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Kriss Harvey from Advanced Gourmet, the official PacoJet Chef, artesian ice cream maker and gelato consultant started a his new blog happypacojetting. Kriss is covering the the basics of a PacoJet and the basics of ice cream making. Once thing you will notice in the blog or any “PacoJet World Domination” demo: ice cream, sorbetti, gelati recipes are as ratio based as any other cooking we do. Period. Over the years I have seen many blogs or forums where the same question was posted over and over. How do Pacojet recipes work? Why don’t my regular recipes work with PacoJets? Whay am i doing wrong? How much of …?

After the first demo of Pacojet with Kriss, I asked him what the difference was and how often we hear the such and such recipe does not work? Looking at the recipes in the handouts and adding up all sugars, waters, fats and other solids I did not see any difference in the ratios than any other properly calculated/balanced recipe. The answer was as simple as it was surprising. There are many ice creams, gelati or sorbetti made without a balanced/ratio based recipes. What is there left to say other than: get a scale and a calculator an start balancing your recipes.

Alex from Ideas in Food, these days traveling without Aki paired up again with Le-Sanctuaire. Very similar to last year over the course of two day and four classes Alex demonstrated and various techniques and shared his “ideas in food”. Alex and Aki have been throwing ideas into the ether and the more they throw our, the more comes back. Just in the recent days Alex and Aki threw at us the compression clarification, utilizing agar rather gelatin and elimination the freezing step needed in gelatin clarification. For those who have followed it, it was amazing to watch how suddenly so many creative juices started flowing across the country, even the globe improving or a better choice of words, simplifying  further their technique. See how Dave over at cooking issues ran with the idea here initially and then later evolving into a simplified low the solution just a few hours later here.

The four classes had each its own topic yet as usual there were enough cross-connections that I feel sorry for those who could not come to each single class. The official posted topics are listed below; although the actual subtopics were changed up a little bit. I will post them once I finished sorting my own note.

Pressure Cooking

9 minute beets
10 minute coarse ground grits
Sunflower seed risotto
Braised tongue pastrami
Caramelized white chocolate
Sous vide under vacuum

Working with Liquid Nitrogen

Buttered popcorn ice cream
Olive membrillo crumbs
Powdered lardo
Finely ground spice blends
Inverted ice cream sandwiches
Whipped tomato-basil

Maximizing the vacuum sealer

Edamame and cheddar mosaics
Quick pasta dough
Blanching under vacuum
Aerated cheesecake
Smoked watermelon
48-degree oyster

Gellan

Tied Key lime pie
Diced artichokes barigoule
Pearls of mozzarella water
Crisp of braised cabbage
Encapsulated yogurt in honey water
Strawberry-bacon pudding

While I won’t replicate the handouts or post recipes, you can find many on the Ideas in Food website or can always email Alex and Aki and ask them I do want to share a few key takeaways:

Gelatin is measure bar

It is not the first time Alex said that, it was even one of the first things he said last year. Whenever we use hydrocolloids the final product we will always compare to gelatin, especially its mouth feel.

Simplification

Whatever technique you employ it should simplify the process and improve the outcome. That means the food should taste good. It does not matter how cool the technique and how cool the presentation, if it doesn’t taste good it’s a lost case. I do agree with this statement 100 percent. Alex was elaborating on the time they spend in Colorado running a boutique hotel with 8 rooms, doing everything from checking in, making rooms, cooking, turn down and fix leaking toilets. In that setting you always look to simplify processes and increase efficiencies.

Micro Stocks

Continuing the previous take away; how much time do we use to make stocks and is the result the most flavors we can get out of the bones? Or can we make “micro’ stocks as part of the cooking process and use them which have already been flavored by the food we are cooking? Yes we can, and the lamb neck was great, despite one ingredient that I had a hard time to wrap my mind around – Dr. Pepper.

Nothing is set in stone

Just because we have been though or told to do it one or the other way, do not take it as the last word. Verify it for yourself; even if Alex tells us to do things one way or the other.

