[[Modernist Cuisine] Pommes Pont-Neuf (3•323, 6•160), Pommes Soufflees (4•306, 6•343)]

I believe that steps 6 and 7 in the Pommes Pont-Neuf recipe should be interchanged. That is, the second, optional vacuum cooling step or air cooling should follow, and not proceed, the blanching step.

What I was trying to do was to improve on the traditional recipe for Pommes Soufflees, which I hadn't made for close to 50 years, by adapting the triple-cooking Pommes Pont-Neuf recipe of Heston Blumenthal.

I sliced the potatoes (and my ring finger!), and trimmed the slices into nice ovals, and boiled them for 20 minutes as directed, but with the thin slices they did indeed fall apart, so I gave up and followed the original recipe. Roughly a third of them ballooned nicely, but the others just puffed slightly, even though they were a uniform thickness, and cut from the same potato.

I was using a Zyliss slicer, because I'd mislaid the straight blade for my de Beyer mandolin. The Zyliss slicer was set on the middle position, which appears to be about 2 mm, rather than the 3mm thickness called for in the recipe.

I would have thought that the thicker slice would make it more difficult for the chip to balloon, but maybe it needs the extra starch to make it pop?

Potatoes are cheap enough to try it again with different thicknesses, with and without the par-boiling and vacuum drying step, and I also want to try it with sweet potatoes, and with crinkle chips.

Anyone else tried this? Any advice?

[[Modernist Cuisine] Oysters with Cava Foam (6•327)]

I tried the soy lecithin and xanthan, and that stabilized it quite nicely. The class (October 17) will be a demonstration and tasting menu, with as much as possible prepared in front of the class. For reservations, contact Max's Restaurant, in Santa Fe. At present, I'm planning a 10 course menu and appropriate wine pairings, featuring New Mexico wines as much as possible. The tentative menu will consist of the following: 1. Amuse bouche. Vacuum compressed watermelon topped with goat cheese foam and balsamic vinegar pearls (forward spherification) 2. Shrimp and lobster matrix, demonstrating transglutaminase (meat glue). 3. Asparagus "Sunrise", with a mousse of green asparagus in the center, and four radiating white asparagus pieces, topped with a perfect egg yolk surrounded with the foam. Sous vide vegetables, 6xC egg yolk, foams. 4. Smoked spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, using a PolyScience Smoking Gun. 5. Oxtail consumme with reverse-spherification mushroom balls. High altitude pressure cooking in a sterilizer, fining with methylcellulose, and reverse spherification. 6. 72-hour 55C sous vide brisket with mustard sauce. 7. Vegetable medley, with sous vide salsify sautes and Moroccan carrots; and mushroom risotto (cooked in a Thermomix) 8. Cold vanilla-infused pears with vanilla-brandy extract, topped with hot ice cream. (Sous vide pears, nitrogen cavitation, more methylcellulose) 9. Blue cheese foam sequence with gelled port, prepared on an Anti-Griddle (and a DIY version with dry ice) 10. Lagniappe, with mango sorbet enclosed in white chocolate that semi-exploes in your mouth. (A different kind of spherification.) Complete recipes with resources will be handed out, along with an extensive PowerPoint presentation on sous vide cooking. You and Nathan would be most welcome to attend! 

[Faucet Aspirators]

I built a home-made vacuum pump, using a faucet aspirator and a pump of the type that is used in the southwest to circulate water through a "swamp cooler". The pump is partially submerged in a plastic tank, and the faucet aspirator drains back into it, so there isn't any water wastage. "The water goes round and around..."

This is used with an Erlenmeyer flask and a Buchner funnel. The faucet aspirator pulls a reasonable vacuum, although I've never measured it.

But when I tried to use it to filter some watermelon juice, the filter in the Buchner funnel clogged pretty quickly, and the yield was very slow. I haven't used it for anything since then, but I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed. Perhaps I should have used a coarser filter paper.

