On Thursday, I had the extremely rare privilege of getting an inside look at the kitchen laboratory at Intellectual Ventures.  If you aren’t aware, Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures CEO) along with chefs Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, has spent the last four years working on the book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.  This will be no ordinary cookbook – at 2400 pages and 5 volumes, it is unarguably the most in-depth, detailed compendium on the scientific process of cooking that has ever been written.  I’ll have many more interesting facts on the book in upcoming posts, but if you want the big picture, check out my interview with Nathan Myhrvold back in May.

The pictures and videos below are from a reception that the Modernist Cuisine team hosted as part of the International Food Blogger’s Conference.   Needless to say, this is the most sophisticated kitchen on earth, and as a food geek, I was in heaven.  Click through for more photos and video.

[Click the picture to view full-size] This panorama gives you a sense of the kitchen’s layout.  All of the stations are on wheels and the whole kitchen can be rearranged as the team focuses on different projects. 

In this video clip, CEO and King of the Food Geeks Dr. Nathan Myhrvold discusses the decision to not dumb down the book to cover only the equipment you’re likely to have in your home kitchen.

[Click the picture for the full-size image (so you can read the labels)]  This is the Modernist Cuisine kitchen’s idea of a spice cabinet.  Many of the products are available through the website www.chefrubber.com

A centrifuge is used here to separate solids from liquids and clarify sauces and stocks.  The green bottle is finely-blended raw peas that have separated into solids and pea water.

In this video, Chef Chris Young talks about the benefits of having a kitchen without customers.  The unique design of the Modernist Cuisine kitchen allows the staff (up to 36 people at certain points in the book’s development) to focus on research and testing of new recipes and techniques. 

You’re looking at the world’s only deep-fried watermelon chips.  I have no idea how they managed to deep fry watermelon, but I promise that it’s a dangerous proposition if attempted incorrectly.  The chips were light and delicious, with a recognizable hint of caramelized watermelon flavor.

Those look like beautiful cherries, don’t they? They’re actually made of foie gras.  And yes, they were delicious.

Chefs plate a small bite of horse mackerel sashimi with ginger and plum, proving that not all of the recipes require a particle accelerator.

My favorite dish of the night’: "tongue and cheek pastrami and rye”.  A thin slice of sous vide smoked Wagyu beef cheek is served with thinly-shaved tongue and delicate rye chips.  But, what makes this dish spectacular is the beef marrow mousseline (shown being shot out of a CO2 charger).  The mousseline is like the richest, fattiest mayonnaise you could imagine, except it’s made from sous vide egg yolks and bone marrow, and it is served warm. 

The frozen pistachio “cream” (ie. pistachio ice cream) alone is worth the price of the book.  As you can see from its beautiful glossy sheen, the ice cream was creamy and incredibly smooth.  What makes this dish really incredible is that the ice cream is made only from pistachios, emulsifiers and sugar.  No milk. No Cream. No eggs.  That’s right, it’s vegan!

And, for a little whimsy, they made olive oil and vanilla bean gummy worms.

And finally, I was thrilled to get a picture with Nathan.  See that grin on my face?  I kept it for days.

For more information on the book, check back here and also be sure to visit the official site for the project, www.ModernistCuisine.com. 

The 2nd Annual IFBC starts today in Seattle!  I’ll be tweeting like a maniac (follow me at http://twitter.com/seattlefoodgeek), but also highlighting some of the more important moments here. 

If you want to keep up with the conference, just keep hitting refresh.

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Low and slow… it’s true for sous vide, and its definitely true for smoking.  And, if you live in Seattle, you probably know that one of the worlds best smoked foods is salmon.  Smoked salmon has a wonderfully rich and concentrated flavor, but unfortunately it also has the texture of wet leather.  For this recipe, I used a Smoking Gun – a remarkable little device that creates a cold, concentrated smoke that can be captured in a container, or in this case, a vacuum bag [Disclosure: the Smoking Gun I used was a demo unit provided by PolyScience.]  The result: instant smoky flavor.  Then, we delicately cook the salmon to just above rare, which retains the fish’s buttery texture.

