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_john

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  1. Adding sugar does not significantly extend the cooking time. I was taught to add sugar little by little over the total cooking time. The reason is that adding all the sugar in the beginning or adding it all at the end will cause the beans to wrinkle because of a difference in concentration of sugar (osmotic pressure). You add the sugar little by little to let it absorb slowly through osmosis to keep the skins taut. The goal is to have the surrounding cooking liquid and the finished beans have the same flavor concentration. As this work is usually done in winter for osechi the typical workflow in a professional kitchen goes like this: day 1: Soak the beans before leaving work (at night), day 2: if there is space on the stove cook the beans the full amount of time, usually all day until you can smash a single bean in between you thumb and pinky finger easily. If at some point the stove needs to be used for other things you can stop the cooking and leave the beans at room temperature (which is very cold even indoors in Japan) and continue the cooking on day 3. day 3: finish cooking and then pack the beans and liquid into jars and process them like you are canning vegetables or jam. They will keep a long time in the refrigerator like this. If you want them to turn out dark black like the commercial kuromame you need to add iron oxide (rust) .

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  2. I ended up getting an electric one and I will never go back to hand shaving. I shave 45g. every day and it is a lot of work especially in the hot summer. I have also switched to honkarbushi which is more difficult to shave by hand compared to arabushi. If anyone is interested in electric ones the only advice I have is to get one that has a large spinning wheel. Some smaller models shave the katsuobushi into thin ribbons using a toothed blade which is not as desirable.

  3. What makes a root cellar a root cellar? What is the proper temperature and humidity needed to preserve root vegetables? Will a root cellar still work in a very humid climate? How do you select a proper site and construct a root cellar?

     

    I am fascinated by root cellars and want to eventually build one on my property. I want to know as much as possible before undertaking such a big project so I have lots of questions. For those of you who have root cellars how do you use them? What things have you found to work and what presents problems? If anyone has built a root cellar I would me interested in any information and experiences you have.

  4. I remake mine from scratch every spring and use it through the summer until autumn comes around. I have an entirely different way of making the culture now. I make a very loose mix of toasted nuka and water and add salt to bring the salt concentration to 2.5%. I leave this out on the counter, stirring each day, until it is very sour. Then I add additional nuka and salt to bring it to a thick mud consistency and a 2.5% salinity. When I add vegetables to pickle them I weigh them and add 2.5% of their weight to the pickle pot. I still every day when I keep the pickle pot at room temperature to prevent too much mold from forming on the surface. Some people like the mold flavor mixed with the lactic acid flavor. I like pure lactic acid flavor so I mix frequently or when I'm not picking a lot I put the whole thing in the refrigerator and mix once a week. If you keep it in the refrigerator you have to take pickle pot out and let it ferment at room temp to keep it healthy. As for what to pickle,  I pickle every vegetable that is in season during the duration that I have the nuka-doko. I keep mine in a large zip-loc freezer bag.

  5. I just finished reading it. I was disappointed. The recipes seem to mostly dated American recipes. He espoused using a scale to measure ingredients in the kitchen but most of recipes are in American volumetric measurements (one step forward two steps back). No mention of xanthan gum or lecithin? So much talk about pizza and no pizza recipe? No new techniques? I don't know, I guess I was expecting something like Ideas in Food where the info on the blog is greatly expanded.

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  6. The cetrifuge and rotor combination I have can do exactly 1000ml. It is a Kubota 5420 with swining bucket rotor. Dave says in the book that anything less than 3L is not practical. I agree with him for a bar but for home use 1L is the sweet spot for sure. Why? even if your yeild is only 75% you can still make a full bottle of liquor 720~750ml.

  7. Milk Washed Tea Vodka

    I used the milk wash technique to take a away astringency and bitterness from jasmine tea extracted in vodka. You have to be gentle with the curds as to not break them up again and re emulsify the milk. Interestingly it was very clear right out of the centrifuge but after chilling it became slightly cloudy. This is not really a problem as the final cocktail has other ingredients in it that slightly cloud the appearance. I wonder why it became cloudy? Any Ideas? As for the taste, the milk washing took away most of the bitterness and a significant portion of the astringency especially as the taste first hits you. The astringency does linger in the throat a little bit but I think this is a symptom of having steeped the tea a little too long as I am using a different tea as in the recipe. The jasmine aroma was strong and right up front, very good.
     

    some floaters as this is before passing through a coffee filter

    here is a short video of the mopping technique used to remove as much milk proteins as possible.

  8. Bananas Justino

     

    I made this with some mixed brandy and whiskey which had vanilla notes to try and accentuate the banana flavor. In the picture you can see the ripness of banana that I used. Unexpectedly the banana flavor developed more after letting the already clarified liquor sit for a day or so. This recipe requires a centrifuge. The taste was not as banana-y as I expected on the top note but has a very clear banana flavor in the after taste. It helps to smell the ripe banana before you try it to help you remember what non-artificial flavor  banana really smells like.

     

    _bananas_justino___clear_banana_liquor..jpg

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  9. I have a centrifuge and have been working my way though some of the recipes that benefit or require a centrifuge. Also have a similar carbonation set up as the one that is mentioned in the book and will be getting to the carbonation section next. Anyone else experimenting with this James Beard award winning cocktail book?

  10. I'm interested in them too. Seems like it would be great for troubleshooting all kinds of problems. As far as I know you can specify a point on the display to take a precise temperature reading withing 1°C for all modern thermal imaging modules. I would want one for monitoring fermentation of things like koji which generates heat and can get hot spots. Another cool idea I saw was a microwave with a built in thermal camera and computer controlled cooking.

  11. I have Liquid Intelligence as well, i'll check it out.

     

    The Justino recipes from Liquid Intelligence spring to mind - fruit (in the book's case bananas) blended with booze (rum) in a high-speed blender until relatively homogenous, then clarified in a centrifuge. I don't like bananas personally, but apparently it's damn good.

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