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Matt L

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  1. Hey fellow Londoner. Be sure to share your modernist experiments. I'm playing around with a creamer myself at the moment - pressure infusion of vodka is a truly great thing
  2. Just picked up "Much Depends on Dinner" by Margaret Visser, which I first read maybe 20 years ago. Its still as good and relevant as when I first picked it up. An amazingly detailed study of what lies behind the food we eat and the rituals that accompany it. Sure some of it feels a bit dated - it was written in the mid-80s and time and food has moved on. But it was ground breaking when it came out, and still worth paying attention to now. http://www.amazon.com/Much-Depends-Dinner-Extraordinary-Obsessions/dp/0802144934- well worth finding a copy to add to your library if you don't already have one from back in the day.
  3. It's a neat tool. I bought it and would recommend others do too. It's good enough now and cheap enough not to have to rely on free codes. A few thoughts on the newest iteration. Bluetooth functionality is great for Anova Precision owners, but of little use to anyone else. The "turn on Bluetooth" pop up each time you switch it on is slightly irritating. As is the dialogue box that pops up (with dimmed buttons) when you click on the temperature setting. This needs reworking a bit to only happen if I have a relevant Bluetooth compatible piece of equipment connected. Could we - like the SVD - set up our default sous vide kit somewhere to avoid this? The ability to shift preset temperatures on the app (to then change predicted "doneness") would useful as an alternative to choosing doneness and getting a recommended temperature. At the moment it all feels a bit locked down. Having a ruler down the side of the app is great. But some way of then using this in the settings would be good. At present, for example, the chicken breast setting simply has a "max 30mm" recommendation, rather than the ability (Sous Vide Dash style) to input the thickness of the piece of meat. Overall, though, a really useful app. I find at the moment I tend to use SVD a bit more as I like the great feeling of user control, but SVD sadly suffers from an annoyingly poor UI. Your app looks and feels much cleaner and slicker (apart from the Bluetooth thing), but needs some more flexibility (whilst not compromising its design).
  4. Are you talking about in-cook or during storage?If it's in-cook and your temperature range is above the danger zone, botulism will be killed whether or not there is oxygen in the bag (although the spores will still be there). Opening the bag won't add anything bar perhaps risking your cook temp going astray as you add air into your bag. Opening the bag won't kill any spores that are there. If you rapidly chill and refrigerate at an appropriate temperature, then new pathogens won't grow at any rate that would cause concern, whether or not you open the bag. Opening the bag would only increase oxidation spoilage of your food, which I guess you'd want to avoid. Again botulism isn't a risk so bag opening is pointless. If you cook and then leave at room temperature for a significant time to cool/store, perhaps opening the bag might reduce your botulism risk, but you're going to be looking at a whole mass of other food pathogen growth over time anyway - sous vide is about pasteurization not sterilization. Tldr: opening the bag is pointless if you follow good food safety protocols. If you don't, it's not just botulism you'll be worrying about.
  5. Sous vide is perfectly safe at normal cooking and storing temperatures. The go to text if in any doubt is Douglas Baldwin's which is very clear on both cooking and storing temperatures for safety. http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Safety_Summary
  6. They look and sound great! Is there a reason you sautéed them with no fat? I wonder whether the addition of a small amount of baking soda might contribute to the maillard reactions taking place, and add even more depth of flavour?
  7. Thanks for such a friendly welcome guys! I mod a pretty big IPB-based forum, so am ok with the technical stuff But do need my cooking thang rebooting thoroughly, so very excited about joining up here! Will dive deep into coffee/tea sub-forum though - definitely - and everything else...
  8. Hi there - delighted to join this community, and looking forward to learning and (occasionally) contributing. I'm a former food-obsessive from London, England currently rediscovering my excitement after ten years of child-rearing induced distraction. There's close on 500 cook books on my shelves, poorly attended to since my kids came along but now they are a bit older getting dug out and utilised again. And the purchase of a Sansaire and a Codlo (yay Kickstarter!) have given me the impetus I needed to start experimenting in the kitchen again (sous vide is very neat - I may end up buying an Anova as well soon). In the meantime, I've contented myself with perfecting my coffee making, with an arsenal of kit to make everything from the perfect pourover to the optimum espresso. But I guess thats for another forum...
  9. A long while ago, I turned 4kg of prime beef into a rather phenomenal bresaola (that compared with any I've tried) using Franco Taruschio's recipe from his legendary Leaves from the Walnut Tree book (now, sadly, out of print - but search it down, its pretty much his restaurant cooking notes, from a man who at the top of his game was a world class chef and culinary researcher drawing on a lifetime cooking the food of the Italian Marche deep in rural Wales). Ended up drying it in an upstairs bedroom with the window open and a fan occasionally on it, suspended in a net from the bottom of a step ladder. A bit of an adventure, and the rest of the house was freezing cold for the duration, but worth it for the product at the end which wasn't a million miles from what I tasted at his restaurant back in the early 90s. In the book Taruschio sources his recipe to a restaurant called Piperno in Rome. There seems to be a "slightly amended" version of his recipe widespread online originating from Yahoo answers https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061109205358AAlOBxgbut its not quite the original (adding onion and more herbs to what is a pretty austere marinade in Taruschio's version). This is (roughly) the original: 4kg/9lb Topside beef (trimmed) (smaller cuts of meat do not work - the recipe doesnt scale) Extra Virgin olive oil fresh ground black pepper chopped chives Marinade Enough red/white wine to cover the joint in curing bucket (iirc I used iirc a 2.5 of bottles of each) 750g / 1 3/4lb coarse sea salt large bunch rosemary 12 bay leaves 24 cloves 3 cloves garlic 40 black peppercorn 12 dried chillies 4 strips orange peel Put marinade ingredients in large bowl, mix, add meat, cover and leave for 1 week or until meat feels firm. Hang meat in dry fairly place for another week until it feels firm enough to slice thinly. It will feel solid with no give as you press with your fingers. Rub the joint with olive oil, wrap in greaseproof paper and keep in the fridge until needed (it keeps for 3 months). Serve thin sliced, garnished with wedges of lemons, drizzled with olive oil and scattered with chives and pepper.
  10. So many. But one that has always stuck (and Ive come back to year after year for inspiration, despite it not strictly being a cookbook and Infirst read it in the late 90s) is Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything. Not least for his proto-modernist potato mash, now easier and less fuss with the aid of a Sansaire rather than a jog of cold water and a thermometer...
  11. agree - much more reassuring than the rather strange answers on the support thread!
  12. I guess if the conclusion is that it's user-replaceable every 2-3 years it could just be treated like a consumeable item. Does the pitting really matter? Is it simple to remove/replace?
  13. Was thinking of buying one but slightly worried by this emerging issue on the Anova support site http://community.anovaculinary.com/discussion/109/corrosion-on-220v-unit- is this a general problem? Or just in relation to a few units?
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