Harold McGee Lecture Series, Day One: Eggs, Lobsters, Sorbet and Champagne

posted by Nastassia Lopez 

The man himself.

For those of you on who live on the other side of the world or for those who just couldn’t make it down to the FCI for the McGee lecture series, here’s a quick recap of the stuff that went down on Day 1. 

Eggs 

We started off the morning with one of McGee’s favorite subjects: eggs.

Whipping: the French have been using copper bowls to make egg foams since the 16th century.  McGee taught the class that other metals also have the capacity to form extremely tight bonds with reactive sulfur groups.  Whether you whip egg whites in a copper, silver , or in a glass bowl with a pinch of powered copper, the foams stay glossy and never develop a grainy texture.  Non-metallic alternatives like cream of tarter or lemon juice (acids) have similar effects on sulfur bonding and create equally beautiful peaks. An iron bowl does not stabilize the egg foam for long, but does give the it a really cool silverish color.

Hamine egg on the left; pressure cooked egg on the right; delicious homemade mayonaisse in the middle.

Pressure Cooked Hamine Egg: this egg is cooked in a pressure cooker at 15 psi for one hour.  A Maillard reation occurs, the egg whites take on a brown color and the yolk has a creamy consistency. The flavor is  “brown”  –  in the toasty, chicken giblets kind of way.

More Traditional Hamine Egg: we compared the pressure cooked egg to an egg that had been cooking for 18 hours at 70 degrees celsius.  The whites of the 70 degree egg were light brown to off-white. The yellow was still very yellow, and there was a slight jade ring around the yolk.  This egg started to develop some of the brown flavors of the pressure cooked egg, but not as much as they would have if they had cooked longer or at a higher temperature. The cool thing about these eggs is the structure of the yolk was clearly visible.  The yolk in an egg is deposited layer by layer  day by day as the egg is developing.  You can see those rings in this egg.

Two bratwursts crushing a quail egg.

The Thousand Year Old Egg: this technique of preserving duck eggs has been done in Chinese cultures for the past 500 years.   Traditionally, they are preserved in mud and ashes for 1-6 months, and last for a year.  Alkalinity is the key player here. Raising the pH of the egg denatures and breaks down the flavorless proteins and the fats into stinky, tasty things. Thousand year old egg whites become a hard, transparent brown jelly, and the yolks become a semisolid with jade coloring.  The flavor is earthy and eggy with overwhelming notes of sulfur and ammonia. Some eggs can develop beautiful crystals on the surface known by the Chinese as “pine flowers.”  To make a quicker, less stinky version, we stored quail eggs in lye for just five days in a Cambro.   The whites became transparent (not brown), and the yolks sank to the bottom of the egg and turned a dark yellow.  We like them a lot; but, alas, no pine flowers.

Pine flower crystals on the surface of the 1000 year old egg

Egg Toast With Caviar: For those of you who attended our Star Chefs or New York Culinary Experience Demos, you’ll know that we’re quite fond of this egg trick. Click here for a refresher!

Our new favorite: egg on egg on egg.

Ike Jime and Lobsters 

Making friends between the black fish and the lobsters in our do-it-yourself fish tank.

Ike Jime: After lunch, we went straight into our Ike Jime demo. Eight live black fish and eight live lobsters were delivered in the morning, and we kept them swimming with the help of a chiller that kept the water at 50F, bubblers that provided oxygen, a tank filter duct-taped to the side that continuously cleaned the water, and a few water-filled cambros and jugs that raised the water level.We: 1) Ike Jime’d two fish that had not been anesthesized (which proved a little chaotic when one of the very live fish wriggled out of Dave’s hands and slapped itself onto the laps of a few of the guests in the first row), 2) Ike Jime’d three after they had been anesthesized in Aqui-S for 15 minutes, and, 3) killed two the “Western way”- partial suffocation, and then knocked out by being bludgeoned in the head. One escaped notice until late that evening.  It was still sleeping in the tank.  It got the full ike-jime treatment. Ike Jime is mentioned a lot on our blog – we know. But this is the first Ike Jime post with an actual video! Check it out by clicking on the photo below.

Click on the photo for the full live ike jime video!

We’re going to test the differences in fish on McGee Day Two and Three.

Lobsters: The lobsters were the next to go.  Unfortunately we still can’t tell you the really cool tech behind this demo for a few weeks.  What we can tell you, is that soon enough you’ll be able to make a damn delicious lobster.

Frozen Desserts

We were exploring ice creams and sorbets with non-traditional textures.  Why should an ice creeam need to be smooth and creamy?

Super Gummy Locust Bean Gum Sorbet: locust bean gum is known for its thickening properties and has been used for centuries. The ancient Egyptians used the paste to glue bandages on mummies. We used it to make raspeberry sorbet (not to be confused with Prince’s Raspberry Beret).  We took a raspeberry puree and added simple syrup to taste, with 1 1/2% locust bean gum (a ridiculously large amount).  After it simmered, we cooled it, tammied it, and realized the acidity and sugar was not right. We added more sugar, froze it while mixing with liquid nitrogen until it became nearly solid, and served.  A lot of the raspberry flavor had been stripped, but it had a cool snappy texture that gummed in your mouth like a Fruit Roll Up.  Slight locust bean taste, but hey, this was a texture test.  What happens when you go beyond too gummy to way too gummy? Does it get good again?

McGee’s Crunchy Ice Cream: McGee (sometimes) likes his ice cream crunchy. He brought some of his homemade uncreamed ice cream which was equal parts heavy cream and milk, a tablespoon per cup of sugar, a dash of salt and vanilla extract. He threw it in a hotel pan, placed it in the freezer and when it started to freeze, he folded the ice cream over (not to upset the larger ice crystals) and served it up. We had a crunchy, delicious vanilla ice cream.  This is a riff on an old French recipe. In French it’s called “pin cheese.” The bigger the crystals, the better the job you’ve done.  The exact opposite of modern ice cream.

Tiny Bubbles in the Wine

McGee recounted an experiment he conducted a number of years ago dispelling the myth of the spoon in the champagne bottle.  Hint: it involved drinking lots of wine.

Spoon in the Champagne Bottle: French folklore insists that placing a silver spoon (handle down) into the neck of an open champagne bottle will keep the bottle fresh and bubbly overnight.  McGee put this to the test.  A panel of six tasters blind tested an American sparkler and a French champagne with five different treatments ( just opened, left uncorked in the refrigerator for 18 hours, recorked, with a silver spoon placed in the neck 18 hours, and one with a plastic spoon in the neck for 18 hours in case the silver part was important).

