pep.

Sorry, no access to a venting pressure cooker, so I can't compare. But Modernist Cuisine says the same thing (although it references the Cooking Issues post, so I'm not sure that they their own experiments on this one).

Ad 1: What's the question? Ad 2: AFAIK no European pressure cooker uses 15 psi as normal operation pressure. Like most pressure cookers over here, the Fissler uses 0,8 bar (approx. 12 psi) for its high pressure mode. Emergency pressure relief happens at around 1,5 bar (approx. 22 psi). So there is some leeway to cook at a higher pressure setting than recommended. All the European models I have seen use a spring-loaded valve and therefore do not vent. Ad 3: Sorry, can't help you there. According to Amazon.com, they are still selling the Blue Point which has been phased out in Europe. But I'm getting my new 10 liters Fissler Vitavit Edition delivered tomorrow (to assist the 4.5 liters Fissler Blue Point when stock making). Ad 4: It doesn't prevent you from doing small amounts (especially if you cook in some kind of container or with the non-perforated inset, but the bigger cookers are very heavy.

Sambal Oelek is of Indonesian origin.

Subject to heat, yes, but not to oven temperatures.

I just got a mail from Amazon UK: My copy of Modernist Cuisine is finally on its way to Austria. I should have it in my hands on Wednesday :-)

Olive oil slowly solidifies in the fridge (via a "blobby" stage). However, when returned to room temperature, it is fully liquid again. If the oil is in a glass bottle, this can take some time (unless you use a hot water bath or some other method of heating).

By the time I'm eating it, it is room temperature, although the little blobs seem a bit cooler. It's possible that Danish refrigerators are run a bit cooler than US ones, and that that may be responsible for the results (5C/41F is standard). if there are still undissolved blobs, the oil is not at uniformly at room temperature.

I've got a recipe for a very nice smoked salmon terrine (called a "mousse" in the recipe) that contains canned tuna to mellow the taste of the salmon. ~ 150 g smoked salmon 1 can of tuna au naturel 250 g sour cream mayonnaise of 1 egg gelatin Make a 1-egg mayonnaise (or use the commercial stuff *shudder*), add the salmon, tuna, sour cream and mayonnaise in a bowl and blend with a stick blender. Soak the gelatin, melt it and stir in some of the fish base. Add the gelatin mix to the fish base, blend some more. Pour everything into one or more oiled bowls or terrines. Allow to set in the fridge. Decorate with parsley and eat with good French white bread.

Since I didn't even think about not crushing the coriander, I just made a powder from everything. I mixed each ingredient with a part of the salt and powdered it in the spice mill accessory of my Bamix. The resulting powders were mixed in a separate bowl to ensure an even distribution of all ingredients. Otherwise, with 0.32 g of pepper being just 5 pepper corns in 400 g of salt, some of the duck legs might not have gotten any pepper at all. Everything's packed now and resting in the refrigerator. On a side note: Has anybody got a good non-chinese duck soup recipe? I'd like to do something with the carcass besides basic stock and the search hasn't turned up anything so far.

That looks like simple calcium deposits (which build up fast with "hard" water). You can vinegar or citric acid to clean the kettle (or some commercial product).

How about increasing the amount of orange zest instead?

I've thought about that, too, but I fear that if I leave out 4/5th of the coriander seeds, the flavor profile will become unbalanced. Either way, the flavor of the cure will not be the same. On the other hand, most traditional confit recipes do not specify more than bay leaves, black pepper and maybe thyme. Some are even given with just salt! Compared to that, even without most of the seeds, the MC cure will still be more flavorful than the traditional recipes.

Any good substitutions for the coriander seeds? I have some, but not 40 g (which I'd need for the 2 kg of confit I plan to make). I even went to the nearest supermarket just before closing time, but their spice selection leaves a lot to be desired. No coriander there. With my planned timetable, I could just barely fit in the 10 hours brining and 8 hours cooking on Friday and Saturday. However, I'd like less stress and that means a sensible substitution that fits in with the rest of the recipe (orange peel etc.). A short list of what I've got in sufficient quantity (not exhaustive, so feel free to mention other stuff): pimenta (allspice) fennel seeds long pepper sichuan pepper piment d'Espellete various chiles cumin caraway

Yes the scaling is correct for 200 g of salt. There is a typo. There should be 20 grams of coriander seeds, not 20 seeds. Good luck, Paul Thanks, Paul! I assume the books include a suggested amount of the cure mix per kg of meat? I'm a bit wary because the 41.5 g per duck leg seem to be too precise to be simple per item estimates. Greetings, Peter

Since Amazon UK has postponed delivery of my MC order to October, can anyone confirm for me that this confit cure mix recipe is an accurate scaling of the MC one (or at least that the salt to meat ratio is correct)?

There may be some other bacterial toxins that are heat resistant, but botulinum toxin is destroyed by cooking. PS: That's not an endorsement to eat meat that has been held at petri dish temperatures for an unknown time.

