nathanm

I assume that ESI is Espresso Specialists International, correct? Any clue when the LM home machine will be out? Any clue whether it will have any advantages over Synesso? Presumably if it is a "home" machine then it would have a price advantage because very few people are crazy enough to buy something like a Synesso for their house (although apparently about 10 machines have been delivered to individuals so far). I want to get two grinders (regular and decaf) to go with the Synesso. I want small capacity - both to fit under counters, and also because my volume is low. Mazzer Mini, Mazzer Mini Electronic and Macap have all be recommened to me. Obviously, I don't want to betray the quality of the Synesso machine with bad grinders. However the really big commercial grinders are mainly driven by being able to grind all day long.

I haven't done it, but have seen it demonstrated. Various advantages are claimed for it, but having the butter on the outside seems like it buys you lots of problems.

The ISI Profi-Whip, which is their stainless steel professional line is the best one if you ever want to make warm or hot foams. If it is just whipped cream, then any of them will do...

Sounds like you need to experiment a bit. I would start at 176F/80C and then go up or down from there. It is very hard to believe that you need to go over 194F/90C - as you say, boiling the apple inside makes the skin rupture as steam escapes. It is possible you could go as low as 158F/70C. A couple quick experiments should tell you. It sounds from the description that one of the goals of the dish is to have the final cooked apple be firm enough, and dry enough to be handled. I don't understand if the pressing part is to push juice out of the apple or serves some other purpose?? It is not clear to me why you'd press them at all. If you want to remove juice to aid dessication, it would make sense to press the apples. Otherwise, what is the goal? It seems possible that part of the goal of baking the apples is to dessicate the apples to some degree by evaporating water from them and concentrating the juices. Even with the skin intact, water could transpire through the skin. As an example, there are many recipes for oven dried tomatoes, or slow roasted tomatoes that involve putting them in a very low oven for a long period, often whole. Depending on time and temperature an oven dried/roasted tomato can range from a partially dessicated but very concentrated tomato, to a leathery thing similar to a sun dried tomato. The description of the Norfolk Biffin sounds a bit like the roasted tomato version - not the leathery dried version but something which has had some concentration via dessication. Of course this could be very wrong - I am just guessing. Obviously, if dessication is a goal then sous vide would not work and you'd be better off making your biffins in an oven at low temp. I would start in a low oven at 176F/80C (ideally a convection oven, but I seem to recall that you have an Aga) and see how it works (increasing to 90C if need be.) A hybrid techique would be cook it sous vide first, then put on a tray and dessicate them a bit. The straw in the original recipe sounds like its purpose was to insulate the apples and prevent them from heating too quickly, which of course would not be a problem in either sous vide, or a well controlled modern oven. Cooking time is another variable. I would guess the original cooking time of 4 to 5 hours as a start. It will take about 3 hours for the center of the apple to reach temperature (depending on the size, and depending on what temperature you start at). Again, some experimentation is in order. I haven't seen Northern Biffins here in the Pacific Northwest, where lots of apple varieties are grown (probably a dozen varieties in the market right now). What other variety of apple best approximates the Biffin? Is it a mealy sauce apple (like Rome Beauty) or a firm fleshed apple (like granny smith, fuji..)? Is it normally tart (like granny smith) or sweet (like golden delicious, cox, fuji)?

Did you put some duck fat in the bag - it is not clear from the photo. There is a whole eGullet thread on duck confit, including sous vide that discusses salt ratios etc. The flavoring for confit comes in part from the salt cure, often with aromatics. Duck fat in the bag is important to keep the legs saturated during the cooking. Some fat will melt from the leg itself, but it is good practice to put a couple tablespoons of extra fat inside.

