Cooking with "Modernist Cuisine" (Part 1)

[Fat Guy]

No. I assume plate or brisket but I don't know for sure.

[mkayahara]

No. I assume plate or brisket but I don't know for sure.

Not short ribs?

[Fat Guy]

I'll follow up and find out for sure, unless Nathan M. gets here first.

[KennethT]

I think I recall Nathan saying he liked the beef cheek pastrami best.

[Michael Natkin]

I've only had a chance to glance through the book (at the launch party in Seattle), but I've had the opportunity to hear Dr. Myhrvold speak a few times recently. At the most recent event, he described a caramelized root veg soup that seemed simple enough to attack without the recipe in front of me. Here is what I came up with: Cold Carrot Soup "Myhrvold". Now I just can't wait for my 40 pound box to show up.

[Dave the Cook]

This morning I had the opportunity to sample some modernist dishes, prepared by the Modernist Cuisine team, at a modernist breakfast at Jean Georges restaurant here in New York City.

. . . .

I recognize many components from the book, but I no longer have access to the online reading room and don't have a physical copy. Those of you in the book, are these recipes from the book?

Most of those items are listed in the index. Maybe all of them are in the book, but not explicitly indexed.

Corn bread (5-76): Fresh kernels are blended with lard, eggs a dairy. The mixture is sieved to remove the kernel husks, then combined with dry ingredients (flour, isomalt, cornmeal, sugar, leaveners and thyme). Baked at 130°C/265°F for about 20 minutes.

Bacon jam (4-229): described as "a sweetened and stabilized Hollandaise made with bacon fat." The sweeteners are sugar and maple syrup; isomalt stabilizes.

Mushroom omelet (5-215): If I read it correctly, the omelet is the striped top; the egg underneath is a separate component called scrambled egg foam. They use a pastry comb to create the stripes. It's cooked in a combi oven.

Pastrami (beef cheek) is on 3-213. Steven's photo looks like short rib to me.

There's a recipe for ultrasonic fries on 3-325. The fries are cut and bagged, then cooked at 100°C/212°F for 45 minutes. Then they go into an ultrasonic bath (still bagged, I think) for an hour and a half. Cool, dry, double fry.

The posset might originate in the parametric recipe for protein curds on 4-105.

There's a recipe for sous vide lemon curd on 4-227: yolks bagged and cooked at 65°C/149°F for 35 minutes, then combined with sugar syrup, butter and essential oil.

Cold coffee extraction is discussed on 4-370: ". . . ideal when coffee is to be used as an ingredients (sic), such as when making coffee ice cream."

[RDaneel]

I would have posted this in the "Cooking With..." thread, but I think it's merged now, so here's a "cooking with..." report.

My brother and I decided to do a nice dinner with some of the MC recipes, ranging from "traditional" foods to slightly more avant garde. Here is what we prepared:

1) Vol 5 "Hawaiian Poke" - this can be summed up as "Activa bonded sushi checkerboards." We were amazed at how close to the book's illustration we were able to get, in no small part thanks to nice quality fish (yellofin tuna loin and white-fleshed sea bass). Cool presentation, and the flavor is what it is - nice fish. Surprisingly, the biggest hit was a simple garnish of finely minced japapeno, sweet onion, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce that we adapted from MC. Great contrast to the flavors of the fish. If I can get a photo, I'll attach one later.

2) Carbonated mojito spheres - unfortunately, this was an epic fail. Totally our fault, I'm sure. We didn't rest the alginate bath long enough, and even holding the xanthan to the end of mixing for the mojito filling left in enough air bubbles that the spheres had a little floating area that failed to gel well. I'm also wondering if we could improve the texture - the spheres had a fairly thick skin that wasn't that pleasant in the mouth. The recipe said 40 spheres, we got 5 that worked, and only three were intact after carbonating. The carbonation was awesome and totally made the recipe, I hope to try this again with other spherified cocktails. I need to experiment a bit more and figure out where we went wrong.

3) MC Mac & Cheese - a total hit. I used nice aged cheddar and a mildly aged gouda, and it rocked. This will become a staple in my house. I wonder if the processed cheese will nearly as good when I don't spend big bucks on the original cheeses? Also, has anyone tried to freeze the processed cheese? That would make this an even easier standby meal.

