mayland

I also tried the microwave fried herbs technique, but the plastic wrap started melting almost immediately. Used Saran Wrap, which explicitly states that it's microwave safe (with the proviso that it should not be in contact with hot fats, as is the case here), and from background reading appears not to be the PVC type. I wonder what type specifically the MC folks use that works. Also will try this just on a plate. Not sure why the plastic wrap should even be necessary, and it's not explained in the book.

I made the sunchoke variation of the pressure caramelized vegetable soup, and it was delicious (fresh baking soda this time). For the liquid, I used PC brown chicken stock I'd made with an ad hoc collection of roasted chicken carcass, meat and skin scraps, vegetables and aromatics. Stock itself was excellent, then infused it for another 20 minutes under pressure with the sunchoke peels before using it in the soup. This made a surprisingly flavorful artichoke stock; I'd be happy enough to stop there and just have that as a soup. Pureed with the browned sunchokes, it was over the top: great mouthfeel from the gelatinous stock, very artichokey, and deep, savory flavor (didn't need to add any butter at the end). I'll watch the salt next time, and not sure what I'd like to garnish it with. This + dutch oven bread, cheeses, cured meats, and fresh pomegranate was a fun weekend project and felt like a feast.

How did the freshly juiced carrot version compare to regular butter and store bought juice?

High school chemistry is fuzzy...thanks! Made the carotene butter (delicious by the way), and even cored the carrots, then flubbed it with expired baking soda. Argh!

Made the caramelized carrot soup for the second time. First was many months ago using the recipe from original MC published on their website. This time, it did not get nearly the rich, brown flavor and color as I remember from the earlier soup. I noticed the proportions are slightly different in the MCaH version, but it seems doubtful that this would be the problem. I know when baking soda gets too old, it loses its ability to react with acid; does it also lose its ability to lower the temp at which browning occurs?

Randomly happened upon a farm selling raw milk so I made the Ultrafrothy milkshake. 1 L Raw milk - $6 Cold bag and blue ice to get the milk home - $7 Egg white powder - $8 Whey protein isolate - $22 Expedited shipping to get the protein before the milk spoiled - $4 If I had figured on all that at the outset, I wouldn't have done it, but I had to shop around, and the more things I got, the less willing I was to drop out. Granted, I have a still have a huge tub of whey protein left. Protein shakes for breakfast from now on? It's a better way to eat the cost than letting it languish in the cupboard. The shake was interesting. I had troubles getting it cold enough. Even after the salted ice bath, it was just cool after a couple minutes in the blender. It did have an interesting aerated kind of mouth feel, but it wasn't thick at all. I was expecting something like an Orange Julius in texture, but it was much thinner. The powdered raspberry topping was delicious. Would having it colder make it thicken and froth more? Would blending it longer change anything? I blended it for 2 minutes instead of 3 because I didn't want it to warm up any more. Alternatives I'd try next time: - some ice to add texture and keep it cold; cream or half/half base to offset the additional ice water - fresh egg/egg whites; basically a homemade eggnog, which in my experience is thicker - powdered Julius imitation mix; cheaper, maybe thicker? - just a regular ice cream shake

I mostly agree with the above responses to this. I would add that this is a cooking from the book topic, and contains a lot of opinion directed at specific recipe turnouts rather than overall book appraisal. In terms of build quality and presentation, information content about the hows and whys of both traditional and modernist techniques, and overall recipe range and quality, personally I find MCaH excellent. It's also not perfect in any of those categories. It's particularly frustrating when it falls short, because overall it comes closer to the ideal than almost any other book out there. Also because few other individuals or companies are as well positioned to produce anything that even remotely comes close. MC is so authoritative that when it does miss, you wonder who is going to hit. Ruhlman's Twenty and Kenji's Food Lab articles (and presumably the forthcoming book) I think do hit on some of these fronts, and are an interesting base for comparison. I also expect MCaH gains a lot when being taken in context of its big brother volumes, though I haven't read those myself. My biggest gripe isn't so much about the recipes per se, but about the tunnel vision on pursuit of perfection. E.g. I will never again shuck mussels raw in order to sous vide them. In fact I do appreciate that MCaH presented this technique, and I learned a lot, not least of all that MCaH doesn't really care about diminishing returns. Probably that's a conscious choice, and to be fair, it's a telling point in the book's favor that this isn't so much an issue with what the book does give you, but really just a complaint that it leaves out the "much easier, but arguably nearly as good" techniques, and I guess there are many sources for those. All that said, yes, the recipe hit rate is a little low for me in my tiny sampling of five. Four of those recipes have been good, but they haven't been great, and they have sometimes been fussy or wasteful. That said, the caramelized carrot soup is kick-ass.

