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A small mountain of tomatoes on my kitchen table (a gift from some generous friends whose tomato crops fared better than ours this year) collided with my post on carbonating fruit in an iSi whipped cream siphon, leading to a fun experiment. These carbonated pear tomatoes were the result. I would qualify them as a [...]

After I posted on Friday about quick infusion of spirits in a whipped cream siphon, I came across Martin’s excellent post on the subject on his blog, Khymos. I encourage everyone to read it, if you haven’t already. In the post, he mentions a couple of other non-traditional uses for whipped cream siphons. The first [...]

The blogs have been abuzz over the past week with an innovative approach to alcohol infusions suggested by the good people behind the Cooking Issues blog. At its most basic, it involves placing the spirits and aromatics to be infused in a whipped cream siphon, like the iSi Gourmet Whip,  charging it, and waiting for [...]

Two cool videos to share with you today. First up, John “Docsconz” Sconzo has a video of Town House sous-chef Matt Edwards preparing the orange shells for the dish “The Orange from Valencia.” John writes: This won’t be freeze the eyes to the screen of anyone already solidly grounded in techniques using liquid nitrogen, but [...]

Not all the equipment used in avant-garde cooking was invented in the past two decades. Some, like the dehydrator, have essentially been around for centuries, if not millennia. All cooking can be broken down into a few simple processes. One of them is understanding and controlling water, and that’s exactly what a dehydrator allows you [...]

In my last tech rundown, I talked about ingredients that avant-garde restaurants use for some of their tricks that are just as easy for home cooks to find and use. This time, I want to show you the Antigriddle, a piece of equipment that’s probably out of reach for most home cooks. (Though that hasn’t [...]

Here’s a recent video of a menu development meeting with the staff at Alinea. It’s an interesting inside look at how Chef Grant Achatz and his team take on the challenge of staying constantly at the forefront of modern cuisine. In particular, Achatz talks about how easy it is to identify certain plating styles with [...]