Bojana

The flavour of cardemom tofee cookie ice cream is amazing. The texture...less so. My dairy based ice cream reacted so much stronger to my stabilizer than the sorbet. The cooled mass was very thick and a bit elastic, so I run it through the blender. After churning and freezing , the ice cream maintained a slightly elastic, gummy texture that was just wrong. I used 0.5% of stabilizer, next time I'll try with 0.3% before giving up on this specific stabilizer blend. On the very positive note, both raspberry sorbet and cardemom ice cream were easily scoopable at -18C and were quite pleasant to eat from the temperature point of view. Corvitto principles really helped me to get the proportions of different sugars and fats right to achieve this.

Risotto, pasta salad, anything with dairy based sauce, sous vide cooked salmon @ 49C, mayonnaise with diced beet with sourdough bread and poached egg...mmm getting hungry

Thanks for the tips. I went ahead with marinade as suggested by Mofassah, but cooked it for 3-4 hours at 60C. On the first evening I served it with the reduced bag juice plus some chicken glaze, fried polenta cookies and picked mustard seeds. For the second evening I did not have any more bag juices so I made the cherry sauce from Eleven Madison Park book and loved that plate even more. The meat was lovely and succulent, thank you for all the pointers that helped me make it happen.

I have a beautiful piece of pork rack which I would like to cook sous vide. Can someone please recommend temperature and duration, including rubs, spices, liquid etc. Thank you, Bojana

I can report that raspberry sorbet is going to be a big success! At least, to my liking that is. What i love in sorbets is when they have an almost creamy mouth feel, without being heavy like cream based ice cream. The one I made last night is just that: tart, not too sweet and creamy but not chewy. I used my home blended stabilizer for the first time. Sifted together 10 gr xantan gum, 10 gr kappa carrageenan (turned out I did not have locust bean gum in my powders) and 17 gr guar gum. I think kappa does not do much in sorbets anyway, since it needs dairy protein to react but I figured it would not do much harm and wanted to test that anyway. Next one will be cream vanilla-cardemom base with toffee cookies. Stay tuned

Thank you Paul, this gives a direction. I'll report back, planning to make some ice cream soon, even though my Musso is still broken, so using the pre-frozen small machine - not ideal for experimenting.

I cook extensively for cheffy books and never had issues with recipes not working. Current favourite is Eleven Madison Park, but I've cooked from many. I think one can never expect to reproduce restaurant results for full 100%, simply because the ingredients we use are different, our burners, pans & pots are different and all that influences the end result.<br /><br />That said, I get really amazing dishes out of my kitchen. Big objection I have about Eleven Madison park is the imprecise imperial measures in recipes. In some cases, esp in the desserts sections, I create my own formulas using the recipe taste profiles. I'd not make their ice creams because I am almost sure they are formulated for Paco Jet. Here I use Corvitto's book and principles to create my own ice creams. I do similar things whenever I think that my approach would give me better results - sometimes recipes call for pan - oven combination for meat, I do pan - sous vide - pan. In general, I approach books for inspiration and rough guidelines that something that should fully be followed.<br /><br />For pastry, I can recommend Bouchon Bakery and Elements of Dessert, Jeni's splendid ice creams. I also love Ideas in Food, mentioned Eleven Madison Park, Square and (Beyond) Essence.

I could not find much through search - I am looking for Fusion books recommendations. I quite like Fire: A World of Flavour by Christine Manfield and am looking to expand my horizons, especially in the Japanese meets West type of cooking. Thanks Bojana

I have fired several herbs successfully (mint, sage, basil) using a microwave safe foil (locally bought brand in the Netherlands)and I fully missed the PVC part. Worked well, although better with basil and mint than with sage - sage burns more easily in my setup

Do you (or someone else) happen to have a directional guideline for the ratios of different ingredients? I have all of them separately so I would like to make my own mix.

I would start with a good cherry puree. Boiron makes excellent fruit purees, black cherry may be what you need (they also have cranberry & morello cherry mix). For sorbet, they recommend adding 1% kirch. You can also download Boiron's ice cream sheets for exact formulations, they use atomised glucose and invert sugar a lot.

