Archive for the ‘General’ Category
International Home + Housewares Show 2010
Which would you rather have? A cookie? Or a cookie with cream? I hope the latter: a slightly crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside chocolate chip cookie, embellished with a cool swirl of freshly whipped cream. It’s classic comfort food – cookies and milk – simply dressed up.
My name is Louisa Chu – I’m a chef and journalist – and I’ll be this year’s guest chef at the iSi booth at the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago. The show starts this Sunday but I’ve been working on recipes for months using the new Creative Whip.
At industry-only trade shows like the Housewares Show, buyers and journalists from around the world will walk miles upon miles through the cavernous McCormick Place convention center to see the newest products offered by thousands of exhibitors, some of which you’ll eventually buy for your own home.
Celebrity chefs – including Mario Batali, Ming Tsai, and Rick Bayless – will do cooking demonstrations and sign their books.
I’ve cooked at some of the best restaurants in the world, including El Bulli in Spain, where we used iSi whippers to make extremely inventive dishes, like airy “gnocchi” from potato foam – garnished with seaweed gelatin wrapped butter ravioli, finished with a roasted potato skin consomme. The dish was beautiful, surprising, and yes, delicious but not quite what friends and family want me to whip up at home.
During the show I’ll offer tastings using the Creative Whip of not only the cookies, but many of the recipes found right here on our blog, like the Cheese Wizard on mini grass-fed burgers with tiny challah buns. I’ll also introduce new recipes including Sparkling Arnold Palmers (sweet tea and lemonade) and Buffalo Style Fried Chicken. We’ll post the menu and recipes for everything we’ll serve at the show, because you can and will want to try these at home.
If you’re visiting the show, please stop by and say hi – and you can now follow us on Facebook!
Golden Belgium Waffles
The best waffle recipes tend to involve separating eggs, whipping the egg whites into soft peaks, then folding them carefully into the batter – but your iSi Creative Whip does all that for you.
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Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes
Flat as a pancake? Thanks to your iSi Creative Whip, more like fluffy as a pancake. (more…)
Carbonated Beverages 101
How to Make Homemade Carbonated Drinks & Cocktails
Make your own refreshing, natural, and always bubbly carbonated beverages at home with your iSi Creative Whip – and far more than just sparkling water. It’s all about freshness and taste. Carbonation adds zing and zip, lightening flavors on the palate. (more…)
Some Fancy Fried Chicken
Perry Street Restaurant Serves Up Famous Fried Chicken
In New York City they make a fried chicken so crunchy it even stands up to gravy!
Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, famous for some of the finest restaurants around the world and whom you might have seen as a guest judge on Top Chef, serves an iSi-carbonated, batter-fried chicken at his restaurant Perry St.
A few months ago Jean-Georges’s 27-year old son Cedric took over the restaurant as executive chef but promises, “I won’t get rid of the fried chicken! You don’t need to worry about that.”
The deboned and seared chicken is dipped in whipper-made batter charged with CO2 and infused with Thai chili, Schechuan peppercorns, and ginger before getting fried to super crunchy perfection. Topped off with smoked chicken gravy and fresh lemon zest, this is aint no ordinary fried chicken but it sure is delicious.
We’ll try to get Cedric to share Perry St’s extremely popular fried chicken recipe with us. In the meantime, see and hear the making and crunching of their famous fried chicken on Vimeo for The Feedbag:
VIDEO: The Feedbag makes Fried Chicken at Perry St. Restaurant
For more love and photos of Perry St.’s fried chicken, visit Serious Eats.
Perry St., 176 Perry Street, New York, NY, 10014, (212) 352-1900
The Skinny on Fat
What’s the Difference Between Heavy, Whipping, and Light Cream?
Our recipes specify heavy cream to make your life a little easier. Whipped cream needs to start with liquid cream that’s at least 30% fat. That’s so the whipped in air stays in stable little bubbles suspended among fat droplets.
But if you go to the dairy section of your grocery store, you’ll find a lot of cartons and bottles labeled with the word “cream.” There are so many that you might just pick up the wrong kind or worse yet, walk out without any.
