Andreas

It is some help, since that tells me that the problem could really be the eggs, not just me doing something wrong... Your theory could be right btw.: After looking it up I now know that pasteurized eggs are heated to ~72°C, whereas they start to coagulate at ~60°C. Modernist Cuisine suggests that this temperature only needs to be applied for ~10 seconds, but during the heating and cooling process parts of the yolk could already have set. After you had those problems, have you tried to find out how much pasteurized yolk to use instead of one fresh yolk?

The last few days I tried to get a recipe right for a chestnut creme brulee. Since I needed a bigger amount (about 20 ramekins) I bought pasteurized yolks since I did not want to have 20 egg whites in my home fridge. I forgot to measure the weight of the yolks during my experiments (measured everything else by weight, just not those...) so I looked it up in various sources. According to "On food and cooking" a US large yolk should have ~17g, according to Wikipedia an EU Large yolk is ~19g. I normally use medium yolks so I figured I couldn't be that wrong using 19g. I substituted the yolks in my recipe 1:1 for pasteurized yolks. I calculated my egg weight, made my creme, waited for it setting...but it did/does not really set. It's more like a light custard. On my other tries I normally got a nice creme that would pretty much hold it's form. Here the ingredients for reference: 150g cream 13g vanilla sugar 30g sugar 75g chestnut puree 2 yolks Method: Heat cream, sugar and chestnut puree until near boiling, strain through sieve. Mix yolks with vanilla sugar, temper the eggs and mix with the cream. Fill into ramekin, bake in waterbath @ 110°C for ~40 minutes. With the fresh yolks this yielded a really nice texture, the ones I have now are more like a thick soup... I checked my "calculations" for scaling the recipe up those seem to be right. Do pasteurized yolks set differently than fresh ones? How to convert between fresh and pasteurized yolks?

I think you might have a hard time finding a study that deals with the original question as a whole, simply because there are just too many different plastics. As other have also already mentioned, it's not only the plastics, but also the additives/paint etc. To really assert if a specific product is safe can be a pretty time consuming task. Then there is also the issue that a (or many) test(s) for toxicity don't say anything about other adverse effects that this material might have. For those who are not used to it, pretty good resources for papers are e.g. PubMed or google scholar. The downside is always that interpreting those studies can be a pretty daunting task on its own. I'm used to reading papers, but since medicine/chemistry is not my field I'm mostly lost when looking at single papers. The one thing that is interesting though is looking at meta analyses. Here is one concering BPA's influence on reproductive organs: An updated weight of the evidence evaluation of reproductive and developmental effects of low doses of bisphenol A. Enjoy!

I've recently tried one of Heston's chicken recipes. There are TV snippets for two different chicken recipes on YT, I tried the one that takes 2 days instead of 3. (brining over night, smothering in butter, cooking at 90°C to 60°C core temp, letting it rest for ~45 mins., crisping up the skin at max. oven temperature). IMO it comes out extremely juicy and tender (compared with a standard roast chicken). During the first oven phase (at 90°C) the chicken does not brown at all, the temperatures are not high enough. The melting butter seems to be sucked into the skin. In the second oven phase (max temp), the skin lifts of from the meat, and crisps up really nicely. I would speculate that the air cussion between meat and skin isolates the meat somewhat from the high oven temperatures. I can't exactly compare this chicken to a sous vide chicken breast since till now I always made my sous-vide chicken breasts in an 80°C bath (in a pot on my stovetop, monitored manually). I'll soon try one with my new immersion circulator, but it might take some time... Compared to my sous-vide chicken breasts, the roasted ones are even juicier. So all in all I would say that the bird definitely is better with this method, but I can't say how a sous-vide one compares. On the other hand it might not be that practical to sous-vide a whole bird. The question would also be: how much of a difference does e.g. 60°C vs. 90°C roasting/water bath temp. make.

Sokrates seems to have coined this one originally, just the other (wrong ;-)) way 'round. I don't know who fixed it: Thou shouldst live to eat; not eat to live.

