Saturday, November 16, 2013

Science Experiment Soup

Oftentimes I'll be in the midst of making dinner and discover something new. Like for example: If you walk away from caramelizing onions for even one second, they'll turn to charcoal. Or: rinsing leeks in a bowl of water after you chop them is way easier. Or even: caterpillars can survive for a week in a bag of greens in the fridge, and they don't always appreciate being banished to the back yard when you find them. More often than not my discoveries are either very tasty or somewhat explodey (see: adventures in Soda Stream ownership) or liable to set off the smoke detector. Rarely are they this pretty.

 A few weeks ago I had N. over for dinner. A few days earlier at the farmers' market I'd been dazzled by a purple cauliflower, so we decided that that plus a celery root getting near the end of its lifespan in my crisper would make a lovely pairing for my Random Root Soup, with a little quinoa for texture. (1 part rinsed quinoa to 1 part broth or water, bring to a boil, turn down heat & simmer 10 min, cover, turn off heat and let sit 5 min, fluff with a fork and eat.) So we chop and roast and stir and boil and whizz in the blender (and there goes my nice cloth bag for steeping herbs and cheese rinds), and 45 minutes later, pretty light-purple soup. Shower with some chopped parsley, drizzle with olive oil and lemon, and -- what now?!? Where the drops of lemon juice hit the soup there were now hot pink polka dots, getting brighter as time went past. Our soup - which was just as delicious as anticipated, by the way - was a litmus test.

I suspect a lot of us did that science experiment in the 4th grade where you use juice from a red cabbage to test for acids and bases, and I can only suspect that whatever's in the cabbage that does that is in purple cauliflower too. Based on follow-up experiments with the leftovers I can tell you that cold the soup turns sort of gray, brightens up to a nice light pink when reheated, turns fluorescent with acids, and goes a kind of tealy greyish green in the presence of a base (ie baking soda). So it's a litmus test/thermometer. A delicious litmus test/thermometer. I'd test for other properties, but, well, I ate it all. Occupational hazard, I guess.

Straight outta the fridge, cold.

Reheated in the microwave. My camera's kinda lame about color but it's a nice light rose.

Lemon juice: bright pink spots.

Admittedly this looks more like something you come across on WebMD looking up skin conditions than something
you wanna eat. But just stir it and it starts looking all swirly and tie-dye rather than infectious..

And turning a spoonful greenish-grey with baking soda, since I didn't wanna ruin a whole bowl. Science!