When Wired magazine asked us if it would be possible to tweak our Olive Oil Gummy Worm recipe so that the finished product would glow in the dark, we knew we had to try. Research chef Johnny Zhu whipped up a batch that week, and when they were set, we all stood around nervously dimming lights and setting up a black light. What was there to be nervous about? We knew the science behind glow-in-the-dark success (quinine), but we always get anxious when we’re about to find out if one of our experiments is a success. We needn’t have worried though. They glowed: oh man, did they glow!
Check out the recipe on wired.com or in the June 2012 print edition to find out where we sourced the quinine. You might be surprised to learn that you have some already in your fridge or behind your wet bar.
For a step-by-step video on how to make the regular worms, see the recipe page in our library.
Question from a big fan of your Modernist Cuisine Volumes:
Do you worry at all about BPA (Bisphenol A) in foods cooked in plastic or sous-vide? I’m a mom of two young kids and I’ve taken to storing and reheating foods in glass or stainless steel.
Thanks.
The sous vide cooking is at a low enough temp that the bag plastic is unlikely to leech anything into the food. Also kids eat stuff off the ground so…
I am a little disappointed to that no one has responded to this basic question of food safety. Its been shown the BPA leaches in to foods and the leaching process is greater when the plastic is heated and there are lipids (fat) to bond with in the food. That being said, it seems that sous-vide method would be one of the best ways to ensure that you are eating BPA- a chemical known to disrupt regular hormone production and has been linked to brain cancer and a myriad of other concerns.
What is modernist cooking if not using science to provide the best meal? Would you sprinkle lead dust on your food if it made it taste better? Of course not! But the concerns of other unsafe chemicals entering our food stream though the techniques advocated here do not address this issue of safety.
Tonic water I assume… Just last night I experimented with this product. 😉