Folding culinary arts into food service - includes related article on trendy food manufacturing.

It is increasingly important for food manufacturers to utilize both culinary professionals and food scientists in their Research and Development efforts, else we are heading towards a society where there wont be any good food to eat.

Food flavors can be either added to foods or developed during cooking processes. However, processes used in kitchen usually produce different results than those in manufacturing.

Culinary professionals can help scientists envision fine restaurant food presentations, which can then be taken and duplicated on a large scale through flavor and/or process technology.

The Odd Couple?

Although working together can be challenging, food scientists and culinary professionals can benefit from learning each other's perspectives on product development. Language/terminology differences can create communication gaps as are often case when people in different disciplines work together.

In its various forms, pasta has become a part of almost every country. Some say that Marco Polo brought idea of pasta from China to Europe, but archaeological evidence has shown that it had been in both places long before then, so after doing a great deal of study, I found that nobody really knows for sure what culture pasta truly came from (if it was just one).

Many people think of pasta as regular egg noodles, spaghetti, macaroni, and lasagna, but once you start looking around, there are many more completely different varieties. In Asia alone, although some of their noodles are wheat-based, they use a great amount of rice noodles, but also some with a variety of other starches. These other starches include such things as potato flour, buckwheat flour, and mungbean starch, and may be eaten either hot or cold. Noodles in Asia are generally cooked by steaming, stir-frying, and even deep frying. They also have a large variety of different dumplings, which would also classify as pasta. Germans have their spaetzle, which is made with flour, eggs, water (or milk), and salt, made very soft and pushed through a colander into boiling water, then tossed with butter sauce, soups, and other dishes. In Poland they have their pierogi, half-moon shaped pork filled dumplings.

The most common Italian-style pasta refers to a dough made with semolina (durum wheat) flour mixed with water or milk and sometimes eggs. Semolina is superior flour that is used because it doesn't absorb too much water and is perfect when properly cooked al dente (just slightly firm). The most common source of pasta is dried, and when looking for best brand of dried pasta, even Italians in Italy admit that Barilla is best brand. When I was in Italy, some friends I made there were surprised that Barilla was popular here since it is so good.