Caren, Author at Modernist Cuisine

A Gingerbread Tribute to Antoni Gaudí

Posted on December 18, 2014 at 9:08 am.

Written by Caren

The idea was simple enough—build a gingerbread house for the holidays. Less than a month later, our house transformed into a gingerbread homage to Spanish Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and Casa Batlló, his kaleidoscopic masterpiece in Barcelona, Spain.

Everything about the structure is edible, from the luster on each chimney and spire to the blanket of snow dusting the roof and ground. After creating a blueprint, we used a laser cutter to replicate the organic, serpentine curves of Casa Batlló in gingerbread and to etch the delicate, bonelike details of the balconies in fondant.

Jolly Rancher glass covers each window, created by crushing the candies with a meat cleaver, placing the shards in each window of the gingerbread facade, and then baking it on a Baking Steel, topped with a Silpat, in our bread oven. The radiant heat from the top of the oven melts the Jolly Ranchers without burning the bottom of the gingerbread

Decorative touches were carefully added: tiles made from Jolly Ranchers, prismatic scaled shingles of icing, edible gold luster dust, rice paper snowflakes, and finally, a powdering of tapioca maltodextrin.

We hope you enjoy watching our tribute to Antoni Gaudí come to life. And, above all, wish you a wonderful holiday season.

– The Modernist Cuisine Team

Gift Guide 2014: White Christmas Edition

Posted on December 11, 2014 at 11:49 am.

Written by Caren

It’s that time of year: gift-guide season has arrived and there’s no shortage of ideas for cooks—we all love indispensable kitchen tools, after all. In previous years, our gift guides encompassed our favorite equipment and tools, including suggestions for photographers. This year, however, we decided to take some of our favorite seasonal songs literally. We’re having a white Christmas and letting it snow by dedicating our gift guide to the powdery wonderland of Modernist ingredients.

Modernist chefs adore ingredients that make the culinary impossible possible, by transforming starches into sugars, stabilizing emulsions, gelling liquids, and creating cloud-like foams. Unfortunately, misinformation about Modernist ingredients is abundant, especially online. Because these substances are able to transform foods somewhat magically, they are often misidentified as being the byproducts of misguided science experiments. In reality, most are derived from naturally-occurring ingredients and processes, and many have been in use for decades.

The usefulness of these ingredients has made them staples in many contemporary kitchens. This guide features background information and ingredients (in no particular order of importance) deemed essential to Modernist techniques—it also serves as a foundation of a well-stocked pantry. We think they make fantastic gifts or stocking stuffers for anyone interested in Modernist cuisine, from seasoned professionals to adventurous home cooks. Create gift sets of different ingredients or provide helpful tools like digital scales, rapid caviar makers, or even a label maker, which comes in handy when you have a pantry full of identically-colored spices.

Gift Guide

1. Xanthan gum is the “sliced bread” of Modernist ingredients. It’s an easy-to-use, tasteless, and flexible additive, made by fermenting bacteria, just like vinegar. It’s an incredibly useful thickener and stabilizer because it is effective under a wide range of viscosities, temperatures, and pH levels. Use it to create salad dressings, sauces, pestos, soups, gelatos and baked goods, including gluten free recipes.

2. Tapioca starch is a traditional thickener made from ground cassava roots. Also known as tapioca flour, it thickens gently, without modifying flavors, making it a great choice for broths, jus, gravy, fruit fillings, and our at-home version of dairy-free gelatos. Additionally, many Modernist chefs make use of modified starches, such as Ultra-Sperse and Ultra-Tex, that are derived from tapioca. These specialty starches are specifically formulated for different thickening tasks and are a great addition to any chef’s arsenal.

3. Transglutaminase is a family of enzymes that form chemical cross-links between muscle proteins so that they bind to one another. These enzymes are found in animal, plant, and microbial cells and play many roles in many functions, such as blood clotting. Despite the nickname “meat glue,” it is a naturally occurring ingredient commercially manufactured via bacterial fermentation, making it no more or less artificial than yeast-leavened bread, vinegar, or fermented sausage. It can be used to raise the melting point of gelatins and increase overall gel strength; in Modernist cooking, however, it’s most commonly used to glue meats or seafoods together. One brand of transglutaminase, called Activa, comes in various grades, each one optimized for a different use. We use Activa as a binder in our recipes for coarse-ground sausages and to create a show-stopping chessboard of bonded tuna and escolar.

4. Soy lecithin, as the name implies, is derived from soy beans. It’s a naturally occurring phospholipid used to emulsify or create foams. Often found in chocolate, this ingredient is commonly used to make salad dressings and sauces, like our Modernist Vinaigrette or Home Jus Gras.

5-6. Sodium alginate is a natural thickener and hydrocolloid derived from brown algae. It’s an ingredient that is commonly associated with spherification. This technique was made popular (and named) by Ferran Adrià—it is now one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking. When alginate (a sugar) comes into contact with a calcium ion coagulant, gelling occurs—the secret to spherification is to delay the reaction by creating a gel mixture that cannot set. In the original spherification technique, sodium alginate is used to create a gel mixture that contains no free-floating calcium. When the liquid is dropped into a calcium bath, such as calcium chloride, a shell forms on the surface, enveloping the liquid inside. Spheres of juice add bursts of flavor to drinks and can transform familiar ingredients like olive oil into surprising pops of texture.

7. Guar gum, of no relation to the band Gwar, is a thickener and stabilizing agent extracted from the seeds of guar beans, which are indigenous to India and Pakistan. This hydrocolloid can thicken both hot and cold liquids, stabilize emulsions and foams, and help prevent syneresis (the tendency of gels to weep liquid). Guar gum is used to create constructed broths and coating sauces as well as cold cream sauces, constructed creams, and ice-cream bases.

