Modernist Cuisine

John | 16 November, 2011 - 11:53 pm

Today was my birthday.  I spent it quietly doing the mid-week wash, and answering phone calls from early in the morning to late evening. It was most enjoyable, and great to hear from and chat to so many dear friends. I also had several very welcome emails. One of the things many friends asked me was whether I had treated or indulged myself in any way, and the answer was no.  To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted.  Although I did reply to one friend that if I go to Chadstone shopping centre tomorrow I’ll buy a tin of Ortiz tuna ($29.95) as a treat.

So it’s rather strange that tonight I got an email from Amazon advertising several cooking books. I’ve always been a huge fan of cooking books, to read and drool over rather than cook recipes. I always swear that I’ll never buy another cooking book, until I see the next one I can’t resist.

The first book I looked at tonight in the Amazon email was The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes from 20 Years of America’s Most Trusted Cooking Magazine [Hardcover]. You can look inside it here.

It’s quite a big book at 928 pages, and weighs 4.6 lbs. I like the look of this book as Cook’s Illustrated recipes work well, and in this book it explains why the recipes work.  I like that type of explanation.  In a quick browse tonight I was interested to read that I cut onions the wrong way for caramelizing. I cut them around the equator, so to speak, but they should be cut from pole to pole.  However, it is an American book with many recipes for foods we just don’t eat here.

The second cookbook I looked at is the reason for this post.  I was gobsmacked when I read about it.  Whereas the Cook’s Illustrated book weighs 4.6 lbs, the ink alone in the second book weighs about 4 lbs.  The whole book (in 6 volumes) weighs 40 lbs.  For me, that’s a nightmare.  I dislike handling big heavy books.  Perhaps it’s an age thing, as I have a bit of arthritis in my hands.

The book is called Modernist Cuisine.   I’m not sure it’s a book I’d really like, or find useful.  It seems to have many sections devoted to cooking with professional equipment and techniques, such as sous vide equipment, not available to home cooks.  As mentioned above, I’m not a fan of big and heavy books,  and with this book, the price alone is enough to eliminate any interest – $625 full price or $451,59 on Amazon.com.   However, it is a book with spectacular photography or art work, like the image above, and I thought it worth making a post about it, to bring the book to your attention.

The book has a website at http://modernistcuisine.com/ where you can read more about the book, download a PDF file and a 4Mb brochure.   The website also has a blog and lots of links, including to video, etc.  The Reviews page is full of rave reviews.

The following is a Vimeo video promoting the book.

Warning:  In basic terms, sous vide cooking involves cooking slowly at temperatures below the boiling point of water and at the temperature at which you plan to eat the food.  One needs to be aware of the health risks when cooking at temperatures which might not kill all the bacteria.

 

 

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Cuisinart Soup Maker – Hot & Cold Blender – 2

John | 4 June, 2011 - 12:32 am

When I wrote my first post about the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender, there is no doubt that I was thrilled by it.  All I had to do was put veg into the blender, add stock or stock powder, spices and herbs if desired, top up with stock or water to the 1400 ml mark, and set the blender timer to about 28 minutes, then start heating to bring the contents to the boil, which took about 8 minutes or so.  Once a vigorous boil had been reached, I would press the “Simmer” button, adjust the timer to 20 minutes if need be, and the blender would then very gently simmer the contents.  Several times during the process I would press the “Stir” button for a few seconds.  When the timer reached zero, the blender would then turn off.  Any time after that I could use the blender to blend the soup to as near as I could get to a puree.  Unfortunately, there would always be some lumps in the soup, be it potato, parsnip or mushroom stalks.  I tolerated the lumps because they were, after all, little pieces of good healthy cooked vegetables.  However, I was disappointed in the performance of the appliance as a blender, because I did my best to make sure there were no lumps by using pulse, and all the speeds the blender has to offer.

Almost four weeks ago, my honeymoon period with the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender came to an abrupt end.  I was making a soup and had set to the timer to 28 minutes as usual.  When the timer got close to the 20 minute mark I stood in front of the blender to keep a very close watch on it to be ready for the moment it came to a vigorous boil, and press the Simmer button.  However, as you no doubt know, there is an old saying that a watched pot never boils.  And this proved to be the case.  The liquid just wouldn’t come to the boil while I watching it.  Then I got distracted for maybe 30 seconds, or a minute at most, and the next thing I knew the liquid was shooting out of the top of the blender and making a terrible mess on the counter-top.  It took about 15 minutes to clean up the mess which got into and under everything within reach on the bench.

