nickrey

As you saw above, I've substituted to make the recipes already. And they worked extremely well! My substitute for the centrifugal recipes will be to freeze the lot and then put it into the refrigerator overnight in cheesecloth and let the liquid drip through into another container, leaving behind the residue. Please don't get lost in the whizz-bangery and lose sight of the fact that there are some incredible recipes and techniques here that will lift our game in cooking substantially. I've got the electronic preview but cannot wait to get my set of books to free up my use of this incredible resource.

Prawn (shrimp) cocktails on iceberg lettuce with Marie Rose sauce. Oh, wait a minute, they're starting to make a resurgence.

Thanks Erin. This was a fascinating insight into your part of the world.

Reporting on my first excursion into Modernist Cuisine cooking. The recipe was Guinea Hen Tagine. Challenges: No guinea hen (they say to substitute chicken, so no real drama. Must think next time to substitute spatchcock rather than full sized chicken: Absolutely no chance of getting the photo like theirs) Dehydrator needed (I have one of those, hooray. They say to dehydrate at 50C for 35 minutes. My dehdrator only works at around 35C. Oh well, need to put in oven on silpat as a substitute). Pressure cooker needed for cooking chick peas. Again, I have one of those. Cooked up the chick peas. Realised my chick peas still had skin on. They won't work in dish. Down to shop to get canned chick peas. Argan oil used in dish. No idea what this is. Glossary says it's very rare and expensive oil made from the Moroccan Argan tree. Forget about Argan oil. Beldi olives. What the ... is a Beldi Olive? Check glossary. Looks like Kalamata will be ok as a substitute. Tagine with no couscous. Who does tagine without Couscous? Cook some Couscous to go with it. It's definitely not going to look like the picture. Processes: Make Dark Chicken Stock. But I have Chicken stock. Decide to use own chicken stock. It was made more or less from Heston Blumenthal's recipe. That should be ok as a substitute. Pickle Figs. This one I did to specifications. Wow, they are delicious. Note to self: try not to eat them all before dinner. Make Tagine Base. Need ginger juice for this one. Ginger juice? Ah, I have a cold press juicer. Will use my microplane to grate ginger and then put it through the juicer. Works like a dream. That ginger residue looks interesting. Perhaps I'll dehydrate that to give me a ginger powder. Dehydrated it and then powdered it in a mortar and pestle. This Modernist Cuisine thing looks like it will be fun. Sous Vide Guinea Hen: As mentioned above, am using chicken: the Jurassic Park equivalent of guinea hen. It's never going to look like the picture. Make puffed chick pea salad: As mentioned above, used bought chick peas. Dehydrated in oven at 50C. Seemed to split appropriately. Hopefully this is going to work. Marinated Navel Organges: Says to supreme Navel oranges. What the ... is supreming? Decide to cut into segments removing connective tissue. Looks like the picture: this must be supreming. Moroccan Batbout Flatbread: This should be easy. Wait a minute the flat bread calls for yeast. Is it a flat bread or leavened bread? Oh well, follow recipe. Seems to puff up a lot but it should be ok. Assemble dish. Heat plates to make it through the assembly phase. Cut bread. Drain Chicken; remove yoghurt covering (used too much but seems to have worked). Place everything on plate. That looks nothing like the picture but it does look inviting. Lessons: You will need to substitute and improvise. The dish was absolutely delicious. The flavour combinations were exceptional and touches such as the crunchy deep fried chick peas and sour figs really turned expectations on their head. The book is written by exceptional cooks. Not to mention them having fantastic presentation skills. Next time, I'll use spatchcock and make the photo plate more 'restaurant' and less 'home cooked meal.' But know what? It may look scary with all the processes involved but the outcome is well worth the effort.

Must not like Australians, I can't get through on either link.

It is included in the quirky "Book of Sausages" by Antony and Araminta Hippisley-Coxe. The ingredients that they list are: Leg of Pork Pork Back Fat Salt Saltpetre White Peppercorns Ground White Pepper Quatre Epices Garlic Hog casings The sausages are strung so as to straighten out the natural curve of the casing and dried in a cool, airy place for 3-6 months. I realise that you said it was a fresh sausage so perhaps the makers omitted the saltpetre/sodium nitrate and refrigerated it to dry it slightly while the ingredients melded. The authors tend to list ingredients and give quirky, vague directions (or no directions at all) but at least they had the recipe. ps. As for most sausages, the recipe is not set in stone so it is likely that there would be significant degrees of variation between individual producers, such as adding pistachio nuts.

Noodles are quite often made from mung beans.

Looks like Gingko nut Erin.

In addition to what Chris has mentioned, chamber vacuums are used in the books for much more than vacuum sealing. As people have played with the machines in Modernist Cuisine, they have used them to enhance flavour by vacuum infusion and also to manipulate texture. The team have included many such uses in the books. For example, one of the first recipes in the plated dish book is for a mushroom Swiss burger. The picture of this has been available on the Modernist Cuisine website for a while. A chamber vacuum sealer is used twice in this recipe in two different ways: to infuse lettuce with smoke flavour (by pulling a vacuum until the water boils then leaving to infuse); and to compress an heirloom tomato.

Thanks so very much Will. I've ordered the book and will report back about its contents. And thank you LT Wong, any of those recipes would be great. Ce'nedra, I know you have a strong interest in regional Chinese cooking so am not surprised that you have also been sourcing books on this area. That Fujian book looks very interesting as well.

