(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Story time science at the Exploratorium, I'm Vivian. And today we're going to
be reading Every Night Is Pizza Night by J Kenji Lopez-Alt and it's illustrated by Gianna Ruggiero. (upbeat music) J Kenji Lopez-Alt who wrote this book We're going to be reading, Also wrote a book for
grownups called The Food Lab, Better Home Cooking Through Science. J Kenji Lopez-Alt is a food scientist. He's a chef, but he also looks at the science of food,
which is pretty interesting
. Especially if you're here
at the Exploratorium. you can buy this book
at your local bookstore, You could borrow it from the library. Check it out. Every Night Is Pizza Night. Tonight is pizza night. So as last night. We're making pizza tomorrow to. Actually every night is pizza night. because pizza is the best. This is a scientific fact. I have done the tests to prove it. Oh, test number 4, waffle iron, Messy? Worth it. Test number 18. The cold morning slice mmh. Test number 22, pizza math. Oh
yes. It's the pizzagorean theorem. Triangles tastes better. Test number 37, pizza in the dark. Hello pizza, my old friend. Test number 86, pizza upside down. Eating it from the back to the front test. Number 91, pizza upside down. Yum really hanging upside
down while you're eating it. Mr. Gonzales knows my
shopping list by heart. Everyone in the neighborhood
shops at his store. A plain cheese pizza
can't be topped, Pipo, But how about some pepperoni this time? I admit not everyone
wants pizza a
ll the time. Exhibit A, my Papa. I long for a grape fruit. Mama says, think of what you're missing. There's chicken, pot pie, chicken not pie. Peking duck? Peking yuck! Five-bean chili? Don't be silly. French onion soup? French onion poo-. Okay, but how do you know
pizza is best If you never try anything else? What if mama's right? My science teacher, Ms. Buffone says a good
scientist always wants more data. Data says Papa, you have
the whole neighborhood. All right, I'll do it. I do not need to
. I do not want to, but
I will try other foods. I will do it for science. My neighbor Eugene thinks
the best food is bibimbap. That's bee-bim-bop. He is wrong. This is our old family recipe, he says. My pizza is not an old family recipe. Papa found it on a bag of flour. The colors in the old
stone bowl are so pretty. I can't blink, even though I know I'm
supposed to. It smells spicy. It smells stinky. It does not smell like pizza. I do not need it. I do not want it, but I
will try it for science
. Eeeeaaaahhhh It is spicy. And I love it. Crunchy carrots, cool cucumbers and rice. You are so delicious. And there are so many of you. Bibimbap you are a taste sensation. If being stinky is wrong,
I don't want to be right. This is new. This is exciting. This is, is this is this better than pizza? Thank you and excuse me,
but I need more data. And then she goes off
with Muttzie her dog. I stop at the end of the
hall, where Farah lives. She says the best food is tagine. That's tah jean. You make
it by cooking a bit of this and a little of that under a clay hat. When I smelled tagine cooking,
it reminds me of my old home, she says. When I smell pizza cooking, it reminds me of how much I love pizza. At the markets you can
get just the right spices for chicken chickpeas
or even camel, She says. Do camels like pizza? Probably yes. The tagine is ready. So Farah lifts up the lid. Hmm chicken is okay, and so are apricots. But together? Wild? I do not need it. I do not want it. But I will try
it. I try another bite then another just to be sure. I can't stop. I'm a tagine machine. chicken and apricots
you do belong together, together forever in my belly and spices? Show me the flavors. Is this, is this better than pizza? Thank you Farah. But I need more data. Dakota lives down the street. She's got a pot on her stove, big enough for Muttzie to take a bath in. This is my mama's red beans and rice. It's the best way to
make someone feel good. Maybe even better than
a hug, she tells me.
So when Papa gets sad, I cook
up a big old pot for him. Does it always work? I ask. It never hurts, Dakota tells me. The beans look like big shiny
beetles, swimming in mud. At least I know rice is nice. I do not need it. I do not want it, but I will try it. once you've had bibimbap and tagine nothing can surprise. Holy pepperoni, this is good. Garlicky, garlic, peppery
peppers, celery, cellars. It's like a great big hug around my belly. This is, is this is this better than pizza? I still need mo
re data. Ronnie and Donnie run the
dumpling truck down the street. They say, dumplings are the best. First Donnie shared his dumplings
with just me, Ronnie says. then we shared them with all
our friends, says Donnie. And now we share them with
the whole neighborhood. They look good. They look warm and cozy but the best I kind of need
to try them just for science Of course. Careful people they're really juicy, back off Donnie. I'm a scientist. Ahhh dumplings. Your middles are so hot and juicy. Yo
ur skins are so thin and stretchy little purses of delight. Are you better than pizza? Data Donnie data. I pull out my emergency
pizza slice and take a bite. Then another dumpling. Then more pizza. Then another dumpling. Dumplings are good, but
pizza is still the best. It is a scientific fact. So how can so many happy
people be so wrong? I will ask Mr. Gonzales.