To add insult to injury, the final soup had more lumps in it than usual, and I found that it gave me some tummy discomfort every time I had it.  In the end I threw the remainder out and haven’t made soup since.  To be fair, I should mention that I had been having tummy discomfort since the week before Easter, and I had to be very careful what I ate.   Simple food worked best.  My tummy discomfort after having the soup could have been from the wholemeal or multi-grain bread, toasted, that I’d eaten with the soup.  I soon afterwards switched to light and white breads such as Vienna loaf, and my tummy has been fine since.

Today I read somewhere that the old food pyramid showing how much we should eat of what, each day, is changing.  Grains are no longer held in such high regard, because for some people they cause sickness.  I don’t want to get into that, but it struck a chord with me because of my recent experiences.  My tummy troubles ended when I switched from Brumbies wholemeal and grains breads to their white breads such as Vienna loaf, French Stick, and Ciabatta.

Coming back to the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender, I have to say that after the overflow four weeks ago when it came to the boil, and the lumps after blending the cooked soup with the blender as best I could, I’ve concluded there are better, quicker, cheaper and surer ways of cooking soup.   I’ll make a post on this when I find the time.  But in short, using the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker to cook the soup and the Kenwood TriBlade Hand Blender to blend it, is the answer.

Just put the ingredients into the pressure cooker, lock the lid on, set the timer for the cooking time – maybe 8 minutes (instead of 20 minutes) – and the cooker will take care of everything, and switch off when it’s done.  The cooker doesn’t start timing until it reaches the desired pressure, then it reduces the heat to maintain pressure throughout the cooking.  The Kenwood TriBlade blending attachments with plastic feet are ideal for the non-stick interior of the pressure cooker.  They can blend everything without any lumps.

Despite the above, I still think the Cuisinart Soup Maker (as called overseas) or Hot & Cold Blender (as called in Australia) is a fine product.  I was so pleased with it that this is what inspired me to buy the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker.  With the benefit of hindsight, I think the pressure plus Kenwood TriBlade blender set is the better combination to make soup.  The two products together are about the same price as the Cuisinart Hot & Cold Blender, and they are of course much more versatile.  I cook my corned beef in the pressure cooker, and it’s great for cooking rice in 3-4 minutes, or risotto in 7 minute (with no stirring).  But again, I’ll make a post on that when I get the time (and inspiration).

 

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Cuisinart Soup Maker – Hot & Cold Blender

John | 26 March, 2011 - 11:51 pm

Today, the Good Weekend supplement to The Saturday Age contained a full page advertisement for the Cuisinart Hot & Cold Blender (called Cuisinart Soup Maker in many other countries).  The photo above is from that advertisement – the rest of it is at the bottom of this post.

The first I heard that such an appliance existed, was almost five weeks ago, when I received an email from Kitchenware Direct in Perth, WA, with a photo and details of the product.  I think it was love (or desire) at first sight for me.  I wanted it. But I resisted buying it for a few weeks, as my brain told me that (1) I can cook soup in a saucepan or pressure cooker, and (2) puree it in the pot with a hand held blender.

My resistance faded when a few weeks later I received a card in the post from David Jones advertising discounts for card holders that week.  The offer included 20% off all electrical kitchen appliances.  That offer was too much to resist.  I decided to trust my instinct and give the appliance a try, so I bought one.

The featured image on the home page of my blog shows two onions cut in half at the bottom of the blender.   The image below shows a segment of pumpkin, like the one in the advertisement photo above, in the bottom of my blender.

In the past two weeks I’ve made soup four times using the Cuisinart blender, and it’s been a taste delight each time.  That’s full credit to me because of having some experience over the past year in making my own soup, and also thinking about what I’m doing, as to how it might affect taste.  But in my mind, it’s also a major credit to the Cuisinart appliance.  The glass blender and 1400 ml limit for soup is for me, a great guide as to how many vegetables pieces to add to achieve the result I want.  I can see through the glass what I’ve added, and then how much stock, or water (with stock powder already added) to reach the 1400 ml level.

Over the years I’ve enthusiastically bought many appliances, pots and pans that have turned out to be a poor choice, and of no use to me after the novelty has died off.  But this appliance is looking like being a winner for me.

