Chris Hennes

I'll grant that you can get "light and airy" by conventional standards. The waffles dr_justice presents here are not the same kind of "light and airy" that you are thinking of, they are a fundamentally different beast. If you'd like to post your recipe here I'll make a batch in my iron and do a weight and photo comparison.

There is airy, and then there is Airy. Believe me, I've made many, many waffle recipes, and these are in a whole new category of lightness. As I mentioned uptopic, it's almost a misnomer to call them "waffles" at all at this point, there is literally almost nothing inside the crust.

I used both the yolk and the white, but combining the butter with the yolk before combining with the rest of the ingredients yields a better, more stable distribution of the butter, without any of the tendency to clump that you see when adding hot butter to cold (or even room temp) ingredients. They got about ten seconds of cooling between the iron and the plate, and I didn't find that any more was needed. By the time I tried them they were shatteringly crisp. They did come out of the iron just barely pliable, but that went away almost immediately.

I had several theoretical objections, but decided to see how they played out in actual experimentation. Here is your recipe as I made it, converted into grams (and scaled because I only wanted to make one egg's worth and only had medium eggs): A. Combine: white unbleached flour [240g-> 73g] sugar [48g-> 15g] baking powder [2.5g-> 0.76g] baking soda [2.5g-> 0.76g] salt [2.8g-> 0.86g] B. Combine: milk (room temp) [258g-> 79g] water (room temp) [375g-> 115g] C. Separate: eggs [180g-> 55g] -- recipe scaled to one 55g egg D. Combine egg yolk(s) with: melted butter [58g-> 18g] E. Combine all liquid ingredients (B, C, & D) F. Combine all ingredients with: whipping cream [375g-> 115g] Dispense from siphon onto preheated waffle iron until iron is completely full. . . . Here is the batter itself: it is approximately the texture of half-and-half. The first waffle attempted was a disaster, I couldn't get it to come out of the iron. It wasn't sticky, per se, it just didn't have enough structure to overcome the slight friction from the belgian-style waffle iron with its extra deep pockets. The fragments that did come out had promise, however, so I persisted. Another attempt, this time with non-stick spray applied to the iron (I don't usually need it with this iron, but what the heck?) Not quite enough batter, it seems: I failed along those lines twice, but the fourth waffle released and held together: So, to address my own concerns... First, the texture is as promised: ethereally light and airy, utterly crisp, in fact more like a very thin cookie than a waffle at all. The complete waffle weighed only 36 grams (for reference, I'd estimate my normal yeasted waffle recipe at well over 100g per waffle). As you can see from the interior crumb shot, there's almost nothing there. It's like a deconstructed waffle: just the crisp outer bits, without any of the custardy filling at all. This fact also addresses the flavor, which was (to my surprise) really very good. There are only browned outer bits to contribute to the flavor, so even with so little butter, the overall effect is a strong toasted waffle flavor. None of the yeastiness that I like in a conventional waffle, but still, not bland at all. So: bravo and kudos, dr_justice. This is an excellent addition to the waffling world. Because of its extreme lightness IMO its best use is as a topping or dessert waffle rather than as a conventional breakfast waffle, but if you were to serve it with a bunch of other breakfast items it would probably work then. The Cook's Illustrated yeasted waffle I posted about here is probably still my favorite general-purpose waffle, but when crispness is paramount there's a clear new champion in your Air Waffles.

Did you use a hand whisk to beat it until smooth (to prevent clogs)?

Is there any particular reason to include the whipping cream? It seems like a normal thin quick waffle batter would work fine in the siphon when airiness is your goal.

Bear in mind that even a heritage breed known for its marbling (e.g. Large Black) are often crossed with faster-growing varieties that are leaner. They also tend to be pastured, which can lead to a leaner hog. The flavor is still good, but if it's fat you are after you'll definitely want to see what feed is being given to a pastured hog.

I did have to laugh when the article described the upgrades as involving "only a few hundred dollars in additional parts." I'm pretty sure my current oven only cost a few hundred dollars! But at the high end of the consumer market I think these features would be welcome, and I'd even be willing to pay the current price of a high-end oven if it actually did some of this stuff.

