Wayt Gibbs

Copies of MCAH are on their way to Europe and will be distributed to booksellers throughout the UK and Europe by Publishers Group UK and Grantham Book Services.

We are quite proud of the tabular style of recipe presentation we developed for MC. In our initial design studies, we investigated many different approaches to presenting recipes, ranging from traditional narrative formats to very graphical formats such as that used on the recipes in Cooking for Engineers. The final format at which we arrived combines, we think, the concision and ease of scanning of CfE-style recipes with the clear linearity of numbered recipes and the scalability of ratios, as used frequently in baking and championed by Michael Ruhlman. We think this format is an improvement for many kinds of recipes. We hope that it catches on, and we encourage others to use it.

To clarify, this error appears on page 5·XXXVIII. The value in the third row of the "Common Conversion Values" table was incorrectly truncated. It should read: J kcal 0.000239 Thanks for pointing out the error.

As the editor of the book, I can assure you that we're thrilled whenever readers cook from the book and blog about how the recipes turned out, what they learned, what new directions they took them, etc. In fact, we set up a cooks forum at http://modernistcuisine.com/cook/forum where readers can post questions for our research cooks and each other, share results and ideas, and upload photos. If you'd rather write about your experiences with MC on your own blog, that's great, too. If you make it a regular thing, we'll even put a link to your blog on our website. Every recipe in Modernist Cuisine is the product of a substantial investment of research, time, money, and talent, so we do ask others to respect our copyright and stay within the bounds of fair use, which have been discussed earlier in this thread. But Modernist Cuisine is intended to be a launch pad for creative cooking--so if you want to take one of our recipes to the next level, make it your own, and write up that new culinary idea in your own words, please do!

Thanks for your interest. The MC Cooking Lab is contained within the larger Intellectual Ventures Laboratory, and as such is not open to the public for events. If we do host any public events at the lab in the future, we will post advance notice on our blog, so you may want to subscribe to receive blog updates by email. You can edit your profile to enable that option.

The complete recipe for Sous Vide Rare Beef Jus--along with backstory on its creation, tips on selecting the meat, and a step-by-step video that illustrates how to use a centrifuge to clarify the jus--is now available in the Recipe Library. We're looking forward to hearing what you think of the recipe, and what dishes you find go well with the jus.

I made the recipe for Strawberry Gazpacho (5-277) a couple weeks ago. It calls for both citric acid and malic acid. I found citric acid (organic, even) at Whole Foods in the bulk section. Malic acid was trickier to acquire, but I did eventually find some at a store in Kirkland that sells beer- and winemaking supplies. I had no luck finding a local source of fructose or glucose syrup DE40, so substituted ultrafine sugar and corn syrup. The soup turned out great.

I second the recommendations of wd~50 and Momofuku Ssam Bar (if you're going with a bunch of people, get the entire roast pig butt). Jean Georges at 1 Central Park West is also amazing.

Mac and Cheese has been one of the most discussed recipes from the book so far. Coauthor Maxime Bilet has already answered several questions about the recipe on eGullet's Cooking with Modernist Cuisine thread. He, along with several other eGulleters, noted that you can probably save the cheese in the freezer for about a month, and explained that the use of carageenan makes this possible. Later in the thread, however, he does note that if you are using all the cheese right away, you can omit the carageenan, but details some of the benefits of the constructed cheese. We hope that answers a few questions, but if not, please ask! We'd also love to see what you have done with your leftover cheese!

That recipe mistakenly omitted a crucial ingredient. In the ingredient list, "Water 250g 208%" should appear before "Cane vinegar" and should be added to the mixture in step 7. Step 8 is correct as written, provided you add the water. We apologize for the error. We will add this to our errata and will correct the recipe in future printings.

Anyone who ordered the book from Barnes and Noble but hasn't received it yet will want to check out my new blog post on that situation. We don't understand why B&N has been sporadically cancelling orders and some B&N reps have been giving out misleading info to customers, but apparently they have. One eGullet member reported that B&N claimed not to have received any copies of MC yet, which is simply false. This situation frustrates us as much as it does the customers, I assure you. We've been told by the powers that be at B&N that they are reaching out to every customer who has ordered the book (starting with those whose orders were erroneously cancelled) to fix this. If you ordered from B&N and received an order cancellation notice, and don't hear from them next week about reinstating the order, please email your order confirmation slip to info@modernistcuisine.com, and we'll do what we need to to make this right.

