KennethT

how about a curry? Disintegrated onions + curry spices + some yogurt??

Beautiful tortillas! Obviously someone's done this before!

gdenby - interesting... what didn't you like about the postSV smoke flavor? Was it too strong? To be honest, I don't have a real smoker - I just have a stovetop smoker - so really, the longest smoke treatment I can give without overcooking something is about 20-30 minutes. When that goes into the SV, the result is really muted, but while it's cooking, you can smell the smoke in the water and in the kitchen as well.

Lately, I've been smoking post SV, rather than prior because of what you talk about - in long cook times, the smoke goes through the bag and scents the water, leaving the meat with a very muted smoke flavor. I don't know what would happen if you used a retort bag, or other multi-layer bag with a metallized film layer. Those types of bags are much less permeable to gases and other small molecules.

You're right - the sugar itself, unless horribly burnt and bitter won't make a big difference. If it tastes good by itself, then I'm sure it'll be fine on the finished component. Just for future reference, it'll get hard enough to grind once you hit hard-crack stage, which is about 150C/300F on a candy/deep fry thermometer. It doesn't need to take on any color to be hard enough to grind.

ok - a lot of times, I'll make sugar glass tuiles like that with a similar procedure, except you sift onto a silpat then put in a hot oven for about 30 seconds until the sugar remelts. You're right - garnishes aren't critical, but I'm often surprised at how much of a difference they'll make in people's perceptions - like what would take a really well done home cooked dish to the level of "wow, I feel like I"m in a restaurant"... seems to me that lots of times, the difference is in the little components/garnishes.

I haven't read the recipe in MC yet, so I was holding off responding about what to do with the sugar... Basically, are you're making an onion flavored sugar glass that gets powdered and sprinkled on top of something then heated and melted into a thin shell? I do that type of work all the time using the el bulli method of 50% fondant, 25% glucose, 25% isomalt... But I never take it that dark (unless I want a heavily caramelized flavor)... usually, I want the sugar to have a neutral flavor, although sometimes I'll integrate whole spices near the end of cooking the sugar - but I always cook the sugar to hard crack or a very light caramel color - I usually don't check the temp and do it by eye, but I would imagine 340F is too high. Once powdered and sprinkled into a thin shell, the flavor is less intense, so if it's a little bitter, it's probably still ok... I just don't know if they intended to have the maillard flavor as prominent as it would be in yours. ETA: also - I find it a lot easier to make the powder in a spice grinder as opposed to the blender because I tend not to make that much at one time - once powdered, a little goes a long way.

Hi Stardiff, and let me be the first to welcome you to eGullet! I agree that lately, the garlic selection is awful. I think the best quality I can usually find is from Fresh Direct - but with that being said, it's not great either. Most cloves already have a considerable germ, but at least they're not terribly bruised or rotten.

Chris - I've been enjoying your blog so far! I start my seeds in rockwool cubes - I get starts that look like your tomatoes/tomatillos after 4-5 days, rather than a couple of weeks. I find soaking the cubes in 5.5pH water initially, and then misting once in a while with the same water gets faster germination. Once I see the first set of true leaves, I'll transfer to my "incubator" which basically keeps the bottoms of the cubes bathed in 25% nutrient fog for a week or two until the roots are long enough to transfer into my normal window garden. I've also heard really good things about Coco coir, and about these Rapid Rooter plugs. While usually, the rockwool is only for hydro (since it doesn't degrade too easily (although it can be recycled)), the coco coir and Rapid Rooter are great for starts that will go into soil.

When my father grew parsnips, he always over wintered them... saying that they were much sweeter that way.

Thanks. I found out today that if I shut the screen down, the alarm turns off also, then when the screen turns back on, the alarm comes back - so that's a temporary solution. But a pause button is a good idea...

Really enjoying 3.0.... when doing cook-chill, is there a way to turn off the audible alarm but not start the chill timer? Sometimes my ice bath isn't ready when the timer goes off (or I'm in the middle of doing somethign else and don't have the time at that moment to do the transfer) but I don't want to hear the timer beeping the whole time.

Another option is a convection microwave which can act as a small oven...

dcarch - where is the market in above photo? I don't recognize it...

Laurel's Heirloom Tomatoes is a great supplier of hard to get heirloom starts... I had a very successful Goose Creek tomato plant growing hydroponically in the windowsill of my NYC apartment on the 21st floor for the majority of last year... I have another that will be shipped as soon as there is no fear of freezing while in transit. I'm in the process of upgrading the "leafy green farm" of my windowsill garden - I had a bunch of fun things growing since the summer, but then I had a leak issue and decided to start over again after it was fixed. But before the issue I was growing pineapple sage, lime thyme, coconut scented geranium, variegated lemon scented geranium, chocolate mint, various types of leaf lettuce, and chinese broccoli (gailan). Most grew really well, but the mint was a pain since the roots took over the entire garden. The herbs all came as starts from Well Sweep Herb farm, and the lettuces and gailan started from seed from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds.

