The initial post is an excellent resource, and I've steered several friends toward it.

Scanning through the 20 pages of questions and responses, I did not find information regarding whether one could purchase relatively inexpensive cookware, and then use a thick copper plate between the heat source and the cookware. I have seen such copper plates/sheets at a building supply stores priced quite a bit less than that of copper cookware. Would this idea work?

In my mind I see the copper plate solution as little different than the disc construction that many pieces of cookware use, and I take for granted that one could not replicate the clad construction using a thick copper plate with inexpensive cookware. Still the idea seems worth pursuing to me given the price. Please let me know your thoughts.

by Kerry Beal

This course will begin next week on Sept. 5. Please read through the introduction for information on equipment and ingredients.

The Instructor

Kerry Beal, The Chocolate Doctor, started making candy in childhood, learning how to make fudge from her mother and pull taffy from her grandmother. (Because she had the patience of a gnat, she had trouble waiting for her fudge, so it tended to be grainy. She's gotten better.) Her interest in candy revived as an adult, and she started working with chocolate about ten years ago after purchasing a small tempering machine while on holiday in San Francisco. That started her journey into all things chocolate.

Kerry is the author of the Chocolate Doctor series of educational DVDs, which cover the basic techniques for working with chocolate. She plans to make at least two other DVDs in the series to cover airbrushing with chocolate and pan coating with chocolate. She teaches courses in chocolate techniques, caramel making and confectionery.

Although she has no plans to open a chocolate or candy shop, Kerry loves to develop new recipes and enjoys reverse engineering what she tastes. Friends bring her treats from around the world with instructions to 'copy it for me. She supports her passion for all things in the kitchen with her day job as a family physician, so she truly is the Chocolate Doctor.

The Series: Confectionery 101

The subjects we will cover in this course are:

1. Caramel

2. Nougat

3. Fudge/Fondant

4. Pull Taffy

The art of confectionery is all about the control of crystallization: the crystallization of sugar in sweets and the crystallization of cocoa butter in chocolate.

Caramel, toffee and butterscotch are all candies with a non-crystalline structure, the differences in texture being determined by the temperature to which the batch is taken. For caramel and related candy, sugar is dissolved and large amounts of glucose are added to retard crystallization. Very little stirring takes place, again to discourage crystallization.

Producing nougat and divinity also involves the retardation of sugar crystallization. A combination of boiled sugar and glucose with a frappe of egg albumin gives them their characteristic texture. The density and chewiness is determined by the proportions of sugar to glucose and the temperature to which the sugar solution is cooked.

Fudge or fondant is made by boiling sugar with a liquid to first completely dissolve the sugar, then cooling to the ideal temperature before beating to encourage the formation of crystals of the desired size. It is the very fine crystals that we produce under these conditions that give fudge or fondant its creamy texture on the tongue.

Pull taffy is sugar syrup cooked to a soft crack stage then allowed to cool just until it can be handled. It is then pulled until it lightens in colour and the crystals form a series of parallel ridges, providing its characteristic texture.

Required supplies

Note: Much of the equipment and ingredients will be used in all four classes.

Class 1: Caramel

Equipment

Heavy pot 6 quarts or larger

Candy or digital thermometer

Silicone spatula or wooden or bamboo spoon

Caramel rulers or pastry frame or metal baking pan

Parchment paper or Silpat or oiled marble slab

Chef’s knife or pizza cutter or guitar cutter (if you are so blessed)

Ingredients

Sugar

Glucose (white corn syrup)

Butter

Honey

Heavy cream

Vanilla

Class 2: Nougat

Equipment

Small heavy pot

Candy or digital thermometer

Stand mixer

Caramel rulers or pastry frame or 8 x 8 inch metal pan

Chefs knife or pizza cutter

Ingredients

Sugar

Glucose (white corn syrup)

Egg whites

Peanut butter

Class 3: Fudge

Equipment

Heavy 4-quart pot

Candy or digital thermometer

Wooden or bamboo spoon or silicone spatula

Marble or granite slab (optional)

Scraper if using slab to agitate

Ingredients

Sugar, white and brown

Glucose (white corn syrup)

Butter

Milk or cream

Vanilla

Pecans

Class 4: Pull Candy

Equipment

Heavy 4 quart or larger pot

Candy or digital thermometer

Marble or granite slab or large platter or flat pan

Two strong arms or taffy hook

Scissors

Ingredients

Sugar

Glucose (white corn syrup)

Vinegar

Peppermint oil (optional)

I hope these classes will encourage you to follow along and try some new techniques. I don't pretend to know everything about confectionery although I learn a lot every time I teach. I look forward to everyone's input, tips and techniques and trouble-shooting ideas. Together we will be able to answer questions, make suggestions and encourage successful confectionery.

