Cornstarch cubes?

Image by qmnonicI love reading cookbooks. My favorite part of a cookbook, though, is rarely a recipe. Usually it is the foreward, the appendix, or the aside: the place where the author gives some insight into their methodology and mindset.

What I like most about these things are the ideas they inspire.

I was recently reading Stuart Chang Berman's Potsticker Chronicles which I happily had picked up on sale at Amazon when I needed to push my order up to $25 to get free shipping. Berman's book is a good, basic primer on (slightly Americanized) Chinese cooking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he devotes a page to the cornstarch and water mixture that is used to thicken sauces.

While I've substituted in other liquids for water... and other starches for cornstarch, I've never given a lot of thought to this mix. Berman doesn't either. In fact, he seems to take it for granted. He uses it so much that he keeps some on hand, pre-mixed.

That's the bit that got me thinking: How long would a cornstarch and water mix keep in the refrigerator? Would it mold? Can you freeze it? Would that give you handy thickening cubes or would you just end up with a nasty cornstarch dumpling?

Experimentation is called for, I think.