KennethT

I loved this dish in Thailand - it's very popular in Northern Thai.... here is a recipe I've used and it tasted very similar - especially if you can find Betel leaves or pepper leaves in your area.... http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/recipes/mkum.html

SV is great for dinner parties - I can't tell you how many times, when prepping for a dinner party with multiple courses, I had several SV rigs running simultaneously.

I've always found it difficult to keep veggies from floating - even "dense" ones like asparagus... I can't imagine what it would take to weigh down a whole head of cauliflower! Maybe using a chamber vac, but I'd be afraid that too much vacuum would crush the head and snap the branches. Please keep us posted! Pics if possible?

I also have a dwarf citrus - a Bearss lime tree growing indoors for 5+ years in a NYC apartment. I used to grow it in soil, but kept having root rot problems even though I had tons of redwood and cedar shavings mixed in with the soil to improve drainage and reduce clumping. Citrus are very root rot sensitive... I bought the tree as a 3 year old tree from a compnay in CA that specializes in dwarf citrus - they have many varieties, many of which do very well grown indoors in containers. Check out 4 Winds Growers.... Being in NY, I also have a grow light on the tree for 18 hours a day for a little supplemental lighting. I used to use a 200W metal halide light, but have since switched to a 90W LED. I have also switched the tree to hydroponics a few years ago - it's a simple ebb/flow system that basically floods the root zone for 10 minutes, twice a day. I used to do it more often, but had some root rot issues. I also add a product called hygrozyme, which is an enzyme that devours rot, every two weeks. Now, the tree is doing great - I have tons of limes that are ripening at the moment, and the tree is also flowering so that means more in the future. I posted some pics of it a while back in the gardening forum... here's the post: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/141848-gardening-2012-season/page-2 .. that was about a year and half ago, so now the tree is probably double the size... if I can, I'll try to take pics this weekend....

there are literally tons of information about duck confit sous vide on these boards... look in the sous vide main thread here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/136274-sous-vide-index/ I'm sure there are other discussions in the subsequent sous vide thread, as well as in the modernist cuisine/MCAH threads... or do a search for it and I'm sure you'll find tons of responses...

Thanks for posting this. I had the pleasure of eating this dish at El Bulli during the last full season and had always wondered how they did it.

oh, and here's more interesting info... this source says that salt in the earth doesn't come from the sea - but it's actually the other way around - salt in the sea comes from the earth! http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/water/salinity1.htm

This is true - but interestingly, you will even find that different seas/oceans have different salt concentrations - it seems like this is due to many factors, among which are total depth, amount of sunshine/temperature which leads to localized evaporation, rainfall... etc.. Here's an interesting image which shows global salt concentrations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WOA09_sea-surf_SAL_AYool.png

I don't want to take this off topic, but I definitely think there is a difference between sea salts from different regions. Sea water contains lots of different salts, not just sodium chloride... there's also calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride, and many more. These other salts exist in varying concentrations in different areas, and can change the flavor of the evaporated salt, as well as the process of evaporation and collection affecting the texture. When I look at my carton of Baleine - it doesn't list Sodium chloride as an ingredient, it just lists "sea salt" which could contain any number of different salts. This is not a finishing salt as it is finely milled - I use it as my normal salt. I have other salts that have different flavors and textures that I use for finishing. There have been studies that have linked iodized "table salt" to higher rates of heart disease and blood pressure issues, with some studies actually going so far as to recommend people with salt tolerance related blood pressure problems to switch to sea salt before resorting to medication. Unfortunately, some of these studies are a few years old, and I can't seem to find them right now to link them. I do believe that some unscrupulous companies could be cutting their sea salt with other salts to make more profit. With expensive finishing salts, I think a good rule of thumb is similar to the olive oil conclusion - taste it... you can definitely taste the difference between high quality sea salt and "kosher" salt and even more difference to any iodized salt. Edited for clarity

Celeste - can you repost the link to the chart from Thermoworks... it didn't come through... thanks!

I used to use food saver brand bags (made from the rolls) all the time, even at 80C+ for high temp and never had a problem.. but for pure convenience I now use ziplocks

I would be worried about olive oil solidifying at the temperatures you need for this process.true... didn't think of that....

FeChef - if your smoker is runnign around 200F, I doubt it would take over 4 hours to go from 40F to 140F unless you're smoking a steamship round. In any case, if you're cooking a single piece of meat that has not been punctured, the inside is considered sterile - especially if you have cooked it SV to pasteurize. Once you remove from the bag, you have only contaminated the surface, which should get up to temp quickly. I don't know if cold smoking is the way to go, unless you want a cold smoked flavor - in my mind, they're different and have different purposes... But, and don't quote me on this, I seem to remember reading that the smoke is "anti-bacterial" or somethign to that effect, so even if cold smoking, you can leave it in the smoke longer than you could on the countertop and remain safe. ETA cold smoke stuff

You can, but it creates a different kind of caviar. The alginate kind have a solid shell and contain liquid and will burst when chewed. The agar will be solid and won't burst. The other problem is that agar needs to be heated above 180degF for a few minutes to hydrate which will completely change the flavors of either raw basil or tomato. Some people have had success in hydrating the total amount of agar in a very small amount of water, and then adding that to your basil or tomato liquid so as not to cook out those flavors. Typically, the agar spheres are dropped into a neutral oil, but since your flavors would probably work very well with it, you could use olive oil.

looks a little like chinese broccoli - only without the thick stems...

