Complex Numbers

Served with Flare

Today, I'm sharing a link that shows, once again, that it's fun to set things on fire.

    Flambé Your Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner  
This retro cooking trend is back.

Back? As fire as I'm concerned, it never went away.

Here at Gastro Obscura, we really like playing with fire.

When I was a kid, the thing I got in trouble for the most (and this is saying something) was playing with fire.

There was the time that editor Sam O’Brien made feuerzangenbowle, a flaming German rum punch with roots in the rowdy student culture of the 1700s. Then there was the night I risked my fingers and eyebrows with the Victorian party game known as Snapdragon, where players compete to pull raisins and almonds out of a puddle of burning brandy.

"Snapdragon." Get it? Huh?

There's one problem with flaming food and drink: I have facial hair I'd like to keep. Okay, two problems: it's harder to exercise reasonable precautions when you're drinking flaming booze while already drunk.

Both of those were Christmastime traditions, though. I’d argue that adding flaming alcohol to food and drink should be a year-round thing.

Absolutely! And April Fools' Day is coming up fast...

Setting food on fire with warm booze was considered the height of luxury for a good chunk of the 20th century.

Now, I don't know about that. The iconic "height of luxury" was usually champagne and caviar. Champagne can be delicious, but caviar? Meh.

Besides looking pretty, what does flambéing do to a dish? There’s the taste of the liquor—which could be rum, bourbon, Calvados, or brandy—with some of the potency burned away, resulting in a smoother taste.

I've heard some people assert that it burns away all the alcohol. It does not. I suspect that at least part of the reason it fell out of favor was anti-alcohol attitudes.

I’ve flambéed a few things in my time, so I decided to set myself a challenge: to flambé my breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the course of one day.

My biggest problem with the technique is that it burns away at least some of the alcohol. This is alcohol abuse. The only time I tolerate it is if it makes something else better, which, generally, flambé does.

Doing it for every meal, though? That's a stunt. I guess it worked, because I read the article and shared it. Though we have no way of knowing if the author is completely honest about the "every meal for a day" thing, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, mainly because it doesn't much matter.

There follows the actual dishes prepared, with hunger-inducing photographs.

I just have one thing to add: absinthe.

The first time I tried absinthe was at a Moroccan-themed bar here in my town. I forget the exact ritual they went through, but fire was involved. And I liked it enough to go buy absinthe and try it myself. But the serving of absinthe, with or without fire, is kind of finicky. Sure, you can drink it straight, like other liqueurs, but, like some other liqueurs, it's not really meant to be straight.

At the very least, the serving of absinthe involves ice water and sugar. Generally, you pour the absinthe into a specialty glass and then use some contraption to let the ice water drip slowly into it over a sugar cube.

As I am, above all, a science nerd, I decided to compare flaming absinthe to not-flaming absinthe. Of course, I used the same absinthe, same water source (my kitchen sink) and the same kind of sugar (Domino's brown sugar cubes), because science is all about controlling variables.

The result? In my not-humble opinion, the one without fire had the superior flavor. It was also, I can only assume, more potent because the alcohol hadn't burned off.

However... the flaming absinthe was just more fun.