The result was, in my mind not that impressive. Bananas: My experience with bananas was similar to greens, I read that they glowed blue in ultraviolet light and got excited. The red shows up best on light colored foods or on a white plate. The red in these oils turns out so well, you can almost use the oil as a paint for your foods. Use the oil to dress salads and cold dishes or provide a tasty and striking garnish. Strain the oil through a fine meshed strainer. Puree in the blender with just enough oil to make the mixture come together. Plunge the wilted leaves into a large bowl of ice water. To make an infused green oil, blanch a handful or two of aromatic greens (arugula, parsley, cilantro, mint) for a minute in boiling water. Infused oils are a gorgeous bright green in day light, and in ultraviolet light they glow a brilliant orange-red. And a strained puree of the leaves looked much the same. The bright green leaves turned dark, almost black with a slight reddish tint. The color does look red, but it’s more like a red tint on black velvet. Chlorophyll: When I read that green leaves glowed red in ultraviolet light I imagined bright red glowing leaves. Not only will the contrast look remarkable, but the flavor of the drink will slowly change as the ice melts. For a luminous cocktail, try making ice cubes out of tonic, and using plain soda water for the drink. If you make ice or jelly with tonic water, though, it will still retain it’s luminous properties. Unfortunately, this potent luminous effect is easily thrown away if you add other opaque ingredients (a few experiments with mixing different plant materials with tonic resulted in unremarkable, murky drinks). I even had difficulty getting the exposure of the pictures, as the tonic water was so bright it threw off the exposure, literally outshining its neighbors. Turn on a black light with a bottle of tonic water around, and it’s like you’ve turned on a light bulb. The ultraviolet properties of quinine are quite remarkable. The distinct flavor works well paired with sour flavors (lime and lemon are classics) or in low concentrations. Quinine is so bitter that tonic water is always sweetened, and even sweetened the flavor is bitter. The flavor or quinine is distinctly bitter, and like most bitter foods some people love it while others just don’t get the appeal. Because it is an unusual ingredient, and many people have not heard of quinine allergy, an allergen-awareness note seemed justified. Drinking tonic water is no more inherently risky than eating other foods with allergens like nuts, meat, fish, eggs, wheat- you get the picture. It is most famous for treating malaria, but it is also has anti-inflammatory properties and (though I claim no medical expertise) the internet tells me that more concentrated quinine has also been used to treat lupus and arthritis.In a small percentage of people, quinine can cause an allergic reaction. Quinine is used for medicinal as well as culinary uses. Quinine can be produced in a lab, but the quinine that ends up in our tonic water is from the bark of the cinchona tree. Quinine : The most dramatic example of a luminescent food is quinine. It doesn’t hurt to wear UV protecting sunglasses either. I found that a minute or so was all I could manage before getting a magnificent headache. And who doesn’t find it a little thrilling to eat something that’s glowing? Or even to see something familiar that looks totally different, well, in a new light.īefore you start planning you black light cocktail party, a few notes about working with a black light: it isn’t a good idea to work too long with your food creations under a black light. Maybe it’s not the most practical food discussion, but it sure does make an impression when you switch off the overhead lights and switch on a black light, and the appearance of everything changes. Foods that glow operate on their own rules. There are several foods that are luminescent under ultraviolet light, and their behavior seems to have nothing to do with the other lessons of plant pigments. To wrap up the end of my discussion on colors in the world of plant foods, we end with the rather weird subject of ultra-violet foods.
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