8. Agar is derived from seaweed and has been used in Japanese cooking for centuries. It’s a clear, tasteless gelling agent that also works as an effective thickener and stabilizer. Although it’s available at Asian markets, specialty retailers sell agar powders, graded by gelling strength, that perform more consistently. We use agar to create fluid gels, like our Vegetarian Panna Cotta and Onion Fluid Gel. When making foams with a whipping siphon, the addition of a small amount of agar will give thin liquids enough body for foaming.

9. Sodium citrate is the salt of citric acid, which is a natural component of citrus fruits. With a slightly sour taste, it is sometimes used to add flavor (think of club soda), although we most often use it in cheeses as an emulsifier in order to keep droplets of water and fat from separating. A tiny amount will give your favorite cheeses a silky smooth texture when melted, allowing you to develop new spins on cheese-based dishes.

Looking to try out these Modernist ingredients? Our recipe library is full of wonderful options for cooks of all skill levels.

Eight Days of Modernist Cuisine Sweepstakes

Posted on December 4, 2014 at 4:29 pm.

Written by Caren

This holiday season, we’re sharing the love—of Modernist Cuisine, that is. Mark your calendars and set your alarms: starting December 8^th, we’re giving away a different Modernist Cuisine gift every day for eight days. We’ll offer a new item each morning at 12:01 A.M. (PST), so check our website daily to see what we’re giving away that day. Enter to win just about anything Modernist Cuisine, from our Special Edition Baking Steel to the 50-pound Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. Be sure to enter before 11:59 P.M. (PST) each day.

After entering, we hope you’ll stick around to double down on the holiday cheer. Let someone know you’ve been nice this year by using our interactive wish list of Modernist Cuisine books and gear. E-mail your customized list to loved ones, or let the world know on Facebook and Twitter. Above all, we sincerely hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

—The Modernist Cuisine Team

See official rules and details

Leftovers Survival Guide

Posted on November 25, 2014 at 9:00 am.

Written by Caren

Let’s cut to the chase: we look forward to Thanksgiving leftovers almost as much as the formal dinner itself. One of the most emblematic leftover preparations is undoubtedly the post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich. A delicious amalgamation of last night’s meal, this sandwich is the essence of Thanksgiving between two slices of structurally sound bread. When it comes to handling leftovers, however, things can get a bit funky. Here’s what you need to know.

Danger, Danger

At the end of dinner, there’s a mad rush to clean the kitchen and pack leftovers so that loafing can begin. It’s usually an afterthought, but proper packaging is a crucial step for ensuring your leftovers survive.

Cooked food should be chilled quickly to inhibit bacterial growth. The “danger zone” range is 4–60°C / 40–140°F, encompassing temperatures between refrigeration and cooking temperature. This zone is notorious because it provides favorable conditions for bacteria to rapidly multiply. The longer food spends cooling in this zone, the more likely it is that your leftovers will harbor unwanted microbes. As a general guideline, food should not sit in the danger zone for more than four hours. The guideline also comes into play for thawing food. A whole turkey and similarly large foods thaw slowly and unevenly, so they should not be left to thaw at room temperature. As the bird slowly thaws, bacteria will develop on the outer tissue layers even though the inside remains frozen.

It’s important to note that these guidelines, developed by the FDA, are an oversimplification of how bacteria behave. Multiplication rates vary according to many factors, such as temperature, moisture, and pathogen type. More conservative recommendations from other organizations, such as the USDA, suggest that two hours is a more suitable estimate, while others expand the window to six.

As you get ready to pack leftovers, do the math and toss anything that could have exceeded this threshold. If it’s particularly warm in your kitchen, dispose of leftovers well before the four-hour mark. Food should be disposed of after an hour if it held in a 32 °C / 90 °F environment.

Rapid cooling has another big benefit: it maintains juiciness and fresh-cooked flavors better than slow cooling can. Juices gel and thicken before they escape, and flavorful aromatics stay locked in your foods.

The obvious remedy to cooling hot food appears to be simply placing it in the refrigerator straight away. But this strategy happens to be the worst way to cool and store leftovers. Warm packages stay warm, well after an hour, and actually raise the temperature of surrounding foods, increasing the risk of spoilage as illustrated in the infrared images below. It’s an interesting problem: food should be chilled rapidly, but cooling via the refrigerator or freezer is problematic.

SV5_Fridge w hot food thermal — Top: Hot food immediately placed in a refrigerator. Bottom: One hour later, leftovers are still hot and neighboring food is now warmer.

The Art of Cooling and Reheating Leftovers

Putting warm leftovers away probably seemed like a mundane task a few paragraphs ago. Now it might feel more like a dilemma, but you have several options.

If you’re cooling lots of sauce, like warm gravy or stock, pour it into a shallow container to increase the surface area. The shallower the container, the faster your liquids will cool. You can also divide the sauce or stock among several smaller containers.

The best way to quickly cool food to refrigeration temperatures is to dunk your sealed foods in ice water, which can be as simple as a sink or bowl of cold water with lots of ice cubes. Once the food is chilled, it can then be stored, still sealed, in a freezer or in the enclosed drawers at the bottom of the fridge, which maintain the most stable temperatures. Avoid the shelves in the door, which are the warmest part of a refrigerator.

When you’re ready for reheating, simply put your bags of leftovers in a heated water bath, and let them warm gradually. Most foods should be reheated to 60 °C / 140 °F, though red meat should be reheated to its original cooking temperature. Avoid reheating any food to temperatures above 65 °C / 149 °F, and take care not to overcook food. Finally, allow reheated food to rest. The rationale is similar to why we let meat rest— resting allows the exterior to cool slightly while juices thicken. This final step will preserve the flavor and moistness of the food.

If dunking your foods in ice water isn’t an option, let them cool on your counter (if time allows), or, if the weather is cold, place covered leftovers outdoors until they’ve cooled enough for safe storage.

Warmed-over Flavors

Turkey and ham come with an additional challenge: the slightly stale, somewhat-rancid aroma that develops after being reheated. It’s an aroma that can put a considerable damper on daydreams of savoring a delicious turkey sandwich.

