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CHEFSTEPS IS HERE TO HELP YOU BECOME A BETTER COOK
Every cook, cooking smarter
ChefSteps exists to inspire creativity and encourage expertise in the kitchen.We develop high-quality content, tools, and resources that will inspire and educate cooks at any skill level. Our team of award-winning chefs, filmmakers, and engineers demonstrates modern culinary concepts with beautiful, compelling visuals, and shows the why’s behind the how’s of every recipe and technique. ChefSteps also provides cooks with the tools they need to connect with others, empowering people worldwide to help each other become more efficient, creative, and successful in the kitchen.
Cooking is an ancient art and science, an accumulated body of knowledge passed down through generations, which we modify every day. At ChefSteps, we’re recording that evolution in real time: Our classes, recipes, techniques, and videos give you the foundational knowledge and inspiration you need to build on the traditions and discoveries of others, and to begin to break the rules to create your own recipes and techniques. Here, we will all grow and learn from each other’s triumphs and failures, as we shape new culinary traditions for the next generation of cooks.
Getting Started
Weigh Ingredients
All of our recipes are measured in weight, rather than volume. We firmly believe that weighing ingredients makes cooking easier, faster, and more fun. If you haven’t yet tried it, trust us: it will change your life.Scales are only $20 .
Embrace New Ingredients
Some of our recipes call for unfamiliar ingredients. We come from professional cooking backgrounds, so we’re used to adding a little guar gum, xanthan, and soy lecithin to our recipes from time to time. (And though these ingredients may sound like chemicals, they’re actually all derived from natural sources.) Part of our mission here at ChefSteps is to make the unfamiliar familiar. We’ll show you where to buy anything you can’t find at your local grocery store, and we’ll also explain how and why different ingredients work. If you need help finding solutions or substitutions, just ask!
Measure Heat
Understanding how heat flows in the kitchen will sharpen your culinary intuition, preparing you to handle any culinary challenge, and ensuring better results more often. We encourage you to invest in a digital thermometer (they’re only $20, too ) as most of our recipes rely on accurate temperature measurement.
Get Connected
We believe that cooking is inherently communal. That’s why we maintain a lively forum on the site that’s dedicated to the exchange of ideas. We visit the forum regularly to answer your questions and marvel at your creations. We create much of our content based on your suggestions, interests, and feedback, so please keep in touch, and we’ll do the same.
No Equipment? No Problem.
We use some high-tech equipment that’s not available to every cook. But that doesn’t mean this site is not for you. Whenever possible, we show you where to buy the stuff you may not have, but you don’t need to spend a fortune to try new things. We’ve devised some home cooking methods that achieve great results without all the equipment. The bottom line is: Just because you don’t have the exact equipment listed in our recipes, doesn’t mean you can’t do it. We challenge ourselves to think creatively about how to get around limitations in price, space, and availability, and we hope you will, too.
Get Resources
Great cooks need great tools and great resources to succeed. We sell a curated collection of our favorite kitchen tools in our online shop, and we provide links to other resources you might find helpful. If you love old fashioned cookbooks—we do too!—we sell a selection of the very best.
Reconstructed Roast
Microwave techniques
That bag of popcorn is just the beginning. First sold in 1947, the microwave oven wasn’t a common household item until the late 1960’s. Along with the fridge, conventional oven, blender, and coffeemaker, it is now considered an essential appliance in the American kitchen. But while we all use it to warm up coffee and pop our corn, this countertop contraption remains poorly understood and often underestimated. Microwaves don’t cook food from the inside out—a common myth—and despite the term “nuke,” it’s not nuclear radiation that’s reheating last night’s burrito. What’s more, microwaves can outperform conventional techniques when it comes to vegetables, quick soups, and fried snacks. Put aside the Pop Secret—it’s time to take a deeper look at the humble microwave.
Hot Pocket:
The Microwave’s Humble Beginnings
For the microwave’s invention, thank Percy Spencer’s sweet tooth. The Raytheon engineer was lingering in front of an active microwave radar set when the Mr. Goodbar in his pocket began to melt. Ingredients used in Spencer’s early food-heating experiments include popcorn kernels and an egg (which exploded in a colleague’s face).