The results were interesting.  The sparkling wine tasted better when left uncorked overnight and actually improved the flavors. It also lost a fair amount of its carbonation, which turned out to be a good thing because the freshly opened bottle of sparkling wine seemed to have excess bubbly (see below). The bottles with spoons were the same as the uncorked bottle.

The champagne results were completely different. The uncorked, refrigerated bottles absorbed the flavors of the fridge. Gross.  Like the sparkling wine, the champagne lost some carbonation, but in this case, the change was bad –it was flat. McGee explained that carbonation levels in the champagnes were lower. The open bottles tasted like the fridge because they didn’t have enough exiting CO2 to push out the stinky odors. The spoon in the bottle trick was also insignificant. Sorry, France. Does Carbonation Affect Flavor: Overcarbonated wine tastes bad.  The oak comes out too much and the fruit is shot to crap.  On the other hand, sparklers that have their bubbles removed entirely taste acidic and bad as well.  To test this effect Dave used the vacuum machine to suck out the carbonation out of an American sparkler,Gruet , and a French champagne, Gosset.  We poured ourselves a taste of the fresh, bubbly bottles first, and then we tried the deflated one.  Both the uncarbonated Gruet and Gosset were high in acidity and tasted like cheap, highly-alcoholic sauvignon blanc. Dave recarbonated the Gruet, but over-amped the PSI. As predicted, awful. We realized that to reach the ideal amount of bubbles, the volume of carbonation needs to match the alcohol content of the beverage.  For example, champagne carbonates at around 30-35 psi (psi= pounds per square inch – with the common unit of measure being pressure)  at 0C. We do our mixed drinks around 40 psi.  Wines with a 10-13% abv get an average 30-35 psi, and sake gets about 5 psi higher than white wines (it’s got more booze in it).

In the next two days McGee and crew will be tricking everyone’s tastebuds, taste-testing french fries, hamburgers and pretzels, yadda, yadda.

Cocktail Science V: Ideal Dilution Through %ABV Blind Testing

posted by Nastassia Lopez

Cocktail recipes specify ingredients and chilling technique, but they typically don’t tell you squat about the ideal amount of water added when you stir or shake with ice. Do drinks have an ideal dilution? We figured with the right people in the room we could probably find some consensus. We were wrong.

But let’s back up:

Dave decided to test dilution values of two drinks – the Sidecar and the Pegu– by doing blind tastings spanning a range of 15-30% ABV (alcohol by volume). Dave and I served 32 consecutive shot-sized glasses of each drink, and got some of NYC’s bartending gods completely sloshed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The panel included: Kenta Goto, of Pegu Club; Don Lee, PDT, Momofuku Ssam; Chad Solomon, Milk and Honey, Pegu, Flatiron Lounge, Little Branch; Christy Pope of Cuff and Buttons; Scott Teague of Pegu Club and Meehan, and Eben Klemm, head of beverage for the B. R. Guest Restaurant Empire, and head of the Tales of The Cocktail Shaking Seminar.

The tasting panel: (clockwise from left): Don Lee, Chad Solomon, Eben Klemm, Scott Teague, Christy Pope, and Kenta Goto.

 

First up, the Sidecar: cognac, cointreau and lemon.

We did five sets of four dilutions, in random order at the same temperature (a fairly tepid 0°C.) The mix came in at 30.8%ABV. We acheived our range of ABV’s with a water dilution like this:

Set One: 15, 16, 17 and 18% ABV.  15%  rated  first or second with the majority of the tasters, and18% followed as most everyone’s second choice. 16 and 17%  rated lower; half the panel noted that they were too sour and acidic. Weird.

Set Two:   higher ABV’s: 23, 24, 25 and a whopping 31%. The 24 and 25% tied as favorites for the round, and the panel agreed that 31% was too boozy, 23% too light.

Set Three: 19, 20, 21 and 22%. Results were all over the board.  One bartender said 19% was too acidic and rated it lowest; another said it was the ideal sour and rated it tops. Two thought 20% was well-balanced, and three thought it was far too overdiluted. Most everyone agreed that 21% was the sweetest and was headed in the right direction. 

Dave playing bartender to the bartenders. Measuring.

Set Four: 16, 19, 20 and 22%. No clear winner. 16, 19 and 22% got two top votes each.  20% was rated either second or third by everyone.  No one thought 16% was overly acidic (as they did in Set One.)

Set Five: 16, 17, 21 and 22%.  21% was voted  first or second favorite by all. 16% was surprisingly still a favorite by half  the group. 17% ranked third across the board, and 24% was agreed to be too boozy and dark.

What did we learn about perfecting the Sidecar? Not much.  We learned that you can’t isolate alcohol dilution like we thought we could; the variables of acidity and sugar balance really complicate things.  We also saw that tasters’ impressions of a drink are significantly affected by the other drinks they are tasting next to it.

Would we fare any better with the Pegu? The recipe: gin, Cointreau, lime, Angostura, Orange bitters.  The straight mix came in at 35 abv.  Here is the dilution table:

Set One:  15, 16, 17 and 18%. 15% was tops with four of the six bartenders, “well balanced” and “strong”  (strong in quality, not liquor).  16% was first pick of the remaining two. The losers were 17%, deemed “soft” and “light,” and 18% – ”sour,” “sharp” and “weak.”

Set Two:  16, 18, 19 and 20%.   19% was picked first or second favorite by the group, “nice sugar,” “softest” and “best diluted.”  20% was second runner-up.  18% was least favored, “sharp” and “bittery.”

Pretty fatigued at this point.

Set Three: Everyone was pretty sauced, but we pushed ahead with an even stronger set of 22, 23, and 24%.  No clear favorite. 

Set Four: thankfully, our last. 15, 16 an 17%.  Kenta bowed out to go to work, so we were down to five bartenders.  The outcome seemed random;  everyone had a different opinion.  Two said 15% was far too strong, one said it was the most balanced.  One said 17% was the lightest while two claimed it was the most acceptable. 16% was evenly split, too strong for some, and too diluted for others.

After all this: no clear answer on our panel’s preferred dilution. We were shocked by the utter lack of consensus. Each set determined the limits of  perceived dilution and liquor and/or acid balance.  We must have structured the tasting poorly;  arguments erupted over whether the inclusion of bitters had mucked everything up, whether the drink choices had been appropriate, whether we could taste accurately at 0°C.  Hard to tell from the raw data, but we suspect that acid and alcohol can come in and out of balance at different dilutions.  We vowed to re-convene and taste two drinks with lime and sugar, one rum, one gin, then taste straight gin dilutions and straight limeade dilutions to try and figure out what the hell’s going on.