4) Kentucky BBQ sauce - also amazing. Nothing "modernist" in this recipe, just deliciousness. I can see why Nathan was such a successful BBQ master. Can't wait to try the other seven sauces...

5) Mushroom ketchup - this was... interesting... to make, and delicious to eat. I'm a bit unclear on the preparation instructions, and guessed that after browning the mushrooms you add them to the other liquids and blend/sieve (as opposed to reducing the liquids, which would have made a paste). My batch ended up thick (crappy blender and no sieves available), so we skipped the Xanthan. The flavor is very nice, and I look forward to making it "right" next time and comparing my results.

6) SV Brisket - we did 132F for 72 hours, and it was awesome. Great texture. It was a flat end and grass-fed, without much interior marbling. I think 72 hours was fine, though I was expecting it to remain pinker - it looked more cooked than it was (and I have no reason to doubt my Polyscience's temp reading), but tasted great.

All in all, we had a blast, even with the spherification failure. These books have so many awesome things to try, I can't wait to find the time to do more...

[Chris Hennes]

Tonight's dinner was sous vide chicken breast, sous vide carrots in butter (a.k.a. "carrot confit") and Modernist Mac & Cheese. The carrots were cooked in 30% their weight in butter with a touch of salt, 83°C/181°F for 45 minutes: this leaves them cooked but quite firm; al dente, if you will. They tasted fine: nothing remarkable, basically carrots in butter. The MM&C was made using cheese that I froze two weeks ago, so I can conclusively state that yes, you can freeze the cheese with no ill effects. I actually didn't bother to shred it at all. It was in a vacuum pouch, so I tossed it in with the carrots until it was heated through. It then works just like the cheese stuff in the Velveeta Shells and Cheese, you snip off a corner of the pouch and squeeze it onto the macaroni. Give it a quick stir, and serve. Doesn't get much easier than that.

[Phaz]

I've done sous vide carrots using this recipeand found them fantastic. It looks like the difference between the two is a bit of sugar. They were basic carrots for sure, but somehow more... carroty... than normal carrots.

My first recipe from the book was Bacon Chips with Butterscotch, Apple, and Thyme from 3·189. It came out great.

My food dehydrator only went to 160, not the 175, so I cooked the bacon for 4 hours instead of 3. It was some of the best bacon I've ever had, and that was cheap grocery store stuff because all the premium bacon I usually get is more than the required 1/16th of an inch thick. Cooking bacon this way is now my go to method if I have the time. Even though they are called bacon 'chips' they aren't really crispy. The amazing part about cooking it this way is that there is no grease in the dehydrator. It seems to take all that grease you normally have left in the pan, and leave it in the bacon. You can really taste it when you bite in, it's almost juicy. I can't wait to try with better bacon.

The butterscotch was also great. I haven't done any candy type stuff before so this was new to me. The first step of heating the corn syrup and sugar takes a while, and when it starts getting close to the 375 degree temp you want to make sure and take the heat way down to slowly reach that point. My first batch I had the heat going fairly strong and took it off at 375 and it climbed up right past 400 and burnt into a mess. This seemed simpler than a lot of the recipes I looked at online, yet so amazing, and I typically don't like sweet things at all.

The apple leather was fairly straight forward. I didn't have the plastic required to set it on or the non-cook cooking spray so used some parchment paper and olive oil, which worked fine. It's really important to get that stuff as level/even as possible, and if you are doing it in multiple 'sheets' to fit the dehydrator like I did, make sure they are all the same thickness so they'll cook properly.

These were really good. Here is a photo. Nothing like they look in the book (I was in a bit of a rush) but still the taste was quite awesome. I'm sure I can find more uses for that butterscotch.

I'm going to try the other bacon chips with the syrup this weekend.

[Guy MovingOn]

I'm very intrigued by the spherification technique with the carbonated mojito spheres. Can a liquid which is already carbonated be spherified? I ask because I would love to do some sort of gin and tonic spheres.

I also contemplated spheres within spheres. Perhaps using hemispheric molds or something. Whereby upon placing the sphere in your mouth, you may sequentially burst two to three spheres containing a sphere within them. My inspiration was a tequila slammer.

