rx6006

A very small amount of butter will stop the foaming as well.

That's very interesting that a dichotomy exists between produce preferred by men and women. Are meals eaten as a family made from the same components or do the different genders in the family build their plates differently as well? Family meals come out of one pot, same thing for everyone, and then individuals decide whether/how much aji and salt to add. Meals are typically rice + some other starch (potato, plantain, heirloom tuber, corn, noodles) + meat + salad. Salad has a slightly different connotation here as well: it may be lightly boiled beets, cooked veggies of some sort (also usually boiled), or rarely fresh greens soaked in lime water with encebollado (a quick pickle of sliced red onion, tomato, cilantro, and lime juice). Fruits and the spices I mentioned are rarely components of main meals. You'll notice that most of what's listed there is fruit, which shows as a wider influence in what people choose as juice or to eat out of hand, especially away from home. The basic daily juice in most homes across the country is tomate de árbol, a type of tomato-ish fruit, which is neutral insofar as aphrodisiac/anaphrodisiac qualities. You also know for a flat fact that the guy sitting next to you at the juice bar in the market, drinking a borojó shake and chewing ishpingo is in trouble with his wife/girlfriend/both in the bedroom department. That must make for a rather simplified experience when trying to pick up a date...avoid the borojo and ishpingo devotees. The idea of neutral hand fruits versus those with, or without, aphrodisiac qualities reminds me of Medieval European cooking that strove to compliment and balance the various humours in the body. Fish were considered cold and wet food, and as such were to be served with hot and dry food such as a roasted boar or something similar.

My better half picked up a box at WalMart over the weekend. I'm not sure how much of my critique is psychological, but I found the sponge cake to be a lot drier than I remember; given the amount of preservatives and dough relaxers in Twinkies, I didn't even think dryness was possible. The filling also seemed a bit more fluid.

Agreed. I picked up two pounds of grass fed chuck roast at Whole Foods today. I'm going to cook it off around 135F for 24 hours and see how it goes. I see a good deal of aromatics in its future, or perhaps a low acid marinade. Do let me know how you like the RedBoat treatment.

Ah, apologies. In PA, meat departments refer to top round as London Broil, as opposed to the more traditional term for a method of preparation.

I never thought I'd speak ill of such a treat, but...bacon. The proliferation of bacon into every possible facet of cuisine, from the greasiest of spoons to the most cutting edge of cuisine nouveau establishments. While I believe bacon has a place of honor in the culinary pantheon of ingredients, I do not believe that adding bacon to an otherwise poorly executed dish magically removes all impediments to flavor and delivers a winning bite.

That's very interesting that a dichotomy exists between produce preferred by men and women. Are meals eaten as a family made from the same components or do the different genders in the family build their plates differently as well?

Growing up, the only pasta in the house was San Giorgio. In my own house, I stock Barilla. They're both fairly priced, and of good quality. Occasionally, I buy a brand from Whole Foods (the name escapes me) that uses a Jerusalem artichoke flour blend. I find that blend works well when using fettuccine noodles doused in a cream based sauce.

It was around 1100 grams or so with a thickness of around 7/8 inches; not my thickest project, but I love skirt steak. I used around 30 grams of fish sauce, and brushed it on each side equally prior to vacuum sealing. After three days rest, I rinsed, seasoned again, re-sealed, and cooked at 138F for about ninety minutes and then at 122F for just under two hours. I want to use the same treatment for a piece of London Broil. It was the second item I cooked with my IC, and the overall result was like cafeteria food: bland, tough, and a texture not even my dog could appreciate. I'm sure that cooking time had a lot to do with it as well (under twelve hours), but hopefully this will help too.

I actually used the 40N Red Boat, and it was perfect. I do have a few smaller bottles of 50N, but I typically use it for finishing and am not too sure if the subtle nuances would be lost during the marinade process.

Great news from the kitchen...the fish sauce experiment was a stunning success. The marinade and time in the fridge created some very deep, buttery flavors in the steak with absolutely no trace of a fishy aroma. Out of an abundance of caution, I rinsed the meat prior to resealing and cooking, and found that it was necessary to salt liberally prior to searing with a MAPP torch. For those of you short on time or the resources to dry age at home, I highly recommend this.