I would think that cooking something so thin should use a higher temp - at least 375 so that the crust browns while the inside cooks through...

That leg of lamb looks fantastic! I wonder what would happen if you put a pan of potato cubes or something in the bottom of the roaster so that it would still be in the path of the IR, but would catch some of those great drippings?

this is a tough problem... especially if you don't know what he likes to eat... I second rotuts... When I first started cooking for myself, I started with simple things - pan roast chicken breast with sauteed greens or salad, pasta, etc... something not too hard to really mess up and cause discouragement.

All of book 1 is about food safety... All the charts and tables are there... That being said, I'll reiterate that the forums here and Douglas Baldwin's site have just about all the info you'd ever need. I'm another one who joined Egullet because of the original sous vide thread.

Sorry for getting off track... I agree - if I had any outdoor space whatsoever, I would get this in a heartbeat! Seems like a great inexpensive and more convenient tandoor - something that I had considered building - if I only had some outdoor space or at least a kitchen that I owned with a big hood that actually vented outside. I don't know about using it as a wok burner - it seems like its been designed so that most of the IR is directed inside the cooker (like a tandoor). The heat coming out the top is probably not nearly as intense.

That is basically the "Black Body Radiation" theory. What I don't understand (yet) is how the screen can reflect the IR energy, perhaps the screen's perforation size is such that the wave length of the IR ray cannot penetrate, just like the screened door of a microwave oven can prevent leaking of microwave energy. dcarch Right... I wondered the same thing about the screen - I just sort of assumed that it was made from shiny metal so that a percentage of IR energy would be reflected (albeit in random directions).. Sort of the reverse of how shade cloth works in a greenhouse. The screen need not to be shiny. It is very possible to have efficient reflectivity in antenna design with very perforated reflectors, it all has to do with wave length. IR is exactly like microwave and radio wave, except the wave length is shorter. dcarch Microwave antenna http://antennasystems.com/Merchant2/graphics/rfsworld/APL-3T.jpg I don't know if I necessarily agree... what works for microwaves doesn't necessarily work for all EM waves. You can use waveguides to carry microwaves, which won't work for higher frequency spectra.. antennae are used to braodcast microwaves - which won't work for IR... So while it doesn't matter for microwave, your bathroom mirror is shiny for a reason... For all intents and purposes, IR is closer in wavelength magnitude to visible light than visible is to microwaves - let's say IR is 1-2 orders of magnitude away from visible, whereas microwaves are 4 orders of magnitude away from visible.Anyway, since I don't own the product - I'm not sure if the screen is shiny or not- but I have enough experience to say that when I wear a black shirt in the sun I feel warmer than when wearing a white shirt, given the same ambient air temp. and humidity. I feel pretty safe in saying that a matte black screen will absorb IR and allow it to pass through with very little reflected - while a shiny silver screen will reflect and allow to pass through while absorbing very little. ETA - unless the black screen in absorbing the IR and re-radiating it (very possible), which changes the argument completely.

That is basically the "Black Body Radiation" theory. What I don't understand (yet) is how the screen can reflect the IR energy, perhaps the screen's perforation size is such that the wave length of the IR ray cannot penetrate, just like the screened door of a microwave oven can prevent leaking of microwave energy. dcarch Right... I wondered the same thing about the screen - I just sort of assumed that it was made from shiny metal so that a percentage of IR energy would be reflected (albeit in random directions).. Sort of the reverse of how shade cloth works in a greenhouse.

the polymerized cooking spray (or other oil), when darkened, will emit IR more efficiently - so it will work better and be "hotter" over time. From looking at the manual, it doesn't seem like there's a temperature control - but IR doesn't really work that way... they said that if you add teh included top screen, it will get hotter inside since the screen reflects IR - they recommend you run the machine after use for 10-15 min with the screen on to burn off any gunk from cooking - like you might for a barbeque grill.

You can google it to get to CharBroil's website, and download the instruction manual. It is very descriptive. The cooker comes with a screen type lid that reflects IR which intensifies heat inside. They also recommend that the inside be seasoned, like cast iron, and over time, the cooker will get even better as the seasoning will emit IR more effectively as time goes on. So, it is not baking (as baking refers to hot air doing the cooking) but roasting in the traditional sense of cooking with IR. It looks like a great device - if I had any outdoor space whatsoever I would consider getting one... as much as I don't like to follow rules, I think I would follow their constant advice (read warnings) as to not use indoors!

I have seen calamansi at Fairway - probably a couple of months ago... But they were ripe, the rind was bright orange. Typically, they are used green in SE Asia cooking. I have never seen them sold this way in NY.