1821 replies to this topic

[_john]

Is the 5% salt for creme brulee on page 235 of the kitchen manual under "best bets for seperated egg gels" a misprint? I made creme brulee based on that recipe and 5% was way to much. I ended up using something more like 1.8%

Edited by _john, 06 June 2012 - 06:16 PM.

[pep.]

Has anyone made the sous-vide fish stock? Does the liquid (and maybe the vegetables) buffer the fish bones enough to have them not pierce the bag? I will be making bouillabaisse with some friends tomorrow and I'm currently in the process of preparing the necessary fish stock.

I wanted to do it sous-vide, but after cleaning and blanching the bones and heads, I'm getting second thoughts about the thickness of my bags. Some of the fish carcasses were quite large (I calculated that I'd need ca. 6 kg of fish bones and my fishmonger gave me frozen ones).

Am I better of doing a pressure cooked variation, or will that ruin everything with a fish stock?

[Chris Amirault]

Your pastrami will probably be great. 4 weeks is a very long time in the brine, so it will have equilibrated. It may be too salty, or it may have a very firm texture.

It was indeed, by unanimous decision of all four family members, great. I didn't take photos as we were too busy scarfing it down. All I did for post-SV prep was to wipe off as much of the rub as I could from each piece -- the meat was redolent with both cure and rub flavor without it -- and put them on a plate. They were fork-tender, like braised, fall-apart short ribs are, and only a hair too salty. Nathan, I'd be interested to know your take on why the ribs were less (not, as you suspected, more) firm with the long cure.

Given that we all awoke hale and whole, I think the "overcure" method is safe as houses. It's good to know that a few extra days or weeks produces results that are consistent with the remarkable original method, albeit within goop that could star in a 1950s sci-fi B movie.

[Corymoto]

Has anyone made the sous-vide fish stock? Does the liquid (and maybe the vegetables) buffer the fish bones enough to have them not pierce the bag? I will be making bouillabaisse with some friends tomorrow and I'm currently in the process of preparing the necessary fish stock.

I wanted to do it sous-vide, but after cleaning and blanching the bones and heads, I'm getting second thoughts about the thickness of my bags. Some of the fish carcasses were quite large (I calculated that I'd need ca. 6 kg of fish bones and my fishmonger gave me frozen ones).

Am I better of doing a pressure cooked variation, or will that ruin everything with a fish stock?

I have made the sous vide fish stock quite a while back (maybe the first thing I made out of MC?). It turned out very well for me. Those were my pre-chamber vac. days if I recall correctly, so I did it with two (large) ziploc freezer bags. I didn't have any issues with punctures, but I certainly didn't/couldn't pull a 'hard vacuum' on the ziplocs (removed air via the 'submerging' technique).

Definitely worth making, I thought it was the best fish stock that I have ever had (not that I've tasted a ton of them straight though). I don't think it would be the same with a pressure cooker.

[Volition]

National Starch Products In Australia - Substitutions

Need some help the only products I can get here are;
Crisp Coats - Great
N-Zorbit
Ultra-Crisp CS
Ultra-Tex 4
Ultra- Sperse M

However I can not get Ultra-Sperse 3, Ultra-Sperse 5 And Ultra-Sperse A For the last 2 I've been sent replacements which I'm told perform the same functions but are not as easy to disperse. Ok that's not that bad. SO that leaves me no real product to replace Ultra-Sperse 3 the rep at the Australian office says that Ultra-Sperse M basically has the same properties.

So my questions are as such. Why use a different brand from recipe to recipe. Can you help with substitution amounts? What are the differences between these products?

Help, Help, NathanM are you there? - I noticed most recipes call for Ultra-Sperse 3 how can I replace this product with Ultra-Sperse M or maybe another?

Kindest regards and am anxiously waitiing for the MC@home. Too exciting. Wish you'd only given a weeks notice. How will I wait till October. These books are a drug and I'm hooked.

My caramelised Butternut Squash Soup with Coconut foam was awesome on Saturday night and the kids loved it to!

Vol.

[therippa]

National Starch Products In Australia - Substitutions

Need some help the only products I can get here are;
Crisp Coats - Great
N-Zorbit
Ultra-Crisp CS
Ultra-Tex 4
Ultra- Sperse M

However I can not get Ultra-Sperse 3, Ultra-Sperse 5 And Ultra-Sperse A For the last 2 I've been sent replacements which I'm told perform the same functions but are not as easy to disperse. Ok that's not that bad. SO that leaves me no real product to replace Ultra-Sperse 3 the rep at the Australian office says that Ultra-Sperse M basically has the same properties.

