KennethT

When we were in Thailand, my wife and I sampled various bugs - we thought the crickets and meal worms were the tastiest. Both were deep fried and salted. When we initially sampled them in the market, the taste was initially crunchy and salty, but then a slight bitterness comes in that was only slightly unpleasant. I would say though, that they'd make GREAT snacks to have with beer. The crunchiness and saltiness are great, and even more savory than a potato chip, and whatever aftertaste there is would be washed down by the beer. Plus, the fact that they are low in carbs, high in protein is an added bonus!

OK - the gellans have been ordered. The total with shipping to me came out to $0.1384 per gram of each, so 100g of each costs $27.68, plus the USPS shipping to you. The gellans will probably get to me by mid-next week, and then I'll distribute and take them to the post office the following Saturday. Once I know the total cost, I'll message each of you privately so you can send payment at that time.

Sorry Gellan people.. I made a math error - $100 for 28 ounces (793g) is $0.126 per gram not 0.76 per gram.... plus the shipping of course... ETA: Sorry - one more error - there's actually 7 of us looking to split the gellans, so that's like 56-57g each. I know this is getting a little low on quantity, so maybe we should get two containers of each - which will be 113g per person? Most people requested about 100g of each...

OK - I now have 6 people, including myself signed up for the Low/High Acyl Gellans. Each container has 14 ounces (approx. 400 grams), so I'm going to stop taking requests now. I haven't had a chance to write to everyone yet confirming - but anyone who has written to me by this time is in. If we split it evenly, it winds up being about 66 grams per person, which is a lot because you use very little of the gellans, as compared with most hydrocolloids (or so it seems reading MC). If someone doesn't want that much, let me know, because one of the people will take extra if available. I'm going to get the Kelcogel F Low Acyl gellan, and LT100 High Acyl Gellan, since those are brands specified in MC. It seems like the only place to get it is le-sanctuaire. Their price is $48 for one, and $52 for the other - so that's about $0.76 per gram of each, plus the cost of shipping to me, plus the flat rate USPS to redistribute. There's no charge for the padded envelope/ziplock bags for redistribution since I've got tons of padded envelopes and ziplocks are cheap. I don't know the exact cost for the shipping to me yet, as that's calculated when you place your order, but I will write to everyone to let them know the exact cost once I have it. While we're ordering from Le-Sanctuaire, are there any other CP Kelco items anyone would want? I spoke with the CP Kelco rep, who basically said Le-Sanctuaire is the only place that carries small quantities of their product. I'm sure we can save a bit in shipping costs if more stuff is shipped at once.

I am trying to get a group together to split the cost of purchasing high and low acyl gellans. We currently have 4 people in the group. I was planning on waiting a few more days to see if anyone else has any interest, and then I'll go shopping and get prices. If you are interested in joining the group, please PM me letting me know how much of each you'd be interested in. Once I have everyone's order, I can figure out how much to buy, and what the total costs will be. I was planning on putting each order into a zip lock bag, and sending via USPS in a padded envelope. Thanks.

+3 - but I go one step further by numbering the crates, and then made an excel spreadsheet with the complete contents of the freezer, and the location. So now, when I wonder if I have something, I don't have to open the freezer to find out - I can look at the spreadsheet, see how much I have and see exactly where it is. Since I don't add or remove stuff that often, updating isn't a big deal...

I don't think the prosciutto water should be a problem, primarily because you're baking the dough and the temperature of the finished dough will surely kill anything in it. Great idea btw...

I used my stovetop smoker for the MC pastrami - I don't think it's as good as it would have been in their precise smoker - but if you smoke the meat for like 20 minutes, then bag and SV, I find the smoke flavor is pretty good.

I like the idea of a hard candy, and while making the candy, if you add maybe 25% isomalt, you will add crispy-time, since isomalt is not as hygroscopic as sugar is.

Grapeseed oil is good, but pretty expensive. As others have said, I like peanut oil for roux - it adds a nice nuttiness, as well as being stable at temps high enough to get a nice dark roux.

You can also tell by weight - there are instructions in the book that talk about how to do that.

I'm looking for Low Acyl and High Acyl Gellan... anyone?

I have roughly 600g remaining of Genu LMA pectin. It cost me about $0.062 per gram. I'll share for this cost, plus shipping. I'll cover the cost of the ziplock bag and shipping bag. PM if interested.

I've done dry ice ice cream both with dry ice directly in the bowl, and in a bath of denatured alcohol. The difference comes down to whether you want your ice cream carbonated or not. If doing the direct method, I recommend looking at the dry ice first (mine came in big blocks) - if it's pure white, it's fine, otherwise if you see any dirt, just scrape it off. Then break into chunks and throw in the food processor just before addintg to the ice cream - you can get a much more even distribution that way and guarantee that there are no big chunks for someone to potentially bite down on and frostbite their tongue.

