Chris Amirault

Thanks for getting us back to cooking with Modernist Cuisine, Chris. I'm making shrimp & grits but, lacking the liquid nitrogen they use to freeze and shatter corn, I'm sticking to meal that Bob ground in his red mill. I am following the modernist instructions for the grits in the book, however: "cook over medium heat for about 40 minutes; stir constantly until mixture softens and forms grits." Got intrigued by the bacon powder recipe in the book, but it seems a bit too refined for this dish so I used the grease to cook the shrimp. Has anyone made bacon powder?

I've been fiddling around with Maine shrimp for years, and the preparation I just used for tonight's shrimp and grits was very good and very easy: 250 g of peeled shrimp, in a single layer, with 20 g of bacon fat in each of two bags, 60C for 15 minutes. Tender, rich, a great way to cook these delicious shrimp.

Bones are found throughout the stock recipes, and brown stock recipes require roasting of the bones.

I said it here. We'll have to agree to disagree. It's certainly my experience -- and that of thousands of others -- that cold smoking, cooking steak SV, retrograde starch techniques for potatoes et al are all pretty straightforward techniques. Most of the things I did aren't even "modernist" per se, and I've no desire to play scientist. I want to make and eat good food. As for your skepticism about the results, I guess you'll have to try it out to find out for yourself!

Risotto fans should check out this parametric recipe that we've excerpted from Modernist Cuisine. No mention of handedness, Coriolis effect, or anything remotely along those lines.

Those interested in getting their smoking technique just right will appreciate this excerpt from Modernist Cuisine on the importance of humidity and pellicle formation.

Anyone got a source for Ultra-Sperse 3? ETA: is Ultra-Tex 3 a workable substitute?

The snow is finally melting around here and I started thinking again about Aperol as a result. Also spied the St. Germain, and.... well, it isn't the most complex thing ever but it's very tasty. It also seems like something that someone should have already invented, but I can't find this recipe anywhere. It's sort of a version of Paul Harrington's Jasmine cocktail. Needs a name: 1 1/2 oz gin (Citadelle) 1/2 oz Aperol 1/2 oz St. Germain 1/2 oz lemon juice dash grapefruit bitters Shake; strain; lemon twist.

Thanks to lesliec for a fantastic foodblog, and to everyone else who participated. Feel free to PM lesliec directly now that the topic is closed.

Boules. Baskets: Shaping:

Into the deck ovens:

Crackers were also on the agenda. Here's the dough in the massive laminating machine: Poked with holes, squared, and being cut into rectangles: Out of the oven:

Here's a student doing a nice job on the same task. Mitch steps in to correct her angle:

This is a short video clip, but it illustrates well how an expert like Mitch scores his baguettes. Note the overlapping five cuts (one happened before I started recording), the angle of the blade, and the speed.

The class was also making baguettes. Watching Mitch fold and roll the baguettes: The seam: Rolls: Students preparing the loaves for the oven:

The students were also working with ciabatta dough, both for rolls and for focaccia. You can see the sheet pan with olive oil on the right: As I've noted in the previous topic, Mitch is a great teacher, and he knows when to step in to share insights. I was taking this photo -- -- when Mitch noticed. You can see that the dough is falling onto the table in a shapeless mass, which defeats the point of the dough being in the rectangular container. So he did a quick demo, and you can see his dough is nearly square: Here's another team cutting their dough for rolls:

Here's one student team getting their challah on, along with two instructors visiting from the Azores:

Mitch was demo-ing challah, which for some reason looks a bit weird in these photos. As a recipient of a few loaves, I can say with confidence it was delicious. Showing the final braiding: Note that the braids are a bit loose. During braiding, it's important not to pull the dough but instead to lay it softly into place. Later in the topic, you'll see an example of what happens when you pull too tight, something that many of the students were doing: First egg wash:

One of the new 21st century innovations is that the students all have digital cameras, and they document much of the class for their end-of-course notebooks, which are illustrated with the photos. So whenever Mitch called the students to see a demo, out came the cameras:

Yesterday's sourdough loaf awaiting slicing for discussion of the effects of aging:

Notes, charts, calculations:

Three years ago, I was able to spend the morning in an introductory bread class with Chef Mitch Stamm (boulak on eG Forums). This past week, I got to do it again.

I bought a little jar of alum at the store the other day, and now I have no idea what to do with it. If we can figure that out, I'll get a WikiGullet entry going about it. How do you use this stuff?

Here's the current collection in cheap Glad containers: Just ordered some iota carrageenan and ultratex 3 from willpowder.net, which I hope will arrive in the next few days.