Anonymous Modernist 218

This is one of my pet peeves with MC as well; scaling of some components of recipes often has no relationship to other components. In this case, the default weight of herbs listed is much smaller than what you need for one batch of coconut chutney foam. Another example is with the rub for beef cheek pastrami, except in that case they give you 6 times more than you need. In any event, I prepared the foam base today for dinner tomorrow. I couldn't find "Coconut Cream" anywhere, but did find a 200g block of "Creamed Coconut" at a local store. It was very hard, and called for dissolving in hot water. I ended up dissolving it in a can of coconut milk and using 400g of the resulting mix. It turns out that the mix isn't sweet at all, and with 20g of the herb paste turns quite green rather than the white in the photo. I laboriously picked leaves off the mint and cilantro (2x weights called for to be sure I had enough), whizzed them up in the food processor, and then attempted to force the resulting mix through a strainer. It didn't go through easily and I ended up with a greenish black paste on the other side of the strainer. There wasn't nearly enough paste (4-5g) so I just took some of the mix not yet put through the strainer to top it off to 20g. I used Chef Rubber Gellan, which I'm not sure is low-acyl or not. The mix set up a little bit but I wouldn't call it a firm gel. I can't say that I like the flavor much — not sweet and a somewhat bitter/gritty flavor from the herbs. Perhaps when aerated out of the siphon and paired with the soup it will taste better, but I have my doubts. Has anyone else had success with the Coconut Chutney Foam recipe? What's your secret? Post-meal edit: As always, the soup tasted great and was a hit. I made a triple batch and it worked and tasted just as good as my earlier single-batch versions. I cored the carrots this time, but I can't say I tasted any difference. The foam worked well mechanically (remained stable) and visually (green pillow of foam floating on orange soup looked cool), but I'm still not convinced that the foam adds anything from a flavor perspective. It definitely tasted better with the soup than stand-alone, but I'll probably pass the next time I make the soup.

I've made this 3 times now, and each time it's turned out very well. I've never cored the carrots and used WF carrot juice instead of the centrifuged variety suggested in the book. One batch actually ended up too thin for my taste, so I added some xanthan gum to thicken it up, which worked well...until I kept adding to see what would happen and it got a borderline slimy, but that's a story for a different topic.

I have a Cameron smoker, and have used it mainly for smoked trout. A tablespoon or so of alder sawdust, a brined butterflied trout, 30 minutes on the stove. Fantastic. It really got me hooked on the use of smoke as a flavor. So much so that I went out and got a big green egg smoker/BBQ to do longer/cooler smokes! I think the sweet spot for the Camerons is with smaller/thinner items that you want to hot smoke in 30 minutes or less. The sawdust is typically gone by then, so its hard to do a long smoke or a low-temp smoke. Your potato idea sounds great (if small or cut thin). I bet garlic might work in the Camron; this only took about 30 min in the BGE and was great in an aioli.

Judy said: Ahah -- that explains it! The first time I made the cornbread it came out very undercooked -- even after keeping it in the oven longer. I initially blamed the size of the loaf pan vs. what was pictured in the book, which I suppose could still be a factor. I had much better success with my second batch, which I cooked on my Big Green Egg in a different pan, and enjoyed along with MC-inspired Cola-brined pulled pork, MC baked beans, MC white coleslaw and 3 different MC BBQ sauces. All highly recommended!