So get out your heaviest pots, your silicone spatulas, and your candy thermometers, and let's make some candy.

Note from the eGCI team: A food scale is also necessary for these classes.

Please post your questions and comment on the class here, in the Q&A.

The instructor

Steven A. Shaw is the executive director and co-founder of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, a James Beard Award-winning food critic, and a contributor to Elle, Saveur, and many other magazines and journals. His book, Turning the Tables: The Insider’s Guide to Eating Out, is the definitive guide for novices and pros alike to getting the best a restaurant has to offer, starting with those all-important, impossible-to-get reservations. (The paperback version was released August 1.) Named by Food & Wine magazine as one of the thirty-five most fearsome young talents in food, he is insightful, irreverent, and often controversial.

HOW TO DINE

Introduction

When people ask me what I do, and if I’m inclined to say anything beyond "I'm unemployed," I tell them I’m a food writer. The first thing they say (after "Really? I've never heard of you.") is usually something along the lines of, "Oh, you’re a restaurant reviewer."

Most food writers are not restaurant reviewers, just as most lawyers never set foot in a courtroom -- we’re talking like 90+ percent. But restaurant reviewing occupies the public consciousness about food writing, just as courtrooms occupy the public consciousness about the practice of law. Never mind that there are a thousand cookbooks on the bookstore shelves for every one book of restaurant reviews, that the major food magazines today publish virtually no restaurant reviews and that a newspaper food section with ten contributing writers might have one restaurant reviewer. Restaurant reviews are in the limelight.

I used to be a restaurant reviewer. It's a great job: you eat a tremendous amount of food at the best restaurants, and once in awhile you write something about it. It doesn’t pay very well, but you eat like a billionaire. I wrote several hundred restaurant reviews over a period of years. But over time I grew weary of the monotony of the form. There's plenty you can try to do to keep your reviews interesting for yourself and for your readers, but in the end you're always writing the same thing: a summary of food, decor, service, maybe something about the chef, and the occasional witty observation.

Restaurant reviews have a more fundamental deficiency, though: restaurant reviews tell you where to eat, but they don’t tell you how to dine. Moreover, most restaurant reviewers are obsessed with the experience of the average customer – they use assumed names, vigorously guard their identities and even wear disguises – but all of that misses the point: you don’t have to be the average customer. In any given restaurant on any given day, some people are having better meal experiences than others. The valuable information isn’t "What restaurant gives a good experience to the average customer?" but is, rather, "How do I get the best experience at every restaurant?" After all, the average meal at the best restaurant in town probably isn't going to be as good as the best meal at a good but not top-ranked restaurant.

Most of us know at least one person who has great restaurant karma. You know, the person who always picks the right place, always orders the right thing and has a great rapport with waitstaff. Restaurant karma, however, is not some mystical force that some are predestined to control while others are out of luck. It's certainly the case that some folks are great intuitive diners, but most of us have to learn.

It was with that in mind that, a few years back, I started writing a series of articles targeted at young professionals (they were published in New York Lawyer magazine) with the theme "Guerilla Dining Tactics." The response was tremendous -- a lot of people were really grateful for the advice -- so eventually I set out to write a book that, at the time, had a working title of How to Dine. Through several proposals and draft manuscripts the concept developed into the book Turning the Tables: The Insider’s Guide to Eating Out, which was published last year by HarperCollins and has now just been released in paperback. If you’d like to read some excerpts from the book, there were five published in the Daily Gullet last year (additional excerpts are included as part of this presentation).

Ever since Turning the Tables came out, I’ve been speaking to audiences -- both in-person (at the 92nd Street Y, the Smithsonian, various culinary schools and bookstores) and via different forms of broadcast media (television, radio call-in shows, live online chat) -- and have learned a bit more about people's expectations when they dine out. A year later, the good people at the eGCI suggested it might be fun to do a "How to Dine" presentation and discussion, drawing on some of that post-publication experience.

Before I go on to some basic advice for getting the most out of restaurant dining, let me try to clear up a few common misconceptions that I’ve encountered on the road:

First, knowing how to get the most out of the dining experience is not some rarified skill that's useful only in super-expensive, fine-dining restaurants. You can take control of your dining experience at all restaurants above the level of McDonald's. Restaurants are all fundamentally members of the same species. The differences between the corner diner and the four-star temple of haute cuisine mostly have to do with scale, style, training; in other words, they aren't different species -- the difference is the equivalent of a gene here and there. You also don’t have to live in New York or San Francisco. Restaurants may be better or worse according to geography, but they're still restaurants. During the years I spent doing the research for Turning the Tables, I spent time in restaurants from New York to Vancouver, and at every level from highly regarded fancy places to pizzerias, hot dog stands and barbecue joints. The similarities by far outweigh the differences. Indeed, some of the most rewarding special dining experiences I've had have been not at fine-dining restaurants but at smaller, family-run, casual places.

