I recently found out about the London Gastronomy Seminars and when I saw they had one planned for this evening entitled 'Microbial ecology, fermentation, and flavour' I rapidly booked a ticket.

The talk itself was extremely interesting and a great combination of science, chat and tasting and I was pleased that it was mainly based on an article I had recently read in The New Yorker about Momofuku and their explorations with microbes, and a web page I also read 'The Misofication of Manhattan'. But the talk wasn't just about Manhattan and miso and we got to learn about how using science and DNA sequencing scientists were able to help cheese makers identify what had caused problems when their cheese rinds hadn't developed as expected- all fascinating stuff. I was shocked to learn that despite cheese making being around for who knows how long until now no-one new just what the different rinds on cheese were formed of. Hence the DNA testing which has enabled food labs to identify just what bacteria make up the different rinds on different cheese and see how they microbes work together to create taste.