Chris Hennes

I think there's room in the world for both yeast breads and quick breads, and if someone wants to put pizza toppings on a quick bread I can't see any problem with that. My inclination here would actually be to start with a recipe for a Dutch Baby and see if you can eliminate the sugar and sub in olive oil for the butter or something along those lines.

Interesting to me that they say it's normal: after you mentioned it I paid more attention to my temperatures last night. I was cooking chicken breast in an overheated bath, 64°C, which I then dropped to the target 60°C core temp to pasteurize. It only went down to 59.8°C before rebounding in just a few seconds. I was not using an insulated bath, and it was pretty small, so maybe that accounts for it?

I'll be honest here... I like Hershey's Syrup. I use about half what the bottle says to since I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but it's my go-to.

It's true that in Mexican cooking, when a recipe (from Mexico) calls for cinnamon they are probably talking about Ceylon cinnamon (cinnamomum verum). I'd suggest that basically any recipe that originates in the US is talking about cassia, since that's by far the most commonly-available here. I'll let others with more expertise speak to other regions.

While they recommend the Bernzomatic TS8000BT High Intensity Torch Head, I think that this will work with basically any normal-sized torch head. There is some info on their original Kickstarter page about what size nozzle you have to have.

(Emphasis mine.) Just to nitpick: this isn't quite true. There is an optimal distance from the broiler that will give you the most heat (it's dependent on the distance between your heating elements). Modernist Cuisine's got an equation for figuring it out for your oven.

(HOST'S NOTE: The topic title has been corrected to read "Korean Cookbook")

I've previously made this salad but had to cheat on a number of the ingredients. I'd like to try it again with less cheating, but I have a number of questions before I dive in. First, when making the foie gras cherries, the instructions indicate that you should use a torch to melt to tops of the hemispheres while they are still in the silicone mold. I assume this is a very quick pass? I'm nervous about destroying the mold. Has anyone else tried this and run into problems, or does it work fine? Next, after dipping the "cherries" you chill them in the refrigerator: what orientation works best for this? Laying on their sides, upright, or upside down with the sticks pressed into foam or something? The recipe for the foie coating calls for "Amarena cherry syrup": I see many different brands of Amarena cherries packed in syrup. Is that syrup what the recipe is talking about? Any favorite brands? The sherry gel cubes list "chamomile blossoms" as an ingredient, and the lentils list "chamomile blossoms (fresh)": when I made it last time I used chamomile tea for the gel cubes since without the "(fresh)" in the ingredient list I assumed dried. Is this correct? The dried blossoms absorbed a lot of the liquid, I had to press on them to extract it and even then the yield was much less than the stated "215g" (which I don't think can be right, based on the ingredient quantities listed). The lentils also call for black radish: is red radish a reasonable substitute for this? I can't find black ones in the stores here, and can't recall ever having them so I don't know what the taste and texture are like. What is a "green hazelnut" and any tips for sourcing them? Finally, I'm looking for a source for food-grade chamomile essential oil: anyone have a supplier?

I typically sear at as close to the smoke point of my oil as I can get, regardless of what I'm searing: honestly, I'd never considered trying to use a lower temp. Can anyone speak to the advantages? I'm also very much looking forward to the Searzall I've got on order...

Have a look at "Kitchen Scale Recommendations 2011–"

In particular, PedroG discusses it here, nathanm here, and DouglasBaldwin here. Take your pick...

I'd personally be pretty surprised if they didn't cover it, for just that reason: I'd love to see some science behind all the sourdough mythology. I know Sam has posted quite a bit, but it would be great to see it in print.

