JoNorvelleWalker

The photocopied manual Fissler sent me makes no mention of a lifetime warranty and also no mention of the requirement of purchase from an authorized dealer. I'm not sure, but the US importer may be trying to protect themselves from graymarket goods -- that is Fissler pressure cookers not handled by the importer, with which the importer understandably does not want to get stuck for warranty. Whether it's legal or not I have no idea, but it makes sense from the importer's viewpoint. Possibly the pots from non-authorized dealers are not stamped with US on the lid? Or, it may just be more evidence of lack of communication on the part of Fissler.

Sorry I misunderstood. You might want to contact Amazon if your dealer was not authorized.

To my taste the 13 minute chickpeas are over cooked. Great flavor though. There were maybe some differences between our two tests. My chickpeas (Goya brand) were purchased yesterday. The chickpeas were soaked in unsalted water about 18 hours. I had hoped to have the soak time closer to 8 hours, but one has to make ice cream when one can. I followed the advice of Modernist Cuisine to vent for about 30 seconds at pressure to expel remaining air, to allow the pot to reach full temperature. In other words even if a pot is at 15 PSI pressure and there is any air inside, the temperature will never reach 250 deg F. I believe I measured the 13 minute cooking time accurately by my watch. However I did not time the natural release as carefully (for one thing, I was responding to your post above). My release time was about 13 or 14 minutes. Now I have to decide how to cook the other half of the chickpeas. I certainly don't want to go to 22 minutes!

To my knowledge Amazon never sells Fissler pressure cookers. The Fissler pressure cookers listed on Amazon state who sells them. In the case of the Fissler I purchased on Amazon the dealer was Eurostoves. (Edit: I see Eurostoves is indeed listed as a Fissler dealer on the Fissler website.) In contrast Kuhn Rikon pressure cookers are sold by Amazon. My 13 minute chickpeas are cooling in the pot as we speak.

Since I can't edit, the Modernist Cuisine at Home version of the MC gelato has a note: "The recipe works with any kind of nut butter, whether you buy it commercially or make your own by using a powerful blender, such as a Vitamix." Nonetheless I still think it is important, at least for me, to have a totally smooth nut butter, however you acquire it. I have an MC gelato mix chilling in the refrigerator at the moment!

I cook three oz of dried pasta in a tall stock pot, in about seven quarts of water, with not much stirring. Same for any shape of dried pasta.

Adding enough oil should break the emulsion, I would think.

For the test should the chickpeas be brined for the soak or not?

No, but now I want to...before my window to return the Fissler runs out. I spent time today rereading reviews (again) of the different brands of pressure cookers. Except for this temperature question, my Fissler does everything I want. (At least, that is, until such time it breaks.) I wonder if it's possible Fissler doesn't understand how their own pots work?

Thanks, pazzaglia, again! I am thoroughly disappointed. What was Fissler thinking? If 60 kPa is correct I wish I'd never bought the thing. Everything else about the Fissler I like. I still have a few days to return the Fissler. I'm undecided if I will. Edit: what pressure cookers, if any, really do operate at 15 PSI?

I am the unfortunate who cut herself. Usually I do not slavishly follow recipes. However many modernist ones are unfamiliar to me and at least the first time through I try my best to do as the recipe says. The recipe in question is MC@H caramelized carrot soup (pp 178-179). I quote: "Carrot cores, rich in calcium, can add a bitter taste and unpleasant texture to this delicate soup, so we always remove them. It's an optional step, however; you can try the soup both ways and compare." The first step is "Slice the carrots lengthwise into quarters..." I was trying to do exactly that! I confess, looking at the picture for step 1 makes me a little ill. If Nathan is reading this, no, I don't intend to sue.

Yes, I would call these carrots gigantic. I have a lot. They are large and they were cheap, and they were on sale. I'd never tried to core a carrot either, but that's what MC says to do, and I usually try to follow a recipe as exactly as I can the first time through. My carrots are not to be served whole, as pretty as dcarch's carrots look. These are for carotene butter and MC carrot soup. Tonight I pureed a baked sweet potato with the reduced liquor left over after making the carotene butter. Very nice if I don't mind saying so myself. In thinking about it, I'm not sure cutting the carrots to shorter length would have helped my problem.

