Mjx

I wasn't around for your last blog, so I'm looking forward to this!

My very thought; if it wasn't clear that it isn't the case, I'd be guessing it was you!

I'm looking forward to seeing this too. I'd planned on being all over this topic asap, then got so slammed with work, I'm barely in the kitchen. Frustrating.

I'm hoping Mette or one of the others who actually live in Copenhagen can come up with something specific (I'm writing from Jutland, but I visit Copenhagen fairly often, and inevitably end up trying to find somthing tasty and reasonable to eat); all I can say is that your best bet is to find some friendly member of the hotel staff who has a legitimate appreciation of food, and ask for recommendations for places they'd grab lunch, for example. Keep in mind that Denmark is expensive, so 'good value' is going to run to more than it does in, say, Germany or Italy (e.g. a plain hotdog from one of those chain stands will run about DKK 25, currently USD 4.30), so you'll need to adjust the baseline cost for casual food accordingly.

I'd have to say Chimay's offerings, but I don't drink it very often; even one bottle of it gets me pretty hammered.

Continuing to prove that the concept of 'too sweet' is essentially incomprehensible to me (ChrisTaylor, please avert your eyes): It doesn't taste remarkably of coffee, so much as plum pudding, distinct prune/raisin/candied fruit notes. Which is fine by me, to be perfectly honest.

Thanks, guys! This gives me something useful to work with, particularly with regard to the question of leakage.

The use of sous vide interests me as a technique, but I do have reservations about the bags; I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of generating more non-biodegradable waste. I've heard and read a bit about resuable bags, however, and would really like to hear what any of you who have experience with them have to say about them. Just to be clear, I'm not criticizing the use of single-use sous vide bags, and am definitely not trying to kick off a debate on this point (since my feelings about this are just that: subjective feelings): I'm just curious about the disposable sous vide bag as a product, and how using it works out. Thanks in advance!

Tangentially, pie crust is not my forte, either, but I've had excellent results with the CI recipe for pie crust that replaces a part of the water with vodka; at the risk of being tedious (not many things are more tedious than yet another suggestion for something that consistently crashes and burns on you, but...) have you had any luck with that one? The custard does look good. I'm a curious: how much does a sous vide rig figure into the MCaH recipes? I have $250 in amazon gift certificates and have been wavering on what to get, and this is looking increasingly attractive... but I don't have a sous vide rig. Yet.

Right now I'm looking at a tin of coconut milk, a pomegranate, some orange flower water and an arry of gelling agets, trying to figure out how to make this all come together. I'm wondering whether the fat in the coconut milk might interfere with gelling, but then again, that doesn't seem to be an issue with panna cotta, so optimistic. Dave, I really love your selection of decorative moulds, wish I had something like those, but mine is probably going to be a big white blob.

The flavour will change a bit if it's heated, although that may be worth it if it makes the process easier (since it's going to be heated anyway), but couldn't you just grate the fresh apples (in a food processor, possibly), then press the hell out of them in a chinois or something? It should be pretty quick, unless masses of apples are involved

I'm thinking that a rich panade would help quite a bit, or maybe some mushrooms? Recipes for meat loaf made with game (also usually very lean) might be a good starting point.

Bison meat loaf sounds great, but we're still talking cattle, so you may want to check that your guest can actually eat it.

Unless the corn syrup has some other function in the recipe than adding sweetness (it would probably say, if that was the case), I think you can safely skip it. Hot dogs in Denmark have a virtually identical texture to typical US ones, but are not sweet, and I have to say I really do prefer them (and I like sweet things); the meatiness and savouriness come through far better.

Regular (not high-fructose) corn syrup has a relatively weak sweetness, compared to golden syrup, which is far sweeter. I don't care for the flavour of corn syrup, but if you use golden syrup you might end up with pork candy (depending on how much of it is involved).

As far as I recall, MSG doesn't have to be listed separately, but can be bundled with 'spices', 'seasonings', or '[natural] flavours', so your hunch is probably correct (but it's pretty easy to get, so you're not out of luck).

Anyone planning on giving a gelatina encapsulada/artistica a go? I'm completely fascinated by these, although I know that it could be argued that they're pure kitsch, but as is the case with many kitsch things, a tremendous amount of painstaking labour is involved in creating them, and I think these could be made interestingly tasty, and really lovely. Anyone tried, or at least eaten one of these?

Life is short. Bring on the butter! Qualifier: If we're talking real (not fluffy, not sweet) corn bread corn muffins, make that bacon fat!

Dave, care to run off a short list of what this category covers? I'm planning on giving spherification another go (my first effort yielded mostly a muscatel-flavoured glop, I'm pretty sure I can top that). I love gels and I have a variety of gelling agents (e.g. gelatine, konjaku, alginate), so I'll be playing with a variety of them. This is going to be great, and I'm hoping to also see the interesting things people do with eggs and tofu, and as well as the traditional gelled dishes and modernist takes on this.

No idea of whether or not it's petty to feel this way, but it's possible that they just feel they could never come up to scratch. Especially if you tend to talk about a food a good deal, and to be highly critical (in both positive and negative ways), they may have received the impression that whataver they did, it might seem sub-par, by your standards. Perhaps you could suggest their being the ones to host a picnic (or something of that sort), which is implicitly casual?

My go-to practice in this sort of situation is to do something a bit out of the ordinary with the seasoning, then stuff the meat into empanadas. These days, I look through Modernist Cuisine's v. 5 for inspiration. What I often end up with is a sort of combined strategy that yields interestingly seasoned meat (e.g. pureed quince/hokaido with pomegranate-juice+chicken-stock reduction, seasoned with honey, saffron, and cayenne) that I use to fill empanadas (e.g. buckwheat-flour-based; gives a cement grey crust, which sounds horrible, but is really strking against a vivid yellow-orange filling, and tastes brilliant), or serve with rice or wild rice.

No microwave? Clearly, the Electrolux R&D kiddies didn't read Modernist Cuisine.

Depending on the colours you want, you can successively add colour: tint a quarter yellow, and when you've got about half those piped, add red, and you've got orange; start with red, pipe those, add blue, you've got purple, and so on.

Well, there was also: Beef carpaccio, the chilly maroon flesh stretched out below . . . radish and celery slices that had started to curl, tasted of refrigeration and surrender. . . a white flap of flavorless squid was pulled over a length of octopus leg like a shroud; . . . frigid white beans . . . were crunchy at the center. Roast chicken tasted . . . (like nothing) . . . a muddy, shapeless swamp of porcini. A long log of Dover sole under a sheet of bread crumbs had neither the texture nor the flavor that might justify charging $49 for a fish stick. Soft green bell pepper and watery peeled tomatoes . . . were draped like old newspapers over and around a chunk of striped bass. Summer corn soup . . . tasted almost nothing like corn.

Still, they were happy with the front of the house, and they didn't think everything was lousy..?