So my questions are as such. Why use a different brand from recipe to recipe. Can you help with substitution amounts? What are the differences between these products?

Help, Help, NathanM are you there? - I noticed most recipes call for Ultra-Sperse 3 how can I replace this product with Ultra-Sperse M or maybe another?

Kindest regards and am anxiously waitiing for the MC@home. Too exciting. Wish you'd only given a weeks notice. How will I wait till October. These books are a drug and I'm hooked.

My caramelised Butternut Squash Soup with Coconut foam was awesome on Saturday night and the kids loved it to!

Vol.

You can get ultrasperse-3 here - http://www.modernist...a-sperse-3.html

They ship anywhere in the world.

[Volition]

Ahh yes I understand I can get it from overseas. However I was wondering if people have information on the differences.

Why did MC choose US-3 over US-M?

The reason is that I have the other Starches. If i can learn more about the hows and whys I can use my existing starches I suspect.
What knowledge is out there? What do you know?

Kind regards,

Vol

[paulpegg]

Spec sheet for Ultra-Sperse 3

Spec sheet for Ultra-Sperse M

I would think that Ultra-Sperse 3 is preferred because of it's bland flavor and ease of dispersion. M looks like it is preferred in high temperature preparations

[Mountfort]

Is the 5% salt for creme brulee on page 235 of the kitchen manual under "best bets for seperated egg gels" a misprint? I made creme brulee based on that recipe and 5% was way to much. I ended up using something more like 1.8%

Definitely typo. Salt @ 5g/liter or .5% is on the mark.

[Broken English]

Made the beet stained eggs today as a trial for a new dish we're thinking about putting on the menu. Very simple, and looks amazing I think.

The eggs...



The dish - a summer vegetable salad with carrot puree, fingerling chips and beet froth...



Turned out very well I think.

[ScottyBoy]

Yeah man that's gorgeous

[pep.]

Has anyone made the sous-vide fish stock? Does the liquid (and maybe the vegetables) buffer the fish bones enough to have them not pierce the bag? I will be making bouillabaisse with some friends tomorrow and I'm currently in the process of preparing the necessary fish stock.

I wanted to do it sous-vide, but after cleaning and blanching the bones and heads, I'm getting second thoughts about the thickness of my bags. Some of the fish carcasses were quite large (I calculated that I'd need ca. 6 kg of fish bones and my fishmonger gave me frozen ones).

Am I better of doing a pressure cooked variation, or will that ruin everything with a fish stock?

I have made the sous vide fish stock quite a while back (maybe the first thing I made out of MC?). It turned out very well for me. Those were my pre-chamber vac. days if I recall correctly, so I did it with two (large) ziploc freezer bags. I didn't have any issues with punctures, but I certainly didn't/couldn't pull a 'hard vacuum' on the ziplocs (removed air via the 'submerging' technique).

Definitely worth making, I thought it was the best fish stock that I have ever had (not that I've tasted a ton of them straight though). I don't think it would be the same with a pressure cooker.

I didn't have any large ziploc bags, so I made it in the pressure cooker. Of course, even my 12 liter model is not large enough to hold the ingredients based on > 6 kg of fish bones. Since I had mistakenly hoped that after cooking the vegetables, all the stuff would somehow fit in, I had to roughly divide everything on the fly. That means the ratios were probably off by a relatively wide margin, so the results are difficult to compare :(

Anyway, based on an old Heston Blumenthal recipe from In Search of Perfection, I used a cooking time of 30 minutes on high pressure. I didn't add quite enough liquid or didn't mix thoroughly enough, so I got a crust on the bottom and what amounted to brown fish stock:

It didn't taste burnt per so, just very strong with a detectable star anis aroma and maybe a tad too much gelatine. So for the second batch I used more liquid, removed some of the remaining star anis and stirred again before covering the pressure cooker. Oh, and I reduced the cooking time to 25 minutes:



The resulting strained stock:



In the end, I used a mixture of the two stocks for my bouillabaisse and it worked very well. I posted about the whole feast on my blog mundschenk.at (German language, but the images speak for themselves).

[pep.]

Oh, and I've got another 2.5 kg of fish bones in my freezer right now from the filets we used for the bouillabaisse, so I will be making MC fish stock sous-vide very soon. I'll thaw some of the white stock from this batch to compare. I've found some double-thick bags on the net and I'll get large ziplocs if that doesn't work out!

[pazzaglia]

Chris, et. al.