Inquisitive minds

Continuing the previous statement: Question everything. Just do. The only question you should never ask is why you should keep on asking questions, asking others or even asking yourself. Isn’t it amazing that every child eager to learn asks thousands of questions and their innocent and inquisitive minds seem never to get enough answers nor run out of questions? What happened to all of us? When did we stop asking questions or even questioning statements or rules? In school when we are ask to shut up most of the time? At work when more experienced cooks or chefs tell us one way or the other? Why do we take all these statements for granted without verifying ourselves? Challenge these statements, rules and theories, find your answer. And if you don’t know the answer if this method or such technique works, just do as Aki says: There is only one way to find out.

You are no van Gogh

Well since we seem to follow like a herd of goats the rules of great chefs who tell us exactly what to do and what we should not, will we also, if we painted, cut off our ear like van Gogh because he did so? Or should we question this act and see if we can get the same of better results with the tools and equipment we have to our disposal nowadays and skip the “ear-cutting” part? I suggest it is worth a try or two. You can still cut off your ear if you feel it is necessary

There is no Creativity

I meant to further discuss Alex’s statement further after the class. In essence Alex claimed there is no creativity and all cooking is based on ratios. I almost agree 100 percent with Alex on that statement. While cooking is definitely based on ratios and a creative chef is not some crazy guy, somewhere out there, that pulls 15 of the latest and coolest techniques onto one dish, there is creativity. Just not in the form as we all may imagine a creative person. Those, who we call very creative, tend to be the most analytical persons we know. Think of scientists: They are extremely creative. They ask questions; work sometimes their entire life to formulate a thesis, just to challenge themselves and their peers to try to proof their own thesis as wrong. Once they or a peer can’t proof it wrong this thesis is seen as right, until somebody else comes around proofing it wrong.

How about the “other creative people”, chefs, painters, musicians, composers, sculptures, and all the other artists? Are they any different in their creativity? Not at all much like the scientist creative people have a extreme well rounded knowledge in their field, for us chefs it happens to be ratios, add flavors, smells experiences, methods, equipment, techniques, and much more. Now imagine each one of this pieces of information is stored in one little box, each box is in their respective group on one shelf. Now we look possibly at ten or twenty shelves each one with a couple of hundred sometimes even thousands of boxes. Now imagine pulling a few boxes of your knowledge boxes off the shelf to create something. Voila. Depending on how many boxes you pull and open you can have a few hundred thousand possible combinations and you pull them of multiple shelves you can have even million of combinations. What does that have to do with creativity? A lot, remember when I said creative people are overly analytical? That is what the so called creative-way-out-there personalities do: They stand in the same room with all their shelves, because they are also very inquisitive they have even more boxes and even more shelves in the room. One called; challenged, not challenged yet, yeah, nay, good now, good for later, to be worked on, to be perfected, etc. Creative personalities open their boxes much quicker sometimes a few hundred per second, not even aware of it, when they talk, listen to others or any other activity. Creative people are also quickly and sorting the results, but challenge them again and again. Creative people tend to pull their little boxes of multiple shelves at the same time resulting in many more cross-connections and even more possible combinations. Now everybody can be creative, just those we call a creative person, because of the fast pace they pull their boxes end up with so many more combinations than the “not so creative”; and statistically the “creative” person has a higher chance to showcase his creativity than the “less creative” who opened substantially less boxes.

Summing up it all comes down to one thing. Ask, ask, ask, and when you are done asking challenge, challenge and challenge once more. Don’t loose your inquisitive child in you and start putting everything into little boxes. We all can be creative and yes it can be learned; my emphasis is on the learning part.

Michael the creator of the blog and author of the same named book “Chef’s Tales” just revamped his blog. It is a fun yet informative read for all those who professionally cook, leisurely cook or never cooked before. I his own words you will find in the blog: “…regular snippets and entries on my blog with regards to working in the industry, living in Asia, occurrences concerning everyday life and I would love to share them with others.”

Find the Micheal’s blog here. Be kind and leave him a note if you want to and let Michael know I sent you.