I’ll be the first to admit that I wussed out a little.
A friend asked me to make something fancy from Modernist Cuisine. He owns the five-book $500 set. I own the significantly cheaper Modernist Cuisine at Home. Think of it as Modernist Cuisine for dummies, which is all relative. It’s still plenty tricky.
I’m not exactly a dummy. I have been to the Modernist Cuisine Test Kitchen in Bellevue, Washington. I spent a week there experimenting with centrifuges, immersion circulators and PacoJets. But I don’t own all this equipment myself (be careful buying a used centrifuge, by the way). And I’ve only ever used all those chemical powders and chanterelles with adult supervision.
So when my friend asked me to make a Modernist recipe, I chickened out a little and went with Modernist for dummies.
Not that the pressure cooker carnitas recipe was easy. I had to get my local butcher to debone two turkey thighs and save the bones (admittedly, more work if you have to do it yourself), make turkey stock, make annatto paste, then pressure cook the meat to pulled-pork perfection.
Then there was pressure cooking the black beans, which I managed to mess up. The book says not to soak the dried beans, which gives a creamier texture. I soaked them by accident.
And then there was using a siphon to create a black bean foam, which I also messed up. The recipe calls for heavy cream, and you need the fat to create the foam. I used coconut oil instead, and I don’t know if the mixture wasn’t starchy enough (the recipe is originally for pinto beans, but it says it should work with any bean as long as it’s starchy enough), wasn’t hot enough, or wasn’t shaken enough, but it came out pretty liquidy and pretty un-foamy.
It was, however, still delicious.
And the carnitas recipe? I didn’t mess that one up. They were the perfect texture, but you don’t add salt until the very end of the recipe, which makes everything pretty bland. It makes me wonder if pressure cooking with salt would dry the meat out? But the whole point is for it to be pretty dry so it shreds well into a carnitas texture. Anyway, we used a salty hot sauce on top, and if the meat had been salty already, it would have been an intense amount of sodium. So it was alright.
Then there was the caramelized sweet potato purée, which was awesome. I’m really into pressure-caramelizing, which means adding baking soda to something starchy in a pressure cooker, which raises the pH, creates a Maillard reaction (e.g. the caramelized flavour that comes from searing meat or starchy vegetables in oil) and creates the sweet potato-iest sweet potatoes you’ve ever eaten. The recipe is a variation on the well known Modernist Cuisine carrot soup, which if you’ve never tasted, you should. You don’t even need to add the 140 of butter, or the licorice powder or young ginger. (Note: the recipe comes from Modernist Cuisine at Home, aka For Dummies, so it’s relatively simple). I’ve since tried caramelizing a ton of other starchy root vegetables, my favourite being parsnip thus far.
But the coolest part of the evening was making homemade tortillas. My friend is better equipped than I. He came with two cast-iron griddles, corn he’d already simmered and soaked with lime (this is what creates the right tortilla texture and makes the corn more digestible, I believe) and his tortilla shaper. He’d special ordered the lime and fat yellow corn online awhile ago and had done this before. He was no tortilla beginner.
One of the tricks to making the perfect tortilla is food processing the corn after boiling/soaking and draining it and then placing smaller balls than you think necessary on the tortilla press.
Also put a plastic bag or piece of plastic wrap down on the press first so the batter doesn’t stick. Then place the ball of dough closer to the joint of the press, so it spreads evenly.
Then cook the tortillas in a dry skillet or griddle over low heat, so they stay flexible without getting too crisp on the edges or sides (unless you want crisp tortillas for grilled flautas, which are generally deep-fried anyway).
Verdict? I’d give the recipes a 6/10 and give myself a 5/10. They were complicated and only the sweet potato was a winner. It wasn’t however, my first time pressure caramelizing, but a recipe should be made to be followed. And if I messed it up, I’m probably not the only so-so cook to do the same.
Or maybe I’m just saving all my recipe-following genius for tomorrow’s gluten free baking adventure. To be continued…
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