FoodMan

I think that mincing is probably the way to go with dishes like stirfrys. That being said, it really makes a big difference how fresh something like the ginger is. Young non-fibrous ginger, if sliced paper thin, can be very nice. Fibrous ginger that is not sliced very thin...not so much. I would imagine the garlic should work well though, again if sliced paper thin.

I agree that this is a wonderful pizza dough. We make pizza at home often and the recipes I use vary, usually we use the Jeffrey Steingarten recipe though. I tried Reinhart's from this book a couple of days ago. It is great and very straight forward to make. I think it will become our default now. Here is my pizza that I topped with Guanciale (is there anything Guanciale does not go good on??) and an egg.

Correction: These were boar loins not tenderloins! I also forgot to mention that I used Xanthan gum to properly thicken the sauce instead of reducing it and risk loosing the perfect taste and balance. I followed the Best Bets for thickening a hot liquid table to get the ratio for Xanthan. It worked out great.

That looks really delicious! I'm wondering why some of the pics posted using RM, GS, etc. have a very distinct bond line. Is it because Activa was applied in powder form vs. liquid? Therefore not allowing 100% adhesion? Maybe I'm being picky and I really wish I had the space - let alone the equipment - in my 3m2 Paris kitchen! Once I'm back in Canada this fall I'll be ordering the book and some new goodies. Until then I'm living & learning vicariously through you all! The tenderloins were very well bonded actually. I do not think there is a way to completely eliminate the "bond line" honestly. In my case it is a bit more obvious due to the dark/white coloration in the boar meat.

I am amazed by the picking and choosing of recipes you folks have been doing. I cannot get myself to stop reading...let alone jump around and look for recipes. I skimmed through most of book one (will need to double back and read the safety section though) and now I am reading through volume 2. It is amazing how much information there is to digest and I find it difficult to just go find a recipe to try now. OTOH, I find that I am thinking of things a bit more critically and with more... attention to detail. For examaple, yesterday I made a spit roasted chicken on my charcoal grill's rotisserie and could not help but observe that this is a true roasted chicken as opposed to a baked one EXCEPT for when I close the grill lid. In that case it is both baked and roasted. Is that "broasted"? Interestingly enough there are so many concepts in there that make sense intuitively, but now it feels good understanding the science behind them (why is boiling water a better/faster cooking medium than 99C water that is still?). Well, I did make a boar tenderloin inspired by MC recently, specifically the recipe for the Juniper-Brined one Chris made. I used the brine ratios in that recipe, added star anise to it and since the tenderloins are much smaller I bound a couple of them together with Activa to make a properly sized one. I cooked it SV following the tables in volume 2, then seared it quickly in grapeseed oil. It was juicy and delicious served with Puy lentils and an apple sauce made with port and the MC beef stock.

I do a lot of baking in general and I use this book at least twice a month or so. I just had a sandwich for lunch on one of my favorite Reinhart breads from this book, the Struan Bread. It freezes well and toasts great. Give it a shot. I also baked a couple of loaves of the soft rye bread recently. We ate one and the other is well-wrapped in the freezer now.

It's very common with recipes from high-end restaurant books with many components to make way more of a specific component that you actually need. Case in point is the Alinea and the Fat Duck books. When I cook from them, I usually have to divide certain subrecipes by 4 and I still end up with more than I need to sauce or garnish a dish.

Keller wraps mackerel with proscuitto in "Under Pressure". It will work fine.

Some pictures of the corn bread mentioned above. This is the corn frying in lard/butter mixture. This smelled so good. Raw and cooked product. I also cooked up a beef tongue I had on hand following the KM recipe for "Sous Vide Veal Tongue" on page 90. They use it as part of the Pot-au-Feu recipe. Instead, I used it as a stand alone dish and plated it based on a recipe from "French Feasts" with Madeira sauce, tarragon, capers and cornichons on a bed of mashed potatoes. The tognue came out with a perfect texture and the cooking liquid with vinegar made for a great stock to make the sauce with.

