_john

They are cooked first

I have dried scallops before in a food dehydrator to make fake conpoy 干し貝柱. I took frozen scallops and then "unrolled" them using a knife while there were still semi frozen. Laid out the strips on the dehydrator sheets and dehydrated them for about 24 hours at 35°C. When they were dry I roughly broke them up and spun them in a food processor to make scallop "floss". As far as I know conpoy are cooked before dehydrating and they are also aged. The flavor will be a little different.

I went to Joel Robuchon's place in Thailand less than a week ago. Thailand is a bubble waiting to burst. Reminds me of Japan in the 90's. Seek out real food.

This is a large heavy pot that I bought at a flea market. A neodymium magnet sticks to it but not very well. The inside of the pot and lid are tinned. I don't think the lid is original but it has a similar verdigris. The handles are not riveted on and have a unique decoration. At the base of the handle is a mark. Does anyone know anything about it? (banana for scale)

Dry scallops at 5°C for about 6 hours and then throw them in the deep fryer until brown. Best sear all around, no one will know they were in the deep fryer, our little secret.

I've heard it repeated again and again that baking is a science, and that you must use exact measurements in order to achieve the desired results. Nevertheless, I'm interested in developing an intuition for baking that is similar to what many cooks develop for cooking. The two "recipes," or intuitive guidelines, that I've developed so far are for pizza and a basic icebox cookie. I have been able to get fairly consistent results after practicing these without measuring. What do others think about intuitive baking? Any suggestions of things to practice or ways of approaching it?

One thing I hate about Japanese recipes, even the ones in Japanese, is when they simply write "soy sauce ___ ml." Dark or light? Which brand? Whole bean? you can always avoid this problem by using recipes provided by the manufacturers of soy sauce. They always seem to specify exactly what to use even down to the brand. I wonder why... I think chefs should write exactly what they use in their cookbooks. I don't care if it is free publicity for a certain brand if they want people to achieve the same results being as specific as possible is important.

Botulism toxin is rapidly denatured at temperatures over 80°C. I don't know if botulism toxin can penetrate intact muscle more than a few millimeters but I doubt it. If the bag isn't puffed and it smells fine I don't think there should be any problem if you cook and eat it. I think you should handle the meat following proper food safety procedures if for nothing else other than to reduce loss.

The model I have is the DLC-X Plus. I guess I will just work out the parts where the blade is folded over and then flatten out the bottom. Going to lose the serrations and scallops in a few places. Hopefully that will not impact the way it works. As it is when I process very fibrous thing a kind of knot of fiber develops on part of the blade that is dull and the machine becomes unbalanced shaking violently.

The one I need is almost $70 USD in Japan, unfortunately.

I own a large hand-me-down Cuisinart. The motor works fine and the plastic doesn't have any hairline cracks. The only problem is that the blade is in pretty bad shape. Has anyone tried sharpening a food processor blade?

how long does it take to make toast in one of these ovens?

Definitely batch and pre dilute. If you have a carbonation rig I would highly recommend a carbonated cocktail. Use a Cornelius keg to carbonate pre diluted gin and tonics for example. If you don't have a carbonation rig consider serving champagne and leverage the champagne for a champagne cocktail. The best wedding cocktail I had came out of a slushie machine (NOLA style frozen daiquiri). If the wedding is in the warmer months this would be great.

I have tried temps between 60°C and 80°C vacuum sealed in a water bath. This is for extracting into whole milk. I found that 60°C for two hours gave the best results. Any longer and the lactose beings to get a carmalized flavor. 60°C had way more floral notes when compared to 80°C. I would only go through the effort for delicate dishes. This testing was done for an unsweetened pannacotta.

If you suck a hard vacuum it does change the texture as diggingdogfarm said. That being said I use a chamber vacuum sealer to ferment things that have air pockets in them, like stems of turnips, to assure good brine penetration. I back slop from a previous batch to make sure the lactic fermentation beings quickly. After your sealed bag puffs up like a balloon you know that the fermentation is going nicely. It is totally sealed so if you let the bag become taught with carbon dioxide and the bag is strong you can get mildly carbonated fizzy pickles.

The MSG ______ line

First you want to wrap the tofu in cheesecloth and then set a weight on top of it to press out some of the water. Leave it like this in the refrigerator over night. I usually dilute miso with water and to make it less salty and easier to coat the tofu. Then add the miso and tofu into a zip lock bag and squeeze out all the air. Leave this in the refrigerator for 1 week and then taste it to see if it as as salty as you like. I like to measure everything so that when the miso and tofu equal out in terms of salt concentration the tofu will be between 1~2% salt. If you can get moromi miso that makes the best tofu misozuke.

A lot of restaurants in Japan write the menu every day, in ink.

I want to try that hariy tofu. looks great.

I used a meat slicer and a cordless dril to "turn" a semi-frozen roast into one long strip of meat once. I started cutting against the grain but was cutting with the grain half of the time as the cylinder rotated. I don't think it was worth the danger or the effort.

Has anyone though about just melting a gallon of supermarket ice cream, adding some eggs and burbon, and mixing it in the blender? You could foam it before serving in a french press. Already has the guar gum and vanilla extract in there and the milk and cream in similar proportions.

Thanks for the pictures. The texture in the pictures looks very similar to my results. I have a few smuggled nitrous chargers so I can do some more experiments.

Unfortunately I can't get nitrous chargers in Japan as far as I can tell. Tempura is usually fried at 180°C. Merkinz, what is the texture like? Does it have crators left by the larger bubbles or is more like a traditional tempura? Usually when you make tempura you mix the batter before frying every time. It is quite time consuming so I would like to get similar results in less time and I thought that using a siphon might work.

I tried to carbonate some tempura batter in order to make it more crispy today. I made tempura batter as I usually would 1:2 ratio of four and cold water with an egg yolk in it. Then I put the batter in my ISI whipper and charged it with one co2 cartridge. Then I let it chill for 2 hours and tried frying some things with the batter extruded into a bowl. The results were not what I was expecting. The batter came out as a foam which I then used to fry some vegetables. When the batter was crisped up all the bubbles had become craters and absorbed oil like a sponge. I tried stiring the foam to get rid of the larger bubbles but had silimar results. Has anyone had good results using carbonated batters? I feel like it was way too carbonated to get results similar to tempura made with commercial tempura flour that has baking soda in it.

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%