ChrisTaylor

James Squire's Golden Ale. Had it a million times before but not for the longest time. Like Coopers, for a mass market (hey, it kind of used to be ... not mass market, but that's all changed, right?) local brew it's pretty good. I mean, when I was given a $50 Coles-Myer voucher and saw that Coles had cases going for $50, well, that wasn't something I needed to think long and hard about.' One thing that's a shame about Squire, tho', is the seasonal specials. They used to be really interesting but have, in the past, 3-4 years, become somewhat ... insipid things. Gone are the days of say, Rum Rebellion. Mass market success isn't always a good thing for the punter.

This. If you don't have an ice machine, place a large metal bowl of water in the freezer for a while. Take it out before it freezes soid, obviously, but it'll give you an ice slurry to which you can add extra ice cubes and etc.

I have a batch of the sous vide buffalo wings sitting in a brine at the moment. The flavoured oil, too, which serves as the base of the mayonnaise, is ticking away on the stovetop.

It's acceptable. Indeed, it's one of the numerous advantages of cooking things sous vide. When I served turkey breasts to my family, for instance, I brined and cooked three turkey breasts a couple of weeks prior to the dinner. I served one straight away and put the other two in the freezer. I thawed them and then reheated them (well, let them come up to room temp and then deep-fried them) on the actual day. I didn't notice any difference in quality or texture. So. Yeah. Seal. Cook. Chill. Don't take the item out of the bag. Reheat however you like. You'll be fine.

20 hours? It takes between 3 and 5 hours to hit the specified temperature. Go by temperature, not time. That 3-5 hour thing? That's a guide. It will not take 20 hours. After 20 hours you'll be a fair way towards biltong. If I was serving it for lunch I'd put it in the oven, after the sear, at about 8am.

Too. This. Is. A. Monster. This could go head-to-head with Gamera and Godzilla and come out not even battered, not the least bit bruised. The person who made this, that he or she, is a lunatic genius.

Yeah. If you want to dip your toes in the water of mixology there are a couple of threads on starting out. Depending on your interest you'd be wanting less in the way of flavoured liqueurs (a helluva lot can be done with just sweetening agents, bitters, spirits and fruit juice) and moving more in the direction of things like rye, gin and maybe a white rum, a couple bottles of vermouth and at least Angostura bitters. Plus some kind of orange liqueur--Cointreau, perhaps. That is a starting point. You'll find some (and a couple of them might even be good) cocktails that include all of those ingredients ... but what you've unintentionally done, if you're really interested in getting into mixing as opposed to just sipping liqueurs, is buy the Dremel bits without the actual unit that drives it. I know, I know, I know. You said you don't want to buy more shit. I get that. But just elaborating more, I guess, on the posts that basically say this won't work. In most cocktails--most--you have a spirit as a base. This is giving you must of your booze content, as a spirit is probably going to be higher in apv than, say, a wine-based product or a liqueur. This might be tequila, yeah. It might also be rye or gin or rum or a hundred other things. Certain liqueurs, wine-based products and etc are used all the time in cocktail-making, whether you're looking at classic recipes at CocktailDB or flipping through the pages of the bitters-heavy beta cocktails. Hence why it makes more sense to start with a handful of spirits (no need to have a hundred kinds of rum or whiskey initially--you'll figure out after a while if you want to go down those roads) and some oft-called for ingredients. You'll find thousands of valid uses for a bottle of dry vermouth but not too many for a bottle of creme de violette/cacao/mentha/et al.

What I ended up serving Turkey breast - brined w/ the Momofuku fried chicken brine for six hours, rinsed, sv for 4 hours at 63*C. Air dried in the fridge overnight (well, for ~24 hours). Taken out of the fridge maybe a half hour before the cooking time. Deep-fried in 190*C until the skin was crisp. Turkey wings - following the recipe from Modernist Cuisine. Protip: follow the bloody instructions and remove the ends of the wings prior to cooking them. I didn't the first time round and ended up making such a mess of things that I had to start again. Turkey sausage - well, turkey, pork and speck sausages. Meat blend, with turkey standing in for beef, and spice mix was essentially old school boerwors. Cooked sous vide then browned in deep fryer. Home jus gras - thickened w/ xantham gum and emulsified w/ liquid lecithin. I used goose fat in place of the pressure-rendered chicken fat. This recipe came from Modernist Cuisine at Home. The stock itself was a brown turkey stock based on a brown chicken stock. Various root vegetables - using the 'best bets for sous vide vegetables' table in Modernist Cuisine as a guide. Roast potatoes - self-explanatory enough, I guess. Christimas pudding - from a restaurant a friend worked at. Rum and raisin icecream - from David Everitt-Matthias' Dessert Vanilla and saffron creme anglaise - from Modernist Cuisine at Home.