It has a lot going for it.  The results are enjoyable.  It’s very easy to use.  And it’s very easy to clean.  That does it for me!

Check out the videos at the end of the above video.

In the coming weeks I’ll make posts about another Cuisinart appliance that has won my great respect.

The Cuisinart pressure cooker.

 

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The Flavor Bible

John | 18 December, 2010 - 8:14 pm

One of the books I bought Amazon this year was The Flavor Bible (yes, American spelling of flavour).  The best way I could describe this book in my own words is that it is a very comprehensive reference of foods, herbs, spices, oils, nuts, with each entry having a list of what goes well with them.

The photo above (taken with a NEX-5 and kit lens) is the salad I made to today, to use up one of two witlofs I bought this week.  Witlof is also known as chicory, endive and Belgian endive.  The most used name in Australia is witlof, and it’s related to radicchio.  Witlof can be eaten raw, and is apparently a treat when braised correctly (says Stephanie Alexander in her epic 1,100 page book The Cook’s Companion).

In the past, I’ve always used witlof in a salad, in place of lettuce or other salad greens, and I’ve done nothing special for it.  But today I decided to look up The Flavor Bible to find what goes well with er, … ENDIVE (the name for witlof used in the book).  There was a long list of items, and from it I chose capers, horseradish, olive oil and walnuts (well, I used walnut oil).  For the horseradish (difficult to find the real thing) I used Heinz Epicure Horseradish.  It comes in a small 150gm glass jar.  For the olive oil, I chose Woolworths Select Australian Extra Virgin Olive Oil – which is one of the best olive oils at the supermarket.  Also, I added balsamic vinegar. The rest of the lunch was Primo BBQ ham, vine ripened tomato and red onion.

The result was a delightful lunch with superb favours that worked wonderfully together.  Once again The Flavor Bible got it right.

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Mashed Potatoes

John | 5 December, 2010 - 1:27 am

From my childhood days I’ve always loved mashed potatoes. I mean the smooth puree of potatoes, perhaps with cream and butter – not the lumpy kind with little lumps of potato not mashed; and worse still, not even properly cooked. But I must confess that I’m a bit lazy and I’ve always preferred it when someone else does the work of mashing the potatoes and extra washing up afterwards. In recent years I’d estimate that I’ve only made mashed potatoes once or twice a year. It hasn’t been something that crosses my mind to do. It’s much easier just to served up the cooked potatoes, which I like anyway. And it’s easier to cook rice or pasta than making mashed potatoes. And it’s even easier to serve up oven fry potato chips or wedges.

The main way I’ve made mashed potatoes is to tip the cooked potatoes into an old bowl given to me in the mid-1960′s and mash the potatoes by hand with an old fork (with long splines) given to me at the same time by my Mother when setting me up a bit for the first time I moved into a flat (in Adelaide).  That has been my old faithful way of mashing potatoes.

However, over the years, I have tried out other ways of mashing the cooked potatoes.   One method was to use a Sunbeam Mixmaster, but that seemed like huge overkill to use such large and relatively  heavy equipment when cooking for one.  I also tried using a food mill (some call it a mouli) to try to puree the potatoes, but I never took to this method with the food mill I had. Or to be more accurate, my potatoes never took to it. They refused to go where they had to, that is, under the mashing blade. To be honest, I can’t blame them. If I were cooked potato I wouldn’t choose to be crushed into a mash.

I’ve also tried a potato ricer. Without doubt, the results from my ricer are THE best I’ve ever had. I treat the results with the same respect as one has for whipped egg whites. Extras are folded in gently, to preserve the lightness of the mash.  The downside to my ricer, and the reason I don’t use it often (in fact, not for years), is that it’s a bit small for potatoes, and too much of the potato pieces don’t get processed – but stay in the ricer in out of the way places.  I have since read that this is because the cheaper construction of my ricer allows potato to squeeze back past the plunger.

But this week, I saw an advert on TV for the Kenwood triblade, and it awakened my interest in mashed potatoes.  So I did some YouTube research on making mashed potatoes.

I found this video very interesting, especially the hint to overcook the potatoes for a few minutes if you intend to mash them.  That made good sense.  But my jaw dropped when the demonstrator added milk to the mash.  I couldn’t credit how much milk she added.  Well, she did say it looked like soup.  I wouldn’t go into that in a fit.