There is a place in Kent that services vacuum sealers - unfortunately I don't have the name in front of me...

go to www.lauda.de and then Downloads, Operating Instructions. They may not have the exact model, but the two dial system is used on many lauda machines so you should get something that explains it. Nathan

Most vegetables need even higher than that - up to 90C or even 100C. At lower temperatures not that much will change in the vegetables - you'll get warm raw vegetbales rather than cooked. Unlike animal proteins, plants have stiff cell walls that need more temperature to affect them. What we think of as "cooked" vegetables is that transition, and that takes more temperature. Personally, I do not do sous vide vegetables all that much, but I'm not quite ready to write it off completely. I haven't experimented here as much as I have with protein foods. Sous vide is very helpful for things that discolor due to oxidation - endive, artichoke.... because they can cook without oxygen. Usually you try to add acid to stop this, but sous vide does it much better. As another example, there are some very delicate vegetables that are easy to overcook (fresh corn, for example) that sous vide may be very good for.

If you want it both rare and tender you will need to cook for a long time - say 36 hours at 131F / 55C. So if you want this for the weekend you'd better get it started ASAP! The basic issue is that the collagen in the meat will break down over time at low temperature in a moist environment - that will occur no matter how the meat is cooked - whether sous vide, or pseudo-sous vide. Is your oven a steam oven? I think that Gaggenau has a home combi-oven. If that is what you have then this is probably your best bet. Note that an oven that uses dry air at 55C is not going to do the same thing - it can't transfer heat well enough, and the surface temperature of the meat won't be the same. Not having a vacuum sealer means that you can't really do sous vide. However you can do the following thing. Take a zip lock bag and put your meat in there. Pour some oil (olive oil, canola oil...depends on what you like) into the bag with the meat and squeeze out most of the air by hand then seal the bag. The idea is to make sure that the meat is covered by the oil. This keeps oxygen off the meat and is some approximation to sous vide. This is not a good idea at lower temperature, but at 55C should be OK. But if you get much hotter the zip lock will melt. You could take the zip lock and cook it this way in either the steam oven, or in a water bath. You should prop it so that the zip lock seal is pointing up so that it does not leak. Besides sous vide there are many other techniques for slow roasting, or poaching, or poaching in oil. You could poach the meat in oil in a pan, without the zip lock bag, but you'll need more oil. Just keep the meat submerged and keep oil temp at 131F/55C. Note this is not really the same as confit - for a confit you poach in oil or melted fat, but at much higher temperature (typically 175F/80C or higher). Using water instead of oil (i.e. directly poaching the meat in water) is NOT the same - you'll cook the meat but I don't think you'll get the effect you want. Please note that you have some major compromises - especially no vacuum sealer - so this is a bit uncertain. Good luck!

Mostly I don't cook things that need to be molded. There isn't any advantage to shrink wrap bags unless you want to mold or shape the product. I don't do foie gras that often, and when I do it is usually hot seared not a terrine or torchon. Which supplier do you use for the bags? I'll try some... Nathan