This is the fifth Cocktail Science shaking post. The previous are:

1: Thermodynamics of chilling: why drinks get so cold

2: Temperature, Dilution, and Ice.

3: Why do my shaker cans get stuck together?

4: Testing Shaking Differences Between Bartenders Qualitatively

Puffed Snacks 1: Wherefore the Puff?

posted by Dave Arnold

I love puffed snacks. Everyone loves puffed snacks. I thought it was time we posted on them.

 

Why do things puff?

In the snack food industry, most puffed snacks are made from starch passed through an extruder.  A screw inside a long barrel mixes, compresses and cooks via friction all at the same time (sometimes extra heat is added, but often friction alone does the trick).  By the time the screw reaches the die at the end of the barrel the product mixture is very hot (well over 100°C) and under high pressure. When the product is extruded through the die at the end of the barrel this pressure is released and water boils off very rapidly -  puffing and drying at the same time. We don’t have an extruder at school, but that doesn’t keep us from making puffed treats.

The products we puff in the kitchen are technically glasses: amorphous (non crystalline) homogenous solids that are stable and rigid.  They also contain water (ideally about 12%).  All glasses have what’s called a glass transition temperature at which they go from rigid to rubbery.  This temperature is usually a good bit (like 100°C) lower than the melting point where they’d become a liquid. For foods destined to be puffed snacks, the glass transition temperature is ALWAYS higher than the boiling point of water –here’s why: When you heat the glassy pre-snack rapidly above 100°C the water inside wants to boil but can’t because it is trapped inside a glass.  When the snack reaches the glass transition temp it suddenly becomes rubbery.  The water is  able to start boiling and expanding,  which it does rapidly.  After the water boils away the product sets (because there’s no more water to keep it plastic and flexible) and becomes crunchy. 

Points to remember if you want to do your own puffing:

• The product you start with must be amorphous.  Crystals won’t puff.  As you will see, that is an important point to remember.
• The water content must be correct.  Too little water results in burning and less puffing because 1) the temperature of the item will get too high before the glass transition is reached; 2) there is insufficient water to puff adequately; 3) without enough water the snack won’t be flexible enough to expand.  In the biz they say water acts as a plasticizer.
• Other substances can also act as plasticizers – such as salt (which also helps taste and might help with heat conduction) and  maltodextrin – any relatively small molecule that will decrease the viscosity of your product.
• Heat quickly and evenly.  I like frying, but air popping, heat guns and microwaves work too.
• Don’t add things to the snack that will burn before the item is fully puffed –like sugar.
• Don’t add things that will compete with the water in the snack and prevent puffing –like sugar.

Things that will puff fall into two main categories (that I know of): connective tissue and starches.

Connective tissue has lots of collagen.  When you cook collagen you break it into to gelatin, which is soft and easy to puff. When you dehydrate the broken-down connective tissue it turns into a glass, which you can heat and puff — a la pork rinds.  Wylie Dufresne works similar wonders with beef tendon and cod swim bladders.

Starches are made up of two main molecules: amylopectin and amylose, usually with more of the former.  Industrial puffing people care a lot about the amylose to amylopectin ratio.  In extrusion applications, about 50/50 gives the highest expansion.  The main structure comes from Amylopectin, while the amylose helps to increase the fluidity of the mix and increase expansion. The ratio  isn’t so important to us. What is important is that the starch gets cooked thoroughly. Native starch is partially crystalline and won’t puff.  The starch granules need to be fully cooked to ensure that the crystal nature is disrupted and the starch can become nice and amorphous.  Some chefs (like Wylie) use pre-gelatinized starch to get around this problem.  Mix with liquid, dehydrate, and you’re done.  If you want to go this rought use Ultra-Sperse from the National Starch Corporation. Don’t bother with Ultra-Tex – it’s hard to hydrate properly.

Almost anything that is mostly starch will puff: rice, corn, pasta, doughs made from tapioca starch (nice and bland), wheat starch, corn starch, yadda yadda.

How do you make a puffed snack?

Making puffs is as simple as: over-cook, dehydrate, and fry.

First: Over-cook your item.  In the case of starch this ensures that the starch granules are  fully gelatinized and at their lowest viscosity.  In connective tissue like pork rinds, overcooking ensures that all the connective tissue is broken down and soft.  Cook  pork rinds in very salty water for 60-70 minutes, pasta in heavily salted water for 45 minutes.

Second: Dehydrate. If the moisture content of your item is above 15% you won’t get much puffing.  If it is below about 10% you won’t get much puffing.  Most people don’t have the ability to test moisture content (If you are anal and you know your moisture level is close you can get it just right by sealing your stuff in a container with a saturated solution of ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrite in water.  That will maintain 65% relative humidity which will give a moisture content of 12%). In practice determining the moisture content isn’t usually a problem.  When the product goes from being flexible to being plastic-y and shrinky-dink like — you’re done.  Try puffing a couple and see what happens.  Over-dried stuff doesn’t bubble much when fried and burns without puffing. Under-dried stuff starts to puff and boils a lot but has a hard center that doesn’t puff.  You’ll quickly get the hang of it.  I recommend putting your product in the dehydrator at 135°F for a couple hours and then turning the dehydrator off and leaving the product overnight. In our kitchen this usually works.  If you live in a very humid or very dry place your results may vary (sorry Louisiana and Arizona). If you don’t have a dehydrator turn your oven on low and crack the door.

Here are pictures of some stuff puffing in a microwave ( thus the blurry pictures).

Pork Rinds puffing in a microwave

Ultra-Sperse M and chicken stock puffing in a microwave

Pasta puffing in a microwave

Here is the technique for puffing pasta.  No, you can’t just puff dried pasta, you have to cook the heck out of it and then dry it.  I built a rack to hold the pasta while it was cooking and dehydrating because it was so fragile it wouldn’t hold its shape.  The pasta  almost breaks under its own weight it’s so soft.  You don’t need the rack if you don’t want to keep the holes in the pasta intact. After dehydration the pasta should have almost the texture it had before it was first cooked –just a little more flexible.

Put pasta on the special rack, salt the hell out of some water, boil the hell out of the pasta (like 40 minutes), load the rack into the dehydrator.

When the pasta has taken on the texture of a shrinky-dink, you fry it.

Here is the recipe for pork rinds:

Take pork skin and boil it in heavily salted water for 60-75 minutes. Carefully drain and cool in the fridge. After cold it is sturdy enough to handle.  Scrape the fat off the fat side; more scraping = better puffing.  Cut the pork rinds into pieces and dehydrate until they feel like plastic.  Fry in very hot oil.