The first microwave oven weighed in at 750 pounds, and was five feet, six inches tall. At first, it was only used in restaurants and other places where large quantities of food had to be prepared at once.
WHY IT WORKS
Essentially, microwaves cook food by producing electromagnetic waves that force polarized water molecules within it to oscillate. We experience this atomic-scale movement as increasing temperature. Imagine water molecules as antennae, interacting with the waves in the oven much like a radio antenna does with radio waves. The more water in the food, the more effective it is as an antenna. Plant foods have a high water content relative to most foods—making them very effective antennae indeed.
But it’s important, too, to consider the size of your antennae. In conventional ovens, small foods cook faster than larger ones. It tends to be the opposite with microwaves. A microwave (that is, the wave itself, not the oven) is 12.8 centimeters long. To receive the waves properly, food should be at least a quarter of that length—so about 3.2 centimeters (a little larger than one inch). Think about how an individual popcorn kernel can take minutes to pop. And yet, you can pop an entire bag of popcorn kernels in about 60 seconds. Grouped together, all the kernels form a target mass that can couple with the microwaves and absorb them, similar to how a radio antenna picks up radio waves. The lone kernels are so small (relative to the length of the microwaves) that they can’t easily absorb the waves’ energy, and thus take longer to cook.
From an engineering perspective, the microwave oven is a fairly simple machine, but for one complex and fascinating piece: the magnetron. (Watch this awesome video for more on how magnetrons work. )
See the diagram below to better understand how energy flows from the socket in your kitchen into the food itself.
The All-Important Defrost Button
Ever try to defrost food in your microwave on the “cook” setting? You’ve likely wound up with food that’s partly cooked and partly frozen.
Here’s what happening: Because frozen water has a different atomic structure than liquid, ice is invisible to microwaves. Once part of the food melts, however, the liquid water will start to strongly absorb the waves, causing that portion to cook quickly while areas around it remain frozen. To even things out, the microwave’s defrost function works by turning the magnetron on and off, allowing the frozen parts of the food to “catch up” to the already-cooked parts, thereby encouraging more-even heating.
Is it safe? Is it healthy?
Yes, and yes. Contrary to popular myth, microwave radiation is not related to nuclear radiation whatsoever. As described above, microwave ovens use electromagnetic radiation that occurs at frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz—the same kind of electromagnetic radiation (except at a different wavelength) as visible light and radio waves. It doesn’t make your food radioactive, not even a teensy little bit. And it doesn’t have anything to do with radioactivity or nuclear reactors.
Another popular myth says that microwave ovens destroy all the nutrients in the food. In fact, it’s the opposite—microwaving often preserves more nutrients than other cooking methods. The longer and hotter you cook something, the more nutrients you lose, and with boiling and pressure-cooking, you can lose additional nutrients to surrounding water as well. Microwaves work by exciting the water molecules in your food, which then heat up and cook the surrounding material very quickly, protecting the food from the damage that can be done by time, heat, and cooking water.
MICROWAVING VEGETABLES
When cooking vegetables, it’s of paramount importance to preserve their fresh aromas and vivid colors. The best way to do that is to cook them rapidly. That’s where the microwave comes in: You can cook vegetables perfectly in a microwave, in just a few minutes. How many minutes exactly? That depends on the wattage of your machine, along with the amount and size of the food you are cooking. Through trial and error, we found that in our 1,000-watt microwave, we got the best results by cooking one-inch pieces for 30–45 seconds. Experimenting with your microwave will help determine your own optimal cook times and settings.
This simple technique opens up myriad possibilities for delicious vegetable dishes with a much lower risk of failure. No more limp, weepy asparagus or soft, watery carrots. When you prepare vegetables in the microwave, you can focus on the rest of the dish, instead of just the vegetables themselves.
MICROWAVED SOUPS
From elegant amuses bouches to quintessential comfort dishes, puréed soups are an important component of every cook’s repertoire. What with all the simmering and stirring, however, they can be pretty time-consuming. Because microwaves cook vegetables so quickly—preserving flavor and aroma so well—you can use them to whip up excellent soups far faster than traditional cooking methods allow. Here are two recipes to get you going.
