Merkinz

Thanks Weinoo

Hey everyone. I've been thinking of picking up a couple of Japanese and Korean cookbooks but have no idea whats out there. I picked up "Every Grain of Rice" this year and cook from it at least once a week (and have done so since it was released!). I love her style and I love the ease of the recipes (although I definitely could manage more complexity). I'm planning on picking up her other books but am after some advice on Japanese cookbooks. Specifically I was looking at 'Japanese Farm Food' by Nancy Singleton Hachisu. Does anyone have any comment on this book? It looks good! As for any other Japanese and Korean cookbooks (I have Momofuku by the way and love it, if you could call the Korean) I'd be interested in something recent, well produced and a book that is also interesting to read. Thanks in advance.

Don't get me wrong! I love 'Plenty' and the food I cooked from it was spectacular I just found that down here in little old New Zealand it can be difficult and expensive buying some of the ingredients for this book. And damn near in possible in winter... This is more of a comment on New Zealand than it is the book itself. I've still got my eye on this PS: I really should get stuck into the garden and grow some herbs!!!

Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to try this method the next time I make it .... and I will be making it again soon @Chris: Looking good!

Wow so amazon UK is doing this as well!? This must be costing someone alot of money!!!

I saw this in a shop the other week (I guess we get some books before the US!?) and it looked fascinating. I didn't spend much time with it but it reminded me alot of "Plenty" in terms of layout, and the boldly spiced/herbed rustic looking recipies. I'm interested to hear what other people think of it, I'm definitely on the fence. I never really look at "Plenty" anymore and only cooked a handful of reciepes out of it due to a lack of reasonably price herbs where I live

Pressure-Cooked Pork Belly Adobo This looked good in the book to me so I thought 'why not' ... So I made a half batch I measured out all the ingredients (everything shown below except the soy sauce) and thought ... "is that it?" not much really goes into this. ... in then out of the pressure cooker ... Strained, reduced, glazed ... WOW! This dish packed some flavor! By far my favorite recipe from the book thus far. It is dead simple to make, has relatively few ingredients but transforms into something truly wonderful. Some of the meat (the bigger muscle pieces furtherest away from the skin) dried out a bit but didn't detract too much from the dish. I'd be interested if anyone had any ideas on how to avoid this ... I've never had much luck with pork. None the less a great recipe for a great meal.

Thanks for that as well Martin, Will check it out.

I would guess yes ... I have a similar question about the cheeses in the PC broccoli recipe. Look forward to trying the eggplant recipe soon

As far as I can tell the only exclusive content you get is a little "MCAH Owner" tag to your name on the forums ... I'd love to know if they have plans for anything additional in the future.

This is interesting, thanks for the insight ryansm. In the end I developed a folding technique to transfer the dough to a peel that worked quite well for me: So the dough was spread out in 'rounds' on the bench, I'd use two hands and grab two opposite sides folding them in to the center so they are touching each other. Then I'd turn it 90° and do this again. I know I haven't described this very well and it sounds like some kinda origami project but the result was good for two reasons: 1) It stretches the skin of the dough enough to make it 'tight' for a short period of time in which you can pick it up, dust it with flour, transfer it to a peel and start working its shape. 2) It doesn't destroy all the air bubbles within the dough... and I love a good bubbly pizza!

Great stuff Chris! ... I've got a 12 mm thick slab of steel at home I have been experimenting with lately and I am looking forward to trying the MCAH dough recipe. I made the Neapolitan dough recipe from the Serious Eats website and it was as difficult to work as you describe this one to be so I'm guessing it is supposed to be that way. It did also taste more delicious than my regular dough recipe so I found the frustration and hassle to be worth it. I've used the steel plate a few times now and I can tell you that it works amazingly well but I'm still trying to get a good system going as my grill can be a little too powerful at times.

ryansm I've also learnt over the last year or so that fresh (like out of the bottle - first time use fresh) oil is pretty poor at browning foods while deep frying. It'll cook it ok but it won't necessarily give you that nice golden brown crust. I overcome this by filtering the used oil (paper coffee filter) and storing it for repeated use. Once it starts to get off smells I'll discard it ... BUT I'll keep 1 or 2 teaspoons of this old oil and add it to the new oil to help break it in... ... I think I heard this on one of Dave Arnolds podcasts but have heard it echoed here and there. It works for me.

