Best Friend Forever in Cooking

This is a very exciting post for me. BFF above refers to Best Friend Forever and yes!, ingredients in .

your kitchen are meant to be with the other ingredients to make a better cooking. Have u had one of those days when your meal is seasoned well but not good enough to kick off your taste bud?

I’ve had that quite often. Well, this post will hopefully help you improve your cooking style, give you some inspirations and guidance in cooking. I’m also writing this post to inspire and guide myself in cooking to create better dishes. I will also keep updating this post so feel free to back and forth or bookmark the page

Basically, there are certain ways u can do to pair ingredients and flavours such as:

- Scientists way

Food science discovered that different ingredients would be good to be combined together if they share same components. Chefs, bartenders and food companies have been using this theory to create new innovative dishes and cocktails. Here is some of the example:

-       Blue cheese goes well with pineapple

-       Cauliflower goes well with cocoa

-       Strawberry goes well with coriander

-       Many more

They may sound strange in cooking but worked really well. I would love to try some of these and post the result, so stay tuned 

- Historic way

Before food science was invented, people learned to pair flavours from great-grandmother. Famous chef Heston Blumenthal used history as inspiration in his shows.  He has done an incredible dishes inspired by Alice in wonderland, British history, etc.

- Taste way

There are five basic tastes that tongue can taste: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. Umami can be described as savoury as well. It has a pleasant kind of taste that you can find when you eat meats or cheeses. Anyway, this last method is my favourite in cooking. It’s very playful in your mouth and easy to practice. Here is the list of what you can mix:

-       Sweet + sour

Everyone commonly uses this one. It is a common sense when you put too much vinegar, you will add some more sugar to make it balance. Sometimes I use this technique when making salad dressing, dealing with berries and yogurt. You can also find this kind of taste in tomato sauce, bbq sauce,

-       Spicy + Sweet

This combination could easily be found in Asian dishes such as Korean, Chinese and Thai

-       Salty + Sweet

This combination is one of my favourites. Salted caramels, sweet potato chips with sprinkle of salts, mashed sweet potato with crushed bacon, cinnamon doughnuts, churos with chocolate dipping, dessert wines with cheeses, apple and peanut butter, French fries and ice cream oohhh I cant stop.

Finally, here are the sums of the Best Friend Forever in cooking that I specially collected for you by watching many Jamie Oliver cooking DVDs and some research:

Meat:

Steak: oregano, rosemary, thyme, peach

Chicken: rosemary, nutmeg, bay leaves, thyme, mustard, chives, coriander, cumin, ginger, saffron, star anise, turmeric, garlic, cajun

 Lamb: Rosemary, thyme, anchovies, parsley, mint

Beef: Tarragon, sage, rosemary, thyme, bay leaves

Poultry: Thyme, sage, tarragon, marjoram

Pork: Thyme, tarragon, parsley, sage, marjoram, Apple, Chinese five spice

Bacon: anything

Seafood:

Seafood: lemon, lime, chilies, basil, asparagus, garlic, wines, salsa verde, oregano, parsley, chives, dill, tarragon, dill, fennel, bacon with shellfish

Shrimp: pineapple, plum

Vegetables:

Mushrooms: garlic, thyme, rosemary, parsley, apricot

 Cucumber – mints, coriander

 Spinach – mints

Carrots – thyme

Asparagus – anchovies and thyme

Spinach and cream – nutmeg

Fennel seeds – lemon zest

Beetroot – feta cheese

Others:

Sweet potato: lime, coriander

Apple: blue cheese, celery, cinnamon, ginger, maple, rosemary

Apricot: basil

Peach: grilled chicken

Risotto: celery, onion, wine, parmesan, lemon

Coffee: chilies, avocado

Olive oil: cooking, stir frying

Extra virgin olive oil: salad dressing

Salad boosters: sun dried tomatoes, lemon, anchovies

Bouquet garni: parsley, thyme, bay leaves, rosemary

I hope you find this post helpful. cheers! :)

"Modernist Cuisine at Home" by Nathan Myhrvold with Maxime Bilet cookbook review.

Another cookbook review! Wohoo! This is exciting because I loved this book. Nathan Myhrvold writes this book with Maxime Bilet and team. I bought this book from amazon and it cost me $86.49 (exclude shipping fee).  It is a very expensive book and the shipping fee is insane! So you might want to think twice before buying it. 

Basically, this book tells you heaps and heaps of information about modernist cuisines, including of introduction of the modernist equipments, ingredients, techniques, sous vide and varieties of recipes. But, the most important thing is the photography. It is really alive! No wonder I was disappointed with modernist cooking made easy book that I recently reviewed. However, I would say that these two cookbooks have a slightly different concept.