Er, with all their confit recipes I'm pretty sure you do exactly what Keith describes ... which is exactly what you do for confit in general, whether it's sous vide or traditional. Cure. Rinse. Dry. Cook. Steps two and three are as important as the first and last.

Air dry it in the fridge for a couple days then give it an initial sear.

Though the overall sodium content is only 0.1g per 100g of the product which doesn't sound much, should I still brine it? No. No. No. No. It doesn't sound like a lot but brining it twice is a bad idea.

My copy landed the other day. Cooking extensively from it this weekend. As I type this the pressure cooked pork adobo is ticking away. Or whistling away, even. I'm also making the home jus gras to serve with turkey tomorrow (turkey done in three different ways, including the cured wing from the original Modernist Cuisine) and the sous vide creme anglaise.

What I've found w/ turkey after some experimentation -- Brine for 6 hours using the Momofuku fried chicken brine. Rinse. 63C for 4 hours (we're talking about a decent sized breast here). Chill in the bag. 12 hours or so before you want to serve it, take it out of the bag and let it air dry in the fridge. Deep fry at 190C.

Mercola? Oh man. Fucking Mercola.

Those look great - I did see that recipe in Les Halles - a bit more complicated than what I'm looking for right now! I'm a total chicken head when it comes to anything involving a lot of assembly or requires dexterity. The book says the recipe is challenging, iirc, but that's only in comparison to coq au vin.

Try a B&S with a meatier scotch such as Talisker.

http://modernistcuisine.com/2010/11/a-modernist-thanksgiving/ I'm thinking of attempting this. Well, the wing component at least. Anyone, it's all very clear 'cept for the curing stage. I'm assuming that equal parts of sugar and salt at, say, 10% of the the weight of the wing (i.e. 100 grams of meat and 10 grams of cure in the bag). That'd be the way to go, yeah? Altho' given it's curing for two days, couldn't I just dump several wings plus a whole lot of cure in a plastic tub?

Revisited the Moment w/ Averna. A sexy beast, that one.

Sous vide salmon is the way to go. I'd individually seal the two portions. Sear to order. Follow the guide for time and temp in the SV Index--it's served me well in the past. Keep in mind that as a fatty fish it'll be fairly forgiving if you over sear it

I did consider shucking the capsules but I wondered if the contents were modified by some sort of gelling agent during the encapsulation process. Obviously not. Still, I found the liquid.

What if I can't get soy lecithin in liquid form? I've found the powder and the grains everywhere. I've found capsules (like vitamins) all over the place. The only place I know that sells the liquid, Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot, does so in 20kg buckets. Will any modernist emulsification agents do the work? As odd as it sounds I might have an easier time getting my hands on those. EDIT Never mind. I started poking around websites of stores that sold soap making stuff. They all sold liquid soy lechitin so it was just a case of finding one that'd ship me one small bottle of the product without making me order a minimum of $40 worth of shit.

I doubt my copy of Modernist Cuisine at Home will land on my doorstep before I need to make this: the simplified jus gras. Has anyone followed this recipe before? Happy with the results? Given I'm just going off the website and don't have access to the book (yet), I was curious about what the purpose of the soy lecithin was. To emulsify the fat into the liquid, right? Too, on the seasoning front, I'm not planning on adding salt. I made a turkey stock and unthinkingly included some of the carcass of a supermarket (i.e. pre-marinated) bird along with some unmarinated wings, necks, etc. The end result was about as heavily seasoned as, say, tare. Rather than throwing it out I froze it figuring I'd be able to use it to season a chicken stock-based 'gravy'. I assume adding seasoning in liquid form to the Modernist Cusine jus gras after the fat and starch (i.e. when you'd add salt if you were following the recipe to the letter) won't cause problems.

Sierra Nevada Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale. Long name. Nice dark ale. A bit of chocolate kicking around there. The best of the Sierra Nevada's I've tried so far.

I've had the cake. I have the book. For a hone cook it's a crazy mission. Good job.

How about the growing ... acceptance of products that are pitched as organic but are actually really disgusting? I mean, it might be organic and have magic woo power ... but if it doesn't taste anywhere near as nice as the evil version I'm not going to buy it.