Scotch and Peanuts in the Centrifuge = Some Funky Stuff.

posted by Dave Arnold

The weather’s getting chilly again, so L’Ecole (The FCI’s restaurant) asked me to start thinking about this year’s crop of Red Hot Poker drinks. (If you don’t know about the poker and our modern take on 18th century drinks, look here.) I  brainstormed with Alexis Kahn, who, along with many other duties,  runs L’Ecole’s beverage program. She suggested making a poker drink using our rotovapped scotch and dry-roasted peanuts (the recipe is in our Rotovap Primer). Great idea—but making all that peanut scotch would be a pain in the petoot. I wanted to try something faster.

I thought about doing some fat-washing—a technique to flavor alcohol with fats that a lot of my buddies use—but it wouldn’t be quick enough. I had a lot of scotch to make and not much time.  I wanted to work REALLY FAST. So I had my guys blend Dewars and peanuts in the Vita-prep and spin it in the centrifuge at 4000 g’s for 20 minutes.

If you don’t know about centrifuges, they separate mixtures based on density. You can read our posts on them here, here, and here.

Left to Right: The blended scotch and peanut goop before spinning; The very smooth, highly alcoholic peanut butter with almost no scotch taste; The not-so-alcoholic, strange tasting, very peanutty scotch liquid; Awesome, awesome, scotch flavored peanut oil

I thought we’d get a layer of peanut butter on the bottom (the densest stuff), a layer of peanut flavored scotch (middle density), and a layer of peanut oil on top (the lightest stuff).  We did get that—but in a weird way.  There was a lot of very, very smooth, highly alcoholic peanut butter with very little scotch taste on the bottom.  In the middle was a small layer of scotch and peanut flavored liquid with a low alcohol content and a strange flavor balance.  The real surprise was the peanut oil on top.  We had a very high yield of very good peanut oil with an incredibly pleasing scotch taste.  The oil was a real winner.

Why did this happen?  I know from our experiments centrifuging nut oils and butters that adding a small amount of simple syrup to ground nuts before they are spun increases the yield of oil and makes denser pucks of nut butter.  The high-yield oil you get by adding simple syrup isn’t as flavorful as the smaller quantity you get by spinning the nuts without adding simple syrup.  Strangely, even though we add water in the form of simple syrup, there is no middle water layer in these preparations. All the water gets absorbed in the nut-paste layer.  Shinderhannes, a reader, commented on this simple syrup phenomenon, and pointed out that alcohol should work the same way. We never tried it till now.

What blew my mind was that the peanut butter absorbed so much alcohol but so little flavor from the scotch. Strange.  Also, unlike the simple syrup technique, the high-yield oil from the alcohol trick is full flavored (plus has the extra yummy flavor from the scotch).  Next up: Bourbon flavored pecan oil (America in nut-oil form). And a different idea for the red-hot poker drink.

Side note for anyone who enjoys stupid troubleshooting stories: Some of you may remember that our new centrifuge, the Jouan C412, was acting up on us.  All of a sudden, the motor went from a 4000+ rpm max speed to 3200 rpm.  The good folks over at Ozark Biomedical who service Jouans spent hours trying to help me.  We checked the resistance of the motor windings, we adjusted the current of the driver circuit, we looked at the tach circuit, we checked and replaced the brushes. In an attempt to check the FET’s on the driver board during operation I dropped my test lead and fried one of the drivers. Now it was really broken.  I found a replacement FET and got back to work. As a last effort, I ordered replacement bearings for the motor even though the ones we had felt smooth. When I took the motor apart to replace the bearings I noticed that one of 4 magnets on the rotor that signal the tach had come loose and flown off.  The tach was only sensing 3 magnets, not 4. The damn thing had been working fine the whole time, just reading 25% low.  I bought an optical tach and verified that the machine was reading low.  What a waste of time! I feel even dumber because a reader named Paul A. suggested I use a tach right off the bat.  Kudos to you, Paul. I wish you had been the troubleshooter.

We’ve Got a 3-D Printer: We Need Applications

posted by Nastassia Lopez

The Jetson's Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle. Very similar to our Fab At Home.

Last week the Tech Department was (permanently) loaned a Fab@Home 3-D printer by Dan Cohen and Jeffrey Lipton from Cornell University.   The Fab@Home universal fabrication machine or, “fabber” (not to be confused with our intern “Fabulous“) can build three-dimensional objects by depositing materials (epoxy, cement, scallop goop) via two 10 mL syringes, line by line, layer by layer.  Just hook it up to the computer and give it a drawing that corresponds to the machine’s x, y, and z axes.  The syringes move along and squirt out the paste in the corresponding form. It’s almost as easy as the Jetson’s Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle that makes prime rib at the push of a button.

Our see-through acrylic 3-D printing machine: Fab@Home!

The Fab@Home crew hopes that every home will someday have a fabber. They brought us one in the hopes of finding applications that will get people’s juices flowing.  And what better to get juices flowing than food? 

First we filled the syringes with scallop paste that had been mixed with meat glue, printed out a few scallop space shuttles (that’s the drawing the fabber showed up with) and cubes, heat set them, and attached them to a charm bracelet for Dave.

We tried an emulsified turkey and bacon fat mixture that had been blended with more meat glue (Activa RM), but by the time starting printing the paste had set for too long and was too gloppy as it left the syringe.

We tried a celery fluid gel. It worked okay, but wasn’t smooth enough to extrude nicely.

Finally we mixed up another turkey/bacon mix and printed a celery puree filled meat cube. Meatballs hard –meat cubes easy.  It worked pretty well.

Here is our problem:

We need legit food applications.

We’re trying to come up with some awesome, non-gimmicky, and—most importantly—delicious applications for this fab fabber. We need some suggestions.  Here are the guidelines:

1. The material needs to be able to squirt out of a very small tube.  This is the main problem.  Mixtures must be almost completely homogeneous.

2. The final product can’t be any bigger than a pound of butter (plus remember, we are currently squirting out of 10ml tubes).

3. It must be delicious.

4. It must have a point. We don’t need a printer to make scallop space shuttles.

A Note From Dave:

I love this machine.  I plan on using it to print out parts for my rotovap. The guys at Cornell even said  it is possible to print stainless steel (via inert-gas kiln-sintering a stainless powder-impregnated agar gel).  Stainless steel! 

In order to keep the machine we need to find good food applications.  I want an application that can’t be done any other way—an application that makes everyone want a fabber.  I’m currently thinking about new textures we can create. The main limitation is that the mixtures we use must be homogeneous so they can make it out of a standard luer lock fitting.  Emulsified meat, yes. Ground meat, no (passing turkey forcemeat through a tamis turns out to be a pain in the butt).  Dan says this is something we might be able to overcome in the future (after all the machine is basically a positioning system.  The deposition tool can be anything we want).