Skimmed milk is used to bind excess water. If you do not want to use it, another approach could be Jeni's, using corn starch. I do nto have skimmed milk powder, milk here is 3.5% instead of 3.6% (Corvitto), yogurt 6% instead of 3.6% so I am making quite some adjustments but the final ice cream was beautiful (5.5% fat). In my fridge maturing is rhubarb jasmine sorbet, cannot wait to see how that one will turn out. I will freeze part of it as pops for the kids and the rest as regular sorbet. Does anyone know if you should churn ice cream before pouring it in pops molds?

Here is what I have done,hope it's clear. I am in a rush now, if you have any questions I'll come back later to answer.

I made a lovely sheep yogurt ice cream that was scoopabe at -18C and tasted very fresh and tangy. I used the guidelines from Corvitto's book and made my own formula, worked like a charm. In nutshell, balance fat, sugars and solids to ensure all free water is bound and the right anti freezing level is achieved. If anyone is interested, I'll post my percentages.

Here is my rhubarb attempt, quite pleased how it turned out. Sticks were cooked at 65C for about 25 mins in rhubarb juice, sugar and vanilla. Tender with still some bite, very nice texture. Paired well with (hidden under rhubarb veil) sheep yogurt ice cream.

I am about to make the 11 Madison rhubarb recipe coming Sunday ans a part of multi course dinner, agree that rhubarb looks great on that one.

Jo, In short, you play with invert sugar and dextrose together to lower the freezing point while keeping same sweetness as sugar. Also prevents cristalisation and sandy texture. I am away for a couple of days, can share more once i am back home, from a great book that Darienne eas so kind to send

I sent you a PM, thanks

Hi Jo, I am making my ice cream according to Jenny's method, so no eggs but I am boiling my milk and cream base. I will make my ice this weekend and check the texture next week Thursday - if it is icy, i will respin. Big dinner party on Saturday so no time to do everything in one day. And no, my Musso is still not fixed. My father in law took it to repair it and not long after the poor man had a (mild) heart attack. He is well and recovering now but my Musso is not the top of priorities right now.

Question about safety: I want to prep the ice cream or sorbet base, cool and freeze directly without churning, then take out to fridge on the day before I want to eat the ice, let melt in the fridge, churn and freeze for few hours. Are there big issues with this plan? Would it help to shortly boil the melted base to kill the bacteria before cooling and churning? Could you in theory repeat this process of melting and churning few times if you cook the base each time?

Hi,<br /><br />some questions about making lobster stock and using lobster, apologies if I missed the answers somewhere<br /><br />-What are the bits that should be removed before chopping and roasting/sauteing the shells? Eyes? Lungs? Rinsing the part between the head and body? Any others?<br />- Should lobster be cooked or blanched before peeling? What are advantages or disadvantages of cooking first?<br />-How long in advance can you peel and store the meat?<br /><br />Thanks<br />

Apologies if I missed the answers somewhere, I still have a few question regarding stock making: -Is there a downside in using the entire shrimp, meat and shell (other than not eating the meat obviously). The benefit is not having to peel the shrimps -What are the bits that should be removed? Eyes? Rinsing the part between the head and body? Any others? -If you are peeling the shrimps, do they have to be cooked first? What are advantages or disadvantages of cooking first? -If you peel them (cooked or uncooked), how long in advance can you do it, what happens to the meat, how long can be stored before it starts becoming mushy? I have similar questions about making lobster stock, will bump up one of the lobster topics Thanks!

Could you flavour pasta with it? Black sesame panna cotta? Or ice cream? I only use the seeds, but figure the taste of powder would not differ much. I may be mistaken...

I guess it depends on circumstances, age of the kids, dessert preferences of the mother (and the rest of the family), location and therefore ingredient availability and seasonality... Give me a combination of chocolate and (salted) caramel or a dessert built around a really good raspberry sorbet and I am a happy mom. In cake/pie department, maybe brown butter financiers or lemon glazed madelaines, or my personal favourite (but hubby hates it) - lemin meringue mini pie.

There is a great Harvard video from the Science and Cooking series that explains exactly that: