Anonymous Modernist 3281

You might notice in my photo of my attempt at this recipe from a while back, that my potatoes were somewhat dark. I always wondered why it was that sometimes i would fry potatoes and get really dark bitter results (or at least potatoes that would darken rapidly, before even being properly cooked) and yet at other times, i got the nice golden color that one ought to expect, even after many minutes in the oil. I came across this article the other day and so I have learned something completely new, which is don't refrigerate your potatoes if you want to ever fry them, because of cold induced sweetening caused by the vacuolar invertase gene. The article is about the suppression of the gene by some really smart scientists, so that you can keep potatoes fresh in the fridge, and not have the sweetening. I guess until their potatoes are on the grocery store shelves, though, if you want fries without lots of acrylamide, then I suppose you ought to keep them in a dark cabinet at room temperature for now. This may have been discussed in MC, for all I know, but I haven't gotten to that page as of yet. O:-) One further observation is this: I had a non-refrigerated microwaved baked potato today, after years of having the refrigerated ones. I like the sweeter taste of refrigerated potatoes cooked that way. So I suppose if I were just baking, microwaving, mashing etc., then I'd be okay with refrigeration, because the potatoes are a little sweeter, and they keep longer. For frying, or anything with a high enough temperature to start to burn that sugar, I suppose there is the drawer or dark cabinet.

Thanks for that zmaster, I was at the times talk today with Nathan and he seemed to say that citric acid would work, but I guess what I really need to understand is what's going on. I should experiment with lemon/lime juice or vinegar just to see if it's all about the acidity, or is something else at play here? I guess i ought to order some sodium citrate and see for myself just how it differs from citric acid... do you know what the differences are? is one being a salt, going to imbue a higher salinity? i'm in the dark here on this one, and i guess I was too lazy to google so far. -Dave

I'll have to try that! I've tried a few little things with the pasta, which there is still a tiny bit of left in the fridge (at this point i think it's probably ready for the worm box, but who knows...) I also want to try soaking pasta in just regular tomato juice and perhaps rinsing it off after, or not. and see if that can be any good. I met Scott and Nathan today in NYC, which was a lot of fun, and you proved me wrong when I said nobody is responding to anything I've posted, which is a great thing, really! I'm glad you're here, with me, because I have a lot more kitchen experimentation ahead, i'd say.

I really guess I'm going to have to calibrate my scales, because I attempted this recipe last night and the result was a total failure. I had scaled the whole thing up by a factor of 4.74 because one package of elbows is 474 grams. I used citric acid crystals from the indian grocery... what molarity of citric acid is supposed to be used here? I was way off, though, because the resulting soupy, grainy liquid never really solidified even in the refrigerator overnight and it was far too acidic. The resulting ph might be in the 4-5 range. I think i need some better landmarks for the recipe, such as what should the proper ph be of the beer/water/citric acid/iota carrageenan mix? Also with over 200 kinds of wheat beer at the beer distributor, it's difficult to know how what different characteristics each would have. one thing that disturbed me was when i measured about 47.4g on one scale, the same thing "weighed" 35g on the other scale... i have bought a calibration weight. although those results disturbed me, i just forged ahead anyway, with disastrous results. another possible problem might have been the temperatures of everything... should the heat be turned up as i add the cheese and hand blend so that it stays very hot or should the mixture be allowed to cool down significantly as the cheese is slowly added to the water mixture? I really would like to have success with this recipe so i'm willing to throw another $20-$30 in cheese down the drain again to get it right...

I made this recipe this week, and I was very pleased with the results. People I gave it to declared that it was of the quality of a $200 a plate restaurant. It was a lot of work doing it as per the recipe. I took farm fresh tomatoes, pureed those, strained them then used the agar agar technique to clarify the juice. I then went out into the garden and got the herbs and infused the juice with those. I also took more garden tomatoes, cored, peeled and de-seeded them, added the ingredients and baked... Now i'm looking at ways to save time on this great recipe so here are some of my thoughts. first i experimented with sun dried tomatoes to use to make tomato water. I bought a pound of those and covered with water for a while, resulting in a pretty good clear tomato water. I then took the now hydrated sundried tomatoes and added the herbs, etc. and dried those back out. I infused the tomato water as per the original recipe. In a taste test comparison, i don't feel that this version was significantly different from the original version. But there is still the matter of 12 hours for infusion, so in comes the whipping siphon... I'm not sure of the time involved, and i don't have compressed air, so i took some tomato water i made using the agar agar technique on a 1.5L can of italian tomato juice and put the herbs in there under high pressure for 30 minutes. when i took those out that seemed well infused with the herb flavor. I'd actually like to figure out exactly what that time ought to be. So then comes the cold soaking of the pasta. That is a HUGE trick that was a revelation for me at least, and it will be the way i make pasta from now on. The book said that it would keep in the fridge for 8 hours which i personally translated into "3 days" considering how crazy you guys are about perfection. Indeed I had soaked a 1lb box of pasta and after removing it from the tomato water i put that in a ziplock bag in the fridge, and i'm on day 3 and so far it's still very close to the original. That leaves the tomato water. I have found that it is somewhat reusable, except that it will evaporate somewhat and so water must be added or else the pasta will become too salty. I have to experiment with freezing these items and seeing if this is a dish that i can make rapidly from the freezer. Today I made a fresh batch of everything, but accelerated using the whipping siphon. I'm trying to calibrate the necessary time to soak the pasta using that gadget... I'm not sure what the calculation would look like. I'm also curious now, if there are little food grade compressed air whippits i can use with it, instead of the co2 or no2...

