blogger Lisa Förare Winbladh let me know that in Northern Sweden one would deliberately add salt if using melt water from glaciers for making coffee. But tradition aside, is there a scientific explanation of this widespread tradition of preparing coffee with addition of salt?
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Crycotuv – a combined vacuum chamber and super fast freezer with internal spray nozzle.

If I were to name a topic for this year’s Flemish Primitives event I guess gadgets would be it. I’ve already covered the high pressure processing in a previous post. Regrettably we were only shown pictures and movies of this machine (it is to large/complex to be brought on stage) but there was much more that would qualify for a post focusing on some of the gadgets presented.

Crycotuv
The most obscure machine in my opinion was the Crycotuv – a vacuum chamber which could be cooled to any desired temperature between -150 and 0 °C in seconds/minutes. (more…)

Bernard Lahousse, project manager of The Flemish Primitives.

I’ve written a couple of posts about The Flemish Primitives 2010 event (and there are more to come), but I also wanted to do an interview with Bernard Lahousse, the project manager of the event. Bernard first contacted me back in 2006 and we met at the EuroFoodChem conference in Paris in 2007. Those who’ve followed Khymos for a while may remember pointers to the “Food for design” blog and the foodpairing website which Bernard has set up.

ML: It seems you have always had an interest for things in the cross section of science and art? When we first came in contact you were writing the “Food for design” blog which covered gastronomy, science and design – what happend to it?

BL: Indeed, I’ve always been interested in the cross-section between different disciplines. Not only science-art or science-gastronomy, but many more. My belief is that the interesting stuff is happening where people with different background meet. As I lack time (and also Lieven), we made a choice to put Food for design on hold and concentrate on other topics. For me that’s foodpairing and my company. For Lieven it is his PhD.

ML: Could you briefly describe your educational background and how you ended up as a project manager for The Flemish Primitives?
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