nickrey

Just made up a country terrine with pork fillet insert and pistachio. Terrine lined with prosciutto. Cooked sous vide. Learnt that you shouldn't pull a large vacuum while trying to seal a terrine as the filling oozes out (thank heaven for stop buttons). The rest of the forcemeat went into some rather delicious sausages.

As poaching is by definition gently cooking items immersed in liquid, I'd be surprised if your food was other than poached in texture. Sous-vide cooked chicken will never taste like fried/grilled chicken as the meat is cooked the same all the way through: In fried/grilled it is typically overcooked on the outside moving to properly cooked on the inside. My personal preference is to cook chicken breasts at 140F (60C), probably for around 1 1/2 hours. If you want a more toothy texture on the outside, either use a blowtorch to sear or heat a frypan up to the highest temperature you can get and sear the meat on both sides before serving

Mandarin Duck (or is it Duck a la Mandarine?). Served with Asian Greens,

I don't defrost them at all. Bury them in the resting risotto as you add the cheese (and butter, if used) and the residual heat will both defrost and cook them to a perfect al dente texture.

I've been reading more about this issue since this topic was started and it seems that it is not a new one. Yes, there are some reductive properties under aged screwcap wine (slight sulphurous, burnt match, flavours). These are not present in wines that are capped using cork as a closure. The cork proponents seem to jump on this as a reason to stick with cork (Ha! See we told you all along). But, wait a minute. Cork still has a huge failure rate. It is so variable in performance that aged wines from the same case, stored next to each other in the same conditions, can be poles apart in taste. So we have a closure that is traditional and has huge flaws. Then we have a closure that is "modern" and has one, small, identifiable flaw. Were I not committed to tradition, I'd definitely choose the one that is close to perfect over the one that is further away. Thus, screwcap wins on the evidence provided. Were I to buy cork and suffer from the extreme variability, I'd be entitled to feel ripped off by producers trying to sell me produce that is sealed with a defective material. However, in countries that are tradition bound, I'd expect a lot more justification for not using screwcaps because they have some reductive properties. It appears that if a cork replacement is not perfect in every way, it cannot be seen as a proper replacement for cork, despite cork being a significantly more inferior closure in terms of variability and spoilage.

It's nice to see a company going back to a closure that has a 2.5 to 6% failure rate or higher.

Per Møller and Peter Barham are the editors of a new on-line journal publishing "interdisciplinary articles on flavour, its generation and perception, and its influence on behaviour and nutrition." Cutting across disciplines including neuroscience, genetics, food chemistry, sensory science, psychology and philosophy it provides a peer reviewed forum for insights into how flavour is generated and perceived and how it in turn influences behaviour and nutrition. This is a source for those of us with academic proclivities who want to know the why as well as the what and how. The journal can be found here.

That's interesting, I cut the sugar in the pickle recipe back by about two thirds to make it edible. Seems Chang has a sweet tooth.

It is interesting then that Jiro said that Joel Robuchon had the best palate that he had ever come across. He wondered how good be could be if he had his palate. I caught it on Qantas airplane movies. Very enjoyable but the subtitles are a challenge to read on a small screen, especially when they were white on a white chef's jacket.

There's a little thing called economies of scale that leads to the other items you mentioned being cheaper. I'm sure that the cost will decrease as uptake (leading to higher production and competition) increases.

Matt, I thought you must have misplaced the decimal in your post. Most likely you are talking about French Press rather than espresso but I thought you used a Rancilio so I'm confused. When I make coffee with my Miss Silvia, I always use a double basket which when properly filled takes around 30g (or 1 oz). This makes two espresso shots of around 30g each. So a traditional espresso uses 15g coffee per oz, not 1.5. My personal favourite is to use the double basket and pull a ristretto (around 20g) which means 30g of coffee to make a 20g (2/3 oz) coffee. The main reason for drinking ristretto is that you can avoid sugar as the bulk of the bitterness comes in the second part of the pour (check it by pouring 20g in one cup and the last 10g in another and comparing taste).

Seeing the champagne quotes above brought to mind a martini quote from Dorothy Parker. "I like to have a martini, two at the very most, after three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host." eta. Ah, I see it is a repeat. It is worthy of it though.

