mkayahara

My first and best advice: pay attention. It's not as dangerous as it's made out to be, but there are some real risks associated with it. Use it in a well-ventilated area, don't let it touch your skin for long periods of time, don't use metal utensils in it and let them touch your skin for very long (I gave myself frostbite that way once, because I wasn't paying attention.) Obviously, don't put it in a sealed container. Overall, pay attention! Oh, and have fun with it! Be sure to take a drop of it and roll it across a flat surface to enjoy the Leidenfrost effect, freeze things solid and shatter them, and make spooky vampire voices over all the "smoke." Edit: Having offered that advice, I have a question of my own for all the other LN2 users out there: A local hardware store carries liquid nitrogen, but specifies that it's not food safe. I think it's cool that they felt the need to specify that, but it made me wonder: how can it not be food safe? Is this something I actually need to worry about, or are they just covering themselves legally?

Do you serve a sauce with the fish when you do this? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Last time I did this, I sauced with a reduction of orange juice, ginger and caramelized sugar, seasoned with a little rice vinegar. The aroma of the ras-el-hanout still came through nicely.

I often use it to dust pieces of fish, either before cooking them sous vide, or after pan-frying, just before serving.

As often seems to happen, McGee got there first: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09curi.html Edit: Err... not to say that he did the research, but he did report the findings. Nearly four years ago.

No, I forgot to warm the pan beforehand. I did let it cool in front of the oven vent, with the oven turned on, though. Next time, I'll try it in a warmed pan in the oven, though I admit I find the idea counter-intuitive: wouldn't you want the sugar to harden as quickly as possible in order to trap the bubbles? I'm willing to defer to greater experience on this one, but I'd love to know the explanation...

I ended up using 15 grams of baking soda, and had much better success this time than last. For one thing, I didn't burn the sugar. (Though I did burn myself, and a nasty burn it is!) For another, I let it settle down a little longer before adding the soda (as I held my burnt hand under the tap). The final product is good, but it could stand to be a little lighter. It looks like the sugar and corn syrup amounts Kerry mentions are similar to what's in the At Home version (though obviously there's more water in the corn syrup than in straight-up glucose), so I might bump up the soda to 20 grams next time and see how it goes.

Stop me if I've told you this one before... tonight's apéritif was a variation on the Rose that I like to call the Abricotier: 2 oz. Lillet 1 oz. apricot eau-de-vie (Zwack barack palinka) 1 tsp. Luxardo maraschino 1 dash peach bitters Stir, strain, up.

In the past few weeks, my partner and I have made a couple of truffles out of this book, so I thought I'd share our results. First, we made the Dark and Stormies, but we added lime zest to the infusion. Great flavour, but the lime ended up overpowering the ginger a bit. Our ganache broke when we made it, too, but we fixed it up quite easily following the instructions in the book. The following week, we made the orange truffles in the butter ganache section. Apart from some slight difficulty incorporating the fondant, these went off without a hitch. We've got plans to make a few more from this book and the At Home book in the next little while. Edit: Yes, we've got lots of bubbles in the chocolate we use for dipping. Not sure where that comes from; stirring too vigourously, maybe?

Well, now that chocoera has confirmed her attendance, I'm going to have to upgrade my attendance to add a plus-one!

Of course, there's another possibility: he calls for 2 Tbsp or 1/2 oz. of baking soda. I just measured out 1 Tablespoon, and that was 0.6 ounces... is the volume measurement supposed to be after sifting? Edit: Or perhaps the volume measurement is supposed to be 2 teaspoons?

I suppose this stems from the fact that there's very little variation in salts like these, while there are many ways to modify a starch?

Funny you should ask. Way back in November, nakji offered up a great recipe for squash with miso: I never got around to trying it... until last night. It's highly recommended! You can also use miso to marinate meats and fish (like the famous "miso-cured black cod"), but others with more experience than me in this area will have to provide information on how to use it for that.

Thanks, Chris. I think I'll probably split the difference, because the dehydrator instructions say 150F, which strikes me as a CYA temperature.

I don't have it in front of me, but don't you need the extra liquid for the carbonation step?

I have the canisters for the Foodsaver, which I intend to use for this purpose next time it comes up. I'm not sure if it'll be strong enough, though. Keep us posted!

Has anyone made the beef jerky from the book? I see Ruhlman calls for it to be dried at 32C/90F, which seems rather low to me from a food safety standpoint, and is lower than my dehydrator will go. Other sources I've consulted say anything from 120F to 150F... any guidance?

Do you have a vacuum sealer? You could try sucking out the bubbles with that...

Chris, I can get powdered ascorbic acid at my local bulk food/baking supply store... do you have anything like that around? A health food store would be my next bet.

Mine still says March 7 (though I'm not holding my breath). Then again, I'm located in Canada...

If I'm not mistaken, DOP requires cooking directly on a stone surface so char would be moot if we're looking for meeting regulations. There are also multiple other requirements outside of our discussion here (e.g. wood fired oven, 900F temp). Then I don't understand why we're having a discussion about whether or not a metal plate can produce Neapolitan pizza... by definition, it can't.

Is the level of char in question actually a part of the "pizza napoletana DOP" definition?

Until I read this comment, Chris, I didn't realize Harvey's was a Canadian chain!

Ditto that. I've never been able to bring myself to buy it, though it's no doubt possible that I've eaten it unknowingly.

Personally, I've found that it gets rather firm if held at cold temperatures - too firm to quenelle, for example. It still tastes fine, but does not have the smooth, melting texture of a good mousse. For that matter, when whipping the chocolate over ice water, I found the layer right against the bottom of the bowl (the coldest part) to be too firm. Or maybe I just wasn't whipping it enough...

What about taping them to a flat surface? You can see something similar done here with yuzu gel; it's not chocolate, but I'd think the technique would work just as well with chocolate.