I use the minature needle probe, which is about half way down that page. These will not make a visible hole in most products. The probe is best used with a digital thermometer. There are many. I use one by Extech which has a feature where you can set it to beep when the temperature reaches a set point. The key thing on bags is to make sure that they can take heat. Typically they are called "boilable" bags. Usually these are 3 mil thick. You don't need to use the thermometer in every single portion unless they vary in size and shape a lot. Once you know that a portion of protein of a given size takes a certain amount of time, you can bank on it because the water bath will keep temperature steady. When you say "a la minute" what do you mean? Usually when people say "a la minute" they mean that cooking does not start until after the guest orders the food. So, you could either prep food into bags up front and keep in the refer until the guest orders, or you could even do the bagging after the guest orders. You can do that with sous vide, but ONLY with very thin portions, beacuse otherwise the cooking time is too long. Obviously, the 36 hour long cooking times for some items would not work this way! But with a thin portion it will work. Check out the time tables and you'll get a good idea of how thin you need the portions to be, then verify it with your thermometer set up to double check. A variation that many people do is to prep into bags, and the put into the water bath early enough that they are cooked by service. They they just leave them in the water bath during service. If the bath temp is close to the final core temp (which is what I recommend) then they can't overcook. So, if you are doing poultry or meat, and your bath temp is at or above 131F/55C then you can do this pretty much for as long as you want. The food is in the water bath during the entire service. If you are doing fish, you will be a lower temp most likely and thus there is some food safety concern about doing it for too long, however a couple hours is considered safe by food safety standards. In fact the official number is up to 4 hours, but I would not push it that long myself. However, fish portions can be cooked to order if they are thin so that is the alternative. This works well. If the seafood is thin, then it will typically cook in 15-20 min which depending on your style of service should be fine a la minute. You can use a mold with sous vide. To do this you would put the fois gras into the mold, and then put the whole thing into a bag and seal it. If the edge of the mold is too sharp, it can cut the bag when the vacuum pulls it tight across the food. If the mold is made of an insulator - like thick glass or ceramic, then it will take longer to cook the food that is right against the mold. So, it is better to have metal, or silicone (which conducts heat pretty well). Generally I would cook fois gras terrine in a bath at 141F/61C and cook to an internal temp of 60C, then after reaching 60C internal let it stay in the bath for 60 minutes extra. At that temp you may get some fat melting, and it may seep away from the fois gras in the bag. The amount is hard to predict - it depends on your fois gras - low quality fois gras tends to melt or disintegrate more than higher quality. There are three things that you can do about this. One is to just live with it - at worst when you take the bags out of the bath you squeeze the fat back in the direction of the mold with your fingers. Then put the bag into ice water to chill it down. This works reasonably well. A deeper mold will help avoid this, because it is harder for the fois gras fat to migrate out of the mold into other parts of the bag. Also, you can put the molds upside down in the water bath. The fat is lighter than water so water pressure in the water bath will make the fat migrate to the highest place in the bag that it can get. If you put the mold upside down it won't be able to crawl over the edge of the mold. Does that make sense? You may need to have a wire rack inside your water bath to hold the molds down. Wire racks or grids made for cooling baked goods work well for this. If this becomes a huge problem then you can use heat shrink bags. To do that you need to seal like you normally would, but seal very close to the mold. Cut off the extra bag away from the seal. Then you plunge the whole thing in boiling water for 10 seconds or so, until the bag shrinks around the mold. The heat shrink bag approach also works for a free form fois gras terrine, such as a torchon. Unfortunately, I don't know a good source of heat shrink bags - I don't use them myself. Not at all - asking questions is the point of eGullet. Nathan

OK, here is a question for you expert baristas. Considering that I am going to use the Syncra at home, should I get a single group head or the dual? This is mainly a space issue, or perhaps a cost issue - but not just the cost of the machine, but I might need a lot more modifications/work to make the larger machine fit in the space I want to put it. I am trying to figure out if I can fit the 2-group machine - maybe yes, maybe no. Volume wise, this is at home so it is mostly very small volume. My guess is that 4-5 shots per day, so not exactly coffee shop volume. Occaisonally I'll have a dozen people over for dinner, and if they want coffee after dinner I might have to pull 12 shots in a row. However, I am NOT an expert barista. I can grind, tamp and pull a shot, but I tend to do it one at a time. It is unclear to me whether I will really be able to get a rhythm going such that I could really use two group heads simultaneously anyway. I can do a decent job of pulling one shot at a time, but it will take a while for me to be confident enough to do them in parallel. I am sure with practice I could get there, but I may not have enough call for this to practice enough to really use it anyway. A different reason to get two group heads is that sometimes I'll want decaf and sometimes regular (I'll have two grinders). One advantage of two group heads is that I could set each one to a different temperature to match the blend I will use for decaf or regular (either from Vivace or Victrola). I should ask them the temps they use to see how different they are. Any comments??

Yes, it is made differently, but I suspect that the result is not that different from emulsfying a fat into a "cream" and then whipping. Any fat needs to be liquid to be emulsified, so if you have chocolate that is in a solid state you will need to melt it as a first step no matter what. Then you can whip it up. I think that in the Herve This examples the emuslifying occurs at the same time as whipping. With a high shear homogenizer, or ultrasonic homogenizer, one could probably make much smaller fat droplets and thus make a much more stable emulsion. Also, one could do it for fats which are liquid at room temp, instead of a solid in which case melting would not help. Homogenized milk, of course, has the fat droplets broken up finely enough to be stable and prevent the cream from separating.

