Modernist Cooking - Centrifuges

So we here at Man Meets Stove have been admiring the modernist chefs use of centrifuges to make interesting things, like Pea Butter (blended frozen peas spun in a centrifuge for 3 hours to make a puck of pea starch, pea oil, and a little "pea butter".  Apparently it is absolutely the sex of peas.  

We have started looking for an inexpensive lab centrifuge to try this miracle substance, and ran across this advice: 

Rule #1 - Never buy a centrifuge when the eBay address is Yucca Mountain, Nevada or Hanford, Washington nuclear facilities.

Rule #2 - See rule #1 

- JBailey

Thanks, JBailey.  Duly noted.


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Image: Marco Torresin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sushi Cupcakes!

A Facebook friend of Jim's, Jen Kimura, posted that she was preparing for her mom's "Cupcake Wars Party" and then shortly thereafter started posting these terrific pictures of cupcakes made to look like sushi in a bento box! 

Jim asked her about them and she was gracious enough to tell us:

"I saw some posts about rice crispy sushi, but that was gross to me. And using coconut shavings was just too much coconut, so these are white jimmies/sprinkles- and much more rice-like. The decorations are shaped "Now and Later" candies, cut up gummy worms, and "Swedish Fish" candies. Some people use green "Fruit by the Foot" for the nori [sushi seaweed wrapper]. But its hard to find THAT MUCH solid green Fruit by the Foot. So I use black/ dark brown wrappers- which are not gross and sticky when you handle them - unlike Fruit by the Foot.

When I'm lazy I use remade pillsbury classic white mix and pillsbury whipped white frosting. When I'm not lazy I use Magnolia Bakery's Vanilla Cupcake and Buttercream recipe.

They are packed in sushi bento boxes because it's easier to transport and cuter. Because they are in the boxes, I make the mini cupcakes. Also, regular sized cupcakes are not properly proportioned. The Ginger is Now and Laters, the wasabi is green frosting, the soy
sauce is chocolate syrup.  Hope that helps!"

It sure does Jen.  Thanks so much for sharing your skillz with us!

Jen got her decorations at Classic Cake Decorations in Garden Grove, California.

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Cookies! Nutter Betters

Soundtrack:  Anything by Sir Mix-a-Lot

You know how this goes, it is after work and you are craving Peanut Butter Cookies and a little nookie. Or is that just us?  Well we can help you with the former and you can use these cookies to get the latter.  So get on it.  The cookies that is. 

Tom searched around and found a few hundred peanut butter cookie recipes. Since he's actually good for a few hundred cookies, that coincidence worked out well.  Your gonna need a tool. No not that tool, a stand mixer.  Otherwise you'll have to stir until your arm falls off and you might need that arm later. 

Engage your inner Nutter and get your supplies ready. These are from scratch, so you kitchen lightweights are going to have to sit this one out.

Supplies:

Unsalted butter – 5 sticks

Creamy peanut butter – Big Tub

Quick oatmeal oats.

White Flour – 2 cups

Baking powder 2 teaspoons

Baking soda – 4 teaspoons

Sugar: white, light brown, and/or dark brown - 2 1/4 cups

Eggs - 2

Cinnamon

Vanilla

Powdered sugar

Set the pound (or so) of unsalted butter out to warm up to room temperature. In a medium sized bowl mix the flour, two teaspoons (that’s the little spoon) of baking powder and four teaspoons of baking soda. If you had to drag the baking soda out of the bottom of the fridge then you should probably consider buying a new box. Whisk (stir briskly) that mixture to thoroughly mix together the magic powders and set it aside.
Set your hotbox to heat up to 350.

Drop the pound of butter into the bowl of your mixer, and add in a cup of creamy peanut butter. Add more (up to say a half cup) if you want it more peanuttie.  Yes "peanuttie" is a word. This is the big flavor deal with these cookies. A glob of peanut butter one way or the other won't hurt anything, so feel free to experiment.  We know she will. 

Since this only has a pound of butter so far, we need to get the calorie count up, so add in 2¼ cups of sugar.  White, light brown, or dark brown in any combination is fine.   Yes, we are still talking about sugar.  Use what you gots, sugar-wise.  All it will change is the flavor, and it will still be a killer cookie, so knock yourself out. Drop the sugar into the mixer.  Turn the stand mixer on.  As it mixes, if the sides of the bowl in your mixer are getting all gloppy, then scrape it down from the sides.  Only use your finger to scrape the bowl if 1.) no one is watching and 2.) the machine is off and unplugged.  Your probably gonna need that finger later too.  Safety first.  Better yet, use a rubber spatula, machine OFF. 

