Thursday, December 17, 2015

FOODIE SPECIAL .... - Neurogastronomy -Gourmet Brain food

Neurogastronomy -Gourmet Brain food


A complete sensory experience on a plate

SO WHAT'S NEW?
Do you ever get an aroma of an acquainted smell that unexpectedly activates a food craving even though you may have just eaten a full meal?
The fact is this can occur more repeatedly than you think since our senses play a vital role in our, eating habits. Simply put Neurogastronomy is the way we experience flavour, and is mostly based on our brain's reaction, which is significantly impacted by our logic of smell and taste.And understanding this is a great missile in a chef 's hand! We have been recognising food by smell, trailed by taste, since humans started cooking and eating. That said, gone are the days of Plain Vanilla, or may I add food that is just nice for the palate and it's all about linking with the consumer in terms of much more. Chefs who have experimented in molecular gastronomy effectively have made efforts at using this tactic with a certain level of success. Michelin star chef Atul Kochhar says, `Neuro Gastronomy has been there since nature created sense of smell and then sight. It's the branch of learning that is concentrating on thorough study of the brain's thoughts of food. There is a lot more to come and thrilling times are round the corner!'

HOW DOES THIS WORK?
`To understand flavour, we need to know how the brain works, it's important to think about packaging, the dining environment' explains celebrity chef Abhijit Saha. Relating food to senses and reminiscences and crafting a sense of fostering is the goal of many chefs. `When we eat the impressions of both taste and touch are at work in our mouth alongside interacting with smells', adds Chef Zubin from Chennai.
He says, `Indications about smell transfer to the brain where they are theorised into three-dimensional patterns, which eventually effect what we know and observe as flavour'. Today many chefs are molecular gastronomy geared and agree to have got new acumens into ways to influence their diners' experiences. They do an excellent job of walking you through each step and ultimately gets their diners to enjoy each flavour. Chefs question the role of oil based flavours versus water based flavours in extending flavours to the customers as they exhale after each bite. Today not only does the chef make sure his ingredients are of the best quality but also works very hard to give the customer an Umami experience. For example, at a popular restaurant in Mumbai the `Jalebi Rabri' is not just your roundels of Jalebi served with Rabri on the side; the chef has gone all out and created the Jalebi in caviar shape served in a star shaped dish with rabri around the Jalebi...absolutely decadent. In his book titled `Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor' Dr Gordon M. Shepherd of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, explains that almost 80 per cent of what we distinguish as flavour is really data that comes from the nose.

Rupali Dean is a travel and food writer based out of Delhi.

ET3DEC15

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