sculptor

The Cuisinart seems decent but I stumbled across some references to a Sharp combination convection, steam and microwave oven that seemed amazing. However, it doesn't seem they make it any more and the people that owned it seemed to have them die at the 18 month point... I just wish they relaunched a better version that!

Sorry, a bit late... Nothing too fancy (some sous vide pork tenderloin) but I did finally try the MC carmalized carrot soup sans centrafuge beacuse I'd finally broke down and bought a pressure cooked over the Christmass holiday. And speaking of breaking down I also had to replace my old blender on New Years Day because of this recipe.

Looks close to what I've got. If you use the pressure gauge you should be able to determine 95% pressure (0.05 bars of pressure) and hit the stop vacuum button then it gets there. If you jot down the number of seconds it took to get there you can program your machine to do that. Note, too much vcacum is only bad for delicate ingredients so a little extra time at maximum vacuum won't hurt other things...

I prefer little tin foil hats... ;-) Serriously, I can't stand it when a restaurant does this... and I'm not referring to the little hats...

My wife loves cubed pumpkin steamed with pround pork and garlic... and I'm prtetty sure there isn't any other way to do this except by peeling the pumpkin first. Note, the peeling is actually the easiest part of this dish because it's not that hard to remove the peel from a 1 inch ring of pumpkin with a decent chef's knife.

Well, I'm not so sure this is something that was really meant to be cooked sous vide... Not having tried this before I can't offer any kind of definitive opinion. However, hams are typically very thick and thicker cuts of meat really have trouble getting the core temperature up to something reasonable in a sane amount of time... Remember below 125 degrees bacteria do grow and a spiral cut does not exactly equate with intact muscle tissue so you might be creating a bacteria farm...

If I might ask, what city are you in?

I was talking to the wife of the chef owner of a local 2 star restaurant and they decided to close on Sunday so they could have a day off to spend with their son. I'm not sure it's hurt their business because if you really want to eat there you adjust to meet their hours.

I've never tried this, but I've always thought it might be a good idea... I savory gratina...

Fritatas and torta rusticas... ummm....

The time I ordered "Mexican" food in Portland Oregon back in the late 70s... I should have know better... they didn't have a clue as to what they were doing and to top that I got food poisining!

A few months ago I had a glass of the house merlot in a local restuarant. When I asked what it was, I was shocked at the answer. I remember back in the day that wines by that Mendicino County vintner were basically plonk. So my question is, has in general the quality of wine improved overall that much in the past four decades or is this a case of single vintner getting his act together? Note, I've also observed similar improvements in some of the less expensive California wines, but this could of course be a coincedence so that's why I put this question out there for those with professional knowledge of the industry.

Has anybody else ever noticed how some restaurants don't seem to plate food logically? I ate in a restaurant the other day and they plated the food in such a manner that is was very difficult to eat. I turned the plate this way and that way and eventually found an orientation that wasn't totally absurd but still it was pain to eat from. So, is there an identifed way to plate food in order to make it easier to eat?

Maybe cooking sous vide and doing any searing with heat guns... it all seems like a bit of a strech.

Regarding your ethical concerns, remember that we as a species are omnivorous and we evolved eating a certain amount of high quality protein (i.e. meat.) Hence, as long as you eat sensible (modest) amounts of meat and buy it from ethical sources that treat their livestock well then I think only the fanatical can find any fault in what you do...

Aren't conventional ovens notoriously inaccurate in the temperature range discussed here?

Back in the day I did a lot of traditional Chinese stir fry but I always diced chicken and sliced beef so I suspect sliced cutlets are not ideal. I believe Chicken Florentine uses sliced chicken...

It worked out very well, though I might tone down the amount of herbs I used (I used about a teaspoon of each) next time. The leg was boned and trimmed by the butcher and I essentially ended up with three different bags in the tank. The first of which took a about an hour and a half and the other two took about an hour longer... Note, I moved the needle probe to the next larger portion each time I removed a bag from the tank. Finally, after removing the lamb from the bag I finished by searing it with a torch. I used the cooking juices and red wine to make a sauce. I've noticed in the past that if I heat the juices it causes the proteins in it to coagulate so I first cooked off the alcohol from the wine, thickened that and cooled it down before adding the juices.

Tarragon seems like a good idea to my internal flavour memories. I kind of flip back and forth between the two memories and a get good idea how they would taste together. Note, I've used grapefruit in a salad with carrots and avocado dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette but I suspect that in a savoury dish it might not work as well. You could use some candied grapefruit peel which would supply an interesting flavour without the acid of the fruit...

I didn't claim that people who had read the MC are chefs I just claimed, based on the authoritative nature of the work, that such people probably know more than many chefs. People are right that this knowledge doesn't translate into many of the skills needed in a restaurant. I've cooked enough for myself and others to know that there is a huge gulf between a professional chef and an amateur cook. I do assume that anyone in my vicinity that cooks with modernist techniques either purchases things online, directly from the manufacturer or in San Francisco because that's how I got my equipment. However, what the lack of the this equipment in the run of the mill restaurant supply stores tells me is that these techniques are not that common in practice, hence my claim. Note, just because there are chefs that don't seem to see Modernist Cuisine on their radar should hardly diminish your prestige since you do seem to belong squarely in the opposite camp.

I suspect those foodies on eGullet who have read the MC probably know more about food and cooking than 95% of the Chefs out there. Just today I tried to buy some self sealing tape to use on my Sous Vide bags and the two largest restaurant supply companies in San Jose California did not carry any Sous Vide equipment period. This means almost no restaurants in the area seem to be at all close to the state of the art.

Wow, an adventurous choice for an Easter diner. Are you going to accompany it with anything that is traditional or in some way connotes spring, fertility or rebirth?

Leg of lamb is a tender cut so I'm going to use a temperature probe and cook to a core temperature of 140. You could obviously do the same thing to 131 to get it rare. When you do this set your bath to 1.8 degrees higher than the desired core temperature. I'm just using fresh herbs because I have culinary lavender bushes in bloom.

When I was a kid I used to strongly dislike lamb. I've found the trick to making people like lamb is in its seasoning. I suspect your in-laws wouldn't even be able to tell what meat was used in Chinese style red cooked lamb. ;-)

I'm going to keep things simple. Sous vide leg of lamb rubbed with fresh lavender, rosemary and sage. Sautéd asparagus drizzled with a little pumpkin seed oil. Mashed potatoes with caramelised onions. Pannacotta with a peach and ginger compote,