He knows everyone. He's tried everything. He will know what the best food is. Mr. Gonzalez, Mr.Gonzalez, I shout. What is it, Pipo? I h
ave to know, is pizza
the best food in the world? Of course it is. He agrees. I knew it. I knew it all along. Of course, pizza is the best. Pipo Pizza is the best, but it's not the only best. Huh? When it's cold out the best is matzo ball soup from Levi's. When I want an extra rich treat, it's Vincenzo's chocolate cake. Famous Fred's famous franks
are the best when I'm in a rush, or maybe that's Mrs.Mendoza's empanadas. Sometimes I just want
hot buttered popcorn and nothing else will do. And of
course my mother's
spicy green pazole soup is always the best. I say, thank you and walk home. Is Mr.Gonzalez, right? How can so many things be the best? How can science explain that? Pizza always tastes good, does that make it the best? Is the best food of family recipe? Is it something that reminds you of home? Is the best food the kind that says, I love you without making a sound or is it just something
you'd like to share? I've got to perform an experiment. Time to get baking. Test number 99
, pizza party. Pipo your Pizza is the best. Tagine party at my house next week. Best pizza ever. The science is in. According to my new data,
pizza really is the best, but I'm pretty sure there
still are a lot more best I can try. Papa asks what's for dinner tomorrow Pipo? How about green posole soup? I hear it's the best. (upbeat music) All right. A couple of food experiments. But before I do that,
I want to tell you that at the very back of the Every
Night Is Pizza Night book are a couple of r
ecipes for pizza, one with store-bought dough and the other one with home made dough. So you can make pizza at home,
really check out that book from your local bookstore
or go to the library. Anyway, let's get started
with some food experiments. The first is how vegetables in this
case get their nourishment. I eat, as you can probably
tell, I drink lots of water. That gives me nourishment
so that I can grow so that I can stay alive
and have lots of energy. But those vegetables
also need nourishm
ent. Animals need nourishment
and fruits need nourishment and trees and all of that. But I'm working with vegetables right now. So what I did was I took a stalk of celery and a stalk with the leaves still on it. I'll pull one stock off right now and I tore this off so that you
can see the bottom is pretty ready to absorb some nourishment. In this case, water water
with food coloring in it. So I stuck this stalk of
celery with the leaves on it into a glass with a little bit of water like a quarte
r of an inch of water and about 20 drops of in this
case, a blue food coloring. And I ended up, I left it
overnight, just sitting in there and I ended up here are the
two comparison of the stocks. This, the leaves on this
stock look pretty dark blue and you can also see
where the nourishment, the water with the food coloring in it so that we could see it ran
up each side of that stock and nourished the leaves
at the very tippy top. Okay. And again, let's just compare it with a regular stock of
c
elery, not blue at all. So I also did this with
it leaf of baby bok choy. And you can see at the very bottom of the
glass, it's not very much water. And I added again about 20 drops of blue food coloring blue works
really well with the green, the pale green of the baby bok choy. And you can see how the
little veins got all blue because this leaf of bok choy, I mean it was still on
the entire bunch here. This leaf of bok choy just slurped up that water as nourishment. Let me pull another leaf off
. And if you don't pull it
off really, really well you might want to cut it with a knife, just so it leaves it open
to really slurp up all of that water. That's got food coloring
and you can see how it compares the stuff that's just straight off the stalk and the other
stuff that was sitting in the blue food coloring with
a tiny bit of water overnight and all of those nice veins
in here got all nice and blue. It looks so pretty. I also tried it with endive. Do you know what endive is? I love it.
