Cooking with "Modernist Cuisine" (Part 3)

[paulpegg]

It really, does, Paul: I consider the gauntlet thrown, I'm going to make it again this week. Another question for you: when you made the sablés, did you use just the butterfat portion of the onion butter, or did you blend it back together and use it as "whole" butter?

Thanks for the compliments, I am certainly not in your league but I am extremely patient and study the recipes very intently before I plunge in.

I used the whole butter in the sables. I didn't see any reason to separate it. The dough looked like it might be kind of short without it. I took your lead and used the left over onions in some omelets the next day. They were every bit as good as you said they would be.

I didn't sear the onion halves and they were a little dry. I thought about saving the sous vide liquid from the bag and reducing it a bit to use as a glaze or drizzle on them. There was a strong vinegar taste to it so I need to be careful with this idea.

My next challenge with this dish is to prepare it for 20 people next Monday with a four man team who has not even seen the recipes yet! That is my personal gauntlet! I will have another team doing the Oysters Escabeche at the same time!

[Chris Hennes]

I used the whole butter in the sables. I didn't see any reason to separate it. The dough looked like it might be kind of short without it.

Interesting, my butter separated itself during the cooling process, leaving a layer of oniony butterfat on top and then some onion and milk solids below. I just used the butterfat. Unfortunately I tried to make these again today but they were too fragile to handle, so it's back to the drawing board.

[paulpegg]

I used the whole butter in the sables. I didn't see any reason to separate it. The dough looked like it might be kind of short without it.

Interesting, my butter separated itself during the cooling process, leaving a layer of oniony butterfat on top and then some onion and milk solids below. I just used the butterfat. Unfortunately I tried to make these again today but they were too fragile to handle, so it's back to the drawing board.

You're right, the butter did separate during cooling so I warmed it just enough to blend into the dough. I used everything including the little bit of onion and milk solids. I think the extra liquid made the dough just workable enough not to fall apart.

[Chris Hennes]

Paul, how thin would you say you rolled the dough for the sablés? I tried to take mine down to 2.5mm yesterday, and the resulting sablé was so fragile I couldn't move it off the silpat. Do you suppose this was a deficiency in my mixing method, or did I go too thin?

[Chris Hennes]

Success at last... I figured out what (I think) caused my overly-fragile sablés. I am using the C&K Products Isomalt Crystals sold here. A close examination of the crystals shows what I believe is the problem:

Note that a US penny is about 1.4mm thick, and we are told to roll the dough to 1mm. Some of the bits of isomalt are actually substantially thicker than a penny, and represent a significant inclusion in the dough. My previous solutions to this problem were to try to cream the isomalt with the butter to get it to disolve, to no avail. Figuring this was just the way isomalt worked, I plowed ahead and just rolled it, accepting the roughness to the dough. However, when I made yesterday's thinner batch, the isomalt inclusions caused the dough to become too fragile. So today I pre-processed the isomalt to a powder, and then followed a standard sablé mixing method. Here are the sablés as 2.65mm (the thickness of a bamboo skewer):

This baked up just fine, so I attempted to get even thinner: 1.25mm (the thickness of insulated, stranded 26 gauge wire)

These wound up significantly darker because I didn't even check them until 11 minutes in, but the taste was still good, so I'll keep them. They are fragile due to thinness, of course, but still strong enough to withstand being moved a bit.

ETA: Oh, and I took Paul's suggestion above and re-creamed the onion butter to get more of a "whole butter" effect. I don't know if it had any effect.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Chris Hennes (log)

[mkayahara]

Chris, you have a remarkable number of bases of comparison for thicknesses!

[Chris Hennes]

It is not coincidental that my sablés were either the thickness of bamboo skewers or the thickness of 26 gauge wire...

[nickrey]

It is not coincidental that my sablés were either the thickness of bamboo skewers or the thickness of 26 gauge wire...

And very evenly rolled I note.

[KennethT]

It is not coincidental that my sablés were either the thickness of bamboo skewers or the thickness of 26 gauge wire...

ha! Sable MacGuyver!

[TheTInCook]

Does the modernist pasta with the xanthum gum work for filled pastas?

