Digijam

I don't worry about temperature at all. Following the advice of Jack, Vanessa, etc (thanks all!) I got a new flour and water-only starter going a few weeks back and it now sits in a sprouter jar on the kitchen worktop (about 70 degrees), bubbling away happily and retaining a good, constantly evolving sourness. Even when I don't feed it for days at a time it doesn't seem to mind. I did get that bad cheese effect once when lack of time made me prove a wet dough mix at a too-high temperature. The wife thought I'd made parmesan bread. But every other loaf made with it has been beautiful. I hardly ever use instant yeast now, except to smooth out the sourdough for baguettes and the like.

I'd suggest adding the starch to the oil, rather than the other way around, for quicker clumping. That way you can also initially add by eye, using as little as possible depending on your ingredients. Must admit I don't even use a blender for small quantities - just mash with a fork for a soil texture, then sieve for a powder. I've found a ratio around 2:1 should work okay if mixed with a pure oil mixture, though if there's any water/moisture being used in the recipe more maltodextrin will be needed. As for taste and colour, it's really just matter of making sure the oil is strong enough not to get overly diluted by the bland starch. What type of chocolate were you working with? I've had no problems with either white or dark - but both still give a good, strong taste (the dark choc does get more coffee coloured, but I can't really see a way to avoid that). Suspect milk chocolate might be a little bland, because that tends to rely so much on mouthfeel from the oil rather than strong flavour. Wouldn't recommend adding any further veg oil as it just means you will need more maltodextrin to mop it up - with both the extra starch and oil further diluting the flavour. The one problem I've found with maltodextrin is that the chewiness makes all the soils and powders a little samey, so it needs to be used quite sparingly. And some flavours work better with the texture than others - peanut butter and caramel work so well because they're the sort of thing that stick to the roof of the mouth in the first place.

Chef Andrés, You mentioned a little while ago on egullet that you're planning to follow up on your excellent Tapas book with one devoted to the more experimental work of Minibar. Any news on when this might be published?

As Chef Carey says a low moisture potato and accurate oil temperature are both vital. For the latter get a temperature probe even if using a home fryer - their thermostats are usually terrible, innacurate by up to 20%. Heston Blumenthal's triple cooking method is also worth a go. It's a pretty much failsafe method for making fries that stay crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside: 1. Cut fries and rinse under running water for a few minutes, put in a pan of water and bring to a simmer. Remove just before they're about to fall apart, and cool/dry on a rack. Place in a fridge in until needed. 2. For the first fry, heat to around 140/284 degrees. Cook until they have a dry looking crust, but aren't coloured (probably 5-8 minutes). Remove and cool/dry on a rack again. Again, they can be put in the fridge until later if needed. 3. Do the final fry at around 190/374 degrees until golden. Add salt and a thick, rare steak to taste. This method further reduces the steam inside the final chip, which is what usually makes the outside goes mushy after a couple of minutes. The only problem is that it's so effective you usuallly don't get that classic French bistro droop on the fries. If just doing the double fry method then doing the rinse under running water (then drying) prior to frying should at least help ensure a lot of the interior moisture is cooked off before the outside gets brown, as well as mimimising the frying smell.

Great theatre, too. Of all the crazy cutlery and crockery at El Bulli, it was those foam fast-food containers that got me smiling the most.

Think it should work dropped right into an alginate bath in much the same way as yoghurt. Cheers for the help Chef T. Still fumbling with larger shapes - finding it hard to get the mix heavy enough (without using too much xanthan) to balance against the viscosity of the algin bath - but am getting smaller cocktail spheres working very nicely.

Sort of touching on both these issues, Adria's frozen parmesan air is pretty damn good. The mouthfeel from the cheese fat balances out the ice crystals pretty well. (It is quick to collapse as it warms, so needs to be served in its chilled container/glass or on a pre-frozen plate, though.) The recipe is here at Texturas - it's basically just cheese, water and lecithin. Whether you'd need a stronger emulsifer for higher fat mixes, or how the fat would affect an additional foaming products like Versa Whip I don't know.

For a completely accurate temp yes, but one thing to consider if you're using this at home is the noise from a pump system. My circulating water bath is so damn loud I can't leave it on overnight , so I have to rely on a non-circulating one for longer cooking. Think I need a kitchen door.

I got the mold on a batch made with the raisins and yoghurt, so hopefully it shouldn't be an issue next time around.

Jack, Vanessa - thanks for the advice. Time to try again! Hopefully a little more care wiping excess mix from the top of the container will keep those neon molds at bay.

Brilliant, thanks - those figures seem broadly in line with the standard (non-reversed) Texturas recipes. Does that mean for that mojito around 2-3g of calcic per 500g would be about right, or is it possible to use less when doing the reverse sferification?

ChefT - thanks for all the info on the mojitos. I guess the amount of Citras required depends on the acidity of each mix, but can I just ask what typical range of Calcic and Algin you're using for this and other reverse sferifications? Are they radically different from the amounts used in standard calcic bath recipes? Also, am I right in understanding that you're adding the Citras to the algin bath, rather than to the mojito liquid itself?

Jack - can I just ask whether you use rye flour or just regular? I must admit I'm thoroughly confused about sourdough - not least because your expert advice seems to to contradict Dan Lepard's books, which recommend raisins to supply the yeast (rather than relying on anything airborne or on the flour itself) along with yoghurt. Also, a little off-topic, but I've never been entirely sure whether it's necessary to leave the starter uncovered if placing in the fridge to lie dormant for longer periods. I'm assuming this would be a Bad Thing for the rest of the fridge's contents, but then last time I tried sealing the container all I managed was to get every colour of the rainbow in my starter.

