Syzygies

How's the display? The noise?

At a certain point I decided not to fear complexity. The key is to relax and think through workflow on your own. Switching cuisines, such as doing multicourse Indian meals, really forces one to pay attention to mise en place. In both work and play, one cannot have a keen enough ear for anomaly. Wrong moves always announce themselves in advance, ever so faintly. Find a state of mind where one listens. One can only cook as well as one can taste, and then only if you cook for your own tastes. Anytime I read a biography of an artist I admire, I get the impression that for how hard they work, and how talented they are, they should be better than they are. It's the nature of the beast, and it applies to all of us.

In addition to the PolyScience Creative, there are a few other circulators on the horizon: http://shop.nomiku.com (Nomiku) http://www.waterbath...e_products.html (Anova) http://www.swid.eu/en/ (110V Swid) Nomiku's manufacturing schedule has been pushed back. I tried to preorder the Anova after they had unlinked the preorder page, and assumed they canceled my order because they didn't have enough in their first batch. However, the web has been silent on anyone receiving a unit, so perhaps their schedule has also been pushed back. Swid claims a 110V version in the new year, but it's hard to tell from their web site if they mean 2013 or some previous year which they missed. If one reads up on power PIDs, 110V is more of a challenge than 220V; someone who didn't understand electricity might wrongly think this is just a standards issue. These guys had a great price, but it's gone: http://store.chefste...sion-circulator I saw a review claiming the display was hard to read in the wrong light. A fellow eGullet member noted they intend the Creative unit only for light use. Perhaps they're trying to protect the top end of their market (Wang reasoned this way and missed the chance to be Apple, pretty dumb), or perhaps it really is more cheaply made. Also, I read here that PolyScience bullied a small maker out of using the name Sous Vide. I don't know this first hand, but I can't bring myself to give them any money till I can refute this accusation. Perhaps someone here can refute it, and set my mind at ease?

I've used their controller for years in various ways, e.g. a with a modified soup warmer, with best success with a hot plate and a giant stock pot. Typically I put a New England bean pot inside the water bath, allowing seasoning and additions as I go. Killer beans and braises. Now that I'm hooked on the impulse sealer chamber vacuum pouch approach (seal once, nick corner, bubble out air in a water bath, seal again, it really works better than anything short of an actual chamber machine) I want a more reliable and energy efficient bath for long cooks. A commercial rice cooker is the canonical choice, I just haven't picked one. (This is for my east coast kitchen; my west coast kitchen has a Sous Vide Supreme which is a pain to keep taking out and putting away. I'm eagerly awaiting the era of affordable (e.g. Anova) immersion circulators.)

http://www.drybagsteak.com/

Here's the most detailed description of balsamic vinegar bacteria I could find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18177968 In other words, acetic acid bacteria for conventional vinegar are adapted to mostly alcohol, while for balsamic vinegar they're adapted to mostly sugar. Yet, the same family of bugs, so your mother should work, eventually.

My understanding is that balsamic vinegar is different from regular vinegar. Not as different as sauerkraut is from beer, but different. I know Paul Bertolli has made balsamic vinegar at home. I wandered into a specialized shop in Itaiy and asked about making balsamic vinegar at home, They were genuinely nice, but they didn't stop laughing for fifteen minutes.

I'm curious if one can pick out the flavor difference in a blind tasting, and if one cares? This New York Times profile of Christopher Kimball confirmed all my gut feelings about Cooks Illustrated: http://www.nytimes.c...er-kimball.html The trouble with listening to a comedian is that you know they're leading up to a joke. Same with a CI recipe, there's always the zinger they're proud of, and they won't publish otherwise. Fine if one has a "Hints from Heloise" view of the kitchen. I see a fair fight between the greatest living individual chefs and the wisdom of entire nations, with CI not in the picture. (My French cooking teacher sides with the nations, and points out how much the individuals are borrowing. Nevertheless, he calls tradition "the last bad performance." http://www.lacuisinesanspeur.com) I do try to keep an open mind, CI technique by technique. "We couldn't taste the difference" is always an interesting partial argument. Anyone who puts enough effort into cooking ends up limited by their perceptions, so if you give anyone credit for effort, "We couldn't taste the difference" should be what you expect them to say.