I went shopping in the asian grocery yesterday and I decided to try buying a fresh bamboo shoot. I went on youtube to find a video on preparing it, and the poster explained that they need to be par boiled until they are tender "to remove the cyanide." that sounds dangerous. The poster also explained that it's important to throw in rice bran into the water to help "extract the bitterness," which I guess is the cyanide? I was curious, though, would par cooking at 185F be superior to just boiling it? can a better texture be achieved without sacrificing the important cyanide removal? Any thoughts or suggestions?

That's in New Zealand! I found a USA source who, actually I'd bought from before... https://www.modernistpantry.com/glucono-delta-lactone.html

The first thing I ever sous vided was a porterhouse steak... 131f for about 90 minutes. I was so impressed with the results that I've sous vided quite a lot since then. One of my favorites from MC is the sous vide turkey wings. I made a more sophisticated wet brine for it though, that involved bay leaves, cloves, onion, garlic, ginger, brown instead of white sugar, and a few other spices. That has become very popular around here. I would throw some eggs in (well, carefully, heh) at 147f and check out the quite interesting texture. also just take a salmon filet with some butter and herbs, salt and pepper, (herbs in a satchet which is a rolled up bit of food safe plastic wrap open at the ends) for about 20-30 mins at 122. That's a great thing to try because it's rare to get salmon so nice and moist without sous vide. searing is a very good idea for most of these items, for a very short amount of time.

hi, I noticed that a lot of the wine coolers are thermoelectric, which seems like it would be a nice more energy efficient way to go... but I don't see many that can 1. go under 40F 2. are made of stainless steel for easy cleaning. 3. have glass door to look at meat. 4. have a fan to circulate the air. Any suggestions for something that won't break the bank but will do a nice job from the counter top?

I made this recipe with superb results. I used 4 heads of garlic, putting one head in each of 4 jars, each with different simple aromatic herb combinations-2-3 herbs per jar at random. I too, was confused about the 15 psi for 2 hours, and I had to actually look in my Khun Rikon manual to see that that meant the 2nd ring showing. I had already cooked for I'd say an hour with only one ring showing, so I upped the heat and added about another 30-40 minutes with two rings, then opened it to check what was happening, and by that point they were absolutely perfect looking, so I didn't want to take it any further. I was fascinated at how as the vacuum formed in the jars the olive oil continued to boil even as the temperature got to be as low as 80 degrees F. Garlic Confit, still boiling near room temperature, as the vacuum equalizes The resulting garlic cloves are such delicious perfection that I've been trying them out in all sorts of spots. For a really quick salad dressing, I've been taking out a clove from a jar with a fork, then drizzling a little olive oil then some balsamic vinegar glaze into a little cup, whisking that then putting the result onto a salad. Absolutely delightful. The garlic is so sweet and delectable, that it's no problem to just take one, as-is, and smear a it on a piece of bread, and maybe use some sun-dried tomato with that as well. I've now tried a small handful of recipes from the book. There is so much inspiration and revelation in there… I have to take it very slowly and carefully, lest I miss out on something because I passed it over.

I've now made this a few times, and it's always a hit with the guests. I don't have a centrifuge (yet, but I'm keeping my eyes on Craigs list) so I use a cheese cloth to wring out the liquid from the solid carrot, then I have been drying the leftover carrot pulp then powdering that for other uses. Caramelized Carrot Soup. Coconut Chutney Foam, Ajowan seeds, Minced Ginger. One question I have though, is how can I make the coconut milk and coconut cream from a coconut? is that explained in the book?

what the book needs more of is, "why this went wrong" and "how to fix it."

Hi, I tried this recipe twice with about the same results... my potatoes are just not puffing up. I tried with a new potato, which totally didn't work, but it did make for nice crisps... and i also took a regular idaho potato and since it was fresh, i stuck it in the dehydrator whole overnight... maybe it lost a little bit of moisture, but perhaps not enough... The first try i had the same shape as in the recipe, but for the second try, i tried rectangles. I'm pretty sure my mandolin was slicing at the necessary 3.5mm so i'm not sure what went wrong.