Borgstrom

I made some sous vide asparagus tonight, using Modernist Cuisines's best bet -- 15 min at 85c. The stalks were pretty thick, so I was worried it would come out too hard. But for my taste, it had just the right amount of "toothiness'. I gave the bag a 30-second dunk in boiling water (followed by a shock in cold water/freezer for a few minutes) before putting in the water bath to try to preserve the color. In the end, I think it was a fine, light preparation. However, I still really prefer grilled asparagus, with lots of brown/black marks...

Sudden burst of energy on a Tuesday night: made a salmon souffle (New Basics recipe) with the remnants of the hot-smoked salmon I made last week, plus some sous vide asparagus using Modernist Cuisine best bet (15min/85c). Asparagus looks kind of naked without a sauce, but was very nice/light after some heavy meals over the weekend.

In your blog, you say that you are making some corrections for the second printing. Do you plan on publishing an errata for those of us with the first edition?

Beef shank cooked sous-vide for 72 hours at 62C. Bagged shanks with 3 ice cubes. 10 second dunk in boiling water before going into circulator -- no funky smell when de-bagging! Browned with MAPP torch. Served with some polenta, gremolata and jus from the bag. Very good -- fall-apart tender, mid-rare. Marrow was yummy on bread!

Quite annoying, really. I had such high hopes for the show, but I've removed it from my TiVo Season Pass after the first episode. I don't know if it is his horrible people-management style, his seeming lack of knowledge or just how the program is edited, but something really bugs me about it. Their approach is everything is going wrong in the beginning, none of the techniques are working, oh the drama, and in the end everything is great, whew! Without really explaining anything or providing any educational value. Why not try spend and extra 10-20 seconds to explain why something didn't work, how you figured out a different approach? I don't think this show will do the modernist cuisine movement any favors with the general population. I'm getting so tired of food-related TV programming. I think I'll just sit back with MC and figure out what I'm going to make this weekend...

Very cool...may have to head down to Home Depot tomorrow after work...thanks for the idea!

I am deeply impressed with the design of MC, especially in tables, graphs, illustrations and recipes. They have done a great job in laying out complex information in a very clean, understandable way. Much of the design reminds me of Edward Tufte's approach in Visual Display of Quantitative Information, with an emphasis on having a high "data-ink" ratio in graphics. The table-style recipes in particular represent a new benchmark for clarity and compactness -- I hope to see more cookbooks use this approach. Congratulations to Mark Clemens and the rest of the design team!

Yeah, I suppose I'm not going to be re-creating the MC recipe at this point...unless.... I wonder how long it would take to get a Bradley delivered!

I'm attempting to make Russian Smoked Salmon (p. 3-212). Fish is vacuum sealed with cure and resting patiently in refrigerator now for dinner the day after tomorrow. This recipe, as well as the parametric recipe for smoking (p. 3-210), only gives instructions for cold smoking fish. Unfortunately, I only have a simple Camerons stove-top smoker which can only do hot smoking. The overview of smokers (p. 2-146) implies this smoker can be used for fish, but I can't seem to find any guidance on cooking times. I've made smoked trout in this smoker before; the fish was very thin and cooking time was about 25 minutes and turned out great. The wood at that point was totally turned to ash, so I'm not sure if longer cooking would have made more quality smoke. The salmon is considerably thicker (2-3 cm?), so I'm thinking it will need more time. Any suggestions? Will the Camerons be able to keep the smoke going that long?

I had a great appetizer at Zero Zero in San Francisco a few weeks back with avocado. As I recall: Very thin slice of avocado on bottom, about 1" x 2" Very thin slice of hamachi (yellowtail) on top of avocado Drizzle of olive oil (?) Sea salt Small piece of a supreme of grapefruit on top Very simple, but surprisingly good.