Second, you have to be willing to expend some effort. People often bristle when confronted with the reality that they have to work in order to get a good meal. They want to be served. But it doesn't work that way. Just as with any kind of human relationship from a marriage to a business partnership, you get more out of dining when you put more into it. It's like when you decide to buy a new TV. You have two choices: walk in to the store and buy whatever the salesperson convinces you to buy (or, in the case of a low-service store like Costco, pick something at random), or take control of the situation by doing some research: go to Consumer Reports online, read product reviews on CNet, check message boards and Amazon feedback, compare prices. You'd put an hour into it, wouldn't you? Well, guess what? Dinner for two at the top restaurants in the Western industrialized nations now costs as much as a new TV. And the value of participation remains high once you get to the restaurant. If you want to get the best possible meal out of a restaurant, you've only got two choices: resent being an active participant in your dining experience, or learn to enjoy it. Either way, don't blame me. I didn't create the system; I'm just trying to help folks get the most out of it.

Third, don't expect any earth-shattering revelations here. Good restaurant karma lies at the confluence of many small, unremarkable actions. A good example is when I advise restaurant consumers to say "please" and "thank you" -- in other words, to be polite to waitstaff. Plenty of people have responded, "I had to buy your stupid book/come to your stupid talk/read your stupid eGCI presentation for such trivial advice?" Yet, being kind to waitstaff is one of the most powerful tools in the successful customer's toolkit. After all, the tip doesn't come until after the meal. Kindness is immediate. If it's genuine, that's even better.

Finally, accept that sometimes you're going to have bad restaurant experiences. Even though I'm arguably the world's leading (only?) authority on getting the most out of restaurant dining, I just had a really crummy restaurant misadventure the other day. We were in (on?) Cape Cod and went to one of those places that does three months of seasonal business a year, utilizing mostly untrained college students for waitstaff, and doesn't take reservations. We did everything wrong. We were herding several kids and the time got away from us, so we finally showed up with seven people at 6:30pm. We believed them when they said it would be a 20-minute wait, and when we'd waited 40 minutes we believed them when they said it would only be 20 minutes more. We tried to complain and were verbally abused by a snotty college kid. The kids were freaking out. Once seated, service was slow. They put olives in a vodka gimlet. You get the idea. It happens. But with a little effort, you can make that sort of experience a once-a-year war story rather than a chronic condition of dining out.

The way I'd like to run this eGCI class is as a dialog. I'll start by making a short presentation, based largely on material from Turning the Tables. But then I’d like to hear from all of you: please feel free to share not only your questions but also your advice and experiences in terms of how to get more out of dining out. The dialog we'll be having here is not, however, the same as the open multi-directional conversations we have on regular eG Forums topics. So, please don't address other members' remarks and questions; if you disagree with something I say feel free to mention it, but just once; and if you feel the need to have a discussion that doesn't fit with the structure of this class, please feel free to start an eG Forums topic at the conclusion of the class discussion period (Friday).

Reservations

Let's start with reservations. People are continuously asking me "How do I get in to popular restaurants?" Really, it's not that hard. You just need to understand a few things about how restaurants handle their bookings.

Every night at a popular restaurant is like an overbooked airline flight. And restaurants, like airlines, operate on razor-thin profit margins; a couple of empty seats can mean the difference between profit and loss for the evening. Most restaurants that accept reservations therefore overbook their dining rooms, because they know that a certain percentage of the reservations will either cancel late in the game or be no-shows at the moment of truth. And in the end, after all the cancellations and no-shows have been tallied, there is almost always an empty table. Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Get that empty table.

Whether you really want or need that table is, however, an open question. Too many people, I think, place too much emphasis on visiting restaurants that are new, hot, staffed by a celebrity chef, featured on Food TV, or otherwise in demand, rather than restaurants that are simply good. Although my work as a food writer often requires that I visit hard-to-book restaurants -- and thus I’ve become extremely facile when it comes to getting in -- when spending my own money I prefer to go to restaurants that are tried and true.

Should you wish to get into an in-demand restaurant, however, the first step is to acquire a basic understanding of restaurant demographics, which includes a good working knowledge of local news, weather, and even sports. The most painless way to get a reservation is to take a cue from the judo masters: never fight strength with strength. Instead, be a contrarian. If the restaurant does mostly dinner business, go for lunch (the food will be the same, and often cheaper). If it serves a mostly pre-theater crowd, go at 8 P.M. If it’s a business-oriented place, go on the weekend. Even the most popular restaurants tend to be empty during blizzards, the Superbowl, and Monica Lewinsky’s Barbara Walters interview.

