s_sevilla

any suggestions for an old Piston-lever machine.....I've always thought that this would be the only way to achieve ultimate control in your technique and have been looking around for a model.

Any place you walk into and can find literally 40 kinds of tomatoes is a winner in my book.... A close second (and first in some areas) is the Monterey Market....I've found that their seasonal and local produce tends to be as good if not better, and cheaper, but their bulk foods section wins me over for all the carbs I consume for cycling.

semifreddo Kitty litter cake (couldn't resist)

don't know about candied....but if you were going to confit them, an economical way of doing it is to seal the leg in a cryovac baggie and do it sous vide style....takes a lot less duck fat to do.

I recall an article in "Outside" magazine describing an extended rafting trip in the Northwest, one of the rafters was a starred chef. Now, rafting is a bit different than backpacking, and on some expeditions you can have many rafts stacked with gear, but still, to have 8 hour braised beef and other dishes is pretty intensive. As far as eating well while backpacking (no porters, and thinking of a trip that extends about 7 or more days), a dehydrator is very useful...I've found that squash soup is preserved very well this way, as are other versions. Hard cheeses, a french press coffee pot, dry aged meats go over well, and if you can fish, you're golden. As far as car camping, I've always made a makeshift oven out of a cardboard box and some aluminum foil. Cooking over a low fire you can make a very good pineapple upsidedown cake, and in the carribbean I've seen someone make a very tasty, and very respectable loaf of bread over some burning coconut husks this way. Back in scouts my group always had the best food. I love grilled gai-yang chicken (thai style), in fact, for camping, grilling is the easiest way to go, but lentil soup and baked beans in a hole are good, I've even tried digging up some clay mud and making a "clay pot" chicken (remember to leave the skin on the quarters, that way you can lift off the gritty bits if the clay doesn't set the way it should.

have you tried their method yourself yet? All I know is that for buttermilk, you can get it pretty clear if you just heat it up and force the buttermilk to form curds, but looking at the foie-gras broth, potatoe broth and other things they are doing now, I think the gelatin is just acting as a flocculating agent.

Buttermilk is created with a bacteria that likes to ferment at cooler (room) temperatures, while Yogurt is created with a bacteria that prefers a warm breeding ground, around 105-115 degrees, originally buttermilk was made with the leftover whey and byproducts of butter making, back in the day they used to let the milk sit for awhile so the cream would float to the top of the milk to be skimmed away, as it sat it fermented and took on a slight sour taste, hence the name buttermilk. To make homemade modern buttermilk, purchase some cultured buttermilk from the store that contains live, active cultures. Add this to some cooled scalded milk and let it sit around for a while. Luckily, the good bacteria reproduce and create an environment ill-suited to the bad bacteria.....same process as yogurt, but at a cooler temperature. I believe all of that is right, but I could be off a little.

That is extremely neat, I would definitely go to a restaurant just to eat that, yet again the bar is set high for these challenges

try to find a copy of a pastry and baking book like wayne Gisslen's "Professional Baking" The recipes are geared towards being scaled to suit. Also, look for recipies that are written as percentages by weight of flour.....or in the case of some cakes, butter. These make it easier to scale your recipies correctly for the number of people you are cooking for. As for things 200 teenagers will like (at least I like): Cupcakes are always nice, as is banana bread...same thing goes for muffins.

upside down beer......for some reason I keep thinking of those "lifting" bubbles in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, But I digress. It would be neat to see if the malt syrup coud be foamed in an ISI whipper....unfortuneatly I don't have one right now, so all my foams will have to wait for another day. I'm wondering how hops will/can be worked into the mix, if you are looking here are you going to infuse something with them? I've heard of places like Alinea using vaporizers to create essences and smells that they load into little pillows, and the guests are supposed to press the pillow, wafting the smells into their faces. A tad gimmicky for me, but a neat way to incorporate herbs and the like.

Thinking about it right now....I might have to sit on this until next weekend because of class, but I might be able to squeeze it into my schedule earlier......right now I'm trying to work out whether or not I can integrate three essentially different breads into one loaf, but looking at the temperatures and times I think I should be ok, the problem is finding or making an appropriate cooking vessal....if all else fails I'll empty out a can from the pantry and bake it in that. Another idea for the immediate challengee: Souffle's; that way the foamy component gets in there.

this seems a little out there but I would love to see if someone pulls it off: Create a loaf of bread that when halved, looks like a pint of beer, with a nice amber interior, a white edge for the glass, and a creamy "head"

If your beef cheeks aren't already history, I picked up a recipe for cooking them at a recent Slow Food demo here in Melbourne - http://cookingdownunder.com/articles/2006/slowfood.htm Fergus Henderson's roast suckling pig is on the same page, for anyone who's interested. ← Thanks, I'll be ordering more to play around with as I get comfortable with them....I've always wanted to do the whole suckling pig as well, and Niman also carries that at their central distribution center. Something tells me that the whole pig won't be fitting into my water bath. On another note: Has anyone tried doing a full "Dessert in a Bag" with Sous Vide?

