• About The Crew
  • Cooking Through ‘Modernist Cuisine’ At Home

Jet City Gastrophysics

~ Exploring Modernist Cuisine in the Northwest

Jet City Gastrophysics

Tag Archives: Blog

Stop being so serious and have a freak out moment…

31 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blog, Cooking Blog, Dinner, Food, Grant Achatz, Recipe

THAT’S CHEF GRANT ACHATZ!!!!!!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I MET HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JETHRO HAD HIM SIGN A BOOK FOR ME BEFORE I WENT TO NOMA (CLICK)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HE TOLD ME AND LUKE (FROM FRESH BISTRO) THAT WE COULD COME TO ALINEA TO WORK FOR A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ERIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Duck Prosciutto Dish

12 Thursday May 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in curing, dehydration, emulsions, gels, hyrocolloids, maltodextrin, starches, thickeners, transglutaminase, vacuum sealing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Blog, Cooking, Cooking Blog, Duck Prosciutto, Food

30 of these.

Eric

Fruit Leather, Flowers, and Glass

11 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in starches

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Blog, Cooking Blog, Dinner, Food, Pure Cote B790, Recipe

Work with pure cote-b790 and ultra tex is starting to pay off.   Traditional fruit leather on the bottom flavored like a candied apple.  Flowers are from my garden.  Glass is made of fresh orange and pear juice.  Sauce is an urfa biber and orange zest syrup heated to collapse the glass tableside.

Eric

Gazpacho

27 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in centrifuge, gels

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blog, Centrifuge, Cooknig Blog, Dinner, Food, Iota Carrageenan, Recipe

Starting to work with iota carrageenan, which is pretty fun.  Also, a bit of work with Jeth’s centrifuge.  We’ll see what happens.

Eric

Soy Glazed Mackerel, Honey Roasted Root Vegetable Puree, Macadamia Extraction, Herb Salad.

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in centrifuge, sous vide, vacuum sealing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blog, Cooking Blog, Dinner, Fish, Food, immersion circulator, Mackerel, Recipe, Sous Vide

Equipment:

Centrifuge
Homogenizer
Chamber Vacuum Sealer
Immersion Circulator

Our first main course dish. Good things are coming…..stay tuned.

Eric

Cookbook: Herve This-From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by ericriveracooks in cookbook

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blog, cookbook, Cooking Blog, Dinner, Food, Herve This, Molecular Gastonomy, Recipe

A book from the father of molecular gastronomy.

I’ve been kicking around this whole “molecular gastronomy” thing for quite some time.  When I first heard about it I was reading about at all the cool presentations, shapes, and textures that were being displayed by chefs at numerous restaurants around the world.  I thought, “I want to cook like that one day…..I want to create art through food”.  I didn’t realize what these chefs were actually doing. I just thought it was for presentation purposes only.  I saw a video on youtube that showed Jose Andres hanging out with Ferran Adria and Chef Adria was explaining his spherification of olive puree,  I was amazed.

A few months later I saw Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain talk in Seattle.  Mario Batali called molecular gastronomy fake, I was confused.  I respect all these chefs and what they do. I’m so far down the totem pole in this chef world that I’m a random bush that is hanging out across the field from the chef totem pole.  What to do?

Looking back at the whole thing I realize one thing. Mario Batali wasn’t talking about molecular gastronomy at all. He was talking about the chefs that turned “molecular gastronomy” into elaborate presentations, shapes, and textures. He had no issue with Ferran Adria but he had a problem with the guys trying to be like Ferran Adria without understanding the science behind what Chef Adria was doing.

Heston Blumenthal set me straight when he had Harold McGee on his show, “Kitchen Chemistry”. Harold McGee wrote a book called:

(I have more information on the book coming shortly….not finished yet)

and Heston Blumenthal said that this book changed cooking for him. It was written in 1984, I have the revised version that was written in 2004. This book answered the why’s, how’s, and debunked all those things you have probably heard growing up, “sear the meat it traps in the juices”……these book say, “no, that’s not true”……the books are correct, you are not (I believed the same thing, I suck…haha). Chef Blumenthal listened, learned, and innovated so did Ferran Adria….look where they’re at now.

I did my research, bought my books, and started to read them (I have a lot more on the way). I began reading Harold McGee’s book and then I started doing more research about how the term “molecular gastronomy” came to be.  It was an easy way for Herve This and his science partner to market this science of cooking easily.  What you have probably heard from the mainstream is that molecular gastronomy is the crazy presentations, shapes, and textures of food. The mainstream doesn’t get it…..it’s like Elvis when he first came out.  The teenager’s loved him and parents immediately thought he was the devil. We often shun the things we do not understand or feel uncomfortable with.

My ignorance lead me to this world of molecular gastronomy………OH PRETTY COLORS!!!! My curiosity has lead me to understand and respect it.  Herve This’s book, “Building a Meal from Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism” has broken down all of these things into plain English for me.  Call it stupid, call it ridiculous, call it what you want.  There is a science behind cooking. The days of me looking at something and saying, ‘it’s done”, are over.  The days of believing someone simply because they have been doing it that way forever are over…..if they can’t tell me WHY then I will question them…..woo hooo I’m 4 years old all over again!

Herve This labeled it molecular gastronomy to make it easy to understand and market but he has also debunked over 25,000 culinary beliefs since he has started his research.  This book shows how to boil an egg to perfection, you might say, “well you just boil it for 10 minutes with a soft boil/hard boil/or whatever technique I’ve been using for years”.  Do you want to perfect this process? I do, so I listen.  Chefs have listened to the words of Herve This and they have become extremely successful in the culinary world, I want the same.