Freund Container & Supply. 5 oz "Woozy" bottle + reducer + shrink band + cap = 0.61 + 0.07 + 0.02 + 0.10 = 80 cents/bottle, with price breaks for quantity purchases. Laser printer address labels (full or half sheet) cut up and stick nicely. http://www.freundcon...les/p/V5014B36/ http://www.freundcon....aspx?p=6046-wb http://www.freundcon...spx?p=sbc241-wb http://www.freundcon...px?p=x24-414-wb

The Robot Coupe is 250 watts; the Bamix I linked to is 350 watts. I understand this is only part of the story. Many cars can do 0 to 90 mph nicely, but a Porsche also does 90 to 0 nicely. But on what basis do you conclude that task for task, the 350 watt Bamix will overheat before the 250 watt Robot Coupe? This is somewhat academic, as for any of my stick blender applications I'd ruin the food before the motor overheated. If I need to deliver sustained power to food I use my Vita-Prep.

A Zojirushi rice cooker, two cycles using the "porridge" setting. Meant for congee, this setting won't boil away all the water, so it's perfect also for steel cut oats. I used this setting today to cook a potato to use later in a Spanish tortilla. Very handy.

For many years, Ortego hot sauce, made in small batches in Ville Platte, was the best Louisiana-style hot sauce. We used to order it by the case, straight from the maker. When he retired, I started fermenting small batches aspiring to a similar style. Buy the best local chiles in the tabasco style at a farmers market, ferment them in a beer carboy or a fermentation crock as one would make sauerkraut, and grind in a Vita-Prep with a good mild vinegar such as champagne or rice wine vinegar. Adjust the salt, sieve and bottle. We still miss Ortego but this gets my friends by.

Well, my copy arrived and it's an amazing book, perhaps the definitive regional cookbook. Here is a review that helps place it: http://www.foodarts....talian-cookbook More comprehensive than Artusi, better than Ada Boni, and while the Silver Spoon tries to scratch this itch in English, I never felt compelled to own it after returning my library copy. Of the four, this book is the one if one had to choose.

I can't make the comparison with the Cuisinart, but I love our Bamix in one kitchen, I'm about to get one for my other kitchen. Of course one can use anything as a beaker, but I find myself using their beaker set all the time: http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/B008ND7KYU http://www.amazon.co...t/dp/B0028Y40S4 I also have a Vita-Prep in both kitchens. The Vita-Prep can do plenty that a bar blender would give up on, but there's a huge inertia effect to deciding to pull it out. Basically one uses the Vita-Prep rather than giving up, on a task that would be otherwise impossible. Or, one can make a Thai curry paste from scratch by cheating with some coconut cream (the paste fries in cream as the first step, after all; don't tell Kasma but I don't see a huge difference) that would otherwise be an hour of pounding, mortar and pestle. I most frequently use my Vita-Prep to grind pan-roasted chiles for barbecue rubs. http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com By comparison, one pulls out either a mortar and pestle or a "stick blender" at a moment's impulse, as an improvisation. Simple acts of not consciously cooking, like preparing spinach by sautéing garlic in olive oil, splashing in some sherry, one will pull out the stick blender to make a smooth sauce one might otherwise have left alone. The stick blender is clean and hanging in its cradle before the spinach is done.

Wow. I brought back 5 kilos of turrones from http://www.monerris.com in Santander, Spain, mostly at the request of friends this October. Misjudged my share, a phenomenal confection and this could be the best source. (The rest of my payload was sixteen 380g tins of anchovies in salt from http://www.anchoasanfilippo.com https://maps.google....55139,-3.484163 also likely best of class.) So I had no idea these could be made at home. I now have http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/0470424419 on request through my public library.

This is all relative, there are threads here where people sweat 0.1 degrees sous vide where 5 degrees might do. Or not. I'm still traumatized by a date 30 years ago where I wanted to stop to get coffee filters and she looked at me exasperated, can't you just use paper towels like a normal person?

As with pretty much everything Zojirushi, the specs are better than a beer cooler. (One of the few compensations of age is only really being afraid of commas.)

Now available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.co...duct/B004P45ZB6 I'm intrigued from many possible sous vide angles.

