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In practice, significantly more flavor is extracted from the meat. [...] When combined with good ingredients, these factors produce remarkable stocks in significantly less time.

-Heston Blumenthal, The Fat Duck Cookbook

I started making stock when I realized that you could stash the carcasses from roast chickens in the freezer and save them up for an empty Sunday and a few hours of simmering. That certainly got me past the cost barrier that I think keeps a lot of people from making stock at home. I was just making good use of something I had anyway. There is absolutely no doubt that roast chicken stock has the body and richness a store-bought carton never has, and it's a lot more satisfying.

But what if there was a method for making stock that not only dispensed with the time-consuming part, but ALSO produced something that tasted better?

If the chef at London's Fat Duck restaurant, Heston Blumenthal is to be believed--and I would stake quite a lot of the accuracy of Heston Blumenthal's claims, which we've used over and over again on this blog--this method does exist. In fact, a superior chicken stock to traditional methods can be made in less than an hour. You read that correctly: not just easier, and faster, but superior also.

In other words, we're not cutting corners to save time. We're actually making something better than the original. I find that rather mind-blowing. In fact, it's now possible to make a stock on the same night you roast the chicken without staying up long past your bedtime.

I've had a pressure cooker for a few months now, but I've yet to use it. Initially I thought I'd cook a lot of very-economical dried beans with it, because I heard the cooking time can be cut down significantly, but ever since the 90-minute no-soak beans revelation, I haven't bothered to cook them any other way.

But I had to pull it out of its box to test this very exciting, rather revolutionary idea.

Dashi is the base of Japanese cuisine, and crucially important in making a simple miso soup.

I just wanted to make a bowl of miso soup.  That's all. It was going to be the first course of a casual dinner party, something that wouldn't require too much attention so I could focus and pull off the main course in a reasonable amount of time.  I figured all I needed was some miso paste, a hunk of tofu, and a seaweed or two to make it look right.  I was wrong.

This perturbed me to no end. Japanese cuisine is not one I've indulged in that often, feeling far more comfortable across the Straight of Korea in, well...Korea. I find that cuisine brasher and more gloriously hedonistic. I certainly respect Japanese cuisine, but it's not one I've wanted to really figure out. Or at least not right now. Now I have no choice.

To make a proper miso soup I needed to make dashi.  To make dashi I needed water, konbu, and bonito flakes. As for those last two ingredients?  I had no idea.  I just set off for my local Asian market figuring I'd run across them at some point.  There I spent well over thirty minutes trying to decipher labels with my nonexistent grasp of any Asian language. Finally, after a good 10 minutes sprawled out on the floor looking at the bottom shelf, I got the nerve to ask someone where I might find these things. She just laughed.

Konbu is dried kelp, which means my miso was going to have dried kelp and seaweed. Who knew?

As for the bonito, it's skipjack tuna that has been smoked and dried into something called katsuobushi.  This resulting wood-like block is then shaved into flakes and sold in plastic bags.  Of course, the bags of them were on the top shelf.

What about the miso?  In my mind miso was miso, but it turns out there are various kinds which vary in color and strength.  The recipe I was using called for shiro miso and aka miso.  I have much more to learn about this as well.

As left the market with a bag of wakame (seaweed), dried kelp, two kinds of miso, a bag of bonito flakes, two packages of tofu, and scallions, I wondered how long this new obsession of mine would take and whether I'd ever get that first course out before the dinner guests got hungry.

By Nick Kindelsperger “What is the recipe for a perfectly...

“What is the recipe for a perfectly cooked egg?”
- Hervé This, Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor

I am more confused now than when I began.  But, in a completely odd and mind-boggling way, isn’t that kind of exciting?  Before this weekend I never gave an ounce of thought to hard-boiled eggs or how to cook them.  I now have spent the better part of a weekend slow boiling them.  The previous method took under 15 minutes.  And I did all for a dish that I didn’t and probably won’t eat that often. 

It was all because I picked up Molecular Gastronomy by Hervé This (It’s a French name, and I don’t have any idea how to pronounce it).  The cover looked interesting and text was lively and inviting.  It approaches food scientifically, much like Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking.  But while the latter volume is encyclopedic in nature, this slender volume only covers a few topics and is conversational and completely engaging.  That’s where I found this incredible--and completely infuriating--chapter on hard-boiled eggs.

Why is it infuriating?  After three pages spent exploring the intricacies of cooking the eggs, he basically comes to the conclusion that hard-boiled eggs need to be cooked at a low temperature, around 154 degrees Fahrenheit, because that’s the point when the yolk will set (the white sets at 144). He concludes, “Obviously this would mean longer cooking times, but the result is a perfectly cooked egg.” 

Great.  I’m all about exploring ridiculous recipes in search of perfection.  Who knew that a hard boiled egg could reach anything close to perfection?  We’re talking about the humble hard-boiled egg here. But there’s one little problem with Monsieur This’s chapter: He never gave the recipe. 

I’m left dangling at the end of this beautifully written chapter with the knowledge that hard-boiled eggs should be cooked slowly at 154 degrees F, but am given no indication on how long it will take.  He hints at the traditional method Hamine eggs being cooked for “several hours,” but what exactly does that mean?  Are we talking about 3 hours or 10?  I scoured the net for some kind of reasoning.  I searched “hamine eggs” and got gobbledegook responses and some random site that wanted to cook the eggs for 10 hours.  A few other sites just linked back to that site.  I needed some proof.