Sorry......I just now saw the 'rest of the story' as Paul Harvey would say. My favorite source for new Spanish books is de re coQuinaria: www.derecoquinaria.com They kind of speak English, and they sort of take credit cards. I have another Basque site buried here somewhere.....

Mugaritz is pretty open to stages. Martxel is the partner in charge of such things, and takes one and all (martxel@mugaritz.com). Once there, Martxel is a dragon....Andoni comes and goes......Dani is also a super-star rarely seen.....and Paco runs the kitchen. Still, the place is deep in former Bulli people, and Argentinian superstars (if anyone wants an insanely hardworking ex-Bulli, ex-Mugaritz guy with magic cutting skills and all the recipes and procedures of both places....who will work for cheap......send me a message.) The stage network makes the trip worthwhile...kids from everywhere.....not to mention Zuberoa, Arzak, Martin's place, Akelaré, Alona Berri, Lasarte, etc, etc, etc.

Edited by author 03-03-2006 02:12 AM
Frozen toxic smoke doesnt disappear when it warms up to room temp. This does. And floating edible aerogel im sure is posible. But putting helium inside ISI foamers with N2O is much easier. You need to play around with some hpmc to get it just right but youll be floating in no time. Yes I work with iso 9001 compliant scientists/engineers. The facility is also FDA approved. We can dissect just about anything in little time. As far as the cartridges go, they are patent pending in 128 countries and they guy that owns them is a nazi.

Greetings Marc Powell,

My name is Mike Wille, I'm a student reporter at SF State. Heard about you on an NPR broadcast and would love to try to do a multi-media piece on your molecular gastronomy. I think the online photos would definately add dimensoin to the story and introduce you to a different audience. Please feel free to contact me if you have interest: mwille@sfsu.edu
Thanks, Mike

Manresa: we worked next to those guys last week at The Masters. It may be old-school to you guys, but they did a dish of diver scallops: they saved the scallop 'tripe', scrubbed it clean in mass quantities of salt, and made a sauce that was better than the scallop. Their head guy worked at Akelaré in San Sebastian, home of the brave.

ps manresa's menu is some amazing stuff! bowing down to authentic cardoons.

Edited by author 02-27-2006 06:20 AM
new foodie: Check out Activa, a transglutaminase from Ajinomoto (company that brought you MSG): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajinomoto_activa

Homaro Cantu: Much respect. For 20$ you can get toxic frozen smoke on ebay- do you think it's possible to make edible aerogels? Do you have access to food-safe supercritical facilities?? I saw the pics of your Madrid Fusion demo- can you tell me where I can get empty food-safe inkjet carts?

txacoli: Thanks for the book recommendations. I got to work with Sam for a week at The Fat Duck, he is a class act. Meeting Andoni at the Duck was also very cool- his Clorofilia book has had an appreciable hippie local herb appreciation effect on me. Beginning to discover the insanities of Spanish and Basque food innovation has been a great pleasure, but I have never visited. I spent 6 months in Mexico last year and hope that I will be able to visit Spain soon in a training capacity. I am very stimulated by swapped tales of Joan Roca's soil hydrosol + black peppercorn gas dishes as well as el Bulli's papels. I tried to get el Bulli reservations as soon as they closed, but they were already full up-- also, it is very hard to get good Spanish/Catalan cooking books in the US- if you have any recommendations of online services, I would appreciate it! (also looking to track down: pierre herme's new pH10 book, frederic bau's new savory chocolate book).

Jonathan: Thanks again for the centrifuge refer, I just got one of those. It requires 15mL testtubes- x6 = 3oz (6 Tbsp) of product at a time. So after an hour maybe you could get half a cup of clear tomoto juice product- maybe. It's 3300 RPM so it should do the trick, but there are larger models of centrifuge (not necessarily medical use ones) that will take over 1kg of liquid product, and rotors that go to 16k, 24k, beyond.. A medical centrifuge's RPM capacity is fast enough to achieve separation of pigments and other solids for most things. I personally think it would be worth it to have a constantly running centrifuge in a service capacity for assembly line purification prep work. At 85$ it's a deal if it breaks- buy a couple backups. The centrifuge is pretty quiet and doesn't take up a lot of counter space. Or spend 5k on ebay for an expensive larger refrigerated model with a service contract if you are crazy rich with dot com money.

i love free msj men it good

what do you use to glue proteins?

Interesting Mr. Bond. Take Nitro and freeze smoke into it. Then allow the smoke to thaw on a plate. Copperfield material.

Thanks for the book list. We worked with Sam of WD-50 last year at The Masters.....wow. My sous-chef just came back from a stage at Mugaritz. Two more books for your consideration, hot among the stages in San Sebastian: Comerc24 (Carles Abellan) and Asfalto Culinario (Xabier Gutiérrez). Xaby is the kitchen lab rat at Arzak and has a great crazy outlook.

And, if you are in Boston....Clio is worthy.

Thanks Marc, i will check up WD-50. Do you know others?

I mean doing food hacking in NYC.

Hi Catalina,

What do you mean by "doing this in NYC"?

If you are looking for some good food hacking, I recommend checking out Wylie Dufresne's restaurant WD-50- http://www.wd-50.com/ . Wylie and his pastry chef Sam are doing some *amazing* things with food.

-marc

hey guys, is someone doing this in NYC?

Edited by author 02-09-2006 05:11 AM
Hello Jon,

There are a lot of cool tricks you can do o clarify things, and a centrifuge is one of the fastest ones.

If you can be certain the centrifuge is safe for food (hasn't had any nasty metals in it), then you can do some really cool stuff- treat it like a seive, for example.

If you puree a fruit or vegetable (making sure there are some solids to form a puck on the bottom of the centrifuge tube)- a 20-40 minute run in a 4krpm centrifuge will clarify tomato juice, carrot juice... clear, flavorful liquid at the top, the solids (pigments, cellulose, other heavy things) forming a puck on the bottom. Decant the liquid- with this clarified juice, you could make clear sorbets out of flavorful colored fruits or clear aspic. You could use the liquid for a consomme.

If you havent used a centrifuge before, make sure you know how to be safe with it. Never exceed the maximum weight allowable by the centrifuge's rotor, and make sure each centrifuge tube weighs exactly the same to ensure that the weight is equally distributed. Use water as a counterbalance if you dont have enough liquid. If you don't do all of this stuff, the centrifuge's rotor can become unbalanced and essplode real big like (google image search for centrifuge explosion).

If you do get the centrifuge, take some pics of what you end up making with it and post em here!

Hello gang,

Was browsing a favorite surplus site and found a centrifuge for $85, which is VERY CHEAP as I understand these things.

http://www.sciplus.com/singleItem.cfm?terms=10076

I remember Mark mentioning it in his talk. Mark, what do we use it for?


Cheers all,

Jon
http://www.rotorbrain.com