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I have always wondered if it makes a difference what side of the foil one uses when roasting/baking/braising in an oven. I would assume that having the shinier side face down (facing the food) would reflect the heat onto the food better and create a more stable cooking environment. Thoughts?

heres some good suppliers here in the UK that i have used, or know others that have used: http://www.msk-ingredients.com/

MC says to not use a spring-valve pressure cooker for canning purposes because you can't make sure that all the air has vented when the valve shuts due to pressure. However, the instruction manual of my pressure cooker (Fissler Vitavit) includes a chapter with canning times (20-25 minutes on level II/0,8 bar for food containing meat). In addition, I can always manually vent (there is a switch that opens the valve when you press and hold it). So is it safe or not? BTW, I haven't seen anything but spring-valve pressure cookers in Europe. Do the American style cooker/canners even exist over here?

where do you find a reasonable (small) quantity of crisp coat uc for sale?

While I followed the recipe carefully, I found the mix too thick to properly and completely dispense from my ISI whipping siphon. Too much of the mixture remained in the bottom even though I sharply rapped on the bottom after inversion. The whole mixture seemed a bit gloppy after using the thickeners. Has anyone tried making this recipe without the thickeners in the potato broth? Larry

We were at Maxim's Sur la Table demo on Modernist Cuisine at home last week, and enjoyed the evening thoroughly. For me, one of the highlights was the very simple, but very scrumptious carrot soup, made in a pressure cooker. So for dinner tonight, I thought I would attempt to replicate that soup. What could go wrong? Carrots, butter, baking soda, salt, and a pressure cooker -- all things I have on hand. I followed instructions to the letter, painstakingly cutting out the core from about 30 tender new carrots, ensuring that I actually ended up with 500 grams of carrots, weighing butter, salt, baking soda, then plopping everything into our pressure cooker. Husband and I both wondered at the lack of water in the recipe, but thought that, since it wasn't called for in the ingredients, we wouldn't add any. So then we ramped up the PC to the recommended 15 PSI, and set the timer for 50 minutes, as per the instructions. At about 30 minutes, the carrots were smelling wonderfully sweet and caramelly. At about 35 minutes, there was a whiff of scorch in the air. By 40 minutes, I knew things were hopeless, but persevered. At 50 minutes, we opened all the windows and turned the fan on high, then scraped out bits of carroty charcoal from the PC, before putting it into hot soapy water to soak for a day or two, and went to plan B, and defrosted some lovely tomato bisque we made earlier this week. What went wrong? My strong suspicion is that 50 minutes cooking time is just too long. If so, perhaps the recipe should be amended. Or maybe we should have gone ahead and added some water at the start. If so, how much? I really, really liked this soup, and would dearly like to be able to make it for Thanksgiving dinner next week.

I posted a recipe for this under the discussion of the mushroom broth, together with some observations and suggestions for making the consommé. If you have any comments about the oxtail consommé itself, please post them here.

In mc, traditional braising is suggested by slow cooking first and browning the meat through the pot lid under the broiler. If the meat is slow cooked on the stove first, doesn't that prevent the maillard reaction from taking place under the broiler at the end since the meat is effectively done? Thanks David

Well after great success with the Caramalized Carrot Soup it's time to move onto the French Onion Soup. I've picked up my Preserving Jars 500ml * 4. Anyone got any tips before I proceed, I'm using a Fagor Pressure Cooker which is fine as this is not a sterilastion canning as I take it. I do not have a tray for the bottom of the pressure cooker except for the steamer basket on a trivet which I'll put the cans on or in whichever way you look at it.. I'm not sure how much water to put in. The PC instructions state to put 2 cups in for >20mins cooking so I'll do that as it is a 40min cook. I think that's it! Anyone have any comments before I proceed? I'll get back to you with the results. Reagrds, Vol.

We recently put up a blog post about one of our favorite Asian markets. Do you use ethnic grocery stores? What type of stores are in your area? What items do you get? How often do you go there? Do you ever feel "out of your comfort zone?"

Made the Crispy Corn Pudding this weekend as an one of the appetizers before dinner. Photo before I floured and breaded them. (Sorry no finished pic), by the time I set them on the table to eat they were gone. They turned out great, just make sure you have a napkin if you don't eat it in one bite. The pudding explodes once you bite into it with rich corn flavors that melts in your mouth. Lots of work to make (acutally lots of dishes to clean, but its worth it). Highly recommend, your love the crunch and richness.

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?