I recently tried making the oxtail consumme, and fining it with methylcellulose as discussed in 2-376. Surprisingly, after straining it, chilling it and scraping off the fat, I tried simmering it once more, and was quite surprised at the extent to which the methylcellulose bubbled up again, with more particles, so I strained it again, using a double layer of cheese cloth and a fine sieve.

It might be interesting to chill and then simmer it yet another time, and this time run the hot broth through the Buchner funnel, to try to get the ultimate clarity.

[Hot Ingredients in Whippers]

I can't tell from the picture whether that is one of the professional (stainless steel) models, or the less expensive aluminum "consumer" grade versions.

I wouldn't put anything but cream inside one of the aluminum ones. I have one, and despise it, compared the the four professional versions I also have. Not only can it not go in the dishwasher, but the nozzles are too hard to attach.

[Sous Vide - to season early or not?]

I have to strongly disagree with George. Letting a steak warm up to room temperature over eight hours, even from the freezer, would violate just about every one of the food safety rules. and searing it afterwards won't solve the problem if there is any bacteria inside the meat, unless you pasteurize it at 55C for the required amount of time, and you shouldn't do that to a nice filet! And even if you did, that won't necessarily get rid of some possible off-tastes.

If you are in that much of a hurry, leave the steak in the fridge, and throw it in the water bath when you come home, just enough to warm it a bit. Then sear it in a pan or on the grill.

I would also recommend against salting the beef in advance, for the reasons others have cited. I never brine a tender steak.

A filet is pretty tender, and cooking it sous vide for 8 hours might make it just this side of mushy, although I've never had that problem with a rib-eye. Chicken, and certainly fish, would be a completely different story.

Assuming you have calibrated your water bath so that it doesn't overshoot the temperature too much, I would recommend putting a frozen, vacuum-sealed portion in cold water in your water bath, and then turning it on just before you leave. Better yet, fill the water bath with ice cubes, and then start it.

If you are using a rice cooker or other device that has a slow setting, you could also use that -- again to slow down the cooking a bit, while not remaining in the danger zone for too long.

[Modernist Ingredient Starter Kits]

I would highly recommend the Molecule-R kit from Cuisine R-EVOLUTION, out of Canada. The set is very nicely packaged, has a great instructional DVD with 50 recipes, including a how-to video and PDF recipes in both English and French. Measuring spoons, a slotted spoon, and pipettes are also included. I gave a set to my grandson on his 14th birthday, and encouraged him to make a molecular hamburger (with spherified mustard and ketchup), "spaghetti and meatballs" for dessert (with white chocolate "spaghetti" and strawberry "meatballs" dusted with exploding pop rock "parmesan".) And for the adults in the room, try Mojito bubbles.

The set includes agar-agar, sodium alginate, calcium lactate, soy lecithin, and xanthan gum -- enough to gt you started with spherification, gelling, emulsions, thickening, etc. Amazon is selling it for $63.95.

The Experimental Kit Artistre has 12 different products, at 50 g each, packed in a lunchbox/cooler to make a nice gift. Also around $60, but without the video or the specialized tools included in the Molecule-R set. But it adds Tapioca maltodextrin, sodium citrate, calcium chloride, glycerin flakes, Methocel F50, and Kappa Carrageenan.

At one time, Texturas, the folks from El Bulli, had a nice starter set that was imported into the US by La Tienda. I haven't been able to find it on the web recently, but you might contact them.

Other ingredients are available on Amazon, including many from Will-Powder, but these generally come in one to two pound jars, which will last you almost forever.