Got a picture that one of the members took of the meal. Here it is:

Hi Josh, Welcome to eGullet. The temperature differential that you had shouldn't have affected the breasts. I've never had meat "expand and become spongy in texture." It almost sounds like you got some water in there and the meat absorbed it but I can't work out how this would happen. My advice would be to try again but try brining the meat overnight before drying it and sealing it in the bag. This will add flavour if the chicken you buy is bland. Use the water immersion method and be careful that you seal the bag properly. It may be me but I always take off the skin as it does strange things when cooked sous vide: try it without the skin next time. The chicken will be much more moist than any that you have had before because it has not suffered from contraction which squeezes moisture out when it is cooked at a high heat. Stick with it, the product is more than worth it. Thighs typically are cooked at a higher temperature to take into account their different texture.

Things emerge. They get a new name to differentiate them from other approaches (eg. Nouvelle Cuisine). People accept the techniques into their cooking repertoire. Once it reaches critical mass, it is just "cooking." The name then becomes associated mainly with the more excessive expressions of the approach and subject to ridicule when new approaches emerge that are more attractive. As acceptance matures, everyone forgets where the new techniques came from when they become simply "techniques." For some techniques in molecular gastronomy, we are at the critical mass stage. For others they are insufficiently adopted and the name lingers. Once they pass fully from the early adopters into the mainstream, we will see a natural demise of the term. It's a waiting game.

Given the fat in lamb shoulder chops, I'm not sure they'd be that nice cooked at anything less than 140F for a reasonably long time period.

Perhaps aging pork would get rid of some of that ghastly water some processors inject it with. With pork, I prefer to get higher quality meat with more taste generated through feed used and farming methods. I'm not sure how much aging will add. As it's a white meat, it's possibly a bit like aging chicken: better done on the hoof than on the shelf.

The only other thing I'd add to mm's post is to master the basics first. Make stocks, learn what pastry feels like, learn what seasoning does to the taste of food and when it is appropriate to add it (eg add vinegar just before serving to brighten up a dish, add it too early and it spoils). One book I'd recommend is "the total Robuchon." He covers the basics much better than most. Be prepared to follow recipes fairly closely at first until you know what is happening, then modify to your own style. Try reading Barb Stuckey's book "taste what you're missing." This book will help to educate your palate to taste and analyse dishes you create and those that others cook. When you eat out, try to work out how a dish was created. If you ask educated questions, you'll be surprised how much chefs will chat with you about their technique. Aim to improve all the time and you will be surprised where you go. Good luck.

You may remember these posts of prawns (shrimp) from my eGullet foodblog. We don't have a shortage of availability nor quality. They are expensive but worth it. On the other hand, if I want to add shelled prawns to a dish, I often use flash frozen prawns as I did last night in a prawn and chorizo paella. They were added at the end of cooking when the dish was resting and by the time the dish was served they were both thawed and cooked through. If they are thawed and/or added earlier, they are particularly unappealing.

Truffle season here in Australia. Had scrambled eggs with microplaned truffle shavings on toasted rye sourdough this morning.

Add them frozen right at the end of cooking. The heat will defrost them and the residual heat will cook them through such that they will have good mouth feel and taste. As long as they were flash frozen, you shouldn't have an issue with the quality.

If you want to do a one-pot meal, traditional methods are probably best. However personally I'm moving more toward cooking the various ingredients in the way that brings out their best and then combining them to give a product that has complexity of flavour and texture that cannot easily be achieved in normal cooking. If you are going to prepare your vegetables sous vide, cook them at the higher heat that brings out their best. Sear the meat to get a Maillard effect then cook low and slow to bring out the best of this item. Continue with all the other items (eg. caramelisation of onions, cook chopped mushrooms in butter, etc.) Once all items are cooked to your satisfaction, combine them. Let them sit for a while so the flavours can blend, then reheat and serve. This is not difficult cooking nor particularly time intensive for the cook but it does require planning. Good luck.

I read the book from cover to cover (or, more accurately from location 1 to the end as it was an e-book) but didn't do the experiments as I was typically travelling while reading. They look great for a training course on taste though; I may adapt them and combine them with some of the sensory experiments from psychology to demonstrate flavour and taste to others.

This. Authentic seems to have a new meaning. Surely he is talking about the best US version of this pizza. Seems horribly ethnocentric to someone sitting at the other end of the world.

Is this a result of some chefs trying to stack the food as high as possible to give an idea of volume?