NYTimes: The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop

The Curious Cook

The Essence of Nearly Anything, Drop by Limpid Drop

By HAROLD McGEE

Published: September 5, 2007

MANY new ideas bubbling up in restaurant kitchens aren't of much use to a home cook without a machine shop and acres of counter space. But some are simple and flexible enough that they just may trickle down to everyone else. In the case of an easy technique called gelatin filtration, that would be a very slow trickle.

Scott Menchin

Recipe: Savory Brown Butter Consommé (September 5, 2007)

Gelatin filtration is a way to make sparklingly clear liquids that are intensely flavored with ... well, whatever you like: meats, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, any and all combinations of ingredients.

Why would anyone want to make such a thing? Think of such liquids as essences. They have no fibers, no pulp, no fat, no substance at all. They're just flavor in fluid form, perhaps with a tinge of color, like a classic beef consommé. In fact chefs are calling these essences consommés, and they often use them the same way, as a soup or a sauce. And they can be delightfully surprising, because their appearance often gives no hint of the pleasure they're about to deliver.

A traditional consommé is made crystal clear by stirring in and then skimming off a foam of egg whites, which trap solid particles. The new technique uses gelatin instead. The process, though it takes two or three days, is simple. First you make juice or flavorful broth and strain it to remove any particles. Then you dissolve gelatin in the liquid, but only a little bit — just a fraction of what you'd use in a set gelatin dessert. (You don't need to add gelatin to meat stocks, which already contain it.)

Then you freeze the liquid overnight, place the frozen block in a strainer over a bowl and let it thaw in the refrigerator a day or two. Liquid slowly drips into the bowl. This is the consommé.

It's ingenious. As the jelly freezes, the water in it begins to form solid ice crystals, while the gelatin, the solid food particles, the droplets of fat and the flavors are concentrated in the remaining liquid. The long gelatin molecules bond to each other to form an invisibly fine net that traps everything else in its crevices.

The refrigerator plays a key role. It keeps the net cold enough so the gelatin doesn't dissolve and the fat doesn't melt. But the ice crystals do, and as they do they wash the dissolved flavors out of the net. Meanwhile the net's crevices act like a microscopic filter, trapping particles, solid fat and other impurities. What drips out of the thawing mass is a clear, flavorful liquid.

The idea of clarifying gelatin-rich meat stocks in the cold originated with a German food technologist, Prof. Gerd Klöck of the Hochschule Bremen, who spread the word at a 2004 meeting of Inicon, a European consortium for culinary innovation. In early 2005 the New York chef Wylie Dufresne saw a freeze-clarified venison stock in the kitchen of the Fat Duck in England, and immediately thought of a way to take the technique one giant step further: adding gelatin to flavorful liquids that don't already contain it. He soon succeeded in making a crystal-clear carrot juice.

He took the technique back to his Manhattan restaurant, WD-50, where as he recently recalled, "I went crazy with it." The possibilities were endless.

Mr. Dufresne now has at least two gelatin-clarified consommés on his menu at all times. Currently he serves seared scallops in an essence of clams and smoked grapes, and lamb loin with an elixir of pretzels. At Blackbird in Chicago, Mike Sheerin, the chef de cuisine and a WD-50 alumnus, serves pork belly in a consommé that he makes from his mother's recipe for barbecue sauce.

A blog called Ideas in Food (ideasinfood.typepad.com), written by two chefs, H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, is sprinkled with suggestions for an impressive variety of gelatin-clarified consommés including Parmesan and Roquefort, foie gras, olive oil, caramelized banana, ranch dressing, butter pecan, kimchi, pumpernickel and baked potato "with all the fixings." Mr. Talbot likes to keep consommés handy in the freezer, like one he brews from brown butter, soy sauce and Tabasco.

"They're great with seafood, asparagus — anyplace you would want those flavors without all the fat," he wrote in an e-mail message. "We also use consommés as brines and braising mediums. Artichokes cooked in horseradish consommé are remarkable."

At Jean Georges on Central Park West, the executive pastry chef, Johnny Iuzzini, makes a strawberry soda as part of his strawberry dessert course. "I clarify a purée of strawberries and the water I cook them in and get a beautifully clear red liquid with a bright, fresh flavor," he said. "I don't have to add any sugar. I carbonate it and top it with a birch-beer foam and diced strawberries."

Mr. Iuzzini also uses the technique to make an even more surprising dish for his chocolate course. He makes separate "stocks" of dark and white chocolate by cooking them in water, then clarifies them into fat-free liquids, one brown and one colorless. He then adds sugars and xanthan gum, a thickener, to give the two liquids different densities and a slight cohesiveness. This allows him to build a two-story drink, a layer of cold white chocolate consommé riding on a base of hot dark chocolate consommé.

So far I've used gelatin clarification to make tomato, Parmesan and chicken consommés. The flavors are so distinct and appealing that I've been content just to sip them straight, alone or mixed with one other.

Interestingly, fans of the new consommés differ about the best way to make the original. Mr. Dufresne likes to freeze and thaw his beef stock to remove the gelatin and avoid the stickiness that develops when the stock is reduced. Instead, he gives his consommé a slight viscosity by adding xanthan gum.

By contrast, David Kinch of Manresa in Los Gatos, Calif., serves many imaginative consommés, but draws the line at modifying the classic meat version. "To my hopelessly romantic mind," he said, "if you remove all the gelatin, you remove the seamless integration of flavor and consistency that you create by carefully cooking the stock in the first place."

They both sound good to me.

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Making food essences with gelatin filtration

from Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

Harold McGee writes in the NY Times about gelatin filtration:

-- a way to make sparklingly clear liquids that are intensely flavored with ... well, whatever you like: meats, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, any and all combinations of ingredients.

Why would anyone want to make such a thing? Think of such liquids as essences. They have no fibers, no pulp, no fat, no substance at all. They’re just flavor in fluid form, perhaps with a tinge of color, like a classic beef consommé. In fact chefs are calling these essences consommés, and they often use them the same way, as a soup or a sauce. And they can be delightfully surprising, because their appearance often gives no hint of the pleasure they’re about to deliver.

Link (Thanks, Carl!)

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LuLL Flowering Lamp Concept

from Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder

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Lawmakers Take Aim At Boom In Frivolous Patent Disputes

UPDATE: Lawmakers Take Aim At Boom In Frivolous Patent Disputes

September 07, 2007: 05:41 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) -- When Apple Inc. released its vaunted iPhone in June, critics were intrigued by its cutting-edge form touch-screen technology. Barely a month later, a doctor from Iowa publicly claimed he'd actually come up with the idea first, and he filed a patent-infringement lawsuit.

Apple (AAPL) and other big technology companies have long complained that such suits are frivolous -- and are becoming far too commonplace. They've taken their case to Congress, which will soon consider legislation intended to rein in patent litigation and its related costs. The House is expected to begin debating the proposed Patent Reform Act on Friday, while the Senate is expected to take up the issue soon.

Passage of patent reform would certainly placate many technology companies, while angering critics who fear a trampling of the property rights of relatively powerless inventors.

But its effect on occupants of the space in-between -- the holding companies thriving on gathering patents and enforcing them with lawsuits -- is uncertain. Branded by big technology companies as "patent trolls," for supposedly buying up patents for no reason other than to threaten lawsuits and collect cash settlements, these companies aren't easily legislated out of existence, attorneys and experts say.

"The legislation will lessen their threat to defendants, but it won't lessen it to the extent it will go away," said Bruce Rose, a partner in the intellectual property practice at Alston & Bird LLP in Charlotte, N.C.

Patent holding companies range from high-profile operations such as Acacia Technologies Group, to lesser known SP Technologies LLC -- which holds Des Moines, Iowa-based Dr. Peter Boesen's patent in the disputed case against Apple. A lower-profile, but nonetheless prominent, player is Plutus IP LLC and its various affiliates, which have drawn the ire of firms from Intel to Toyota by blanketing hundreds of defendants with patent suits.

Versions of patent reform working through the House and Senate include limits on districts where plaintiffs may sue, and on the amount of damages that may be awarded for infringement claims. The Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group whose members include Apple, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and others, has been an outspoken proponent.

"Every once in a while an issue comes along where a consensus emerges that something needs to be done, and this is now in that category," said Mark Isakowitz, a spokesman for the group.

But the drive to enact new laws has raised questions about what constitutes abuse of intellectual-property principles, and whether the government can, or should act against patent trolls.

Speculation

Kelly Hyndman, an intellectual-property lawyer with the Washington firm of Sughrue Mion PLLC, argues that the Patent Reform Act would weaken patent rights in favor of big corporations.

"No one looks at real-estate investors who speculate as trolls," he said. " They're admired for what they do."

Hyndman said companies that seek out high-quality patents have a right to maximize their value -- in court, if need be. And, he said, there should be no requirement that the patents be used to make products. "Other people shouldn't have the right to tell you what to do with your intellectual property," Hyndman said. "This is America."

In effect, Hyndman said, the legislation could water down the value of all patents, and in turn hinder the sort of original thinking and competitive drive that went into them in the first place.

Patent-holding companies often legitimately lay claim to simply maintaining the value of patented ideas.

But there's also "a cottage industry of people who go out and acquire patents solely for the purpose of bringing these suits, and with the hope that they will never have to go to trial," said Rose, the lawyer wit Alston & Bird LLP. Instead, he said, such holders hope for a high volume of settlements from companies wishing they'd just go away.

However, the proposed patent reform in Congress would, at best, "lessen the impact that patent trolls have," by limiting settlement amounts they can demand, he said.

For example, one proposal advanced as part of the legislation is to calculate damages based only on the specific contribution of a patent to a product. Under existing practice, awards are often based on the value of whole products.

Microsoft, for example, lost a $1.5 billion jury decision in patent litigation with Alcatel Lucent last February, which was based on worldwide sales of it Windows software, not just on technology within that software related to the patent. That decision was later reversed.

Critics say that by addressing problems that patents create only after they've been issued, the Patent Reform Act misses the point. "A lot of these problems go away if you clean up what's coming out of the Patent Office," said Greg Aharonian, a patent consultant in San Francisco.

Patent Office examiners are overwhelmed and work under less than ideal conditions, Aharonian said. That's a factor in the issuance of low-quality patents, which leads to proliferating infringement suits, he said.

In July Aharonian went as far as suing Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, for appointing a deputy director of the Patent Office who Aharonian and fellow plaintiffs say has an insufficient background in patent or trademark law.

The Patent Office has said it is now aggressively hiring examiners to increase the quality of issued patents, at a rate of more than 1,000 new examiners per year.

In a prepared statement Thursday, the Bush administration said it supported some elements of the Patent Reform Act, including the establishment of a limited period during which a patent's validity can be challenged outside of a costly court dispute after it's issued. It criticized other elements, such as blanket directive that would limit damages.

A 'form of hold-up'

Companies in the pharmaceutical industry, which relies heavily on the value of a relatively small number of patents, have actively opposed the reforms. Even the technology industry is divided, with some companies that rely on patent licensing joining the opposition.

Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) , for example, is a member of The Innovation Alliance, which opposes the Patent Reform Act. It holds an extensive portfolio of patents in cell phones, and has litigated extensively in an effort to uphold that portfolio's considerable value.

Shortly after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a modified version of the measure in July, the Innovation Alliance complained that "the bill will still erode, not strengthen, patent protections, thereby dampening innovation and stifling entrepreneurship."

But proponents of reform say the real aim is to curb what they say is an illegitimate, and growing, form of business.

Many patent holders know that the large companies they sue are willing to pay out settlements in the $1 million range -- because going to trial can often cost them "on the order of $4-to-$5 million," said Mark Lemley, a Stanford University law professor.

"It's a form of hold-up, and it results from the fact that patent litigation is expensive," Lemley said.

Still, the legislation may have limited effect on such tactics, said Kristie Prinz, an attorney in Los Gatos, Calif.

"The reality is there's not that much proposed yet to significantly damage this business model," Prinz said. "It's the litigation system, not the patent system, that is fostering this."

Some observers say it would be easy to circumvent the legislation's limits on venues where plaintiffs can sue. That's because a plaintiff could establish at least a nominal office in a district where they would like to litigate in the future. Plutus IP, for example, established offices in Texas and Wisconsin court districts, prior to filing patent suits there.

Hyndman, of the firm of Sughrue Mion, acknowledged that "a reasonable market correction" may be called for in the patent system. But passage of the Patent Reform Act, he said, moves too far away from inventor rights, and in favor of corporate rights. Adds Hyndman: "Whether it goes too far remains to be seen."

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  09-07-07 0541ET
  Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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IPhone: TV Out on iPhone Coming Soon via Software Update?

from Gizmodo by Jason Chen

The Apple Store page for the component AV cables—which up until now only supported the iPod classic—lists both the iPod touch and the iPhone as supported devices. What's up with that? The iPhone doesn't support TV out. Well, seeing as the iPod touch is also there, and since the touch and the iPhone are almost exactly the same, it makes sense that while adding TV out to the touch, Apple will go ahead and add TV out to the iPhone as well. Either that or this is just a mistake in the page. [Apple via Wired]

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