FoodMan

I actually mentioned this new device back on page 10 of this thread. I contacted them and did not find their device satisfactory for my needs. In particular it only hold temperature to within 1 degree and no cage is available. There is also no way to switch between C and F which is not a big deal but still a nice convenience. Lastly a 6 month warranty is not long enough for a product like this. Looks like these guys re-branded their product. I wonder why...I still think they are in a sort of a no man's land. Not cheap enough to go with them over Polyscience for what you get and too expensive compared to the FMM or now possibly the SideKIC.

Not that the meat smoking websites are wrong per se, but they miss the point a bit. Cooking chuck at 53C for 12 hours is not enough to tenderize it. Like Paul said it is both Time and Temperature that matter when dissolving collagen (or pasteurizing meat or for any other cooking process). Collagen starts to dissolve at a much lower temperature than 170F, more like 130F (54.5C) or even a bit lower. However at those low temperature you will need more time. So, for tough cuts like chuck or short ribs you will need to go for 48 hours or more at those temperatures. Cooking the meat at 170F(76C) will tenderize it much quicker but will not give you the nice steak-like texture and color you are looking for. It will be more like a braised cut of beef.

You are correct, that's why I was not sure if store bought will work at all. Taste will be wrong I suppose. I am juts not sure to make Atole then (at least per Ms Kennedy's specs) with no access to a "mill" for the white corn. Will pureeing or processing give a decent enough result maybe.

Chris- That looks like a great menu. I am curious about the Atole. Will you be making the masa per page 395? She instructs the cook to boil the corn and then send it to the mill to be ground to a smooth paste. I've always wondered if storebought prepared masa (not the dried Maseca) can be used for Atole, but I've never tried it.

Beef shank I've head of, but the store didn't have any. Like a lot of other cuts, the name seems to vary depending on your location -- e.g., tri-tip. In my case, I weighed the carrots before peeling and slicing them (contrary to what the book suggests), or it would have required even more! I suspect a typo -- maybe it should have been 50g? Has anyone seen any kind of an errata listing? These days, an on-line errata listing ought to be a minimum standard for ANY reference book! Not sure that is a typo actually. I just weighed a random carrot from a bag I have in the fridge, 98 grams. It's not particularly that large either, measuring 7 inches long and about an inch in diameter at the largest end. So, 6-7 carrots to make 500 grams is about right.

How's this working out so far Jason? I have an IC of a very similar Lauda model and I need to do something to keep items away from the pump as well. To kind of close the loop on this one...based on a picture that Vengroff posted upthread and a tip from him I ended up getting a rack from Sous Vide Supreme: Click to See and Buy. This is perfect and I had no clue that they sell them seperately. It keeps the food away from the pump/heater and helps organizing it and keeping it submerged. Hope this helps. Looks pretty good. What are teh dimenions? I have a 12x18x9 cambro..wondering if the rack will fit in there. It will certainly fit. I use the same Cambro container. You can almost fit two of them in there actually.

How's this working out so far Jason? I have an IC of a very similar Lauda model and I need to do something to keep items away from the pump as well. To kind of close the loop on this one...based on a picture that Vengroff posted upthread and a tip from him I ended up getting a rack from Sous Vide Supreme: Click to See and Buy. This is perfect and I had no clue that they sell them seperately. It keeps the food away from the pump/heater and helps organizing it and keeping it submerged. Hope this helps.

More like bulgar + yogurt .... steeped .... Fermented which adds a ton of complex flavor... dried...milled

It's amazing that you are making this yoursefl Chef. Now I will have a record of it in case I ever want to try. Like you, I also get my kishik from Lebanon, made by my grandmother every year. That stuff from the store is pretty awful. I love it mostly on manaiish/fatayir (I think I posted about this a long time ago) and of course like you did, in soup form once in a while when it is cold outside. L:ooking forward to the final result. As far as I could tell the main difference between Tarhana and Kishik is that Tarhana usually looks much coarser, almost like large couscous pebbles.

I guess my prosciutto cotto post on my blog was about a week late Glad it worked out. 20% brine for 14 days seems WAY WAY high, but it would also depend on the volume of water and the weight of the meat. Ha! that looks very nice Jason, but yeah, it was about a month late for me . I will have too try it soon enough though. Next up is the New Year's Cotechino of course...