I wondered if it would be possible to create a sphere of lime juice, freeze it or by some other means trap it inside a sphere of pure tequila, which would then be dusted or sprinkled with some form of salt, and place that onto a tapas/chinese spoon. This would provide the sequence of flavours of salt->tequila->lime.

Would those wiser than me consider such techniques possible? If so, please share your wisdom regarding how!

[AaronM]

How bout that "rare beef broth" recipe?

Very interested in how they got that color.

[Kim D]

I thought I had all the equipment I needed to make Duck Leg Confit...

PolyScience Sous Vide Professional

Ary Vacmaster VP210

Soehnle scale that weighs in grams or ounces

I definitely had all the ingredients on hand.

What could be better? I didn't have to leave my house.

And then I started weighing ingredients. And that's when I realized one piece of my equipment was not up to snuff. My scale. It had no problem weighing a kilo of kosher salt and 100 grams of toasted coriander seeds. It did ok with 11 grams of garlic, 7 grams of star anise and 5 grams of orange zest. Weighing 0.4 grams of bay leaves proved to be impossible. Ditto 0.8 grams of black peppercorns and 2 grams of thyme leaves. I just had to wing it on those.

If someone could recommend a scale, I would be appreciative. Preference would be something not made in China.

Even with the guessing, the duck came out great. The texture was what I always wanted in my confit. Tender yet firm. My husband said it was better than the confit we had aged for 6 months. I agree.

And now I have 4 individually wrapped duck legs. Just waiting to be needed. And three packages of Confit Cure Mix. I also have a few kilos of duck legs in my freezer so all I need is a few days notice and I can make another batch.

Life is good.

Edited to add: Volume 2 Techniques and Equipment has the answer. Ohaus.

Edited March 22, 2011 by Kim D (log)

[jsmeeker]

Kim

There is a good topic discussing kitchen scale recommendations in the Kitchen Consumer forum. Check it out right here.

[lstrelau]

to make Duck Leg Confit...

And then I started weighing ingredients. And that's when I realized one piece of my equipment was not up to snuff. My scale. It had no problem weighing a kilo of kosher salt and 100 grams of toasted coriander seeds. It did ok with 11 grams of garlic, 7 grams of star anise and 5 grams of orange zest. Weighing 0.4 grams of bay leaves proved to be impossible. Ditto 0.8 grams of black peppercorns and 2 grams of thyme leaves. I just had to wing it on those.

Kim (or anyone who already has MC (My copy won't be shipped til April 14 ). I have 6 duck legs thawing as I type and plan to confit them sous vide tomorrow. Could someone give me a brief (is that possible?) method for the MC recipe? I am a jewellery designer so have a couple of little scales at work that I plan to liberate one for precise measuring at home.

I can find methods online I know but the spice/herb mix sounds great. I assume the legs are cured with the salt and spices first but timeing and then temp/details for the SV portion would really be great.

Thanks,

[Kim D]

Duck Confit

The spice/herb mix is good for 4 batches of legs. I gave the list of ingredients above. The garlic gets mashed, the star anise gets finely crushed, the peppercorns are coarsely crushed, the bay leaves are thinly sliced. I was surprised by the large amount of coriander seeds. They are not crushed. I wonder if I could have used a much small amount had they been crushed.

The recipe assumes one batch is 4 legs weighing a total of 1.6 kg. Apply spice mix, vacuum seal, refrigerate 10 hours. Rinse off spices and dry completely.

Vacuum seal the legs individually with 20 grams of duck fat in each bag.

Sous vide 82C/180F 8 hours. When done, cool in ice bath and refrigerate.

I used mine right away so it went straight in to a hot cast iron skillet to crisp up the skin.

If you refrigerate yours, warm it in a 80C/176F bath for 12 minutes. Then crisp the skin in a skillet.

[Kim D]

Kim

There is a good topic discussing kitchen scale recommendations in the Kitchen Consumer forum. Check it out right here.

Thank you! I'm heading there now.