Toss in two eggs (no shells please) and mix again. Yeah, next time you will want to start those on low speed. WAY less mess that way.  

So mix in the eggs and add a few good shakes of cinnamon and then a nice splash of vanilla. Add in the flour mixture by thirds until it is all in there. You may have to scrape the sides again, machine OFF. Now if you went crazy with the peanut butter, here is where you would add an extra quarter cup of flour and mix it in.

The dough will be really light at this point, so we add two healthy cups of oats, use the “quick oats” or the slow ones, but if you are going to use the slow ones whip out the chefs knife and give the oats a few rounds of chopping, or run them in the food processor for a few short quick bursts.  You might be used to a few quick short bursts, it’s okay.  Mix those oats in and you are ready to bake.

Now scoop the dough out onto greased or buttered cookie sheets lined up like soldiers  ready to load.  If you care at all what these look like or how easily they will be to assemble, then use an ice-cream scoop or big spoon to keep the cookie size more or less consistent. Bake at 350 for about 10 to 12 minutes. If they start to burn, then that was too long, duh.  Set ‘em out on racks to cool.

To make the filling, clean your mixer bowl and toss another stick of butter in your mixer (awesome, right?).  You can use either melted butter or room temperature butter. Mix with an equal amount of creamy peanut butter and then add powdered sugar until you think it is good. Start with a cup and a half of powdered sugar and then taste and add, taste and add, until you like the taste. 

Now this is complicated. To build the Nutter Betters, take a cookie and put some peanut butter sugar goo creme on it.  Put another cookie on-a-topa the first cookie to make a goo sandwich. Repeat till all the cookies are cookie sandwiches.  Try not to eat them all standing there in the kitchen, it is embarrassing.  

Now about that nookie...

Go find your Significant Other.  Have them close their eyes and stick out their tongue. Open a cookie sandwich and slide the cookie creme down their tongue.  We hope you can take it from there.  We know we can. 

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Tapas

"I love the samples at Costco. It's like having Tapas" - E.P.

Pickling Pro-Tips

Saw a post by a friend of ours, Donnie Dillon. He was making these Sun Pickles.  We asked him for his pro-tips on pickling and here was his response:

"Pro Tip #1. Just do it. Making pickles is literally as easy as boiling water. It requires no special equipment or exotic supplies. A few fresh herbs, a pinch of salt, an maybe a splash of vinegar is all it takes.

Pro Tip #2. Start with small batches. It is as easy to make 1 quart of pickles as it is to make 5 gallons and small batches let you play with herbs and flavors until you find a profile that you like.

Pro Tip #3. Don't stop at cucumbers. Try fresh okra, or cauliflower, beans, onions, etc. Mix and match! One of the best batches I have ever made was pickles eggs and onions. So far the only thing that turned out really badly was carrots."

We would add that if you use up a jar of pickles that you like, you can reuse the pickling juices to make another batch.  Just re-load with cucumbers, or whatever!

Enjoy!

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In Progress...

Holy crap. Editing our cookbook takes a Loooong time. :-)

Pack your own food onto airplanes, the Chef's way....

So if you can't stand airline food, and who can?  This article discusses some tasty ideas.  For example, freeze shrimp in a container overnight, and put cocktail sauce into 2-ounce (TSA-friendly) containers.  By the time you're completely uncomfortable and flirting with the stewardess, the shrimp should be defrosted.

You can also pre-cook pasta (do NOT go beyond al dente!  Ever!) and then ask the flight attendant for some tea water (minus the tea) to heat the pasta.  Genius!  Add some feta and cherry tomatoes.  Nosh.

2-ounce containers of yogurt can be frozen and then defrost as your groped through security.  Don't forget to wear your special undies!  

Tomato salads!  Fruit salads.
Get creative.  We like to bring extra-stinky cheese.  Okay don't do that, we will laugh at you on the evening news.  Just a little.

Bento Lunch Boxes

When we were kids, we had to carry our food in the skin of the animal our parents removed it from.  We walked to school in a Stage 1 Smog Alert, uphill, both ways.  My how times have changed! 

As our focus here is usually on teaching fellow underarm-scratchers how to cook, it isn’t very often we have the opportunity to delve into matters of children.  Seems like we found the right person to help us change that!

A friend of ours, Lorelei Cress, has been posting to Facebook the lunchbox-bento boxes she makes for her daughter “E” and is consistently impressing the hell out of us and anyone that sees them.  They are super-cool pieces of food art, and are just plain FUN as well.  So we asked Lorelei for an interview…

MMS: How did you get the idea for the bento boxes?