There's no problem if you're equilibrium curing - I "over cured" the beef cheeks for the pastrami for 4 days or so, while they recommended 3 and it was perfect - definitely not too salty.

So here's the rundown of the highs and lows of the last set of experiments, including the pastrami incident. Note, most of the dishes were concepts or ideas taken from MC, not necessarily the full recipe verbatim: I sampled the pastrami about 28 hours before being served to anyone, and took a sample over twice the size of any that I'd be serving... after not feeling the slightest bit sick (and I don't have an iron stomach), I decided it was safe for consumption - also I knew that I had no immune compromised people being served. The wagyu beef cheek pastrami was a huge hit. I served it with the aromatic alsatian mustard, which was a little vinegary and loose because I misunderstood the instructions and pureed the mustard seeds with the soaking vinegar. All in all, still a hit though. Sous vide braised snails with garlic puree and parsley puree. The snails were awesome - great texture. The garlic puree is very unmodernist, but rather straight out of the pages of Bernard Loiseau - you basically blanch the garlic 8 times changing the water each time, then remove the germ and puree. I added a bit of vit. c powder to keep it from browning. Time consuming, but always a hit. The parsley puree was actually "Plan D" since plans A through C were failures. The first was a parsley wafer, adapting the spinach wafer from MC. The book says to dehydrate for 2 hours, but I could only get it solid after about 12 hours, at which point, it was still a bit dense, and bitter as it's basically pure parsley. The problem may be with my dehydrator, which is basically my pilot-less gas oven set as low as possible, with the door propped open by a wooden spoon. The thermometer in my oven read about 145-150F. Plan B was a parsley meringue, adapting the beet meringue from MC. The recipe says to pipe into a 2" thick mold and bake at 195 for 2 hours. I piped the parsley meringue into a 1-1/2" mold, but after 2 hours, it was not even close to set. After 6 hours, it was drier but still quite soft. I wondered if it would stiffen as it cooled, so I took it out of the oven. Big mistake! I watched it starting to deflate, and then quickly put it back in the oven overnight. The result was a stratified meringue - airy at the top, and progressively denser to the bottom. Plan C was a parlsey air from MC, but I couldn't get it to foam no matter how hard I tried. Maybe my parsley juice was too thick, or my hand blender not at the right angle, or depth or something... I'll have to experiment more with this later when I have more time. Plan D was to take the failed Plan C in a squeeze bottle and put a drop on each portion. Wild mushroom and goat cheese "taco", where the taco shell was made using the cornet recipe from the TK smoked salmon cones. Came out great - everyone loved the texture and flavor of the shell. Cocoa dusted Aerated Squab liver torchon, scented with star anise, and hazelnut. I actually couldn't do this out of the book because I odn't have the konjac yet, so I found a video of Wylie doing this online. Mine was a combination of his recipe and techniques from MC. So I sweated shallots in butter, and deglazed with Cognac, flambeed, then added to a bag with the squab livers. Cooked at 131 to pasteurize (since I wasn't using them for another few days). Reheated then pureed the whole bag, run through tamis. I hydrated agar in hot water, dissolved in gelatin, then emulsified into the squab livers with some egg yolk. Cooled by blending basically making an agar fluid gel. Put in mason jars and vac'd, then refrigerated. This technique worked really well - I'd definitely do it again - the liver had a great gaminess and consistency, but since it was aerated, wasn't as intense as a pure pate would have been.

Bob - thanks for your summary! So, I didn't get even remotely sick from my initial portion of the pastrami, and since my sample portion was over double the size of the portion I was giving to guests, I assumed it would be ok. Everyone loved it by the way - the flavor was great, with the smoke really coming through even though I only smoked it for 30 minutes or so in my stovetop smoker. I originally commented that the cheeks were a bit dry in my sample taste, but when slicing for the guests, I noticed it was much more gelatinous and juicy - it was really excellent.

Whenever I cook something for a long time, it is common to get the smell of the aromatics (not just smoke) into the bath water. My bath is covered, so it doesn't get into the kitchen too much, but if I open the cover, you get a large waft of aroma. The aroma is definitely going through the bag - I've seen this happen on sealed bags, as well as ziplocks - but the bag keeps its vacuum, so the seals are fine. Unless you get special bags, most plastic bags are semi-permeable to gases... I know that many vacuum bags will actually allow oxygen to move through it (albeit slowly), and the better bags (and more expensive) have several layers, one of which being either a metal foil, or mylar, which is much less permeable. This is the same as the sample bags of Activa shipped from Ajinomoto - the bags are layers of plastic and metal foil - so you can heat seal it, but the metal foil does an excellent job of keeping out oxygen, which would degrade the enzyme during storage.