The underlying cause of rancidity is the oxidation of unsaturated fats found in muscle-cell membranes. When first cooked, these unsaturated fats remain reasonably stable. Once the meat cools, however, the cell membranes readily break down, exposing fat molecules to oxidation. The greater quantity of unsaturated fats, the more likely warmed-over flavors will arise after reheating cooked meat, which is why such aromas are commonly found in seafood, poultry, and pork.

Iron, abundant in meat and myoglobin filaments in muscle, catalyzes these oxidation reactions after food has been heated, cooled, and then reheated. Brines with curing salts can be used as preventative measures against the reaction, but salt alone can do more harm than good. The best way to buy more time for your leftover turkey is to keep it tightly packaged in a sous vide bag after cooking. The air-free environment therein will help slow the process of oxidation.

Now back to that sandwich. There’s a lot to be said for one perfect bite of thanksgiving—getting all of those flavors in a single bite. When it comes to sandwiches, be strategic. First, if you don’t use a water bath to warm your turkey, try reheating it in extra gravy to restore flavors and lost moisture. As you begin construction, use cranberry sauce as a spread, and then add your gravy-soaked turkey. Next comes a rather difficult decision: whether to finish your sandwich with stuffing or potatoes, but not both. Too many carbohydrates will upset the delicate ratio of proteins and condiments.

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Building a Better Turkey

Posted on November 19, 2014 at 9:03 am.

Written by Caren

When it comes to turkey, there are many different theories about the best way to prepare a bird. The topic can get downright philosophical with every side presenting evidence on behalf of a particular technique, leaving you to exit the fray with over a dozen methods, each one somehow better than the last. While some methods yield far better results than others, the only true loser is your dried-out bird. Here’s our guide, backed by science, for making a truly succulent turkey.

The Mechanics of Dark and White Meat

Structural differences between white and dark meat make succulence a particularly challenging goal. Meat gets its color from an oxygen-carrying protein called myoglobin, which naturally binds and shuttles oxygen throughout an organism’s body. Dark meat is comprised of slow-twitch muscles that are built for endurance and found primarily in the legs and thighs. These aerobic muscles require large quantities of oxygen-friendly myoglobin to help sustain prolonged use—such as long-distance running—hence their dark coloring. They also burn fat for fuel, so the meat ends up richer in flavor.

In contrast, if you were to look at a turkey breast under a microscope, you would see many light-colored, fast-twitch muscle fibers, geared for intense bursts of activity such as fluttering or scrambling across a road. These fibers work anaerobically and don’t burn fat, so few myoglobin proteins are present, resulting in a white, lean meat.

With different compositions and purposes, muscles cook at different temperatures—dark meat, for instance, requires higher cooking temperatures than white meat. That’s why preparing a turkey can get tricky. A Modernist approach is to cook each separately. For Thanksgiving, we like to create a confit of dark meat, brine the breast meat, and cook both sous vide at their respective times and temperatures. Cooking sous vide provides a precision-based strategy for maximizing juiciness, and it has an additional bonus: it frees up precious oven space for other dishes on your menu.

The Whole Turkey

It can be hard to imagine a Thanksgiving meal without an iconic, whole-roasted turkey. Maybe it’s a deep‑seeded, primal instinct based on millennia of roasting meats over a fire. Or perhaps it’s the nostalgia from that special moment when everyone in the kitchen holds their breath in unison to take in the aroma, the color of the skin, and the site of the steaming turkey as it emerges from the oven.

Whatever the reason, there are two issues that make roasting a whole turkey tricky. First, white and dark meat have to be baked together. Second, a crisp, golden skin requires temperatures that will leave the meat underneath undesirably dry. Suddenly, roasting a turkey becomes a juggling act between crispy skin and succulent meat, a task akin to an algebraic formula: if a turkey leaves the station in St. Louis at 15 mph, how long will it take to arrive in Denver with crispy skin and tender meat? Is there a definitive solution for roasting a whole turkey? Likely not. But we’d like to think that injection brining comes pretty close.

How Brines Work

On a fundamental level, brines modify meat proteins. When dissolved, salt dissociates into positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions, which are the atoms that actually diffuse throughout your foods. Salinity is a measure of the concentration of these two ions, which equates to a specific ratio of salt to water. Ions flow from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration, but, due to a shallow gradient in muscle tissues, the diffusion of dissolved salt tends to be quite slow, which is why it can take months to properly cure a ham.

Brining technically does not work via osmosis, as popular opinion suggests. If osmosis alone were at play, water would be drawn out of the meat, but brining works by pulling water into muscles. Chloride ions from dissolved salt diffuse into muscle fibers and accumulate along the surfaces of protein filaments. As these ions increase in number, they generate a negative charge that loosens and pushes neighboring filaments apart. This newly created channel provides enough space for water to enter the muscle, causing it to swell from the influx of ambient water. Ions further modify muscle proteins by causing them to bind tightly to water and resist shrinking as the meat cooks. Muscle will continue to swell until the salinity reaches 6%—after that, it shrinks and begins to lose water.

Brining is a slow process; salt diffuses through muscle roughly 100 to 1,000 times slower than heat conduction. As such, traditional brining can take days—the thicker the cut of meat, the longer it will take to brine. Protein is also found in skin, thus water molecules are bound and trapped there as well. As a result, the skin of brined meat can easily get soggy because of the time it takes for the brining process to work. Excess water can, then, lead to soggy skin and a rubbery texture. Enter injection brining.

Injection Brining

Injection brining speeds up the process, turning a multiday event into an overnight task. This technique will give you more control over where your brine diffuses, allowing you to expose only the bird’s muscles to the brining solution.

