BRB w/ Nathan P - Impossible's Heme, Levain Cookie Recipe & Mission In a Bottle

Hi all,

Welcome to BRB with Nathan P - a weekly newsletter on food & climate. Each Wednesday, I am excited to spoon-feed your inbox 3 organic foods for thought:
1 Breakthrough, 1 Recipe, and 1 Book revolving around food & climate. (BRB, get it?)

My hope is to help you make informed, healthy, and climate-conscious decisions. Looking for a quick recipe to wow your loved one? A crowd-pleasing mushroom fun fact? An answer to what this fermentation hype is all about? I got you covered.

Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate in the news this week:

• Bloomberg’s (not so nuanced) piece on plant-based protein. See Impossible’s response.

• Animal-free dairy start-up Remilk and General Mills launch cream cheese in Minnesota (all dairy, no cow).

• Biden administration releases national strategy for decarbonizing transportation.

• The ‘carbon pirates’ preying on Amazon’s Indigenous communities.

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Breakthrough: Impossible’s Heme

Since Bloomberg’s piece on alternative meat garnered a lot of attention (and controversy), this week I want to discuss the technology behind Impossible’s bloody patties.

The secret sauce to Impossible’s bloodiness and meatiness is ‘Heme.’ ‘Heme’ is soy leghemoglobin, which shares the red color of human hemoglobin. However, it doesn’t come from soy - it is produced using a technology called precision fermentation.

Precision fermentation is a controlled process that uses microorganisms to secrete a targeted molecule. Impossible uses a strain of engineered yeast - called Pichia pastoris - to make ‘Heme.’ Pichia is popular in the synthetic biology world for its easy manipulation, high protein expression potential, and non-toxicity. In the SynBio world, we call molecules like Heme recombinant proteins.

Impossible brought precision fermentation to the limelight with Heme. However, it is by no means a new technology - enzymes from precision fermentation are already involved in 80% of the world’s cheese production.

With advances in synthetic biology and biomanufacturing, the floodgates of precision fermentation are just opening. Products in market already exist with animal-free egg protein, cow-less dairy proteins, and spider-free silk proteins (what a relief). Precision fermentation has the potential to decrease our reliance on animal- and petroleum-based products, using 19x less land, 30x less water, and producing 3x fewer emissions in the case of dairy proteins.

Lots of exciting breakthroughs in this space - more to come on other applications of this tech in future weeks.

Recipe: Levain Cookies

This week, make Levain’s warm chocolate chip walnut cookies at home (my mouth’s watering, too). Find the detailed recipe at the end of this email.

Book: Mission in a Bottle

Curious about Honest Tea’s inspiring origin story? Mission in a Bottle: The Honest Guide to Doing Business Differently- And Succeeding is an entrepreneurial tale that’s Just a tad sweet™. Yale School of Management Professor Barry Balebuff and his student Seth Goldman find a lack in the market for organic, freshly brewed, and low-sugar bottled teas. As they source fair-trade leaves, unlock manufacturing scale, and remove billions of calories from the American diet, ‘Honest’ becomes their operative ethos over ‘Tea.’ It is brimming with stories of creative problem solving, personal crisis and perseverance, and approaches from which data-obsessed conglomerates should learn. If you are short on time, the epilogue itself is well-worth the read.

As a teaser:
“I went to business school with the mindset of being an activist. I wanted to get more skills to lead a nonprofit. And I sometimes joke that I did lead a nonprofit for the first five years of Honest Tea. But you can really have a public agenda while pursuing a business. It’s a vehicle for change.”

On the stress of the first year: “…I cracked a tooth, went to the dentist, and he said, ‘You’re gnashing your teeth at night. Are you living with any stress?’ And I said, ‘I guess you can say that.’ He said, ‘Well, you either need to find a way to reduce your stress, or I can tell you about a mouth guard.’ I said, ‘You better tell me about the mouth guard.’”

- Seth Goldman

That is all for today - BRB next week ✌️

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Levain Cookie Recipe

Heat 5/8ths cup or 120g of unsalted butter in the microwave (about 1 minute) until just melted. Set aside and let cool a bit.

Chop 150g dark chocolate (60-70%), with variations in size.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine 3/4 cup or 125g cake flour and 1 cup or 135g of all-purpose flour. [If you do not have cake flour, take a deep breath. Mixing 100g all-purpose flour and 25g corn starch is a great substitute.] Add 1 tsp or 3g of kosher salt, 1 tsp or 4g of corn starch, and 1/2 teaspoon or 2g of baking soda.

In a regular bowl, mix together: 5/8 cup or 140 brown sugar, and 1/4 cup or 60g of granulated sugar. Stream in the butter and whisk until creamy.

Add in 1 egg, then 2 egg yolks, and mix thoroughly. Add in the dry mix and whisk until homogenous.

Once the dough is nice and smooth, add in 1 cup or 80g of rough chopped walnuts, and the chocolate. Mix until evenly spread.

Scoop with ice cream scoop to get balls of around 6 oz. Freeze on baking tray topped with parchment or wax paper for 20 minutes.

10 minutes into the cooling, preheat oven to 425F.  Bake for 10 minutes or until slightly golden brown then lower to 350F for 8 minutes. Let cool and enjoy :)

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About Me

Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.

Want to get in touch or chat further?

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