Salting would increase these times, but I can't tell you by how much since I don't have MC at the office to see what the salt and nitrite levels are. I hope this information will help you make a more informed decision. It sounds like you could be on either side of the maximum cumulative exposure time (especially when factoring in safety margins and the salt and nitrite levels). OK, here's the total info.... the ratio is: 100% beef cheek 225% water 7.5% salt 1.5% Insta Cure #1 This sat in the fridge for 4 days for about 1.25" thick cheeks The cheeks were then removed from the brine, rubbed, and smoked for about 30 minutes on my stovetop smoker. The brine was boiled, with foam skimmed, then strained and cooled. The smoked cheeks were then bagged with 100% of the boiled brine and cooked at 144 for 72 hours, then taken out and put in an ice bath and forgotten about until the next day in a 65F room. As an aside, I tasted the pastrami and it is excellent as everyone says... although it may be a little drier than I remember Katz's pastrami being... Most of the raves are making this with short rib, so I'll have to try it again, minus the possible bacteria... If people don't hear from me after the next 18-36 hours, you can assume I'm in the hospital!!! haha....

I wonder if 2 days at 131 is too long... I don't have much experience with it but isn't eye of round relatively tender? I think that's what is typically used raw in pho bo, sliced thin... called tai. That would account for the mushy, pasty texture. I would probably try cooking at 131 just to temp and trying it then. If it's tough, you can give it more time, but I definitely wouldn't go more than 24 hours. There's not nearly enough connective tissue in it for that.

Douglas, thanks so much for weighing in on this. Unfortunately, I didn't check the temp. because I didn't discover it - my wife did... I can pretty safely say that it wasn't higher than 65F since we keep the apartment pretty cool, and I know I left the a/c on last night - so the room temp definitely was not higher than that. I'd say I'm about at the borderline for B. Cereus and Perfrigens, based on your info, however I think I will be safe because of the salt and nitrite levels. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me either, but I'll check it once I get home, but the beef cheeks were completely cured (4 days in the equilibrium brine, with cheek thickness about 1") before cooking, not just a surface cure. I'm going to take the beef out of the re-pasteurizing bath tonight. And I think I'm going to eat a small-ish sample - since these are going to be used for 1 bit apps, I'll eat a few slices which will be double the amount that any guest would ever eat, but still not enough to seriously get me sick (I don't think). If I get even the slightest bit uncomfortable by the next day, I won't serve it. Otherwise, I think it'll be good to go - I'll just make sure to keep the portion size small!!!

Thanks for the response Maxime! I always look forward to your team's postings - it is wonderful to be able to interact with the authors of the book in this way. To everyone: I am currently aging the aromatic alsatian mustard to go with my pastrami (hopefully!), and, like Chris, misunderstood the directions and added the mustard seeds and the soaking vinegar, so the mustard is quite thin... What do you think is the best way to solve this issue? I could probably thicken the mustard with agar or xanthan, but I assume (I haven't tasted it yet) that it will be too vinegar-y.... Any ideas? Chris, how did yours turn out?

I did the same thing with six nice rib-eye's -- bagged them up with the chamber vacuum, then left them sitting on the counter! Repasteurization MIGHT be safe, but I would first open the package and smell it. You might have lactic acid build up, which although relatively benign, won't taste or smell very good. I'd say it was time to head for the local deli. Bob For sure, if after re-pasteurizing I open the bag and it stinks I'll go in the garbage... but it doesn't have to stink to not be safe... From what I gather, heading to the corner deli would not be a good substitute for this pastrami (that stuff shoudln't even be called pastrami as it's usually a disgrace) - in fact, Katz's is not far from me, and I gather they've got nothin' on this pastrami either! I was hoping to use this as an additional proof to the claim...

On a related note to Bob's issue, I made a major mistake last night. I was making the MC beef cheek pastrami for a party for Saturday, which involves brining (with nitrates) for 3-4 days, then cooking SV at 144F for 3 days - so it's a big time investment and impossible to recreate for tomorrow to say the least... So, late last night, I took the bag out of the waterbath and put it in a bowl of ice water in the sink to cool. Unfortunately, my wife discovered it still in the sink about 20 minutes ago!!!! I'm going to assume that the ice water bath had gotten to room temp or so probably about 8 hours ago or so. Granted, this is not nearly as bad as the 120F incubator, but I think it's bad enough to consider all the issues. I was considering putting it back into a 140F bath for 6 hours or so to re-pasteurize... any thoughts about this? I'm not worried about botulism, since it was done in a zip lock bag which had plenty of residual oxygen to inhibit that. Thanks in advance for everyone's thoughts - I'd really like to not have to throw these away, but I don't want to get a bunch of people sick either.

I don't think this would cause a major problem, as long as your waterbath water is clean... Did you bag the ribs with any liquid in the bag or were they dry? Did any of the bags have any air in it? I had a small leak a long time ago, and I never saw waterbath water get into the bag - but some juices came out... that was years ago, and I'm still here!