When I got the Modernest Cuisine At Home cookbook, I was overwhelmed. Bringing science into the kitchen was very exciting to me. I grew up with pressure cookers, so that was not a big reach for me as a tool, but I never had access to a chinois, using a fine sieve instead. We recently got a chiniois, and I have to say, it is a game changer. If you like smooth sauces and soups, get one immediately because it will change your life.

There are a few steps to making this dish, which will absolutely blow your mind.

First, you need broccoli. Trimmed, you need 500g, I find its about 3 heads of broccoli. You need to trim the brocolii down to floweretts, making sure to set a fair number of them to one side for later.

Then you need gruiyere cheese grated, in this recipe you need 40 grams. It’s not a good idea to overdo the cheese.

You need chicken stock, or my preference is chicken bone stock, but you priobably need about 2 cups worth to get the soup the texture you like.

The magic happens in the pressure cooker

To begin, you need a half cup of unsalted butter, 30 grams of water, 5 grams of salt and 2.5 g of baking soda.

Melt the butter in the pressure cooker, add the water, baking soda and salt that you have mixed, then add the brocoli, other than the floweretts you saved, put the lid on, and bring it to 1 bar of pressure for 20 minutes. When its cooked, cool it and take the lid off.

While its cooking you need to fry the saved flwoeretts till they are bright green. It works great when the oil temperature is around 200 F. They get bright green quickly so pay attention then let them drain on a paper towel.

You also need to roast and chop hazelnuts and strip the leaves off of thyme stalks.

Back to the pressure cooker.

Use and immersion blender, and blend the cooked broccoli. This works with just 30g of water because the water content of the broccoli allows it to cook correctly.

Add chicken stock till you are satisfied with the consitency.

Then run it all through the chenois.

Bring it to a good simmer adding the cheese and chicken stock as needed till you are happy with the consistency.

Serve it with the broccoli, hazelnuts and trhyme leaves as illustrated. We also make garlic bread out of toasted bagettes that I rub a clove of garlic over.

It is an absolutely the best dish of soup I have ever had in my 67 years on the planet.

vindaloo is a bold, authentic Goan-style spicy curry—tangy from vinegar, deep with garlic and spices, and properly hot (but adjustable). This version stays true to its Portuguese-Goan roots: no tomatoes, no cream, no sugar unless you intentionally balance heat at the end.

It begins with the marinade. First using these ingredients:

For the Vindaloo Paste

• 8 dried Kashmiri chilies (or 4 Kashmiri + 2–4 Thai chilies for extra heat) 🌶️
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger
• 1½ tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 6 black peppercorns
• 4 cloves
• 1-inch cinnamon stick
• ½ tsp turmeric
• 2 tbsp white vinegar

They all go into the food processor and make a thick paste that you marinate the chicken in. I prefer bone in thighs, so I skinned them, cleaned the fat off and chopped them into pieces before applying the marinade. They sat in the marinade in the fridge overnight. Thats the best way! Then in the morning, I chopped a big onion and caramlized it before adding just half of a roma tomato chopped to help build the sauce. I added the chicken and browned it a little before adding some broth and half a bottle of spicy vondaloo sauce before letting the whole lot simmer on a very low heat all day.

What happens is that the first flavor you smell is the vinegar. The vinegar-forward aroma is exactly what you want at this early stage. It means the dish is still in its early vindaloo phase—sharp, bright, and angular. Over the next few hours it will round out as:

• garlic sweetens
• onions dissolve into the sauce
• chili deepens
• fat emulsifies
• acidity integrates

Vindaloo almost always smells too sharp midway through a long cook—and then turns magical later. Its pretty hot and so that will be the thing I watch. We like it hot, bet too hot is not good either.

Naturally, when you make curry, you make smosas. These are potato and peas with chicken vindaloo

We LOVE food from NOLA. That Big Easy feel in every bite. A heat that grows, with textures and flavors that demand you take another bite on your way to cleaning the plate. Because beef is getting really expensive, we made the choice to try to make less expensive meals. Red beans and rice NOLA style is a very good and tasty strategy.

Ingredients

• 1 lb dried red kidney beans (soaked)
• 1 smoked ham hock + ½ lb thick-cut bacon (or pancetta)
• 1 lb andouille sausage, sliced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• ½ tsp cayenne (adjust later)
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 6–7 cups low-sodium chicken stock
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire
• 1 tsp soy sauce (secret umami boost)
• 1–2 tsp apple cider vinegar (finishing acid)
• 2 tbsp butter (finish)

Rice:

• Jasmine or long grain rice
• Add 1 tbsp butter + 1 bay leaf while cooking

. Render & build flavor

• Cook bacon slowly until fat renders and it’s lightly crisp.
• Remove bacon (leave fat).
• Brown sausage in that fat → remove.
• Add the trinity (onion, pepper, celery). Cook longer than you think—you want slight caramelization.

Garlic + spice bloom

• Add garlic and spices.
• Let them toast 30–60 seconds in the fat (huge flavor payoff).

Slow simmer with structure

• Add beans, ham hock, bacon, sausage, and stock.
• Simmer low for 2–3 hours.
• Skim occasionally, stir gently—don’t rush this.

• When beans are tender:
  • Remove ~1–2 cups of beans
  • Blend or mash them smooth
  • Stir back in

This gives that silky, gravy-like body instead of watery beans.

Final layering

• Stir in:
  • Worcestershire
  • Soy sauce (you won’t taste it—just depth)
  • Butter
  • Splash of vinegar

Taste and adjust:

• Salt (now, not earlier)
• Heat (cayenne or hot sauce)

Rice (don’t neglect this)

• Cook rice with butter + bay leaf.
• Fluff and let steam off slightly → you want distinct grains, not mush.

Plating like a pro

• Rice first (tight mound)
• Beans ladled around and slightly over
• Slice of sausage on top
• Finish with:
  • Green onions
  • Parsley
  • Few drops hot sauce

The process from start to finsih was simple but involved. The first step is to soak the beans for 24 hours. Then you start by making pancetta with the chopped bacon. Next you brown the sausage coins, and only then do you start to build flavor. Yook the holy trinity in the bacon and sausage fat till its pretty caramlized before adding the garlic, then the spices. After that you add the meats and the ham hock along with the stock and the beans, and it cooks very slowly on a simmer for about 3 hours. After that, you mash a cup or two of beans to get that silky smoothness before adding the liquid flavoring. We let it sit ovenight, and ate it the next day after finishing it with butter. We served it with chopped green onion and parsley along with a thick slice of sourdough bread. I am certain we will make this again!