I have to agree that Amazon shipping estimates for MC were not very accurate. I ordered from Amazon.com on August 15, and was initially given a March 9 delivery estimate. Then on March 8, they changed the estimate to April 18. On March 10, they said it had shipped with a delivery of March 14. I actually got it on March 12! The first thing I noticed when opening the very heavy package was the quality (and "greenness") of the packaging engineering. While most things you have shipped by mail are protected by thick blocks of non-recyclable styrofoam, MC came double boxed with an extra layer of very solid but lightweight honeycombed cardboard blocks, cleanly wrapped in brown paper. While all of this packaging can be easily recycled, it's of such good quality I'm wondering how I (or my school-aged daughter) could re-use it for some other project. So far I've flipped though a few a the books, and read a few of the sections. I'm overwhelmed! There seems to be a whole culinary school's worth of information here. Actually, it will be interesting to see how cooking schools will fit this into their curriculums. I wonder if reading MC and doing lots of hands-on experimental work at home could approach a culinary school education. If so, the cost of the book is a real bargain! After I get through the "flipping-through" phase, I'll need to come up with a strategy to actually read and try to absorb the whole thing. What approach would work best? Just start on page 1 of volume 1 and work your way through?

Wah! The same thing just happened to me. I ordered August 15 and the expected delivery was March 9....until the morning of March 8: I just got my shipment notice from Amazon; MC will be in the house Monday!

Wah! The same thing just happened to me. I ordered August 15 and the expected delivery was March 9....until the morning of March 8:

I invariably make farfalle with golden beets, beet greens and pine nuts whenever I am able to get some really fresh looking beets. It's just fantastic; the whole family likes it. I haven't tried it with red beets, but I suppose you could (if you're OK with pink pasta! Toast 1/3 cup pine nuts in oliver oil, set aside Halve and slice 2 large onions; saute in olive oil until brown & tender (30+ minutes usually) Add 3 minced garlic cloves Scatter de-stemmed and sliced greens from 2 bunches of beets over onions; cover and cook 5 minutes Meanwhile peel 2 bunches of golden beets and cut into 8 wedges each. Boil in salted water for 10 minutes, then set aside. In same water, boil pasta according to directions, saving one cup of cooking liquid. Add cooked pasta and beets to onion/greens mixture, add cooking liquid as needed to moisten, season with S&P, stir in 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese. Top with toasted pine nuts. Originally from Bon Appetit.

Thanks! The bourbon-ancho sauce was really awesome -- a half a bottle of Makers Mark (2 cups) reduced down to 5 tablespoons. The house smelled like bourbon all weekend, but the sauce ended up with an incredible thick oaky/bourbony flavor that paired up well with the background heat of the chiles in the sauce and rub. This is the second recipe I've followed in Flay's cookbook, and I have to say I'm really happy with the flavor of his sauces.

I'm thinking about getting a stove-top smoker, but am concerned about the potential health risks of smoked foods. Given how popular smokers seem to be, and how many different types of smoked food products you can buy in stores, I would expect that health concerns have been addressed or safe techniques have been worked out. What's the latest word on safe smoking? Is there a definitive reference/guide?

New Mexican rubbed pork tenderloin with bourbon-ancho sauce from Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook; also with roasted red pepper sauce and cilantro oil.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! Once I get into it, I really like working through a huge pile of dirty dishes, pans, tools and ending up with a pristine kitchen/workspace. In an hour you can go from total disaster area to perfection. Must be bringing me back to my first job in a restaurant kitchen many years ago at Glacier NP... Also: Oiling a 2" maple cutting board, and seeing it transform into its original, deep-golden self. Any kind of vegetable prep with scary-sharp knives; especially turning a pile of artichokes like they were butter.

My 11 year old daughter loves to help me with dinner prep (a mis en place fanatic), but we're moving to her doing complete dishes/meals once a week. We have a deal where she is going to learn to cook 10 dishes from memory before she graduates High School. So far she does a very elegant rolled omelet with Gruyere and chives - a great way to learn heat management in the pan. Another is a very nice chopped salad with a homemade garlic vinaigrette -- a great way to develop the palate while adjusting the acid & salt balance in the dressing. Next will be a mushroom risotto -- hopefully a great way to learn patience while stirring

... Do a search for 'lactic' in the old Sous-Vide thread and you will find out more about this. Perhaps it is covered in the index. Thanks for the pointer! I actually had read all of the old thread's posts many months ago when first getting into sous vide but didn't recall that topic until you reminded me. The smell could indeed be coming from surface bacteria reproducing as the meat warms from refrigerator temp to bath temp. The next time I do long-cooked beef I'll dunk the bag briefly into boiling water before going into the bath and see if that helps.

