mkayahara

I should also note that my plus-one and I won't be in until Saturday morning.

On, but only barely tightened. The book notes that the jars might explode if they're overtightened. Does that mean that the contents themselves are under pressure due to the expansion of the air remaining inside the jar? And wouldnt they be under pressure anyway if the lids were totally off? I assume the contents of the jars are under just as much pressure as everything else in the pressure cooker, and the air in the jars gets out around the the lid, but that the lids are left on mostly to prevent the broth from evaporating or boiling over!

On, but only barely tightened. The book notes that the jars might explode if they're overtightened.

I think the baking soda is pretty key to the whole process, but I don't see any reason you couldn't just put onions, butter and baking soda in the pressure cooker and get perfectly caramelized onions. Certainly it would be worth a try, onions being as relatively cheap as they are!

I guess there was nothing for it but to open the bottle! Certainly the bottling lives up to its name: the first impression on the nose is peat, followed by vanilla and a lingering vinousness. The palate starts off a little sweetish, but is quickly overtaken with more peat, and the finish is all smoke, with a slight saline quality. I would describe it as a very "clean" smoke; not oily like Laphroaig, and not rich and sweet like Lagavulin. (Or rather, like I remember Lagavulin being; it's been a while.) More than anything, it reminds me of the BenRiach "Curiositas" bottling, only the alcohol is a little better integrated here. At first I thought it was a little one-note, but the longer I sit with it, the more satisfying I'm finding it. I might try this one out on my father-in-law, who usually doesn't care for Islays, to see what he thinks.

I recently made the Autoclaved Onion Soup on p. 3•302. No crazy ingredients in this one, just a slightly unusual approach: the ingredients are packed, raw, into mason jars, then autoclaved for 20 minutes. OK, I don't actually have an autoclave. Fortunately, they offer a variation, where you cook it in a pressure cooker for 40 minutes. This was only the second time I've used my pressure cooker, and it hissed throughout the whole 40 minutes, even when it was only at low pressure, so I was a little worried about how the soup would come out. (That reminds me, I guess I need to check the valve before I use the cooker again.) Fortunately, it worked beautifully, other than a small amount of leakage from the jars. At first, I didn't think I was going to be able to pack 250g of sliced onions into each jar, but it does fit. Barely. The operative word here is "pack." I was out of fresh thyme, so I substituted dried; I'd like to try it again with fresh. I skipped the cheese foam, because I don't have any of the stabilizers called for in the recipe. (I also skipped the more traditional cheese croutons, which is a mistake I won't make twice.) More than anything, I was impressed by the way the browning reactions worked; I've never seen onions go from raw to so evenly browned with so little time and effort. There was a unusual note to the aroma that I still can't quite place, but it wasn't unpleasant at all. My only complaint about the dish would be that, made exclusively with sweet onions and with added sugar, it was a little on the sweet side. I realize it says to season the soup with vinegar, and I will probably season the leftovers more aggressively, but it would be interesting to try it again with a mix of sweet and cooking onions. All in all, a worthwhile dish. Now that that's done, I can jump on the bandwagon and do the caramelized carrot soup. Or maybe a variation on it... I wonder how it would work with parsnips?

I think this is Sam's point, at least with respect to the mac and cheese recipe: macaroni usually takes only about 8 or 10 minutes to cook in boiling water, and this recipe calls for you to cook the macaroni in the sauce for 10 minutes. So it doesn't reduce the cooking time, at least not in this case. This raises a very good point: they recommend soaking different pasta shapes for different lengths of time.

That's interesting, Sam. I've made the mac and cheese twice now, with plans to make it again soon, and have never had a problem with the texture: I've found the pre-hydrated pasta to be still nearly crunchy, and the final dish to be quite chewy. I agree that it's a very rich dish, though. As far as the pre-hydration itself, I think it's just another way of getting to the same place: in a traditional, béchamel-based mac and cheese (at least the way I've made it), you under-cook the pasta slightly and make the cheese sauce a little loose so that everything comes together in the oven. With this kind of cheese sauce, though, you really need to have your pasta fully hydrated to begin with; they do that through soaking, then gelatinize the starch in the sauce. I don't see any reason you couldn't cook the pasta in boiling water, drain, then mix into the sauce and broil right away. That way, you could easily cook it to your preferred doneness.