OTHER IDEAS
Looking for more cool stuff to do with that countertop oven? Check out our method for microwaved vegetables confits. Super-simple and mess free, they’ll enhance all sorts of preparations and, as in the case of our Confit Squash Salad, can form the basis of a pretty killer dish as well. Ham fans, meanwhile, will love the way we harness the microwave’s dehydrating abilities to transform silky prosciutto into a crunchy garnish.
Art
http://srip.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/restoration/
Sergio Rangel recognizes that the image in itself does not own any power. It is the glance the one that as much attributes of communication or symbolic value to him in constructs exhibited to constant history’s changes partner, visible as much in the artistic forms of our time like the mink of the asylum. It is as well as it can think that its work also reaches Latin American, oscillating the modern subject between an imaginary hybrid and a model of productivity sustained in a series of norms that defined the good and the evil, the moral and the immoral thing, weakening all impulse of the symbol waste and material in favor of the economy that reach all the you order of the social life, especially, the body. In some of the poems of this creating the necessity to surpass the economy of the enjoyment that could be extended to the monk and the artistic thing:
“I am incessant meat,
vulgar matter
I own glorification for my ego
mined determines and conditions in the cosmos,
but in the end
I end up rendering me to the erectile sensation
of clearly a dark sight through a skirt“
© Rangel_1998 Between Skins|
Sergio art and cooking
[Barcelona, Spain 1969] Born in family of great cultural tradition flamenco Christian, the Rangel-Manrique from 1912 stages the sacramental acts of the Living Passion in Mérida, Spain. His paternal grandfathers Victor owned the gift of music and its grandmother ” Doña Carmen” the one of the health. On the other hand she acquires as inheritance of the Penzo-Dorante an ample knowledge of the art and the photography. Of the hand his uncle the Venezuelan film director Jacobo Penzo discovers the world of the image, with him shares practically all their childhood in this way is generated a species of complicity where the factory of work of its uncle is transformed into its space of daily game, Rolle Flex Planar 1: 3.5 in its eye, the imaginary friendly tripods, Nietzsche in the turn advisor and the unfinished Purgatorio of Arthur Michelena in the future dream. The visits of the artists, writers, musicians and other co-inhabitants of the cultural world conform the fauna who describe their infantile surroundings. In 1980 one begins in the pictorial process like a daring game and seduced by his maternal grandmother (Paula Antonia of the Carmen) the Carmen, it participates later in the distributed factories of summer in the CEGRA of the Acacias and in the Athenian of Florida where it is discovering the plastic one like surroundings to his life. In an amalgam of average oriented pictorial graphs and at first to the unconscious demystification of the image as being container in the middle of the own chance of the childhood is discovering its way, plagued of memories. In 1984 it begins to take his first expositions steps in the Halls Drawing and Painting organized by Faber-Castell, the halls state, regional photography and painting is the points of contact. For 1990 National Hall Bolivarian Youth participates in the 2 where it obtains the first recognition to his work and the possibility of making reality his first personal exhibition. 1990 Studies of Graphical Design and in the School of Plastic Arts Red Cristobal [Caracas-Venezuela], in this joint party experiences with national artists as as much international many of which influence of one or the other way and future development of their work. Alirio Oramas the symbolic magic, Pedro Terán a speech, Carlos Moya the concept, Jesus Soto the space, Mario Abreu the goodbye, Victor Hugo Irazabal the graphics, Alberto Monteagudo the magic of the officiate, Santiago Pol the graphical communication, Miguel Von Dangel a footpath, Robert Guevara the friendship. 1992 begin in the photography, video, sonorous creation as complement to their communicative process, in teaching in different Venezuelan institutes of design. 1996 begin to work in the development of applications for the Internet to its artistic work. 1999 move Europe where at the moment it resides and multimedia is dedicated to the development of interactive semantic communications. Barcelona 2003, establishes contact with the catalan artists Joan Cots, Antoni Tàpies and Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar, among others from this contact begins to develop a work linked to the catalan culture by setting a jumper between its past and present, the work posthumously of Joan Cots allows you to understand the transmutable as a reflection of the eternal creator matter mysticism. Antoni Tàpies is the relationship pragmatic codes where only the initiates in certain ancestral knowledge can access encrypted, this relationship Sergio Rangel gets a thorough knowledge of the symbolic universe. The indirect relationship with Josep Maria Subirachs i Sitjar closer you to understanding Gaudí, to see the expression of the artist on his work, on his visits to the workshops of sculpture of the Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona directly confronts the craft of the constructor of cathedrals, a paradox in this time. 2009 come to Belgium, to establish his workshop in this country where he began to carry out a research process linked to the materiality and the expression of the object as full icon, where the concept idea becomes of the direct dialogue of the viewer with the work, unless there is a measurement between the creator and the final object.