Total kitchen time: 25 minutes

Shopping list:

• 2 salmon fillets, about 15mm thick
• 1 tsp. smoked salt
• 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat your water bath to 45.5°C.  [Note: Consuming undercooked fish blah blah blah.  Some people will cook their salmon at 39°C, but that’s a little rare even for my taste.  If you’re squeamish, crank up the temp to 52°C.]
2. Remove the skin from the salmon fillets (reserve for frying, if you want.)  Divide the salt and pepper between the fillets and coat both sides.  Place the fillets, together or individually) into vacuum seal bags, but don’t seal them yet.
3. Prepare an ice bath large enough for the salmon fillets in their bags.
4. Load a Smoking Gun with hickory wood shavings.  Insert the exhaust hose into the open end of the bag and fold over the open edge to partially seal the bag.

   

5. Turn on the Smoking Gun and light the wood chips.  Smoke the entire bowl into the bag, retaining as much smoke as possible. 
6. Holding the open end of the bag up, submerge the bag into the ice bath for a few seconds to condense the remaining smoke.  Seal the open end in the vacuum sealer.
7. Cook the salmon in the water bath for 15 minutes.  Remove and serve.

Given the soft texture of the salmon, I thought it would be good to pair it with something crunchy.  I fried kale leaves in grapeseed oil for a few seconds per side (look out for major oil splatter!) and roasted asparagus with olive oil and rosemary salt.  I also fried the leftover salmon skin until it was slightly crispy and used it to wrap the asparagus.  This is one of my new favorite salmon preparations, and I can’t wait to see what else I can instant-smoke!

I think we can agree that by now we all expected to fly around in jetpacks and watch porn through a plug in our skull.  Unfortunately, those technologies have not yet become commercial, so we’ll have to make due until modern science can sort out its priorities. 

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a little prediction.  By the year 2020, you’ll be able to purchase the following items anywhere that also carries a George Foreman Grill.  These devices are way out there now – only the most adventurous (and well funded) chefs are using them, but they’re headed to a kitchen near you… along with those jetpacks.

What the hell is it?
A centrifuge.

What does it do?
It spins little vials of liquid around really, really fast. 

What say the white lab coats?
Centrifuges are used for separating out the parts of a liquid by density.  Your doctor probably uses one to separate your blood cells from plasma to, um, look at them and stuff. 

You put food in that thing?
Although centrifuges have already been used for years in industrial food processing (separating cream from milk, separating sugar crystals from their mother liquor), they’re just now starting to appear in the geekiest restaurant kitchens.  Chefs use centrifuges to clarify stocks, sauces and even lime juice.  Even the finest mesh strainer is no match for the separating power of the sedimentation principle, so the next time you’re making consommé consider your centrifuge instead of your chinoise. 

What the hell is it?
A rotary evaporator.

What does it do?
It extracts solvents from substances.  Kind of like a moonshine still, but designed by robots from the future.

What say the white lab coats?
By creating a vacuum inside the glass chamber, the rotary evaporator reduces the boiling point of a compound liquid.  Then, through gentle heating and turning, solvents dissolved in the liquid are evaporated and removed.

You put food in that thing?
Imagine being able to extract the essential flavor from just about anything into a highly-concentrated liquid.  Sure, you can go buy mint extract or even rosemary extract (if you know where to look), but what about the essential oil of bacon or saffron?  Chicago’s famed Alinea restaurant has been using rotovaps to distill the essential oils from herbs, and even chiles – all flavor, no heat.  So, when you’re baking cookies and the recipe calls for vanilla extract, don’t turn to the plastic vial from the grocery store; make your own!

What the hell is it?
It’s a freeze dryer.

What does it do?
It freeze dries, R-tard.

What say the white lab coats?
Freeze drying has all the benefits of freezing, but without those nasty ice crystals.  The freeze dryer freezes the materials inside, then creates a vacuum and adds just enough heat so that the water frozen inside the materials converts directly to gas and escapes.

