Phaedra Cook

This plate of cookies and truffles has zero calories, according to Meal Snap. Dig in!

​Last week, our editor asked if anyone was interested in evaluating an iPhone application called "Meal Snap." Since I both work in IT and write about food, this sounded like a perfect assignment for me. I love playing with new technology.

Meal Snap claims that you can take a photo of your plate and it will figure out what you are eating and approximately how many calories are in it. It seemed like a dubious idea, and I wondered if the application was any good. After all, I could stand to lose a few pounds. Being a food writer is hard on the waistline, and if Meal Snap worked, it could be a fantastic diet tool. I guess I could rely on self-discipline, too, but that hasn't worked yet.

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​Note-taking smart phone app Evernote is widely considered one of the best productivity apps on the market, particularly if you do a lot of note taking. I ranked it as my number one app of the year and find it indispensable for keeping track of everyday tasks.

The company that produced Evernote just released a version geared for food lovers not terribly creatively called Evernote Food. The free smart phone app allows its users to keep track of meals as they happen and archive them for posterity complete with photos, locations and notes on the meal, but it's not quite ready for prime time.

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Roasted Banana-Rum Gel Setting

​Back in December, I wrote about Gelatin Clarified Stock. It's a wonderful technique, and one I still use. It is, however, slow. Due to the melting point of gelatin and the structure of the gel it sets, it requires both freezing and cold-thawing to work properly. Both of these steps take time. Fortunately, gelatin is not the only hydrocolloid on the block.

Agar, a derivative of red algae, is one such hydrocolloid. Lately, I've been exploiting a few of its particular properties in the kitchen, with some wonderful results. One of agar's benefits is the fact of its provenance. Since it doesn't come from animals, agar can be used to quickly and easily clarify vegetarian stocks and juices. I'm not vegetarian, so this fact is actually of minimal importance to me. What makes agar gel particularly appealing to me, especially in this application, is the fact that it is not as easily thermoreversible as gelatin.

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​A few weeks ago, I was making risotto for dinner, using the pre-hydration method, which I'm so fond of for weeknight cooking. As I drained the Arborio rice from its bath of Sierra Nevada Glissade Golden Bock, now cloudy with starch washed from the surface of the grains, I had an epiphany.

The value of pre-hydrating starches (pasta, rice, etc.) rests not just in the speed of preparation (contingent, of course, on a little pre-planning), but in the possibility for flavor. I've taken to pre-hydrating rice and pasta in a wide array of flavorful liquids, from stock to the aforementioned beer, flavoring the grain from the inside. This yields amazing depth of flavor, with unique combinations possible. The only downside is the dump.

It always bothers me to pour all that flavor down the drain after the pasta has had its turn. As I stared at the hazy golden beer, I realized that this process could serve double duty. I'd been so focused on adding flavor to my starches that I hadn't ever considered the possibilities inherent in adding starch to flavorful liquids.

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bbc.com

My, those little turkens sure do look delicious!

​What has the body of a chicken, the head of a turkey, and is bred for its skills in magic? Okay, so that last one's a rip on Napoleon Dynamite, but there really is such a beast, originating in the far corners of Eastern Europe.

Recently scientists at the Roslin Institute at Edinburgh University set out to unravel the mystery of the Transylvanian Naked Neck Chicken, also known as the "churkey" or "turken," and how the bird with an especially elongated, featherless neck came to be.

Using DNA samples comparing "naked" chickens in Mexico, France and Hungary, scientists were able to locate the genetic mutation, intensified by an A-derived substance produced around the bird's neck. This results in production of BMP12, a protein responsible for suppressing feather growth. Apparently a bare head and neck serve to keep the bird cool, making the churkey particularly well suited for life in warm, tropical climates.

Why do we care? In theory, isolating the gene will allow it to be replicated, and food companies are always on the lookout for a heartier, more cost-effective farm animal. The recently deceased Don Tyson hit it big by engineering a variety of exceptionally large breasted chicken for McDonald's, making Tyson Foods one of the largest meat production companies in the world.