Rybí Trh has some vegetarian options that could work as a main course (mushroom risotto etc.). I would recommend it over Francouzská restaurace. If you happen to visit the former Jewish Quarter, stay away from U Golema! Even though the food is not that bad, it's a tourist trap. They only serve beer by 0.3 liters and rip you off on the extras (salted almonds on the table that are not included in the cover charge etc.) .

I got the same mail a few hours ago (my order date was June 9 after I had cancelled my original amazon.de order - the UK price at that time was a lot better than it is now. I'm starting to think I have to order in the US. Unfortunately, with a US$ 400 purchase, that is a customs nightmare.

You could always make Lammbeuschel (a sort of soupy ragout of lungs and heart of lamb). Beuschel by itself is made with veal in Austria and would be similar to the Bavarian Saures Lüngerl mentioned by OliverB. If you are interested, I can look up a recipe for Lammbeuschel.

Oh, and by accident I made candied chiles once. I used some of the dried Twilight chiles to flavor the syrup for "black nuts" (i.e. candied green walnuts). After three days or so, I noticed that the dried chiles hat reabsorbed a lot of moisture and sugar and had become translucent like candied fruit. I chopped them up and used them to decorate the Aztec Hot Chocolate ice cream. I'm thinking of doing this with strips of fresh chiles when the ripen in the near future.

I recently made the Aztec Hot Chocolate ice cream from this adapted recipe (the original one is from The Perfect Scoop). I went looking for a metric recipe after I read about it in one of the eGullet ice cream threads. I used some home-grown dried NuMex Twilight chiles (seeds and all). Very nice!

Are you sure the two models have got the same number of revolutions per minute? With the European models, the 120 W model has like 12000 rpm and the 250 W has 19000 rpm (all the models have two speed settings, the numbers are for the higher setting).

With the different Bamix models, the wattage determines the rpm of the blender (or maybe the other way round ;-).

Since no-one has offered any recent recommendations, we went by instinct and visited two restaurants: Rybí Trh on Thursday (July 28) and Francouzská restaurace on Saturday (July 30). Rybí Trh At Rybí Trh, my girlfriend and I both had the 7-course fish market menu, which costs CZK 1490 (slightly less than US$ 90) per person. There is also a 9-course tasting menu for CZK 2450 (about US$ 144). I think there was the possibility of a wine pairing, but since it was our first evening in Prague and since we both were already a bit tired from travelling, only I had a glass of wine. Compared to Vienna, I thought the wine prices were outrageous. Wine prices are not listed on the webpage and I can't find the receipt, but even the house wine (Moravian red, white or rosé by the glass) was more than CZK 120 (I think it was 150). This seems to be a characteristic of the Czech Republic: (good) beer is very cheap, while even domestic wine is rather expensive. As for the setting, the weather was good and we dined on a terrace or dais in the courtyard. As usual in such circumstances, the table was a bit small for two people, but since we were dining rather early (around 18:30 IIRC), the waitresses simply requisitioned an adjacent table for keeping our water bottles. The amuse-gueule (if one can call it that) consisted of lobster butter, a white mousse of smoked trout and regular butter. Nice, but really nothing to write home about. Now for the actual menu: Tuna tartare with beetroot carpaccio, avocado foam flavoured with Tuscany lavender, and quail’s egg I would have liked the tartare a bit less salty, but overall the combination worked very well. It also included lots of greens (what I would call "Wildkräuter" in German). The quail egg was only half an egg, with a cooked white and perfectly creamy yolk. Whether it was cooked sous-vide or conventional, I don't know, but I don't think it was poached. Baby carrot soup, cold spring baby carrot soup with ginger and vanilla Very refreshing, more sweet than spicy. Garnished with greens and edible flowers. Didn't taste cooked, so I guess the base was raw carrot juice. Glazed Black Tiger shrimp with liquorice risotto, dried Parma ham and Beurre blanc foam Nice ensemble, I especially liked the risotto. Again, decorated with greens and flowers (I guess they had lots of those at hand ;-)) Lime sorbet Simple, but refreshing. Good. Wild Sicilian sea bass with crispy skin and Barbera olive oil, with sweet parsnip confit, nettle stuffing, fresh baby spinach and saffron-vanilla sauce The best course for the both of us, although I didn't care much for the nettle "stuffing" (it was more of a small slice of bread dumpling). The fish was great (moist, but with a crispy skin, just like the menu promised), as was the parsnip confit (decorated with a crisp parsnip chip). Variation of cheeses with confited apricot The usual assortment of cheese: chèvre, some blue cheese, etc. No revelations, but nicely presented and good quality (as far as I can judge that). Cantaloupe marinated in a vacuum, “Mascarpone” cheese mousse and mango sorbet Unfortunately, the dessert was a bit of a let-down. The vacuum-marinated cantaloupe was diced like a tartare, but it simply didn't taste very interesting. The "mascarpone" (I guess the had to use quotation marks because it wasn't actually Italian mascarpone) didn't have much taste at all. The mango sorbet was good, though. Edited to add heading with restaurant name (and correct some errors).

Looking at the instructions on the product page it seems that one needs to fill the canister. I, on the other hand, only fill mine about 1/3! Strange. If you use less than the nominal capacity, you have to add more NO2 cartridges to get the same level of pressure.