Nathan Myhrvold (Society member nathanm, best known in these parts as the author of Modernist Cuisine) and Wayt Gibbs recently published an article in IEEE Spectrum, Nathan Myhrvold's Recipe for a Better Oven. In it they discuss problems with and potential solutions for today's ovens. I particularly like the notion of completely eliminating the glass window and replacing it with a camera and color display to help even out heat distribution and perhaps even make it easier to see. They also suggest ovens that actively transition from a convection to conduction cooking mode depending on the food's surface reflectivity (once you've got a camera pointed at the oven contents you can start to do all kinds of smart things in software). It's a long-ish article by internet standards, but a fascinating read if you're a food technology junkie.

Considering the world as a whole, certainly. That said, local conservation actually makes perfectly good sense in many cases. For example, the city of Norman is allowed 9.3 billion gallons of extraction per year from the aquifer we draw from, plus about 3 billion more from our surface water supply. Anything else must be purchased, at a substantially higher cost, from Oklahoma City. We have no significant agriculture, so our big uses are things like lawn irrigation. During a drought (most of the time these days, it seems!) one of the first mandatory conservation methods employed is a reduction is residential irrigation.

You might give this Serious Eats article a read, both re: adding oil and re: how much water you actually should use.

These are all great ideas: I asked my sister if she was open to Modernist interpretations and she basically said it has to have crowd appeal, be relatively light (these are being served prior to dinner), non-messy, and cold. Otherwise pretty much anything goes. I'm going to nix the aspic on the basis of crowd appeal problems, but I think everything else is sounding great. It might be time for me to start testing some recipes.

Living in Oklahoma, I definitely think about water. I just made the switch to a drip irrigation system for my vegetable and herb garden, which helps a great deal (and is also a huge timesaver). Since I cook sous vide a lot I am often re-using that water either to cook again, or to wash the dishes, depending on the rest of the week's dinner schedule. I also make an effort to use my dishwasher to clean dishes whenever possible, and to minimize pre-rinsing.

You can see the recipe here: 11g (4% scaled to the cheese) is correct. ETA: It's only one gram more than is called for in the full Modernist Cuisine recipe, which I've made successfully many times.

I don't have a firm number but I've been led to believe that we are dealing in single-digit pounds of shrimp.

Great point, FeChef. Here's a photo of mine side-by-side for comparison purposes: I can think of two things to check: either email your photo to Will Powder and ask them if it looks like the right stuff, or maybe some chemist here can tell you a reaction that you can use to check whether you've really got calcium chloride (or something else that's not sodium citrate).

My understanding is that there are no plates involved. It's got to be either a single bite or "shrimp on a stick".

Will Powder is definitely a reputable brand, I own many of their ingredients myself. But the ingredient list in the Mac & Cheese is very short! I assume you've tasted your cheese and it's fine. So unless your water tastes sour, the only other ingredient is the sodium citrate. Have you checked the calibration on your scale?

I love the idea, but I'm not going to have access to a smoker. Can I cheat and smoke something that then gets added to the marinade (e.g. smoke something at home and then ship it to the wedding location)?

So, normally when people report this problem it's because instead of actually using sodium citrate they used citric acid (both products are sometimes called "sour salt"). It sounds like in your case that's not the problem, but considering your issue I'd be inclined to buy some sodium citrate from another provider and see if it works better.

I have (perhaps foolishly) agreed to help my sister out with the hors d'oeuvres at her upcoming wedding. It's a small party, and for the most part she's doing various charcuterie elements that are already taken care of. She has requested that I make a cold shrimp item: her fiance has requested that it not be shrimp and cocktail sauce . I'm looking for some ideas and recipes for easy-to-eat, not-too-messy, cook-ahead, served-cold shrimp dishes. I'll have reasonable kitchen facilities including sous vide equipment, so that's the current plan. I basically need some marinade and/or dry-rub ideas that are family-friendly (e.g. basically no capsaicin involved).

Well, "nose to tail eating" etc... most of us eat the intestines, after all!

In which case while it's not necessary for removing the skins, you may want to go with longer boils anyway. Are there actually any alternative ways of blanching besides what we've discussed here?

Even a minute seems excessive to me, but I am often trying to avoid softening the almonds. For milk maybe that's not a goal, though.

I was inspired to resurrect this discussion by a recent trip to State College, Pennsylvania, where I had the first malt I'd had in something like ten years. The place is a small, unassuming dairy at the edge of town called Meyer Dairy: They still sell milk in glass bottles here: And, of course, have an ice cream counter: The malt was terrific. I have no idea what brand of powder they are using, but they loaded up on it, there was no mistaking the flavor. I opted for a simple chocolate malt, and while I normally don't have much of a sweet tooth I make an exception for these things. Amazing. Anyone else have reliable access to malts these days?