But sometimes you don't want to eat at 5:30 P.M. on a Tuesday, or in a snowstorm. What then? The lesson I've learned from observing and interacting with scores of reservationists (yes, it's a word) over the years is that, when attempting to secure a reservation for the busiest times, the key is polite but confident persistence. Remember the pathetic guy in high school who asked every girl out on a date and never gave up in the face of repeated rejection? Remember your astonishment at his lack of self-respect? Remember how, one day, he scored? When it comes to reservations, you want to be like that guy. It's that careful balance between genuine enthusiasm, flattery, and exhaustion that makes extra seats magically open up.

Most people, when told a restaurant is "fully committed," will give up. But if you're fully committed to getting a reservation, the first phone call is only the beginning. Everybody wants to be wanted, so you need to communicate your desire to the reservationist, sometimes repeatedly. Let that person know you care enough about dining at the restaurant that you're not going to give up until you get a table -- maybe not at that time or even on that day, but you're going to get one. If your first attempt is rejected, start asking questions. Is there a waiting list? When does the restaurant require confirmations? When does the restaurant get most of its cancellations? (Usually right around the time confirmations are required, and also during the afternoon the day of.) What are the reservationist's hopes, dreams, and favorite kind of dog?

There are few restaurants in the world where you won't be able to get in by using the aforementioned techniques. Still, every good strategy must have several contingency plans, and in some extreme cases -- such as at the most popular places in large cities on weekend nights -- you may very well fail at getting an advance reservation. But hope is not lost. Given how many people cancel their reservations at the last minute or fail to confirm them, an ironic situation arises: it's often easier to get a reservation the day of than it is to get one a month in advance. So find out from the reservationist when the restaurant requires confirmations, and call one minute after the deadline. Ask when the bulk of day-of cancellations typically come in -- depending on the restaurant this could be anywhere from noon to right before the dinner service -- and call around that time. And make sure the reservationist remembers that you're the nice couple from Arizona, or the woman who just loves the chef's sweetbreads, or in my case the guy with the English bulldog named Momo.

Even if you can't get a last-minute reservation, if you simply must dine at a particular restaurant I recommend you just show up. Once you're on the inside, don't give up until the last cook goes home for the night. It is almost inconceivable that a neatly dressed, polite potential customer, sitting at a restaurant's bar and exhibiting a willingness to wait and a desire to experience and pay for a restaurant's cuisine, will not eventually be given a table. So far I have never failed with this strategy, though I’ve endured some long evenings. (Those long evenings are great times to collect gossip from bartenders, though.)

In the door

Getting into a restaurant is nice, and for many consumers it's victory enough, but it's only the beginning. It's what happens to you in the restaurant that really counts. Most every restaurant is really two: the one the public eats at, and the one where the regulars dine. Being a regular affects every aspect of the dining experience, from getting that tough-to-book table on a busy Saturday night, to getting the waitstaff's best service, to getting special off-menu dishes and off-list wines. The best restaurant isn't the one with the highest Zagat rating, the most stars from the local paper, or that cute celebrity chef. It's the one where you’re a regular.

This news can be discouraging to some, but it needn't be to you: by being a proactive and knowledgeable customer, you can start getting treated like a regular on your very first visit. A special relationship with a restaurant is one of life's great pleasures, and such a relationship can be far easier and quicker to establish than many people think. You don't need to be wealthy, a celebrity, or great-looking to be a regular. I’m none of the three, and I do pretty well in restaurants. And while you can't exactly become a regular in a single visit, you can make a lot of progress in that direction.

The benefits of being a regular will, of course, increase with each visit to a restaurant. Although each individual meal at a top restaurant should be excellent, most seasoned veteran diners take the long view. To them, eating a first meal at a restaurant is like a first date: it's a preview that helps you decide if you're going to want a second date. Most every restaurant, like every dating partner, keeps a little something in reserve for subsequent encounters. The first meal won't expose you to the full range of an establishment's capabilities, but it will give you a taste. On the later visits, things can get even more interesting.

But you can't make those repeat visits if you're constantly eating at the latest trendy place. Becoming a regular requires focus, whereas the relentless pursuit of the new and the different cuts directly against depth of enjoyment at just a few well-chosen places. There are more than six thousand restaurants in Chicago, and New York has something in the neighborhood of twenty-thousand; given how many close and open each week, any large city has too many to visit in a lifetime. Since you'll never visit them all, don't try. Instead, zero in on a handful of restaurants to satisfy your various dining needs -- the special-occasion place, the business-lunch place, the neighborhood place where you go for a quick bite -- and cultivate the heck out of your relationship with the staff at each one. You'll soon find you don't often get the urge to eat anywhere else, and that new restaurants have to fight to get onto your schedule instead of vice versa.