[[Modernist Cuisine] Oysters with Cava Foam (6•327)]

For my forthcoming class in Modernist Cuisine, I'm preparing what I call an "asparagus sunrise." It consists of a mousse of green asparagus in the center of the plate, with four radiating stalks of white asparagus. A perfect egg yolk (130 min at 63C) will sit on top of the mousse. Then to finish it off, I wanted to have a light, airy foam, like the sun peaking through the clouds. I tried the cava foam portion from the Oysters and cava foam recipe (MC 6-327), but substituting a non-sparkling Gewurtztraminer wine for the cava. When dispensed from a cream whipper, it foamed up nicely -- maybe even too much. But then it very quickly deflated, leaving a slightly sticky wine behind. I'd like it to stay intact for at least a couple of minutes. Was the problem caused by not using a sparkling wine, which would have added some of its own bubbles? iSi has a recipe for a Riesling espuma that calls for 900 ml of Riesling, 90 g of sugar, and EIGHT sheets of gelatin, which seems like a lot, but maybe not for 900 ml of wine. Another possibility might be the citrus air (MC 6-312) with lemon and lime juice and soy lecithin and xanthan gum. The lemon/lime would go pretty well with the asparagus, although it would make the wine pairing even more difficult. I suppose I could try adding some soy lecithin to the remaining wine, and charge it again. Any other thoughts? 

[Sous Vide Magic/Fresh Meals Magic]

I was a beta tester for the SVM, still have three or four, and have custom calibrated well over a dozen. They are certainly the least expensive way to do precision sous vide cooking, and the customer support is outstanding. I don't have any personal experience yet with the Fresh Meals Magic -- I use a variety of rice cookers, but you can also use a crock pot, a turkey fryer, and a variety of other dumb electrical appliances.

For most applications, you don't really need a circulating water bath, unless you are cooking very large quantities of food, but on the other hand it does help to even out any fluctuations, and to come up to temperature quickly.

I recently summarized the pros and cons of various such devices on eGullet, athttp://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/136275-sous-vide-recipes-techniques-equipment-2011/page__st__780.

[[Modernist Cuisine] Mushroom Stock (6•6)]

Thanks, Judy, that clarifies that.

Now, how about the scaling percentages for the vegetable stock recipe?

Also, when can we expect to see an errata sheet for the second printing?

[[Modernist Cuisine] Mushroom Stock (6•6)]

I think you win the sleuthing prize!

When I first saw your post, I thought, "Wow, that seems like a lot of grapeseed oil!" But on looking up the recipe, I see that they are coating the mushrooms in oil, roasting them at 175C/350F until golden (30 minutes), then simmering in water for an hour, and straining.

From a culinary linguistics standpoint, this makes more sense, because a broth is a finished, highly flavored essence in it's own right, whereas a stock is used in combination with other ingredients to make the finished dish.

However, the differences are interesting. If you scale up the mushroom broth ingredients to the same scale as the mushroom stock, you would have 2kg of mushrooms (Crimini, in this case), 3575 g of water(!), 121 g of olive oil, and 529 g of shallots. Obviously the shallots would add a lot of flavor, but I'm not sure that it would be a mushroom flavor. The recipes differ in that the broth is sauteed, vs. roasted, but I doubt that makes much difference in the taste. Likewise, I don't know that pressure cooking for 15 minutes vs. simmering for 30 minutes would make all that much difference.

I thought I would double-check this recipe with Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire, but surprisingly, I couldn't find any kind of a mushroom stock listed, even under morels or champignons. Cream sauces, and other preparations, such as a mushroom sauce made from Demi-glace, yes, but not a separate stock.

[[Modernist Cuisine] Mushroom Stock (6•6)]

I have the same question. I wanted to try making the Mushroom-Bacon Cappuccino on 4-275, which calls for mushroom jus on page 2-348. That in turn calls for mushroom stock, and refers you to page 2-296, but mushroom stock is nowhere to be found there, nor is it listed in the Vol. 5 or KM index.

Perhaps lachyg is correct, and you are supposed to know to substitute mushrooms for the vegetables. But he is correct -- water is scaled at 100%, and vegetable oil at 5%, but the vegetables/mushrooms aren't scaled at all! So how much are you supposed to use?

I bought the second printing and sold the first one I had, in order to clear up some of these problems. But so far, I haven't found any errata for the second printing, yet one is obviously needed.