Modernist Cuisine research chef Grant Crilly answers: There are several thing to consider when cooking a steak (rib steak) sous vide. One is the thickness of the meat. If it is much thicker than an inch or two, I would not preseason it. In the amount of time that it takes to reach your core temp, the salt will toughen the surface of the meat and remove lots of moisture. A second consideration is which cut/rib along the rib primal does your steak come from? Steaks cut toward the front of the animal contain a larger portion of the tender muscle known as the “deckle” or “cap.” In such cases, you might want to separate the muscles and cook them at different temperatures (a procedure we describe in the book). Toward the rear of the primal, the eye increases in size and starts to become the New York. You can cook a steak of that kind in one piece with no problems. You have several approaches to remedy the fat problem. You can cook the meat at a slightly hotter temperature, such as 58 °C / 136 °F, for a touch longer. Doing this helps to soften the fat in a rib eye quite a bit. The average rib steak is a touch more tender at this temperature anyways. I usually use this approach at home. Alternatively, you can remove the fat completely. Or you can sear the fat, and place it back into the bag. Yet another option is to pierce the fat with a pin many times to help rupture the cell walls that contain it. In the book, you'll find an illustrated step-by-step procedure for preparing duck that shows how to do this with a dog brush. (Be sure to use a new one!) I myself always prefer to sear after the cooking, for a couple of reasons. First, you lose your crust if you presear; it sort of steeps in the bag like tea. The color in your sear will pale and leach out, making for a pretty sad-looking piece of meat. If you want the flavor, slice off a little bit, and sear those pieces, then place them in the bag. Second, searing just before serving brings the surface temp up considerably. You can fry the steak, place it in a very hot convection oven, or sear traditionally in a very hot pan. Always take care to sear in a hotter-than-normal method, however, so that searing occurs as fast as possible. This helps get it to the table at a good eating temp. As for warming the plates, that is always a nice thing when serving hot food. One last thing to keep in mind with a cut like the New York and rib steak: the muscle fibers run parallel to the thickness of the steak you are cooking. Yet most people still cut along the fibers on the plate at the table. If you as the cook simply precut the steak at a 45° angle, you will effectively tenderize the steak a great deal. A cheaper steak prepared this way will often enough seem more tender that a more expensive steak prepared and cut in a typical way. For a large roast, cutting very thin slices achieves similar results. You'll find many more tips and techniques like this in the book.

At the beginning of chapter 10 on The Modernist Kitchen, you'll find four pages of tables that list: Must-Have Tools for the Modernist Kitchen Handy Special-Purpose Tools Inexpensive but Invaluable Modernist Tools Classic Tools for Modernist Cooks Each table ranks the gear in priority, lists some common brands, and gives (2010) price ranges. The chapter also opens with a photo of the kitchen at The Cooking Lab with a numbered key that identifies each piece of equipment in it. Listed right at the top of that first table are water baths, unstirred or circulating. Also high on the list are liquid nitrogen, a humidity-controlled oven (combi oven or Cvap), a vacuum sealer, and a homogenizer. The vast majority of recipes in the book can be made with just those tools plus standard kitchen items.

That depends a lot on what you're most interested in--why it is you decided to buy the book. But because we expect a lot of readers will have the same question, we're planning on adding soon a "Getting Started with Modernist Cuisine" area on modernistcuisine.com that will offer some suggestions, as well as guidance on where to pick up any special equipment or ingredients you may want to try. In the meantime, there is a Cooking with Modernist Cuisine thread going on eGullet that you may want to keep an eye on, as readers post about their experiences trying various techniques and recipes in the book.

It does, in several different ways. Perhaps most important, Modernist Cuisine explains, in a clear and accurate way, how pressure and humidity affect almost every kind of cooking technique, from baking to smoking to sausage-making. The sample pages at the start of this Q&A give a glimpse of one facet of the explanation of humidity, but its role is covered thoroughly as a dominant theme that reappears in multiple chapters. The effects of atmospheric pressure also come up in several places throughout the book. So for those who want to develop a really deep and accurate intuition about the actions of these two crucial variables in cooking, this cookbook can give you that. More specifically, the authors have included marginal notes to accompany quite a few recipes throughout the book with tips for adjustments you might need to make at higher altitudes.