Welcome to those of you joining us from the Modernist Cuisine Forums! We have a long history of engaging the modernist movement, dating back to reports on Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck in 2001, to Q&As with Blumenthal (2002), Grant Achatz (2003), Ferran Adrià (2004) and José Andrés (2005), among others. In 2004, eG Forums hosted a multi-faceted, multi-topic project covering the pre-opening activities at Alinea, where founders Achatz and Nick Kokonas discussed, among other details, the Alinea business plan, how it developed its famous serviceware and menu layout, and the design of the kitchen. Perhaps most relevant: eG Forums is where Nathan Myhrvold posted, on March 16, 2004, “I am wondering if anybody has sources for recipes for sous-vide cooking – which is to say, cooking done in sealed vacuum bags.” The genesis of the multi-volume book set Modernist Cuisine, as well as what has since been produced by the Modernist Cuisine team – including Modernist Cuisine at Home, and The Photography of Modernist Cuisine – can be traced to that moment. All of that to say how proud we are to announce our partnership with the team behind those remarkable works. The Modernist Cuisine Forums have been integrated directly into eG Forums: any search of eG Forums content will now also search forums posts that were previously made at the Modernist Cuisine Forums site, and a complete index of all recipe discussions from that site can be found here. In addition, all imported content has been tagged with the "modernist" tag to integrate it with our pre-existing modernist content, as well as with a special "Modernist Cuisine Forums" tag so that it's easy to find content previously located in those forums. Privacy Protection and eG Forums Accounts We respect the privacy of all of our members, and of those who registered at the Modernist Cuisine Forums: you can read the eG Forums Privacy Policy here. As an added measure of privacy protection for those who were members of the Modernist Cuisine Forums, no personally-identifiable information was transferred: your email addresses and user IDs have both been anonymized, and no IP address or other related information was retained. A dummy account at the eG Forums was created for each participant in the Modernist Cuisine Forums (those who had made at least one post): to activate this account here at the eG Forums send an email from the account you registered at the Modernist Cuisine Forums to feedback@egullet.org with the username you would like to use here (if the username is already taken we'll write back to discuss your options). If you already had an eG Forums account and would like them merged, let us know that in your email.

Which part of the recipe bothers you? The ingredients aren't particularly unusual, though straining the solids back out is, I admit. The idea of self-encapsulating isn't that outlandish, I don't think, just opens up fun new ways of serving the broth. Even encapsulated I think it's hard to argue that it's not a tortilla soup, the taste is spot on.

Do you have a favorite recipe for boiled dressing? I could give it a try.

I think that depends on how you define "modernist": in many respects bakers and pastry chefs have always been the most "modernist" of chefs in terms of their approach to the craft. They may not use a lot of whiz-bang ingredients, but I think the thought process is definitely the same, with lots of careful analysis and testing.

How do chicken kidneys compare to lamb kidneys in taste and texture? In The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating Henderson has a quick sauté of lamb's kidneys that he serves on toast, so maybe something like that?

Rather than a typical cole slaw based on cabbage, the main vegetable in this Modernist Cuisine at Home slaw is sweet onion. It also includes vacuum-pickled red onions (p. 130) and scallions. I guess it's "Modernist" in that it is made with mayonnaise where the egg has been cooked sous vide (for food safety and additional stability. p. 108), though I'm sure a jarred or "normal" homemade mayo would serve just fine. Otherwise it's a pretty typical slaw, with sour cream, mayo, dijon mustard and cayenne forming the sauce. Overall it's a good slaw, but one that I think would be best as a sandwich topping (an application they suggest in the notes). In that application I think I'd also add double or triple the pickled red onion, which is delicious in its own right and certainly complements the slaw very well.

Of course! That's what makes them "Pro"... for the rest of us home cooks, however...

Precise, Reliable, Optimal

But LTLT is only one type of sous vide cooking, and probably not even the one that will be most common for home cooks.

Coding them in HTML doesn't preclude that.

Hah! Not quite what I'm going for, but I could do a riff on the Shanghai Soup Dumplings on MC 5•253. Those are sort of inverted soup dumplings, where the soup is encapsulated and a thin sheet of pasta laid over the top.

I think there are two dangers with using sweet potatoes in that application: the first is that they will have a tendency to fall apart when you try to handle them, and the second is that the flavorings included in the recipe probably can't stand up to the more aggressive flavor profile of sweet potatoes. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if I was you I'd do a trial run before any big dinner parties featuring the dish!

Maybe serve it as a sort of caviar on top of tortilla chips: I know you were joking, but now the wheels are turning...