I’d also like to share my first impressions of the book. My intentions were to browse quickly through the contents, set up a framework for reading the content and then drop into some detail. Good in theory; totally impossible in practice. As you’d expect from the previews and photos that Nathan has shared with us, the book is visually stunning. You turn the page and go “Wow” and then you just have to start reading some of the detail on the page. Reading through Nathan’s previews, I have been tantalised by the times when he has whetted our appetites by saying “we cover that in the book.” Looking at the book in front of me, he and the other authors cover the foreshadowed topics and many, many more. One of the first words that came to mind when reading through the first book was “encyclopaedic” but this also brings to mind a dry writing style, which is not the case with this book at all. The authors and writers here explain difficult concepts in easy to understand terms and then use the information to explain why things happen in cooking as they do. For example, salt does not dissolve in a non-polar liquid such as oil. If you coat the salt in oil before cooking it on a tomato, it doesn’t dissolve thus giving a satisfying crunch when it is eaten. This is attributed to Herve This in the book, which brings me to the next point: The authors acknowledge that they are codifying an area that was pioneered and has been worked in by many others. The sources of the ideas and methods are clearly identified and named, including when the recipes have been adapted from or based on the work of others. In saying this, I don’t mean to take away from the depth of contribution that the authors have made. They acknowledge what has gone before, synthesise it, ask what questions have yet to be answered and then go off and find these answers and give them to us. Just a quick additional word on the writing style. It is some of the best technical writing that I’ve seen. These are people who know how to get inside a topic, understand it back to front, and then recount it in terms that are not only understandable but also memorable. The research underpinning the writing is obviously exhaustive. They’ve read the books and synthesised the information so you can use it. A number of commentators have balked at the price because I suspect they think it is too much to pay for only one book. Saying that it is five volumes plus a kitchen manual answers this criticism to some extent. However, having looked at the content and owning well over 300 books on cooking, I’d have to say that the content covers that of at least 15-20 specialist books in an integrated, synthesised whole. Try buying them individually and see how much you would pay. I should also mention the index. At 59 (large) pages, it is extremely comprehensive. They have also added such touches as having a separate “Parametric Recipe Table,” which provides “best bets” for key processes such as making risotto, brining, smoking, lowering pH, spherification, etc. Which brings me to a question: Nathan, if you are reading this, are there any plans for creating an electronic version of the indexes and tables so we can do smart searches to find where to look within the books for our needs? I’m really looking forward to trying some of the recipes and getting back to you all with the results. But in the meantime, there’s a really interesting section on the physics of food and water that’s calling me…

Having had all my original recipes and other interesting ones scrawled on paper and stuck in books for years, I've finally invested in an IPod app to enter them into. After reading the reviews, I settled on Paprika Recipe Manager. Seems good. Now to find the time to transfer them all in...

I also had the duck, the oyster omelette, and a vegetable dish. They also had a special menu to die. From this, if memory serves me correctly, I had stingray; which was a cold dish. My father, who accompanied me, was brave enough to try this, which was a real achievement.

Having been lucky enough to sample the food at the T-Chow Chinese restaurant in Adelaide, South Australia, I've developed a strong interest in this form of cuisine. It is variously known as Chiuchow cuisine, Teochew cuisine, Chaozhou cuisine, or Chaoshan cuisine (Chinese: 潮州菜) [descriptions and Chinese characters from Wikipedia]. My problem is that I have not been able to find any cookbooks on this style of food. Some cookbooks have a few recipes but I've not been able to find one that has more than this. Can anyone help out?

Perhaps it's vadouvan

I did Beef Wellington last night and it turned out perfectly. The meat was cooked for a few hours at 54C, chilled and put in the fridge. I didn't sear it and don't think it really lost anything. Followed Gordon Ramsay's recipe and did a mushroom pate around the meat, wrapped in prosciutto. Because the meat just had to heat through, I cranked up the heat on the stove to around 240C instead of the recommended 200C. Removed the Wellington when the pastry was appropriately browned. The meat was uniformly coloured and looked and tasted magnificent.

Plain white. They make the food look much better in both real-life and photographs.

I'm glad Pam gave us a week off to recuperate before this blog. Really looking forward to your cooking and some shots of the NY food scene. Sam, that Pagliacci score would have been a dead giveaway. I note from the original post that it was artfully edited out

Try soaking them in milk Shelby.

I cook 100g of dried pasta per person but serve less than this. The remainder is for second servings or subsequent recycling as a follow up meal (typically reheating quickly in a frypan).

The last picture has the feel of someone who caters. Is it ScottyBoy?

Yep. Was thinking of Ardberg, the Ard mountains.

I was thinking that your interest in charcuterie would skew the use a lot.

Salty is a description placed on malt whisky. The ones that typically show salty characteristics include: Aberfeldy, Glenugie, Laphroaig, Scapa, Ardmore, Blair Athol, Clynelish, Glenmorangie, Port Ellen, Talisker, Ardberg, Bowmore, Dufftown, Glenfarclas, Glenlochy, Glenury Royal, Jura, Lagavulin, Longrow (Springbank distillery). Source: Lapointe, F.J. & Legendre, P. (1994). A Classification of Pure Malt Scotch Whiskies. Appl. Statist. 43, pp. 237-257

I've got one of those benchtop brass corkscrews (picture here). Of course virtually all Australian wines these days come in screw caps so the thing is buried in a cupboard.