If I think about the most essential items for cooking those would definitely be my Chefs Knife (Global G4), my Tongs and my Rubber Spatula. Going from there most likely my skillets. There are some Tools that I like to have handy though, like salt box, pepper grinder etc. All along the lines of tools you mentioned. But I think one of the most underrated tools is a good cheese slicer (yes I know that modern people buy cheese pre-sliced). I absolutely love a good piece of bread (crackly crust!) with a little bit of butter and a few (a few more) slices of cheese on them, preferrably with a little bit of (freshly) ground pepper.

I'm still searching for the 'perfect' solution... At the moment I work with a mixture: a handwritten notebook: I love that because of the nearly 'ancient' feel to the idea, as well as being able to have something 'solid' in your and + you don't need a PC, the downside might be that you can loose it because of water (maybe use a waterproof book?), fire etc. + is it not easily searchable a wiki that I use mostly for keeping recipes that I share with friends (and for keeping ideas somewhere to find them), nice and easy, but I need the computer to use it (which is on most of the time anyways, but still...) It is searchable, but maintaining takes much longer than writing something down on paper magazines that I scanned, OCR'd and saved as a PDF, very nice for searching, placeing cross reference and comments, etc. downside is that it takes much (much!) work to do that and the results are not always very nice (especially when text is above a picture, not solid color). I would love if you could get PDFs directly from the publisher, they have them anyways, especially for the free magazines that many of the Austrian supermarkets have as a marketing tool... magazines & books that I still have on paper, often very nice to look at (especially if someone thought about typography etc.), hard to search through (I know that there are online platforms for that, but I still like the feeling of real paper, but I should try those) The combination is far from perfect...but atm it seems to work (waiting for the supergau)

I wondered about sharpening the knife. Since I use a waterstone to sharpen my knifes I would be a little bit concerned about coating e.g. that residues of the coating make the stone unusable. But after seeing the knife...this won't be a problem, you can't sharpen that knife that way anyhow... (+ I suppose you don't really need to sharpen that, especially as long as you only cut watermelons) But I would be concerned if it was a chef's knife, santoku, etc. Regarding the lettuce: as far as I can remember, the lettuce is not browning because of the metal itself, but because the lettuce cells are damaged more then by ripping the lettuce apart (ripping causes the lettuce to mostly come apart at the cell walls). (Maybe that's why the ceramic knife is better in that regard ). I searched a little bit on the internet, but I could not find any reputable resources for this theory, so maybe just a food myth? Edit: I just found a paper that suggests that browning is not different from cut to uncut lettuce. They not explicitly specify the material of the blade, just that it was a razor knife, which suggests that it was metal. Paper: Phenylalanine ammonia lyase inhibitors control browning of cut lettuce

In Austria the inspections themselves are surprise inspections (except when there where some things found at the last inspection. If the problem is not too severe then the business owner has some time to fix the issue). If the issues found are too severe, the business will be closed until the issue is resolved and the premises again inspected. The thing you mentioned that I would also like very much is that those inspections would be made public. I don't need a webpage where I can look at detailed reports, I would prefer e.g. a label at the door where you see when the last inspection was done. The business owners should get this label only when everything was according to the regulations. I know this is only an idea if we are talking about e.g. a butcher that sells directly (yes we still have those small shops...but there are less of them every year). Would you really look up a slaughterhouse after seeing the mark on the label? If something is wrong...close them down, then we don't have to look up if the meat is "ok" or not. There might also be another issue: how many people are qualified to assess a restaurant/slaughterhouse on the pictures? In the restaurant it might be easier, but even there stuff might look awful that is indeed clean and ok. And you also have to say that current inspections still seem to get some stuff right if you look at the numbers... (not saying that they can't get any better though)

I think you got me the wrong way around... It's about the cooking AND the end result. While when climbing I can be perfectly happy with not ascending a route, I can't stand dumb mistakes that make the cooked end product worse... I think I might skip v4 and read a little bit through v5...