Tickets et 41º Experience
Les frères Adrià, Ferran et Albert, ont ouvert en 2011 deux nouveaux établissements à Barcelone. Dirigés par Albert, le benjamin, Tickets et 41º Experience sont deux concepts différents mais complémentaires, censés perpétuer l’héritage et le savoir-faire d’El Bulli.
Pierre Gagnaire et Hervé This Conférence ITHQ
Novembre 2013 – Dans le cadre de ses Grandes Rencontres, l’ITHQ a offert à ses étudiants ainsi qu’au grand public, une conférence-démonstration du chef Pierre Gagnaire, trois étoiles au Guide Michelin, et du physico-chimiste Hervé This, père de la gastronomie moléculaire, deux personnalités aussi diamétralement opposées que complémentaires. Résultats : pendant deux heures de génie créatif et ludique, l’un des plus grands chefs de l’heure s’est exprimé à travers les interrogations d’un homme de science fou de cuisine, avec humour et pédagogie.
EfferveSciences – Hervé THIS – Gastronomie moléculaire
Hervé This, né le 5 juin 1955 à Suresnes, est un physico-chimiste français. Il est connu pour être l’inventeur avec Nicholas Kurti de la gastronomie moléculaire.
Biographie
Hervé This est né le 5 juin 1955 à Suresnes de parents psychanalystes, Bernard This et Claude This (née Jacquemin)1,2. Dès l’âge de 6 ans, il se passionne très tôt pour la chimie et la physique3. Il étudie au lycée Janson-de-Sailly à Paris puis intègre l’École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris en 19764,1. En parallèle, il passe une licence de lettres modernes à l’Université Paris Sorbonne-Paris IV1.
Il a créé en 1988 avec Nicholas Kurti une nouvelle discipline scientifique : la« gastronomie moléculaire »5,6,7. De cette discipline scientifique qu’est la gastronomie moléculaire sont nés plusieurs courants culinaires : la « cuisine moléculaire »8, le « constructivisme culinaire » 9, la « cuisine abstraite »10 et la « cuisine note à note »11, présentée pour la première fois dans un article publié dans la revue Scientific American en avril 199412.
Il a publié de nombreux livres sur le sujet. Il y présente les mécanismes de nombreuses transformations culinaires. Ses études scientifiques ont des applications technologiques et techniques. Il a notamment introduit en 2002 un formalisme de description des systèmes colloïdaux (DSF, pour disperse systems formalism), et, en 2012, une théorie générale de la bioactivité. Parmi des travaux plus ponctuels, il a montré que les blancs d’oeufs cuisaient par formation de ponts disulfure, et montré que la cuisson des œufs à des températures précises conduit à des résultats jusqu’alors inconnus (œufs cuits 67,5 °C par exemple) ou comment faire des mousses au chocolat (« chocolat Chantilly ») sans œufs, avec seulement du chocolat et de l’eau.
Pour l’Éducation nationale, il a mis au point des Ateliers expérimentaux du goût, entre autres pour sensibiliser les enfants à la gastronomie et à l’alimentation. Hervé This est également connu pour son usage de l’azote liquide afin de fabriquer rapidement des crèmes glacées. Il travaille depuis de nombreuses années avec le chef français Pierre Gagnaire avec qui il a écrit plusieurs livres et, surtout, pour lequel il a effectué plus d’une centaine d’inventions, décrites sur le site de Pierre Gagnaire. Il intervient souvent dans l’émission pour enfants deNoëlle Bréham Les p’tits bateaux sur France Inter.
Après plusieurs mois aux éditions Belin, comme éditeur scientifique, il travaille à la revue Pour la Science de 1981 à 2000, comme rédacteur, puis rédacteur en chef adjoint, et enfin rédacteur en chef. Là, il dirige également plusieurs collections de livres de vulgarisation scientifique.