Apple & Parsnip Soup So for those who have cooked the carrot soup from MC this recipe is almost the same but the carrots are swapped out for ... you guessed it: Apple and Parsnip. And the carrot juice is replaced with stock. I used vege stock (because I had good quality vege stock on hand) but the recipe calls for chicken stock. Into the pressure cooker: Once done: And finally constructed: I loved this soup. It had the same rich and luxurious flavor and feel as the carrot soup but with a different overall flavor. Personally I prefer this soup to the original carrot soup! I didn't pickle any apples for it (one of the garnishes called for) but would recommend you do if you try the recipe. It needs that little something to cut the richness. Overall excellent! Very happy with that (...not sure why they labeled the difficulty as "Moderate" because it is dead simple). Please would some one care to comment on the Broccoli-Gruyere Soup ... they way I read the recipe the cheese is cooked in the pressure cooker. Is this correct? I'd rather get it right the first time

Do you have Modernist Cuisine? ... if not, i'd try that Mac n Cheese first that's a sure fire bet.

Just got refunded the different between what amazon charged me (full price) and the lowest book price prior to release. sweeet

Just a note for those going to make the peanut sause: the quantity of salt listed is on ther high side so just add it gradually to taste.

... Right! Pressure-Caramelized Peanut Sauce (p.111) revisited. So after receiving Johnny's comments on the peanut sauce I felt that I owed them a second batch before I wrote the recipe off completely. I prepared all the ingredients exactly the same, I had all the ingredients I needed from the previous batch. The ONLY change I made was I dumped all the ingredients into the bottom of the pressure cooker instead of using a trivet. tick, tick, tick, ... 40 minutes later and ... BOOM! It was a completely different sauce! It was thick, it was rich, it was balanced, it was DELICIOUS!!! Holy s^*t it was delicious ... the difference between the two (both shown in this picture above, left is the OLD sauce, right is the NEW sauce) was incredible and there was only a very slight change in the way I cooked it. I held back again and only put 30g of fish sauce in but the peanut flavor was robust enough that it could easily hold the 40g that the recipe suggests. The sauce was MUCH thicker, just right for a peanut sauce note the sauce on the left in the picture is fridge cold (colder generally means thicker) whereas the new sauce on right is piping hot but still thicker. I gave a spoon full to my other half and said: "Here, try this, this is what I was meant to serve you last night", she tasted it and her face lit up immediately: "mmmmmmmmm, thats delicious!"... This recipe is a winner so I'm here to eat some humble pie and say thank you to Johnny. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy it if I didn't bring it to the forums ... I simply wouldn't have made it again.

Thanks Chris for your interesting comments. Also thanks for your input Johnny! It is great to see some help from the MCAH team here and it is most appriciated. I'll revisit both of these recipes with these suggestions in mind and I hope I am proven wrong with the peanut sauce.

Chris it looks great! ... did you season your soup with the Chaat Masala? If so how do you think the soup would be good without this seasoning? I'm looking for my next dish to cook and was just perusing the pressure cooked vegetable soup pages. Also can I get your thoughts on the Broccoli-Gruyere Soup. The recipe implies that the cheese would go in the pressure cooker with the broccoli and liquids but I am a little hesitant to try this as it seems to go against logic and I haven't had much luck with the book thus far... Thanks