The funny thing, I'm one of those crazy climbers... (Not El Camp, but still...). Never looked at cooking quite this way though: When climbing pretty much the journey is the reward, when I cook I can get pretty angry at me when I make unnecessary mistakes... Something to learn maybe...

First off, I think many of the chefs on TV might use the term just because someone else used it - and it sound very nice. What is interesting is that everyone will be able to relate to his food being "honest". If you read through the thread you find a bunch of different definitions (or better opinions), but on one thing everyone (except Mjx ) would agree that they like their food honest. Who in his right mind would like dishonest food? I don't want to accuse all the chefs of just doing clever advertising, they might all have their own opinions what honest food is (just as we do), but to me it seems like a pretty clever meme. Apart from that it is used in Austria too, just translated... @chris: I do care where my food comes from because in many of our neighboring countries the farmers are allowed to use a lot more steroids etc. While I'm not necessarily of the opinion that every antibiotic is extremely bad, I don't really want to eat a cocktail of 20 different steroids. Since it gets increasingly common to import food and than relabel it (changing the country of origin), which is still legal in Austria, it's nice to have a complete trail. (Or buy your food directly at the farmer, which is still pretty common here) @Kyb: reading your thread I might be inclined to say that McDonalds food is that different from a chicken. If I understood you correctly you where saying that a chicken is "more honest" because you know what it is. This is also pretty easy to find out, e.g. McDonalds themselves published the content a while ago (can't remember the stuff, it was ~4 lines long). One could also say that this would not make the food "dishonest", just the people selling it. I'm pretty much with Mjx on that one, I don't really think that food itself can be intrinsically dishonest. All of the definitions that where provided principally defined being "honest" as something that we already have words for: over-engineered, uberspicy, traditional, etc. If we already have well understood and defined words for something, why invent a use of a different word? Sounds like advertising to me... PS: this is one of my first posts here + English is not my native language, I hope I'm not being too offensive...

Thanks for the Blog, the final onion tarte looks amazing! Would you say that it was worth the hassle? (Regardless what you say, I'll try it anyways... But I still have not red through the book, I'm currently at v3)

I think semantics should not be our problem, I think we know what we mean Btw. yes if you use a relays it will not break for some time when controlled "correctly" (though even 3000h are not that much considering the 72h cooking marathons those device have to withstand). I would not use one because of the scenario that might happen when the relays malfunctions and gets stuck, and the heating element run continuously on full power. But on the other hand...for the electronics I design it's not a requirement that they are as cheap as humanly possible...

@sreeb: I would consider PWM a power regulation, especially when the thing you are driving in the end is as slow changing as a 20l pot of water. + I hope they do not use a traditional relays to PWM control the heating element

The lasagna looks quite nice, but I'm not sure if I like the pasta layer on top. I normally top my lasagna with a layer of bechamel sprinkled with Parmesan. The Parmesan gets nicely golden and crusty and the bechamel acts as a "base" for it. Still I think I'll have to try it this way once too... Do you fell that the pasta sheet on the side help with lifting the lasagne out of the pan? Or is there another reason for those?

I just got a follow-up mail where the guy from VacStar said something interesting: He told me that they do not do any power regulation on the input power to the heating element (For cost reasons). I have asked for clarification, since this does not really go well together with his comment that the unit is PID controlled. A PID controller does not really make sense if you don't do any power regulation... You are surely right that it won't hinder any cooking process, but I like to know what I'm getting, hence I followed up on the report that the controlled temperature was oscillating. Even with a cheap PID controlled setup you should get a stable temperature. Another reason for my curiosity: I'm an electronics engineer, so it's always interesting what I get when I want to buy something I will also order the unit and report when I get an answer or the unit. (edit: pressed send button too early)

I just got the answer: Maybe just a tuning issue?

nickrey: I also don't think that a temperature variation of 0.2°C should matter that much... The only procedure where it might matter that comes to mind would be "6x eggs" cooked at the higher end of the 60s range. But cooking in that range seems to be quite inaccurate anyhow (at least when I look at the errors graphs in the appropriate paper). My question was more along the lines: "Does the unit really work as advertised", and that it seems to do, at least according to pep. One other question that came to my mind would be if you can configure the controller parameters yourself + is it PID controlled. From the description it might be a bang-bang controller. I sent an email to VacStar asking about the control algorithm, I'll post their reply when I get it.