Simultanément, il participe à des émissions de radio (par exemple, le Panorama de France-Culture), de télévision (directeur scientifique deArchimède sur Arte, et Pi=3,14… sur France 5), il est éditeur scientifique, et, surtout, il mène ses recherches scientifiques dans son laboratoire personnel.
En 1992, il crée avec Nicholas Kurti les « International Workshops on Molecular and Physical Gastronomy ». En 1995, il passe sa thèse de sciences à l’Université Paris VII (jury comprenant Jean-Marie Lehn, prix Nobel de chimie, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, prix Nobel de physique,Pierre Potier, Nicholas Kurti, Georges Bram, notamment). Jean-Marie Lehn l’invite alors dans le Laboratoire de chimie des interactions moléculaires du Collège de France. Puis en 1999, il passe son habilitation à diriger des recherches (jury comprenant Étienne Guyon, alors directeur de l’École normale supérieure, Guy Ourisson, alors président de l’Académie des Sciences, Xavier Chapuisat, alors président de l’Université Paris Sud, Alain Fuchs, aujourd’hui[Quand ?] président du CNRS, Georges Bram, et le cuisinier Pierre Gagnaire).
En 2000, il entre à l’INRA, et mène ses recherches au Collège de France. Il crée alors les Séminaires INRA de gastronomie moléculaire, rencontres mensuelles (au sein de l’Ecole supérieure de cuisine française du Centre Grégoire Ferrandi de la Chambre de commerce de Paris) où sont testées des “précisions culinaires”.
En 2004, il crée les Cours de gastronomie moléculaire d’AgroParisTech, des cours gratuits, non diplômants, qui restituent publiquement, sur deux jours pleins, les travaux d’une année, sur un thème nouveau chaque année, comme le sont les cours du Collège de France. Ces cours sont en ligne (voir liens).
C’est cette même année qu’il contribue à créer l’Institut des Hautes Études du Goût, aujourd’hui coanimée par l’Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne et l’Ecole Le Cordon bleu, et qu’il crée également la Fondation Science & Culture Alimentaire, à l’Académie des sciences, dont il est alors nommé directeur scientifique.
En 2006, il est qualifié professeur des universités, date à laquelle il déménage son laboratoire à AgroParisTech, dans le Laboratoire de chimie analytique.
Depuis 2010, il est Secrétaire de la Section VIII (alimentation humaine) de l’Académie d’Agriculture de France13.
Le 3 juin 2014, il a contribué à créer l‘International Centre for Molecular Gastronomy AgroParisTech-INRA14, qu’il dirige.
Le même jour, il a annoncé la création du Free Open International Journal of Molecular Gastronomy15
Œuvres
- 1993 : Les Secrets de la casserole, Éditions Belin.
- 1995 : Révélations gastronomiques, Éditions Belin.
- 1999 : La Casserole des enfants, Éditions Belin
- 2002 : Six Lettres gourmandes, Éditions Jane Otmezguine.
- 2002 : Traité élémentaire de cuisine, Éditions Belin.
- 2002 : Casseroles et Éprouvettes, Éditions Pour la Science / Belin.
- 2006 : La Cuisine, c’est de l’amour, de l’art, de la technique, Éditions Odile Jacob (avec Pierre Gagnaire).
- 2007 : Construisons un repas, Éditions Odile Jacob (avec Marie-Odile Monchicourt).
- 2007 : De la science aux fourneaux, Éditions Pour la Science/Belin.
- 2007 : Alchimistes aux fourneaux, Éditions Flammarion (avec Pierre Gagnaire).
- 2008 : Propos culinaires et savants, Éditions Belin.
- 2009 : La Sagesse du chimiste, Éditions L’Œil 9.
- 2009 : Cours de gastronomie moléculaire, tome 1 : Science, technologie, technique… culinaires : quelles relations? , Éditions Quae/Belin.
- 2010 : Cours de gastronomie moléculaire, tome 2 : Les Précisions culinaires, Éditions Quae/Belin.
- 2012 : La Cuisine note à note en douze questions souriantes, Éditions Belin.
