Medellitin

I have been working on a list of modern cooking technique debates I hate witnessing and the "Do Foams Suck?" debate is filled with jackassery from both sides.  I am a proponent of all culinary techniques regardless of trendiness.  They just have to be well executed and service the dish.  That being said, I think us pro-foamers do need to check ourselves when we attempt to engage the enemy. Say you are minding your own business when some foam hating douche walks up to you and says: I hate foams and everyone that likes 'em! The initial response as programmed by the Internet will invariably be: You hate all foams?  You know that x is a foam right? Where x is: Bread Mousse Cappuccino Beer Your Mother Hocking that loogie is a total red herring.   Obviously, when someone says they hate foams, they are being more specific than any solid or liquid with a gas trapped inside of it.   So, let's stop channeling that nerdiness from high school that got...

Looks like Jean Francois scoops everyone (again) by digging up the pricing on the apparently batshit-crazy high end Kitchenaid Chef Touch System .  His sources state: Vacuum chamber : 2,950  € incl. VAT / ($4099 USD) Shock Freezer : 5,000 € incl. VAT / ($6947.50 USD) Oven : steam ( 1,550 € / $2153.72 USD) combi (1,850 € / $2570.57 USD) incl. VAT Kitchen high cabinet : 2,700 € incl. VAT / ($3751.65 USD) Total = 12,500 € (combi oven) incl. VAT (approx. 17,500 USD) This sounds like madness, but the truth is, most of this pricing isn't too far off the mark... if you are buying restaurant quality equipment.  Combine that with the fact that you get a clean, home kitchen quality aesthetic, and the pricing isn't insane, assuming the quality is there.  I wonder if this will find success in new construction of luxury homes/apartments, because I have a hard time imagining the person who buys this for an existing home.    Previously , I joked before about...

If you read the Sous Vide article at wikipedia, you will notice an uncited reference to Count Rumford discovering sous vide. Now, there are two banes to my existence, wikipedia and uncited references. Since wikipedia content is religiously stolen, aggregated and republished, Google becomes useless when trying to hunt down the minutia that keeps me going. Fortunately, I managed to hunt down the essay written by Count Rumford. I should I say eſſay. Or ſhould I ſay eſſay? Because, apparently, as late as 1802 we were still using the long s . Which makes reading Count Rumford's ſeminal eſſay, "Of the imperfections of the Kitchen Fire-places now in common uſe" a real delight. You people owe me. This essay, which could be found in 1802's timeless classic Essays, political, economical, and philosophical, Volume 3 not only gives us valuable insight into the culinary happenings of the 1800's, but also gives us one of the earliest documented efforts of low temp...

Squishycups! Cite: TheWayWeSeeTheWorld Such a simple and clever idea .  Agar Agar is a hydrocolloid derived from a sea algae, making it vegan.  It has all kinds of great culinary purposes, and now we can add another one. Many great applications ahead for the use of edible, flavored cups... if they aren't too squishy or slimy. Would this work for cocktails?  Pour some Patron into a margarita shot glass.  Tomato glass with horseradish infused vodka?  Think that's gross? No worries, it is also biodegradable/compostable.

As the name suggests, The PolyScience Anti-Griddle is a flat-top cooking apparatus that uses extreme cold instead of extreme heat to modify the texture and flavors of food.  The cooking surface is a metal sheet approximately 15" x 9" that is cooled to -30ºF by specialized refrigeration gear.    This can be used to create some unique dishes or components.  Examples include: The Moto team used the Anti-Griddle to make crepes on a recent episode of Future Food   Grant Achatz's  Mango , Bonito, Soy, Sesame course at Alinea PolyScience's own Philip Preston makes a creme anglaise lollipop by griddling both sides but leaving the center creamy Most home cooks cannot afford the 1000$ price tag.  The good news is that you can simulate the AntiGriddle at home provided you can get your hands on some dry ice.  A number of people have talked about AntiGriddle hacks before, but the first mention I could find came from Nick Kokonas. ...

I am really loving 'Future Food' on Planet Green (10PM:EST/Tuesdays).  On each half hour episode, Chef Homaro Cantu and his chefs use modern cookery techniques to recycle abused product , creating fish dishes without using fish, and, on the most recent episode, solving world hunger . How would the Moto team solve world hunger?   Their answer begins with a peculiar fruit called "Miracle Fruit".  Miracle Fruit contains a taste chemical called... wait for it... Miraculin.   Miraculin is a taste modifier.  You put it on your tongue and sour/bitter flavors become sweeter.  There are a handful of taste modifiers out there, but miracle fruit is the easiest to come by. At first glance, it is easy to dismiss the idea that the power to make unappealing flavors delicious.  After all, if you are starving, does flavor play a huge role in what you eat?  I don't know.  I also don't know how nutritious crab apples and various weeds are.  Bu...