I've had my Sous Vide Professional for about 3 months now, and have cooked a variety of dishes including beef, fish, seafood, chicken, turkey, pork, eggs, vegetables. Most are reasonably successful, some spectacularly so. But there is an issue with long-cooked beef which is bugging me. So far I've made 4 beef dishes with cook times of 24-48 hours at 56-60C. Two were short ribs following the Momfuku recipe which includes a flavorful marinade in the bag. These turned out spectacularly well both times. The other two where boneless short ribs and bone-in chuck roast, each time seasoned with just salt & pepper before going into the bag. In both of these cases the smell of the juices/meat coming out the bag was...unappetizing to say the least. It didn't smell exactly spoiled or rotten; just off somehow. The meat came from different sources (Costco short ribs; grain-fed chuck roast from a local farm) and were prepared at different times. I confirmed bath temperature each time with a Thermapen. The prep conditions were sanitary and meat kept cold until entering bath and consumed within 30 minutes of leaving the bath. The bags hadn't puffed up or leaked. I ended up eating the meat in both cases and felt no ill effects. The meat itself tasted OK, especially after being torched & seasoned. The main issue really is just the smell of the meat when it comes out the bag. Has anyone else experienced this kind of bag odor with non-marinated beef? Are marinades for SV beef important to have a more appetizing aroma? Could this smell really be some sort of spoilage and I'm just lucky I didn't get sick? (The only other SV dish I've made with cooking time over 4 hours was turkey leg confit, which was salted for some time before being bagged, and then bagged with an herb sachet. I didn't notice any off odors or flavors -- it was actually quite good.)

My Braun gave up the ghost last year. I ended up getting a Bamix Gastro 200 to replace it. I'm pretty happy with it overall, although I don't think I've yet really taken advantage of all the different blades they provide.

Percyn did scrambled eggs at 72C, though his post isn't clear on time. I'll ping him to see if he can weigh in. They look delicious. My eggs looked similar to Percyn's photo, perhaps a little looser, before going into the siphon. Coming out of the siphon was the problem -- more of a sauce than a stiff foam as I expected...should have taken photos...

I tried the aerated scrambled eggs from the Ideas in Food book today (eggs, milk, salt, butter whisked, bagged and cooked in 72.5C bath for 25min, loaded in siphon with 1 charge). Result wasn't what we expected--more of a slightly foamy liquid sauce than solid foam scrambled eggs. My only variation was to scale down from 6 eggs to 2 eggs. Has anyone else tried this? Are these the expected results?

My 11-year old daughter and I did some SV egg experiments over the holiday break. She loves poached eggs over toast, where the yolk is liquid enough to spread easily. We tried 62, 62.5, 63, 63.5 water baths for times between 45 and 90 minutes. The egg was left in the shell during cooking. We found the 62C egg cooked a minimum of 60 minutes produced the best results -- a lightly set white with a thick liquid yolk with an almost honey-like consistency. We found differences in consistency between the 45 min version and the 60 min or longer versions. The 45 min 63C yolks were similar to the 60 min 62C yolks, but at 60min the 63C yolks had set up too much and weren't liquid. Since one of the benefits of SV cooking is not to have to worry too much about timing, we settled on 62C as our go-to temperature. De-shelling is pretty straight-forward -- crack egg on hard surface, lift half of shell off, "pour" egg out of bottom half onto toast. Sometimes part of the white will stick to or remain on the inside of the egg shell, which can be scooped out with a small spoon. For a more professional presentation, you can pour the egg first onto a small plate and separate the stuck-on bits of the white from the main egg to get a more perfect, smooth, white ovoid.