Before and during your first visit, do a little research. Every level of restaurant in every city has both an official and an unofficial dress code. The official dress code tells you the minimum ("no jeans, no sneakers" or "jackets required for gentlemen"), but what you want to know is the unofficial code: what are people really going to be wearing? The way to find out is to call ahead and ask. Other questions -- there are no stupid ones -- should be asked on the spot, while dining. Those in the service profession usually love to share their knowledge with newcomers to their restaurant or to fine dining in general. Whether you want to know what a funny-shaped utensil is for or what the best dish on the menu is, just look your server in the eye and ask, "Can you tell me about this?" The first time my wife (then-girlfriend) and I dined at Bouley in New York City, we didn’t know what a sauce spoon was. When we asked, the waiter took us under his wing -- and that's exactly where you want to be.

Most good restaurants' waitstaffs will recognize you after two or three visits (and certainly the restaurant's reservations computer will, assuming you use the same name and phone number each time). In that sense, anybody who visits a restaurant often enough eventually becomes a regular by default. But there are levels of regulars, and if you're going to visit the restaurant anyway, you may as well attain the highest, super-VIP level by being proactive. Learn the name of your waiter and the maitre d' or manager, and, more importantly, make certain they learn yours. The easiest way to accomplish this: "I really enjoyed my meal today. My name is Steven Shaw." If you aren’t answered with, "Thank you, Mr. Shaw, my name is François, please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you in the future," then there’s something wrong with you, or with the restaurant. (Of course you should use your name, not mine. There are still a few places out there that are annoyed with me for giving them bad reviews.)

A restaurant is a business, but a relationship with a restaurant is not just about money. Especially when dealing with waitstaff, the human element can often eclipse financial concerns. Sure, money is important to people in the restaurant business, just as it's important to lawyers. But like the law, the restaurant business is a service business, and all lawyers know that there are good clients and bad clients, and that you can have bad billionaire clients and great penniless clients. When cultivating a relationship with a restaurant's service staff, being nice often counts at least as much as callously throwing money around. The use of "please" and "thank you," and general acknowledgment of your waiter as a fellow human being, will immeasurably improve your stock.

And there's something that counts as much as or more than being nice: being interested. Any chef or waiter can tell you how disheartening it is to work so hard to create the best possible food and service experience, and then to dish it out to a mostly uncaring clientele that chose the restaurant for the scene, not the food. If you can distinguish yourself as someone who really cares about the restaurant's work, you will be everybody's favorite customer. The quickest approach? Again, ask questions, which indicates interest. Interest is one of the highest compliments you can pay. Of course, if you do choose to distribute a little extra cash, a twenty-dollar bill and a discreet "thank you" never hurts.

Do not, however, make the egregious mistake of faking it. Don't try to be someone you're not in order to impress a restaurant's staff. Aside from being undignified, this is doomed to failure. Every experienced waiter is a part-time amateur psychoanalyst and can spot a poseur clear across a crowded dining room. It's not necessary to try to appear learned about wine and food, or to appear absurdly enthusiastic. You'll get a lot further by deferring to the staff's expertise than you will by showing off your own. You may learn something, too.

The meal

Choosing and ordering food and, especially, wine is another area of dining out that many find troublesome. Today there are places where you're presented with so much paperwork you'd be forgiven for thinking you're at a real estate closing. There may be a regular dinner menu, a preset chef's multi-course tasting menu or two, a specials list either spoken or written, a wine list, a dessert menu, and perhaps even a dessert wine and liqueur list. How is one to make sense of all these documents?

There's no way to become a food or wine expert overnight, or even in a year. But you don't need expertise. All you need is enough confidence to ask questions. The rest is up to the restaurant. In hiring staff, training them, and holding staff meetings every day, a top restaurant has taken on the burden of providing expertise. If you provide an opening by asking a question, any good restaurant's staff should be more than happy to share that expertise with you. One of the most basic lines of inquiry, which can lead to a highly productive dialogue, is asking servers what their favorite dishes are, and what dishes the chef considers specialties of the house. While your tastes may vary from the norm, and while you shouldn't order bass if you hate bass, the recommendations of waitstaff at good restaurants are valuable indicators of what the chef, staff, and customers tend to enjoy. And you'll get even more out of asking questions if you can be as specific as possible. "I love bitter chocolate; which dessert would you recommend?" is better than just "Which dessert would you recommend?"

One of the most daunting parts of ordering, especially for those who are new to fine dining but even for many seasoned veterans, is the selection of wine. A significant restaurant with an ambitious wine program might have more than a thousand wine choices on its list. Even a casual brasserie or bistro is likely to have more choices than you could possibly read through without freezing out everybody else at your table and winning yourself a "wine geek" label or worse. In better restaurants, then, it always pays to seek assistance from the sommelier, or wine steward. The sommelier's role is to know the restaurant's wine and food offerings better than any customer possibly could. Even other professional sommeliers seek the advice of the sommelier when dining out.

