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So, I'm looking at the two charts, and Baldwin seems to suggest that which is intuitive to me. That is to say that cooking a meat in slab form should take longer than in cylinder form for each thickness of meat. On the other hand, Modernist seems to suggest that, for all but the largest sizes, cylinders should take more time. This makes no sense at all. In fact, Modernist estimates that a 15 cm diameter cylinder of 3 cm thickness would take 1:21 to cook to 55 degrees, while a slab of at least 5x length and width of the same thickness would take approx 50 minutes. But this makes no sense because the slab is at least 15x15 cm, by definition, and in that case you could inscribe the cylinder in the slab. But by doing this, by cutting off the meat and making it smaller, without changing thickness, you would increase the cooking time! That seems impossible. I am sure I am reading the whole thing incorrectly, but I would really appreciate an answer from somebody else who has puzzled over the same issue. Thanks!

I live in Silicon Valley, and worked for years in high end restaurants in the SFBA. I think Coi is smoke and mirrors, terrible food with a totally undeserved reputation.

I'm finding that in using the low acyl gellan in various recipes I have had a lot of trouble with the gel clumping right after it comes to a boil. There is no doubt that the powder was dispersed well, so that isn't it. Does anybody have experience with this or other suggestions as to why it is happening?

Koki from Japanese Knife Imports found me a set of these from Mizuno. It goes down to 8mm or so and they nest like bowls. I don't remember how much it was.

So, I made the mushroom ketchup today. It tastes great but it looks, well, like poop. Not as in it looks bad, but it resembles the stuff. Is this what others have seen.

Steam oven is useful here.

For the life of me I cannot find the recipe for mushroom stock, which is referenced several times in the book. Help?

Much obliged.

Question here on Sodium Hexametaphosphate. Is there a specific food grade example that should be used, or is any version of SHMP, like a lab grade, going to be what I need?

New member just wanted to say that the book is fabulous -- a real credit to the cooking world and to the authors. I've cooked a few recipes and all but one went quite smoothly. Even the one which was a bit hinky turned out delicious. Moving from the recipes to the comments on traditional cooking, I want to try the new, old braising style, or what Myrvhold et al call real braising. They suggest cooking the braise covered under the broiler, but do I read this to be the method for the entire time, or just for finishing. In other words, am I to broil my Staub for an hour and a half for this method of braising? Many thanks and bravo!