So you'd say (1) do the steps in the order shown in the main volume and (2) 365F until it's at 190F internally? Pretty much. In the main volume, pay attention to the pictures, as opposed to the steps outlined for the fried corn. The corn (or most of it at least IMO) should be blended with the cream, milk and eggs. Baking at 365F is definitly what worked for me.

I made the corn bread this weekend(pages 5.76 and 6.256) to go with some bbqd chicken and pork chops as well as the much hyped and awesome mac and cheese. forgot to download the pictures for the corn bread, so I will have to post them later but figure this might be helpful if anyone is going to try making it soon. I think the recipe has 2 issues: - Steps 2 and 3 are reversed. The picture shows that the corn should be pureed with the cream, milk and eggs not added afterwards. Adding the corn afterwards (whole kernels) makes an awesome but very crumbly and very difficult to slice end product. Now, I was working from the KM so I did not notice the pictures till later when I refered to volume 5 to check for accuracy. - The baking temperature at 265F for 20 minutes is very low. At 20 minutes the bread was raw. I upped the temp to 365 and the loaf needed another 45 minutes approximately to reach 190F internally. I already forwarded this info to the MC team and, unless I screwed something up, they will need to add it to the errata list. That being said, the corn bread is really delicious and I have to make it again. Even if the recipe has you blend all the lard/butter fried corn, I will most likely reserve 20% of it or so to add as a mix in. The texture and mild sweet taste were very unique and loved by everyone, kids and adults.

Mostly for convenience I would think.

I am not able to find the garlic chip recipe in the KM. The only one there seems to be for a fried version of the garlic chips on page 159. Is this an oversight?

I bet you McGee will have an answer for that...the book is at home though. I think this kind of coloration usually happens due to the reaction of sulphur in the garlic with acid or the metal of cooking utensils (copper causes it I think), heating should have deactivated the enzyme however.

Yes, I think so -- and based on my experiences with stresa pancetta, it makes sense. So, a combination of things, including moisture loss, diffusion, and controlled aging of the meat, probably combined to make it work. Oh, and for MC owners, this all happened without any Fermento. To confirm, Chris, you used no Fermento? What about Sodium Erythrobate?

FYI, the Errata list had errata in it . I found a couple and reported them. They are now updated on the site but the PDF is still wrong and should be updated shortly. I guess Nathan was not kidding that at some point reading and re-reading will start to introduce some errors.

I'm not surprised that that happened. I was surprised that an additional ten days -- ten days more than anyone has ever suggested to me, including Ruhlman & Polcyn -- would have such a dramatic effect. And NB: it wasn't extra time in the cure. It was extra time OUT of the cure, in a curing chamber. Sounds so good and it is time to make bacon. I'm getting a good 5lb piece of a quality pig belly this week. I'll be trying the MC bacon. I have no Sodium Erythrobate so I might skip it unless I find it at my local supplier (Allied Kenco). Other projects in the works include the corn bread (frying corn in lard/butter is brilliant), SV beef tongue and some form of the pea clusters with Methocel but probably made with corn. Not 100% sure what the eventual application of each will be just yet.

Not sure how far along the project you are, but if you have not seen this, check out Auldo's blog. He cooked everything in the Fat Duck book! Here is a link to the BFG post.

Looks very nice. I can see, after looking at the KM (is it wrong to keep it with me at work to steal glances at something or another every hour or so?), why you would not think that the ice cream ingredients will make so much end product. If it was listed as a seperate recipe component with yield then maybe it would've clicked just how much gelato you will end up with. As for the steak, I think hanger steak is usually thicker than a skirt (also depends if it is inside or outside skirt you used). That in addition to the naturally deeper red color a hanger has could account for the difference in color you are seeing. Honestly though, your version looks damn tasty. My first recipe from MC ended up being the Brown Beef Stock cooked in the pressure cooker. I needed to make some beef stock anyways with a several prime rib bones (saved them after carving the meat off them). So, I subbed those for the oxtail. I also made a double batch to use up all the bones and it is now frozen in FoodSaver bags. The stock was very tasty and made a semi-firm gel in the fridge (can be spooned but not really cut). I also ended up with a good cup or so of rendered beef fat from it's surface.

