Modernist Cuisine; the $625 cookbook.

[HORNS]

Very interesting.

 

[Kent Wang]

Originally Posted by Stazy

I'll take that bet.
Have you collected on your bet?

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by iammatt

So many of the recipes are all about making various gels where you are required to mix the ingredients in one form and eat them in another. Liquids don't taste like solids, so tasting the liquid doesn't give you much of a good idea. Even worse, you are tasting them at one temp when you are eating at a different one. Even even worse, they often go through three phases before you eat. Basically, you can't salt a gel after it is set, because of texture, so you are kind of fucked. I'd say the vast majority of the recipes have some issue like this in them. For example, to make the mac and cheese, you make a form of processed cheese gel first, and this seasons the pasta, but the salt was way too high in the recipe for the gel, so the dish tasted like **** imo.
Don't they use % for ingredients? If you have the first printing, there were apparently a lot of errors that were fixed. Wonder if the salt quants were one of them. One of the comments in the reviews i've read is that everything is very precise. Would be surprising that they'd get something so basic so wrong. Overall, do you think it's worth getting for the technique and other stuff? I'll probably get a sous-vide machine and vacuum sealer, but centrifuges and liquid nitrogen aren't in my future.

 

[itsstillmatt]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

Don't they use % for ingredients? If you have the first printing, there were apparently a lot of errors that were fixed. Wonder if the salt quants were one of them. One of the comments in the reviews i've read is that everything is very precise. Would be surprising that they'd get something so basic so wrong. Overall, do you think it's worth getting for the technique and other stuff? I'll probably get a sous-vide machine and vacuum sealer, but centrifuges and liquid nitrogen aren't in my future.
I can't tell you that it is worth getting or not. I don't know what your technique is like now, don't know what you want to learn etc. It's an interesting book, but I don't think the recipes are all that great. Maybe their palates and mine differ greatly.

 

[braised]

Originally Posted by foodguy

lot of surprising stuff if you search through it, but it's mainly an eccentric genius billionaire's cabinet of curiosities.

That's good enough for me, I'm in. B

 

[GQgeek]

After much debate, I decided to say *******. Just bought the book off amazon. No clue when I'll get mine b/c they're currently out of stock, but I'm gearing up and looking forward to it.

 

[otc]

IMPORTANT NOTICE: No media files are hosted on these forums. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website. We can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. If the video does not play, wait a minute or try again later. I AGREE

TIP: to embed Youtube clips, put only the encoded part of the Youtube URL, e.g. eBGIQ7ZuuiU between the tags.

 

[otc]

IMPORTANT NOTICE: No media files are hosted on these forums. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website. We can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. If the video does not play, wait a minute or try again later. I AGREE

TIP: to embed Youtube clips, put only the encoded part of the Youtube URL, e.g. eBGIQ7ZuuiU between the tags.

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by otc

IMPORTANT NOTICE: No media files are hosted on these forums. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website. We can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. If the video does not play, wait a minute or try again later. I AGREE

TIP: to embed Youtube clips, put only the encoded part of the Youtube URL, e.g. eBGIQ7ZuuiU between the tags.

If anyone remembers the old SGI workstations, there was a jello demo where you could toss various polyhedrons modeled to be like jello around a room. Maybe it's still available as an OpenGL demo?

For how simple their model was (point masses connected by springs), they were pretty realistic compared to this video. And if you tossed the shapes around too violently, there seemed to be some kind of instability in their simulation that would make the thing explode.

--Andre

 

[musicguy]

deleted

 

[itsstillmatt]

So, I've done a bunch of **** from this book now, and have wavered on my feelings about it. I now have some conclusions:

1- A lot of interesting info on techniques and ingredients that are not "normal" for those of us who haven't worked at Alinea, Fat Duck etc.
2- The recipes are very hit and miss. I like to think that my skills are good enough to follow just about any directions, and I have generally tried to follow the directions pretty scrupulously. A few of the recipes have been huge winners. The sea urchin "tofu" I posted last week was probably the best. Others have been more mixed. A few are "adaptations" (and mentioned as such) of recipes I have from their original sources, and the original recipes are almost always far superior. Why adapt these then?
3- The biggest problem with the recipes, I think, is that the taste level and palates of the writers are just not that high. The recipes from a book like Simply French, any Ducasse book and even the most casual Gordon Ramsey books, not to mention various books on rather casual cuisine just taste a lot better when executed as laid out by the authors. It makes sense, since it was written by a technologist and two kitchen lab guys, but I guess I am surprised by how low brow a lot of the flavors are. And disappointed.
4- There is far too much emphasis on new techniques. I can only say that when I cook from this book I find myself cleaning every ******* machine in my kitchen, often multiple times, while I rarely have to use a knife or a stove at all. I guess this isn't really cooking to me. Mixing these new techniques into old is great, better than just old in fact, but this goes too far. At no point to they prefer a traditional method for a new one, hands for machines, or choose simple over complicated. I think that is generally a mistake.
5- Some explanations are fantastic, especially where they are explaining why things happen the way they do. Especially notable are the chapters on baking and on flavor extraction from meats for stocks and sauces. This is great info any good cook should have.

I think I am just about done with trying to make things from the recipe sections of the books. They are generally disappointing either because they are not as good as they could be otherwise, or because they are slightly barbaric in flavor. It will now be a reference, like Larousse.

Any questions, I am happy to answer them.

 

[lefty]

That high speed gelatin video is beautiful. I could watch that all day.

lefty

 

[mordecai]

If it does not require any equipment too fancy, I would love to try that sea urchin recipe. Also curious what new revelations about stock are contained in the book?

 

[itsstillmatt]

Originally Posted by mordecai

If it does not require any equipment too fancy, I would love to try that sea urchin recipe. Also curious what new revelations about stock are contained in the book?
It doesn't require anything but a blender. The stuff with stock was about the relationship of size of ingredients to time and flavor extraction (smaller is better) and with the advantages of using a pressure cooker.

 

[L.R.]

I have many, many things to purchase before I ever get down to this book, but it looks interesting. I cook a lot, but at a very basic level, and importantly: on the cheap.