Who needs knives when you have high-powered lasers! I'm kidding--although laser engraving of food has certainly come up here as an idea. Each of the chefs on the MC team has their own personal set of knives, which they've chosen over the years based on their own preference. The brands vary. We do have some tentative plans to start writing up reviews of various kinds of cooking gear, from water baths to freeze dryers, on our blog at modernistcuisine.com. Since there seems to be interest, I'll add knives to the list of equipment to evaluate. You may see those starting to appear sometime in March.

We don't have videos, but Vol. 2 does include a fantastic, two-page annotated cutaway photo of a pressure canner and jars of multicolored tomatoes (which are also shown in cross section). It's one of my favorite shots in the book. To answer the earlier question, yes, we include a photo of our instrumented canner.

Despite the "old-school" reputation of canning, I'm pretty confident in asserting that Modernist Cuisine covers this technique in greater detail than any other recent general cookbook does. You'll find discussions: in chapter 2 on Microbiology about the biology of the pathogens that are of special concern in canning; in an 18-page section of chapter 7 on Traditional Cooking that includes step-by-step procedures for safely packing food, pasteurizing food with boiling water, and pasteurizing food using a pressure canner; in chapter 9 on Cooking Sous Vide, in a section on pasteurizing food for storage; in the 30-page Preserving section of chapter 12 on Plant Foods, which includes recipes for salting, pickling, and fermenting fruits and vegetables. We did indeed run experiments in which we instrumented jars of food with thermal probes and recorded temperature profiles as cooking proceeded. We even constructed a custom pressure canner that passes multiple probe leads through the lid without letting the steam escape. We ran experiments with jars varying in capacity from 8 oz to 32 oz, and a table in the book presents the cooking times we found necessary to reach sterilizing temperature for foods packed hot or cold. (The times vary by food type; we give times both for convecting foods and for conducting foods.) The book also offers general cooking guidelines for those cooks who aren't able to make an instrumented canner. Appropriate cooking times depend on many variables, and the authors explain the role that each of those plays.

Chris Young, one of the authors of Modernist Cuisine, wrote a recent blog post on "doneness" that addresses part of your question. You can find that at http://modernistcuisine.com/blog More generally, throughout the book the authors advocate cooking in ways that are highly reproducible. One of the biggest advantages offered by modern equipment, from water baths and combi ovens to homogenizers and centrifuges, is the ability of these machines to transform food in precise, highly repeatable ways. There will always be a highly subjective component to cooking, and we wouldn't have it any other way--that is what creates the freedom for chefs to express their ideas and aesthetics through food. But once a cook has refined a dish to (her idea of) perfection, she should be able to hit that target every time. Doing that means putting every variable that matters under control where you can, and understanding which other variables (e.g. air pressure and ambient humidity) do matter but aren't always under control. Modernist Cuisine is the first cookbook that really explains all of this in a detailed, clear, and useful way.

Anjana Shanker, one of our research cooks, suggests cooking farro like you would pearl barley. See the instructions in the Ragout of Grains recipe excerpted above and the row for pearl barley in the parametric recipe.

Taking your last question first: yes, the book devotes about a dozen pages to a comprehensive discussion of curing, both wet and dry. It also offers recipes for cure mixes and for dishes that include cured meats or seafood. More generally, if you're curious about whether a particular topic is covered in Modernist Cuisine, the quickest path to an answer is to search the index, which can be downloaded from modernistcuisine.com. Food safety is such an important and widely misunderstood topic that we devoted two chapters to it in volume 1: chapter 2 on Microbiology for Cooks and chapter 3 on Food Safety Rules. These chapters survey the latest and best scientific research on the major sources of foodborne illness and examine the (often surprisingly thin) scientific support for official cooking guidelines promulgated by the FDA, USDA, and other authorities. In cases where the official guidelines simply cannot be squared with the science, such as recommended cooking temperatures and times for chicken, the authors boldly propose a simplified set of cooking standards that are based on the scientific literature. We may soon release an excerpt of this chapter, and if we do I will post a link to that here. Widespread misconceptions about nutrition are tackled in chapter 4 on Food and Health. That chapter explains why it has been so common for notions about nutrition to gain wide belief (even government support) despite little or no evidence to support them. To help readers understand which of these connections between "bad" foods and health have been proved and which have not, we reviewed the results of nearly all the large-scale, well-designed clinical trials that have put long-held conventional wisdom about fat, fiber, cholesterol, and salt to the test. The conclusions were very surprising. The Food and Health chapter not only reports the results of these rigorously controlled trials, but also explains why medical researchers have such a hard time reaching reliable conclusions on these questions. And it teaches readers how to evaluate for themselves whether the outcome of a particular study is trustworthy or not.