First of all, the MCME (Modernist Cuisine Made Easy) book gives you heaps of information about the techniques such as spherification, foaming, gelling, thickening and so on (that’s pretty much what they cover plus sous vide). On the other hand, MCAH (Modernist Cuisine at Home) book gives you a whole different perspective of modernist cuisine. This book covers more about cuisines. They did not cover techniques such as foaming, gelling or spherification but more on how to cook perfectly, how to use pressure-cooking instead. However, they also used the modernist ingredients such as lecitin and xantan gum and modernist tools such as whipping siphons and hand blender.

However, I would say this book is not suitable for everyone. I personally liked this book and I think it worth every penny I spent. If you don’t have any idea of what molecular gastronomy/ modernist cuisine/ modernist cooking is, I would not recommend this book to you. This book suits a person like me who has interest about modernist techniques and wanted to know how could it be applied in daily cooking.  

This book is not really an introduction book. To practice these techniques written in the book, it takes willingness, interests and it is pretty expensive to be practiced because they use some tools and ingredients that home cooks don’t use. Also, if you are a chef or home cooks who want to enhance your skills in cooking and knowledge, this book is perfect. Modernist cooking is the next level of normal cooking.

Moving onto the content, this book has plenty and plenty of amazing pictures and recipes. I don’t know if all of the recipes will fit into your taste bud but they really do look amazing. If you are curious to try some of the recipes, you can go their website (www.modernistcuisine.com). They put some of the recipes up on the website. From the website itself, you can tell that they are really serious about this stuff.

My favourite part of the book is sous vide. The book covers different method you can try to achieve sous vide other than using the expensive sous vide water bath machine, such as oven, sink, cooler and rice cooker. It also covers methods to seal the meat without using the vacuum sealer (how cool is that). Additionally, this book also comes with a portable, thinner and smaller recipe book, which actually contains all the recipes in the big book. I would definitely try these recipes and share my experience with you guys. So, please stay tuned :)

I hope you found this review helpful and I'm looking forward to see you soon :)

"Modernist Cooking Made Easy" book review

Last month I purchased 2 cooking books from amazon.com. The first one is “Modernist Cuisine at Home” by Nathan Myhrvoid and team and the second one is “Modernist Cooking Made Easy” by Jason Logsdon. They both cost me $153.61 in total, which is pretty expensive for me. The first book I’m going to talk about is the book by Jason Logsdon. This book cost me $22.84. When I was about to purchase this book, I read a lot of good reviews on Amazon website, so, I decided to give it a go.

Before I purchased this book. I’ve already used their website (modernistcookingmadeeasy.com) as a resources for molecular recipes, tips and tricks. So, it’s not surprising that I recognized some of the contents of the book. As I mentioned before, I read a lot of good review about this book, so, I didn’t think that much when I purchased it and it’s only 20 bucks anyway. However, when I received the book, I ran through the pages and I realized that the book is black and white. I was a little bit disappointed because the pictures looked sad in black and white colour only.

At the back cover, it says that the book contains:

• An in-depth look at many of the most popular modernist ingredients such as Xanthan gum, sodium alginate, carrageenan, and agar agar. 

My opinion: Go check out their website and you’ll find as much information as the book has, and even more.

• A detailed exploration of modernist techniques like spherification, gelling, foaming, thickening, and sous vide.

My opinion: I’d say that the website has more information than the book. They both even have the same wording style

• More than 80 recipes for gel, foams, sauces, caviars, airs, syrups, gel noodles and marshmallows.

My opinion: The website has 23 recipes only. So, if you are looking for more recipes, this book has plenty! However, not every recipe has a picture of how it looks like.

•  Directions for how to use modernist techniques and ingredients to make your everyday cooking more convenient.

My opinion: Both website and book complement each other. Some information you might find on their website instead of book and the other way around. As an example, when I wrote about spherification on my previous post about yogurt sphere, I found that the website gives a better explanation about the differences between direct vs reverse spherification and it has a colorful image too, which is interesting.

•  More than 400 sous vide time and temperature combinations across 175 cuts of meat, types of fish and vegetables.

My opinion: The book contains more information than the website. More importantly, it contains sous vide time and temperature for different type of cuts of meats, duck, pork, fish and vegetables, which is not available on their website.

Overall rating: 3 star out of 5.

I would say that this book is just alright because you can find the most of the information on their website. Even though it contains plenty of recipes, not every recipe equipped with image/photo.

That is the end of the review and let me know in the comment below what you think about the book and if you suggest other book. I’d love to hear that and happy reading!