A sommelier will most likely make a sensible wine recommendation, provided you participate in the decision. Your part of the bargain, then, is to make your needs and preferences known. If you haven't yet ordered, you’ll benefit from telling the sommelier what you plan to eat. Any preferences you can articulate, from the most basic "I like my wines on the sweeter side" to more technical statements of regional and stylistic preference, will help the sommelier narrow the field.

Most importantly, there is the matter of price. Once you've decided how much your budget is for a bottle of wine, the best way to communicate this to the sommelier is to point to any bottle on the list at your comfortable price and say, "Something in this range, please."

The wine service ritual is romantic and entertaining, but it's mostly pragmatic. The main goal is to determine whether or not the wine is "corked." It’s a reality of the wine world that as many as one in ten bottles will be corked, meaning they will be tainted by a foul-smelling and -tasting mold that grows in corks. (It has nothing to do, as some mistakenly think, with bits of cork in the bottle, which would be harmless.) To me and many others, it smells like feet. If your nose detects such an off aroma when you smell or taste the wine the sommelier or server has poured, send the bottle back. If you're not sure, ask the sommelier for confirmation -- restaurants usually get credit from their distributors for corked bottles, so they tend not to mind taking them back, and even if they did mind, it wouldn't be your problem.

The wine service ritual is not, however, intended for you to see if you like the wine. If the wine is damaged, send it back. If it's simply not the exact wine you wished you'd ordered, mention this to the sommelier, but be prepared to drink it and chalk it up to experience unless the sommelier offers a replacement (it may happen).

It's not always necessary to order bottles of wine, however. Sometimes, if you’re a couple and don’t drink very much, or you're ordering very different dishes, you may want to inquire about wines by the glass, or at some restaurant, by the quartino (a 250 ml mini-carafe that's enough for two small glasses) or half-bottle (375 ml).

Plenty of restaurants, unfortunately, don’t have a sommelier or even any server or manager who knows much about wine. This is your cue that you shouldn't be spending much money on wine at the restaurant. Instead, order something inexpensive and safe, if anything at all. Know the names of a few of the major producers of reliable red and white wines -- information you can get by reading a couple of issues of Wine Spectator (which includes a pullout reference card with every issue) or surfing the web -- for such contingencies. Or do without, and use the money for a better bottle of wine later on, at a better restaurant.

Under no circumstances, however, should you ever feel compelled to order wine in any restaurant. Aside from whatever fixed price menu or per-customer minimum a restaurant reveals in writing on the menu, everything else is optional. You are entirely within your rights and the scope of appropriate conduct as a customer to drink tap water, order food only, and skip coffee. A server should always ask if you want these things (at most restaurants it's a requirement of the job and servers will get in trouble if they don’t do it), but should never aggressively try to upsell you on anything. If that happens, just smile knowingly and say, "No, thank you."

Dealing with Problems

Finally, let's spend a few moments on the subject of what to do if something goes wrong in a restaurant.

Servers, managers, and chefs are human. They make mistakes, they get distracted, they have personal problems and are besieged by all the other little difficulties of the human condition. Most of the time, though, when their mistakes are pointed out to them, they want to make things right. And if they don't, there's always a manager or an owner above them who will. What a restaurant's staff can't do is read your mind. That's why, if something goes wrong in a restaurant, it's important to speak up.

I know many people are uncomfortable speaking up in restaurants, either because they're intimidated by the staff or because they don't want to put on a big scene in front of the other people at the table. Some of us have families that raised us not to complain, but the restaurant context isn't the place to live that way. In restaurants, it's best for everybody if you make your complaint known as soon as you become aware of a problem. If you prefer to complain privately, excuse yourself from the table as though you’re going to the bathroom and pull a manager aside on your way: "I just wanted to let you know that every time I need water refilled I have to search and wave for several minutes to get it. I'm trying to have a celebratory dinner here and this is putting a damper on my evening. Do you think you can help?" At any good restaurant, it is virtually guaranteed that the manager will not only address the issue right away with the service staff, but also will pay extra special attention to your table for the rest of the evening. If not, don't return to the restaurant.

