rmillman

Boy: what a couple of months. We just finished off the last chunk of amedi: CTAM25 Chuao, 70% cocoa, dark chocolate couv... From Chocolate trading Co. One Kilo goes a long way.

Candy can be a good addition to augment sauces when you are in a pinch or are looking for something different. I have used tic-tacks and certs when needing to up the mintyness/wintergreen flavor of something (like a mint jelly). I recently braised some short ribs in red-bull: I would likely not do that one again.

Nice short note in the Boston Globe about the rebounding of the fishery and the hopes that the season will continue through April.

Yes: I cooked the eggs in the shell. There is an extensive thread about sous vide/constant temp egg cooking elsewhere. I find that you need to drop the temp .5-1C when using quail eggs compared to chicken eggs to get the same textures

Was inspired by this thread: cooked my quail eggs at constant temp 61C for 1 hour. Served on a tasting soup spoon with a slice of fresh oregon white truffle and a pinch of Blis smoked sea salt. Went over very well.

I have order both the Australian Waygu and the Japanese Kobe from 1-800-kobe (http://1-800-kobebeef.com/) These are some of the best packed and treated imported meat I have ever gotten. The AU were nice thick steaks well cryo-packed. The JP kobe (we had the ribeye last night) was like beef flavored butter. If you want US producer: I highly recommend Morgan Ranch (http://www.morganranchinc.com/index.htm). They are doing the waygu breed right and provide beautiful meat.

You can get rosemary oil from many of the nutrition supply stores. If you want to change some of the flavor profiles if you steep some yourself try roasting (either dry pan or open flame) it before steeping: this will get rid of some of the unwanted "green" taste. I have been playing with a wide range of the now available colloids for both gelee and harder gels. Gelatin is always fine but I have been enjoying the self-life and strong trexture support of an agar-agar based gelee (see will goldfarbs site for his myer lemon recipe as a basis). I did a mint gelee this way and stirred in small sized rosemary caviar to serve with a lamb roast. I used rosemary and mint oil that I got from a nutrition store. I was not fully happy with the flavor profile of my mint base so I augmented it with a couple of mint tick-tacks: the sugar was likely what was needed to enhance the flavor but it came out good.

Not seared butter, but I tried butter in isomalt tear-drop last night to use on top of a steak. I used frozen butter (not good with the carmalized isomalt) and room temp (worked well) and melted butter (worked ok but it did not "load" as nice as a small room-temp butterball). 5 seconds in the microwave to melt the butter on the inside of the teardrop prior to plating. Worked quite well and the guests were impressed.

Generally after a deep freeze in liquid nitrogen (like with the balloons and orange segments) things require 1-several hours in the freezer to tempur to a point will you do not get mouth burns. For quick freeze or lite freeze (such as with quick immersion meranges quick freeze sorbets), plating them generally allows enough time to warm. As for pictures, here is a link to the imagegullet of the blueberry orb the other night (this one had cookie crumble not cocoa, with orange, tangerine and blood orange cells). People would break up the orb and use segments like chips to pick up the orange, etc. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=mo...md=si&img=82349

I used milk because the mini-mart next door was out of creme and I did not want to walk the three blocks to the market in 15 degree weather. Mouth feel was good: the quick freeze performed by the liquid nitrogen does prevent large ice crystals from forming. Last night I did a similar sphere technique but used odawala blueberry smoothie as the base flavored with taragon oil and coated with cocoa nibs. The sphere idea was from Moto (Cantu did it recently on iron chef). The citrus supremes idea came from Elbulli 2003/4. I liked the combination of blood orange and tangerine for both color and taste. Still playing with the technique: trying some more savory ideas later this week. Tonight, I got a new supply of fata paper (www.jbprince.com) and I will do a bread-pudding cooked center table on a hot plate.

I have been playing with the liquid nitrogen a lot lately (I work for a biotech company and can bring it home anytime). Last night I half filled 6" round balloons with a milk spiced with some chipotle and vanilla. The partially inflated/filled balloon was then rolled in a liquid nitrogen filled styrofoam ice chest until a frozen coating on the inside of the balloon was formed. The balloon was then "popped" with a torch and a little mint oil was injected into the sphere for flavoring. I then took blood orange and tangerine segments and put them into the liquid nitrogen and then broke up the segments with a rolling pin in parchment paper leaving frozen orange cells. The frozen spheres was served on a plate with some cookie crumble and the cells from the orange slices aranged around it. Dessert was indeed a hit.

No matter what, the Anchor Bar is still a place in wing history, but many prefer Duffs 3651 Sheridan Drive For additional information see: http://www.geography.ccsu.edu/harmonj/atlas/buffwing.htm http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=707

We have been lucky to have fresh Maine Shrimp at our WF in Boston all last week. Sweet, tender and wonderful. Our favorite has been to use Fata paper (www.jbprince.com), a little oil and some spices, place the wrapped package on a hot plate and watch it cook. Opening it up you get the most wonderful cooked crustacean smell (best with whole shimp).