The day before Thanksgiving, create a brine of 6% salt by turkey weight—a reasonable rule of thumb is to use at least as much water by weight as you have meat. Pull back the skin so that you only pierce the meat. Then, using a brining syringe, slowly inject the legs, breasts, and thighs. Inject the muscles evenly over the surface, leaving about an inch between injection sites. Turkeys can be large, so this may require dozens of injections. After your turkey is brimming with brine, let it rest overnight in your refrigerator. When you’re ready to roast the turkey, put it on a roasting rack over a drip pan. The rack allows air to circulate around the turkey, which helps amplify flavors and promote even browning of the skin.

Crispy Skin

Skin has an incredibly high moisture content—it’s about 70–80% water by weight. The science behind golden skin is simple: dry it out by removing moisture. For particularly thick skin, however, we like to add an extra step before cooking—don’t cover your brined turkey when you refrigerate it overnight. Instead, leave it uncovered until it’s time to put it in the oven. By doing so, you’re allowing the turkey’s skin to dry out so that it crisps better in the oven.

Crispy skin is also dependent on knowing the internal temperature of your turkey, so we like to combine the drying step with another equally simple step: tracking the oven’s temperature. Cover your turkey with aluminum foil, which will help prevent the skin from getting too dark, and then place it in the oven. Depending on your oven, bake the covered turkey between 191-204 °C / 375-400 °F. Once the turkey reaches an internal temperature of 68 °C / 155 °F, take the foil off, and crank your oven up to 232 °C / 450 °F in order to brown the skin. When the internal temperature reaches 71–72 °C / 160–162 °F, take the bird out of the oven. The turkey will continue to cook from residual heat to an internal, safe temperature of 73 °C / 163 °F. Note that for the most accurate temperature readings, you should insert your digital probe into the thickest parts of the bird, such as the turkey’s breast.

Patience is a Virtue

Once your turkey is out of the oven, it may be hard to avoid a display of turkey worship, but try to resist the urge to immediately carve your bird. Letting the meat rest can be one of the most difficult steps of the entire process, but it makes a considerable difference in flavor and texture. Ripe with brine, your finished turkey will be juicy. If you carve into it too soon, all of those glorious juices will end up on the cutting board instead of in the meat.

Why do we need to let it rest? Some popular theories suggest that the delay allows moisture, forced toward the meat’s interior during cooking, to travel back to the surface. But the slow diffusion rate of water actually prevents moisture from migrating during cooking and resting. In truth, degraded and dissolved proteins slightly thicken the natural juices as the turkey cools. The thickened liquid then escapes slower when the meat is sliced.

We recommend letting your turkey rest for 20 minutes. Use that time wisely by reheating vegetables made earlier in the day. Five minutes before service, gently warm your turkey in the oven.

One Final Debate: Stuffing

The subject of stuffing also happens to be fodder for debate. In one corner, there are devotees of cooking stuffing inside the turkey. In the other corner are those who insist that stuffing must be prepared separately.

If you want Thanksgiving to be memorable for all of the right reasons, make your stuffing in separate cookware, like a cast-iron skillet. Cooking stuffing inside of your turkey introduces food-safety issues—because turkeys are so thick, your stuffing will never reach a safe internal temperature, meaning you must contend with contamination issues from uncooked turkey drippings. Plus, you’ll miss out on the best part of stuffing: the crispy bits on the surface.

Ready for pie and leftovers? We have a recipe and more tips coming your way.

Día de los Muertos

Posted on October 27, 2014 at 10:19 am.

Written by Caren

This fall, we found ourselves inspired by the sentiment and iconography of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). A two-day holiday, it begins November 1^st with All Saints Day, when the spirits of infants and children are honored, and is followed by All Souls Day, honoring adults. Both holidays are a way of commemorating the lives of deceased loved ones, but the festivities are far from morose, and the mood is far from somber.

Head chef Francisco Migoya grew up in Mexico City, where he celebrated Día de los Muertos each year, often going to the village of Mixquic, which is famous for its celebrations. Sometimes referred to as “City of the Dead,” the village is home to the church of San Andrés Apóstol and its surrounding cemetery, which became the epicenter of commemorations. “It’s where most of these traditions are kept alive,” said Migoya. In Mixquic, the festival spans three days and is attended by thousands. It concludes with La Alumbrada on November 2nd, when the cemetery is awash with the glow of candles and people hold all-night vigils at gravesites.

Day of the dead, Francisco Migoya, 2014

“A celebration centered on death might sound somewhat morbid to other cultures where it’s more taboo. [Día de los Muertos] is really a huge celebration that, in some ways, makes light of death…” said Migoya. For two days, vibrant processions snake through towns, and families build colorful altars called ofrendas at gravesites or in their homes to encourage spirits to visit, celebrate, and once again enjoy the luxuries of corporeal life.

The holiday is a feast for the senses. “There are specific flowers that are tied to the holiday. Marigolds and cockscomb flowers… You can smell the burning candles, incense, and Frankincense from the altars all day. Those smells are a big association with Día de los Muertos,” Migoya added.

Flowers, stories, possessions, toys, and, of course, foods and libations, are offered to welcome home the spirits for the holiday’s duration. Traditional holiday staples, including sugar skulls and Pan de Muerto, are prepared, as well as the spirits’ favorite dishes.

Sugar Skulls

Intricately decorated sugar skulls, or calaveras, with names of the deceased written across the foreheads, represent departed spirits. They are typically covered in labyrinthine patterns of vibrantly colored icing that seemingly breathe life back into the spirits. Throughout the holiday, the skulls serve as gifts between friends and family.

Chef Migoya based our sugar skulls on traditional recipes. First, he mixed sugar, water, and egg white powder until the mixture produced a texture similar to wet sand. Next, the mixture was pressed as tightly as possible into molds. “The process is similar to building sandcastles. Filling the molds is like filling buckets with sand. You want to pack them as tightly as possible so that the sugar skull pops out intact…” The skulls were dried on cardboard (permeable surfaces are preferable) and, after five hours, were hollowed out to reduce the weight of the skulls and make them easier to work with. After drying them for an additional 24 hours, they were decorated with a simple icing made of water, powdered sugar, and a little bit of citric acid; the skulls were then placed under a fan to keep the icing shiny. “The citric acid prevents the sugar from crystallizing. And the faster the icing dries, the shinier it will be.”