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​Since I started Shiftwork Bites, my coworkers have been asking me to do something with fish. I've hesitated for one reason. The electric skillet that comprises my primary heat source uses a thermostatically controlled heating element that cycles on and off. It doesn't do a very good job, tending to swing wildly between full-blast and nothing, almost entirely regardless of what temperature you set it on. It will rage into life, blasting the pan's contents with heat until the thermostat shuts it off abruptly. Not exactly the ideal cooking surface for delicate fish.

Then I noticed that, if I set the skillet on warm, it maintains a fairly constant temperature roughly equating to medium-low on my gas range at home. I decided to give it a go with a fish preparation. I'm a big fan of cooking fish skin-on, and love cooking it until crispy, playing up the textural contrast and enjoying all the flavor the skin retains. I sat down and sketched out an idea, shopping the following day before work.

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Cookie fail.

​Baking can be a puzzling task. As such an exact science, just one slightly off element can produce disastrous results. Here are a few things to avoid learned from my more embarrassing baking snafus:

1. Not maintaining oven temperature

It took about three days of living in my current apartment to realize my oven is an evil demon sent from hell. The oven decides temperature it wants to be at, usually ranging about 25 to 50 degrees off the mark depending on the day, often producing burnt or unevenly baked desserts. An oven thermometer is one of the best gadgets a budding baker can purchase. And above all, stop opening the oven door to peek.

2. Not working with properly prepared ingredients

I've found out the hard way that room-temperature butter does not mean you can get away with tossing it in the microwave. In cookies, this causes the pancake effect, as the butter melts and spreads before the cookie is set. If a recipe calls for cold ingredients, make sure you refrigerate everything or risk that delicious flakiness that makes pastry so amazing. Also, this may seem like a no-brainer, but check the expiration date on your ingredients. I once went a few months with expired baking soda and wondered why nothing rose.

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Fresh-From-The-Oven Naan: Now showing at Yumm.com.

​Technology is increasingly infiltrating the kitchen. While we may not have robots making our meals like on The Jetsons (yet), all sorts of apps, websites and kitchen gadgets are providing new resources for expanding our cooking repertoire and making our time cooking meals more interesting.

A problem that seems as old as the kitchen itself is how to manage all the different cookbooks, note cards and wayward sheets of paper containing our favorite recipes. No doubt many of you have sheets of paper wedged between cookbooks much the way my girlfriend does and, when it is time to come up with dinner plans, there is a wild shuffling of paper trying to find the recipe you want.

As if that weren't complicated enough, websites like Epicurious.com and AllRecipes.com, while great sources of information, add to the massive recipe clutter that can overwhelm anyone. But new website is out to change all that.

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A list of available restaurants in the 77027 area code.

​For those with a love of food and obsession with their smart phones, these are amazing times. There are apps that give iPhone and Android users all sorts of options when it comes to food, from finding happy hours to ranking restaurants.

One thing that has been missing from the world of apps has been food delivery. Online services like Takeout Taxi, which have thrived for years off of hungry office staffs, don't provide mobile-friendly websites or apps for helping nerds make the most of their food ordering experience.

Fortunately, SeamlessWeb is here to sort of save the day. This free app for iPhone, Android and Blackberry allows users to order food for delivery or pick-up without all the mess of actually dialing a phone. Isn't technology amazing?

SeamlessWeb has the distinction of being the only app with restaurant choices in Houston. In fact, SemlessWeb's only real competition is GrubHub, but they are limited to 13 cities and not one named Houston.

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The 42 Restaurants app is a thing of beauty.

​I recently commented to a friend that reviewing restaurants is so much easier with a smart phone, taking notes on the fly and being able to instantly look up directions if you get lost on the way.

In my case, I have an iPhone, and -- sad as I know it is -- I can't imagine life before it. I'm a sick person. I know. But there it is.

There are apps that I use on a daily basis for work which have made other forms of technology obsolete. For instance, the built-in Voice Memo application on my iPhone takes the place of a much larger Ederol (which is also quite expensive). I can record interviews or press conferences, edit down the audio to its most important parts -- right on the phone! -- and email myself an MP4 file when it's done.

Likewise, if I'm dining in a restaurant and a song comes on the stereo system that I love, but either can't identify or don't want to forget, I simply use my Shazam app to identify and log the song for later access. This is helpful when every Cannibal Corpse song that Amy's Ice Cream plays starts to sound alike.

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