Looks great... next time, try taking the bones out - nothing like crunchy boneless wings! Especially if you make it for unsuspecting people - because it looks like a normal wing - so people get a kick out of trying to figure out how you got the bones out.

One of the El Bulli books recommends cooking chicken wings in a little olive oil at 140F for 24 hours. At this point, remove the wings from the bag (be careful, they're very delicate) and you can pull the bones out without damaging the meat or skin. It takes a little practice but it's definitely doable at home. You can then chill (or maybe even lightly freeze), coat in potato starch or other crispy coating and deep fry at really high temp a la modernist cuisine quail dish. You can coat in wing sauce just before serving or provide it as a dipping sauce. In the past, I've done a decent wing sauce by sweating a bunch of finely chopped shallots in a lot of butter, then adding a bottle of Crystal hot sauce, then blend... Another idea is a roquefort foam - the foam is good as roquefort can be very strong and salty, and the foam mellows it just a bit, while letting the essence of it through... melt roquefort in a bit of cream (maybe a little sodium citrate will help melting?), strain, put in nitrous whipper and chill.

The textbook I used was On Cooking bt Lebensky and Haus. A bit pricey, but details all the classic techniques pretty well.

whoops... in my last post, I meant that black bass is typically overcooked not overlooked... but it was perfect the other night - good crust but still really moist.

Had a chance to go last night. Excellent - not much to add that hasn't been said already, other than the fact that they said they're planning on turning the downstairs into a cocktail lounge with small plates. Also, I think one of the dishes referred to above as"black cod" is actually black bass (unless there's a black cod on the menu as well that I didn't notice) - a fish I love but is typically overlooked. This one was great.

I don't know if I'd call them crispy... they get crispy in spots, but not uniformly like if they were deep fried. But they get great maillard coloring, turn almost sweet, and have a great texture where they are tender but still have a little bite to them.

I know you're not a fan of frying, but a while ago, I took a cooking class with David Bouley - and one of the components of one of the dishes was brussel sprout leaves... you can get the leaves pretty quickly by using a paring knife and coring the sprout like coring a head of cabbage - most of the leaves just fall off. He then proceeded to get a saute pan very hot and using a touch of grapeseed oil (just enough to barely coat the pan), throw in all the leaves at once. They will sputter bit. Season and saute until they reach the amount doneness you prefer.

Interesting - so it seems like it's just plain sugar... I guess the purpose is for those who want to make their own flavored candy.... I took a quick look around, and it seems like most "homemade" pop rocks come from hard-crack sugar, with added baking soda and flavoring. Typically, when doing hard crack sugar, you replace a small amount of the sugar with corn syrup to prevent recrystallization... You can make it less sweet by substituting more glucose and isomalt for some of the sugar. Isomalt is much less sweet than sugar is, but structurally acts like sugar. Glucose is also less sweet than sugar. I'd probably try 25% isomalt, 30% sugar, 45% glucose by weight as a starting point - you may need to bump up the sugar and reduce the glucose a bit if it's a little chewy. Making the isomalt behave can be a little tricky... typically I'll heat the sugar and some water in the pan until it starts boiling, then add the glucose. I add the isomalt once it gets to soft ball stage (230-240F?) by sprinkling it evenly over the surface of the sugar and letting it slowly melt in to the mixture. I don't stir it because it can cause crystallization, but I wonder if it's even possible with that much glucose in the mix... keep heating (medium heat? - Don't go too fast) until you get to hard crack - 305-310F, let cool a bit, then add flavoring and baking soda stir to combine then pour out on a silpat and let cool... then pulverize. So, you can make savory spiced pop rocks by adding whole spices (star anise, coriander, clove, etc.) while the sugar is boiling... you can either pick the big pieces out after you've poured onto the silpat or leave them in to get bits of spices in with the rocks...

Does anyone know if the unflavored ones are still sweet (meaning sweet without tasting like cherry, raspberry, "blue", etc.)??? If they're not made entirely from sugar they could be only slightly sweet.. like isomalt and glucose "candies"? I've done savory sugar glass before - there's just a hint of sweetness, definitely not candy-sweet. I use the El Bulli ratio of 50% fondant, 25% glucose 25% isomalt. Maybe the unflavored pop rocks are made from a similar base?

If you can get a hold of jamon iberico de bellota - a slice on pan con tomate is simple, unchallenging, and crazy-good, depending on the jamon...