Raamo

So true! I have my pc dvr set up to record the shows, but it is nice to get the dvds basically for free once I pay them $30 for the book since it's easier to cook out of the book. Given the last few years 80% of what we cook has come from one of the books it's not too bad a trade off. I did tell my wife about the new PC book last night and she thinks it's one we'll actually pick up.

Interesting, I didn't realize they kept adding to that book. We got rid of all the prior books when the one through 2010 came out even though there's some things like an index compared to the season that is missing in the mega book. It's not possible using the book alone to figure out which dvd to watch to see them make the episode. I agree CK loves his bucks. The amount of e-mail I get from them to sell books is pretty nuts. We used to get CI, but don't bother any more because they end up recycling the recipes in a book some day so it's a lot of extra stuff to look through. I do have a pair of books signed by CK when he came to a local B&N a few years ago, the crowd was totally not what I expected at the time so I expect his fan base may not be exactly the same as MC. Even if we don't see PC used in the show, a book on the shelf at BN could just be another way to get CK some bucks and perhaps his staff enjoys the challenge / change.

I have the season 13 book, I'll have to look up this recipe when I'm home and report back on if it uses a PC.

from ATK: After soaking overnight in what was hot water, add 1 cup more and cook for 4-6 mins till it looks like hot porridge then rest for 5 mins. Can't get much easier then that and it's faster then a pressure cooker in the morning.

I have on DVD every ATK episode but the 1st season and they never use a pressure cooker. The latest season I only have the book and there are no pressure cooker recipes in it. This is the 1st I've heard of this book, but it won't be the last. The one down side to this company they try really hard to sell their books I may get this book for that exact reason, they also do a good job of using science so it might be the most modernist friendly ATK book yet.

This is covered in the latest season of America's Test Kitchen, I've not seen the episode but I have the cookbook. They found if you boil 3 cups of water to 1 of oats first w/o the oats in the pot and then add the oats to the hot water off the heat and let sit over night you get the best combination of softness w/o the gummyness. I've done this ~4x since we got the book, the next morning you add 1 cup of liquid to the oats and cook to finish. It works very very well, you can even add other things with the liquid to get all kinds of yummy flavors.

I made Buffalo Wings last night, we tried to keep the chicken wings away from the side and turned the bag around 1/2 way through cooking, results were much better. I subbed a single 3g fatali pepper for the 2 types of peppers in the buffalo sauce, it worked very well. I'm guessing this will work with any other hot pepper with some flavor. The resulting sauce had a distinct fatali heat / flavor but not so strong you couldn't eat it (like you might get if you try a fatali raw, I did once... never again )

No floating problem, I just gathered from MC@H that I should be clipping ziploc bags to the side, not putting the whole thing under water. I'm guessing this is not true It's clear from the recipes that ziploc bags with most of the air removed is a valid substitute for shorter cooked dishes.

Thanks, what's the best way to get ziploc bags to stay in the middle? There are other recipes were they specifically calling out to attach the bag to the side, I'm guessing time is taken into account then. We're going to try the buffalo wings tonight and I think IIRC that's how they have you do it, in a 1 gallon ziploc bag clamped to the side. I'd like to get a vacuum sealer but I think I want to skip food savers and jump to a chamber vacuum, but that's not a cheap purchase so it'll have to wait.

I made sous vide Salmon on Saturday. My first attempt with the creative series from PolyScience. I used a relatively small food service container to hold the immersion circulator as it took up about 1/4 the space in the container. Even after time listed in the recipe the salmon was not up to 113F, the water was 115F, we ended up polling out the fish at about 107-108F and it was fine. We used Ziploc freezer bags and the water displacement method to get the air out, the bags were clamped to the side of the container with the fish fully underwater. Could this be delaying the heat transfer? Do I need to try and get them away from the sides of the container? I also had problems getting the fish out of the bags without breaking them up, the end result was tasty but nothing I'd want to photo graph The Fish Spice mix turned out quite nummy, though I'm sure part of it was the sheer amount of butter I can definitely see why using N-Zorbit Tapioca Maltodextrin would be helpful as it clumps a lot.

That's a great story, I discovered them in the seed savers catalog listed as super hot and decided to give them a try, I still have the first plat we started. We're going to try starting a bunch from seeds this spring and growing them outside, should be able to get plenty of peppers and make enough sauce to last a while. Going to use the one I have right now in the buffalo sauce from MC@H this afternoon just to see how it works out

We get the Fatali's from Seed Savers out of Iowa, getting them to grow isn't a problem We've never tried to get them to produce a lot of peppers which we'll want to do if we're going to make a sauce out of multiple.