An ultrasonic homogenizer uses ultasonic sound waves. The classic use in a lab is to rupture cell walls, however it also works to emuslify - breaking up droplets of oil into finer droplets. Mechanical homogenizers use shear forces in liquids to try achieve something similar. Comparing the two is hard - it depends on a number of factors. I believe that one could whip artifical "cream", just like any fat emulsion. As Jackal10 pointed out, there are a number of old fashioned kitchen devices designed to take butter and milk and turn it into whipping cream. I don't have one, but it would be amusing to try it the old fashioned way. Herve This has done a lot of experiments taking various fats and water whipping them. He has done chocolate, and I believe even camembert cheese, emuslified them then whipped them. Here are some links in French http://www.linternaute.com/femmes/cuisine/...w/it_this.shtml http://www.sciencesetgastronomie.com/proto...20chantilly.htm Here is a Google translated version of the whipped chocolate recipe These translations can be a bit comical - I once had "bernaise" sauce translated as as "resident of Bearn". I am sure you can figure it out. Would be interested in how it turns out since I haven't tried it.

Yes, these are very useful, relatively cheap, and have a big impact. I've never even heard of one of these! I did not realize that Indian cuisine had spawned a residential machine like this for doing wet grinding. May need to try one... Yes, these are quite interesting. I have one and I have made "cream" by combining an arbitrary fat and liquid. Still working on other aspects of the technique however. There are several common kinds of screw extruders in use in kitchens. One is an extrusion style pasta machine. I have one of these and it is great for pasta but I have not tried other other material in it. However it should work. Many sausage makers and meat grinders also use screw extrusion. A Champion vegetable juicer is also a screw extruder of a sort. The key issue with a screw extrusion press is how much pressure you need, and what consistency of dough. Pasta making requires fairly high pressure and a very stiff dough / paste. Sausage is obviously the other extreme - very soft and low pressure. Hmm... this is interesting but I wonder how the bread tastes. In essence this "leavens" bread by making a dough foam. Although one purpose of yeast or other leavening is to make gas bubbles to raise the dough, they also add flavor etc. So I am not so sure that this is a great idea. Maybe it is...

If I'm not mistaken, there's one such tool at The Fat Duck as well. Can't remember the brand though. ← Yes, these are cool, I have one. There are several good brands. Still working out the best techinque.

There are several common variations in distillation columns. One aspect is condenser design - how the unit cools hot gases to make some of them condense like dew on the condenser. Alihn, spiral and others are variations that may have some advantages in some contexts, but it is not a big deal for most of what you'd want to do with cooking. The only big difference in condensers is the cold trap style that is meant to be used with something extreme cold (dry ice). However, most cooking uses do not need or want extreme cold condensnig coolant. Note however that different condensing columns can be set up in a variety of ways to achieve VERY different results. That difference is things like whether you do direct distillation, reflux distillation, soxhlet extraction, fractional distillation etc. This is NOT the same as condenser design - it is how the condenser is connected to the rest of the system.

The "vaporizer" is a rotary evaporator. This is basically a high-tech distillation machine that allows you to distill under a vacuum. They are not cheap, unless you get a used one. Used glassware needs to be REALLY clean, or you could buy a used one and new glass. There are many other ways to do something similar. People who make their own essential oils have similar distillation equipment. The rotary evap has the advantage that the temperature can be lower due to the vacuum, but a non-vacuum approach will work for many things. A soxhlet extraction column has some advantages. A full soxhlet outfit in glass is MUCH cheaper than the whole rotary evap outfit. I have Buchi, which is the probably the best one, but Heidorf and Yammato also make them. For larger volume it gets both dificult and expensive, unless you go the non-vacuum route. The essential oil people make soxhlet and other extraction/distillation equipment up to very large sizes. The Lincoln impinger is just a track grill or conveyor grill, and is hardly new. Every burger king has one! Turbo Chef is old at this point. Many companies have mixed microwave and convection, and radient in various mixtures. I have a small one by Sharp, and it is OK, but generally not worth the hassle compared to a combi-oven. However if there is a specialty product like souffles and that is all you make then great. Liquid nitogen doesn't really require much in the way of equipment, apart from a dewar and some cryo-gloves. There are various chefs custom making things like the drip machine for doing alginate / calcium reaction, but in more complicated ways. This is basically a small version of industrial equipment made to make artifical cherries or other alginate/calcium reaction products. So, here are some of the new tech goodies I am very interested in getting: 1. A critical point extraction set up. This is a way to extract flavor essences from food using liquid CO2 near its critical point. 2. Freeze drying equipment. 3. Very high shear mixers - for hydrating hydrocolloids These are all beyond exotic - they aren't even commerial products necessarily, or if they are, they are beyond the Fisher Scientific / Cole-Palmer level and into the really weird stuff. My current kitchen upgrades are much more tame (i.e. things it is possible to buy). I'm getting a Synesso espreosso machine - leagues beyond any other. I am upgrading my Rational comb-ovens, getting a new vacuum packing machine... these things are fun but don't make the grade for really new high tech gizmos.

