Modernist Events

[Anonymous Modernist 3840]

We hosted a modernist food event for the members of Sector67 a maker/hacker space in Madison,WI last weekend and it was a great success. I will share more about it along with links to pictures shortly. We made 40 hamburgers in the "perfect hamburger" style with the souse vide and liquid nitrogen, and the deep fryer. We made creme anglaise souse vide (YUM!), and liquid N2 ice cream from souse vide base custard. We did souse vide whole racks of ribs cooked at 175 F for 16 hrs ( a bit too tender, fell apart trying to flip them). We finished them with sauce on the modified charcoal weber grill with the added circular metal reflector/ heat concentrator that MC describes, and did that work well, wow! Other members had home made souse vide cookers cooking salmon, as well as long cooked condensed milk in the souse vide that turned into something like caramel with the texture of flan (a bit weird). One member infused Pom blueberry/pomegranite juice into watermelon chunks using a vacuum chamber. He submerged the chunks then pulled a heavy vacuum and then released the vacuum, this forced the dark juice deep into the fruit, it was dark purple and really good. Also, in the fruit area we also filled a cooler with various fruit and a chunk of dry ice and let it sit overnight, it was amazing! My favorites are blueberries, raspberries and pineapple. But the cuties (tangerines) were great, as were blackberries. I didn't think that the grapes or bananas were as good, but maybe it was just lack of carbonation.

We have a follow up even scheduled for February 17th. I will tell more when we get the pictures up on the Sector67 website. But think about doing one of these, we had a great time.-Chris

[Anonymous Modernist 3840]

We finally got pictures of our food event from early december on the Sector 67 site. It has some great pictures and video of our event. Check it out, and stay tuned for our next one on Feb 16th.

http://www.sector67.org/blog/2012/cooking-with-science-day/

[Anonymous Modernist 3840]

We held another Modernist inspired Science and Food Event at Sector 67 in Madison, WI this weekend. This time we had about 25 people and a lot more help, and it went very well. We made a lot of different hot wings. The regular sous vide wings from MAH were good, but could have been cooked a little longer as they didn't fall apart as easily as baked wings, but they crisped up well, the korean hot wings were AMAZING! We also used the torching technique from MC to sear sous vide lamb chops: WOW! The 3 creme anglaise recipes were: vanilla bean, orange zest with basil, and starbucks mocha powder, which we mixed in a kitchen aid with liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. The mocha was the best of all, but we used 40 g of mocha powder and it was very rich. We loved the mac and cheese recipe, to which we added lobster, that disappeared fast! Some members cold brewed coffee, others vacuum infused cherry juice into watermelon (too watery a juice was used) and that didn't work as well as expected. The whipping siphons got much use in infusing lemon grass and lemon zest into vodka (good) and coffee into whiskey (very good). The modernist merangue recipe scared me as it said to put the cooked egg white and sugar mix into the 1L siphon hot and then infuse it with 4 charges of nitrogen, but our engineer said that stainless steel was strong enough to handle the pressure. It came out very messily, so we put it in a water bath to cool and thicken up, and then it came out thicker after that. (It was good torched) Also, it worked well in the laser cutter, which incidentally we used to cut minced garlic as well. I will update you all in a bit with more of what we did. -C

[Anonymous Modernist 3840]

We also made a lot of different types of carbonated fruits: pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, grapes, (all good), tiny bananas (so-so, didn't carbonate well), peaches (wow, very ripe and very good), pomegranite (carbonated well despite the thick skin, and tasted great), and the best of all kiwi fruit (amazing).

We also had all the books out for people to look through, and they were a hit. We also cooked brussel sprouts in butter at 180 F, in the souse vide. We had 3 different souse vide baths going at one time, 2 of which were homemade setups. The sprouts were a hit btw. We plan on doing another food event again on April 13th, and will likely continue them regularly, as they are a bit hit.

[Judy Wilson]

Thanks for sharing! Did you put any photos on your blog?

Judy

P.S. Next time try deep-frying the Brussels sprouts. There's a recipe in MC!

[Anonymous Modernist 3840]

We are doing another modernist cuisine inspired event at Sector67 in Madison, WI this Saturday. We are doing the @72 hr pastrami and other fun things with transglutaminase, pressure cookers, microwaves, whipped cream siphons, etc... I was wondering if anyone has done other types of alcohol infusions using the whipped cream siphon technique. How does cinnamon taste when infused into vodka? Should I use whole sticks, or crush it first? Also, if we were to use nutmegs whole or broken up, whould there be any danger in extracting the alcohol soluble myristicin found in nutmeg? Perhaps it would be best to refrain from making an alcohol infusion using nutmeg? Does anyone have experience with this, or any other common spices that may have unexpected fractions extracted using alcohol and a siphon this way? Should we be cautious of this method with certain botanicals?

[Scott Heimendinger]

I've done several alcohol infusions using the whipping siphon. While I can't speak to the nutritional safety of certain extractions, I can say that the technique is both fast and potent for these type of infusions. Botanicals work well, as do spices and candies. Generally speaking, the finer something is ground or pulverized, the better the extraction will be. However, there are exceptions such as coffee: extracting from coffee grounds will yield a very bitter flavor compared to extracting from whole beans.

Have a great event, and send pics!