I'd agree. I ordered Fuschia Dunlop's new book from the UK to avoid the risk that the US version would be dumbed down, not in grams. Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand very nicely teaches one to compute brines by equilibrium salinity, using a guess as to the water percentage of the meat itself. Keller calls for a cup of kosher salt per gallon. As a practical matter one will run several vegetables in turn through his giant pot, with different cooking times by taste. So if one kept careful notes the ideal salinity would vary by vegetable, based on contact time. Lucky for me, my wife thinks salt is the new sugar. [Moderator's note: discussion continues in Sous Vide: Recipes, Techniques & Equipment, 2013]

I've made the comparison between the fat separator, chilling, and simply ladling into and out of a beer mug. I prefer the beer mug. One less piece of equipment, less finicky than the fat separator. I make a couple of gallons of stock at a time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmaltz My favorite way to lift off fat from stock involves an amplification trick: Ladle from the top of the hot stock into a tall tumbler, like one of those jam jar glasses. Now ladle fat from the top of the glass. Stop before you reach stock, dump the rest back into the stock pot and repeat. Eventually all of the fat makes its way into the tumbler, and one can lift it all out with very little wasted stock. I've tried all the other methods, this one works best for me. I chill my stock pot to room temperature in a sink filled with ice water, but this way I don't have to refrigerate my stock before packaging for the freezer. Instead I package in chamber vacuum pouches with a $30 impulse sealer; one can learn to easily burp out the air bubble just before sealing. (Propping up the sealer at a slight angle helps pick a route for the air, as one squeezes the bag.)

Thomas Keller is pretty definite about excluding many green vegetables from sous vide, though his concern is in part preserving color. He prefers "big pot boiling" where one cooks just to the point of tenderness in a gigantic, very salty pot of boiling water, then plunges into ice water to arrest the cooking. This was one of the better home cooking lessons from The French Laundry Cookbook, reprised in Under Pressure. One can easily overdo the saltiness with the wrong vegetable; I ruined English peas this way once. It's fantastic for many applications. I'd try slicing greens rather thin, and seeing if I could live with the texture this way. Of course Italian vegetables aren't done till their color resembles army clothing. Go for 185 F sous vide, you aren't serving skycraper food?

I make vinegar in a beer-brewing carboy, using ends of bottles and good bottles that are nevertheless not exactly what I'm looking for to drink. I would no more make vinegar from "off" wine than I'd make sausage from rotten meat. In both cases one wants the friendlies to win the war, for which they need a decisive head start. Unless one is absolutely positive that the way in which the wine has gone "off" is precisely that it has started naturally to turn into magnificent vinegar, throw it out! Usually, something else is wrong instead. There are kits to train people in the wine trade how to distinguish ways in which wine has gone off. Like the seafood inspector who now tastes every piece of shrimp starting to go off, it would probably be a curse to actually learn to identify these tastes. Easier to be conservative.

Funny you should say that, I was gearing up to reverse engineer my Zojirushi, to try to figure out what each preset really does. I don't need a rice cooker cookbook, I need a table defining to an engineer what each mode actually does. Their strategy has to be to hit a target temp depending on the preset, then switch to warming mode when it senses the "water is gone"? It must track the current required to maintain temperature. The original "signature" configuration for the SousVideMagic was to control a dumb rice cooker, so yes, it's baffling that Zojirushi doesn't just build this in. I find various uses for higher temps using my PID, principally for beans. Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo is my bean God, selling flavorful heirloom beans good enough for Thomas Keller. Steve (he used to come regularly to the SF Ferry Building farmers market) feels that pressure cooked beans taste like canned, don't develop the same pot liquor. So I'm baffled by the school that advocates pressure-cooking beans. Are they expecting little flavor, so they're optimizing some textural quality? I've had the best results at 185 F to 195 F. There must be an appropriate Zojirushi setting, with the timer function and the automatic cutoff as bonuses.

Is anyone else as baffled as I am that the $60 slow cooker market hasn't expanded to higher profit margin $100 units with "to the degree" PID controllers? Forty years ago you could notice something traveling in Japan, and introduce a novel product in the United States, but now information travels faster. Did slow cooker management all thaw out of a glacier?