Pan de Muerto

Pan de Muerto (Bread of the Dead) also adorns ofrendas and is eaten during the holiday. This soft, yeasty bread is lightly sweetened and typically flavored with anise- and orange-blossom water, giving the bread a delicate taste and enticing aroma. The bread maintains the iconography of Día de los Muertos—before baking in the oven, the dough is rounded, topped with pieces shaped like long bones (representing the deceased), and dusted with sugar.

We just happened to have a gorgeous skull stencil at The Cooking Lab, so we decided to put it to good use for our Pan de Muerto. We shaped our dough into a large boule (round) and dusted sugar over the stencil. The small notches around the bread’s edges represent traditional bone decorations. We then augmented the supernatural quality of our Pan de Muerto by adding clouds of liquid nitrogen.

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Pasta: A Retrospective

Posted on October 21, 2014 at 1:22 pm.

Written by Caren

Chances are, there’s a food holiday (and maybe even two or three) for every day of the year. While we like to celebrate amazing food regularly at Modernist Cuisine, we couldn’t let National Pasta Month come and go without acknowledging it. As the weather in Bellevue, Washington, turns gray and cold, a plate of Spaghetti alle Vongole or bowl of Shanghai Soup Dumplings sounds even more enticing than normal. And Mac and Cheese, Russian Pelmeni, Chicken Noodle Soup, and Rye Levain Noodles? Check, check, check, and check.

With noodles of all kinds on our minds, here is an homage to the delicious beauty of pasta.

Rye Levain Noodles_Francisco_03133 — Rye Levain Noodles

Spaghetti_Opener_MG_7677 — Spaghetti alle Vongole from *Modernist Cuisine*

Cocoa Tajarin_Cover_MG_7953 — Cocoa Tajarin from *Modernist Cuisine*

Stitched Panorama — Mac and Cheese from *Modernist Cuisine at Home*

Soup Dumpling_Opener_MG_2640 — Shanghai Soup Dumplings from *Modernist Cuisine*

MCAH_Nood_Opener_172530_M=B_R=8_S=4 — Chicken Noodle Soup from Modernist Cuisine at Home

Pelmini_Cover_MG_1696 — Russian Pelmeni from *Modernist Cuisine*

An Afternoon with Massimo Bottura

Posted on October 17, 2014 at 1:14 pm.

Written by Caren

Last week, we had the pleasure of hosting chef Massimo Bottura, of Osteria Francescana, at The Cooking Lab while he was on tour promoting his first book, Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef. He was joined at the table by a group of exceptionally talented, Italian-influenced chefs from this region: chef Suzette Gresham of Acquerello, chef Nathan Lockwood of Altura, chef Pino Posteraro of Cioppino’s Mediterranean Grill, chef Simone Savaiano of Mucca Osteria, chef Holly Smith of Cafe Juanita, chef Michael Tusk of both Cotogna and Quince, and chef Cathy Whims of Nostrana.

We always look forward to events where we can meet and cook for chefs who inspire us. Chef Bottura undoubtedly falls into this category. His food validates his creativity, his love for his country, and his culinary philosophies. It also demonstrates that food is fun in signature dishes like the wabi-sabi-esque beauty of a dropped lemon tart and his tribute to the best part of the lasagna: the crunchy bits of pasta, which he serves in a deconstructed fashion with ragù and béchamel.

All too often we hear, “Modernist food lacks the soul of its more traditional counterparts.” or “Foams are cold, sous vide is unappealing and lacking passion—we just don’t get Modernist cuisine.” Why can’t food be traditional and innovative at the same time?

The work of chef Bottura illustrates that these concepts, tradition and innovation, are not opposing forces. Instead, they are nuanced layers we can use to construct a single, transcendent bite. The three-Michelin-star Bottura can, in fact, transport you to his mother’s kitchen on a wisp of mortadella foam. It is whimsical, yes, but the dish is also a dialogue about ingredients and a love story about one’s heritage.

Chef Bottura’s now-infamous bollito misto non-bollito is deeply rooted in history but born out of honoring the past through new techniques. Instead of boiling tough cuts of meat, as tradition would strictly dictate, he cooks them sous vide to maximize flavor, tenderness, and nutritional content—an homage to the original bollito misto, a dish Bottura grew up with. Thick sauces are replaced by light foams of familiar flavors, smartly designed to complement, not hide, the meat. All of the classic flavors are vibrantly present, and this metamorphosis of technique allows chef Bottura to continue the evolution of Italian cuisine.

We honored the gregarious chef with a menu that featured our own tribute to Italian flavors: Vongole, Cacao and Sea Urchin Pasta, Polenta, and Cappuccino. Our classic dishes were reworked so that each would give a subtle nod to Italian cuisine, including Pea Stew, with a delicate ravioli, and Basil Cocktail, with a splash of chef Bottura’s Villa Manodori Balsamic Vinegar.

And, of course, there was Pistachio Gelato.

Want more? Read Molly Wizenberg’s Yahoo Food article about lunch with chef Bottura.

Cooking for Ferran Adrià: Reflecting on Inspiration and Innovation

Posted on July 10, 2014 at 4:28 pm.

Written by Caren

There are always stories behind food, whether it’s a quintessentially Modernist dish, spheres and all, or a beloved recipe handed down over generations. Mistakes are made, learned from, and then ideas are refined through trial and error. You can taste the labor, the love, and the inspiration in sublime flavors and intriguing textures. In the same manner, thoughtful food creates memories. Flavors comfort and transport us with dishes that surprise and delight us.

There are many memories wrapped up in the experience of cooking for Ferran Adrià. Here are a few of the stories behind a handful of the fifty dishes we prepared that afternoon.

