Chemistry in the kitchen: Fresh summer home made ginger ale!

One of the most recent spots in which chemistry is involved and gets a new fascinating aspect in the molecular gastronomy. When we make any meal, we mix ingredients, we cook, we dry, basically we do chemical reactions and by control them it is possible to set up the right and balanced taste. I have been looking for some recipes about ginger ale drink, since I was curious to try to make it at home and now it is hot and I really like to drink something refreshing. I found different recipes, also a few involved fermentation processes, but I like simple recipes in which there is no fermentation. I add this recipes that also you can find with pictures of the process at Homemade Ginger Ale:
Homemade Ginger Ale
recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
from "Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef"

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh ginger, unpeeled and cut into small dice
2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 small fresh chiles, stems removed
1 1/2 cups sugar
Soda water
Lime wedges

1. Combine the ginger, lemongrass and chiles in food processor and process until minced, stopping the machine periodically and scraping down the sides.

2. Place the puree in a saucepan with the sugar and 1 quart water (that's four cups). Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat. Cool, then strain and chill.

3. To serve, place 1/4 cup of the syrup in a glass full of ice. Fill with soda water, taste and add more syrup if you like. Garnish with a lime wedge, then serve.
Basically I love the process as you heat this ginger puree and promote a retro aldol reaction that brings from gingerol to zingerone, that is responsible for the spicy aroma of the drink! There is always chemistry in every you drink, mate!

Sugar...sugar...honey...honey!

Somebody told me if sugar has an expiration date. In this post I wanna talk about the importance of some parameters in food safety and particularly about water activity. In food safety the main parameters we use to project any food and to see if they are shelf stable are: water activity, temperature, pH. Water activity is defined as the vapor pressure of water above a system divided by that of pure water at the same temperature. Distilled water has a water activity value of 1 and a pure fat system of zero. Simply speaking the water activity is a measure of "free" or "available" water in a system, since the presence of dissolved species makes an interaction between them and the water through hydrogen bonding, dipole-dipole attraction or ionic bonds. A measure of water activity will help us in predicting if the growth of mold or a microbiological contamination can happen. Therefore, taking into consideration that the water amount in the sugar we can have at home is less than 0,3 % and that chemically speaking sugar has a cristalline structure, it is hard can be contaminated if it is well stored. In fact it is used in food industry as preservative in several food formulations. If you keep it in a closed can, at room temperature, the sugar can be kept indefinitely. Dont worry about it...sugar sugar...honey...honey!!

Chemistry and music!

During these summer days, it is nice to go out for a walk, a drink and may be to listen some good life music. Music is a form of art, particularly is the art of generating, manipulating and making new combinations of sounds. We always know how close is chemistry, among all the other sciences, to art and any artistic form of expression. In our science, there is a formal code to communicate chemistry and the results of any experiment. To write in any international journal, every scientist has to follow some rules and the language is strictly formal. It was really surprising for me to discover on Internet there are a lot of videos in which some scientific concepts like chemical reactions, or the enthalpy variation, are explained in a song form. I am really convinced that this new way of teaching can affect the learning of science and also stimulate students in their studies.

Chocolate Math Mystery

Chocolate Math Mystery

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Extra virgin olive oil, a common question

Generally, when I talk about extra-virgin olive oil and its amazing properties, I get several questions. The first one is about the adjective "extra virgin", whay is this "extra virgin? What does it mean? I explain that virgin and extra-virgin olive oils are those ones obtained exclusively by mechanical processes of the fresh fruits, the olives and that the difference between extra-virgin and virgin are in some chemical parameters of the oil. Here the chemical aspect! The Reg. CE 2568/91 and the Reg. CE 1989/03 contains the limits of these parameters. The first one is the acidity. Of course, when you are having a dinner with friends, it is not easy to get into chemistry for several time, so the conversation ends after replying to this and last question: what is the acidity of olive oil? I say that by our law the extra-virgin olive oil needs to have an acidity lower than 0.8% in oleic acid. Here the most difficult part, to explain this concept to people never studied it. Olive oil and vegetable oils contains mainly triglycerides that are esters of glycerol and fatty acids. The acidity is the content of the main representative free fatty acid in the oil, so more the free fatty acid, more the acidity, less pure in triglycerides the oil. That's why we call EXTRA-VIRGIN an olive oil with a really low content of free fatty acid, no more that 0.8% by weight. At the end of the conversation probably my friends know something more about chemistry appreciating in any case the beautiful scent of a pure sicilian extra-virgin olive oil in their meals!

Non solo chimica; Not only chemistry

Dopo avere visionato molti blogs di autori chimici, mi è venuta la voglia di iniziare questa avventura, perchè credo molto nelle potenzialità della rete e che in futuro il blog avrà un peso sempre maggiore nella diffusione delle informazioni e della cultura in genere. Proprio per questo ho deciso di mettere a disposizione di tutti le mie competenze e le mie conoscenze della chimica. Mi presento, mi chiamo Alessandro, ho 31 anni e faccio il chimico. Da circa quattro anni lavoro come libero professionista e mi occupo di analisi ambientali e alimentari e di consulenze nel settore della chimica ambientale, alimentare e forense. Inoltre ho maturato anche quattro anni di esperienza nella scuola pubblica avendo fatto alcune supplenze di chimica e tecnologia in un Istituto superiore. Voglio scrivere questo blog sia in italiano che in inglese per dare una maggiore visibilità. Gli argomenti di cui mi occuperò, saranno argomenti di attualità del mondo della chimica e della ricerca scientifica per cercare di darne una visione corretta, indipendente e scientifica. Mi piacerebbe potere pensare che fosse un chimico a commentare le notizie di chimica con un linguaggio che possa essere compreso da una ampia utenza, in modo tale da creare una coscienza critica nei lettori e una rinnovata immagine della chimica, materia che studio da molto tempo e che ogni giorno non smette mai di affascinarmi.
English version:
Today, after reading several blogs about chemistry and science, I decided to create my blog and to call it: the independent chemist! Why "The independent chemist"?
The idea is to comment scientific news from the newspapers or from Internet and to offer the point of view of a scientist, in order to let the readers make a critical and scientific consciousness about chemistry and science.
Some informations about me: my name is Alessandro, I am 31 years old, works as a chemist, in the field of environmental and food analysis as well as consultant in environmental, food and forensic chemistry. I have been teaching chemistry for four years in a high school.
With this blog I would like to create a big network with all the people interested in discussing about science and chemistry particularly.
Be ready, let's start up this brilliant journey! Everybody is welcome!