My dream home has a fully automated aquaponics system that grows tilapia and vegetables in the backyard. Alas, I live in San Francisco, so the closest I can get to experimenting with food self-sufficiency is this Back to the Roots Water Garden. Aquaponic farming is a closed system that captures the complete nitrogen cycle to…

The eternal question: Vitamix or Blendtec? Behold this chimera of a Vitamix base with a special Blendtec Rebel+ Jar. It’s the best of both worlds. The Blendtec jar is great – so great that Vitamix copied it. It’s short, easy to pour, and easy to clean. However, the controls on the Blendtec Total Blender are…

Spring is rhubarb season. A rhubarb gin fizz with miracle berry is my variation of iNG Restaurant’s rhubarb whiskey sour. It starts sour then turns sweet, thanks to the miracle berry. The gin fizz is a laborious cocktail to make. It requires vigorously shaking a cocktail shaker to build up a good foam. Modernist tools…

The treachery of food at WD-50, where an egg is not an egg. The egg whites are coconut milk infused with cardamom. The yolks are carrot juice and smoked maple syrup. The texture is remarkably similar to a real sunny side up egg. Recipe from Modernist Cuisine. For the egg yolks: 250 g carrot juice…

Akelare cooks a lobster dish tableside in a coffee vacuum siphon. Here’s the recipe as listed in the Akelare book.  My notes and substitutions are in parentheses. Ingredients: 2 spiny lobsters, weighing 400/500 g each (I used one 1.2 kg Maine lobster) 1 chive flower (could not find a suitable substitute) 30 g marsh samphire…

Chef David Chang made Momofuku Ko’s Puffed Egg in episode 9 of The Mind of a Chef, but the show did not provide a complete recipe. After some research and experimentation, here’s the recipe I compiled for my adaptation: The bacon dashi recipe is from the Momofuku book. You’ll need: 2 3×6 inch pieces of…

Adapting Mugaritz’s edible soap bar via Modernist Cuisine. A literal palate cleanser! Ingredients: 1 kg water 150 g wildflower honey (substituted orange blossom honey with honeycomb) recipe) 20 g egg white powder 1 g xanthan gum 3.5 g salt 110 g AP flour 40 g hazelnut flour (substituted almond flour) 30 g sugar 40 g…

Here’s my attempt to recreate The Aviary‘s gin and tonic with encapsulated cucumber juice. The cucumber juice boba spheres are liquid on the inside and burst in the mouth. The drink is shown in the video below. Since the relative quantities of the ingredients weren’t mentioned in the video, I used the recipes for the…

A “chocolate smore bomb with pop rocks shrapnel” is my combination of moto restaurant’s smore bomb and Modernist Cuisine’s exploding chocolate. It’s a liquid graham cracker contained within a chocolate shell, covered in pop rocks, and finished with a “marshmallow” fuse. Light the fuse, wait for it to completely burn down to the chocolate, and…

I won dinner for two at moto restaurant and guest chef for a day at iNG restaurant in Chicago as part of the Scorcese Menu contest. There are many reasons why you should dine at iNG. The cuisine is delightfully imaginative. Flavor tripping with the miracle berry is sui generis. The service is excellent. And as…