Head Chef Francisco Migoya: Rye Levain Noodles

I own many of the elBulli books, and I’ve certainly tried many of the recipes. But the influence of elBulli goes beyond simply producing their recipes; their work changes your way of looking at food and what it can be. Cooking is about seeing the potential that lies beyond the obvious by looking at food from a different perspective.

The idea for the rye levain noodles came to me shortly before I joined the team. With our upcoming book on breads in mind, I was thinking about pasta, which traditionally doesn’t have yeast. I couldn’t find any recipes that added yeast to a pasta dough, which got me thinking: why are there no yeast-leavened pasta doughs? As commercial yeast has little flavor, it occurred to me, conceptually, that a levain would be more flavorful. And in the realm of levains, a rye levain would be even more flavorful.

To make the pasta, I replaced some of the water and flour in a rye pasta recipe with a fully ripened rye levain. Getting the sour taste right was one of the most challenging things about the course. The lactic acid produced by lactobacillus in a levain preferment has a very characteristic taste and is what makes sourdoughs taste sour. If it doesn’t have the right degree of ripeness, the sour flavor will not come through, and the concept is lost. Timing the levain preferment just right is the key.

We served the rye pasta with sauerkraut beurre blanc and toasted nigella seeds. This dish preceded the pastrami dish (one of my favorites) because it ties into the Jewish-deli classic of pastrami and rye, with the rye in this instance being rye levain noodles.

Cooking for Ferran Adrià was an honor. It was nerve-racking at the same time, especially since I had joined the team as head chef just prior to his visit. It was my first dinner at the lab, so I saw it as a tremendous challenge with a responsibility to succeed. In the end, the team performed at a very high level—we had one of the smoothest services ever.

Research and Development Sous Chef Sam Fahey-Burke: Onion Soft Serve Ice Cream

It’s really impossible to measure the influence of elBulli on my work as a chef. The work that was done there pretty much established the Modernist movement, and I’ve spent my entire career cooking that type of food. If it hadn’t been for the work of Adrià and his team, I would still be a cook, but every day would have been completely different.

I’m always a little nervous right before a long tasting, and with 50 courses (and chef Adrià in attendance) I was probably a little more on edge than usual. But once we got into the service routine, the nervousness faded and I started to enjoy it. We normally serve our dishes in a traditional progression, but we switched it up for chef Adrià. We added courses we had never served before, including Onion Soft Serve, which kept us on our toes.

The Onion Tart recipe in Volume 5 of Modernist Cuisine is one of my favorites. It’s a great example of fundamentally Modernist cooking—it’s the evolution of a technique, as opposed to a technique that exists for the sake of adding obscure gelling agents or emulsifiers to a dish.

A champion of the tart, I’m always trying to convince Nathan Myhrvold to serve different versions of it at our tastings, which is where the idea for Onion Soft Serve originated. Fortunately, Chef Migoya and I are both experienced ice-cream makers, so we succeeded on our first try. To get the texture right, we processed the ice cream in a Pacojet for about 10 minutes before serving time and then put the mixture in the freezer (in piping bags) on a frozen Baking Steel. To keep the dish cold for service, we gave the cones, handmade by head chef Migoya, a quick dip in liquid nitrogen before adding the ice cream.

The idea of onion-flavored ice cream might seem alarming to some, but it’s sweetened just like traditional ice cream. The onion purée creates more depth, adding an incredibly savory element to the base. And the crunchy cone adds a nice textural contrast to the ice cream. We’ve done this course at two lab dinners now, and each time the diners seemed to be taken by unexpected enjoyment.

Research and Development Chef Johnny Zhu: Binchotan

When the first translation of the elBulli books came to the U.S., I was a young cook in New York. I remember at the time that it cost about $350, which was the most expensive cookbook I had ever heard of. I was still determined, however, to save up and get it. I remember finally getting my copy and rushing home on the subway, like I was smuggling some kind of treasure. When I opened the book, I was simply blown away. Everything I knew about food had been completely reimagined in those pages. It taught me that food is never static but always evolving.

The inspiration for the Chicken Liver Binchotan is trickery, a play on the theme of trompe l’oeil (culinary deception), a theme perfected at elBulli and a common element of Modernist cooking. The dish is served with points of toasted brioche on a binchotan grill; inside, the actual binchotan coals are charred just to the point of smoking. Coal-shaped chicken livers are then placed in front of the diners, who are still drawn to the hibachi grill in front of them. For just a moment, the diners think, “What is this, a spare piece of charcoal?” The illusion subsides quickly, but the aroma, aesthetic, and interplay of smoke and liver mimics the look of binchotan exactly, and, when diners dig into it, it spreads like butter.

The Chicken Liver Binchotan recipe started with a sous vide version of chicken liver mousse. If you look at most recipes for chicken liver mousse, they are pretty vague. You’re supposed to cook chicken livers to what you think is medium rare and then purée them with aromatics and butter. But the livers can be easily undercooked or overcooked, so the texture can range from gloppy to gritty. When cooking the chicken livers sous vide, however, they are medium rare every time, and the texture is incredibly smooth. Such consistency is a testament to cooking sous vide.

Chef Migoya introduced us to silicone mold making and suggested that we try a few shapes. We tried shapes that we had lying around, one of which happened to be a Japanese binchotan charcoal. When we cast the chicken liver mousse into the molds, the effect was striking. The mousse captured every nook and cranny of the wood, resulting in a realistic imitation. To complete the effect, we dusted the mousse with edible dietary ash.

The evolution of this dish was so natural that all we had to do was pair the tasty mousse with toast points, but presenting the dish was tricky. Excited about the trompe l’oeil, we enthusiastically (and artistically) piled the binchotan grill with toast points; getting the binchotan grill onto the table and in front of chef Adrià without dumping the toast-topped grill in his lap was nerve-racking. Even he looked a bit nervous as we made our way over.

Cooking for Ferran Adrià was an incredible honor, being both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Preparing a meal for one of my idols is an experience I will never forget.