[Chris Hennes]

I doubt that firm "al dente" texture is desirable in a filled pasta product: it was OK in lasagna, but I can't see it working all that well for, say, ravioli.

[TheTInCook]

I doubt that firm "al dente" texture is desirable in a filled pasta product: it was OK in lasagna, but I can't see it working all that well for, say, ravioli.

I hadn't thought about that. I was more wondering if it would seal at all.

[Chris Hennes]

I haven't tried it directly, but when I made the lasagna the sheets stuck to one another if they were wet, so I'd guess that the standard brush of water between pasta layers would do the trick. Only one way to find out for sure...

[TheTInCook]

You got that right.

I'm taking the Rhulman's Ratio recipe for pasta I've been using and adding half the xanthum and all the oil like in MC.

Works out to:

Eggs 100

AP Flour 150

Oil 15

Xanthum 0.75

Will report back.

[TheTInCook]

You got that right.

I'm taking the Rhulman's Ratio recipe for pasta I've been using and adding half the xanthum and all the oil like in MC.

Works out to:

Eggs 100

AP Flour 150

Oil 15

Xanthum 0.75

Will report back.

Even with that little xanthum the dough felt different. I was worried for a bit, because after the first two passes on my Atlas machine, it looked like it had bad acne scars, but it smoothed out.

No problems sealing that I could attribute to anything other then my poor agnolotti skill (first attempt) the ravioli came out ok.

The texture was definitely more toothy.

Edited March 6, 2012 by TheTInCook (log)

[paulpegg]

Paul, how thin would you say you rolled the dough for the sablés? I tried to take mine down to 2.5mm yesterday, and the resulting sablé was so fragile I couldn't move it off the silpat. Do you suppose this was a deficiency in my mixing method, or did I go too thin?

Chris,

I have been at the foodservice show all day in NYC so didn't get back to you on this. I see you solved the problem since then. I also found that the isomalt was too big. As I was blending the dry ingredients I felt the particles and forced them through a sieve. I should have pulverized them ahead of time as you did. Your finished sables look great.

[Chris Hennes]

Finishing up the arlettes this afternoon. This time around I let the dough get harder, I sliced them thinner, rolled them thinner, sprinkled with less sugar, and baked them longer. They were also made with homemade puff pastry instead of store bought, and I didn't accidentally skip any steps in the recipe.

Just off the slicer:

Rolled thin (sorry, no thickness reference this time):

Sprinkled with onion sugar:

Baked seven minutes at 340°F:

Sprinkled with more sugar:

Baked until crisp, about eight more minutes:

This batch was much more successful than the last: they were thinner, crisper, and both looked and tasted better. As long as they hold for another day without any problems I am confident that this next time through the dish will be completely successful. It's also much easier the second time around!

[paulpegg]

As long as you don't nibble on them beforehand!

Looks very good.

Paul

[Broken English]

I made the bacon jam at work today, seeing as we weren't too busy. It is sickly sweet, I'm thinking I may omit the sugar and halve the maple syrup for the next batch. The flavour would have been great if it weren't so sweet, it's almost like tasting simple syrup.

[FoodMan]

Sous Vide Lemon Curd

Once again my Meyer Lemon tree is going crazy and I have way more lemons than I know what to do with. I made lemon olive oil, Lemoncello batch, salt preserved lemon...and I also wanted to make a batch or 3 of curd. I figured I'll try the MC version this time around and the first thing I noticed is the quantity of butter used. It's a crap ton of butter compared to typical lemon curd recipes. I plowed ahead and gave it a shot anyways.

Egg yolks are cooked SV at 65C. I did not use lemon essential oil and opted to use the extra-fragrant lemon zest.

I also used a total amount of lemon juice equal to the combination of water and citric acid that MC uses. This is something the MC authors in a recent video and email said is fine to do and makes sense to me.

The lemon juice and sugar gets blended with the cooked yolks and then butter, a lot of it (400gr) gets incorporated. After a chill time the curd is ready to eat.

Now, the verdict: It's a good tasting product, but the crazy amount of butter makes it like no other citrus curd I've ever had. I usually expect a stiff custard of sorts, this was more like a lemon curd flavored butter and the texture out of the fridge was more like a cream cheese. No way I would use this to fill a tart or cream puffs, it is just way too rich. I know the recipe has no errata since they just republished it on the MC website and emailed it to their subscribers. So, this is the intended resutl they are shooting for I suppose.