[abadoozy]

I made the Mac & Cheese yesterday (delicious!) and have a couple questions for those with the book:

- Does it make any mention of why you'd allow the sauce to solidify, as opposed to just making the cheese, then dumping cooked pasta and maybe a bit of pasta water in if needed? Seems to me that's the easier/more direct method, but maybe I'm missing something.

- Again on the pasta: why cook in so little water then add the sauce without draining? Is it just to simplify by using only one pan and not having to drain? Or is there another reason? For the record, though the pasta turned out, I found it more difficult to do this way, as I felt I had to constantly watch the pasta to make sure the water didn't completely cook off. Would be easier to cook the pasta normally, drain, then dump in the cheese and some reserved water. But once again, maybe I'm missing something.

Can't wait to get my copies of the book. If Amazon doesn't start shipping soon, I'm going to implode!

[therippa]

I made the Mac & Cheese yesterday (delicious!) and have a couple questions for those with the book:

- Does it make any mention of why you'd allow the sauce to solidify, as opposed to just making the cheese, then dumping cooked pasta and maybe a bit of pasta water in if needed? Seems to me that's the easier/more direct method, but maybe I'm missing something.

- Again on the pasta: why cook in so little water then add the sauce without draining? Is it just to simplify by using only one pan and not having to drain? Or is there another reason? For the record, though the pasta turned out, I found it more difficult to do this way, as I felt I had to constantly watch the pasta to make sure the water didn't completely cook off. Would be easier to cook the pasta normally, drain, then dump in the cheese and some reserved water. But once again, maybe I'm missing something.

Can't wait to get my copies of the book. If Amazon doesn't start shipping soon, I'm going to implode!

I had the same questions...I skipped freezing the sauce and just used it as is. I also found there to be a little too much water left with the noodles, making it a little soupy. Next time I'm going to drain (and reserve) the water, add the cheese, and add a little water at a time to get the right consistency.

[Chris Amirault]

You can also just continue to cook it a bit longer; the water absorbs or cooks off very quickly, though there might be a teensy sacrifice in mac toothiness.

[Chris Hennes]

I think the reason for cooking in just enough water is to preserve the starch from the pasta in the sauce, so you don't lose it when it's drained. I agree that making pasta this way is a bit more work, though I didn't have a problem with soupiness. Are you running your burner full-blast? Is the burner big enough for your pot? And of course I'm sure there is plenty of variability between burners: maybe I just got lucky having one similar to whatever they tested the recipe on.

[lstrelau]

Many thanks Kim - can't wait for my own copy to arrive but this will help tide me over.

[therippa]

Yeah, I let it continue to cook for probably another 10 or 12 minutes, which helped a little, but I still wish it was a little thicker (which I know is easy to fix). The sauce just didn't really stick to the noodles like I had hoped.

Aside from that though, the flavor was incredible. I served them in ramekins with crushed goldfish crackers on top and stuck them under the broiler until they got a little color. Delicious!

edit: typo

Edited March 22, 2011 by therippa (log)

[Chris Hennes]

Whoa, wait... another 10-12 minutes?! Are you dead certain you had the quantity of water right? I mean, on high heat the water should completely evaporate in 20 minutes of cooking, even if none of it was absorbed into the pasta at all. Something is not right here.

[therippa]

Whoa, wait... another 10-12 minutes?! Are you dead certain you had the quantity of water right? I mean, on high heat the water should completely evaporate in 20 minutes of cooking, even if none of it was absorbed into the pasta at all. Something is not right here.

I did have the right amount of water...the extra time cooking was more of a simmer than a rolling boil.

[jsmeeker]

I think the reason for cooking in just enough water is to preserve the starch from the pasta in the sauce, so you don't lose it when it's drained. I agree that making pasta this way is a bit more work, though I didn't have a problem with soupiness. Are you running your burner full-blast? Is the burner big enough for your pot? And of course I'm sure there is plenty of variability between burners: maybe I just got lucky having one similar to whatever they tested the recipe on.

What is the starch doing to the sauce? Keeping smoother? Adding flavor?

For making a block of cheese first, isn't that because the recipe for the cheese block make a lot more than you really need for a batch of mac and cheeese? It would seem the point here is that you make the cheese block. Now, you can use part of that as an ingrendient in a finished dish.