True, it does call for a blanching for the white stock, but not the brown. Not sure why not. I'm using an electric cooker, and it wants to vent steadily, although not vigorously. From what I've read, this might not be ideal for flavor also. As an aside, I wish "venting" or "non-venting" as well as PSI were listed in the product information for more pressure cookers... I had several issues with the explanations in that article as well. I sort of have a feeling that the difference would be due to the mouthfeel from a residual coating of fat more than anything else. Generally, speaking, why does blitzing meat in a pressure cooker at 250 degrees not completely dry it out?

This weekend was my first foray into actually cooking from the book: Brown Chicken Stock I *think* this turned out great, but I haven't tasted it yet. At refrigerator temp, the resulting stock was somewhere between liquid and pudding, so it certainly pulled a lot of gelatin out of the wings. Color was a dark brown, and it was very cloudy. My only issue with this is the huge waste of chicken meat which is discarded at the end. I appreciate that the recipes are often going for best flavor, not cheapest or easiest, but it would be nice to see a variation on this which tries to economize better, e.g. by using chicken carcass and/or braising legs both for eating and to flavor the stock. Also would be nice to have some more background on pros/cons compared to traditional stock methods. The clarity doesn't seem great, so I guess if that was important to what I wanted to do with the stock, I would clarify after, or maybe use a different method entirely. Microwaved Eggplant Parmesan This was very tasty, a good version of this dish, but for me not particularly special. The cheesy panko topping surprisingly had a decent texture, even after the final microwave step, but I still prefer something crustier, and this was more of a loose pile of crumbs. If I did this again, I'd do the last step in the oven, not the microwave, which would also let me throw on the cheese and panko w/out pre-baking it. I like the idea of using the microwave to par-cook and dehydrate the eggplant, but I didn't notice a difference in the final quality from traditional cooking methods. Then there's another microwave step to fully steam it, and a final step as well to heat the assembled dish. Can the middle step be skipped? Or can the second two microwave steps be traded for a bake in the oven? If not, why not? The book doesn't go into much detail, and this recipe felt fussier than it had to be for no good reason. Mussels Mariniere I used cider instead of wine, and that was fine except the cider was a little too sweet. In terms of the overall value proposition of the modernist version of this dish, I ended up very frustrated. I figured the initial two minute steam in a bag had something to do with getting the mussels to open up a bit and make shucking them easier, although the book doesn't actually say. In fact, it seemed to have very little effect, other than making the mussels sticky from the cider. Shucking them was then a lot of work. Not sure how much of that was due to lack of practice, and also due to a batch of mussels with VERY skimpy flesh, but it I think it'd be time consuming in any case. A lot of work for what was often just a tough foot and a few shreds of flesh. Never cooked mussels at home, so don't know if this is unusual. Certainly a far cry from what's pictured in the book. I wonder if cooking them in the shell would cause them to detach much more cleanly, and also if it had something to do with the variety of mussel. Incidentally, the book calls for 1.1 lb of mussels for four servings, whereas in my case 2 lbs made just one serving. The flavor of the broth was good. Mostly subtle, but punchy from the pepper flakes and all the herbs. Certainly the sous vide step worked out great, but if there's ever a next time, I'll be inclined to just throw the mussels shells and all into the pot to steam.