Hey, it is interesting to hear how you and others use Evernote. I haven't really given this a go before but I am currently looking for a new way to organize and view 'found recipes'. I might have a look into Evernote tonight when I have some time... Would you (or anyone one for that matter) mind sharing a screenshot of how you organize your recipes using this program? I used to use MacGourmet but didn't enjoy typing everything out ... then I switched to Windows etc. etc. and generally lost interest. I'm really interested in finding something that will help me travel with my favorite recipes. Cheers

jfrater, thanks for your comment. I know what you're saying, I too have read and cooked a bunch of thing form MC and gained a tremendous wealth of information. This is in fact the very reason I pre-ordered MCAH. I imagined that it would largely be a recipe book with key techniques form MC distilled into the recipe pages. However from the few recipes I've cooked so far I'm quite simply dissapointed! I'm intentionally avoiding the recipes that were hits from MC (such as their Mac n' Cheese) and focusing on the 'new' recipes. I can't help but feel that these were thrown together without much thought and weren't thoroughly tested. The peanut sauce recipe is terrible and I can't imagine using any part of that again. I do want to like this book, I paid alot of money for it after all, and I will keep on trying recipes in the hopes of finding a few hits to make it worth while ... but I won't sing its praise if all I get is dissapointment after dissapointment when cooking from its pages.

I too had some time on my hand this weekend and wanted to try a few of the easier recipes... However everything I've tried from this book so far has led the to believe is a the Modernist Disappointment So today I tried: Pressure-Caramelized Peanut Sauce (P.111) ... I remember seeing this in the PDF preview that had the full contents page and I've been wanting to try it ever since. Sounds amazing! Got everything I need locally. I even had enough leftover galangal from making Tom Yum soup. Into the pressure cooker and this time I put it in a bowl on the trivet: After pressure cooking it was pureed and then seasoned with palm sugar, salt and 40g of fish sauce (I decided to use only 30g as I felt that 40g would simply be to much based on how the sauce tasted at that stage. So how was it? Very disappointing, by itself it tasted dull with what can only be described as generic maillard aromas (not in a good way either) with a strong fish sauce note and a hint of peanut. The galangal and shallot aromas/flavors were obliterated by the pressure cooking. When this sauce was paired with the rice noodles (see below) it seemed to improve a little with more of the peanut flavor coming through. But I won't be making this again. Interestingly when you look through the book this very peanut sauce is shown in several photos. First it is shown on the actual recipe page (below middle) then it is shown again on Skewers recipes page (below left). I've included a photo of my results from following the recipe to the letter (with the exception of the 10g of fish sauce I left out). It's quite different isn't it! ... if you follow the recipe you get a not so great tasting gray fluid. Moving on I wanted to pair the peanut sauce with the ... Rice Noodles (P.271) I've been making pasta for a while now and I'm quite used to making pasta, I had great success with the pasta recipe in MC so naturally I was pleased to see some variations on the basic recipe. My dough had 3 - 4 hours rest time in the fridge to hydrate (the recipe prescribes between 1 and 24 hours rest time). Then it was rolled out (ultimately to 2mm thickness), rested again, then cut and rested yet again. This recipe didn't cut too well. I have an Atlas pasta cutter and have never had problems in the past but with this recipe the noodles just wanted to stick to each other as soon as they passed through the cutter. hmmmmmmmm ... Well the noodles tasted OK (cooked for 45 seconds in boiling water) but it was difficult to get past the disappointing sticking mass of noodles. Here they are dressed with the peanut sauce and a little peanut oil. ... The show must go on! So I decided to make some... Mediterranean Vegetable Confit (p.126) ... I LOVED the Pressure-cooked Garlic Confit from MC and it has become a staple in our house so I thought I'd try its cousin. Fairly straight forward really... chop vegetables, cook. Mine were a little overcooked (the bell peppers were really withered and the zucchini was very very soft) but it tasted great. I'll likely cut the cooking time down when I make this again and / or cut the vegetables a little thicker (the mushrooms were about right). I look forward to trying the Fingerling Potatoes Confit but fingerling potatoes are a little hard to come by around here so we'll see. All in all this was another disappointing venture into MCAH and this time it wasn't because I had technical issues, this time it was simply because the flavors just weren't that great. I'll press on but I can't help but feel let down.

...double post ...

Makes sense! Thanks guys...