I hate the molecular gastronomy debate.  My real job world has several similar nomenclature debates and the truth is people hate labels, especially when the label is either outgrown, foisted upon them or develops a negative connotation.  The Molecular Gastronomy nomenclature debate is pure inside baseball. The truth is, there really aren't a gazillion restaurants that really fall under the umbrella of this movement... Molecular Gastronomy, Molecular Cuisine, Progressive Cuisine, techno-emotional, Spanish avant-garde, call it what you will.  The idea that this is a tremendous movement is really something perpetuated by the culinary zeitgeist.  Don't get me wrong, this is a movement that exists, and inside of that movement are a good number of chefs and restaurants that execute to varying levels of success.  But, the reason it is talked about so frequently is because it makes for an interesting story.  Interesting stories get read.  As a result, people...

So, there are a lot of distinctions between different approaches to sous vide cooking appliances.  One difference between the immersion circulators and water baths (including classic PID controllers) is the ability to move the water around.  This helps keep the temperature of the water regulated more precisely.  Think of it like a bath.  You fill your bathtub up with hot water, then you get into the tub.  After some time, the water gets cold and you turn on the hot water tap.  The whole bath tub doesn't immediately get warmer, just the water near the heat source.  Usually, I start moving my hand around to equalize the temperature. The fine folks at PolyScience did some testing to see what the actual impact of this was on food being prepared.  Their tests show that as water baths adjust to the introduction of cold product (e.g. refrigerated chicken breasts), they actually will raise the temperature of the water above the target setting.  M...

Go big or go home. That is what I always say. Actually I never say that. I think I say go big and go home. Which doesn't really convey the original expression. And really, I just want to go home.  And tomorrow I will be thinking about going home, because this bag of salt cured duck parts with smothered in rendered duck fat: just got dropped into this: Tick Tock.  Tick Tock. I'll talk about Duck Confit and my results in the next post.

Received a demo SousVide Supreme today. I am incredibly excited that I have the opportunity to test drive an appliance that I hope will mark the first major milestone for the adoption of Sous Vide for the home cook. I invite you to join me over the next two weeks as I do a deep dive into the SousVide Supreme, exploring every nook and cranny.

Sadly, I had this post mostly written for the better part of a year. I finally sat down, listened to the audio again and finished the post. It is important to note that this reflects my understanding and take on their conversation, and I am may have unintentionally misrepresented them. As mentioned previously , I had the privilege of attending "WIRED & LIVE present GRANT ACHATZ & NATHAN MYHRVOLD Moderated by Mark McClusky The Cutting Edge: Tales from the Culinary Frontier" way back in october. Of all the events I have attended recently, this was the only one with really good moderation. In attendance, I saw Jeffrey Steingarten, Tim Zagat, Alex and Aki from IDEAS IN FOOD , and even one of the teachers from cooking school. Best part of all of this is: you can listen to it yourself. Don't want to listen to it? Here were my take-aways: On The Beast That Shall Not Be Named Mark was pretty relentless in trying to get Grant and Nathan to discuss the labeling of ...

When you are drinking that can of cola you aren't just feeling those tiny bubbles, you are also tasting them, according to a new paper entitled "The Taste Of Carbonation". From the press release: Ryba added that the taste of carbonation is quite deceptive. "When people drink soft drinks, they think that they are detecting the bubbles bursting on their tongue," he said. "But if you drink a carbonated drink in a pressure chamber, which prevents the bubbles from bursting, it turns out the sensation is actually the same. What people taste when they detect the fizz and tingle on their tongue is a combination of the activation of the taste receptor and the somatosensory cells. That's what gives carbonation its characteristic sensation." There are two crazy factoids here. The first is that the sensation is identical when the bubbles aren't bursting, which seems to defy logic. You'd think there would be some sensory difference. Second, somewhe...