You put food in that thing?
It may not surprise you to hear that freeze dryers are used for culinary applications.  After all, this was the space-age piece of technology that brought us Astronaut Ice Cream.  But it’s not all about infinite shelf lives and lightweight transportation.  Ferran Adrià, often called the best chef in the world, has been freeze drying slices of fruit at his restaurant El Bulli.  10 years from now, when you want to make apple chips and jerky, you won’t be reaching for the dehydrator – you’ll be freeze drying!

Although this may be the antithesis of my own culinary philosophy, the idea was just too indulgent to let go.  But, to do justice to this masterpiece of American-Chinese-American fusion, I felt that I really needed to commit – so most of the ingredients are premade and can be found in the freezer section!  Is this dish the epitome of the bastardization of Asian cuisine?  Perhaps.  Was it actually, shamefully delicious?  You bet.

Makes: 6 ethnically-retarded servings
Total kitchen time: 1 hour

Shopping List:

• 1 bag frozen Mandarin Chicken (available at Trader Joe’s)
• 1 cup frozen “Organic Foursome” (carrots, peas, green beans and corn, available at Trader Joe’s)
• 2 cups prepared sushi rice
• 1 tbsp. low sodium soy sauce
• 1 premade pie crust, thawed (available at Trader Joe’s) [Note: use 2 pie crusts if making individual pot pies]

1. Preheat your oven to 450°F.
2. Prepare the Mandarin Chicken according to the package directions, reserving the sauce packets.  Set aside.
3. Thaw 1 cup of frozen vegetables, and mix together with Mandarin Chicken, sushi rice and soy sauce in a large bowl.  Add the Mandarin sauce and stir to combine.
4. You can prepare the pot pie in either one large round casserole dish, or in 6 medium ramekins.  If using one dish, spoon in the chicken, vegetable and rice mixture and push into the dish with the back of a spoon to compress.  Top with the pie crust and crimp the edges with a fork.
   If making individual pot pies, divide the filling between 6 medium ramekins and cut the pie crusts into rounds to cover.  Poke small holes in the middle of the crusts to allow steam to escape.
5. Bake for 30 minutes, or until crusts are golden brown.  Allow to cool 10 minutes before serving.

I’m secretly hoping that this dish sweeps the nation (well, at least the middle part) as the next big trend.  There is something delightfully Paula Dean-y about the combination, not unlike “chicken tempura with BBQ sauce”.  So, if you’ve got friends or family who prefer something semi-homemade and anti-culinary, why not pass this gem along.

St. Germain is like the Samuel L. Jackson of liqueurs – it’s in everything these days.  If you haven’t tasted it (or you’re militantly hetero and won’t admit to tasting it) it’s an Elderflower liqueur – sweet, floral and quite refreshing.  Last weekend I was making butter recipes from the cookbook Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.  One of those recipes was for a rum butter, but I didn’t have any decent rum in the liquor cabinet.  So instead, I decided to combine butter with just a splash of St. Germain – the result was unexpectedly good.  So here’s the “recipe”, although it couldn’t get much simpler.

Makes: 1/2 cup better butter
Total kitchen time: 5 minutes

Shopping list:

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter (best if homemade), at room temperature
• 2 tsp. St. Germain
• 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt

1. Combine the butter and St. Germain in a small bowl using the back of a fork. 
2. Add salt and stir to combine.  Add additional salt, to taste, if necessary.

So, next time you’re putting bread and butter on the table, consider making the party a little more interesting by getting your butter liquored up.  Your mouth will thank you.

It doesn’t matter how old you are – there’s still a little kid inside you who just loves roasting marshmallows over a campfire.  However, if a campfire is a impractical for your next dinner party, try this simple trick: use your fondue set for tableside s’mores.  [Caution: locate your nearest fire extinguisher before attempting, and don’t serve alongside that bottle of 90 proof Brandy.]

To make your s’mores a bit classier, try using premium chocolate (sorry Hershey’s, it’s not me, it’s you).  I prefer Seattle-based Theo Chocolate’s Coconut Curry and Fig, Fennel & Almond, though there are hundreds of exotic flavors out there that will easily earn you your Open Flame Artisan Pastry Making merit badge.