The one thing that I often have to laugh about are the pronunciation tries of most of the scotch distilleries. But on the other hand...Gaelic is not really that easy to pronounce... my favorites: . Glen Garioch : glen–geery (river valley in mountain or hill country) . Laphroaig : la–froyg ("Hollow by the Big Bay") . Ledaig : lay–chuck ("The Small Slope") . Poit Dhubh : posh–doo . Strathisla : strath–eye–la ("The Valley of the River Isla") . Te Bheag : chay–vek . Auchentoshan : ocken–toshun ("Corner of the field") (Copied from a list I collected over some time, in the brackets are the translations/meanings, I do hope the pronunciations in the list are correct )

@pep. It would be nice if you could post a link to the report so that I could read it myself?

I think I have to agree with most of you, modernist technique is just a technique employed and does in my opinion not really define a chef. Ok...we have a new technique, and many well known chefs use it, but in the end it just shifts the focus of the chefs attention. He will still have to create a meaningful composition of flavors (which I think gets harder the more possibilities you have to choose from), but with using modernist technology he faces an additional facts: .) at the moment you will have acceptance problems if, e.g. a salmon still looks raw because it was cooked sous-vide at a low temperature, even if the method itself is not that removed from poaching .) you can not rely on many things that you would use when doing something with a classical technique, e.g. cooking sous-vide you might have to think more about sauces, since pansauces are pretty much out of the picture. In the end I would say that you can use a technique 'too-much'. Just because a technique is newer does not mean that it has to be used less often (like 'earning' its place in the kitchen). You might say that sauté is overused... It is still the dish that is created in the end which counts, modernist technique or not. One thing though: I don't really like techniques (modernist or classical) applied that do not change the food or dining experience in some meaningful way, but that a personal taste of mine. When sous-vide etc. maybe go mainstream at some point we will have the same as now... we will have good food, mediocre food and stuff in between, regardless which technique was applied. One thing that comes to mind would be that at the moment many chefs in my area seem to try to modernize their food, by doing 'fancy' stuff and trying to plate their food in a 'modern' way. The point where most of the fail is that they don't really want to try too much since they are (I think rightfully) scared of scaring away customers that 'like it the old way' and don't really fancy change. What you get in the end is a plate where you don't really know what you are getting... for some higher class restaurant it just seems too - I dear say - normal, for a restaurant that serves comfort food it just seems too pretentious and extravagant. I don't want to say that they should not try to get a modern touch, I just think that they have not yet found the right spot, the right 'amount' of modern. This is what I believe will also happen with those modernist techniques. (But I do hope that I don't get a spherisfied side dish on my comfort food, just because we can...) Andreas

Hi, Keeping with the recent SideKic Thread, I wanted to ask you for your thoughts about the Vac-Star circulator. To me it seems to have enough power etc. and might be a cheap alternative to the pretty expensive ones we know. Also the given value for temperature consistency seems to be quite ok... (but since till now I used a big pot on my stove, regulating myself with ice & hot water...) Has anyone tried the thing? Any thoughts based on the provided data? Is it a good alternative for the more expensive circulators or should I still go for those? Regards, Andreas

I'll deviate from the route of the other posters about giving general advice (mostly because I nearly never cook for enough people to give really useful advice). You said that chicken thighs would be ok. An idea into that direction could be braised chicken thighs: Take the thighs, crisp up the skin (in steps, a few at a time). Sauté some sliced cremini mushrooms, add some flour and deglaze with some red wine or balsamic vinegar. Put mushrooms, thighs and chicken broth into a roasting pan. Roast in the oven, while it is roasting prepare creamy polenta. The recipe is not my own, it's 'stolen' from here.