So when I read it, I thought of decomposing it three ways: by ingredients, by tasting notes of a certain beer, and by the form of beer.

I have seen stout pie, but the challenge here is to deconstruct beer....so it's gotta have some barley malt, hops?, and additives common to the region (I guess for the "beer" (sorry bud, miller, coors fans) we drink in the US of A, that would include some corn....so we could salvage the last of the Masa from gfron) yeast, and for some beers, especially lambics, a woody component. Add in the spices of Belgian beers, and the fruits of fruit beers, the sakes and we have more than enough components for a dessert. If I were doing this right now, I would do a yeasted rich dough bread, perhaps borrowing an idea from the world baking championships and doing a bread within a bread like the japanese team, served with a spiced fruit coulis, and a little demitasse of a spiced foam. Or something closer to a tart with the same accompaniments. Whatever it is, I would find a beer to base it on first...and right now that would be Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA, with a lot of berry flavors in there, and of course, serve a nice pint with the pastry . . . I think I'll go drink a beer now. If Mette accepts, good luck.

Looks beautiful....I'm inspired to go buy a mill and start making my own fresh ground Masa/hominy. If powdered masa makes better tortillas than anything you can buy in a bag, then I can't imagine what fresh ground corn would taste like. edit: Still bummed the chocolate covered crickets didn't make it.

This brings up an interesting revelation I had....We oven dried some really nice, sweet early girl tomatoes until they were nice and crispy. As I was snacking on them and some strawberries, I realized, holy crap, these things taste a lot like strawberries, then I remembered seeing a pastry here somewhere where someone did make a pate de fruit out of tomatoes....... I'm really interested in seeing what's created, it seems like the dessert has already found its course....now to just sit back and wait.

I pretty much just answered my own question, but if anyone has any sources or insight it would be much appreciated. The hydrocolloid carrageenan has the thixotrophic properties (fluid under shear, viscous when not) I am looking at. As far as I know, there are different forms as they are derived from seaweed, and the forms have advantages and disadvantages for stabilizing different solutions/colloids at different temperatures. BTW I first learned about this application from someone's experience at "The Fat Duck" thanks.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of the applications of and the chemicals used to create a gel that is stable under no shearing forces, but with the application of shear will destabilize and liquefy? Sort of like a suspension of cornstarch in water but with the opposite effect. Someone pointed me to Xanthan gum but I am not sure if this creates the effect I am thinking of.

]]Puke[[ oh man that hurt. Though I do like the breakfast sausage idea, maybe not like that though. ← Hey, I'm just throwing them out there. Maybe one will stick. What about the eskimo treat of seal fat mixed with berries? Can you get to a couple of seals where you are? ← I in no way support the use of whale in this manner, but I went to a specialty ice cream shop in japan and they actually did have a whale flavored ice cream........."scientific whaling" my ass.

This is where it would be neat to design a controller interface for a water bath to create an automatically stepped cooking sequence......unfortuneatly I fail miserably at circuits and took up civil engineering instead, but for long cooking times it's no problem to manually change the temperatures. My friend, on the other hand, did some research on PID controllers this summer, and these happen to be the most commonly used in laboratory baths, so he might be able to lend a hand.

how about a "cup" made out of candied bison sheets (kind of like those tuile cups) filled with mincemeat ice-cream and topped with a candied, smoked chili?

I'm going through my culinary artistry book and this one caught my eye: Rabbit and chocolate.

Mincemeat-sweetcorn tamale, with a candied bison sheet as a garnish, and a smoked chili chutney?

lobster, vanilla, corn, olive oil....... crispy lobster and sweet-corn cake or blini with a vanilla-creme fraiche ice-cream......still would need something to cut the richness of the whole thing, maybe a citrus powder or a coulis, perhaps some blood oranges (the color would be nice), probably a light sprinkle of flour-de-sel. I almost want to try this, but lobster is out of my budget for just playing around with.