I do a constant temp egg most mornings on the weekend. A quick saute of some meat and veggies and right now a couple of fresh white oregon truffle slicers from www.trufflezone.com. From your picture, i would say your temp was more closer to 63-64. At 65 I tend to get a harder look to the yolk than your picture shows. I agree that 62 one to two hours is best and then hold at 50-55 for as long as you want. This gives me the perfect combination of texture in the whites and yolk. I find at 62 for more than two hours the yolk starts to harden slightly over time.

Does anyone here really know what they are looking for: are they looking for industry types only or would a home taught inspired but at home cooking chef with an interesting background be let on? I thought about a weekend in Vegas and a stop off in Henderson to see but would clearly not waste my time if they are really looking for only a professional chef who has yet to achieve notice. Unlike others, I am personally inspired by at least the concept that a national TV show is about cooking and is the basis of much watercooler talk. I have even used the challenges as inspiration in coming up with dishes such as vending machine peanut soup with slim-jim creme.

I actually have always thought Marcel got a bad rap and that Ilan was the arrogant one. In my mind, Marcel is an inspired chef. He learns technique and applies them to the local ingrediants. He is not satisfied by a dish, knowing that even done well, with additional thought and work, it could be done better. I think Sam and Mike comments help the judges make their decission. Yes a chef must be prepare great food, but he also has to direct a staff and Mikes answers suggested otherwise (and yes I think Sam took too much credit for just saying, dude, do the dish as you planned but without the fish). Personally, I would enjoy cooking and learning with Marcel.

With Fata, you do not have any drying problem since little moisture excapes (do not seal it completely, knotting with twine is fine, or you can get a messy pop). I like Fata because of the display, but some find the plastic a little cheesy. One way I have used it entertaining is with a hot plate. For a fish dish, you put this nicely wrapper "present" on the hot plate (one medium/low) and all can watch it through the first course puffing up and steaming. Then when opened, the immediate aromas are a treat. I like it more than the polymeric box at Moto. For desert, some bread squares, some sliced fruit and some spices and you get a wonderful tableside bread pudding. I did not mean to suggest earlier that Fata is an alternative to sous vide. This thread was how best to prepare fish, with a focus on a wrapped technique to maintain moisture and impart flavors. For this, and in particular because of my general desire to control textures as well as flavors, that I suggested sous vide as an alternative. I have found no better way to prepare certain fish, particularly fish like skate.

I have used fata paper recently with good success: particularly when presenting it still wrapped like a gift on the plate. However, in geneal, I prefer the texture and flavors I can get using sous vide with fish. I generally do a two step process where I first sous vide cook the fish and then flash sear it to give the surface extra texture and flavor.

I use a 12 channel multi-tip pippettor which can generally be bought for ~$100 (the one I use is a 50-1000ul version): http://cgi.ebay.com/Acura-853-Socorex-50-2...VQQcmdZViewItem You can trim the disposible tips to vary the opening diameter to control the size of the droplet. You then draw-up the maximum volume the pippetor holds and then as you slow expell the liquid you get mutil rounds of droplets from a single fill. Depending on size, viscosity of solution, etc, I get up to 10 droplet sets from a singl fill (X12=120 caviars). I do 1-3 fills per cooking batch (so they are generally uniform in texture) so in no time can do large amounts. Other tricks are using laboratory glassware (like flask). You can then use either a microwave or laboratory hotplate magnetic stirrer to melt the alginate. When possible, I make up a 2-5x alginate solution as a stock (keeping it warm on a magnetic stirrer) and then dilute it with my flavoring liquid before dropping into the cacl.

This is not really the right place for this post but since this is an active thread on new technique: Anyone going to Madrid Fusion V next week? Registration just closed (it is full): does anyone know of someone registered who cannot go? Thank you.

I found that a digital postal scale and scientific weight boats are a great deal for this molecular cooking. A good .00 gram postal scale fits in your pocket and cost >$5 on ebay.

For small batches, I drizzle the oil into the zorbit in a small mixing bowl while mixing with a manual whisk. If fine powder is needed, I then sieve. For increased flavor profiles, I use infused oils and essential oils. Hot mustard oil has become a current favorite but the flavor does diminish if not used fresh. I obtain my zorbit from www.lepicerie.com.

La Tienda has Iberico products (http://www.tienda.com/). We just broke into our Bellota Lomo: it is great, no salt/spice flvor, just pure Iberico. For a more Salami product, we took the last month to eat the Bellota Iberico Salchichon Sausage which ws great as well.