Chris Hennes

Spot on: I used the levels called for, and no adjustment was required at the end, I just served it as is.

I got an order of gellan from Chef Rubber a few weeks ago, but I haven't used it yet. The problem is, while one of the gellans was labelled "low-acyl gellan," the other one was just "gellan." I don't know if that means it's a blend, or if it's high-acyl. Does anyone have a good test I can do to figure out what I've got here? Something like "gel x grams of water with y grams of gellan, and if the texture is z, you've got high-acyl."

Awesome, thanks for the tips. More questions (of course), this time on the subject of pasta: First, the semolina pasta recipe on p 3•382 lists its yield as 450g, but with input ingredient weight of over 600g. Is the loss due to the extruder? Second: the herb-embedded pasta veil (p. 3•383) has a 12 hour refrigeration step. What is the purpose of that step? Finally, I'm struggling to understand the Spaghetti Carbonara recipe on p. 3•384: I was going to make it tonight but realized I needed a number of clarifications before I proceed. The yield is listed as 1.5kg (30 portions), but as near as I can tell the only way to get that high would be to not drain the pasta, otherwise the input ingredients don't add up that high. But it doesn't look to me like a no-drain recipe. Is that yield number leftover from a previous scaling of the recipe? With only 100g of dry pasta and perhaps 250g of cheese gel, I don't see how to get 30 servings. Can anyone who has seen this dish comment on how it's plated? It also appears from the photo that the size of the cheese gel rectangle isn't actually 2" x 4", but perhaps more like 1" x 4". I guess this doesn't really matter much, but at this point I got lost in the details.

Today I made the "Africa" ganache (p. 88), flavored with cinnamon, star anise, and ginger. Unfortunately I think the flavors were overall too subtle, they barely come through in the ganache alone, and are all but indiscernible in the finished bonbons. So, what's next?

What is it you are trying to gel? If Activa is an option that is perfect: I don't think the bonding is reversible once it's done. the enzyme gets destroyed, but the protein crosslinks remain.

Note that Philpott's argument is that the "sustainable food movement" should embrace Modernist Cuisine because MC encourages the idea that food can be art, and not merely sustenance. Of course, this presumes that some kind of monolithic "sustainable food movement" really exists, and that it embraces food as art: the reality is far different, with different sects of the movement promoting different values (as in any human endeavor). I strongly suspect that not everyone in the sustainable food movement embraces the notion that food can be art.

Over on the Modernist Ingredient Kits topic, ermintrude suggests we include some brands and substitutions for various ingredients. I like this idea, but am not quite sure how to go about it: we have several intersecting ideas that play into it. It is simple enough to include a "Brands" and even a "Sources" in the article about each ingredient. But how to tie that back to the cookbooks or recipes? Or do we keep those ties in the Forums discussions, and just put tables/lists in the ingredients topics?

I bought my SHMP from Chef Rubber, but I'd imagine a lab-grade substance would be fine as well (my impression is that lab-grade tolerates even fewer impurities than food grade—is that correct?).

I'm particularly concerned about the Nutrifos in this case because my impression is that it's specifically manufactured to have a particular texture, presumably to aid in mixing into the sausage. So perhaps the substitution can be made, but with different mixing technique.

Can I substitute generic Sodium Tripolyphosphate directly for the Nutrifos 088 in the Modernist sausages, or is some conversion necessary (or perhaps impossible)?

Had the Caramelized carrot soup (p. 3•301 and 6•150) for dinner tonight. I omitted the optional licorice powder, used unsalted butter rather than carotene butter, and did not centrifuge my carrot juice (which was store-bought). Overall I thought this was very successful, and also very simple. I particularly liked the ginger garnish, which gave a nice textural contrast and pop of ginger flavor to the soup. I think next time I will not omit the licorice powder, I bet it is a really nice enhancement to layer on with the tarragon. I'd also like to try to make this with fresher, younger carrots, but that will have to wait a month or two for my garden to catch up to my ambitions.

One possible solution is to add your comments to the source code of the article as HTML-style comments, like this: <!-- If you edit this, make sure to leave this note here! --> This will be visible to editors, but not to someone reading the page. Does that do what you are looking for?

I've got a batch of carrots in the pressure cooker right now. To others who've made the soup: did you interpret all of the last set of ingredients as a garnish? For how many servings?

MM, perhaps they can use these for their crunchy volcano tacos. Which clearly need even more fake cheese-like product. And salt. I'd try them.

Yeah, I'm thinking someone didn't get that memo. Doh!! That's an expensive mistake.

Mine was $25 at amazon.com. It's not the greatest scale in the world, but the price is right.

Wow, grilled? That's asking a lot. How do starch gels behave at those extreme temps? Something like the deep-fried custard in Modernist Cuisine p. 4•120?

I have never made the burger buns without it, so I can't compare. The dough was quite slack, but perhaps not as slack as I expected. Then again, at the time I lacked a milligram scale, so I sort of eyeballed the very minute quantity called for. Coupled with the fact that it appears that this L-cystein is only about 75% pure, I probably didn't have enough in there. The only way to be certain, of course, is to make the buns a couple more times with various iterations.

In Wikipedia they seem to simply use the <ref> tag to do this: you can put anything you like in that tag and it will show up in the references section. My personal opinion on the matter is that excessive detail is just that: excessive. I think we should be creating a user-friendly culinary information source, and too many references and asides tend to detract from that goal. I agree wholeheartedly with liuzhou's statement above: "[...] while we must strive for accuracy, we must also bear in mind the target audience. It isn't a PhD thesis."

I bought mine off Amazon.com, it came in powdered form. The bottle says it's actually L-cysteine hydrochloride monohydrate, so I'm not actually positive it's right.

I think the reconstructed cheeses may have changed my life. I made a grilled cheese for lunch today that might possibly have been the best I've ever had. Such a simple little thing...

It helps that more or less everyone hated the other terms available ("molecular gastronomy", "technoemotional cuisine", etc.) And the book makes a very compelling case for the term "Modernist cuisine" in volume one: I suspect the uptake of the new terminology will be rapid indeed.

Did you smoke it first, or just cook SV? Seasonings?

It's quite readable with a Scotch instead (though I've already spilled on it once...)

Glad Steven could provide you guys with some comic relief. It's why we keep him around here, too .