What are the issues with pre-infusion? As I understand it there are three positions - off, preinfusion, on. You are supposed to turn to preinfusion first until a drop comes out, then on. Does this not work well, or??? The Synesso advocates here in Seattle say this is just leagues beyond the La Marzocco machines - not even in the same category at all. This include David Schomer and the people at Victrola.

There are a bunch of instructional videos for making espresso, foaming milk, making latte art and other barista skills. Here is a example selection from one vendor. Which of these is the best? Are any of them very good? Basic barista skills are one topic, advanced skills are another and not all videos would be equally good at both. I am interested in comments on any or all of them. Surely somebody on the forum must have looked at each of them at some point. For example, does anybody on eGullet honestly claim they learned to pour latte art from one of these videos? Put another way, does a video help more, or less, than going through 5 gallons of milk practicing? They certainly should, since they cost a lot more than 5 gallons of milk. I wonder if there is something other than espresso you can use to practice making latte art. Learning means making a lot of bad ones, would be nice not to waste all that espresso

I haven't ruled them out at all... certainly they are in the running. I'd like to understand what the tradeoff is between them, the Macap and Mazzer grinders...and if there is anything else I should consider.

Exactly! After dinner some people ask for one and some for the other. Swapping out is a pain, and as you point out it is nice to dial in the ideal grind for each bean. Obviously, two grinders are a luxury, but I am considering it. The 2-group Synesso machine also lets you set the brew temperature for each group head independently. So one can be set for optimum regular and the other optimum decaf.

Here is my grinder question. I want to get two small but very high quality grinders for espresso. The grinders are meant to grind coffee for a high end commercial espresso machine, probably the Synesso Cyncra. I want two grinders so i can have decaf and regular (I need both at home). Commercial grinders are an option EXCEPT that they tend to be very large (I would like this to fit under a kitchen cabinet). Also, commercial grinders are set up for large volume, so the big issue with them is designs to avoid overheating when they are used for shot after shot all day long. That isn't an issue at home where we won't be doing that many shots at home. I don't need huge canisters for the beans because I don't go through that much coffee. At one extreme, the Swift grinder from La Marzocco is ridiculously expensive, way too tall, but it does have twin canisters so the decaf / regular thing works. So it is just overkill for what i want. I'd prefer not to pay as much as the Swift, but on the other hand it is silly to buy a high end espresso machine and then feed it with cheapo grinders that are not up to the task of producing the very fine even grind that will make the best espresso. In looking at reviews on various web sites it is a bit confusing because a person reviewing home grinders will come up with one idea of what the "best" one is, without even considering machines in other classes. Sometimes this is done on the basis of a price class. Sometimes it is not price so much as machines that you might find at Williams Sonoma, versus machines that are distributed via professional sources. So far I have gathered that the Mazzer Mini, and the new Mazzer Mini Electronic seem to be contenders. Any comments on whether the electronic one is worthwhile? Home style grinders may also work.... Recommendations please...

I'm considering getting a Synesso Cyncra espresso machine. I talked to the founder and designer, Mark Barnett at Coffee Fest in Seattle recently. The machine is very impressive, and there are a number of rave reviews. Anybody here actually have one and have some direct experience with its pros and cons?

Yes, I have in in English and Spanish. It is the only decent book on sous vide cooking right now. It is very much like a textbook - not only in cost, but in how it is written. If you are interested in sous vide it is very good. Any other questions?