This is the demo of the Kuhn Rikon potato ricer.  From what I can see, it’s much bigger than my ricer, and would fit all the potato I would cook for myself, in the ricer at once.   In the video, it works wonderfully.  I’ve read several user reviews and one explicitly mentions that it does suffer from the problem that my ricer does.   In the past I couldn’t find a seller in Australia, but in a check tonight I’ve found several interstate online stores that sell it.  I’ll definitely try to get one, hopefully before Christmas, and will report on it in due course.

And now we come to the Kenwood triblade blender with accessories, which includes a masher.

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New iPhone Apps

John | 7 June, 2010 - 11:47 pm

Today is a great day to write about some iPhone apps, because Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, announced the iPhone 4 today.  It’s a sensational update, and the good news is that the new iOS 4 software will be a free update for 3G and 3GS iPhones.

It might seem a little odd, or at least conflicting, that I’m writing about the new iPhone apps I bought last Saturday night, on my blog pages, when I have a page dedicated to iPhone apps on my home website.  The difference is that in my blog posts I mostly write about current or recent happenings and thoughts, such as the purchase of two new iPhone apps a few days ago.  By contrast, in the iPhone Apps page on my home website, I’ve mostly written about apps after I’ve used them for many months and find them invaluable, or especially interesting (such as the Remote control for iTunes on the computer).

The thumbnail image for this post is a scan of the front cover of the Mark Bittman book “How to Cook Everything” which I’ve had since it was first published in 1998.  It’s a big book – 944 pages.

Mark Bittman is a columnist for The New York Times who writes under the heading of “The Minimalist.”  You can read about him on his blog at http://markbittman.com.

In the past year or so when I’ve seen his book on the shelves at Borders and other bookshops I’d noticed that the cover was now red instead of yellow, but I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Well, not until last Saturday night, when I discovered that the Mark Bittman book is available as an app on the iPhone.

It’s not the yellow cover book that I bought in 1998.  It’s the 2008 completely revised 10th Anniversary 2nd edition, with a red cover – and 1056 pages.  There are whole chapters of the 1998 book that are not in the 2008 book – such as the chapter about Beverages and other drinks.

You can read more about Mark Bittman at the New York Times website at

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/mark_bittman/index.html

* trying recipes

* app features such as search, filters and shopping list

The iPhone app is great and a delight to use, and it has features that the books can’t have, such as searches with filtering, and a built-in timer in the recipes.  When the recipe calls for you to heat the frypan for one minute, you click on the time in the recipe,  and up comes a timer set for 1 minute.  The timer alarm sound is worth the price of admission.  A very useful feature is that if you’d like to cook a recipe that sounds tempting, you can click on an icon to add its ingredients to a shopping list.

So far I’ve tried three recipes.  One was for fried eggs, which I’ve been cooking for 45 years, but Mark Bittman’s way of doing it was different to the way I’ve always fried eggs in the past.  It’s such a simple dish, and I’ve always loved bacon and eggs for breakfast since I was a child (when Mum did the cooking).  But in my retirement I’ve only cooked bacon and eggs a few times a year because it has always given me indigestion for a few hours and has tended to ruin my day.  I always vow never to have it again for breakfast, but months later I forget the discomfort and try it again.  Perhaps it’s the way I’ve fried the eggs, so I’ll try it again one day using the Mark Bittman method, as the result of my first trial was very pleasing and tasty.

The second iPhone app I bought last Saturday was Things.  It’s a task manager with a difference.  It’s also a project manager, in which your tasks can be broken down into all the steps needed to implement the project.  Things is the iPhone app of the week on the iTunes App Store this week.  However, it’s the type of app where I wouldn’t post a review until I’ve been using it for many months to see if I’ve found it genuinely useful – or whether I don’t bother looking at it and have, in effect, I’ve stopped using it.  For example, MS Outlook has a To Do list section which I entered all my task into last year – and this week was the first time this year that I looked at it.

Tonight I used my Kuhn Rikon  frypan pressure cooker to cook rice in 4 minutes, and then use it to cook stir fry beef and vegetables.  It’s so convenient and time saving.  It reminds me that one day I must write a blog post about pressure cooking.  Perhaps I should make a note about it in Things.  [superemotions file="icon_smile.gif" title="Smile"]

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