#texture brushes make your file heavy super fast...Good to know

[manesvoid]

Hehe it took some time but finally, I have a reference sheet for Poudre! :D

I'll try to do a couple more to showcase her personality

[eathdk]

Sensplorations? Text and images: Jesper Jansson

I’ve always been interested in how outer factors effects us as humans. Especially how our senses effect us, and help us to navigate, or not. Like how you sometimes loose focus, just because of a tiny annoying sound like a clock ticking. Or that smell that makes your meal experience amazing, and triggers old memories from a place, room or something that you had a that cafe and wanna try again.

I also always have been very fascinated in systems, to organize things into categories, and to create frameworks and ”rules” in a creative process that you sort of aren’t allowed to break out of. What you end up with is, in my experience, something very concise and structured. Designing by numbers is a very good way or example, like if you want to do typography, use the fibbonacci sequence as a size guide to get good balance between a headline (89pt), ingress (55/34pt) and so on; 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...

By ”mapping” things out, in this case senses, you create a very interesting framework as a sort of base or foundation foryour process and endgame.

During the EAT-course I’ve been struggling with trying to get to a point in my project that 'makes sense' (mind the pun), or to present/package it in a way that is more accessible to other people – to summarize – will they get it?

I started out with discussing and touching upon different senses, first the regulars; hearing, scent, vision, taste, touch etc.

But found also a few more.

- will, feeling – thought

- touch

- thought

- life

- balance

- smell

- taste

- sight

- temperature

- speech – hearing

- ego – movement

- will - act - action

http://tomvangelder.antrovista.com/pdf/observing.pdf

And I though about how this releates to food, flavours, the experience of foods and such. What I found is that eating is not only something you do just to keep your belly happy, but also survival, pleasure, energy and much more.

Eating is also an event, something that you experience, it creates memories. It's about the room, the light, sounds, smells. What happens when some of them are more or less dominant in terms of how you experience them? Like for example, if something you eat has a lot of flavour, but completely lacks texture? Or vice versa, has alot of texture but no flavour. It can be super crispy, but doesn't taste anything. Take something away and the others compensate?

I want to recreate, categorize, sort this out. Break it down, recreate it and serve as a dish, or dishes. Bite-sizes that contain aspects of the senses?

Later I found two great terms that summarizes this narrative and phenomenon really well. And a way to make it less abstract.

1. Psychorheology

"Psychorheology is the sensory judgement of rheological properties. It is a term used in the food industry, to describe how a food 'feels' to the mouth. It is not necessarily straightforward to predict how a food will 'feel' based purely on the true rheological properties.

Psychorheology is the sensory judgement of rheological properties. It is a term used in the food industry, to describe how a food "feels" to the mouth. It is not necessarily straightforward to predict how a food will "feel" based purely on the true rheological properties."

2. Mouthfeel

"The most important factor in food rheology is consumer perception of the product. This perception is affected by how the food looks on the plate as well as how it feels in the mouth, or 'mouthfeel'. Mouthfeel is influenced by how food moves or flows once it is in a person's mouth and determines how desirable the food is seen to be."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_rheology

https://www.thespruceeats.com/mouthfeel-765730

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthfeel

These two terms also relates to – the twelve senses – the different aspects of palate*.

*"…describes 'Baltimoreans' preference of flavors in food, their palate. Palate can also mean the roof of one's mouth or the taste of something, such as wine…"

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/palate-palette-pallet/

Senses <–> Palate <–> Psychorheology <–> Mouthfeel.

I found a great list of words to explain different qualities of foods in terms of psychorheology. This will be my guide for creating my bite-size foods. It basically touches upon everything I want to do with this project.

Cohesiveness: Degree to which the sample deforms before rupturing when biting with molars.

Density: Compactness of cross section of the sample after biting completely through with the molars.

Dryness: Degree to which the sample feels dry in the mouth.

Exquisiteness: Perceived quality of the item in question

Fracturability: Force with which the sample crumbles, cracks or shatters. Fracturability encompasses crumbliness, crispiness, crunchiness and brittleness.

Graininess: Degree to which a sample contains small grainy particles.

Gumminess: Energy required to disintegrate a semi-solid food to a state ready for swallowing.

Hardness: Force required to deform the product to a given distance, i.e., force to compress between molars, bite through with incisors, compress between tongue and palate.

Heaviness: Weight of product perceived when first placed on tongue.