Chicken Skewer with Spicy Yogurt dipping Sphere

Spherification is one of the most “wow” techniques in modernist cuisine or molecular gastronomy. In the previous post, I’ve used this technique to make caviars. This time, I’m going to talk about yogurt sphere, which is much bigger than caviars. The form of sphere looks and works exactly like egg yolk. It has a membrane that protects and seals liquid. Once you break the membrane, the liquid will flow out of it like a river. How did it happen? Basically, the membrane will start to set when calcium meets sodium in a bath setting.

There are two types of spherification. The first one is direct spherification, the technique that I used in making caviar the other day. In this technique, the flavoured liquid mixed with sodium alginate and dropped in calcium bath. After 1-3 minutes, the sphere should be taken out of the bath, rinsed off in water bath. The spheres produced through this method should be consumer immediately as the membrane continues to gel until it becomes solid.

I used the second spherification method to create this yogurt sphere, which is reverse spherification. It is the other way around of the first one. The membrane will start to gel/set when a flavoured liquid mixed with calcium and dropped in sodium bath. In this case, I didn’t add any calcium to the yogurt because it is already high in calcium. After few minutes, rinse off the spheres in water bath and ready to be served.

This recipe is very simple and easy to make. It is also great for BBQ for this upcoming summer. The funny thing is when I was trying to take a photo of complete spheres and skewer, the spheres kept sliding down and sticking to each other so I had to separate and rush taking the picture.

For marinade:

- Olive oil

-Salt & pepper

-3tbs Hot Cajun chicken powder

Ingredients:

-500gr chicken thigh, diced

-2 lemon, sliced

-1 green capsicum, diced

-1 red capsicum, diced

Sphere yogurt:

-Greek plain yogurt

-Hot paprika powder

-Garlic powder
-Salt & Pepper

Sodium water bath:

-2gr sodium alginate

-500ml water

-Water bath to rinse

Tools:

-Skewer

-Measuring spoon

-2 Flat bottom containers

-Hand blender

-Spherification spoon

Steps:

1.  Combine the chicken with marinade ingredients overnight

2. Mix the sodium with water using hand blender and let it rest in the fridge overnight
3. Soak skewers for 10 minutes in water
4. Preheat the grill
5. Thread (in order) chicken, capsicum, chicken, capsicum, lemon and chicken onto skewer
6. Spray skewer with oil and grill until cooked

    Yogurt Sphere:

  1. Combine all ingredients

  2. Scoop the mixture and slowly and closely pour it into the sodium bath. Leave for 30 second and stir slowly so the sphere is coated evenly. 

  3. After 1-2 minutes, remove the sphere using spherification spoon, tap off the excess and rinse in water bath

  

     Spheres could be stored in water bath and fridge for several hours. If you have any problem in getting the right shape, freeze the yogurt before hand using spherification mold. I found it is a little bit challenging in getting the perfect shapes. I don't have any spherification mold as it is very expensive here in Australia (almost 50 bucks for a small mold, crazy right!). However, there are some tricks to help you getting the perfect sphere such as:

- Use flat bottom containers

- Place the spoon as close as possible to the water bath before pouring

- Pour slowly

- Use half round measuring spoon to scoop the mixture

- Don't forget to stir the sphere

- Tap off the excess is compulsory

Good luck and happy cooking :)

Nutella Powder

Who doesn’t love Nutella? I’m not a big but huge fan of Nutella. Today I made the famous Nutella powder and serve it with home made Churros (instead of cinnamon and sugar). The chemical of the day is Tapioca Maltodextrin/ Maltodextrin. Basically, tapioca maltodextrin turns high fat liquid into powder. It was derived from tapioca and commonly used in food industry to make sauce, sport drinks and baby food. Molecular Gastronomy chefs use tapioca maltodextrin to take their dishes to another level. Some famous powders ever made include caramel, olive oil, bacon and Nutella. Today I’m going to show you of how I came up with Nutella.

It is very simple to use. All you need to do is just throw the chemical and high fat liquid (like Nutella) into food processor and let it mix for a couple of minute. There are no good ratios for this...I followed a recipe on the Internet but it was useless. I ended up adjust it myself to create the texture I wanted. Just to give you an illustration, for this recipe I used 100 gr Nutella and 110 gr Maltodextrin. You don’t wanna throw everything together at once but try to add the maltodextrin a little by a little. If you don't have a food processor like me, you can use hand blender but it will take more time to do it and also more difficult.

You can also try this technique to convert infused oil or other liquid flavour into powder. However, you have to make sure that the liquid is fat enough, or you can try to add heavy cream if the liquid has low fat content. Here are the pictures of what I made today. I hope you give it a go because it is pretty easy and you will be surprised because the powder will melt in your mouth just like eating jams!

Soy Sauce Foam

Another post! Yeay! Exams and assignments are finally over! I’m finally free like free-cage eggs hens! I’m so excited to cook and try new stuff again. Last month I bought Soy Lecithin and didn’t get a chance to try it out. Finally yesterday I made something very easy from Lecithin, which is soy sauce foams. If you want to try “molecular gastronomy” or also called “modernist cuisine”, this technique is perfect for you to begin with.

