MikeMac

I really like Cooks Illustrated until I came across Modernist Cuisine they were my favourite because the actually experimented and tried different things. One of my favourite tips from them was to use anchovies to enhance beef flavour I really like this with tenderloins. Cooks may suggest it but I am sure someplace in Modernist Cuisine they explain it.

Vacume packing and hot even warm ingredients do not get along just let the meat cool then seal works great. Love doing brisket this way easier than watching it in a smoker.

I like a place called 5 Doors on Younge Street. Not exactly what you would call Modernist Cuisine but the owner is a chef and he started a butcher shop called Son of a Butcher in the same area. But the best dish is grilled octopus.

I make my own Vanilla extract works great I get Everclear alcohol pour out maybe 20% of the product stuff the bottle with split Vanilla beans then shake and store for a couple months and have great Vanilla. I have done the same thing with Rum. I use the over proof alcohol as I was told that it "extracted" the flavour from the vanilla beans better. My questions 1) Do I need to use the Everclear alcohol? Does the higher % of alcohol give a better extraction? What is the best ratio of beans to liquid? 2) What is a good on line source of top quality Vanilla beans? This year for X-mass presents I think I will give people home made vanilla so I will need at least a kilo of beans and in searching on line getting prices all over the map. Any recommendations? Companies that ship to Canada are preferred.

After checking out the Gear Guide I bought the Toddy System - Love the coffee and tea the system produces. But not so happy with the Toddy containers. the brewing works great but the storage containers are pretty thin glass and the tops are very poor for example the Toddy supplied Tea produces great results but as it sits in the toddy storage container the solids build up at the bottom when your shake the container to put the solids back in solution the top leaks. It would be nice if it did not. Plus shipping as a Canadian its nice to deal with companies that make it easy and cheap to get things across the boarder unfortunately Toddy is not one of those companies. Also the Ice Coffee mix provided by Toddy is quite good I recommend it and wish it was easier to get Toddy brand consumables in Canada at a reasonable shipping cost

I use a Vitamix - love it have both the "standard" container and the whole grains container. Everything works great and its fairly easy to maintain by changing out the bottom of the containers and the "sprocket" on the base unit. Now I am seeing adds for Blendtec and Warring products that sound great. More power better containers that mix faster and run quieter. As I am happy with what I have I see no reason to change and when they all plug into a standard 110 Volt 15 Amp outlet I am not sure how much more power the newer blenders can bring to the task as they are limited by the amount of amperage delivered through the electrical circuit. Am I understanding this correctly?

thank you very much Judy. We are getting a Rational but we can only put in the 61E 240 volt single phase - the Rational web site to be polite is "challenging" http://www.rational-online.com/en_ca/company/index.html Very difficult to get information out of they want you to go through their dealer base. Another great resource is the local Rational reps are real chefs who have actually used the units and have great advice. We would not be making this investment in time and money if it was not for Modernist Cuisine !!! The big problem is 3 phase power in a residential environment very expensive to get into an existing house and hard to get to the site. I checked both with my insurance company and the building inspector insurance company said no issue and the building inspector only said we had to maintain the manufactures recommended clearances. Their are different standards for ovens and stoves with a commercial stove we would need a engineered make up air and exhaust lot more money and confusion. Getting enough gas and venting into a residential kitchen to handle the gas version is another problem. Plus I believe that Gas will require more maintenance long term. Now if I could only figure out how to calculate the operating costs on the Rational Vs a regular oven.

Would you consider the VP112 unit? See the chart below its plastic which would probably not stand up in commercial use but have a vacuum port takes bigger bags but lacks a digital read out. http://vacmaster.aryvacmaster.com/vacmaster/pdf/Machine_Comparison.pdf I too need to figure out which one to buy my external Foodsaver has t=got a bit of brine in it and quit again.

In your FAQ's Modernist Cuisine states about ebooks or Apps: Eventually, there may be, but we have no current plans to offer an electronic version of Modernist Cuisine. We began this project before the market of e-books developed ... at the time we started designing the book, the Kindle had not even shipped yet. Kindle is a wonderful e-book platform (we love ours!), but it is not the best medium for a book such as this that offers so many large color pictures. Our use of dramatic photography is a large part of how Modernist Cuisine makes the art and science of cooking accessible. Although the Apple iPad has a color display, its screen size is still very limited, and by the time it shipped, we had designed a thousand pages for print. We decided that a large-format, high-quality printed book is still the best platform today for delivering this kind of content - particularly our photographs and illustrated step-by-step procedures - to the majority of the people who will want to use it. Eventually we would like to spend the time and resources to make an e-book edition that offers new and interactive features, but that is a lot of work and is probably a couple years away. I hope Modernist Cuisine will consider the following 1) There are over 1500 recipes just in Modernist Cuisine and more to come when my copy of the second book comes in. 2) The book is amazing but pictures only go so far personally I want to get to the "meat" of the matter and use the books as a reference trouble is they are just too big and for me hard to get around in I find myself searching for things all the time. At work I quit carrying manuals years ago they are all in my Ipad now. 3) Modernist Cuisine is more than a hobby to me I love cooking and I love getting it right and it would be much easier if I could only reference the material in the books easily. 4) the size of the books means anyone who is handicapped is basically cut off from them unless someone can be around to physically open the books for them. 5) The creators of Modernist Cuisine deserve to make money or at least break even on their "labour of love" I actually believe the world is a better place with Modernist Cuisine in it. Yes I feel that strongly about the book and the authors. Well done; I admire you. 6) Hopefully Modernist Cuisine decides to publish a App or a E-Book.

On looking at higher end home ovens and comparing them to Rational combi oven yes the Rational is more money but you seem to get so much more for your money. Anyone have any Experence in this area ? How big of a steam hood do I need?