Moisture absorption: Amount of saliva absorbed by product.

Moisture release: Amount of wetness/juiciness released from sample.

Mouthcoating: Type and degree of coating in the mouth after mastication (for example, fat/oil).

Roughness: Degree of abrasiveness of product's surface perceived by the tongue.

Slipperiness: Degree to which the product slides over the tongue.

Smoothness: Absence of any particles, lumps, bumps, etc., in the product.

Uniformity: Degree to which the sample is even throughout; homogeneity.

Uniformity of bite: Evenness of force through bite.

Uniformity of chew: Degree to which the chewing characteristics of the product are even throughout mastication.

Viscosity: Force required to draw a liquid from a spoon over the tongue.

Wetness: Amount of moisture perceived on product's surface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthfeel

Then of course there’s the aspect of flavor, which in hand relates to mouthfeel.

”Five basic tastes – sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory) are universally recognized, although some cultures also include pungency[3] and oleogustus ("fattiness"). The number of food smells is unbounded; a food's flavor, therefore, can be easily altered by changing its smell while keeping its taste similar.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor

The bite-sizes will contain one or several of the above mentioned aspects. So I did some experiments with tofu/soy and fried rice papers.

Rice papers (Very crispy, fatty, coating…)

Superfast and easy way to make an interesting snack.

Be careful with the hot oil though! Make sure there’s no water close to the oil, the rice-papers or your cooking equipment.

Recipe in the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoADEBQWM98

You end up with a nice snack with interesting texture, and you can flavor it by using different oils, or sprinkle dry powdered spices on them.

Chunky tofu (chewy, salty, smoky, dense…)

This recpeice takes a little bit more time, but it’s a slow food so be patient.

Recipe in the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwDYQxdc5_Q

1. Buy tofu, regular one from supermarket.

2. Freeze the tofu overnight or for a least 4-6 hours. This will make it easier to ’drag out’ more water, making it moretangy.

3. Defrost the tofu in a warm waterbacth.

4. Open the packaging, pour out any leftover water.

5. Press the tofu like in the video or between to wooden or plastic cutting boards.(You do not need to drill holes like he did in the video, just make sure the water doesn’t soak your kitchen, just put aclean towel underneath or around it like he does in the video. If you press between two wooden cutting boards, aheavy put or frying pan is fine on top, not to much though, time is the key here, not to much weight!)

6. Cut the tofu into one inch cubes.

7. Sprinkle some table salt on all sides of the cubes.

8. Put on a baking rack with a drip tray underneath, in the oven on 125-150C° for half an hour-ish or until the tofu looksa bit charred, but only a little bit, you want to drag out as much water as possible.

9. Take the tofu out after 30 minutes.

10. Prepare a marinade of your choice, if you feel lazy, just use some soy-sauce and grilling oil. Just make sure it’sbalanced.

11. Put the tofu in a container/bag and makes sure that the marinade coats the tofu.(If it only coats halfway, just flip them around every 10 minutes or so.)

12. Marinate for 1-2 hours, or overnight in the fridge if you really wanna get a super deep flavor.

13. Remove the tofu from the marinade. But save it for later.

14. Put the tofu on a baking tray or rack again, and this time put your oven on 175-200C°.

15. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, and if the tofu looks ’dry’, you can take it out and brush some more marinade.

16. Take them out of the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes.

17. Enjoy!

BUT: I’ve altered this a little bit to make it even more chewy!

This tofu work to eat with sallads, or stews etc. Depends on what spices you use, but the general idea is to get a tangy texture by drying them and then re-moisting, since the water is dragged out through freezing and salt baking, the texture of the tofu really get super tangy, I don’t know why, but I guess it’s like sundrying in a way, slow vs fast processing creates different end results.

PS: If you want to enjoy this tofu in a hot dog like way, just cut long cubes instead and eat with a hotdog bread. A burger version I haven’t tried yet, send me a ping on instagram if you do!

//Jesper Jansson

Some other interesting links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfg8WB6tICE

https://steinbeisser.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kszzJjtv2oo

https://libraryofsenses.com/Tasting/files/a1876a5bcdf1b041613d7484d9fbd65f-0.html

https://libraryofsenses.com/Tasting/files/45a003b84e1a4b1529816a431c34d20d-5.html

Website and instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/eathdk/

https://www.instagram.com/jesperkjansson/

https://jesperkjansson.cargo.site/