Speaking up is fundamental to getting what you want. If you're being shown to a table that you don't like, for example one next to a noisy group or a bathroom entrance, request a different table before you sit down. Even if there are no other available tables, say you'll be willing to wait. A few minutes of awkwardness at the outset is better than a few hours at a table you won't enjoy. If a dish is overcooked or otherwise deficient, send it back and say why. If you feel the pace of your meal is rushed, ask to have it slowed down. If your server or a manager asks "Is everything okay?" and it isn't, don't say it is. Review your bill carefully, because if you notice an error the next day it will be infinitely more difficult to correct. So long as you are civil when voicing reasonable complaints, you are in the right. Writing a follow-up letter of complaint is another way to convey your dissatisfaction, but by then it's too late for the restaurant to fix the problem. I prefer to make complaints immediately, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me, so as to fix the meal before it becomes a bad memory. I reserve follow-up letters for the complaints that weren't fixed, even after being voiced.

Conclusion

As I said, it's not earthshaking stuff. Mostly, it's a willingness to take charge of your dining experience, instead of letting it happen to you. It's a lot of little things that add up. Join me in the Q&A to discuss more ideas for getting the most out of your restaurant experience.

Post your questions and comments for this course here.

by Chris Holst, aka cdh

The Course

Welcome to the eGCI course on homebrewing. This course will be divided into five classes spaced two weeks apart to allow you to gather equipment and ingredients, and to let the yeast alone to work their magic.

Class 1, which follows, is a basic introduction to the concepts and necessary equipment. It ends with a shopping list for Class 2.

Class 2 will step you through the most simple kind of beermaking you can do, extract brewing. You’ll make a strong golden ale.

Class 3 will teach you what you need to know about bottling your Strong Golden Ale, and brewing another beer that combines malt extract and specialty grains for added complexity and body.

In Class 4 you’ll make a Red Ale using what we discussed in Class 3.

Class 5 will walk you through the next step up in complexity and control in brewing, where you’ll derive some of your sugar from malted grain, and some of your sugar from malt extract. This is called partial mash brewing, and incorporates all of the steps involved in all grain brewing. We’ll brew a Belgian Abbey style ale. We’ll not do any all grain brewing, since it is more equipment-intensive than this course envisions, but if you complete Class 5, you’ll know the procedures if you get the urge to try it.

The Instructor

Chris Holst spent some time living in England in the early 1990s, where his attention was caught by the homebrew kits that the Boots pharmacies stocked. The idea of making beer stuck in the back of his mind. After returning from England, the space and time to brew were available, so the hunt began for a homebrew shop. Luckily one was nearby, and staffed with helpful folks who got things off on the right foot. He's never looked back. Since then, he's brewed at least 3 or 4 batches a year, experimenting mostly with Belgian ales and English bitters.

CLASS 1

Prelude

Brewing is an ancient human activity. Making drinks out of grains has been a part of human civilization for a long, long time -- archaeologists have found evidence of Egyptian and Babylonian brewing. Over the ages we’ve refined the process, but in essence brewing remains simple in its process but complex in its ingredients. The process involves three steps:

1) Turn grain into fermentable sugars in the concentration you want, with the flavorings you want.

2) Let yeast loose on the fermentable sugars and leave them alone.

3) Carbonate it.

Getting at the fermentable sugars in raw grains is the art of malting. Although brewers used to malt their own grains, it is now a separate industry, which takes that element out of the job of the brewer and replaces it with a wide variety of prepared products you can buy at a homebrew shop. The primary factors that differentiate fermentable grain products are how far the natural starch-to-sugar conversion processes are allowed to proceed, and how much caramelization of the resulting sugars occurred. We’ll address grain options and the techniques associated with them in later lessons in this course.

Most beers today are flavored with hops, so we’ll look at the information they carry with them to give you the knowledge you’ll need to make an informed purchase and have an idea about what your hops will do.

Yeast gives beer a distinct character depending on what type of yeast you use. We’ll look at the commercial options available to you, and the tricks to use to get the best performance out of your yeast. Leaving the yeast alone means effectively removing competing organisms from the environment it will work in so it won’t be bothered by the wild yeasts and other beasts that might sneak in, and having the patience to let the yeast sit in your beer for a week or more to eat through all of the sugars.

Carbonation is more yeast work, which requires sanitation, and sealable bottles to keep the carbon dioxide in there once the yeast make it.

EQUIPMENT AND INGREDIENT BASICS

So, you’re curious about brewing and want to give it a try? Brewing in small batches is quite easy and within the reach of just about anybody interested in making a simple beer all on their own. This lesson will introduce you to a minimalist’s essential brewing equipment. As a bit of advance warning: homebrewing is a gadgeteer’s paradise, having been adopted wholeheartedly by folks with an inventive spirit and mechanical aptitude, so there is a vast array of toys and goodies designed to streamline some aspect of the brewing process. Here we’ll eschew all of them and strip the hobby down to the absolute basics.