I've heard of this happening before, though I don't make butter often enough to have experienced it myself. IIRC, there are a couple of possible culprits: stabilizers (like the carageenan you mention), homogenization and high-temp pasteurization. I don't think we ever tracked down the problem definitively, so I'm not sure what mechanisms are involved. Whenever I want to make butter, I go with cream that has had as little done to it as possible, which usually means organic around here.

That looks great, FoodMan. Did you use the propylene glycol alginate in the mint cream? That looks to be the only ingredient I don't have and/or can't substitute for in the recipe. Not that I need another fiddly recipe to make right at the moment, but this one does look really good.

I strongly recommend checking out the cheese section in the Ideas in Food book. A lot of the ins and outs of the process are explained, and the barrier to entry is a lot lower than for Modernist Cuisine. Personally, I think their approach of using evaporated milk for their mac and cheese is sheer genius, for its wide accessibility. I bet you could apply the same approach to your queso fundido very easily.

I'd take a look at Modernist Cuisine pages 4•56-57. They've got a "best bets" table for making "milks and creams," and a recipe for Low-Fat "Cream" that uses cellulose gum and lambda carrageenan. Good luck!

Have you tried Planet Bean here in guelph? I love their espresso and they bring in their baked goods from Let's Get Baked . the dark rum date squares are killer good. Wow, there's another Guelph resident here on eG!? I thought I was the only one! I buy all my coffee at Planet Bean; despite their tendency toward roasting a bit dark for my tastes, I'd prefer to support a local roaster than not. That said, I usually just buy beans for consumption at home, so I don't think I've ever tried any of their baked goods. They do look good, though. I guess I'll have to change that.

Yeah, living in a 1906 house here, and even though our kitchen is a good size, the lack of exhaust means that cooking just about anything causes the smoke detector to go off. I would've taken the batteries out long ago, except that there are none: it's wired directly into the house electrical system, and there seems to be no way to shut it up other than to wave a towel at it. If I know in advance that whatever I'm cooking is likely to set it off, I'll open the window and block off the doorway with a curtain, and that usually prevents it. We're hoping to remodel sometime soon (though we've been saying that for 3 years now, ever since we bought the house), so after that it won't be an issue. It'll be the first time I've ever had an actual exhaust fan, rather than a recirculating one. I've never understood recirculating fans; do people find they actually prevent the smoke detector from going off, or are they intended for something else entirely?

What can people tell me about the various bottlings of Bruichladdich? I was just gifted a bottle of what appears to be "Bruichladdich Peat". What can I expect from it?

If roast chicken is too big, what about poussin?

Personally, I would find an upper limit of 180F to be unacceptably low: you wouldn't be able to do very much vegetable cooking in those. I guess if you do only meat, it's not a big deal, though.

Now why didn't you suggest that before I threw them out?

I don't know a lot about Australian flora, but if I had to urgently substitute for proper sorrel in a dish like this, I would use wood sorrel, aka "oxalis," since it grows wild in my backyard as a weed. That may not be an option for the OP, though. I agree with others that the sorrel family has a very "lemony" taste, and there's nothing I can think of that would be a suitable substitute. Spinach might work on its own merits, as might lemon balm or lemon verbena, or you might try searching for other greens high in oxalic acid. (This site, for example, seems to indicate the lamb's quarters have a lot of it.) Raw rhubarb stems might be an interesting approach flavour-wise, but the visuals would be all wrong.

Ditto on Ideas in Food, but it was released in 2010.

While it doesn't count as "2011 so far," my next most-anticipated book this year is Paula Wolfert's The Food of Morocco. I've been in love with Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco for years now, and the thought of an updated, expanded and modernized version has me thoroughly excited.

Yeah, I guess it's pretty dependent on the temperature at which C. botulinum begins to die. The reason it jumped out at me is because of the notorious difficulty in rendering the spores inactive, given that they can survive past 100°C.

Reading through chapter 2 tonight, I was surprised to read on pp. 1•132-133, regarding C. botulinum, that heating the food enough to kill the bacteria doesn't destroy the toxin they've already produced. My understanding of the specific case of botulism was that the toxin was quite easy to destroy; the CDC says that heating to an internal temperature of at least 85°C for at least 5 minutes will decontaminate the food in question. I realize there are lots of bacterial toxins that aren't inactivated by normal cooking temperatures, but can anyone clarify the issue of botulinum toxin? Or am I simply reading this paragraph wrong?

Filling for agnolotti?

No, don't do that; it'll raise your blood pressure!