Indeed, though I suspect anyone here that's mucking about with this stuff already has an appreciation of the value of seasoning. Not sure about the addition of salt in this instance, though - I prefer my expresso just bittersweet. The sauce is a chilled strawberry soup - a play on the fruit centre in a solid donut. I wanted to stay true to the original coffee and donut flavour combination, hence no mint or other additions. A coffee or strawberry tuile might add a nice texture addition, though. That caught my eye, too. Maybe ChefT could give a demo as a taster for that upcoming Minibar book.

Guess the colour and ph of expresso make it an obvious candidate for caviar-making. Went through a bit of a panna cotta phase a couple of months back and came up with 'coffee and donuts'...

Hey Bryan, Maybe too late for you now, but I'll second Les Halles - especially if you go for the Cote de Bouef, $58 for two. It's a beautiful hunk of meat. Some grumble about the service at both the midtown and downtown branches, but you can't fault the quality of the beef. Or the fries, for that matter.

By cheating - it's just a store-bought jar. Normally I'd dehydrate and grind. Thomas Keller suggests microwaving the tomoto trimmings as a quick option, but I haven't tried it.

Exactly. It will absorb up to twice its weight in fact and still remain 'dry' - it clumps to a breadcrumb consistency in the same way as a roux, and can then be passed through a sieve to make a fine powder. It will go paste-like and dissolve in water, though (the powder is also used to make pure carb drinks for weighlifters). So the fattier the liquid you're mixing it with the better. I'm guessing Marc Powell, the guy who came up with that rose water recipe, was using really high fat yoghurt. The easiest way to use it is to mix with flavoured oils. Here's it's blended with some basil oil I'd already made to create a sort of soil - I already had tomato powder on the plate, so wanted something with a different consistency.

Been wanting to try Fabada for a while now. Finally got hold of the vital granja beans and some good-quality chorizo and morcilla and set to work - ie, stuck it in a pot and did very little else beyond make some bread to mop up the juices. It's not the prettiest dish, but by god it was one of the best tasting things I've ever made. Or eaten. The way little more than three types of pork and some beans transform into something so good really seems to sum up what cooking is all about. Even if my eating several bowlfuls didn't exactly sum up the spirit of tapas.

Had a superb tasting menu here a few days back. Only the Goat's cheese cone, jelly and foam, and wood pigeon/foie gras combo from Duncan's menu cropped up on our visit. Instead there was a greater focus on fish (easily some of the best I've ever tasted), with a moist ballotine of rabbit satisfying the urge for more meaty goodness. A nicely tart raspberry-based trio of desserts worked wonders after that cheese course too far, while the inspired selection of accompanying tasting wines selected by Erica proved almost as much fun as the food itself. Allium really seems to excel at cooking that's not overly showy, yet in no way safe or bland. Lots of what Neil Perry would call 'really great produce' cooked in such a way as to make each dish taste of so much more than the sum of its parts. Sitting happily in the near-empty niche that exists between the Cotswolds' megabucks manor house restaurants and countless upscale pubs - though with cooking akin to the former and prices almost the same as the latter - this is a gem.

That fact that methylcellulose sets when heated and can liquify when chilled makes it pretty cool for doing weird gels, mousses and the like. Wylie Dufresne used it a little while back, along with some xantham and gum acacia, to make a reverse ice cream - warm and solid when on the plate, it then melts as it cools in the mouth.

It seems so. Adria was quoted as saying the reverse process was necessary because of the calcium levels, and checking up it seems they have 61mg per 100g - not drastically high, but more than double cream.

In part it was just to try to the reverse method again, for a bit of practice. And also I figured the fact that butter is diary-based would make it more appropriate, both for the taste and the spherification. But that CaCl taste, while not overpowering, was still detectable. I'm starting to wonder if one of the reasons Ferran Adria went with olives using this method was so their strong flavour would mask the CaCl element. Think in future I'm going to stick to the usual alginate-based mix when possible. It's so much more workable in every way. Love the new foodblog, btw.

Finally grabbed a moment in the kitchen to have a muck around... Cooked up a little beurre monte, emulsified with some lecithin, mixed in CaCl, and then added gelatin to get the mix thick enough to handle during the sphere-making stage. Cooled over ice and then turned out into the alginate bath as usual. It worked, after a fashion. I still find when doing reverse spherifications that the thickness of the alginate bath makes it hard to get a good sphere. Figure next time more gelatin and maybe less alginate will help ensure the butter mix is the thicker and heavier of the two. I might also see if, as Pounce suggested, that the butter's calcium level is low enough for it work with the alginate back in the mix and the CaCl in the bath. Here's the (slightly unspherical) result after about two minutes in the alginate and then a quick wash. Then blowtorched to remelt the gelatin. Cut into it and... Not bad. Certainly tasted buttery, but obviously needs to be paired with contrasting tastes and textures. Any idea what they serve it with at Alinea? Next time think I'll dip them in egg white, then coat with salt and ground freshly toasted popcorn. Spheres with beers - now that could work.

Bryan - What proportion of cream/milk were you using? I've found that the initial viscosity is as crucial as the strength of the bath and the time in it - liquids like milk just seem to disperse before a skin ever has a chance to form. When adding to a calcium bath it's not so much of a problem because the alginate has already partially thickened the mix, but when doing it in reverse I've had the most success when using either heavy cream, yoghurt, or thickening with cornflour or a roux. Also, as Chef Andres says, it's better to start out with ingredients containing enough natural CaCl. Milk isn't really that high in calcium (115mg per 100ml) when compared to stuff like almonds (240), tahini (680), or cheese (720 for cheddar).