Lorelei: It's important that your readers understand that the lunches I make for E aren't technically bentos at all - they only take inspiration from them. I honestly don't remember when I first got the notion - but I know I saw pics online (probably through someone's FB post, but possibly on Flickr) of really cute bento-style lunches, read that Japanese mothers do this as an expression of love for their children, and thought it was something unique I could do to show my love for E and make healthy homemade lunches more fun. After looking at some blogs by American mothers who are doing their twist on Japanese bentos, I became more confident that I could actually pull it off with my time and budget constraints. 

MMS: What did/does E think of them?

When I just asked E what she thinks of her lunches, she said "They're beautiful!" She likes to take a peek at them every morning before I close up the lids of the boxes and ooh and aah over the contents. I tell her she has to eat at least some of the veggies in order to eat the dessert, and so far, she has complied (she knows if she doesn't, she won't get dessert in the next lunch!). 

MMS: Did you get any specialized tools to make them? Special foods?

 
I did acquire a lot of tools - the ones I use the most are the metal cookie and vegetable cutters to cut veggies, fruit, cheese, etc. into shapes and/or create designs. I need to get some more cookie cutters so that I have more seasonal shapes available - I have tons of leaf shapes and a few Christmas shapes, but nothing particularly spring-ish or summery. Sometimes I've been forced to improvise and cut shapes by hand, and the results have often been amusing. I hope to get better at that as time goes by!

I also get a lot of use out of the sandwich cutters that cut the sandwich into shapes while sealing the sides so the filling doesn't leak out. Ones I don't use as often but still love are the Japanese egg molds that make a hard-boiled egg resemble a bunny, bear, heart, fish, etc., colorful food picks shaped like animals, leaves, etc., silicone cups to hold blueberries, Goldfish crackers, etc., and shaped sauce bottles/containers for dressings, dips, etc. Bento supplies can be found on Amazon, E-bay or through Japanese/Asian specialty stores online - but pay attention to shipping costs before purchasing, which can be equal to the value of your merchandise!

As far as foods go, anything miniature is perfect for bento boxes. Small fruits like berries, grapes, clementines or satsumas, petite apples (you can find small Gala, Jazz, and others by the bag at the grocery store), Forelle pears, kumquats, etc. are all wonderful. Baby bell peppers, broccoli florets, grape or cherry tomatoes, snow peas, sliced cucumbers, baby carrots and celery sticks are great ways to get some veggies in. Grocery stores sell containers of mini muffins (multiple flavors in one package!) and mini cupcakes that are perfectly sized for kids' lunches. Sara Lee makes mini burger buns that are great for small sandwiches, and Smuckers Uncrustables frozen PB&Js are great to have on hand for those days when you don't have time to make a sandwich (which for me, are far too many!). Sometimes it's a challenge to have enough fresh produce to create variety in her lunches without wasting some due to spoilage. If you can get your produce from a local farmer's market, it'll last longer.

MMS: How many have you made? 

So far I've made 89 bento-inspired lunches for E - four per week since she's started school, with the exception of sick days and vacation days. Fridays are "pizza day" at school, so I give myself Fridays off and let her have pizza for lunch.

MMS: How do you come up with new ideas?

Some ideas for designs have come from other lunches I've seen online, and some have been inspired by the weather/season, holidays, and sometimes just by what I have available. For instance, I had a little red wax heart that I'd cut from her Babybel cheese and thought it looked a little like a cat's nose - and I had cheddar and swiss cheeses to make the face, mane and whiskers, green gumdrops and yellow sprinkles for eyes, a little strip of grape tomato for a mouth, and voila! A lion.

I have been stuck in a rut ingredients-wise, and need to branch out so that she gets more variety. Some friends have sent fabulous ideas for vegetarian sandwich fillings, and I have yet to try many of them. Usually it's time constraints that keep me from doing more experimentation. I need to find a way around that and prepare stuff in advance so that I have it on hand and don't have to try and make it AND assemble it the morning of.

MMS: Any fun stories about the boxes?

I've heard that some of the teachers who supervise at lunch time and some of her classmates make a point of checking out her lunches every day, so that's nice to hear. And of course, my friends on Facebook always have sweet things to say - usually something along the lines of "Will you make my lunches, too?"

Thanks for your interest!

Thank you Lorelei!  Your food art is AMAZING!

Pictures:

Bento 6 - Vegetarian bologna & cheese pocket sandwich (with cheddar cat cutout), broccoli and cherry tomatoes, Babybel cheese, apples. Snack: clementine and mini blueberry muffin.

Bento 8 - Peanut butter and honey sandwich with cheese flowers, Babybel cheese, grapes, snowpea "leaves" and bell pepper flowers and butterfly. Snack: clementine and mini blueberry muffin.