This was a Thanksgiving catastrophe closely averted. My wife requested a ham this year as opposed to turkey, so I went ahead and bought a locally raised free-range lovely fresh ham of about 15 lbs. Previously, I had used Ruhlman's Charcuterie recipe for an American Holiday ham on a small 6-7lb piece of meat. That made a very nice ham, but the amount of pink salt in it needed to be a bit higher I think or the soaking time longer since the cure did not penetrate all the way through. This time I decided to give the Modernist Cuisine cure recipe a try. Using the Best Bets table, I made a Sweet Cure (total liquid was about 3.5 gallons, one of which was apple juice) and soaked the ham in it for 14 days. Then I rinsed it and soaked it in water for about 10 hours (book recommends 8) and then it sat in the fridge dry for about 12 hours (again, book recommends 8). MC uses 20% salt in the cure. That is very high, more than twice what Charcuterie uses (about 7-8% I think). Still I went with it and figured the rinse time / resting time will handle that. Luckily I decided to smoke the meat till it reaches 150F the day before T-Day and to bake/glaze it the day of. Well, as soon as it came off the smoker I took a couple of tastes and holy shit! That was very very salty. To fix the issue, I decided to simmer the ham with some aromatics instead of baking. I simmered it very gently for a couple of hours and changed the liquid twice. Then I glazed it per the Charcuterie recipe and baked it. It was still slightly saltier than I prefer, but it was overall a success. The cure was eben all the way through and the glaze made for a fantastic crust. Now, maybe the expectation for cured fooods in MC that they should be this salty, but I do not think so. I suppose if you are making a "country" ham then possibly this is good. Making a cure with no more than 10% salt should be way more than enough for something like this. I doubt this should go in the "Errata" page but just a heads-up for anyone planning on curing any meat.

I can usually find dry flageolet beans at grocery stores. That should work.

Salmon Boi Boudran Salmon cooked at 50C for 20 minutes or so makes for an amazingly textured fish. It's succulent, rich and tender. The skin crisped up with no problem, but I can see it being a problem trying to do that with larger peices of fillet. The sauce is very easy to make and went great with the fish. We ate the rest of the sauce over the next week with deviled eggs and with cheese sandwiches. I did not do the potatoes exactly like the recipe. I had some spinach and mushrooms I needed to use, so I sauteed those and added them into the potatoes with the dressing Mushroom Soup This was an easy weekday dinner. I used mostly cremini mushrooms that I had. That's why it looks a bit darker than the book picture that uses 100% white button mushrooms. I had made the vegetable stock from the book a couple of weeks back for a risotto and froze the rest. It's flavorful and just "rich" enough. So I used that as a base for the soup. It tasted great and simple, but in hindsight, I should've made it a touch looser so that it might've "frothed" a bit better.

It's not stopping me either, but it is just a bit surprising in this day of high-end cookbooks that they would not include appropriate weight measures throughout.

I am looking forward to getting my copy as well, but I was surprised to read on the Ideas in Food blog that the book uses no weight measures. Is this accurate? or are they just saying that the book uses Imperial weights instead of metric?

Wonderful. Really cooking salmon at 50C (or ocean trout) is a revelation. I bag the fillets with a little olive oil instea dof poaching in pure oil. I did that recently to cook the salmon from Blumenthal's latest book and then quickly crisped the skin. It was an amazing piece of succulent fish.

and I bet he makes fantastic celery sticks for them and turkey on white sandwiches...."all the way to the top" LOL. On the other hand I liked the addition of Emeril (a much toned-down and non-bamming Emeril) to the show. We'll see how this season goes.

Probably the same tool who, upon said tool's appearance I turned to my wife and said; "Won't make it through the first episode." Looks like it's going to take 2 episodes just to get to the real first episode. Which means we'll only have to see 1, 649 ads for "The Real Housewives of xxx" throughout the whole season. Haha...same here. Told my wife this talentless douche is sooo gone. His hasty dismissal by TC (before he even "cooked") 10 minutes later for that hatchet job he did really made the premier for me. That was fun to watch.

Works well, it seems to already be "corroding" (i know it's not corroding, but its showing some surface issues). I like SLKinsey's idea of bending a stainless cake rack. Just bend into a rectangle, and zip tie...i might do that! Yeah, that is a good idea. I might even have one lying around.

How's this working out so far Jason? I have an IC of a very similar Lauda model and I need to do something to keep items away from the pump as well.

The mozzarella recipe from Ideas in Food worked great. I've had a few failures with mozzarella before and this is the first time I try their recipe. Followed it exactly but did not use the Lipase (had none and was not going to buy any...yet). I want to attempt repeating the result using regular whole milk. This time I used some excellent raw unhomoginized milk from a local farm.

The Pavé cake sounds wonderful and simple enough to make (and it did get rave reviews on this thread). However I have this unwritten rule against all milk chocolate as I typically find it too sweet and never really understood the point of "adulterating" perfectly good dark chocolate with extraneous ingredients. Do you think that this recipe will make me reconsider my position on milk chocolate? 1- I agree about Milk Chocolate. I rarely ever touch the stuff. 2- Yes to your question

The Pave cake is decadent and delicious.

It's really creamier "in person" and the way it's used here as a base for the fish, I think the texture was perfect. That being said if you like it to be wetter or even soupier (like a Venetian risotto) then adding 15-20% more liquid should do the trick. I did follow the recipe proportions exactly but I scaled it up to 1.5 times the recipe as written.

I recently made risotto using the Modernist Cuisine pressure cooker method. It worked exceptionally well and made for a perfectly creamy risotto. You basically start by sweating finely minced onions and celery and then adding the rice and stirring it around for a minute. Next all the liquids are added including stock (vegetable in this case) and vermouth. Five minute or so on full pressure (15psi) and we're done. I stirred in a few pats of butter, let it sit for a few minutes and served. I will certainly be making my risotto like that again.