Summer has arrived, and that means it’s time to grill.  But before you start charring steaks, you’ll need a little equipment.  Here are my favorite nerdy accessories for the grillmaster within you.

1.  Extra-Long BBQ Tongs.  They don’t sound geeky, but this single piece of equipment can mean the difference between retaining your forearm hair or not.  Look for locking tongs at least 16” long, with metal ends since plastic and even silicone can melt at grilling temperature.

2.  TurboQue Turbo-Charged Smoker.  This battery-operated fan attaches to the inside of your grill and turns it into a convection smoker.  This means reduced cooking time and extra exposure to smoke from wood chips. 

3.  Infrared Thermometer.  Sure, you could hold your hand above the grill grate and count “one Mississippi… two Mississippi,” but it’s far more geeky to be accurate to .1 degrees Fahrenheit.  This non-contact thermometer instantly measures surface temperatures with the pull of a trigger, enticing you to be quick on the draw. 

4.  Instant Digital Probe Thermometer.  While the infrared thermometer will tell you how hot the grill is, it won’t give you a read on the internal temperature of your porterhouse.  Use a probe thermometer to quickly check the doneness of thick cuts without having to slice them open.  Choose a digital instant read over an analog model, unless you enjoy waiting while your fingernails melt over the fire.

5.  Onion Goggles.  You may look a little… special… flipping burgers with these on, but if you’re cooking with smoke, or better yet, over a campfire, they are indispensable.  The foam-lined glasses are highly effective at keeping the smoke out of your eyes, and keeping girls from ever talking to you.  But hey, form follows function, right?

If you caught my post last week on smoking your own salt, you learned how easy it is to turn ordinary salt into an extraordinary seasoning.  But did you know that you can pull off the same trick with flour?  In this recipe, I’ve smoked Semolina flour – the most common kind used for pasta making.  The finished pasta takes on a subtly spicy smoke flavor and is a great match for Morel mushrooms. 

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If you haven’t noticed, flavored salts are becoming wildly popular.  On a recent trip to Whole Foods, I spotted an aisle-end display with no fewer than a dozen varieties: some infused with spices, some mined or harvested from exotic locales, and some smoked.  Smoked salts – salts that have taken on the flavor of a particular burnt wood – are an excellent way to add a deep, campfire flavor to dishes.  I use them all the time in dry rubs, and as a substitute for the flavor you get from actually cooking over wood.  In this video I’m using hickory chips, but another popular option is to flavor your salt with by smoking the wood from old wine barrels.  Needless to say, you’ll save a ton of cash on specialty salts, which, of course, you’ll need to import all those ancient wine barrels from Bordeaux!

Sous vide strikes again! This time, we’re exploiting science for perfectly medium-rare, ultra-tender flank steak.  And, since we’re throwing ethnic authenticity to the wind, why be predictable with our condiments?  Salsa and Monterey Jack are out, red onion compote and chèvre (goat’s cheese) are in.  If you’re not a sous vider (yet), you can cook your flank steak however you like: broiled, grilled, smoked, or fried.

Makes: 4 Tacos Scientificos
Total kitchen time: 30 minutes (+12 hours cooking time)
Special equipment: Vacuum sealer, sous vide water oven

Shopping list:

• 1 lb. flank steak
• 1 tsp. Mexican seasoning blend
• 2 tbsp. lime juice
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp. sherry vinegar
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 four tortillas
• 1 cup crumbled goat’s cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 bunch cilantro

