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Sale on ducks at Whole Foods led to a duck-buying binge. I've cured and confited duck legs according to the recipe on 3:178 (Duck leg confit with pommes sarladaises). My question: how long will these legs store under refrigeration in their vacuum bags (I assume I should keep them in the cooking bags for optimal storage)? Given that confit is largely a preserving process, I think I should have a pretty long shelf life. Thoughts?

Chef Rubber (www.chefrubber.com) has some reasonably priced liquid nitrogen Dewars, cryo-gloves and aprons, double-walled bowls and liquid separators, etc. A 6 liter Dewar is only $358, and a 10 L $410 -- a far cry from some of the ~$1000 prices I'd heard elsewhere. The holding time is about 109 days, and they include a dipper for removing the LN2 from the container. Now the next question is whether it is safe to transport the LN2 in a car.

I believe that steps 6 and 7 in the Pommes Pont-Neuf recipe should be interchanged. That is, the second, optional vacuum cooling step or air cooling should follow, and not proceed, the blanching step. What I was trying to do was to improve on the traditional recipe for Pommes Soufflees, which I hadn't made for close to 50 years, by adapting the triple-cooking Pommes Pont-Neuf recipe of Heston Blumenthal. I sliced the potatoes (and my ring finger!), and trimmed the slices into nice ovals, and boiled them for 20 minutes as directed, but with the thin slices they did indeed fall apart, so I gave up and followed the original recipe. Roughly a third of them ballooned nicely, but the others just puffed slightly, even though they were a uniform thickness, and cut from the same potato. I was using a Zyliss slicer, because I'd mislaid the straight blade for my de Beyer mandolin. The Zyliss slicer was set on the middle position, which appears to be about 2 mm, rather than the 3mm thickness called for in the recipe. I would have thought that the thicker slice would make it more difficult for the chip to balloon, but maybe it needs the extra starch to make it pop? Potatoes are cheap enough to try it again with different thicknesses, with and without the par-boiling and vacuum drying step, and I also want to try it with sweet potatoes, and with crinkle chips. Anyone else tried this? Any advice?

Are there any other recipes or sources of ideas for use of aquarium bubbler to create foams. The web was not very giving, and the book was vague other that the one honey water recipe (4-267).

The recipe and video page is now up for everyone's enjoyment!

Nathan/Chris/Max, I am not sure if this has been discussed before, but have you guys ever thought of creating a digital version of the modernist cuisine volume for the Apple iPad? You have all the digital photos (not all have to be in the digital version) and digital notes already at hand. The books I have is stunning, however if I need to check/discuss articles outside the home, I'd love to be able to carry this library of information with me. The books are big and quite heavy on their own. I'd be willing to shell out anything <USD200 (and less than 4GB) for the app and you have the option of adding/updating/correcting content along the way. Videos of interviews, techniques or simply discussion on particular food items would be awesome as well. This would probably solve some of the issues with volume printing too. What do you think?

H Everybody, The metal bars, the call pastry bars in the book where can you get them? I'm in Australia but i can't even find anything on the Web anywhere that even resembles them colsely. Any help, directions? Regards, Vol. Answered::: I found it. They are called Caramel Rulers

Have there been any studies done on the integrity of the plastics used in sous vide bags? Do they break down under heating and/or leach into the food?

MC comes with a lot--and I mean, a lot!--of packaging, in order to keep the acrylic case from breaking beneath the weight of the books. This makes it pretty difficult to unpack. I have become an expert at packing and unpacking MC. Since starting with the team, my arm strength has significantly increased, too! I've found that the best thing to do is to: 1. open the main box and take out the four cardboard corners. 2. open the interior box, and take out the kitchen manual and cardboard boards. 3. without taking the interior box out, tip the whole box on it's side. 4. grab ahold of the plastic case and pull. Chris Long, one of our readers, sent me a link about how to break the books themselves: If you ever want to know how to repackage the book (I'm not sure why anyone who is not me or someone who is writing a review of MC would ever do this, maybe if you were moving...) let me know. I have that technique down as well.

I have a MAPP torch but I haven't seen any recommendation on how to use it in the kitchen. Since it's hot enough to theoretically melt any kitchenware I'm wondering about how to use it. Until I'm more confident it will be outside on the BBQ grill. But how do you use your torch? Thank for the info

I am experimenting in using Sous Vide to make "Char Siew" a popular Chinese BBQ pork disk where the pork is marinated in sweet/salty sauce and roasted. The cuts are normally tough cuts like pork belly, shoulder etc. It has basically 3 stages: 1. Brining/marinating 2. Braising or slow cooking the meat 3. Charring the meat I am considering using SV method for steps 1 and 2 Wonder whether anyone here has advice or experience on this? The traditional wok way of making it is documented in my blog here: http://www.foodcanon.com/2011/04/auntie-rubys-char-siew-revisited.html http://www.foodcanon.com/2011/03/auntie-rubys-char-siew-this-food-blog.html