  

Basically, Lecithin is an emulsifying agent. It is commonly used in chocolate making to give a velvety smooth taste, as it brings together the cocoa and cocoa butter. However, it can also be used to create foams, mousses, airs, etc in modernist cuisine. It is very simple and easy to make. However, you don’t want to put too much lecithin in your liquid because it would change the taste of the liquid.

The basic comparison is 1:200 = 1g of lecithin for 200ml liquid. All you need to do is just combine these two ingredients together in a flat and wide bottom container and mix it using hand blender. After few seconds, you will see foams coming through. Once it stops foaming, take the layer of foam out of the container and continue mixing using blender until you get enough. You can store the mixture in fridge while preparing the dishes. However, it might be hard to be used for thicker liquid and oily solution.

As you can see from the picture, I served my sushi with soy sauce foam, ginger pickles and wasabi paste.  For soy sauce foam, I combine the soy sauce with water, sugar and salt. You can adjust the recipe to your liking. It tastes just like normal soy sauce but it increases the eating experience. So, try this out to impress the guests in your party.

Beside this, I have nutella powder post coming up and also few books about modernist cuisine that I recently purchased. So, stay tuned!

Fruit Spaghetti

Making Fruit Spaghetti with Agar-agar powder

The other day when I bought the chemicals for my molecular gastronomy experiment, I also got the spaghetti kit. Finally, today I decided to make something out of it because I was so bored and stuck with my assignments. I’ve been planning on doing this since last week when I found this video on Youtube about making meatball spaghetti using agar-agar and chocolate. And today, I finally did it! Yeay! I’m pretty proud of how it turned out even though the sauce wasn’t really what I expected.

The sauce that I used is ready use one since I’ve been very busy with college and need to catch up with all of the assignments before my brother comes next week. I’m super excited! But I think I won’t be able to do all of them since I’m such a lazy ass. This brain just doesn’t work if it’s not urgent. I hate it. I even bothered my self by taking ginkgo billoba pills to boost my brain function but no use! LOL.

Anyway, I want to discuss a little bit about our super star today, which is agar-agar powder. Thanks to Minora Tarazaemon (in Japan) who firstly discovered agar-agar. In fact, agar could actually be found in the cell walls of seaweed (Agarophyte). Agar is being used a lot in making dessert in Asia. It is also known as vegetarian gelling agent and derived by boiling.

This recipe below will give you an idea of how to use agar-agar and how you can make your own creation with this spaghetti! It is very easy to follow you’ll have a lot of fun making it. The spaghetti kit does come with everything you need such as:

Agar-agar powder

2 disposable syringes

5 tubing

Recipe for basic agar noodle

Additionally, I also bought canned mango, Ferrero Rocher chocolates and Raspberry ready-to-use sauce. If you would like to make this recipe, I would advice you to buy the real mango because to be honest the canned one is not nice and totally has different flavor and taste. Mango is just not in season at the moment here in Australia and so hard to find. So, I had no choice but to use canned mango. For the sauce, you can use make your own using this easy recipe http://www.food.com/recipe/raspberry-sauce-33624

So, let’s get started:

Ingredients:

5g Agar powder

300ml mango Liquid

1.    Combine mango liquid and agar in a saucepan and stir using whisk until agar powder dissolved.

2.    Prepare the iced water bath.

3.    Bring the mixture to boil (add sugar if needed). Keep stirring and allow the mixture to boil for one minute and remove from heat.

4.    Let the mixture cool slightly (1-2 minutes) and fill up the syringes with the mixture.

5.    Inject the mixture in the syringes into the tubing and place in water bath for 1 minute or until set.

6.    Use the other syringes to inject air into the tubing to push the noodle out.

Tips:

1. ·      Ensure tubing and syringes are washed before use
2. ·      Run water or oil through the tubing before using to allow the noodle to be extract easier
3. ·      The base mixture will start to set once the temperature goes down. To prevent, put the mixture in the bowl, and place the bowl in the pan filled with hot water. The same way when you do fondue.
4. ·      If you find trouble in getting the noodle out of the tubing, put it in warm water for a few second before inject it with air.

Mango Liquid:

Blend water and mangoes in a blender until smooth. You don’t want the base mixture to be too thick or too thin. Add water a little by little so you can adjust it easily. Strain the base mixture and use as needed.

Water bath:

In a medium stainless bowl, place cold water and some ice cubes

Serving Suggestion:

Place the chocolate on top of noodle and pour the sauce and now you have it!

Let me know in comment bellow if you have any questions or want to share your own creation. Otherwise, have fun! :)