Textures

 

Isn't food great?!  I mean .... can you imagine life with nothing but nutritional supplements that have no taste, no flavor, no color, no texture?  I like to think especially about texture a lot.      

Food textures, the words themselves, refer specifically to properties of foods which can be sensed by touch, either by mouth or by hand. 

For instance, take the crispy rice treat shown above.  The combination of the crispy (from the puffed rice) and the chewy (from the marshmallows and butter which are melted to create this treat) is amazing.  Or take a simple chocolate chip cookie -- the slight bit of crispiness on the outside, the slight bit of chew on the inside, the pools of liquid chocolate interspersed with the actual cookie.  The texture contrast is wonderful.

The tricky thing with some foods is that textures are very likely to be easily changed (most often in a bad way) completely by accident if one is not being careful.  This week I made sweet spiced roasted pecans.  They were great.  I always love to have them around to snack on.  They were crispy and crunchy both from the roasting which dried them out a bit as well as from the sweet and spicy coating in which they were roasted.

I stored them in a sealed container and every time I wanted some, I popped the lid, scooped some out and resealed.  But then something terrible happened.  I got distracted.  I went to grab a few.  And I left the lid open.  For some time they sat open on the counter and slowly bit by bit they seemed to absorb some of the humidity in the air.  When I went back to get more and I saw that I had left the lid open, I knew they wouldn't be the same.  And they weren't.  The taste was the same but also different because texture affects our evaluation of taste. 

The same thing happens to potato chips if you leave them out on warm humid day.  That's why some people have made a fortune on little clips which make sure you chips bags are closed.

Well, I'm going to make another batch of pecans.  And this time I'll try to be more careful.  I tossed the remains of the texture-disadvantaged batch out for the squirrels.  I don't know if the squirrels could taste the sweet or the spicy on these pecans, but I hope they appreciated my efforts.  I happened to catch a glimpse of a young brown squirrel nibbling on one of the pecan halves.  He seemed to be enjoying it.  

Have a great week, everyone.