Well, it is certainly vinegar and has some small bite. Overall it is still mild (been 8 weeks now)and slightly sweet. Like you said though, I have no basis for comparison but it is very tasty.

That is worth something in my opinion. They do also have a better standard for many items (but not all) and they are conveneient for me. It's not the "best and only" option, but I love having one on my way home, when I need it for certain things (like fish). Sure, overall it is more pricy than your run-of-the-mill store if you buy everything there, but when picking and choosing it fairs very well. My all time favorite store in Houston though is Central Market, it beats WF by a mile honestly, but it is very much out of the way for me...

Well, Nathan it looks like you guys have thought of everything. I am referring to the KM index of course. That would be fantastic and will save me hours of work trying to alphabetize the list of recipes myself . only 2 below "boobs" huh? Very much an achievement.

The fact that a collection of books like those has a small percentage of errors in the 1500 recipes is unavoidable and completely understandable. Nathan and his team's complete transparency and diligence in tackling errata is very much appreciated. I have no problem updating my kitchen manual as I go along. The label maker idea is great for that. On the other hand, its a bit frustrating to me that the Kitchen Manual does not list the recipes alphabetically. Unless I am missing anything (I am still in the browsing stage, even though I did make the brown beef stock yesterday), we have to browse through all recipes in a specific section in order to find the one we are looking for. For example, to find the Mac and Cheese you need to dig through the Plant section in the KM to find it. Why not list them alphabetically instead of "in order of appearance"? I am not sure anyone mentioned this before, so maybe I am alone with my quibble, but I am seriously considering making my own KM alphabetized list. If I do, I'll make it available here.

It really is time to bump this up. Feast remains, even more so now, one of the top restaurants in town. It is a unique experience and to this date after maybe 15 visits it has never disappointed. In short: I LOVE Feast. We went to Feast this past Tuesday and for the first time ordered the 9-course chef's menu (at $59 it is a crazy bargain). We were a table of four, kind of a double date, and everyone had a great meal. We got to taste a couple of items we might not have ordered otherwise and some classics. - Lentil and Pork cheek soup: Tart and sweet. Rich dark stew like soup. - Pork Rilletes with cornichons and toast. Classic, rich and nicely seasoned. Made with pork belly confit not shoulder. - Chicken Onion: Red onions wrapped in chicken skin and roasted to crackly crispy goodness. Served on a bed of shredded lettuce cause we need our light greens. - Black pudding with minted peas and sunny side up eggs. I'll admit that I am slightly squeamish about blood and blood sausage. Some of those I tasted are too metallic tasting. I most likely would not have ordered this dish if left to my own devices. This however blew us all away, even my wife who is not a fan of Morcilla. The homemade black pudding is lightly spiced and pan fried to a nice crispy outside. It worked amazingly well with the fresh eggs and refreshing peas. - Whole roasted amberjack. Very very simple fish with some herbs. Served with sautéed lemony kale. This was so much better than I would've expected. Another example of a dish I probably would not have ordered. - Lamb shank pie with Bubble and Squeak. For me, this was the star of the evening. It's a stewed tender lamb shank cooked in a dark sweet and sour thick broth (flavored with raisins and mint among other spices). The shank and it's cooking liquid along with some carrots and maybe turnips is baked in a large ramekin under a suet crispy crust with the end of the bone sticking out. It is one of the most memorable dishes I've ever had. - Pork belly with potato cake, sautéed cabbage and apples. A delicious Feast staple...but by now consuming more of this fare was getting harder and harder. - Sticky Toffee Pudding. Probably my favorite Feast dessert. - Spotted Dick with warm custard. Light sponge cake and vanilla custard. Very nice. This was all washed down with a Negroni to start with a couple of bottles of Cote de Rhone. Not too bad for a Tuesday meal. Is it? I was also very pleased to see that the dining room was fairly busy. I would hate to see this place go due to lack of business, but so far they seem to be doing well still. If you have never been, you really need to make a reservation and head down there ASAP.

Nothing like oil is added to it. That is another benefit to this method vs. boiling it and then attempting to hold it. If just soaked (room temp water) the pasta will not stick like it would if boiled. That is due to the fact that the starch has not been "activated" I think.