Jimmy Kimmel, Cryofrying, and How to Make a Laser Omelet

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Last night Nathan was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” along with actress Jessica Alba and Congressman Barney Frank. Jimmy was very excited to meet and cook with Nathan — he’s quite the food enthusiast — in fact, he already owns a set of Modernist Cuisine and has been cooking sous vide at home for some time.

The Modernist Cuisine hamburger is a great example of the philosophy we extol in the book: even the most humble dishes can be worthy of extraordinary care and attention. You’d certainly lavish great care on your duck confit, so why not do the same for your cheeseburger? In the video below, Nathan demonstrates an abbreviated version of our cryo-frying method, which involves cooking the patty sous vide, giving it a quick dunk in liquid nitrogen, and then browning the outside by deep-frying. These steps ensure that your burger is perfectly cooked from edge to edge. But let’s be honest, it’s also pretty bad-ass.

It’s challenging to work in a kitchen adjacent to a machine shop and not get inspired to occasionally tinker. So we’ve developed a “recipe” for laser etching images onto the surface of an omelet! [Perhaps we’ll include this in a future edition of MC clip_image001] First, we make the same omelet base used in our iconic Striped Omelet recipe. We omit the mushroom stripes and instead cook a perfect disk of tender egg using a combi oven. A crucial step, it turns out, is vacuum-boiling off all of the gas trapped in the egg base before we cook it; otherwise, we’d end up with air bubbles and an uneven surface. Once the omelet cools, we put it in our laser cutter, turn the power down from “kill” to “stun,” and burn the image onto the surface. Some reconstructed cheese, cubed ham, and chives round out the dish.

This video shows the laser etching process, sped up 20x actual speed. Needless to say, the parametric recipe for the laser omelet would include additional celebrity faces.

Nathan also got to meet one of his favorite celebrities, Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier from the film The Artist. Nathan showed off a section of volume 3: Animals and Plants, and Uggie was particularly inspired by our rabbit recipe. Unsurprisingly, Uggie has a strong preference for free-range hare.

Maxime Demonstrates Hyperdecantation

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Last week during his presentation at Book Larder in Seattle, coauthor Maxime Bilet demonstrated one of the easiest techniques found in Modernist Cuisine: hyperdecantation. By pouring red wine in a blender, you cause it to froth, thereby allowing it to oxidize better and far more quickly. Watch the video, and try it yourself. It might just make your Valentine’s Day dinner that much smoother.

Modernist Cuisine – Maxime Bilet on Hyperdecantation from Modernist Cuisine on Vimeo.

Tune in to Bizarre Foods Tonight!

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photo from travelchannel.com

Tune into Bizarre Foods America with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel tonight to see what the team creates for the man who’s tasted it all. Part of a Seattle-themed show, the episode also happens to feature Andrew’s visit to harvest geoducks at Taylor Shellfish–the very place we get our giant clams from, too! At another place close to our hearts, FareStart, where coauthor Maxime Bilet and the Staff Chefs happen to be volunteering a few days from now, putting on a dinner, Andrew teaches a class on cooking offal. Andrew of Bizarre Foods also visits the famous Pike Place Market and Vashon’s Sea Breeze Farm, and drinks a lot of coffee.

This episode airs tonight, February 6, at 9 pm (8 pm central) on the Travel Channel.

New Recipe in the Library: Cheese Puffs

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Be careful. It is impossible to eat just one!

Whether you tune in for the game or just the commercials, you can’t watch the Super Bowl without snacks. But why pick up a bag of cheese puffs from the store when you can make your own? Wow your friends this Sunday with our Cheese Puffs recipe. In our Recipe Library we’ve included the recipe plus photos, tips, and how Wylie Dufresne inspired this and many other recipes in Modernist Cuisine.

Already have your Super Bowl menu set? Tell us about it in our Cooks’ Forum!

The News from Madrid

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Aside from a few frantic e-mails from Max about the technical aspects of Nathan’s presentation, we, who are sadly not in Madrid this week, had not heard much from the team. On Wednesday, Staff Chef Johnny Zhu wrote on his Facebook wall, “Put Madrid Fusión 2012 in the bank. We killed it!” But it wasn’t until we read Colman Andrews’s summary of Madrid Fusión Day Two on The Daily Meal that we knew that Johnny’s statement was not just a mixture of jet lag and bravado.

Next week we’ll give you some of the details firsthand. Until then, read the article here.

Modern Marvels of The Cooking Lab

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With our centrifuge, rotavap, combi ovens, and myriad other cool cooking gadgets, The Cooking Lab is full of wonder. That’s why H2 (formerly known as The History Channel) will be bringing you an inside look on their hit show, Modern Marvels. Our episode, titled “Under Pressure” airs this Monday, January 30, at 10 pm (check local listings for channel number; time may differ according to region).

New Recipe in the Library: Microwaved Tilapia

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This recipe works with many other fish varieties as well.

Take a shortcut this Chinese New Year by creating a gourmet steamed fish in your microwave! This recipe, found in Modernist Cuisine and now in our Recipe Library as well, was inspired by the mother of one of our staff chefs, Johnny Zhu. It mimics a traditional Chinese-style steamed fish but is ready in minutes. Once you taste it, you probably won’t even notice the difference! Find the recipe, video, photos, and tips here.

Teaching Melissa Clark

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New York Times columnist Melissa Clark gave Nathan Myhrvold what many might consider the ultimate challenge: teach me recipes from Modernist Cuisine that I can make for a dinner party without buying any unusual ingredients or equipment.

Nathan isn’t one to turn down a challenge, and besides, cooking from Modernist Cuisine in a home kitchen is much easier than lifting it. Nathan taught Melissa how to cook salmon sous vide using tap water, cook steak in the oven, infuse celery with apple juice, caramelize delicata squash in a pressure cooker, and make balsamic panna cotta. For the results of Melissa’s dinner party, plus the recipes and videos, read the article here.

Nathan Talks with Danish Food Critic

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While in Copenhagen a few months ago, Nathan Myhrvold chatted with noted Danish food and wine critic and Gastronomiredaktør (gastronomy editor) of Børsen TV, Ole Troelsø. During their 20-minute talk, they discussed how temperature control is like fine-tuning a piano, whether or not all great food must be delicious, working with TASCHEN on foreign editions, and, of course, Nathan’s recent visit to Noma. You can watch the whole video here, on Børsen’s online TV station, which is in Danish. The video starts with Ole speaking in Danish, but he soon switches to English.