Any chance of posting exclusive e-gullet previews of Modernist Cuisine @ Home, like you did for the first tome? I'm particularly looking forward to the pressure cooker recipes.. an article promised many!

Ciao,

L

[Chris Hennes]

This past week I've been working on another batch of pastrami: I made the first batch with brisket, but nathanm commented that their favorite cut for this was short ribs. Finally a couple weeks ago there were a few nice pieces of rib available at my butcher so I gave the recipe another shot with them. While I still maintain that the pastrami made with brisket was superb, the additional fat in the ribs really took them to the next level. It's hard to imagine pastrami could get any better than this, but I'm going to have to find some Wagyu cheeks one of these days I think.

[pbear]

Oh, and I've got another 2.5 kg of fish bones in my freezer right now from the filets we used for the bouillabaisse, so I will be making MC fish stock sous-vide very soon. I'll thaw some of the white stock from this batch to compare. I've found some double-thick bags on the net and I'll get large ziplocs if that doesn't work out!

Have you considered doing this in canning jars? Seems like the simplest solution to me.

[KennethT]

Looks great, Chris... but to rival Katz's, you'd need to use 3x more pastrami!

[Chris Hennes]

Looks great, Chris... but to rival Katz's, you'd need to use 3x more pastrami!

Sacrilegious, I know... but I like my ratios better.

[ScottyBoy]

Perfect ratio, it's all about the balance in the sandwich my friend.

I had made the pastrami for the second time with Snake River Farms wagyu brisket but a total failure on documenting it. Everyone snatched it up too fast. The best I've had by far and I think I'll start another batch Monday

[md8232]

I'm going to make the mac & cheese tonight when I get home (to serve with some pulled pork sandwiches and a few other things), so I thought I'd share a tweaked version of the ratios in the book. We found that it was a bit too salty, and I wanted a stronger cheddar component. I also tweaked the techniques a bit.

Whisk & simmer

• 100g water
• 75g (wheat) beer
• 10g sodium citrate
• 4.5g salt
• 1.25g iota carrageenan

Grate and combine over low heat:

• 140g aged gouda (was 200g)
• 145g aged cheddar (was 80g)

Stir until melted/emulsified. Pour into container; bring to room temp; freeze. Just before serving, pull it from the freezer and grate/shred 160g.

Boil over high heat:

• 300g water
• 100g macaroni
• 1g salt [down from 2.4g]

Don't drain it. When pasta is al dente, add cheese and heat through until smooth and combined.

I then put it in a Le Creuset au gratin pan, topped it with seasoned breadcrumbs, and let it sit until the broiler for a couple of minutes.

Oh, and, yes, that's dried macaroni, not fresh.

Thanks for this Chris. I finally made the sauce tonight and tomorrow night is Mac & Cheese night. I used Woodchuck Cider with Fontina and a smoked Gouda. There are 2 pucks in the freezer with 2 ounces for snacking. My wife licked the spoon, pan and was eyeing the bit left over for snacking. Very tasty.

Edited by md8232, 06 July 2012 - 08:04 PM.

[ScottyBoy]

Melts well on eggs

[FoodMan]

I just put up a large piece of beef (I used eye of round not tenderloin) to cure last night to make bresaola following the MC recipe proportions (Page 111 in the KM, Cured Beef Tenderloin "Bresaola Style"). I am making the true bresaola version so I will be curing it for 3 weeks and then hanging it for another 2 or so. I've made bresaola before several times following Ruhlman's recipe more or less. This cure sounded very interesting though so I wanted to give it a shot. I am just hoping the amount of ground coffee in the cure won't be too overpowering. Has anyone tried that?

[md8232]

Melts well on eggs

Indeed and a slice on my ham sammich was good too.

[adey73]

Anyone know the difference between Carrageenan in it's different forms and the cheaper brewing additive 'Irish Moss'?

is Irish Moss the same as Kappa Carrageenan?

[paulpegg]

Below is a bit from wikipedia. The commercial grades are extracts from different seaweeds. Irish Moss in your store may not have the specific characteristics that we look for in modernist cooking and I have no idea on the potency it would have. It is used in beer making to remove fine particles that would make the beer cloudy and compounds that affect the taste. Think of it as a filter aid in finishing the beer. There is a recipe for extracting your own carrageenan and you could always experiment with it. The commercial stuff is so cheap that I wouldn't risk much more expensive ingredients in such an exercise.