Bento 36 - Uncrustables sandwich with cheese stars, apple slices, carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes, Babybel cheese. Snack: mini cranberry orange muffin and clementine. Dessert: chocolate Teddy Grahams.

Bento 41 - Uncrustables sandwich with cheese stars, grape tomatoes, celery sticks and orange slices. Snack: mini pumpkin spice muffin and apple slices. Dessert: Meiji "Pucca Choco Pretzel" from Japan.

Bento 44 - Uncrustables sandwich with cheddar gingerbread man, checkered apple slices, celery and carrot sticks and Babybel cheese. Snack: green seedless grapes, mini cranberry-orange muffin. Dessert: Meiji "Hello Panda" chocolate-filled cookies from Japan.

Murder Most Foul

We know the Holiday season is long past, but we just laugh our heads off everytime we see this post from Salt and Fat.

Link http://saltandfat.com/post/2166654276/friend-of-the-site-jelisa-castrodale-has-a-little

Mandelbratwurst

Priceless.  Nothing more to say.

Rules of Chef's Club

The First Rule of Chef's Club is Don't Talk About Chef's Club. 

The Second Rule of Chef's Club is Never Admit You Used the Microwave.

Photo by kokopinto (flickr).

Chocolate Lab

Chocolate.

How much chocolate is in that bar, and how much milk and sugar? These are the questions that move men’s minds, well, when they aren't thinking about boobs.

Really if you are going to cook with chocolate, eat it, or melt it and drizzle it all over the slowly building curvy under-edge of...well, never mind…you really need to know which chocolate is best to use for various applications.  Tom is here for you.  Tom took one for the team and taste-tested a whole array of chocolate bars.

There are more than just Hershey bars out there, and if this is news to you, we have some other things to break to you. For instance, there are at least 17 types of bra clasp and as many shapes of breast as there are wine glasses, coffee mugs, and melon analogies.  So open your eyes up!  There is a great deal of variety out there in the world and it seems you’ve been missing it.  We had to go out and buy the Chocolate Blanc, and the 100% chocolate. Aside from that, Tom had seven kinds of chocolate already in the cupboard.  If you count the fruit and spice flavored chocolates Tom had 12 varieties in the pantry.  Yeah, he’s an underachiever.

The photograph is really a very simple guideline, it only represents big jumps in percentages and ignores all the "other" ingredients nor does it look at where the beans are from, or the number of sources. 

Running the numbers:

White chocolate, is in fact…Not...Chocolate.  It is cocoa butter with milk and sugar.  Tom only put it on the cutting board so that we could tell you that.

The Hershey bar is good if you like that sort of thing.  To Tom’s taste it contains a little too much "other stuff” like milk, and not enough chocolate.

“World Famous” fund raiser chocolate had a bit more flavor but every bit as much “other stuff” in it and was very milky. So if you really are not looking for chocolate but more just something sweet to eat, it is okay.  Tom will be embarrassed for you, but it’s alright, Jim would probably eat it.

Bakers Simi-sweet Chocolate had a very hard texture which is fine in a baking product. Nice big chocolate taste and once it melted, it was nice and sweet as well.

The 34% chocolate bar's packaging didn't seem to want to tell us how much chocolate it had on board but it was nice to eat and had the distinctive milk chocolate flavor but was a bit too sweet for Tom’s palate.

Now the 54% chocolate bar was rich chocolaty deliciousness on the tongue, it melted into warm sweet goodness rapidly and was VERY chocolaty. Tom ended up eating most of this one, and letting the flavors mellow before he refreshed the palette with coffee. The milky taste was gone at this level of chocolate, replaced with a creamy smoothness to the flavor.

Now we jump to serious levels of chocolate and the dryness starts to come into play and with some brands, a bitterness creeps into the flavor.  Ghiradelli, however, is just a really big chocolate flavor.  Tom crunched this up a bit when ate the sample rather than letting it slowly melt.  Hey, we are guys after all, people to do, places to cook, and meat to broil.

Tom sank his teeth into the Godiva 85% chocolate and WHOOP, there it is.  Dry and a bit bitter, but in a spice way that he liked.  This level of chocolate is why Tom is the lab rat here.  Jim’s skull would have exploded out the back of his head like a sniper’s bullet.  Tom is a professional Chocophile.  Magna cum Laude.

The Ghiradelli 100% dark chocolate is not really for eating at all. Even for Tom.  It is very dry and bitter, all the while tasting INTENSELY of chocolate.  It really is too bitter to leave in your mouth unless you are super dedicated.

So we hope this run down of what the percentages of chocolates was helpful.  Tom just headed out to have his blood donated as a source of laboratory grade sucrose.