What are the things out of modernist cooking that I can actually, you know, use? I'm not going to "mold casts from real kumquats" and then use them to serve "sugar cubes that were rubbed on kumquat skin to extract its flavor". I like to cook, and I like to eat, and I'd have little qualms about using modernist cooking techniques, but they all seem to involve an expense of time and equipment that I'm not willing to invest given the alternatives.
I guess sous-vide is making it into some regular kitchens beholden to the laws of time and space.
Buy _Modernist Cuisine At Home_, or, if you don't want to subsidize Myrvhold, _Ideas In Food_ and _Maximum Flavor_ (from the same authors). These books are full of applications of modernist cooking that are useful in home kitchens.
Here's an easy example: you can turn any cheese --- any cheese --- into a cheese with the texture and melting properties of American cheese; you heat it, add a little liquid and a little sodium citrate, in a ratio you can find in the books or online. The cheese melts and the citrate instantly emulsifies it, so even a veiny blue or a mature cheddar melts smooth. Pour into a cool metal pan, slice and wrap.
You're not going to make a lot of "airs" and foams and freeze-dried powders and powdered oils (though: the maltodextrin olive oil powder trick is pretty cool to play with), but there's a lot of nuts-and-bolts stuff to modernist cooking that you'll use a lot once you know them.
It's tough for me. On the one hand, nobody likes patent trolling. On the other hand, one wants to support someone who would undertake such a monumental, bold project. Plus IV does some cool stuff in addition to trolling. Modernist Cuisine is a whole organization with lots of people that do phenomenal work.
That's almost worse. Its best that if you don't agree with Myrvhold to simply ignore what he has to say altogether.
Personally, I think it more than a little ironic that his entire excursion into cooking began by being fascinated with and emulating the techniques of Ferran Adria.
From "modernist cuisine at home" which is kind of the diet version of the full $625 set, I have made the pressure cooked carrot soup and it is in fact the best carrot soup I've ever eaten.
So you need a pressure cooker. And probably an immersion blender or at minimum a blender of some kind.
I've also done a variety of extractions. Carotene butter (which I think you need for the soup above anyway). This requires little more than a vegetable or herb with fat soluble flavors (like lots of carrot) and some butter and a saucepan. And a juicer. Maybe I'm a weirdo (oh, who am I kidding, I'm a weirdo) but I like carotene butter on ... everything. Its like butter-ketchup, but tastier.
The recipes are not necessarily oriented around generating the maximum volume of food or quantity of food per unit of raw material input. So it takes a lot of carrots to make a large batch of carotene butter. So it does. And its worth it.
A lot of it is ideas and techniques. So the advice on homemade hamburgers was interesting and informative and I was able to successfully employ it. But I didn't "git clone" the recipe, I just kind of fixed up my technique.
Yep, the biggest takeaway from modernist cuisine is that knowing how food cooks and the chemical reactions therein means you can cook a better meal.
Its not necessarily about distilling the flavor of a thing and making it look like something else. Thats more a upscale restaurant thing.
The things I found most intriguing were how little we actually knew about the process of cooking. Like barbeque as an example, it boggles my mind that until modernist cuisine came around we didn't really understand how it worked at a fundamental level. Just a bunch of "well we do this and it works and tastes well", aka we hit a local maxima and didn't seem to want to move off that hill to see if there were higher peaks around by using binoculars.
Sous vides are great because they actually allow you to measure things properly. Do you consider pressure cooking "modern" because that's also great. There's also some cool stuff you can do with a whipping siphon[0]
Pressure cooking isn't modern but is obviously enjoying a modern renaissance.
I have little issue with the methodology unless it's unreasonably expensive for unreasonable reasons (and I don't count sous vides here).
But things like molecular gastronomy are almost pure show - have you eaten many spheres or foams with your food? They're basically pointless from the perspective of taste.
Two responses: first, they're not pointless from the perspective of taste, because they impact how and when the components of the dish will engage your taste buds and nose; second, texture is a huge element of how you experience and enjoy food, which is why you don't take the best pizza in your city and stick it in a blender before consuming it.
You can do encapsulations and "caviars" and stuff in ways that are pointless, and a lot of coattail-following stunt cooks do that. But when Achatz or Dufresne decide to do something, there's usually a very well-thought-out reason for it.
Taste is far from the only consideration in the sensualist approach to food. As just one counter-example, texture is a very big deal, and something with which the folks into molecular gastronomy do some very interesting things.
A. Price is a function of the buyer's willingness to pay it, not your sensibilities as an uninvolved observer or critic of the market. If it's too pricey for you, don't buy it. I, personally, think Bentleys are too expensive for a car, but I'm not buying one, so my opinion is immaterial.
B. This is a discussion of "taste" and similar preferences. Of course it's aesthetic.
Sure, I mentioned that it's my opinion already; I'm simply noting that the value is rooted less in taste (in the literal food sense) and more in aesthetic.