Carrageenans are large, highly flexible molecules that curl forming helical structures. This gives them the ability to form a variety of different gels at room temperature. They are widely used in the food and other industries as thickening and stabilizing agents. A particular advantage is that they are pseudoplastic—they thin under shear stress and recover their viscosity once the stress is removed. This means that they are easy to pump, but stiffen again afterward.
All carrageenans are high-molecular-weight polysaccharides made up of repeating galactose units and 3,6 anhydrogalactose (3,6-AG), both sulfated and nonsulfated. The units are joined by alternating alpha 1–3 and beta 1–4 glycosidic linkages.
There are three main commercial classes of carrageenan:

• Kappa forms strong, rigid gels in the presence of potassium ions; it reacts with dairy proteins. It is sourced mainly from Kappaphycus alvarezii.^[3]
• Iota forms soft gels in the presence of calcium ions. It is produced mainly from Eucheuma denticulatum.^[3]
• Lambda does not gel, and is used to thicken dairy products. The most common source is Gigartina from South America.

The primary differences that influence the properties of kappa, iota, and lambda carrageenan are the number and position of the ester sulfate groups on the repeating galactose units. Higher levels of ester sulfate lower the solubility temperature of the carrageenan and produce lower strength gels, or contribute to gel inhibition (lambda carrageenan).
Many red algal species produce different types of carrageenans during their developmental history. For instance, the genus Gigartina produces mainly kappa carrageenans during itsgametophytic stage, and lambda carrageenans during its sporophytic stage. See Alternation of generations.
All are soluble in hot water, but, in cold water, only the lambda form (and the sodium salts of the other two) are soluble.
When used in food products, carrageenan has the EU additive E-number E407 or E407a when present as "processed eucheuma seaweed", and is commonly used as an emulsifier.
In parts of Scotland (where it is known as (An) Cairgean in Scottish Gaelic) and Ireland (variety used is Chondrus Crispus known in Irish Gaelic variously as carraigín [little rock], fiadháin [wild stuff], clúimhín cait [cat's puff], mathair an duilisg [mother of seaweeds], ceann donn [red head]), it is known as Carrageen Moss it is boiled in milk and strained, before sugar and other flavourings such as vanilla, cinnamon, brandy, or whisky are added. The end-product is a kind of jelly similar to pannacotta, tapioca, or blancmange.
When iota carrageenan is combined with sodium stearoyl lactylate (SSL), a synergistic effect is created, allowing for stabilizing and emulsifying not obtained with any other type of carrageenan (kappa/lambda) or with other emulsifiers (mono and diglycerides, etc.). SSL combined with iota carrageenan, is capable of producing emulsions under both hot and cold conditions using either vegetable or animal fat.

[Keith_W]

For those who have made the beet stained eggs - how do you get the colour to stay on the eggs when you rewarm them? This is what the eggs looked like after I peeled them (ignore the two casualties of the peeling process):



I then rewarmed them in cultured butter held at 62C. They came out like this:





As you can see, the beautiful cracked shell pattern has disappeared.

I also made the deep fried cauliflower the same evening. Picture of it here:



It was a real hit. In this image you can also see deep fried enoki mushroom - that is not in the book, but it is awesome all the same.

Edited by Keith_W, 04 August 2012 - 03:53 PM.

[nickrey]

For those who have made the beet stained eggs - how do you get the colour to stay on the eggs when you rewarm them? This is what the eggs looked like after I peeled them (ignore the two casualties of the peeling process):



I then rewarmed them in cultured butter held at 62C. They came out like this:





As you can see, the beautiful cracked shell pattern has disappeared.

I also made the deep fried cauliflower the same evening. Picture of it here:



It was a real hit. In this image you can also see deep fried enoki mushroom - that is not in the book, but it is awesome all the same.

Keith,

When I deep fry enoki mushroom, I dehydrate it first. Did you do this or have you tried it and compared with with straight deep fried?

[Keith_W]

Nick, I did not bother dehydrating the mushroom. I put it straight into the deep fryer. It turned out really well. I imagine that if you dehydrate it before deep frying, the mushroom will puff more?

[Broken English]

We serve the eggs at room temp. I haven't tried reheating them. Are you reheating in the shell or after they're peeled? I imagine sous vide in the shell is your best bet.

[Keith_W]

James, I reheated the eggs after they were peeled.

I think it would be very difficult to peel the eggs if they were at 62C. My peeling technique involves submerging the eggs under water, otherwise the risk of destroying the egg is very high. I have seen many chefs don't seem to mind handling hot food with their bare fingers. I could never do that - I can't hold a 62C egg for any length of time, let alone try to peel it.