Some of us pay for our electricity but do not pay for our hot water, which is included in the rent.

That is more or less the method I was using.

Having recently butchered my thumb with a chef's knife, cutting, or trying to cut, a carrot lengthwise so that I could remove the core, I decided I could use advice. I can only assume this is a common kitchen task solved long ago by others: how do folks cut hard, cylindrical foods like carrots along the long axis? It's been thirty years since I've had a similar kitchen accident, and that was cutting hard chorizo. I seem to do OK otherwise. I asked my son about the carrots and he said he would use a serrated knife. I hit my forehead with my hand (my good hand) and wondered why I had not thought of that. What other carrot cutting techniques do people have to share?

According to the LA Times, bars in British subs serve ale on tap, so yes, no corks. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/18/business/fi-submarine18

Bojana, I don't have a blender but I recall Nathan et al saying (MC vol 2, if memory serves) that a high speed blender was not sufficient to make nut butters in which the particles were not evident to the tongue. And I can report, having made it both ways, that modernist gelato is far better when the nut butter is completely smooth. I believe the MC folks used a colliod mill for theirs. I had been thinking to start a thread asking if there was such a thing as an homogenizer for home use. Unfortunately any kind of homogenizer seems quite expensive.

Was the smoked pork hock something you made or did you purchase it already smoked? Sounds good either way.

I don't buy from Target because the parent company laid off my son. Your mileage may vary.

For carotene butter (p 121) how important is it to core the carrots? I ask because it is a pain and on the last of about twenty carrots I just sliced through my left thumb, removing a nice chunk and part of the nail. Coring the carrots also seems to make them juice less well, at least in my Waring juicer.

It's the air, stupid! As posted above, I prefer De Cecco. However my market stocks very few shapes of De Cecco -- notably not linguine, which is my favorite shape of dried pasta. Recently I saw a new brand (at least new for me), Delverde. Since it was on sale I bought a box of Delverde linguine fini to try. It is not a bad pasta and I plan to buy again. The texture is a bit slimier than De Cecco. I don't mean that to be pejorative. The Delverde box says "artisan made, bronze dies, slow dried, spring water". This is a bit confusing as the Delverde website speaks of water from the Verde river, but never says Verde river water, which river is apparently fed from springs, is what is used to make the pasta. But the quality is attributed to "the purity of the air": "Pasta that breathes deep". Note, even though I can buy linguini fini, I still can't find linguini!

I used to boycott Nestle, years ago. However from reading the history of Henri Nestle it appears that his infant formula was a life-saving advance at the time it was invented. The problem, as I see it, is that the product was/is overly agressively marketed. And now, hypocrite that I am, I would have a hard time boycotting Nestle, since on work days I go through a lot of Carnation Instant Breakfast.

Thanks, Pazzaglia. Putting off pressure cooking legumes till I can place an order with Rancho Gordo, which will probably mean next paycheck in a couple weeks. I'm interested to try the chickpea experiment. I am fond of hummus! Interestingly Steve of Rancho Gordo writes of pressure cooking chickpeas for 25 minutes with natural release. From the picture on his blog Steve is using the WMF Perfect Plus that according to Cook's Illustrated goes up to 247 deg F.

No, this time I don't think it was the pine nuts. I've made several pesto meals from the same jar of pine nuts. As I understand it, pine mouth sydrome has a delayed onset (this did not). And from what I've read pine mouth is not typically accompanied by copious secretions from the nose.

Not sure how big the eyes are, but if they are small enough you could carbonate them in an iSi before adding them to your drink. My regettable dinner was a mostly garlic pesto sauce last night. The weather has been cool here and the basil has not been doing well of late. I am as fond of raw garlic as most, but at four cloves per person (me) I went through a lot of toilet paper before the meal was over. The only thing that somewhat saved me was that I had just brought in about fifty ripe tomatoes. I left them on the dining room table, not having counter space. After every other bite of pesto I took a tomato from the pile and ate it. Now it is the next afternoon and my tongue is still numb and everything tastes funny. Plus, to add insult to injury, I spilled the first pot of pasta.