Food News: Bompas and Parr Culinary Odyssey

For A Culinary Odyssey, KitchenAid have joined up with Bompas & Parr to prototype the dishes of the future, to explore the avenues for global food development and launch the KichenAid® 6.9L Artisan® Stand Mixer – the best performing stand mixer in its class.

The six-month research project culminates in an interactive event held at One Marylebone and the publication of a report on the ‘Future of Food and Food Preparation’ on Wednesday, 21st March 2012.


Bompas & Parr have worked with food designers, micro-nutritionists, set builders and biochemists employing cutting edge technology to create an event that provides insight into how we may eat in the future.
Food plays a significant role in science fiction as one of the clearest measures of how far we have journeyed from the present (J.P. Retzinger, 2008). Many science fiction authors and film directors invest considerable energy imagining the food of the future and their predictions offer areas for culinary speculation and innovation.


Okay, so it's effectively one giant ad for KitchenAid, but with the help of culinary event extraordinaires Sam and Harry, it should at least be a fun, albeit commercial, ride, with the menu incorporating genetic modification, entomophagy, nutraceuticals, nano-technology. Cocktails and canapes will feature our take on Burgess's terrifying Milk Plus from A Clockwork Orange as well as bio-luminescent enzymes, cooking with liquid hydrogen, sugar in the air, cooking with liquid hydrogen and the most intoxicating drink in the galaxy.

If you aren't tempted yet, The Experimental Cocktail Club (ECC) are making science fiction cocktails, Rhea Thierstein is designing sets that include the entire solar system in papier-mâché and Poietic Studio are building food levitation devices and the tropism well. On the evening, Future Laboratory will launch a report on science fiction prototyping and how we'll eat in the future...

Tickets available from noon on the 8th March for £5 from www.jellymongers.co.uk

Food Fact of the Day...

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Chewing gum has been used since at least the Neolithic period.
5,000 year old chewing gum with tooth imprints, made of birch bark tar, has been found in Kierikki, Yli-Ii, Finland. The bark is believed to have antiseptic and medicinal properties.
The ancient Aztecs also used it as a mouth freshener.

Talking of Gum...


Bompas and Parr is building an Artisanal Chewing Gum Factory an at Whiteleys Shopping Centre opening between 25 – 31 October. People are invited to learn the secrets of chewing gum manufacture at the world’s first mirco-factory.

Each visitor will be able to choose and combine a 200 familiar and unusual flavours including iris, Hendrick’s Gin and tonic, curry and beer yeast. In total 40,000 flavour combinations are possible.

I think I will be checking this out, so if you like the sound of it, just keep hitting my blog!

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The Experimental Food Society

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http://www.lovetocake.co.uk/

The Experimental Food Society


Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that food isn't just something we consume to survive. It goes beyond sandwiches from Pret or getting the right nutritional fat-to-mineral-to-protien ratio on a plate. As as artist as well as a cook, it's fascinating to see food and art come together. It's refreshing to be shown that food isn't just art when it comes on an oversized plate with a Michelin star (or three...) and that you don't need to have attended Leith's and spent twenty years in a kitchen to make an impact on the food industry. And I can't think of a more exciting way to be reminded of this than by The Experimental Food Society.

Last week The Experimental Food Society 'The UK's most talented culinary creatives' held their annual edible exhibition, to showcase the new ways in which the gourmet artist's blend food with art, entertainment and science.

I booked my tickets weeks ago and ticked off the days to this year's event held in the Brick House on Brick Lane- and on Saturday I trotted down, camera in hand...

Bompass and Parr Ether Jelly

Feasts of the senses included a life sized suckling pig cake, a sculpted fondant gorilla and Paul A Young's Burning Ember Truffle -filled with black cardamom, tobacco and chilli.

Simon Smith at work, carving sculptures out of margerine.

I chatted with Paul Wayne Gregory, who proved chocolatiers are some of the most passionate members of the food world, whilst rolling out his champagne and white rum truffles.
I also enjoyed Ginger's icecream; 'This Monkey's Gone to Heaven' was a gorgeous mix of Banana, peanut and bitter chocolate - served out of an old school icecream van.

Its Paul O'Grady- A portrait comissioned by Jelly Belly and made of Jelly Beans. I do not know why. Impressive. Bemusing... But impressive.


A Carl Warner food landscape.

... Till next year! xxx !


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