In the U.S. the fat content in cream varies:
Heavy Cream (often labeled Heavy Whipping Cream): 36% fat or more
Whipping Cream (often labeled Light Whipping Cream): 30 to 36% fat
Light Cream: 18 to 30% fat
Half-and-Half: 10.5 to 18% fat
And just in case you were wondering about milk:
Whole Milk: 3.25% fat
2% Milk (often labeled Reduced Fat): 2% fat
1% Milk (often labeled Low Fat): 1% fat
Skim Milk (often labeled Fat Free): 0 to 0.5% fat
Can you remember all that at the store? Us neither. We make it easy and just say use heavy cream because it always whips up light and fluffy. If you use yogurt or cream cheese, just get whole milk kinds too.
You can whip up any brand but we especially like the fresh and delicious products from Country Dairy, Farmers’ Creamery, and Traderspoint Creamery.
You’ll see egg whites and gelatin in our recipes for mousses and foams which also stabilize air bubbles like heavy cream.
And remember, your iSi Creative Whip makes five times more whipped cream than you can whip by hand. So a spoonful of our whipped cream is less than spoonful of hand whipped cream and a whole lot less than liquid cream – and that’s the real skinny on fat!
No Ordinary Mayo
Highlighting Homemade Flavored Mayonnaise from around the World
Homemade mayonnaise serves up international flavors with the squeeze of the trigger on your iSi Creative Whip. Mayonnaise is said to have been invented in either France or England but is now loved around the world.
In Provence and Catalonia, it’s aïoli, made with olive oil and garlic, served with seafood platters and grilled vegetables. (more…)
Whipped Cream Variations: Not Just Vanilla Anymore
Ideas for Flavored Whipped Cream — Sweet or Savory!
With whipped cream so fluffy and fresh, there’s no such thing as plain whipped cream. But there are a world of possibilities beyond simply sweetened or even vanilla whipped cream.
Europeans often don’t sweeten their whipped cream, preferring theirs au naturel. But for us with sweet-tooths (and salt-tooths too), the iSi Creative Whip provides endless flavor possibilities.
Cream and Soda
The Versatile Creative Whip – Cream & Soda Chargers in One
One of the most exciting new things about your Creative Whip is that it’s the first iSi whipper for the home chef that lets you use both cream and soda chargers. You can make whipped cream and carbonated beverages, and that’s just the beginning.
In the excitement of playing with your latest kitchen tool, you might get your cream and soda chargers mixed up but it’s easy to tell them apart. iSi has conveniently color coded them for you. Cream chargers are silver-tinted (although they look more purplish-pink to me) while soda chargers are gold-tinted.
So what makes them different? Cream (N20) chargers create a creamy mouthfeel which makes them the perfect choice for whipped creams, foams, sauces, desserts, and the majority of your whipping needs. Soda (CO2) chargers are for carbonating only but the right choice for tempura batter, drinks, and garnishes where you want to create fizzy bubbles.
And remember, iSi chargers are made of high-quality steel so they’re 100% recyclable. Plus they never expire so it’s a good idea to keep a few spare boxes on-hand and ready for your next culinary inspiration.
Cheese Wizard
Bring out the Fun with this Cheez Whiz Recipe
Top Chef‘s inventive Richard Blais makes his own “Cheese Wizard” and serves it from one of many iSi whippers at Flip Burger Boutique in Atlanta. The Philly burger “wit whiz” – as the sandwich that inspired it is ordered in Philadelphia – can be found on the menu filled with unique creations.
The original Cheez Whiz out of a jar is a cousin to Easy Cheese sprayed out of a can. While our tastes have mostly outgrown processed foods we have not outgrown the fun. Richard shared his recipe via a Twitter DM (private direct message) for his Cheese Wizard served at Flip.
CHEESE WIZARD by Chef Richard Blais
Ingredients for 1 pint Creative Whip:
200 grams whole milk
100 grams Velveeta
100 grams white cheddar
3 drops roast beef extract
Procedure:
Heat milk to a bare simmer. Add Velveeta and cheddar. Stir until melted. Strain. Cool. Pour into a 1 pint Creative Whip. Charge with 3 cream chargers. Shake 3 to 5 times. Test consistency. Serve on your own Philly sandwich inspired burger!
Note:
You can also use your favorite real cheese in a Mornay sauce (just a fancy name for cheese sauce). Just let it chill before you pour it into your iSi Creative Whip. Charge with one cream charger. Shake three to five times. Test its consistency. Serve on burgers or baked potatoes, steamed broccoli or roasted cauliflower, toasted baguette slices or just plain crackers.