"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!