Anonymous Modernist 5979

The wonderful menu on 6/21 featured Spaghetti alle Vongole: Taylor‚’s geoduck, vacuum-molded, centrifuged broth. What do you mean by "vacuum-molded"? I would expect that the shellfish was cooked sous vide, but how does the molded part come into play? This was my favorite dish of the evening.

At the MC dinner last week (6/21), they served ‚“Liquid Caprese: constructed cream of olive oil, buffalo milk whey, and tomato essence”. I want to make it for dinner club this Saturday. I’ve figured out a few things, like the Tomato Whey Broth (p 4-49) Goat Milk Ricotta (p 4-108) and Tomato Water (2-366) and Tomato Vinegar, but how or what is the constructed cream of olive oil? Is it the Thickened Oil of p 4-230, or does it refer to the whole dish, which was pretty frothy? Of course, I could have asked while I was there, but my mouth was too busy doing flip flops of joy to let my brain rationally dissect the dish. And was there any basil in the dish? Thanks

Check out brew shops for ingredients that are used in beer and cider brewing and winemaking. Some also sell ingredients for cheese making, like the Cellar HomeBrew in Seattle. I suggested that they peruse the book for ingredients, and that they they start a tab on the website for these ingredients. http://www.cellar-homebrew.com/

I've tried making the mascarpone from the book a couple of times, but each time the texture hasn't been thick enough to run through cheesecloth. Last night, I let it sit at room temperature in a bowl, and by morning it had thickened up incredibly, enough so that it took too long for it to drain. Was the recipe simplified? Is the whipping cream too heavy/not heavy enough? And just like ricotta made with lemon juice is not real ricotta, but more of a paneer, is this still "real" mascarpone? Does using lemon juice, citric acid, or tartaric acid instead of ascorbic acid change things? Looking forward to the dinner on Thursday night! thanks!

The MC site has a variation of the Centrifuged Carotene Butter that does not call for a centrifuge. It is really easy, and worth the while. But what no one has mentioned is the caramelized carrot pulp leftover after straining the butter. This is the most delicious little tidbit. I put a small dollop in the middle of the bowl, and sprinkled some tiny chive tips, tarragon, and ginger on top.

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 tried this with pineapple and coconut oil and it browned nicely. I then took the caramelized pineapple and pureed with fresh pineapple. It was served atop the panna cotta prepared by Melissa Clark in the NY Times in January. I discovered as much as I like caramelized anything, fresh pineapple is still better! But mixed with the caramelized pineapple, it brought out the best of both.