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Anonymous Modernist 734

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Posts posted by Anonymous Modernist 734

  1. I am making this recipe and following the instructions to make a "true" bresaola, i:e curing the meat for three weeks. I am using what I normally use for bresaola which is the eye of round cut of beef. The meat has already been in the cure for a week so far. Has anyone done that? There is a lot of coffee in there and I am concerned that the coffee flavor might be too assertive in it.

  2. Sous Vide Lemon Curd

    Once again my Meyer Lemon tree is going crazy and I have way more lemons than I know what to do with. I made lemon olive oil, Lemoncello batch, salt preserved lemon...and I also wanted to make a batch or 3 of curd. I figured I'll try the MC version this time around and the first thing I noticed is the quantity of butter used. It's a crap ton of butter compared to typical lemon curd recipes. I plowed ahead and gave it a shot anyways.

    post-5404-0-80177800-1331152362.jpg

    Egg yolks are cooked SV at 65C. I did not use lemon essential oil and opted to use the extra-fragrant lemon zest.

    post-5404-0-63195800-1331152393.jpg

    I also used a total amount of lemon juice equal to the combination of water and citric acid that MC uses. This is something the MC authors in a recent video and email said is fine to do and makes sense to me.

    The lemon juice and sugar gets blended with the cooked yolks and then butter, a lot of it (400gr) gets incorporated. After a chill time the curd is ready to eat.

    post-5404-0-64605900-1331152425.jpg

    post-5404-0-16175300-1331152440.jpg

    Now, the verdict: It's a good tasting product, but the crazy amount of butter makes it like no other citrus curd I've ever had. I usually expect a stiff custard of sorts, this was more like a lemon curd flavored butter and the texture out of the fridge was more like a cream cheese. No way I would use this to fill a tart or cream puffs, it is just way too rich. I know the recipe has no errata since they just republished it on the MC website and emailed it to their subscribers. So, this is the intended resutl they are shooting for I suppose.

    Two questions:

    - Is there a reason why the lemon juice, sugar and yolks cannot be mixed together and then bagged and cooked? The last step would be to incorporate the butter. This makes it simpler and more like how a traditional curd is made.

    - I am thinking of making it again with half or even less the butter amount. Any thoughts if that would or would not work?

  3. jennykelly said:

    Thank you! So a related

    question: how do you work out the optimal salting time for beef? There seems lots of info relating to how long to brine things, but not so much on how long to let the salt sit.

    Well, in Modernist Cuisine there are long and accurate discussions about briningand salting, the difference between a high concentration and equilibrium brining, how long to do eitherand so on. So, if you have the books review that.

    For my unscientific approach I try to season the meat with kosher salt(and sometiems other seasonings)24-72 hours before I am planning on cooking them (for a whole turkey or rib roasteven longer time is needed). This approach is mostly from the Zuni Cafe cookbook. It seasons the meat more evenly, draws out some proteins to the surfaceand seems to keep it juicier.


  4. I would do avari­a­tion of Option1.Leave it in the fridgetill Monday, and salt it then. Do not vac pack it until ready to cook it in this case.I say this because the meat will have released some juice that Ilike to pat dry well with paper tow­els before vac­uum pack­ing and cook­ing. Since this is aten­der cut thatdoes not need too long of acook­ing time this works well in ahome envi­ron­ment as opposed to arestau­rant. If you had atough cut that needs hours or days of cook­ing, Option2 is prob­a­bly better.

    Another option is to vac­uum pack it and freeze it. Then put it in the SVS directly from the freezer acou­ple of hours (well, look at the books for tim­ing…) before ready to serveit.

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