Full speed ahead, let’s build a meal “molecularly”!

BUY THIS BOOK…………..now!

Eric

Meeting Six: Eggs, Foamlette 1.0, and Bone Marrow Creme Brulee

16 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by ericriveracooks in emulsions, foams, sous vide, vacuum sealing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blog, Bone Marrow, Cooking Blog, Creme Brulee, Egg, Food, Recipe

That’s an egg yolk.

I got together with the guys at Jet City Gastrophysics to work on some projects.  This time our theme was eggs.  It reminded me of my favorite week at school which was egg week.  We had a ton of eggs to cook in every which way possible but we never tried Sous Vide.

Scott was borrowing a machine that Polyscience lent him as well as another machine that he built…the guy is a freaking genius. He had the two baths set up at different temperatures in order for our creative juices to start flowing.

We tried to make a foam mayonnaise but it didn’t turn out the way we wanted….just need more practice and time and I’m sure we’ll get it. On the last foam mayonnaise Scott decided to torch it and it gave us a nice “foamlette” which I wrapped around some salami.  It’s a work in progress.

Next up was another idea from Scott.  ”We should deep fry one of these egg yolks”.  I said, “yeah, we could do that it would be easy”.   A little standard breading procedure and some seasoned flour later we came up with this.   Perfect the first two times we tried it….it’s almost like I fry things a lot at work or something…..

These little things are incredible.  You’ll be seeing them a few more times on this site (waiting on the pancetta to be ready).

Finally, Jeth brought over some bone marrow and he put it in the immersion circulator and cooked it for 45 minutes.  When it came out we tasted it on bread with a little sea salt and it was amazing but then we all studied the texture which was very delicate and creamy.  We were thinking about what else we could do with it.  I thought, “well, we have egg yolks, you have sugar, and cream……let’s make a creme brulee”.  Made those a few thousand times………but this time was with BONE MARROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had to leave before the creme brulee was completed so Scott snapped this picture and sent it to me.  His reaction to it leads me to believe that it was something I should make again.  (PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT AKA SEATTLEFOODGEEK.COM)

Eric

[Originally posted at ericriveracooks.com]

Instant Champagne.

03 Friday Sep 2010

Posted by ericriveracooks in carbonation

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blog, Champagne, Cooking Blog, Dinner, Food, Molecular Gastronomy, Recipe

Bubbles baby. That’s what it’s all about.

I purchased a soda siphon and I have been working with it for a few weeks now.  Keys to success using a soda siphon…..finding the right temperature in order to have bubbly bliss in a carbonated creation.    Let’s just call this “Instant Champagne 1.0”.  Good things happened but ideal achievements were not met.

Eric

Soda Siphon Experiments Coming Soon……

27 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by ericriveracooks in carbonation

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blog, Carbonation, Cooking Blog, Drinks, Food, Molecular Gastronomy, Soda Siphon, Sparkling Wine, Wine

I bought a soda siphon and I’m really excited to start working with.  I would like to combine some of the work we did with the whipped cream dispenser then turn it over to this apparatus in order to carbonate our drinks……what….I like bubbles!

Another thing I want to start working on is a good base for infused sodas.  Most sodas today are flavored with high fructose corn syrup and while there is a segment of the population that has a brain aneurysm when they hear about HFCS I just like the taste of real sugar.  If HFCS tasted like real sugar then I wouldn’t care.  Most sodas just have a simple syrup mixture which is just a 50/50 of water to sugar then the flavors are infused from there and most of the time they are artificial….I’m looking at you Coke and Pepsi.   While there have been the natural soft drinks that have come out (Jones and others) I feel like they have been missing something.   If my sodas take off I’ll promise not to burn Michael Jackson……

Another thing I want to do with the soda siphon is make sparkling wines. I realize that this process is achieved through secondary fermentation in the wine world but there are some wineries that do pump in CO2 without worrying about secondary fermentation.  I’m not a big fan of wine but wine that bubbles and sparkles?!?!?!?! You have my attention!

I’ll post my findings here over the next week so stay tuned!

Eric

Search

Categories

From the Twitterverse

Tweets by jcgastrophysics

Feed Yourself

  • RSS - Posts

Recent Posts

  • Ferran In America
  • That One Time We Applied For A Food Patent
  • Ideas In Food At Home: Coffee Onion Rings
  • BOOM: Sansaire Circulator Raises $823k On Kickstarter
  • Dining Northwest Style at The Willows Inn
  • Sansaire, The $199 Circulator: A Brief History
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: Barbeque Rubs And Another Sauce
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: More Barbeque Sauces
  • The Price Of Cooking Modernist Cuisine, Part IV: More Gadgets, Ingredients and Resources
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: Compressed Melon Terrine
  • That One Time We Were Nominated For Best Culinary Science Blog
  • Gastrophysics Labs Closes Doors; Reopens As A “Kitchen”

From the Archives

  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010

Blogroll

  • A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
  • Alinea At Home
  • Chef Rubber
  • Cooking Issues
  • eGullet
  • Eric Rivera's Cooking Blog
  • Ideas In Food
  • Khymos
  • L'epicerie
  • LeSanctuaire
  • Modernist Cuisine
  • Modernist Pantry
  • Seattle Food Geek
  • Studio Kitchen
  • The Alinea Project
  • Willequipped
  • Willpowder

  • ericriveracooks
  • jethro
  • sheimend

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Jet City Gastrophysics
    • Join 163 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Jet City Gastrophysics
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...