1. Pat the steak dry and coat all sides with Mexican seasoning blend and lime juice.  Vacuum seal the steak in a bag large enough that the meat lays flat (but still fits in your water oven).  Cut the meat into two pieces and seal separately, if needed.  (If you’re not cooking your steak sous vide, place it in a zip-top bag or a covered shallow dish and let it marinate overnight). Note: although it might be tempting to add aromatics like garlic to the marinade, don’t! Your kitchen will smell like ass by the time the meat is done.
2. Set your sous vide water oven to 56°C.  Add the vacuum sealed steak, making sure the meat stays submerged.  Cook for a minimum of 1 hour, up to 48 hours.  The picture above shows the meat after cooking for 12 hours, which was perfectly tender.
3. Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp. olive oil in a medium saucepan over moderate heat.  Add the red onion and reduce the heat to low.  Let the onion sweat 5 minutes, until it is slightly translucent, but not browned.  Add the dark brown sugar, sherry vinegar and salt and stir to combine. Simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, and making sure the mixture doesn’t boil or burn. 
4. Remove the bag from the water bath and let the meat rest, still in the bag, for 10 minutes before searing.  Remove the meat from the bag and pat dry on all sides.  Sear with a blow torch, under the broiler, or in a smoking-hot pan.
5. Slice the meat perpendicular to the direction of the muscle fibers, and on a sharp bias. 
6. Assemble the tacos: tortilla, sour cream, steak, cheese, onion compote, cilantro.  Enjoy!

Cooking the steak sous vide rather than just grilling it may sound like a pain in the ass since you have to plan 12 hours ahead.  However, the hardest part of cooking flank steak is getting your timing right. Leave it on the grill 1 minute too long and it’s overcooked and tough; take it off too early and it’s raw.  And, if you’re entertaining company, you may be more focused on your margarita than your steak.  Cooking your meat sous vide lets you be laissez-faire with your timing – sometimes I even sear my steak before company arrives and return it to the water bath to keep it warm until we’re ready to eat.

Before I begin this story, I should let you know that it doesn’t contain any references to sous vide or molecular gastronomy or any other geeky cooking technique.  It is simply a story about a great meal that I will never forget.

Rachel and I just returned from a week in New Orleans.  In my humble opinion, New Orleans has the best regional cuisine of any city in America – the heavily French- and African-influenced flavors of Creole food are simply unmatched by any other American ethnic cooking style.  So, needless to say, I was quite pleased to eat my way through the city.  We made sure to hit most of the predictably great spots – Galatoires, Brennan’s, Felix’s Oyster Bar – but it was our meal at Irene’s, a quaint Italian restaurant off the beaten path, that we will remember most fondly.

It was our last night in town and Rachel had chosen Irene’s based on the suggestion of a local couple we had met (and with whom we subsequently shared take-out gumbo on the roof of their 1790’s apartment building).  After the long walk from our hotel to the restaurant, we were greeted with the same hospitality shown to us by every place we had eaten, and to which we were becoming pleasantly accustomed.  We were seated in the corner of one of three intimate dining rooms, surrounded by wall-mounted photos of past patrons, who we assumed were of some significance.  Rachel and I ordered Gin Mojitos and split a crabmeat gratin appetizer, which, as with much of the cuisine in New Orleans, was an unabashedly indulgent combination of seafood and dairy. 

We continued on with a steak and a Pompano Meunière Amandine, the latter of which is a local classic: a pompano fillet broiled and topped with browned butter, crabmeat and toasted slivered almonds.  The food was all excellent, and armed with the knowledge of our immanent return to Seattle and the requisite post-vacation diet that would follow, we savored every bite until our clothes no longer fit correctly. 

And it was right then, at the end of the meal, that our dinner really became spectacular.  During the step of the waiter-patron protocol at which your server normally delivers the check to the table, our waiter instead informed us that our meal would be free.  We were puzzled.  He explained that another couple had been in the restaurant just slightly earlier that evening to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  Apparently, this couple had adopted the custom of anonymously paying for the dinner a random pair of diners who appeared to be out of town.  As luck would have it, we ended up being that pair for the evening.  I asked if we could meet our benefactors or at least send them a bottle of champagne in return, but alas, it was against the rules of their charity. 

Rachel and I were stunned by their generosity and we were at once giddy and deeply touched.  Unable to identify and thank the couple personally, we decided that the best thing we could do is to pay forward this incredible gesture.  It is an all-to-rare occurrence these days to witness a truly altruistic act, particularly one as substantial as buying an upscale dinner for strangers.  However, I knew that the only thing that matched our joy was the contentment of the generous couple who had made our night so special.  Personally, I look forward to being on the other end of the transaction now and then.  If we can provide to another couple the happiness and lasting memory of a meal paid for by anonymous strangers, it will be well worth the cost of dinner. 

