My favorite part of any bird is the dark meat - besides the skin, dark meat is the only real "flavor country" found in fowl.  I'm particularly fond of duck because both the leg and breast meat is darker than you'll find in a chicken or a turkey.  But ducks are relatively small and, shall we say, flat-chested.  A goose, however, is a much more curvaceous creature and offers quite a lot to love.  Like ducks, geese fly quite a lot.  And just like in any other animal (that I'm aware of), the more a muscle needs to work, the darker its meat will be.  So, geese end up being an animal composed entirely of dark meat! 

But, if the idea of roasting a goose gives you anxious visions of forgotten kitchen timers and smoking ovens, let me assure you that there's a better way.  More >>

After much ogling, I finally took the plunge and purchased a VacMaster chamber vacuum sealer when I caught an irresistible deal on Craigslist.  I had known for a while that my FoodSaver was woefully inadequate at sealing wet foods for sous vide, but after witnessing how much of a workhorse the chamber sealer is at the Modernist Cuisine lab, I knew it was an essential missing piece of gear for my own kitchen.  These are the results of my first real experimentation with the chamber vacuum sealer: "quick pickling."

Although I don't consider myself Jewish, I did grow up in a household that observed the major Jewish holidays like Passover, Yom Kippur, and of course, Hanukkah.  One of my favorite memories of celebrating Hanukkah is the tradition of eating latkes with sour cream and apple sauce.  For the gentiles out there, latkes are potato pancakes, made from shredded potato and onion.  In fact, latkes are pretty simple to make, which is why I wanted to take on the challenge of making them better.  To me, a latke should have an awesomely crunchy outside and a creamy inside.  So, I started experimenting with ways to get the ultimate potato crunch. 

I've assembled a list of must-have cooking gear, kitchen toys, and foodie fetishes for 2011.  If you have a food geek in your life and you're looking for gift inspiration, I'm here to help.  They say "'tis better to give," but 'tis best to give to someone who'll cook you dinner in return!

Man, o man do I love butternut squash, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, delicata squash... you get the point.  When I was young, one of my favorite side dishes at family dinners was an acorn squash, halved, filled with butter and brown sugar, and roasted until soft and sweet.  It tasted like candy, but technically qualified as a vegetable - a loophole that I still enjoy exploiting. 

During my recent, steamy love affair with my pressure cooker, I've discovered that it does fantastic things to squash.  For example, last week, Jethro served THE BEST butternut squash soup I've ever eaten - pressure cooked, of course.  There are two fundamental benefits to pressure cooking, as opposed to roasting, squash:

1. Speed.  Fork-tender squash takes 15-20 minutes in the pressure cooker, rather than 30-45 minutes in the oven.
2. All-Over Tan.  Put another way, the pressure cooker achieves deep, even browning on all surfaces, with a significantly reduced risk of burning.  Let's explore that more...

Ah, chicken & waffles.  Having grown up in Los Angeles, I've made a few late-night pilgrimages to the famed Roscoe's House of Chicken'n Waffles, and every now and then, I get a craving for crispy fried chicken alongside a lightly toasted waffle.  But other times, my desires are a little more unsavory (pun intended). So, in a recent [epic] Jet City Gastrophysics jam session, we came up with the above: waffle-flavored ice cream served in a crispy chicken skin cup, with maple syrup. 

The first step is to make a neutral ice cream base infused it with waffle flavor. Jethro took on the challenge and nailed it.  More >>

As you may know, one hallmark of the photography in Modernist Cuisine is their use of cutaway photos that show what's happening inside your food – and cookware – as you cook.  Since I plan on (eventually) trying to recreate all of the recipes in the  book, I thought it might be prudent to recreate those cutaway shots, too.  Unlike the MC lab, however, I don't have a waterjet. 

Enter the fantastic folks at Flow International Corporation.  They happened to catch my half-joking tweet asking if anyone had a waterjet I could borrow, and as it turns out, they do.  In fact, Flow manufactures waterjet machines and invited me to visit them at their headquarters in Kent, WA.  When I arrived, they led me – and my box of fully intact cookware – into their demonstration room, an enormous space punctuated by a handful of monstrous waterjets machines. 

Under normal circumstances, they'd load a 3D model of the object we were cutting and the cutting nozzle would follow an exact path through the object.  However, since I just wanted my pans cut "in twain" the operator switched  the machine into manual mode and piloted the cutting head across the surface of the pan like a Jedi.  The video below shows the cutting process. 

We had friends over for brunch last weekend, so I pulled out an old standby: brioche with a 64°C egg, maple syrup, pancetta, and pea butter.  It's my version of French toast, you know, because of the toast part.  I'm not trying to sound snooty when I say this is "as simple as can be" because you do need a sous vide machine and a centrifuge to make it.  However, provided you have those tools, the recipe is brain-dead easy.  When I was growing up, we used to go for brunch at a diner that made "sweet pea guacamole" served alongside a Tex-Mex omelet.  I loved the notion of having peas with breakfast, and once I discovered centrifuged pea butter, that was even more reason to work it into the dish.  I'm sure there's a "green eggs and ham" permutation of these ingredients, too; if you find it, please share.

Total kitchen time: 10 minutes + 3 hours centrifuge time + 1 hour sous vide time
Makes: 4 servings

I was very honored to be the very first speaker at Seattle's Nerd Nite a few weeks ago. They asked me to talk about what I know: food and sciency stuff. They also told me that having a few cocktails in advance of my presentation was highly encouraged. The irreverent, historically inaccurate, desperately passionate, swear-laden rant in the video below was the result. As I explain, I'm not much of a history buff. Without my slide notes (which were too far away to read) historical names, dates, and the sequence of events that I describe is not to be trusted. But the rest of my talk is informative, if you happen to be seeking information on doing insane things with food.

Click through for the video...

Last week, I gave a talk at Seattle's 0th ever Nerd Nite!  My talk was titled "Food, Science, and Electric Bacon," and was a similar history of Modernist cuisine and explanation of geeky food techniques that I presented at the International Food Bloggers Conference in New Orleans a few weeks back. 

I'll post the video of my "lecture" when it's available, but in the meantime, give a listen to this Podcast I recorded with he wonderful folks at Nerd Nite.  Unlike the video, this one's work-safe.  Click through for the Podcast link...