Tandoor Chef Chicken Tikka Masala The sauce in this packet is the all time best frozen dinner I've had, my wife pointed out that the link I have above is sans rice... the stuff I usually get comes with rice, I've made Chicken Tikka Masala from scratch by making the tikka's first and then the next day makeing the sauce and the chicken I made was light years better then the frozen but the sauce was almost the exact same. You get real chicken pieces that aren't exactly small either. I've yet to find anything this good from the freezer that's a meal. Our local high end supermarket has frozen soups that can be gotten on sale for $2 each, it's the same quality of soup we find at the mid tier of resturants that use frozen soup. Very good when we don't feel like making soup. This is one thing I likely can replace when we get a chamber vacuum since I can package soup the same way Edit: Sent the link to my wife and she pointed out the difference

Awesome, someone else who actually grows Fatali's - how many plants do you have? Getting to 24 to make this would be rather difficult so I may have to pair this recipe down when we get a crop. The pepper is so hot but awesome we havn't exactly worried about the low production. I'm in Minnesota so it's only 65 in the room with the peppers much of the time during the winter and I'm sure they don't like that - but there's one pepper on one of the plants right now! Back when I first got into Fatali it was the 5th hottest pepper.. how times change We mostly use it in Fajitas but my wife makes me cook them on the grill because the oil gets so hot it's basically a pepper oil gas in the kitchen. The flavor imparted by the pepers has made resturant Fajita's blah to me and I don't order them any more. I have put them in Chili before and gotten crazy hot chili but it seems to lack some of the double punch you get when the chilis aren't cooked quite as much.

I have a microwave above my stove as well. It was cleary put in after the fact since there's a duct for a proper hood that's not used. It appears one of the advantages of a good hood is you can suck all the stuff up that ends up as splater all over the place when you cook with hot oil.... this seems like a good selling point if I can find a better place for the darn microwave. We do own a microwave cart that's anything but sitting in the dinning room. When I get a chamber vacume it needs some place to sit, perhaps a proper microwave cart would work for both items.

My wife's pressure canner that I bought from a Wisconsin company has both a pressure gauge and a weight that goes on. When we made the polenta in MC@H we used this giant pot since we were basically canning... when the pressure got up to ~13 psi the weight started jiggling a lot and it freaked my wife out since she's never seen that before. When she cans she only goes to 11 psi since that's what the canning books she has say to do.. Since it has both the weight and the gague is this a combo of what you describe above or just a normally pressure cooker? On the topic of Sous Vide I picked up the Sous Vide Professional Creative Series by Poly Science last night at W-S, it came free with a container that W-S tossed in that holds more then 20L but at the sane water level is 20L and it seems to be as big as I could ever need for the party size I would expect to cook for. I'm guessing this device would handle more then 20L but not to the accurency of .1C, I guess I could try it in the former mentioned giant pressure pot which is more then 20L.

I plan on it... I've got a GE Profile electric range that's about 12 years old and keeps on trucking... so I'll likely have to wait for it to die before I replace it. I remember MC@H swears by it, and says cheap Ikea pans are great. I've already got a nice collection of stainless all-clad so I'm in no rush for new pots. When you say great for a low simmer? Is this because it's more effecient? I find it super easy to mantain a simmer on a pressure cooker once you learn the pot / electric range.

Whats the best use for these besides boiling water? This seems like a very cheap way to try this out.

I have a small bookshelf from Ikea, it's full height but only half width. My wife won't let me buy any more cookbooks then what fit on the shelves. I recently got rid of 15+ books, 1/2 were ATK books replaced by the 10 year compalation. Even then I've still got a very full self, easily 40 books. Still not sure wher MC is going to go once I get that.

That's not yet avalible, it's a KS project that's late: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nomiku/nomiku-bring-sous-vide-into-your-kitchen?ref=live From the updates: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nomiku/nomiku-bring-sous-vide-into-your-kitchen/posts First, the bad news: because of issues that have lined up and the 3-week Chinese New Year holiday, it’s likely that we won’t have the Nomiku on your doorstep until March. I think I'm going to go with the creative series and pick one up tonight at William Sonoma, It seems this industry for the home use is just getting under way and I feel more confortable buying from a large company with a histroy of these units in the science community.

Is that the same booklet that contains recipes that comes with the unit, or does that unit have a separate instruction book? Separate instruction book, English is the 3rd Language, after German and French but before about 3 more. So I suspect it's the european model and thus the .8 bar high settings. I got it from amazon, not sure who locally even would sell these units.

Thanks this makes sense, so the 2nd red bar is .8 / 13 psi... I can go over it a little bit to get to 15 psi / 1 bar, too much and I'll hit 1.2 and it'll not be happy

The instruction book says the maximum pressure is 1.2 bars.

Thanks to MC@H I bought a smaller pressure cooker then the giant one my wife uses to can. Kuhn Rikon Duromatic 3-3/4-Quart Pressure Saucepan What I'm curious about if anyone knows is where I should have the popup thingy at when cooking with MC@H who normally wants 1 bar I've read from the manual with the cooker that the 2nd red line is .8 bars... and I've read elsewhere that it's 1 bar when at the 2nd line.... I'm thinking it's supposed to be a little past to be at 1 bar, the unit goes up to 1.2 bars without being unhappy. This appears to be the exact pressure cooker MC cut in half for their cookbook so I'm guessing someone else has it too.

We grow two peppers - Fatalii and Rocoto I'd love to make a sauce out of the Fatalii if I got enough of them. I'm in Minnnesota so it's strickly an indoor project. There's one fatalii on one of the plants right now but I doubt I'd ever get a full pound. What's the reason for fermenting described above?