Here is a bunch of endive. Okay. So again, I pulled
off one leaf of endive and you might want to cut it at the very bottom just to make sure that it's ready to slurp
up some of that water, that nourishment. And in this case, I put it in red food coloring
and I left it overnight. It got a little bit curly there at the top but let me hold it steady and compare it. You can see what the red looks like. Let me flip it around here. Oh, I might make a little
red spot on the table but that's the way it
goes. All right. So there is the red that ends up looking kind of orange
on belief of endive. So this is how these plants
got their nourishment. Help them grow, grow enough
to become food for humans. And then you can have a
lovely endive salad or you know saute some baby bok choy. Delicious. And let me just show you
the kinds of food coloring. This is the most basic food coloring that you can get that comes in four colors, blue,
red, yellow, and green. This one is by Wilton foods
and it's gel f
ood coloring and it comes in turquoise or cyan. If you watched a previous
episode, you know that cyan is one of the primary colors. There it is. And pink also known as a
magenta, another primary color and then also purple, which
is not a primary color but they make it purple. It's pretty cool. And then orange. So you can, if you want the primary colors so you have the magenta and
the cyan from this brand and then you have the yellow from this brand and you have
your three primary colors. Let's d
o another experiment. This is how two foods might
combine to make something else. Food is all about science and
cooking is all about science. In this case, we're going to change a liquid. This is your, I'll put
this right in front first. This is just plain old vinegar. It is distilled white vinegar. All right. Kind of the most basic
cheapest kind you can get. This is a liquid, right? I'm going to pour some into this glass. I don't need too much. Hm. Smells like salad dressing. And now we have mo
ved this
over again, baking soda. This also works with baking powder just not quite as well,
baking soda and baking soda. I'm just going to pour a little bit into my hands so you can see
it's what we call a solid, it's not something that
will pour like a liquid like water or soup or something like that. All right, I'm going to add a little bit of food coloring to the vinegar just to make it a little
bit more interesting. A cyan put that aside swirling around now while
I'm getting ready with this
. All right there, we have
turquoise or cyan vinegar. So you can also go on our website and do a
search for bubblebomb. That's a way to do this. That really kind of
makes more of an impact. In the recipe for a bubblebomb on the exploratorium.edu website. It says that if you can't do
it outside, which is where it should be done, you can
try doing it in a sink or in the bathtub. In my experienced opinion, you probably want to do it outside. Even a bathtub might not contain it. And you don't want y
our
whole bathroom to smell like salad dressing. So I am going to pour a little
bit more of the baking soda into my hand. Are we ready? I'm going to dump it into, we're
going to hope for the best. We have a pipeline around it. I'm going to dump it into the vinegar. Let's see what happens. Woo. Oh, very nice. It didn't go over top. And I don't know if you
can see the bubbles popping at the very top. Yeah. You can kind of see that. Okay. So what we did was we took a solid and we took a liquid and
we combine the two and
they turned into a gas. Now, if this happens in your body like it happens to me sometimes, you Fart. This is two different
states of matter liquid and solid turning into a third
state of matter called gas. If you're doing a bubblebomb, what you want is a Ziploc bag. You want not the most
expensive kind of Ziploc bag. I have the steadier kind
here, which you can try. And you start by pouring in
some vinegar about a half a cup. I'm not going to do it here because I don't wan
t it to explode here in the studio where we're recording this. So you put some vinegar in
here first about a half a cup making sure it's not leaking out anywhere. And then, then you want to
seal it tight about halfway up. Then you want to cut or tear, oh, a square of paper towel. I'm doing this really, really sloppily. All right. So I have some, some paper towel here and I'm going to pour a
little bit of baking soda, above a tablespoon, a tablespoon
and a half would be good. Like I said, I'm not
actually
going to do it in here. Ooh, that's probably a bit
more, but that's all right. And then you fold this up and this paper towel with
the baking soda inside of it is like your time release capsule. And you fold it up nice and good. And you quickly, you
have to do this quickly. You stick it in the bag. That's already got your
vinegar in there, half a cup. And as quick as you can, you seal it up. You said it on the ground outside and you back away and well,
I'll let you see what happens. I'
ll give you a little bit of a hint because the solid of the baking and the liquid of the vinegar combine. That's a chemical reaction. They combine and they form a gas. It's going to make this bag sort of fart. The bag will inflate
and hopefully explode. And your surroundings will
smell like salad dressing. So that's the bubblebomb. Look it up on the Exploratorium
website and have fun safely. (upbeat music) Poetry corner. I found three food poems
that I really liked, the first two are by Shel Sil
verstein. And this one's called Italian food. Oh, how I love Italian food. I eat it all the time. Not just cause how good it tastes but because how good it rhymes. minestrone, cannelloni, macaroni, rigatoni, spaghettini, scallopini, escarole, braciole, insalata, cremolata, manicotti, marinara, carbonara, shrimp francese, Bolognese, ravioli, mostaccioli, mozzarella, tagliatelle, fried zucchini, rollatini, fettuccine, green linguine, tortellini, Tetrazzini, oops-I think I split my jeanzi. and this
is another one by
Shel Silverstein called, sorry I spilled it. The hams on your pillow,
the eggs on your sheet the bran muffins were
rolling down under your feet. There's a milk on the mattress
and juice on the spread. Well, you said that you
wanted your breakfast in bed. And the third one is a
traditional Japanese haiku poem. Remember haiku's don't rhyme and they have numbers attached to them. So the first line has five word sounds. The second line has seven word sounds. And the third line has
five words sounds again. Japan has sushi. Japan has its own mountain. Japan has ramen. (upbeat music)
Comments