For my forthcoming class in Modernist Cuisine, I'm preparing what I call an "asparagus sunrise." It consists of a mousse of green asparagus in the center of the plate, with four radiating stalks of white asparagus. A perfect egg yolk (130 min at 63C) will sit on top of the mousse. Then to finish it off, I wanted to have a light, airy foam, like the sun peaking through the clouds. I tried the cava foam portion from the Oysters and cava foam recipe (MC 6-327), but substituting a non-sparkling Gewurtztraminer wine for the cava. When dispensed from a cream whipper, it foamed up nicely -- maybe even too much. But then it very quickly deflated, leaving a slightly sticky wine behind. I'd like it to stay intact for at least a couple of minutes. Was the problem caused by not using a sparkling wine, which would have added some of its own bubbles? iSi has a recipe for a Riesling espuma that calls for 900 ml of Riesling, 90 g of sugar, and EIGHT sheets of gelatin, which seems like a lot, but maybe not for 900 ml of wine. Another possibility might be the citrus air (MC 6-312) with lemon and lime juice and soy lecithin and xanthan gum. The lemon/lime would go pretty well with the asparagus, although it would make the wine pairing even more difficult. I suppose I could try adding some soy lecithin to the remaining wine, and charge it again. Any other thoughts?

I am trying to locate lambda carrageenan for the pistachio gelato. The recipe indicates the Texturas brand but I cannot find that nor any other brand or supplier. Does anyone have a source or an appropriate substitute they can recommend? I have managed to find all of the other ingredients. Thank you.

Does anyone know if there are any plans to release any of the El Bulli books (after '03-'04) in English?

I have been playing around with the reverse spherification technique and found that the sphere itself holds great for even up to a few days when submerged in water. The problem is that the flavor starts leeches out into the water almost immediately, resulting in a more tasteless orb as time goes on. This seems to have a correlation with the viscosity of the liquid inside the sphere (the thinner the liquid, the more flavor leeches out). A few questions: 1) If I thickened the holding water with something like xantham gum, would that keep the flavorful liquid from leeching out? 2) Does the amount of time the frozen/calcinated liquid spends in the alginate bath have a correlation to how thick the sphere wall is and thus how much flavor leeches out? 3) Would storing the sphere in the same liquid inside it (minus the calcium) make up for any flavor loss? I am trying to avoid this last option as food cost becomes an issue at some point. 4) Finally, would using the same flavor of the inner sphere for the alginate bath make any difference? Again, the food cost thing. I am going to try and play around with this after the weekend, but if anyone has any suggestions in the meantime, please let me know. BTW, thanks for the book and the forum, I have been waiting for something like this for so long!

Is there any reason why I couldn't put hot ingredients (scrambled egg foam) inside my cream whipper? I bought this model: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/CREAM-GUN-WHIPPER-1L-PROFESSIONAL-DISPENSER-KA4700-/150602834437?pt=AU_Business_Industrial_Restaurant_Catering_Equipment&hash=item2310a0e205#ht_2658wt_922

MAPP gas ceased production in 2008, so I was a little surprised to see it still recommended here on the MC site. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAPP_gas The alternatives from Bernz-O-Matic ("MaxPower") and Worthington ("MAP//Pro") appear to be close to all propylene. Any experience on with these non-propane alternatives in as far as leaving residual odors on the food?

Mushroom stock is referred to in quite a few recipes, and said to be on page 6. I'm assuming that it is actually talking about vegetable stock, substituting mushroom as a majority, but I can't find these proportions. Does anyone else have any ideas on what to do when mushroom stock is called for? What have you done / made?

http://www.savoryspiceshop.com They have a wide selection of spices at reasonable prices and their shipping is prompt. I've bought piment d'espelette, vadouvan, urfa biber, asafetida, and tasmanian pepper berries.

After putting all the components of Seattle Food Geek's DIY immersion circulator in my Amazon basket I remembered that I know next to nothing about assembling electronics. That fact, and my sincere desire to avoid electrocution, led me to consider purchasing a commercial circulator. Does anyone have any experience with the Sous Vide Magic and the Fresh Meals Magic? I'm interested in the FMM because of its circulating abilities, I would much prefer that over a water bath. I appreciate any answers you can give me.

I am looking at building a drying chamber for cured meats. It would have basic humidity and temperature control. I had a question about the environment inside the chamber as I am trying to figure out what controls I feel like building. Is there ever a time that the humidity would have to be raised? My assumption is that once the chamber is sealed, and a closed system is formed, thehumiditywould rise above the desired 70-90%RH, and it would only have to be controlled in a downward direction. Does anyone know if this is a correct assumption? It would save me having to build a water injection system. I will make sure to do a build log and code for anyone who is interested. Thank you, Joshua

On Volume 5, p152, the Pate A Choux recipe calls for Methocel SGA150 in the dough recipe. I looked at a PDF reference of this chemical in the Dow website and MC Volume 4, page 60 - I could not find the reasoning behind the inclusion for the dough. On Volume 4, the table shows it is for "tender", "edible films/wrappers" - what does this chemical compound actually do to the finished, baked product? Does it give it a glazed effect?

We have a new poll on our blog allowing readers to help us pick four 8x10 prints we'll include with the 3rd printing of MC! Tell us what you think, and if you have any suggestions of prints you'd like to see us include in the future, leave your comments here or on the blog post.

This is perhaps one of my favorite techniques in the book. I'm a sucker for a confit and love the fact that I don't need massive quantities of stored fat to make them now. I don't even add the little fat that MC calls for, enough renders when the leg cooks. Tonight I will be trying a similar technique with pork belly.

I've made this dish twice now and both time loved it. Everyone who has had it comments on how it is the juiciest and most crisp quail they have ever had. It also helps that the flavors really work well together and balance nicely.