Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Thanks, JB! Photography was my first BIG hobby, I love MC, and now cooking dominates my life - this will be under my tree one or another

Wow, this is awesome. +1 on the wishlist for me, too!

--Lisa

I am planning on making the fondue variation of the modernist mac and cheese tomorrow night with fontina and cheddar, maybe a touch of homemade mozzarella. Any tips?

--Lisa

Responding to myself (very gauche, I know) but some searching lead me to this Melty Cheese calculator. I quite like it because you can change the "flow" of the cheese with different liquid levels and see how much sodium citrate you would need without as much experimentation.

http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/10/melty-cheese/

--Lisa

One of these days I might spring for the Modernist starter kit...melty cheese is tempting.

Thank you Lisa, now I want Melty cheese. I love that you shared the answer you found. Not gauche at all in my book.

Darcie, I have the Modernist Evolution R kit plus another from Cuisine Innovations both Christmas presents from my daughter. The Modernist kit is nice, but it does not contain sodium citrate or iota carrageenan (needed for the MCAH Mac and Cheese). It does have pipettes, tubing and a sphere spoon as does my other one (it also has 3 measuring spoons for pinch, dash and smidgen, and they tell you the grams for each.) The first order you place from Modernist Pantry has free shipping (otherwise it is $5.99 I think, flat rate). Amazon has some of the stuff on prime, but the cost is more than you'd pay at MP including shipping. I'd look at what I'd want to make and see if the stuff needed is included in the kit. If not, I'd buy the stuff separately. Upon Amy's advice, I ordered, both carrageenans (iota and kappa), and sodium citrate. I added mono and dyglycerides flakes, bronze gel sheets and one anti-static measuring dish in each size for the 0.1 g scale. I am sending you the pdf of the kit's recipes on Facebook since I don't think I can't add a file here.

Steve and I hope to play with caviar, what they call raviolis (which look more like quenelles to me) and some carbonated/infused stuff this week.

Well, the Melty Cheese calculator was a bust. I entered my amount of cheese in weight (498 g), and played with the liquid amounts until I was right dead center of the "thinner sauce - best for fondue" result (550g). Based on that, I expected a middling thin sauce. Now, it was a lot of wine. It looked like a lot of wine for a pot of fondue.

But I trusted the calculator and added my 550g of wine and the sodium citrate, brought it to a simmer, whisked in my cheese a bit at a time and got slightly opaque cheese water. I ended up adding every other bit of cheese in my house - a whooping additional 325 grams - and got a barely thick enough fondue.

So, while I would say that the calculator gave me a good amount of sodium citrate to liquid ratio, do not trust the thickness information. Go with a lot less liquid to start, with the full amount of sodium citrate and thin with more liquid if needed.

We have half a pot of fondue leftover! I am thinking mac and cheese, but it is going to have to cook on the stove for a while to be the right consistency. And it might be next week before I can look at cheese again.

--Lisa

Sorry your fondue did not work out as planned. Did you compare the liquid to solid ratios to those for fondue in MCAH?

PS, how was the goat cheese ricotta?

Hi Alina,

I did not compare against the MCAH tables, because it was an MC calculator, so I figured they would have the ratios right. It came out fine, but I quite literally added about 12 more ounces of cheese and ended up getting two full meals of fondue! I won't trust it again.

The goat milk ricotta came out fine, but more like cream cheese than ricotta because it was ultra pasteurized, We have been eating it on toast with jam.

--Lisa