Baselerd

The Eleven Madison Park cookbook has a great recipe for a rhubarb-themed dessert (sheep's milk sorbet, SV rhubarb, rhubarb gelee, celery ribbons, sheep's milk yogurt foam). To make the rhubarb sticks he cooks them SV in a steam oven with rhubarb juice and sugar at 150 F for about 20 minutes. Following the SV cooking step, he has you peel the outer layer and cut them into matchsticks. If you don't have access to a SV setup, the standard poaching techniques will work well too.

I recently made the recipe found here - consisting of mango custard, coconut sorbet (I used my own recipe for this), and carbonated calamansi gel. I added a few twists - since I could not find coconut milk powder at the store I mixed some unrefined coconut oil, tapioca maltodextrin (N-Zorbit), powdered sugar, and salt to make some coconut powder. I made some grapfruit confit as well, and used some freeze-dried pineapple instead of mangos. Since I cast the mango custard into molds rather than into the serving vessels, I should have added a bit more carageenan to further thicken it (ever so slightly), it was too soft to maintain its shape. In either case this recipe was very tasty, and I had never thought of carbonating a fluid gel before - it was an interesting effect.

From the garden (except the mushrooms): Pan-fried gnocci, roasted tomato-basil puree, glazed shimeji mushrooms, pickled radishes.

Definitely interesting, and seems cool for anyone who feels that eating is simply a chore. With that said, I think most people enjoy food, eating, and - at least on these boards - cooking.

There are all sorts of commercially available sorbet stabilizers that will both improve the sorbet texture as well as prevent large ice crystal formations. I've had great luck (non-professionally) adding a small amount of xanthan gum before churning.

I've been on a recent Hamachi binge, so I'm partial to that.

That pork neck looks great Keith. Last night's dinner was lemongrass-glazed pork shoulder, glazed shimeji and shiitake mushrooms, carrot/celery root/dashi puree, and some short grain rice, topped with pea shoots dressed in lemon oil. To make the pork shoulder, I brined (4 cups water, .5 cups sugar, .5 cups salt) it for 4 hours, cooked it sous vide (36 hours @ 149 F) in smoked pork fat, then pan seared it on a skillet. Once seared, I glazed it with a lemongrass glaze which was made from pork jus, honey, soy sauce, and a ton of lemongrass - I used this recipe but quadrupled the lemongrass quantity. [Moderator note: This topic continues in Dinner! 2013 (Part 3)]

There are two example recipes from the Modernist Cuisine that use Kuzu starch to form gels. Unlike most things in that book, there isn't really a great "best bets" table or the like. One recipe has you blend it into a flavored liquid, simmer until it is thickened, and then cast into molds and refrigerate to make peanut flavored faux-tofu.

The ad seems ridiculous to me because there is no need to list off dozens of requirements that are implicit to any job. Obviously nobody wants to hire messy, late, negative people who are going to injure their coworkers - no need to state it in the job posting..

I've done those before - I simply laid some plastic wrap over hemisphere molds, drizzled some truffle oil over the plastic wrap, and cracked the eggs into the molds. To get the air out i just worked it out with my hands and twisted the opening shut closing it with a small rubber band. If your eggs are floating (and your plastic is sealed well), try gently resting a fork or two over the egg to keep it submerged.

I've used one and two charges with my .5 L whip with no issues.

Pork shoulder, ribs, neck, and belly all satisfy that criteria.

Thanks. It was a very lightly set gel. I actually strayed from the recipe a little and pureed it prior to siphoning - it didn't make as much sense to me to fill the siphon with a set gel.

Goat cheesecake foam, sous vide figs, raspberry fluid gel, graham tuile, and rosemary crumble. Here's a link to the recipe. The cheesecake foam was delicious, although I would hold back on the amount of vinegar in the figs if I make it again.

The "Chicken and Egg" recipe from Momofuku cookbook. This was some of the best chicken I've ever made. The recipe has you brine chicken legs in a sweet brine, then cold smoke (mesquite) them. I strayed from the recipe a little by using SV for the following confit process (170 F for 8 hours in pork fat). This recipe serves the chicken with a slow-cooked egg (143 F for 45 minutes), quick-pickled cucumbers, and short grain rice. I added some tare sauce I had laying around as well.

I don't think the acid will prevent the agar from gelling, I've made plenty of acidic fluid gels with it before. If you do choose to use the fluid gel approach I would add it very gradually - I can imagine adding too much would give an unpleasant slimy texture to the "rice." As Plantas Vertes suggested though, I can't imagine this would be necessary. This blog seems to have made sushi rolls with cauliflower rice using no binding agent.

I've never tried it before for fake sushi rice, but mixing a thick fluid gel (maybe start with 1% agar, .2% xanthan gum) into the cauliflower may work. If you want it to still taste like cauliflower use cauliflower juice as your base liquid.

"Printing functioning organs, skin/tissue" You can create living cells with a printer? I think not. References please. They aren't creating cells from smaller components, but rather formulating a gel slurry containing a suspension of cells. They can print a mesh with this material, and the cells will proliferate throughout the structure. All of this technology is still in the basic research phase, but I can imagine not too far from now where we could print out human ears, noses, etc. Check out this article if you can get access to it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21358040

Could you elaborate on this? I've never used one, but I always have had the impression it allows you to make ice-cream/sorbet/etc to order from the frozen canister so that you don't have to re-churn and/or temper each time you want to get a nice texture.

On the subject of the next great kitchen tool - I would love to see some of the high-end kitchen equipment come to wider availability for home use. A few items on my short list include a Pacojet and ultrasonic homogenizer. Obviously these aren't new tech, but they're so cost prohibitive few people have access to these tools. I don't really see 3D printing becoming relevant to cooking any time in the near future - it has to provide an advantage over current techniques to be adopted. Current 3D printing instrumentation generally require relatively expensive motion control, specific curable/extrudable "ink." Is it convenient to order/formulate a printable food ink, load it into your machine, program your machine, and print your food? I'm sure the technology will improve rapidly, but the current printers are very slow. It takes half a day to print a small component with a reasonable spatial resolution. The idea of someday in the far future being able to print out a whole raw (or cooked) duck breast to order sounds awesome, but that's not coming anytime soon. Sous vide was accepted because it was low-cost, easy to use, and provided tangible advantages to cooking.

I don't think 3D printing will be very relevant for a while. I use a "nice" 3D printer routinely at my work and the quality of the materials that the current tech is able to produce is very poor. They are also fairly complex and expensive... On the topic of SV hate, I've always gotten the impression that many haters think it lacks "soul." I understand bagging food and programming a machine isn't as enjoyable to some people as cooking up an old fashioned meal. With that said, there isn't really a good reason I can think of to dislike perfectly cooked food that is 100% repeatable. Without a doubt, using SV has dramatically improved the average quality and convenience of my cooking.

Maybe going to get some flak for this .. but I would say American cheese.

Yeah the use of multiple measuring techniques was somewhat interesting - I assume these were some sort of back-of-the-envelope notes he had jotted down. The pastry chef (Antonio Bachour) has the best food porn though so I trusted the recipe.

You might try visiting a local smoke shop and see what they have. I would imagine any vaporizer that has an active pump and temperature control could produce the same results. As said above I can imagine with reduced cost you will get lower build quality.

Austin has tons of good food, although $5-10 is very restricting if you want the trendy food you've been reading about. There's a ton of food carts in that price range - I would recommend East Side King, Tacos Selene, Chilantro, and Doc'n'Roll diner to name a few.