Curious Cook

The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna?

A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious.

Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include “bologna” and “carpet,” it’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it.

Curious Cook in the New York Times: The five-second rule

My column in today's New York Times food section is about the five-second rule, the idea that if you drop a piece of food on the floor but pick it up quickly, it will still be safe to eat. 

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Dawson, P. et al. Residence time and food contact time effects on transfer of Salmonella typhimurium from tile, wood, and carpet: testing the five-second rule. Journal of Applied Microbiology 2007, 102, 945-53.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03171.x

Wine: "Talk Dirt to Me" in the New York Times

Last Sunday's New York Times T Style Magazine includes an article about wine that I co-wrote with Daniel Patterson, chef-owner of the San Francisco restaurant Coi. In "Talk Dirt to Me," we examine the idea of terroir, the influence on a wine's flavor of the place in which the grapevines grow. We drew on several experimental studies, two of which are especially worth reading: 

de Andrés-de Prado, R. et al. Effect of soil type on wines produced from Vitis vinifera L. cv. Grenache in commercial vineyards. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2007, 55, 779 - 786.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jf062446q

A collaboration between the Bodegas Miguel Torres and the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Barcelona.

van Leeuwen, C. et al. Influence of climate, soil, and cultivar on terroir. Am. J. Enology and Viticulture 55, 2004, 207-17.

A study of Saint-Emilion vineyards from the Department of Oenology at the University of Bordeaux.

And as we mention in the article, the subject of terroir is given a thorough and original treatment by the English wine writer Jamie Goode in his excellent book Wine Science: The Application of Science in Winemaking (Mitchell Beazley 2005, University of California Press 2006). Goode offers further thoughts on the subject at his website, www.wineanorak.com.

Talk Dirt to Me

It’s hard to have a conversation about wine these days without hearing the French word terroir. Derived from a Latin root meaning “earth,” terroir describes the relationship between a wine and the specific place that it comes from. For example, many will say the characteristic minerality of wines from Chablis comes from the limestone beds beneath the vineyards (although, when pressed, they generally admit that they’ve never actually tasted limestone). The idea that one can taste the earth in a wine is appealing, a welcome link to nature and place in a delocalized world; it has also become a rallying cry in an increasingly sharp debate over the direction of modern winemaking. The trouble is, it’s not true.