Research and Development Chef Anjana Shanker: Caviar Service

Cooking for the world’s greatest chef was a dream come true. It was an opportunity I had been hoping to have for a very long time. Ferran Adrià’s visit turned out to be incredibly humbling—when you meet him you realize that he is remarkable and simple at the same time.

Chef Adrià and the elBulli team played an important role in my culinary career, inspiring me to value creativity and to better understand the connection between food and science. Their work influenced how I approach deconstructing a dish—how I will transform all of its elements or modify its texture and taste so that it appears fully Modernist, while retaining the dish’s original essence.

Our caviar service was inspired by a course at elBulli. The dish appeared to be a traditional pile of caviar—decadent, salty, and delicious. Even the first bite confirms its appearance: this is good caviar. The caviar, however, was actually mustard seeds.

It took me a great deal of work to perfect this recipe before chef Adrià’s visit. Caviar has a distinct flavor and texture, so developing the faux version was a scientific process. I researched, experimented, documented, and analyzed many variations of it, but the trickiest part was replicating the mouthfeel—getting the mustard to gently pop like caviar with each bite. We also had to figure out how to reproduce the buttery, oceanic, and delicate tastes that are reminiscent of traditional caviar.

We soaked yellow mustard seeds, pressure-cooked them with a neutral oil, and then centrifuged with the mixture with anchovies. Olive oil and squid ink were added to disguise the seeds. We then served the seeds on a blini to mimic traditional service.

Because Ferran Adrià’s work and research has been such an inspiration to me, it was a tremendous feeling when I read The New York Times’s coverage of his response to the dish. He declared it “Fantastico,” which is an incredible honor.

Research and Development Chef Aaron Verzosa: Cryoblanched Lobster

Cooking for chef Adrià was like painting to impress Picasso—why would you do that? You’re making food for a man who has seen it all, broken all the rules, and written the language that we at Modernist Cuisine have chosen as our industry dialect. In fact, it was slightly terrifying. Hours before the dinner, to my amazement, chef Adrià walked through the kitchen by himself, taking in the atmosphere. What was I doing when we first met? Making spheres, of course—a technique synonymous with his name.

Despite the anxiety and fear that accompanies such a moment, and after months of preparation, the dinner finally started. The first course went out, then the second, and finally the 50^th. When you’re in the moment, it’s easy to be swept up in the details of each dish and the intensity of service. You hardly have a moment to realize that within 50 courses, the man, Adrià, had asked for seconds of many of our dishes.

One of my courses was a spoonful of delicate, cryoblanched lobster. We dipped the lobster in liquid nitrogen for 10 seconds (not long enough to freeze the meat), and then submerged it in cold water. The temperature differential between the liquid nitrogen and water is enough to completely release the meat from the shell. Classically, to remove a lobster from its shell, you blanch it in boiling water, but the problem therein is that the lobster and its shell are then partially cooked. By cryoblanching we are able to cook an entire piece of claw or tail to an exact temperature; the pieces are cooked all the way through without overcooking the outer portion of meat. The Coconut Lobster Sauce, made from lobster shells, is also more intense because the flavor is never lost to the boiling water, an artifact of classic blanching.

The concept behind this technique evolved from a method I learned in Paris. We would put the lobsters in the freezer from 45 minutes to one hour, then place it into the fridge for about an hour or two—the result was similar to cryoblanching. In Paris, we didn’t have liquid nitrogen, so, when I came back to Modernist Cuisine, it was the first thing I tried. Getting the timing right was difficult. If you keep the meat submerged in liquid nitrogen too long, it freezes. If you defrost the meat too quickly, the texture is compromised—the result is mushy lobster. Aside from producing incredible results, liquid nitrogen drastically reduces prep time—hours can be shaved down to minutes.

Being able to serve Ferran Adrià a dish that was born out of my own culinary explorations was amazing. Through the momentous challenge of preparing and executing our most ambitious meal to date, to see chef Adrià eat our food with curiosity, intrigue, and a childlike delight was undoubtedly the single greatest moment in my career.

ElBulli and the concept of elBulli Taller have probably influenced me in more ways than I realize. It was certainly the first establishment that got me interested in Modernist cooking. I suppose then that it was the reason I was so enamored of the possibility of joining the Modernist Cuisine team. But more so than any one technique, the philosophy and mindset of elBulli—to be ever dedicated to curiosity, innovation, and purity of flavor—is what has truly influenced me as a chef.

Director of Applied Research Scott Heimendinger: Laser-Etched Tortilla

The Virgin Mary has made hundreds of appearances on toast, grilled-cheese sandwiches, and quesadillas. Far fewer people, however, have witnessed the visage of legendary Spanish chef Ferran Adrià on the surface of their tortilla.

As part of the epic, 50-course tasting, we decided to have some fun with the presentation of our Milagro al Pastor. Before the course arrived, servers littered the tabletop with English- and Spanish-language newspaper articles touting miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary in various griddled foods. As our guests curiously pored through the flyers, the dish arrived: alternating layers of pork and beef, laminated and cut into perfect cubes, which sat atop an avocado purée embroidered with dots of fiery red achiote sauce. The dish was a richly flavored and technically exquisite interpretation of tacos al pastor, but it was also the setup for the punchline that followed. Head chef Francisco Migoya rounded the table inauspiciously, offering corn tortillas to accompany the course. When chef Adrià pulled a warm tortilla from the top of the stack, he was more than a little surprised to see that his own face adorned the surface.

How did we create this eBay-worthy tortilla? In the days leading up to the dinner, we worked to perfect the technique of transferring black-and-white images onto the surface of tortillas using a laser engraver in our machine shop. Although designed for cutting and etching plastic, wood, and thin metals, the engraver happens to be remarkably useful for toasting the faces of unwitting guests onto flat foods. You might remember the time we etched Jimmy Kimmel’s face onto an omelet for Nathan’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. This time we had much more control of the joke, including the rather elaborate setup leading to the final unveiling.

