Category Archives: pressure cooking

Modernist Cuisine At Home: Oxtail Pho Broth

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in MC at home, pressure cooking, recipes

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Pho Bac

My Neighborhood Pho Place

Spring is taking its time arriving this year, and there seem to be more cloudy days than sunshine.  But that’s not a problem – while I wait for the outside to warm up, I can just warm up my insides.  With a Vietnamese pho, to be exact. Cooking Asian food can seem so different than what I’m used to making in the kitchen.  Can my soup match the dish at my favorite local spot?  I turned to Modernist Cuisine to help me in my quest.

Note: It’s way too easy to play on words with the pronunciation of the word “pho”, which is “fuh”.  For instance, we have a chain of restaurants here in Seattle called “What The Pho?“.  I will try to abstain.

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Root Vegetables

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in brining, dehydration, gels, hyrocolloids, pressure cooking, sous vide, starches, thickeners, vacuum sealing

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Components:

Chioggia Beet – gel and pickled
Parsnip – centers sous vide and fried strands
Turkey Chicharrones
Cocoa Nib – cooked in sherry vinegar
Russian Blue Potato – steamed
Swiss Chard – pickled
Rutabaga – powdered
Rosemary – fried in potato starch
Pea Tendrils
Turkey Consomme (poured over once presented)

Eric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modernist Cuisine At Home: Caramelized Carrot Soup with Coconut Chutney Foam

10 Monday Oct 2011

Posted by in centrifuge, foams, gels, hyrocolloids, MC at home, pressure cooking, recipes, thickeners

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Caramelized Carrot Soup with Coconut Chutney Foam

This one is always touted as an easy introduction to Modernist Cuisine. It has two main ingredients: carrots and butter. It has two steps as well: pressure cook carrots in butter for 2o minutes.  Then add carrot juice, puree, and season.  Voila.

Strange thing is, well, my version, it took me most of the day.

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Ideas In Food At Home: Popcorn Gelato

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in foams, liquid nitrogen, pressure cooking, recipes

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Popcorn Gelato

A few months back I bought the cookbook Ideas In Food: Great Recipes And Why They Work, but hadn’t cooked anything out of it yet.  It has two sections: recipes for the home cook and recipes for the professionals.  As I don’t believe in such restrictions (the point of this whole blog, really), I immediately turned to the “professional” section.  What can I make with what I have on hand? I settled on the Popcorn Gelato.  And I’m glad I did – this is a really cool recipe.  Actually it’s really, really cold.

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The Price Of Cooking Modernist Cuisine, Part I: Tools And Gadgets

19 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in blow shit up, centrifuge, combi oven, dehydration, liquid nitrogen, pressure cooking, sous vide, vacuum sealing

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“Modernist Cuisine” is not for most home cooks.
– Michael Ruhlman

“[Modernist Cuisine] looks cool and would be fun to flip through,” he said. “But I don’t need to spend six hundred dollars on a cookbook — I already know how to cook.” This led to my next question — in his opinion, were these techniques even appropriate for the home cook? “Sous vide is great for cooking vegetables and meat,” he replied. “But home-cooked meals are home-cooked for a reason. They’re meant for the home.”
– Domestic Divas

The truth is that this stuff is for the pros.
– New Yorker

Man, do these people bore me.  How uninspired. How defeatist.  How sad, pathetic, and totally lame.

0 To 60 in 90 Days

I started to cook in December 2009 – about 18 months ago.  I had no knife skills, didn’t know anything about Anthony Bourdain or Iron Chef, much less Mugaritz.  My refrigerator was empty save for old condiments.  I didn’t even notice the front right burner on my stove was larger than the others because I had never used it.

But once I started, I got way into it.  Within weeks, I had discovered avant-garde food.  By February 2010, I had ordered my first ‘molecular gastronomy’ kit and contacted Scott and Eric to form Jet City Gastrophysics. By March, I spherified my first liquids.  By August, I made the red cabbage gazpacho from The Fat Duck. And in October, just 10 months later, I began cooking from Modernist Cuisine, which wasn’t to be published for another five months.  I used their PDF excerpt.

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Modernist Cuisine At Home: Mushroom Omelet

28 Thursday Apr 2011

Posted by in combi oven, MC at home, pressure cooking, recipes, sous vide, vacuum sealing

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Striped Omelet

After I tackled the ham and cheese omelet last week from Modernist Cuisine, I was ready for the next step: their infamous striped mushroom omelet.  I had to go online and to four grocery stores to collect the ingredients necessary.  About $75 later I was ready to go.  This had better be a good omelet.

The Cast Of Characters

The Cast Of Characters

The recipe calls for several preparations: a brown chicken jus, which goes into a mushroom marmalade, a mushroom puree and the omelet base.  A scrambled egg foam was also made, but I ran out of N2O chargers for my cream whipper.  So the sous vide scrambled eggs sit sealed in my refrigerator until I can go to the store and pick some up.  We’ll skip that step.

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Under Pressure

28 Friday Jan 2011

Posted by in pressure cooking

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I finally had a chance to use my pressure cooker that I bought about a year ago.  I purchased it for two reasons:  #1 In Heston Blumenthal’s “In Search of Perfection” he suggests using a pressure cooker more often……SOLD! #2 I wanted to do a bunch of canning (never got around to it).

I purchased two 3.5# pieces of pork belly that I brined (one in Chinese 5 spice and the other in a smoked paprika/chili oil blend) then braised, then pressed.  The process when it comes to preparing pork belly is time consuming but with a few different pieces of equipment I was able to do this in record time….for me anyway.

The brining process took me the same amount of time….about 4 hours.  Luckily, Jethro has a vacuum chamber sealer so next time I’ll go that route and save even more time!  The cooking time of the pork belly is what really changed things.   Normally, a 3.5# piece of pork belly would take about an hour to an hour and a half to braise properly in the oven.  I knocked one out in 20 minutes then the other piece in 18 minutes.  The pressing and cooling process took another 45 minutes.

The next time around is what I’m excited about.  Essentially, I could have a piece of pork belly brined, cooked off, and ready for pressing in under an hour.   Time is everything in a kitchen and space is a concern at home.

The great thing is that I was able to dehydrate tapenade ingredients in my oven overnight then cook the pork belly in the pressure cooker. Once all of the tapenade ingredients were ready I placed them in my spice grinder then emulsified them with extra virgin olive oil then slowly worked in tapioca maltodextrin to create that pavement effect you see in the picture above.

After I made the two pork bellies I made a beef stock in the pressure cooker.  Traditional French style beef stock with all the bells and whistles in 45 minutes instead of 8-12 hours.  The only problem I had was that the stock was cloudy but I cleaned it up by cooking some egg whites in the stock which cleaned it right up.  I talked to Jeth and Scott about this and Jeth suggested after I make the stock to use the centrifuge so I will have a super concentrated stock…..genius.

The picture above is the 5 spice pork belly, tapenade “pavement”, and flower.  With a few more adjustments and tinkering I think this will turn out to be a world class dish.

Eric

15 p.s.i. ’til I die!