Molecular Learning
Green Eggs and Deconstructed Ham
Molecular gastronomy is a field of cooking that plays around with the fundamental properties of food. It’s highly experimental and creative, and it leads to dishes like these:
Our course, Sisyphean High, must seem sometimes like a restaurant run by a chef like that. We are breaking learning down to its molecular components and brewing strange concoctions and generally trying to find the limits of what’s possible in a classroom.
It’s interesting and all, but what if you just want some eggs? Like, just a plate of regular scrambled eggs? Since you can’t take your business to another restaurant, you might feel like you’re being forced to eat food you didn’t order. Sure, plenty of the people in the restaurant seem to be enjoying themselves and their food, but you just want some eggs, not a science lesson.
So you turn away the transglutaminase bacon spirals. You shake your head at a cup of molecular coffee. You refuse the hen egg that’s been cooked inside-out and truffled. And while you search for something recognizable, you keep getting hungrier and hungrier…
We can skip to the lesson, since you know it’s coming: It’s good to take risks and try new things. That is a pretty good lesson, which is why most of us know the book Green Eggs and Ham. That story ends with the main character finally giving in, eating the titular green eggs and ham, and loving every bite:
When my daughter was two years old, she asked for this book almost every night. It’s so repetitive (everyone knows, at this point, about the wager that led Dr. Seuss to write it) that my mind would wander, and that’s how I began to sympathize with Ralph. After all, he was minding his own business when Sam showed up:
Seconds before that, Ralph is saying how much he dislikes Sam in a particularly forceful outburst that I think is meant to tell us what an obstinate stick-in-the-mud he is:
But the more I think about it, the more obvious it is that Sam has ruined this guy’s day before. I don’t think it’s just Sam parading around announcing himself that causes Ralph to explode like he does.
This has probably happened more than once: Sam-I-Am interrupts Ralph’s day and forces him to eat something that he has no interest in eating. Ralph tries to be polite, then he gets mad, and finally he runs; none of it works, and he eventually gives in.
In fact, you could probably read the rest of the story as an example of Stockholm Syndrome. Sam chases and torments Ralph for what has to be hours, never breaking stride, just hammering at him with a plate of meat that is cold and soggy and soot-covered by the end.
Look at the moment when Sam finally wears down our protagonist. It’s kind of heartbreaking:
The point is this: You might empathize with Ralph after being in a classroom calling itself a Humanities makerspace. You might feel like you, too, were simply sitting there, reading your paper, when someone began chasing you with a plate of weird food.
Only I’m not Sam-I-Am. I’m not here to chase students. I’ve got no ultimatums — no threat that you will eat this food or starve. I’m here to teach you how to cook so that you don’t starve. If you’re ready to experiment, we will whip up the equivalent of white-chocolate spaghetti. If you’re not feeling quite that adventurous, we will take it slowly.
And if you want those regular eggs, you get to make them. Then you get to try to make them better. Then you get to try to do something clever and unexpected with them.
This is a course in figuring out what to do by doing it. In fact, the only requirements are (1) you need to cook the food yourself, so no sneaking in an Egg McMuffin; and (2) you might want a fire extinguisher handy in case you set the kitchen on fire.
Those are easy rules to follow. Egg McMuffins might taste delicious, but what’s inside them is kind of harrowing; and setting the kitchen on fire isn’t an issue. Whenever there’s a risk of things exploding or bursting into flames or otherwise surprising us, you know we’re doing something right.
What you shouldn’t do is to sit in the restaurant with your arms crossed while you slowly starve to death. You have a chance to cook what you want. You can go at the pace you want. You can use the ingredients you want. You can experiment and collaborate and sample your creations along the way.
Embrace that. Don’t manufacture a reason to sit there, stomach growling and blood sugar plummeting, and be miserable. That’s more insane than hitting someone with a car just to get them to try some eggs.