I'm not saying that the package is overvalued, but rather the underlying food that is; after all, it represents but a small - sometimes negligible - portion of the package as a whole.
Interesting molecular gastronomy idea: Take the carotene butter as mentioned, mix with tapioca maltodextrin to make a carrot flavored powder, then take carrot cake cupcakes with a buttercream frosting make with carotene butter and drizzle the powder on the frosting as a topping. I haven't tried this, but there should be enough carrot in one cupcake to turn your skin orange for a week.
You are generally correct that leaving in the same phase is not as interesting as changing phase.
That would probably be my list as well. And immersion circulators (for sous vide) can now be gotten for very reasonable prices as they've gone at least somewhat mainstream.
I use my circulator and my pressure cooker on a regular basis and play with the siphon from time to time.
In the ingredients department, I picked up a variety of thickeners etc. to experiment with but, to be honest, I haven't done a lot with them.
There are some good ideas and techniques in books like Modernist Cuisine at Home. There are also instructions for making an omelet that would probably take hours. I won't be doing that.
I have a similar skepticism of modernist cooking. I have very egalitarian ideas about good food--it should be for everyone. This has probably never been true, but the fact that people are trying to make new foods that are even harder for the common person to achieve rubs me the wrong way.
Of course my idea of a perfect meal trends towards amazing Banh Mi from a food truck rather than Kobe Beef fillet mignon, so YMMV.
Of course my idea of a perfect meal trends towards amazing Banh Mi from a food truck rather than Kobe Beef fillet mignon, so YMMV.
This reminds me of the Iron Chef intro where we see Masaharu Morimoto eating a hotdog (or something) sitting on a step while reading a newspaper.
As a foodie myself I'm not sure why you have to choose one meal over another. I've lined up for Banh Mi, and warm jam doughnuts being sold from a truck, and I've spent hundreds of dollars on multi-course meals. They were all 'perfect' meals in their own context.
Relatively few modernist techniques are intrinsically expensive or exclusive. Many local yogurt shops now sell "fruit bubble" toppings. New gadgets make sous-vide cheap as well, and I'd expect to see that used by food trucks before long, despite the tight counter space.
Quite a bit actually. Foams for instance are very easy and fun to play around with. Hydrocolloids aren't very expensive, let you do cool stuff, and often take very little time/effort to use. Toss an eight of a teaspoon of xanthan in your next salad dressing and watch it get creamy as all hell and not separate.
Beyond that, there's a lot of info in there about classical cooking too that is quite informative. You'll improve the performance of your charcoal grill by lining it with foil, for instance. It's neat seeing how proper wok cooking works, even though you can't try it at home because you'll never get a hot enough burner.
Model airplanes are a hobby. I don't want to know a man who dosen't have a hobby. I don't mind if a person uses food as
a hobby. My dad didn't have any hobbies besides work. When
he retired he was lost. Godbless you Dad--I know you had a
tough life. I did love you. I wish we were closer. I tried, but we were just different people with different values. Happy Father's Day to all of you!
Cook your steak in the oven with an in-the-oven meat thermometer. Set oven to 250 and cook until proper internal temperature matches preferred doneness
> “Cooking at this level is like giving a concert,” he said. “No one in their right mind gives 300 concerts a year.”
Many musicians, even famous and successful ones, do just that.
I love food, including expensive, fancy food. I grow vegetables, and I have a CSA where I get local vegetables weekly.
Food like Myhrvold's, to me, is rich, ignorant assholes behaving like rich, ignorant assholes. I say ignorant because while they may be well versed in certain areas, their knowledge is very narrow and skewed. They fancy themselves adventurous intellectuals, when in reality they are precisely the opposite. They are some of the most closed minded people you will find.
Also, for anyone who doesn't already know, Intellectual Ventures (Myhrvold's IP troll firm) is one of the worst. A little Googling on their actions tells you everything you need to know about what kind of person he is.
Can you give some more examples of the kinds of closed-mindedness you're trying to get at? I'm trying to understand your line of thought. Are you saying that Myhrvold is being an asshole because he's elevating what he is doing to a much higher level than it justifies?
I find interesting that high level cuisine is growing more and more detached from "eating". It is more similar to an spectacle, when one should be surprised or even shocked, and it's not designed to be done everyday.
It is more and more about creating an experience, and ends up being totally different from some sort of "high quality feeding".
This what I really like about "modernist cuisine", and why I think it's silly that some people consider it the future of cooking. It's really fun and delightful to very occasionally enjoy food as prepared by a mad scientist, you know? If I'm shelling out $200 for a meal, I'd rather experience it as this sort of ephemeral performance art rather than yet another perfect, but ultimately unmemorable, traditional dish. But aside from the occasional technique or two (sous vide), nobody's gonna be doing this sort of stuff at home.