Two questions:

- Is there a reason why the lemon juice, sugar and yolks cannot be mixed together and then bagged and cooked? The last step would be to incorporate the butter. This makes it simpler and more like how a traditional curd is made.

- I am thinking of making it again with half or even less the butter amount. Any thoughts if that would or would not work?

[Chris Hennes]

Onion Tart (Take 2)

For my second attempt at the Onion Tart I made some changes. First, I made sure that the onion arlettes were appropriately crisp. Second, I used a much thinner sablé. Third, I tried not to reduce the onions for the gratin as much so that I had more of it. Last, I played around with the plating. Some of these things worked, and some did not.

• The arlette was a huge improvement, they turned out much better.
  
• Interestingly, the thinner sablé was not: I used the 1.25mm version, and thought is was too thin, both visually and texturally. The 2.5mm version would have been best, I think.
  
• While I did end up with more of the gratin, as hoped, the taste and texture were not as good: the onions were too al dente. If it make this again I'll go back to the way I made the gratin the first time, and just increase the quantities to compensate for the lack of volume.
  
• I thought this plating was unattractive, and also resulted in an unbalanced quantity of gratin to custard: I think it's important that you wind up with, by volume, about twice as much gratin on the plate as custard, and I had that ratio reversed when plated like this.
  

So some good, some bad: still not perfect.

[paulpegg]

Chris,

I sort of like your idea with triangular sections but I agree that the sable should be thicker. I also think it should be the same size and shape as the custard and the gratin. The arlette's look great, you've got that part nailed.

There are loads of variations that can be played and I think you are on the right track with this one.

[Chris Hennes]

You can't really tell from that photo (of course, I posted one that showed the dish in its best light, not its worst!) but the triangular sections didn't work well, the smaller acute angle was too thin to support the custard. I wanted triangles because it's simple to get two exactly equal portions out of it, but they didn't work well physically or aesthetically. I thought the larger sablé worked well in the original plating (the one specified by the recipe), but with the two triangles of stuff being the same size and shape in this case, you're right, it looks silly to have the sablé larger.

I also think that flavor-wise, I'd be inclined to replace the custard with a much richer (and smaller) reconstructed cheese item: I'd like something that I could serve hot, rather than lukewarm.

[Anonymous Modernist 734]

Sous Vide Lemon Curd

Once again my Meyer Lemon tree is going crazy and I have way more lemons than I know what to do with. I made lemon olive oil, Lemoncello batch, salt preserved lemon...and I also wanted to make a batch or 3 of curd. I figured I'll try the MC version this time around and the first thing I noticed is the quantity of butter used. It's a crap ton of butter compared to typical lemon curd recipes. I plowed ahead and gave it a shot anyways.

Egg yolks are cooked SV at 65C. I did not use lemon essential oil and opted to use the extra-fragrant lemon zest.

I also used a total amount of lemon juice equal to the combination of water and citric acid that MC uses. This is something the MC authors in a recent video and email said is fine to do and makes sense to me.

The lemon juice and sugar gets blended with the cooked yolks and then butter, a lot of it (400gr) gets incorporated. After a chill time the curd is ready to eat.

Now, the verdict: It's a good tasting product, but the crazy amount of butter makes it like no other citrus curd I've ever had. I usually expect a stiff custard of sorts, this was more like a lemon curd flavored butter and the texture out of the fridge was more like a cream cheese. No way I would use this to fill a tart or cream puffs, it is just way too rich. I know the recipe has no errata since they just republished it on the MC website and emailed it to their subscribers. So, this is the intended resutl they are shooting for I suppose.

Two questions:

- Is there a reason why the lemon juice, sugar and yolks cannot be mixed together and then bagged and cooked? The last step would be to incorporate the butter. This makes it simpler and more like how a traditional curd is made.

- I am thinking of making it again with half or even less the butter amount. Any thoughts if that would or would not work?

[TheTInCook]

Anyone try the rice noodle dough from the parametric table?