(you can click through the entire presentation at the end of this post)

I really enjoyed taking part in the recent MG seminar in Copenhagen, and the greatest surprise was when I received a kind email from Michael Bom Frøst last year where he invited me to give a presentation on how molecular gastronomy has been communicated during the last couple of years. As many of you know the blog and my popular science activities are only a hobby, so it was a great honour indeed to present side by side with all the other people who spend whole days working on the subject. I arrived at the title “Molecular gastronomy meets the internet – Can blogs benefit popular food science?”. I started by looking at how Gartner’s hype cycle fits with the phenomena molecular gastronomy (I’ve touched briefly upon this before). To me the publication of Modernist Cuisine and the announced launches of the Flavour journal and the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science suggest that we are approaching the plateau of productivity (but not quite there yet – we’re still waiting for the actual launch of these journals). Furthermore molecular gastronomy is still perceived as less scientific. Few publishing channels integrate the scientific and practical aspects of molecular gastronomy, and in my presentation I argued that self publishing plays an important role. I focused primarily on blogs, but it’s interesting to note (without any further comparison!) that even Nathan Myhrvold turned to self publishing with Modernist Cuisine. To conclude the presentation, I shared some of my experiences as a blogger and encouraged the chefs and scientists present to start their own blogs. You may click through the slides from my presentation below:
(more…)

Rene Redzepi sees no contradiction between science and his style of cooking. He also promoted his book NOMA at the press conference at The Flemish Primitives 2011.

It came as no big surprise that NOMA defended its no. 1 position in April. A lot of the press coverage of NOMA and René Redzepi focuses on foraging (some even claim that we are in The Era of the ‘I Foraged With René Redzepi Piece’). It is all about nature and natural ingredients. Many would probably claim that NOMA is as far away from molecular gastronomy and science as you could possibly come. In March René Redzepi attended The Flemish Primitives in Oostende. I was there, and the one question I asked René at the press conference was this:

ML: The Flemish Primitives aims to bring together chefs, scientists and artists. There is also a co-operation between Noma and the University of Copenhagen. What have you learnt from from working with scientists?
(more…)

The launch of Flavour, the journal I mentioned recently, is right around the corner. To celebrate the launch they give away 10 copies of Peter Barham’s Science of Cooking to anyone who registers for their article alerts before 1st July. The nice thing for those of us who don’t have free access to scientific litterature through an university library is that it’s an open access journal. There’s some more info in this blog post or you can follow them on Twitter.