Denatured

Denatured. Sounds rather ominous.

But it's just a fancy term for what happens when you cook food.

[WP] The normally twisted and folded protein molecules are unraveled or unfolded into less convoluted shapes, and the shapes of molecules, especially proteins, are responsible for most of their physical and chemical properties. In other words, they have lost their original natures: They have been denatured.

You can also do this denaturing to seafood or meat with a strong acid like lime juice, high concentrations of salt, and weirdly -- air and alkalis (opposite of acid) under certain conditions.

Me, I just like to eat. I love a good spicy beef salad, so I made my own by marinading beef strips in lime juice, lemon juice, water, crushed garlic, onion, green onion, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, and a touch of cooking sherry (hey, it was there!).

I cooked it up (I know I denatured it already with the lime, but I like my food warm) with some sliced carrots and a tablespoon of fish sauce and served it over sticky rice and sliced tomatoes. Sweet and spicy with that lime tang! I made jasmine rice with a dolop of blue agave nectar, a low glycemic sweetener (ok, it's cactus juice!) in order to make it slightly sweet to balance out the spiciness for the kids.

It looked a little like this picture, but it didn't last long enough on my plate to take photos. I must have been thinking about yam nuea (spicy beef salad) when I made it, only I rarely use a recipe.