ecopolis

Interactive Corian in Zaha Hadid’s Z Island kitchen

The Z Island is the first project to use a new interactive technology developed for DuPont Corian that allows interactive touch sensitive areas and information display on the surface of the Corian material. It features a touch pad and a large display area from where many functions of the kitchen can be controlled via menus.

It includes two separate island units: “Fire” (the cooking area) and “Water” (the washing area). In addition, a modular cabinet-wall system (the storage unit) also made of Corian, complements the two islands.

The menus read:

MAC, LIGHTS, AROMA, HEATER

The MAC menu controls the Mac Mini that is integrated in the far end of the kitchen. It allows full control of the Front Row software to access music, video, fotos and DVDs. The Corian touch panel is the ideal interface for multimedia in the kitchen: you can touch it with dirty fingers and wipe it clean later!

The LIGHTS menu controls the full-colour LED lighting system and the white spot light above the Mac display. There is full dimming for red, green, blue to mix your own colours and automatic modes for colour cycling.

The AROMA function controls an aroma dispenser for aroma therapy.

The HEATER function controls a novel Corian heating panel that heats your plates up to 80C.

The display showing the music function of Front Row. The Mac mini is integrated just below the screen. The image shows the DVD slot below the screen. To the right of the DVD slot there is a USB jack and a dock for an iPod nano. There is a wireless keyboard and mouse for full control of the Mac. Just in case you were wondering: The Intel Mac mini came out too late for this project; the Front Row software had to be installed manually but works flawlessly on the PowerPC Mac mini.

Press event with Zaha Hadid.

Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal serving a life sentence for killing and eating a man who begged to be devoured, has described how the meat tasted of pork: “The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger. It tastes quite good”. In his first television interview, broadcast last week on the RTL channel, he also spoke about his decades-long yearning to consume another man, an his obsession with cannibalism since puberty.

Meiwes filmed himself killing, disembowelling and cutting up the corpse of Bernd Brandes, a computer engineer met after posting messages in chatrooms Desperately Seeking “Men for slaughter.” He defrosted Brandes portion by portion in the following months and turned him into gourmet recipes: “I sauteed the steak of Bernd, with salt, pepper, garlic and nutmeg. I had it with Princess croquettes, Brussels sprouts and a green pepper sauce,” he said. While he kept the skull in a freezer and buried the left parts in his garden.

Someone to be part of me

He found a perfect match in Brandes, who was obsessed with being eaten. “The first bite was of course a peculiar, indefinable feeling at first because I had yearned for that for 30 years, that this inner connection would be made perfect through this flesh…” he said.

German scientists have recently discovered that Truffles produce a musky chemical that is also secreted in the male pig’s saliva and prompts mating behavior in the sow. The investigators suggest that “the biological role of this boar sex pheromone might explain the efficient interest of pigs in search of this delicacy.

It is generally believed that the truffle excites the genetic sense. So wrote Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, the renowned 17th century gastronome, in his classic work The Physiology of Taste.

Do truffles actually have aprodisiacal properties? Whether a porcine pheromone scent has any effect on the human libido is yet to be proven: there are too many social and behavioral factors influencing human sexuality to consider any strictly chemical to be any reliable mating trigger. But the main characteristic of the truffle remains its smell, which can be perceived even from a distance: the unique aroma is difficult to describe. Like its unique taste.

Truffles are a sort of mushroom that lives below ground. They form a symbiotic relationship with their environment and feed on the substances they find on the roots of some species of trees to which they also restore vital substances.
Since they live in symbiosis with trees, the most important species for truffles are walnut, poplar, hazel, linden, chestnut, pine, oak. Inside the fruit is the flesh or gleba, which is differently coloured according to the species, the host tree, and to the minerals in the soil. Truffles are earth parts.

The body of the truffle is spherical in shape, varying in size from a hazelnut to a melon, with a more or less even surface
The outer part of the truffle (peridium), which is more simply known as the peel or skin can be white, yellow, dark grey or black and smooth or warty according to the different species, and according to the soil, the plants with which the truffle has a symbiotic relationship, and the area or countries in which the truffles grow.

However, the main difference is that between the black and white truffle. The best truffle of all is the white truffle. You can find it in Alba, Piedmont or in the Monferrato region and in the Marches region of Acqualagna.
White truffle sale’s seasons is just started: from 1st October to 31st December. For Black winter truffle you must wait until the 1 st of December until to 15 March.

Scrambled eggs with truffles: Beat eggs lightly in a bowl with a little cream; add white or black pepper if desired, but no salt. Scramble over medium heat in lightly browned butter. At the last minute of cooking (literally; all of the soft textured truffles are generally best either raw or very lightly heated, just enough to incorporate their essence into the dish), add slivered or shaved truffles.