A lot people involved in Molecular Gastronomy (the modern cooking revolution, Modernism, Molecular Cooking, Techo-Emoti{ve,onal} Cooking) use the term spherification to describe the technique of forming food into spheres. Some folks hate the term Molecular Gastronomy (for many reasons, some good, some bad) and rail against its use to describe a style of cooking. A lot of energy is expended debating the term, or attempting to change this part of the culinary zeitgeist. While it rails against one word, it invents another. That's right. Spherification is not a word. The closest Merriam Webster provides (in Mar. 2009) is: sphere Function: transitive verb Inflected Form(s): sphered; spher·ing Date: 1602 1 : to place in a sphere or among the spheres : ensphere 2 : to form into a sphere Do I really care about this? No, I actually like that language is fluid and that made up words can become real words. Up next, actual spherification sphering.

As far as food blog meme's go, Khymos' "They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT)" contest. Martin Lersch (it's his blog), is one of those smart, sciencey food guys. He way more scientist than chef, but if you read me, then you clearly don't care about that. I like reading him because he doesn't dumb anything down. And when people don't dumb things down, it means you have to smarten up. You should be reading his blog in general, but what I really wanted to talk about was TGRWT. Once a month, Martin announces two ingredients that well, go really well together. Some flavor-pairings are really counter-intuitive. Here is his description: The name refers to flavour pairing of ingredients based on their content of volatile aroma compounds. The idea behind flavour pairing is that if two (or more) foods have one or more volatile compounds in common, chances are good that they might taste well together. Click for a list of other flavour pairings and to read...

I went to see Michael Ruhlman and Thomas Keller converse about sous vide at the Astor Center . I think it was worth going to if you didn't know much about the subject. I have become far more literate on the subject than I had thought. The space and facilities at Astor Center continue to make for the best venue to attend food related events in New York City. Ruhlman and Keller were fun to watch, even if Ruhlman did occaisionally sound like the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer from Saturday Night Live: "Mr. Keller, you mean to tell me that you seal food in plastic bags and put them in hot water? Won't we die of botulism or PVC poisoning? Your modern cooking techniques frighten and confuse me. Which demons did you sell your soul to in order to remove all of the oxygen from that bag." Yes, I know, this was a softball so that Keller could hit a home run on the safety answer for a crowd that probably does think like The Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. It was still entertaining. Usu...

I have vague memories of the first time I saw liquid nitrogen in use. I think I was in my junior high school auditorium and there was some speaker they brought in to try and get us excited about science. He was a typical science pitch-man. His lab coat partially concealing a plaid shirt and cheap slacks, thick glasses elevated by a sense of humor that came in two forms: the pun and the science joke. His routine, somewhere between David Copperfield and a birthday clown, climaxes when he attempts to bounce a rubber ball that was frozen in liquid nitrogen. You could hear the ball shatter like glass. I didn't really think much about liquid nitrogen again. Puberty happened, and then I had to get a job. Having finally recovered from the realization that I will not be getting any taller and that I will likely have to work until I die, I found myself at the Astor Center, attending "Cold Cooking with Liquid Nitrogen" with Ideas In Food chefs Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Ta...

Yah, I know. Two things wrong with the title. First, most people who fall under the category MG, hate the phrase. Second, isn't it oxymoronic? I mean, Raw Veganism is hippie rabbit food. A diet already restricted by veganism compounded with the inability to heat anything past 104 °F (40 °C) to 115 °F (46 °C). Salads and juices, oh my! Contrast that with the Modernists, Molecular Chefs, Molecular Gastronomers, what ever they want to be called often cook with ingredients whose usage was pioneered in the industrial food industry. Kitchens like laboratories. Ingredients like Hydrocolloids, Transglutaminase, Tapioca Maltodextrin, and Xanthan Gum. And first glance these forms of cuisine seem to have nothing in common. New Age Hippies vs. the Avante Garde. Let's dig into some similarities: Creativity. I think creativity comes from two places: constriction or freedom. Modernism frees you. New textures, new techniques, new, new new. Raw constricts you. Trying to consi...

** Old-Me has joined the chat room "SousVide:TheNewNotTooHotness" ** Future-Me has joined the chat room "SousVide:TheNewNotTooHotness" Hey... look who it is... Me... again. So glad that in the future the only person I talk to is myself. What the heck is Sous Vide? No time for shenanigans. You need to know this. Sous-vide, French for totally delicious, or possibly under vacuum. It is a cooking technique where food is vacuum sealed in plastic bags and "poached" in a temperature controlled water bath. Originally developed in the 70s as a way of reducing the loss of weight in foie gras during traditional cooking techniques, sous-vide has had widespread applications ranging from industrial food preparation to use in some of the most highly regarded restaurants in the world.There are several benefits for cooking with sous-vide:  1. Consistency. Sous-vide takes a lot of the guesswork out of knowing when a food is done cooking. Imagine a world where everyti...