Here’s  a long-time dream I probably shouldn’t share: I’d like to make little food creatures that move under their own power.  I know it goes against what I preach about  technology in food but I just want to do it.  It goes back to everything I thought about in my sculpture days.  I want to make beautiful little delicious things that move around on your plate and look like edible jewelry.  There. I said it.  I just can’t think of a way to power them.  Acid/base reactions are unpredictable, provide spotty power, and don’t taste good.  Pressure is difficult to control.  I’m convinced, however, that having a Fabber is bringing me closer to my goal. 

In any event the pastry department here is going to have a field day making centerpieces.

Kindai Tuna Breakdown: How to Cut Up and Serve a Whole (Sustainable) Bluefin

posted by Dave Arnold with Nastassia Lopez

About a month ago, Chef Toshio Suzuki from Sushi Zen in New York (our ike-jime sensei) and Chef Noriyuki Kobayashi of Megu Midtown came to The FCI to demonstrate cutting a whole Kindai bluefin tuna. The event was sponsored by the Gohan Society and Sona Seafood (the guys who import Kindai).

Bluefin is delicious, but naughty.

As many of our readers know, you aren’t supposed to eat bluefin. The wild stocks have been horribly depleted. So-called ‘farmed’ bluefin are really just wild fish that are caught and fattened up for a couple of months.

But Kindai bluefin tuna are different. Kindai tuna are produced through closed cycle farming. They are raised from eggs hatched in a lab at Kinki University in Japan, and the eggs are obtained from fish grown from eggs hatched in Kinki’s lab. This cycle has been going on for several generations, although the folks at Kinki have been working on the problem for decades. Kinki does take some bluefin from the wild to increase the genetic diversity of their breeding stock, but they claim to release enough hatched juveniles to make up for it (a company representative told me this; I haven’t seen it confirmed in a written paper).

There are some folks who don’t like the idea of Kindai tuna. Some say bluefin shouldn’t be farmed at all because the operations are too resource-intensive—it takes a lot of fish to grow a pound of tuna. But since when is the food only about efficiency? (I once spent 2 days producing a single quart of super-perfect wine reduction.) If the mackerel, sand eel, and squid that are fed to Kindai tuna are in danger of depletion it would be a different story—I don’t think they are. Some also argue that inefficient feeding regimens of large-scale aquaculture pollute the ocean because wasted food sinks to the bottom of the ocean and rots. The Kinki people counter that they feed their tuna only as much as they want to eat, by hand. Lastly, some critics argue that customers who have just stopped eating bluefin are confused when they are given an option they are allowed to eat, spoiling all the effective anti-bluefin education. This argument makes the least sense to me; the only real concern is that wild bluefin could be falsely marketed as Kindai.
If you are going to eat bluefin, Kindai seems like a good bet. Here is how to cut one up and use the parts. Enjoy.

NOTE 1 Some of the pictures are quite small.  If you click on them a new window will open with an 800 pixel wide version without captions. 
NOTE 2 I am no tuna expert.  Let me know if there are errors or omissions.

Chef Suzuki with a whole Kindai Bluefin Tuna. It weighs about 60 kilos and costs about 72 dollars a kilo.

Step 1

1) Cut off the tail. 2) Make a cut in gill flap and, 3) Feel for the location where the spine meets the head. You’ll be aiming you cut towards this spot.

Step 2

1) and 2) Grab pectoral fin and cut in a vee to center of the head. 3) and 4) Flip the fish over and repeat.

Step 3

1) Sever the spine and the hard part beneath the jaw. 2) Remove head (Some fish cutters will remove the head at the gill flap and leave the collar area attached till later). 3) Cut off pelvic fin. 4) Open the belly and locate the spine at the head and tail. You will be aiming just below the spine on the next cut.

Step 4

1) and 2) Make a cut along the side of the fish just below the spine all the way to the center. 3) and 4) Cut from back to front to slice off the lower quarter, called the belly cho (a cho is a quarter of the fish), then remove.

Step 5

1) 2) and 3) Cut at an angle over the backbone then slice the top quarter (the back cho) off and remove. Note the blood spots in the meat. This is a result of the Kindai electro-slaughter technique. They should have used clove oil!

Step 6

1) 2) 3) and 4) Trim the fin areas on the top and bottom. At this point some fish cutters would scrape all the meat off the spine with a spoon, but Chef Suzuki plans on using it in a grilled spine dish.

Step 7

1) and 2) Cut the spine free from the second half of the fish. 3) Pat dry and wipe off.

Step 8

1) and 2) Separate the belly quarter from the top quarter.

Step 9

The belly quarter: 1) Cut off the major bloody area in one piece. 2) Finish trimming out the bloodline from the belly quarter. 3) Turn the quarter around. Note the shape of the trimmed area.

Step 10

1) Trim a little bit of the white fatty membrane on the inside of the belly (Suzuki has just done this). 2) Trim the fin area. Suzuki likes this cut of meat. He says it’s like beef. 3) and 4) Trim the rest of the membrane areas on the inside of the belly. Suzuki likes these pieces, too-–more beef.

Step 11

1) The trimmings from the belly and fins. 2) 3) and 4) Cut off the bottom portion of the belly. This will be the fattiest part: the otoro.

Step 12

1) and 2) Cut the upper portion of the belly quarter free from the skin. This will be chutoro and akami. 3) Cut the meat in half. 4) Scrape the meat from the skin. This meat is fatty-–good for rolls.

Step 13

Cutting Saku blocks. Saku are rectangular pieces of fish from which individual portions are cut. 1) Take the upper portion of the belly quarter that was closest to the head (remember he cut it in half) and put it skin side down. 2) and 3) Cut off the piece shown. It was on the interior of the fish and has the least fat. Reserve it for step 16.

Step 14

1) Cut a saku off the portion of the fish that was farthest from the belly. 2) Flip it over and trim (the trim goes into the scrapings pile). 3) Look at the piece. On the bottom it is fatty and on the top it is lean. Suzuki puts it in the medium fat, or chutoro, pile. (Note that between 1) and 2) the main piece of fish has been rotated 180 degrees)

Step 15

1) 2) and 3) Continue to cut saku.

Step 16

1) Take the piece that you reserved in step 13, put the blood-line portion down on your board and trim. 2) and 3) Flip it back over and cut off a saku in where the bloodline was trimmed in step 9. 4) Rotate the meat 180 degrees and cut off another saku. These piece of meat are lean, aka akami.