I agree, this is what I find intriguing (although I've never experienced it). It seems to be a little bit like thinking, "okay, we have these various very sensitive chemical and touch receptors in our mouths, what else can we do with them?" The answer of course is still "food" but only because we don't want to consume things that are poisonous or inedible.
In France, back in the day, the King was served entire meals at once, which would sit there cooling off while spectators gawked from the gallery. It was one thing if you could afford to eat great cuisine, but if you could afford to let it go to waste, that showed real power. That kind of thing inspired the democracy movement.
So, in the long term, it is simply not possible for serious cuisine to grow more detached from eating than it has been.
Most cuisines are ethnic and you can point to a spot on the map, like italy. MG and modernist is more like "point to the internet".
Given that, by analogy, for most people "italian night" is ordering dominos pizza. However, it is possible to make a homemade tomato sauce and pour it on homemade fresh pasta made into the shape of homemade ravioli thats stuffed with home made home ground italian sausage. Most people would be surprised / shocked at that effort. That doesn't mean the homemade ravioli is less Italian than ordering Dominos or Dominos is more real because more people "cook" Italian that way.
So yeah, I've spent 5 hours making carrot soup. An entire afternoon. And it was really good.
Most Italians would encourage you to get a lot more specific when pointing at the map :-) Most dishes here are fairly regional, or have a place where they are "best" - like pizza from Naples, even though you can get pretty good pizza anywhere.
This has always been the case. Small food stalls can produce great quality good cheaply. So expensive reauatrants have to work on the ephemerals or 'experience'. Its just that this kind of restaurant has grown significantly in our generation where eating out costs less because of the efficiencies of the modern world.
So? He also an amateur paleontologist whose work in that field has been published in Nature, has masters degrees in both space physics and mathematical economics, a PhD in theoretical physics, has worked as a postdoc for Stephen Hawking, is an award winning nature photographer, won first place at the Memphis barbecue championship, and is one volcano lair away from true mad scientist territory with his proposals for large scale geoengeering to deal with climate change.
People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them. It's kind of annoying...I have a very diverse set of interests, and I suck at most of them. How do they do it?
> People at his level somehow manage to have both a very diverse set of interests and to excel at all of them.
I guess it helps a lot if you are really really rich and have time to do whatever you want for days on end.
I also guess some people would say Nathan Myhrvold is rich partially because he is running a very successful extortion scheme (my mind is not made up.)
Still, a pretty cool story. Here are my recent BBQ efforts.... not going to win any championships, but lots of people in Italy have never had any BBQ and it tastes pretty good:
I'm reminded, maybe unfairly, of the moment just before Enron went under, when it suddenly realized that it'd probably be a good idea to have some actual assets and bought up a bunch of land to do sundry things with (mostly wind farms IIRC). Maybe Myhrvold had a premonition (prematurely, sad to say) that the legal shit concerning IV's business was about to hit the fan, and decided to diversify. There's zero evidence for this, but it's amusing.
Was anyone else rubbed the wrong way by that closing paragraph? It almost seems like in bad attempt to sound 'deep' makes little of everything that went into the meal.
Not me. Though the author is gracious to Mhyrvold and recognizes the rare opportunity to join in this meal, he does not seem especially complimentary to the food. Actually, he seems unimpressed. Despite all the technical wizardry, the meal might have simply fallen short of something prepared simply. It's a valid opinion.
Then perhaps he was the wrong person to do the article considering thats quite a contrast to Adria's (who has quite established ethos in tasting/food) seemingly positive opinion of meal.
There is a lot to dislike about him. A man who becomes the preeminent patent troll after already having a enough money to do anything he wants-- worst kind of person, if you ask me.
This is completely unrelated to the point of the article, but this struck me:
> To fight malaria, the lab has invented a “photonic fence” device that identifies, tracks and zaps female mosquitoes (only females bite humans).
Can anyone explain why it's important enough to only kill the females that we might want to add (presumably expensive) sex-identification technology to mosquito zappers that are aimed at eliminating malaria in poor countries?
I don't think this is what you're talking about but one of the ways of killing mosquitos is to lace a gallon of water with a chemical that attracts adults and kills them along with any eggs. In practice, this would basically target only females.
After a quick search I found this link leading to a page of Intellectual Venture's
It's pretty cool but unfortunately looks tied to IV. My first guess might be to avoid any criticism that by killing ALL mosquitos, they're harming the ecosystem. I guess that's wishful thinking for a company that I kind of despise even being on their website.
Interesting tidbit at the end on Dicks, and I completely agree. As simple as it is (only four variations on the burger, cheese, no cheese, all the fixings, double with everything, one size of fries, shakes, and that's their entire menu), one can really appreciate it.
Funny that this is called Modernist Cuisine. It's very ornamental and inventive. Most Modernist movements had their heyday in the early 20th century. Maybe it is because of the technological focus.
I guess sous-vide is making it into some regular kitchens beholden to the laws of time and space.