Distinctions
Sélection des distinction reçues par Hervé This, liste complète
- Ordres et décorations
Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.
Chevalier de l’ordre du Mérite agricole.
Officier de l’ordre du Mérite agricole (élevé au rang par Hervé Gaymard).
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (élevé au rang par Jean-Jacques Aillagon).
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques (nommé par Lionel Jospin).
Officier de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques.
- Médailles départementales et locales
- Médaille du tourisme du département Loire-Atlantique (13 mars 2001).
- Médaille d’or de la ville de Saint-Étienne remise par Michel Thiollière (23 novembre 2006).
- Médaille du département des Yvelines (octobre 2011).
- Participations à des sociétés savantes
- Nommé membre de l’Association française pour l’avancement des sciences (décembre 1997).
- Membre de la Société chimique de France (depuis le 12 février 1998).
- Membre de l’Académie nationale des Arts et Sciences du Goût (30 novembre 2000).
- Élu Membre correspondant national de l’Académie de Stanislas (4 décembre 2006).
- Élu Correspondant national dans la Section Filières alimentaires de l’Académie d’agriculture de France (16 décembre 2006).
- Élu Membre associé de l’Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique (mai 2009).
- Élu Membre de l’Académie d’agriculture de France (octobre 2010).
- Distinctions académiques
- Prix d’Alembert de la Société mathématique de France (1985).
- Grand Prix de la science de l’alimentation 2003 de l’Académie internationale de gastronomie à l’unanimité.
- Médaille Joseph Favre de l’Académie culinaire de France (12 mars 2005).
- Médaille de l’Association des membres de l’ordre des Palmes académiques (2008).
- Docteur honoris causa de l’Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec (novembre 2003).
- Prix littéraires
- Félicitations du jury du Prix de l’Académie nationale de cuisine pour Les Secrets de la casserole et Révélations gastronomiques (mars 1998).
- Prix de la chronique gastronomique télévisée au festival culinaire des Gastronomades (novembre 1998).
- Diplôme d’Excellence de l’Académie Nationale des Arts et Sciences du Goût (30 novembre 2000).
- Grand Prix de la littérature gastronomique, hors catégorie du Salon international du livre gourmand pour Casseroles et Éprouvettes (20 novembre 2002).
- Prix du Salon du livre gourmand de Bruxelles pour La Cuisine, c’est de l’amour, de l’art, de la technique, avec Pierre Gagnaire (20 octobre 2006).
- Special Award du jury des Gourmand World Cookbook Awards pour La Cuisine, c’est de l’amour, de l’art, de la technique, avec Pierre Gagnaire (23 décembre 2006).
- Prix télévisuels
- Prix Télévision Jeunesse du Festival Image et science pour Pi=3,14… (septembre 1999).
- Prix Imagina de la meilleure production en image numérique de synthèse pour Archimède (février 2000).
Art of Cooking
by Antoni Tapies
[Exhibition Drassanes Xifrat / Barcelona 2003]
Ancient apprentice of rites , lover of the codices and the mysteries that make up the universal iconography in a language of pure matter that moves us through the magic of the image, its iconography goes back to the time of the officiating at a time that the concept than the creator, no longer a contemporary work that reminds us of the origin of individual identity. One day, Sergio Rangel, came to my studio in Barcelona carrying a great treasure in your travel bag, are pieces of America that are opposed to an anachronistic Europe, devoid of any identity, that is the work of this young promise of universal arts. Facing the reality it describes the purest expression, before evoking the commercial, aesthetic or does not seek to create beautiful objects, but these elements we confront the deepest fears of man, which is the confrontation that I found in this outstanding Catalan artist Venezuelan time confided that allows you to get your place in the history of contemporary art.
In his recent work I have stated objects or rather transmuted urban wastes, it were a score on which develops the rhythm to be played at each performance of the work we do, ropes, mud , an amalgam of materials encapsulated in a polyurethane core safeguards of time, short-lived but self-contradictory, Rangel is bringing together memories in these constructs, which are the product of his passage through this world, blogs that speak of a trace Standing on the history of art, like the apprentice must become past master, that the path of initiation that this artist undertakes in each in his work.
http://srip.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/sergio-rangels-apprentice-by-antoni-tapies/