Step 17

1) and 2) Take the tail-half of the upper part of the belly-cho (from step 12.3), put is skin-side down on your board and slice off the inner piece. 3) and 4) Cut this small piece into two lean akami saku.

Step 18

1) 2) and 3) The other portion is cut into 4 saku and put in the medium fatty chutoro pile. It looks very pale because Chef Suzuki flipped it over. You are looking at the skin-side. The skin-side is fattier because the fish stores fat on its outside for insulation.

Step 19

The super-fatty otoro! Big bad belly badness. 1) Make a small incision in the corner of the belly and 2) remove the small bone. 3) and 4) Cut 2 saku off the short part of the belly (the part closest to the bottom).

Step 20

1) Cut the rest of the belly in half. 2) 3) and 4) cut the halves into two saku each.

Step 21

The pieces of the belly cho: 1) The otoro; 2) the akami; 3) the chutoro.

Chefs Suzuki and Kobayashi did not demonstrate cutting the upper quarter (back cho)  into saku.

Step 22

Chef Kobayashi comes in to break some heads! Each head yields two eyes, two cheeks, two collar pieces, and one piece of meat running from in between the eyes up the forehead. 1) The tuna head. 2) and 3) cut around the eyeball and gouge it out with your hand.

Step 23

1) Trim the skin from the cheek area. Use your finger to free the cheek from the skin and the bone and 2) Rip it out with your hand. 3) Use your fingers to free the meat on the top of the head and carefully remove it with your hand. 4) 1 cheek (the round piece) and one head piece. Chef Kobayashi says they can be used either for tartare or for grilling like a steak. They are very tender.

Step 24

1) Chef Kobayashi shows where the head meat came from. 2) Cut around the other eyeball. 3) Free it with your hand. 4) Rip out the eye. The eyes can be eaten raw or wrapped in foil and cooked.

Step 25

1) Trim the skin over the cheek. 2) Use your finger to free the cheek meat. 3) The head meat is on the cutting board.

Step 26

1) 2) and3) Cut off the collar of meat behind the gill flaps. This cut is called kama and is good roasted or grilled. 4) Platter with the collar (kama), the two eyes, and the belly trim.

Step 27

Preparing the spine. 1) 2) and 3) Chef Suzuki cuts the spine into segments between the vertebrae. Notice the jelly in-between them. This is the tuna marrow. This can be eaten raw if the fish is fresh or cooked. Chef Suzuki says it’s good for the complexion.

Step 28

1) Lean Akami; 2) medium fatty chutoro; 3) very fatty otoro; 4) meat scrapings from the skin and fins; 5) meat scrapings from around the spine. I ate them. They were great.

Step 29

1) The cooked belly trimmings; 2) The cooked eyeballs and a piece of cooked tail; 3) the cooked cheeks and head-meat; 4) the cooked collars, or kama.

Step 30

1) The roasted spine. 2) If the bloody portion of the fish that was trimmed in step 9.1 is dried for a couple of days it becomes a jerky like you see here. It is then grilled over a hot flame and served with sake or beer.

Step 31

Chef Kobayashi on the left and Chef Suzuki on the right at the end of one sweet demo.

Harold McGee Lecture Series

************SHAMELESS PLUG FOR OUR CLASS*****************

A scientist, a chef, and a food technologist walk into The FCI. What happens next? An emulsion of science, food, and deliciousness. On November 4th, 5th, and 6th Dave and Nils will be joined by Harold McGee, renowned author of On Food and Cooking and one of the world’s most respected authorities on science and food, for their interactive Harold McGee Lecture Series.

They will explore the fundamentals of science and food techniques, covering everything from simple culinary skills (application of heat in cooking) to cutting edge approaches (hydrocolloids, rotary evaporation, ultrasonic homogenization) that are being applied in some of the world’s most progressive kitchens.

Think you know everything about the egg? Think again.

How hot should your grill be when cooking a steak? And for how long? Most likely your tried-and-true method is all wrong—or at least we’ll poke fun at it.

Come to the class to start thinking like a scientist in the kitchen. Or just come to watch a mind-blowing discussion and demo from three of the country’s top food nuts (McGee isn’t so nuts but he is really nice).  Sign up here.

*********We now return to our normally scheduled program.  But seriously, the class is fun. McGee does the science bit and Nils and Dave run around like lunatics doing demos.*******************************

Ladies Night Skoal, Hosted by Morimoto

posted by Dave Arnold and Nastassia Lopez

(Hey, what is this Skål Project anyway?)

It’s Ladies Night!

Presented by:

Morimoto!

Masaharu Morimoto: Intercontinental Iron Chef, Chef of Morimoto, opened Nobu, sketches all the meals he makes because cameras are too new-fangled, strikes fear in the hearts of fish everywhere.

Ladies…

April Bloomfield: Chef at Spotted Pig and the new Breslin Restaurant. Eats and cooks from nose to tail.

And, buttertastic:

Alex Guarnaschelli: She's like buttah.

For sweets:

Melissa Murphy: Back home we'll always run, to Sweet Melissa (Bakery).

For meats:

Ariane Daguin: Queen of Gavage, Mastermind of D'Artagnan, plumper of livers - both bird and human.

And anything in between:

Lee Anne Wong, FCI's own: Top Chef Season 1, Wong Way to Cook, Bravo blogger, TV culinary producer, our buddy.

Transglutaminase, (aka: Meat Glue) Primer!

posted by Nastassia Lopez

Activa RM brand Transglutaminase from Ajinomoto aka Meat Glue

We have a brand new Meat Glue (Transglutminase) Primer up on the Cooking Issue’s Primers page!

Here are some excerpts to get you started:

What is Meat Glue? Transglutaminase (TG or TGase), better known to chefs as “Meat Glue,” has the amazing ability to bond protein-containing foods together. Raw meats bound with TG are often strong enough to be handled as if they were whole uncut muscles. TG is safe, natural, and easy to use. In the kitchen, TG is primarily used to:

• Make uniform portions that cook evenly, look good, and reduce waste

• Bind meat mixtures like sausages without casings

• Make novel meat combinations like lamb and scallops

How to test meat glue: a) Rub a lot of meat glue into a piece of raw chicken; b) if it just smells like chicken your glue is no good; c) If it smells like wet dog you're good to go!

Testing Meat Glue: There is a way to test if your meat glue is still working. Get a small scrap of raw meat (we use chicken). Apply a liberal amount of meat glue to the meat and massage it in. Sniff the meat (don’t inhale the powder). If the meat smells like a wet dog or a wet wool sweater, your glue is good. If it doesn’t, your glue is bad. The next time you get a fresh shipment of TG, run the “wet dog” again and get a sense for how strong the smell is. After a while you will be able to tell how good your glue is (how high the enzymatic activity is) by how strong the wet dog smell is. Don’t wait too long to sniff after you massage in the glue because the smell dissipates after a couple of minutes. The wet dog smell is, I believe, caused by the small amount of ammonia released in the TG reaction.