Why, you might ask, go to all this trouble? The dish would have been just as delicious in the absence of Adrià’s face. The joke demonstrates one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking—the desire to extend the dining experience beyond our five senses—in this case, to include humor. Many Modernist chefs, including honoree Ferran Adrià, punctuate their tasting menus with moments of levity: welcome reminders, amidst a marathon meal, that the point is to enjoy yourself.

Making humor part of the menu is a gamble in the same way you might wrestle with using a joke to begin a speech. Will the joke fall flat? Is this as funny as we think it is? We anxiously held our breath before the reveal. When chef Adrià recognized his likeness on that corn tortilla, he heartily laughed out loud, smiling ear-to-ear with genuine exuberance. He even tucked an extra tortilla into his notepad to show his brother, Albert, who is opening a Mexican restaurant later this year.

It was one of many incredible moments that night. We’re thrilled that our joke paid off and honored to have shared it with a chef whom we so admire. Only time will tell if laser-etched faces will be the next big trend in Modernist cooking, but, for now, we’ll keep inspecting our tortillas for signs from above.

Read more about how chef Adrià and experiences at elBuilli inspired Nathan and the idea behind Modernist Cuisine.

Cooking with Syllables: Carrageenan

Posted on July 3, 2014 at 10:19 am.

Written by Caren

What is Carrageenan?

History

From eggnog and soy milk to infant formulas and toothpaste, carrageenan is found everywhere. The word carrageenan may sound foreign and vaguely exotic, but it’s simply a generic term for a type of sugar extracted from various species of red seaweed. In Modernist cooking, it’s classified as an emulsifier, stabilizer, hydrocolloid (hydrophilic colloid), or gum, all of which function in some way to thicken or clarify ingredients, or to bind moisture. The term carrageenan has been around since at least 1889 and is derived from carrageen, circa 1829, which is a purplish, cartilaginous seaweed colloquially known as “Irish moss,” found off the coasts of North America and Europe. In fact, the seaweed gets its moniker from a small Irish fishing village, Carragheen, where it’s plentiful. Traditionally, the seaweed was boiled in sweetened milk to create a pudding. Simmering the seaweed unlocks the ingredient’s gelling properties. Its use, however, can be traced back even further to at least 400 CE, where it was used as a gelling agent and as an ingredient in homemade cold-and-flu remedies. Industrially, carrageenan is extracted chiefly from the red algae Chondrus crispus (class Rhodophyceae), but it can also be extracted from various species of Gigartina and Eucheuma.

Function

Inherently vegetarian with no nutritional value, seaweed-based thickeners like carrageenan have new, modern applications. Most commonly, carrageenan can adjust the viscosity of dairy products like cheese, or it can serve as an emulsion stabilizer in salad dressings by keeping your oil and vinegar mixed. In more advanced applications, it will glue meat together, allowing for the creation of hot aspics and other seemingly contradictory foundations. Chemically, carrageenan is classified as a polysaccharide, a type of sugar. Its properties are varied and complex, but its basic function is to thicken and stabilize. It does this by forming large yet flexible matrices that curl around and immobilize molecules. Because of its inherent flexibility, carrageenans can form a variety of gels under a wide range of temperatures, but each type of carrageenan only becomes fully hydrated at a characteristic temperature. Some carrageenans can be hydrated without adding heat, while others must be brought to 85°C / 185°F or higher before saturation occurs, and a few have a hydration temperature that depends on the presence of other ions, the most common of which is calcium. Carrageenan actually comes in five varieties, classified by how much sulfate (SO₄) it contains and its solubility in potassium chloride. Named after Greek letters, they are ι (iota), κ (kappa), λ (lambda), ε (epsilon), and μ (mu), however, only the forms iota, kappa, and lambda are used in Modernist cooking. All forms contain roughly 20–40% sulphate, which dictates how firmly (and whether) a gel will set, how the gel freezes and thaws, and how syneresis (the separation of water from its gel, also known as weeping) is affected. As the amount of sulfate increases, the strength of a gel decreases.

Safety

Recently, there has been some speculation over the safety of carrageenan. Carrageenan has been a focus for many mammal studies because of its potential to cause inflammation, ulceration, colitis, polyps, and colorectal tumors. Although such maladies are reported in animal studies, at the time of writing this connection has not been validated in humans because carrageenan’s molecular size and accompanying bonds prevent it from being digested naturally. To understand why carrageenan does not cause morbidity in humans, it’s important to differentiate between carrageenan and its degraded form, poligeenan. Poligeenan is the digested form of carrageenan and consists of molecular fragments small enough to pass from the digestive tract to the circulatory system. It is poligeenan that causes the many illnesses researchers describe in mammals, but current research has shown that the human digestive tract is limited in its ability to break down carrageenan into poligeenan. The primary pathway of human digestion, the alimentary canal, is, despite its placement, considered to be outside the body; a compound is not considered to be in the body until it moves from the digestive tract to the circulatory system. And, in order for any compound to affect human organs, such as the brain, liver, or heart, it must be small enough to cross the intestinal walls. Carrageenan is too large to do so, but poligeenan’s small size can. Not surprisingly, it has been postulated that carrageenan can be fragmented by natural digestive processes, but, to date, this has yet to be demonstrated in humans. In addition to carrageenan’s large size, its inherent bonds pose another challenge to the human digestive tract. Carrageenan is held together by β-glycosidic bonds, which are ubiquitous in the plant world, but most mammals, including humans, lack the proper enzymes to break them.

Recipes and Sourcing

Because of its utility, carrageenan is an ingredient that we use frequently, appearing in many recipes throughout Modernist Cuisine and Modernist Cuisine at Home. Carrageenan is used to create the creamy texture of our Pistachio Gelato and to stabilize our American Cheese Slices. Although you may not be able to find carrageenan on the shelves of neighborhood grocery stores, it’s easy to source online. If you’re ready to start testing this ingredient, try out our Pistachio Gelato recipe or Raspberry Panna Cotta in Modernist Cuisine at Home.