I'm going to treat it like a marinade as Paul suggested; after he mentioned the comparison, the mystery of how to treat the skirt steak sort of fell away. I do think after I rinse and pat dry, I'll season with cracked black pepper and throw in a pat of unsalted butter for good measure. I'll be sure to report back with pictures and a summary of how it turns out. Truth be told, I don't mind the smell either. Almost all of my favorite foods are heavily cured or fermented, so I've come to equate bracing food aromas with substantial payoff when it comes to the taste. A whole bottle of Red Boat breaking, though, might necessitate a HazMat response.

Hello all, My Polyscience Creative Series finally came in the mail, and I've been tearing through recipes from Modernist Cuisine at Home. I was very intrigued by the technique of vacuum sealing a steak brushed with fish sauce to mimic the flavor of dry aged beef as mentioned in the section on beef. I currently have a skirt steak in the fridge doing just that, but I was unclear on the cooking process. Should the steak be removed from the bag after the three day aging period, rinsed, and seasoned at usual or should it be cooked as is? I'm somewhat leery of seasoning it as usual, due to the innate sodium content of the fish sauce but other forums have said throwing it in the sous vide as is will result in too strong a flavor of fish sauce. Given my wife's absolute disgust for the smell of the sauce as I prepared the bags, I'm trying to avoid serving her an entree redolent in that aroma and taste. Thanks in advance for your input.

Sauces that are hot for the sake of being hot are just wastes of good ingredients. If you enjoy Tapatio, try Cholula...great smoky flavor with the vinegar/pepper bite.

You're right, making your own stocks is one of the great benefits of owning a pressure cooker. Although I rarely have enough to can it, it usually is used up so fast. (We're trying to eat a lot of homemade soups.) If you'd like to read two really interesting articles re making stock in the pressure cooker, I can recommend: http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/11/22/pressure-cooked-stocks-we-got-schooled/ http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/01/27/pressure-cooked-stock-2-changing-pressures-playing-with-chemistry/ Its really quite interesting to read about their experimentation and their comparisons of making stock conventionally and in the pressure cooker. Excellent read. Those are great reads; I stumbled upon them while I was perfecting my stock recipe and couldn't decide on what pressure to use. I ended up using 15 psi.

I learned about pressure cooking stocks about six months ago; as simple as it is...what a revelation in my kitchen! I use my All-American pressure canner to perform double duty of cooking and canning the resultant stock. The only downside thus far is that, due to the enormous heft of the cooking vessel, I fear my stock almost always boils prior to reaching pressure.

So very true. In my mother's kitchen two Thanksgivings ago, she absentmindedly poured powdered sugar into my turkey stock thinking it was corn starch. The resulting "gravy" syrup was poured out into the front yard and killed whatever grass it landed upon.

Makes sense. I've always relied on taste and smell to determine expiration for most things, since the dates are arbitrary and usually put there to encourage planned obsolescence. Good point on the potential issue with moisture; I'll be sure to use containers with gaskets for the powders. I'm not sure about whether or not organic materials like gelatin and carrageenan can exist in perpetuity, but using them until I see failures seems like the way to go.

Leaf lard in pie crusts. Lard as a frying medium. Just...lard. Glorious, unctuous lard.

Perhaps I'm stubborn in clinging to old habits, but I'll never lose my love for regular old Tabasco. While I think siracha is being done to death at the moment, I think it still has its place, judiciously used of course.

Your basket weave with the zucchini was a phenomenal touch.

During the height of ramp season, I was fortunate enough to obtain five pounds or so. The bulbs and white stems were pickled and canned for use in salads, garnish for roasts, and the occasional midnight snack. I simmered the ramp greens with chicken stock, cream, onion, Yukon Gold potatoes, and pureed it with an immersion blender before serving. The overall effect was similar to potato leek soup, but with a bold spring green hue and a heady aroma of garlic and chive. It was definitely not the soup of first dates, but the taste was worth the threat of sleeping alone.

Hi All, I'm new to the site and new to incorporating modernist techniques and ingredients into my culinary repertoire, but I like to think that I've cooked food in every other conceivable way short of a fusion reactor. When purchasing chemicals such as carrageenan, calcium chloride, sodium acetate, etc., what sort of shelf life should I expect? I'm reticent to purchase large amounts if they aren't well suited for storage, but I also don't want to purchase very small quantities if it isn't necessary for quality control. I know there are so many other "molecular" additives I've omitted from my example, but a rough generalization would be very helpful. Thanks very much.