Can’t get enough? Want more on Meat Glue uses, safety, storage and unique protein binding combinations?  Check out the entire Primer!

New York Culinary Experience Technique-a-thon: Pressure Cooking Eggs, Super Rich Sorbet, N’Stuff

 posted by Nastassia Lopez with some comments by Dave Arnold

Dave and Nils - it's not a demo without a circulator.

This weekend marked the second annual New York Culinary Experience (hosted by The FCI and New York Magazine)—a hands-on event where attendees cook side-by-side with some of the best chefs in the industry. Events started on Saturday morning and ended Sunday night with a reception in L’Ecole. Dave and Nils demo’d at 2pm on Sunday to a sold out room of tech-curious New Yorkers. 

We used some techniques we haven’t fully explained before, so we’ll emphasize them with *stars* and go into excruciating detail.

Cocktails

Nils chilling the glasses with liquid nitrogen while Dave prepares the Cold Buttered Rum

Naturally, Nils and Dave bookended their class with cocktails.  They started with a twist on an old winter favorite, Cold Buttered Rum, and ended with (according to Dave) the Best Damn Gin and Tonic they have ever made.  They used Tanqueray gin, clarified lime juice (using stupid simple agar clarification), simple syrup and quinine sulfate (be extremely careful with quinine, see our recipe in the rotary evaporation primer). The mix was chilled with liquid nitrogen till it got syrupy (about -20 C), carbonated at 40 psi, and served in liquid nitrogen chilled champagne flutes. Damn good.

*Egg Toast with Caviar*

We love eggs in every shape, size or animal type.

They then unveiled one of their newest creations (and introduced the class to the many wonders of a pressure cooker) with a dish that debuted at last week’s Star Chefs convention, Egg Toast with Caviar (or as we like to call it around here: Egg on Egg on Egg).

We have been pressure cooking whole eggs for a long time.  Pressure cooked eggs undergo Maillard reactions and turn brown.  Eggs undergo Maillard reactions at lower than normal temperatures because egg whites are alkaline.  Alkalinity promotes Maillard reactions.  The whites have a toasted… well… “brown” taste.  The yolks taste like cooked chicken giblets.  We like ‘em.  When we tried to cook the whites and yolks separately, we noticed the yolks didn’t have that awesome giblet taste.  We thought that the lack of alkalinity was the culprit so we told one of the interns to put in some baking soda (it’s alkaline). Well, he messed up and put in baking powder instead (I’m calling you out, Ed!).  The results were really cool. What we got was something with the texture of bread that was made entirely of egg yolks.  It even toasts like bread. Gluten-free, baby.

3 large yolks beaten with 2.25 grams of baking powder makes a muffin in the pressure cooker. On right it is sliced and toasted.

When we re-ran the experiment with baking soda the results sucked (thanks, Ed!). Varying the amount of powder changes the texture of the egg bread.

Left to right: 1 gram of baking powder per yolk is like a hamburger bun; .75 grams of baking powder per yolk makes a firmer toast (.5 grams is denser still); 1 gram of baking soda per yolk explodes and tastes horrific; .75 grams of baking soda per yolk looks weird and tastes bad.

Here is the recipe we made:

Egg Toast with Caviar
Serves 8

Ingredients
6 large egg yolks
4½ g baking powder
Salt, to taste
6 large egg whites
Butter, for sautéing
Italian farm-raised caviar, to taste
Chives, finely cut

Mix together egg yolks, baking powder, and salt. Divide the mixture into two ramekins. Place egg whites and salt in a Ziploc bag, and remove any air. Mix together by squishing the mixture by hand, on the outside of the bag.  If you have a vacuum machine, pack them in a vacuum bag instead and mix them.  If you mix the salt and egg whites normally you’ll incorporate air and the whites will souffle in the pressure cooker. Hold the bag up and allow the air to rise to the top, then cut the bottom and allow air-free whites to flow into two ramekins. Pressure cook the whites and yolks at 15 psi  (second ring) for 40 minutes, and let cool naturally. If you vent the pressure cooker to speed the cooling process the yolks will explode. Slice the yolks into cylindrical discs and sauté in butter on both sides for a toast-like texture and flavor. Finely chop the whites, and place on top of the yolk disc. Pile a hefty spoonful of Italian farm-raised caviar on top and garnish with chives.

Pecan Yōkan

Pecan Yōkan, which has become a staple in the lab, was spun, spread, dehydrated, and tasted all around the room.  The recipe is already on the blog but we’ll include it for completeness and full deliciousness disclosure.

Pecan Yōkan
Yield: Approximately 2 lb

Ingredients
5 g agar agar
300 g water
200 g sugar
340 g pecan butter

Procedure
Disperse/whisk agar into cold water, then bring mixture to a boil and continue boiling until agar is fully dissolved. Whisk in sugar and heat to dissolve. Remove sugar, agar, and water mixture from heat and quickly whisk in pecan butter until fully incorporated. Either pour yōkan mixture into plastic wrap-lined mold or spread thin on Silpat/dehydrator sheets to cut noodles or create crisps. For noodles, place thinly spread yōkan mixture in fridge to set. Hand cut noodles and gently lift them away from Silpat.To create yōkan crisps, place thinly spread yōkan mixture in dehydrator at 135°F for 1 to 3 hours. If left too long in the dehydrator, the fat from the pecan butter will start to create little bubbles, so keep an eye on it while it’s drying.

Scallop Tartare

The delicious scallops.

Then came Scallop Tartare with Smoked Potato Cream, Mustard Seed, and Vacuum Infused/Flash pickled apples, a dish many remembered from Nils’ showdown on Top Chef Masters.

*Scallop with Smoked Potato Cream, Mustard Seeds, and Curried Apples*
Serves 12

Ingredients
For the Curried Apples
2 apples, diced
1 qt curry oil


For the Mustard Seeds
½ c yellow mustard seeds
1 qt apple cider vinegar

3 T simple syrup


For the Potato Cream
1 lb Yukon gold potatoes
2 ½ oz shallots, sliced
1 oz butter

½ c white wine

1 sprig tarragon
½ qt chicken stock

9 oz crème fraîche

Smoke powder, to taste


For the Scallops
Extra virgin olive oil

10 scallops, diced
Finely cut chives

Procedure
*For the Curried Apples*
To make curry oil heat your favorite curry powder with grapeseed oil  till the desired taste and color are reached, then strain the oil through a coffee filter (a tedious, tedious job). Place diced apples in a container with the curry oil. Put in a vacuum machine. When it reaches full vacuum plus 30 seconds, turn off the machine with the power switch (not the stop button). This will maintain a vacuum in the machine.  The apples will still be bubbling because air will still be coming out of them. Let them sit till they stop bubbling. Turn machine back on to let the air back in and force the oil into the apples. Run one more complete vacuum cycle to accentuate the infusion and infuse any stragglers, then strain the oil, and reserve the apples.  The apples will have taken on a great color and will be flavored by the curry oil without tasting greasy.  We think of it as a self-contained vinaigrette (with the apples providing the acidity).

