Friday, January 13th 2012

Today we did our daily chocolate tasting, cheese tasting, sugar and honey tasting, and listened to a lecture by Dr. Nowatka

Here's what I thought about the chocolate

62% chocolate has a very chocolate smell, good snap, and full chocolate flavor throughout

70% I like this better than the 62%, it still had the same characteristics of the 62% but it's still a better chocolate taste and the after taste wasn't too bad.

82% is really bad. It still has the smell and snap of the others but the after taste is very bitter and lingers for minutes.

High quality filled chocolate: horrible. It's a flavor rich of chocolate and spicy. It was composed of banana, cyan,  etc.


We received a cheese cook book called: Cheese Essentials by Laura Werlin. Just flipping through the pages, I'm really excited to cook some of the recipes on my own. 

 
Dr. Nowatka presented a power point on sensation and perception. 

I've never had any psychology classes so I was really interested in her lecture. I didn't know that there weren't specific regions or points in the brain that control things like taste or sight. I really do believe that experiences and not beans/DNA that make a person who they are.  Sensation is taking in a stimulus, en perception is the body's response to it. There is a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. Expectations taste perceptions. 



Sugar Taste Test:

Dextrose: this is not very sweet to me. No after taste. Not very grainy. Powered sugar consistency

Fructose: this is very sweet to me. Lingering after taste. Grainy consistency.

Sucrose: table sugar, disaccharide. This is a little bit sweeter than the plain fructose. 
very grainy consistency. 

Honey TasteTest:

Buckweat: way darker than the others, very over powering tangy taste in the beginning then nice pleasant after taste.  Tobacco. smells like animals! Wtf

Wild flower: very woody taste, very very strong initial flavor, then ok after taste .smells clean. 

Orange blossom: this smells like honey, very mellow initial taste and after taste. This is my favorite.

Tupelo: smells woody, woody and kinda citrusy/tobacco flavor.

The honey defiantly had a complex flavor profile. It really reminds me of an ever lasting gobstopper the longer the honey stays in my mouth the more it changes.


Cheese taste test double cream cheeses:

Brie: very subtle cheese taste, thick outer covering and nice soft inside, kind of earthy tangy taste,, complex flavor profile, sweet and milky towards the end.

Camembert: smells like chees but also like it's gone bad, tastes like it's been smoked with pork, thick outside covering and soft creamy inside,  not my favorite.

Both are ok on bread.