I think what you are seeing there is a "parboiling" not a completed dish. No, taking the arborio rice example, it looks like it says parboil for 6 minutes, and then finish on the stove for 3 minutes (unless I'm reading that page wrong). And in the instructions, it says that you can hold the parboiled rice, or you can continue straight to the stovetop finishing, with no mention of any associated changes in time or technique. I'd encourage you to try the recipe and let us know how it works for you. Step 6 refers to finishing steps that are spelled out in an adjacent example recipe for Risotto Milanese. After draining the parcooked rice (step 3), cool the rice, return it to the pan, add 150 g of vegetable stock for every 100 g rice, and cook for another 3 min for al dente or until desired texture is achieved. Then remove from heat, and fold in any additional ingredients, such as cheese, butter, saffron, and/or pepper. Season with salt.

Modernist Cuisine includes an 88-page chapter on Cooking Sous Vide that is the most comprehensive guide yet published to this remarkably useful technique. You'll also find hundreds of sous vide recipes and tips throughout various chapters in the book. The sous vide chapter includes an invaluable two-page troubleshooting table and covers in detail various ways to compensate for some of the limitations of low-temperature cooking, such as blanching and searing strategies, the use of inert gas to avoid off-flavors when cooking certain foods sous vide, and sous vide infusion and extraction techniques that are useful for making sauces.

Yes, we include a recipe for Root Vegetable Risotto on page 3•309.

I'm also intrigued by the technical aspects of the book production. There seems to be a lot of black backgrounds such as the Parametric Recipe for Risottos. Why did you make this choice? Does this account for much of the heavy amount of ink used? It does look nice and stark for some of the photos but for the recipes it seems unnecessary. About the color gamut of the inks, are the inks able to produce a total amount of colors greater than the 16.7 million colors available on a typical 24-bit computer screen? Though I see that purples are not so great. This is the first I've heard about this ink and printing technology; is it only beginning to be taken up by the publishing industry? Three type families are used throughout the book. We used Arno Pro from Adobe as our serif face. Optima Nova from Linotype is our primary san serif face. Whitney and Whitney Condensed from Hoefler & Frere-Jones are used as secondary san serif faces for captions and labels. We arrived at these choices after examining literally hundreds of other options, both old and new. The only way to judge the colors in Modernist Cuisine is to look at a printed copy. Digital images of the book cannot faithfully recreate the experience because printing produces colors in a fundamentally different way than computer monitors do: by subtraction rather than addition. The range (aka gamut) of colors for printing and digital displays overlap to a great extent, but not completely. On bright, coated paper like that used in Modernist Cuisine, photos printed with cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks can be richer in reds, yellows, and light blues than digital displays can show; but monitors reproduce more of the deep blue and green areas of the spectrum. Type is much easier to read in printed form both because it is much sharper (the resolution is far higher) and because the contrast between black and white is much greater. One of the reasons we selected Artron as a printer is that they were one of the first printers in Asia to offer both Chroma Centric inks, which expand the gamut of colors achievable, and stochastic screening, which uses a sophisticated algorithm to determine the pattern of colored dots that make up each photo and effectively increases the sharpness and detail of the images. We took a very thoughtful and careful approach to the design of the book; legibility and ease of navigation were two of our highest priorities. Black backgrounds do appear on many pages. Sometimes that is because the photographs would not be as clear or compelling on white (it's hard to see fog above a steaming pot on a white background!). But more frequently we used black as a way to signal that a group of pages belong together as a unit and/or a page is not part of the running body text. The main narrative of each chapter always runs on white pages. To ensure legibility, any text that appears on black is set one weight heavier than it normally would: body text is set in semibold rather than medium, heads in bold rather than demi, etc. For each in navigation, each chapter in the book has a unique highlight color, all of which were selected with legibility as well as aesthetic appeal in mind.