*For the Mustard Seeds*
Blanch mustard seeds in three changes of boiling water.  This will remove the bitter, dirty taste that mustard seeds have. Then, place mustard seeds in a pressure cooker with the vinegar. Make sure you add enough vinegar.  You should add as much vinegar as you would add water to cook rice. Cook for 20 minutes at 15 psi (second ring). Strain, reserve mustard seeds and add simple syrup to taste, season with salt. Don’t add the sugar before you pressure cook. It will scorch.
The pressure cooking removes the pungency of the mustard seeds and gives them a great texture.  They pop like caviar.

*For the Potato Cream*
This technique takes advantage of a classic no-no.  We all know that overworking mashed potatoes makes them goopy and bad.  What if you add extra liquid and really blend them to create a gluey texture on purpose? This awesome stuff happens: Peel and cut potatoes into slices. Sauté shallots in the butter.
 Deglaze with white wine and reduce by two thirds. Add potatoes, tarragon, and chicken stock. Cook until the potatoes are soft (really cook them, undercooked potatoes for purée are one of Nils’ pet peeves). Strain potatoes, reserve liquid, and remove tarragon. Put potatoes in a blender, add crème fraîche and some of the liquid from the potato mixture, and blend until they reach a smooth and creamy consistency. Season with salt, pepper, and smoke powder.   We use smoke powder because we like it and it is easier and more consistent than conventionally smoking potatoes. Allow potato cream to cool. Put some in the bottom of a small bowl.

For the Scallops
Mix scallops with the mustard seeds, extra virgin olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place on top of potato cream. Place the apples on top of the scallops and sprinkle with chives.

Butter and Bacon Poached Lobster with Napa Cabbage, Chorizo and Broccoli Purée

Dave. Lobster-whispering.

The main event: Cooking live lobsters. Each pair of students got their own lobster which was par-cooked in boiling, salted water for 3-4 minutes and immediately placed in an ice water bath for 10 minutes. When the lobster meat was de-shelled, it was placed in a Ziploc bag with clarified bacon-infused butter, and circulated in a water bath for 10 minutes at 65 degrees C (you could do it in a pot). Each tail was served with sides of puréed broccoli, cabbage, and chorizo. No real tech here, just good food.  The class was, after all, aimed at home cooks (actually, there was some pretty freaking cool tech but we are saving it for a future post. Heh heh).

It's not all butter, bacon, lobster and chorizo! We threw in some veggies (cabbage and broccoli) for good measure.

Butter and Bacon Poached Lobster, with Napa Cabbage, Chorizo, and Broccoli Purée

Serves 8
 For the Lobster
1 t butter, per tail
1 t bacon fat, per tail
8 lobster tails

For the Napa Cabbage and Chorizo
1 head Napa cabbage
50 g (1¾ oz) sugar
12 g (½ oz) salt
265 mL (9 oz) apple cider vinegar
2 pieces chorizo, skin off and diced into 1/3-in cubes

For the Broccoli Purée
2 L (2 qt) milk
1 T thyme
25 g (¾ oz) fennel seeds
3 heads broccoli
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Procedure

For the Lobster
Place the butter, bacon fat, and lobster tail in a Ziploc bag. Exclude air from the bag by immersing it in water while squeezing out the air (don’t let water into the bag). Cook at 65°C for 12 minutes or till done.

For the Napa Cabbage and Chorizo
Cut the heart of the cabbage (white stem) into noodle shapes and place in a bowl. Add sugar, salt, and vinegar to the cabbage, and mix well. Press the mixture for several hours or overnight. Sauté the chorizo in a pan until it begins to brown. Add the cabbage and sauté for an additional two minutes. Good stuff.

*For the Broccoli Purée*
Broccoli purée is often bad.  The color is for crap.  What’s funny is that the classic mistake happens not in the cooking but in the cooling.  After the purée is cooked and blended, it must be cooled down instantly to maintain the color. We use a high powered Vita-Prep to blend our puree.  The Vita-Prep is so powerful, in fact, that the purée doesn’t cool at all—it continues to heat. If you blend slowly or use a weak blender you may have problems with your purée losing its vibrant green color before you can cool it. Here at the school we cool our purée by spreading it in a thin layer in a hotel pan set on ice.  We stir it like the Dickens to chill it really fast.  At home this would quickly exhaust your ice supply.  You can put the purée in a Ziploc and knead the bag under ice water. 

Here is our technique: Place milk into a pot, add thyme and fennel seeds, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer in order to infuse the milk. Strain and reserve. Separate the broccoli florets from the stems.  They cook at different rates.  Slice the stems thinly and chop florets into tiny pieces. Bring infused milk back to a boil and add the sliced broccoli stems. Cook a while and add the florets. Cook till tender. Remove broccoli from milk and immediately purée until very smooth in a blender, season to taste, and cool it fast like your life depended on it.

*Pistachio Sorbet*

Dave helping out on the pistachio mixing.

This was the very best (and simplest!) dessert of the day.  Pistachios were placed in a centrifuge, which separates the oils from the paste. The thick Kermit-the-Frog-green pistachio paste was mixed with sugar and water and placed in a mixer. While spinning, liquid nitrogen was added to produce a dense, creamy, no dairy sorbet. I’d be willing to bet you’ve never has as rich a sorbet.  Milk or cream would simply muddy the flavor of the pistachio.  To finish we garnished the sorbet with emerald-green pistachio oil.  Here’s the recipe:

 

Pistachio Sorbet

 

Ingredients:

1 Kilo Water

640 grams Pistachio paste

12 egg yolks

249 g simple syrup

 

Mix and freeze with LN2, Paco Jet or ice cream machine of your choosing.

 

At the reception, Dave and Nils mixed their final drink, a Honeycrisp Apple and Tequila Cocktail, made of clarified, greenmarket Honeycrisps and 901 Tequila that was carbonated with 50% CO2 and 50% N2O.

Thanks for those who stopped by, and for those who didn’t,  see you next year!