The authors of Modernist Cuisine: Maxime Bilet, Chris Young and Nathan Myhrvold

In 2003 Chris Young had an epiphany of a meal at The Fat Duck outside London, and by the end of the meal he knew he had to work with Heston Blumenthal. Things worked out well and after a stage he was hired to build and lead the experimental kitchen at The Fat Duck. In 2007 he returned to Seattle to work with Nathan Myhrvold who at that time was very active on the eGullet forum sharing his research on the sous vide cooking technique. The project that started off as a book on sous vide eventually grew into Modernist Cuisine with 6 volumes spanning more than 2400 pages. After many delays (one being due to Amazon’s drop test which showed that the casing wasn’t sturdy enough for the books totaling 20 kg) Modernist Cuisine is ready for release in March, and will be presented at The Flemish Primitives event in Oostende, Belgium on March 14. That’s one more reason to visit the event!

Martin Lersch: Congratulations with Modernist Cuisine – it is a truly amazing accomlishment! Will you be present in Oostende?
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I’m quite fond of carbonated water, and last summer I bought a water carbonator so I wouldn’t have to carry all the water home from the shop. The working principle of the carbonater is very simple – a bottle filled with cold tap water is subjected to a pressure of carbon dioxide for a couple of seconds, allowing some of it to dissolved in the water. The result is an instant sparkling water. But even with the carbonation there is something missing. The big difference between my homemade instant carbonated water and bottled mineral water is the mineral content. True, tap water may also contain a number of minerals, but this varies and there are huge regional differences. In Norway most water is very soft (i.e. low in calcium and magnesium) and has a very low mineral content. But tap water rarely has a desirable mix of minerals compared with the really good tasting mineral waters.
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It’s soon time for the third edition of The Flemish Primitives and registration has now opened. The Flemish Primitives wants to challenge Belgian gastronomy and bring together chefs from all over the world to meet and exchange ideas built on innovation. The top name this year is without doubt the chef René Redzepi of Noma, the world’s best restaurant according to Restaurant magazine, but “the Flemish primitives” will be present (a group of Belgian chefs) as well as guests and scientists. And there are a lot of new things going on as well. (more…)

Update: I’ve written up a short post about no-knead bread in Norwegian – Brød uten å kna – to accompany my appearance in the popular science program Schrödingers katt.

I know – since the NY Times article about Jim Lahey in 2006 the no-knead breads have been all over the internet, newspapers and now even appear in numerous books – this is really old news. But the no-knead breads are really tasty as well, so I hope you’ll forgive me! When I give popular science talks about chemistry in the kitchen the one thing I’m always asked about is the no-knead recipe I show, so I thought it was about time to publish a recipe. Surely, everyone can google it – but regrettably many (if not most?) recipes are given in non-metric, volume based units – even Jim Lahey’s original recipe. And for baking this is really a drawback because the density of flour depends so much on how tight you pack it. Oh yeah, and I will also try to explain why and how the no-knead bread works.
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Mixing tomato ketchup with horseradish causes it to gel over night

A while ago a reader sent me a very interesting question regarding a gelled seafood sauce. It is made by mixing tomato ketchup with horseradish and his question was very simple: Why and how does this sauce gel? He speculated about pectin (which is present in tomatoes), but wondered why ketchup then doesn’t gel on it’s own? And he also noted that horseradish ground with water does not have any gel like properties. So how come they can form a gel when mixed together?
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Remember the public cooking lectures at Harvard that I mentioned in September? According to the website they are *very popular* and the auditoriums are packed! This is good news, but the best thing is that the lectures are made available through YouTube and iTunes for free! So far 9 of the sessions are available, but I guess all will be available soon. If the picture is difficult to read, here’s the list of all the lectures:
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Wheat beers such as hefeweizen, weissbier and wit are all light beers made from a mix of malted barley and wheat. In southern Germany the typical hefeweizen is fermented with a non-flocculating yeast, and it is not filtered before bottling. This gives the beer a yeasty, bread like flavor accompanied by aromas reminiscent of banan, cloves (we’ve encountered that combo before), coriander and citrus. I’ve just begun to read up on brewing and my first batch of a partial mash hefeweizen is bubling along. As I pitched the liquid hefeweizen yeast into the wort I decided to keep a tiny amount for baking. If hefeweizen beer is reminiscent of bread, why not use the yeast for making bread? In particular I was curious whether some of the aroma top notes characterizing hefeweizen beer would stand out in bread made using the same yeast.
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The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (“SEAS”) and the Alícia Foundation have developed a new General Education science course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter”. The class is limited to currently enrolled Harvard undergrads, but the general public will have an opportunity to attend topic-related public lectures given by the guest chefs and faculty affiliated with the course. The lectures are not a replication of the course, but will consist of a brief introduction by Harvard professors followed by a broad-based talk by the chef. The first public lecture tomorrow features Harold McGee, Ferran Adria and José Andrés, so it would be well worth a visit if you live nearby. More info on venue, times and schedule here.

[Thank's to Matthew Pierce for the tip!]

Cream chargers containing 8 g of nitrous oxide each (N₂O) to be used with an iSi whipper for whipping cream, making foams/espumas or pressurized infusions.

A little more than a week ago Dave Arnold posted a great, new technique: pressure infusion using a conventional iSi whipper! Just think of it – the whipper has been around for decades, and years a go Ferran Adrià pioneered it’s use for espumas. Several have suggested it’s use for carbonation of fruit. But no one had thought of utilizing the whipper for infusions – until August 11th when Dave Arnold of Cooking issues posted the results of his experiments in “Infusion Profusion: Game-Changing Fast ‘N Cheap Technique”. The first blogger to pick up the technique and post about it on August 12th was Linda of playing with fire and water who termed it a revolutionary technique. A couple of days later, on August 17th Aki and Alex of Ideas in food posted a combined pressurized infusion of basil and marination of mozzarella. And then on August 20th James of Jim Seven describes his results comparing conventional cold brewed coffee to cold pressure brewed coffee. It’s really fascinating how fast the idea spread, and it illustrates the benefits of an open and sharing approach to food innovations.
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The website to accompany Modernist cuisine is up now. It showcases stunning pictures and example pages, the complete table of contents available in pdf format, details on the exceptional printing quality (stochastic screening and wide gamut inks in case you wondered…) as well as introductions to each volume: History and fundamentals, Techniques and equipment, Animals and plants, Ingredients and preparations, Plated dish recipes – and each page of these pages has additional pictures. It turns out that in addition to the five main volumes there is a 350 page spiral-bound kitchen manual printed on waterproof, tear-resistant synthetic paper (!) with condensed versions of the recipes. And their FAQ page let me know that the complete word count is 650,000. I’ve been looking forward to these books for quite some time, but seeing the pictures just got me to start counting down the days left until December 1st.
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