And for that reason, I probably shouldn’t tell you where we’re planning to eat on our anniversary

It’s been a little while since I checked in, but I thought I’d give a quick update.  I’m hard at work getting production versions of my sous vide heating immersion circulators ready for sale.  The picture above is of my current prototype, based largely off of the DIY design I published a few months ago.  As you can see, I’ve got a custom-made heating coil and a slightly prettier enclosure.  The controller I’ve selected is also far more user-friendly, and I’ve upgraded other components after months of intense testing (and a handful of literal meltdowns). 

Anyhow, I’m still working as hard as I can to bring you all a sub-$200 sous vide heating immersion circulator accurate to .1C!  If you’d like to be on the email list when the first units are ready for sale, please leave a comment below.

If you couldn’t tell, I’ve been slightly obsessed with molecular gastronomy (“modernist cuisine” if you’ve read the Nathan Myhrvold interview).  Unfortunately, I’m a long way off from having centrifuges, rotary evaporators and tanks of liquid nitrogen lying around my lab kitchen.  Luckily, some of the geekiest cooking techniques work very well with home kitchen substitutes, and dry ice sorbet is the perfect example.  Eric Rivera first introduced me to this technique during one of our periodic food experimentation meetings.  Depending on the sugar content of the sorbet base and the type of mixer attachment, you can produce anything from fluffy, soft, taffy-like sorbets like this one to desserts with the consistency of Dippin-Dots.  Last night I added lime zest, lime juice and a shot of tequila to the sorbet base, then topped the result with lime salt for the coldest, sweetest smoothest margarita sorbet you’ve ever tasted!

Note: Whenever you’re working with dry ice, WEAR THICK GLOVES. Having sensation in your appendages is a good thing.

Note Two: In the video, I say to bring the sorbet base to a boil.  Further testing has shown that’s really not necessary.  A simmer is usually sufficient for the sugar and water to be completely combined.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Nathan Myhrvold about his upcoming book, MODERNIST CUSINE: The Art & Science of Cooking (by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold & Chris Young).  But this is no ordinary cook book – it is a 4-volume tome totaling over 2200 pages on recipes and techniques you might think of as “molecular gastronomy”.  Although Nathan humbly denies the analogy, this book is poised to do for modern cooking what Escoffier did for classical cuisine a hundred years ago.

If you haven’t heard of Nathan Myhrvold, you’ll likely enjoy his Wikipedia bio, which should be cataloged somewhere between the biography of Leonardo da Vinci and The Adventures of Baron von Münchhausen, except that all of his accomplishments are verifiably true.  Nathan, a native Seattleite, is the founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a company that specializes in “the business of invention”.  His resume includes a PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics and awards in wildlife photography.  His archeological paleontological expeditions have discovered more T-Rex fossils than any other group, and he has published breakthrough research on the trajectory patterns of penguin feces.  He designs nuclear reactors and laser guns that zap mosquitoes in mid-air.  And he is a major food geek.

I’ve followed the sous vide thread on eGullet and I noticed that your first post was in March of 2004.  What began your interest in sous vide cooking?

I’ve been interested in cooking forever. I have this very elaborate kitchen at home. It’s the second-most technological kitchen in Seattle – the first is the one that we built over at the lab for the cookbook. But it’s only first because we moved a bunch of my stuff from home over there!

I had bought all of the equipment for sous vide a year or so before that.  I was working with it and getting some results, but I sort of assumed there’s this huge body of knowledge out there and I just didn’t happen to connect with it.  I put that [post on the eGullet forum] out there naively thinking people would say, ‘Fine here’s a bunch of techniques and recipes.’

I was naïve! What I discovered was, nobody actually had a clue. I don’t mean that rudely, but at that point in time (2004) Roca’s book hadn’t come out. The only books I found were books about either commercial food service or a couple of books that were in French, and which seemed to have very high temperatures and were not the real deal.

…A year or so in after I had published my major tables, and I was one of the big posters in the sous vide forum, I realized how little people knew, I saw how much interest there was, I saw how much misinformation there was and so that’s when I decided I really oughtta write a cook book.

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