Equipment

The first thing we’ll do is list the equipment you’ll need to get a batch of beer brewing. Since this is a tutorial, I’m going to scale down the recipes from the homebrewer’s standard 5-gallon batch size to a more manageable 2 gallons, which will yield just short of a case of beer, and won’t require you to purchase a whole new kit of equipment. To get from here to beer you’ll need to get the following equipment together before the next lesson (you'll probably have some of these already; others are specialty items you'll need to purchase):

A pot that holds at least 12 quarts, and a tight fitting lid. You’ll use this to boil the malt extract and hops together for an hour. You want this to be a non-reactive metal, so cast iron is out. Enameled canning pots are good, so long as the enamel is intact and not chipped. Stainless steel is the gold standard.

A container that holds at least 12 quarts. This is where you’ll be fermenting the beer. Fermentation takes between a week and two weeks. You could use the pot you boiled in, or you could use a food grade plastic container. The standard in the homebrewing world is a food grade plastic bucket with an airtight lid and an airlock device that allows the gasses the fermentation produces to leave, but allows no new air in. It is great if you have one, but we’ll assume you don’t yet at this early stage in your brewing adventures.

A scale. Recipes call for certain weights of ingredients. Eyeballing can get you into the right ballpark, but a scale is really necessary if you want to be able to properly follow recipes or build your own reproducible recipes.

A thermometer. When you’re dealing with grains rather than just extracts, you’ll need a thermometer. Grain husks contain astringent compounds that are extracted at temperatures above about 170F, so you need a reliable method of ensuring that the water your grain is sitting in is not above 170F. There are other critical temperatures that activate and deactivate enzymes in grain that we’ll address later.

A large metal spoon. You’ll stir boiling liquid with this, so a long handle that doesn’t conduct heat would be the best.

A sanitizing agent. Homebrewing is as much about keeping unwanted additions out of the beer as putting the right ingredients in. As we all learned from those swab and swipe experiments in our high school biology classes, the world around us is crawling with microscopic life. Our job is to make sure that the microbeasts we like (namely our chosen yeast) get to eat all of the sugary nutrients in our beer, and to keep wild yeasty and bacterial party crashers from busting in, chowing down and leaving the beer a mess. That means we have to be vigilant about sanitizing everything that comes into contact with our beer. A great sanitizer that is likely already in your cupboard is chlorine bleach. If you’re using bleach, then one tablespoon to a gallon of water will make a fine sanitizing solution. I’ve been using either an activated oxygen cleaner (a lot like Oxyclean, but no blue crystals in it) or a bleach solution for my dozen years of brewing, and haven’t had an infected batch. There’s a lot of infection paranoia out there, but if you’re careful, you should not have problems.

A balloon whisk. You’ll use this to stir and aerate your wort after you have boiled it and cooled it down to room temperature.

Muslin hop bags. Hops should be isolated and easily removable from the pot. Homebrew shops sell little knit muslin bags really cheap; you’ll need to buy ingredients from a homebrew shop anyway, so pick up a few of these too.

hop bag, center

A nylon grain bag. Grains are something we’ll deal with in later lessons, but if you’re going to use them, you need something able to contain them. There are little nylon bags and there are big bags that can be fit inside big pots. I’d recommend the latter because they’re tougher, and more versatile. A little bit of grain in a great big bag is less of a problem than a lot of grain in a little bag. Some people advocate using nylon stockings for this purpose; make sure they don’t have runners in that will let your grain out.

A clean white dishtowel and a rubber band. Since we’re operating on the assumption that you don’t have an airtight fermentation vessel, it is important to keep airborne stuff from settling on your beer while it is fermenting. A clean dishtowel that has been soaked in sanitizing solution and wrung out can be stretched over the top of your fermentation vessel and kept in place with a rubber band. This will mean that you’re conducting an “open fermentation,” which is more traditional in some beer styles than others, but will work for everything.

A 4-foot length of flexible ½" (or so) tubing. Transferring beer from vessel to vessel should be done by siphon, and you need a tube to get a siphon going.

A racking cane and a bottle filler. These are rigid plastic tubes that attach to the flexible tubing. The racking cane has a device on the bottom end so that your siphon will not draw up sediment from the bottom of the vessel. The bottle filler has a pressure activated valve at the end, so that you can fill bottles without overflowing. Buy these and your tubing at the same time from the same place to insure that everything fits together.

Bottles. You need something that can handle the pressure of carbonation and can be sealed tight. If you are a beer drinker, you can save thick returnable bottles and cap them with a device you can buy from a homebrew shop, but the more common twist-off bottles are not recappable, nor are they sturdy enough to safely carbonate beer in the bottle. Since most people don’t have a case of empty recappable beer bottles sitting in the pantry, I’ll suggest an easier and cheaper alternative: PET seltzer bottles. You can get one- and two-liter bottles of club soda for less than the cost of shipping a case of empty bottles to you. You’ll need to take care about light exposure while your beer is aging, but that is as simple as keeping them in a dark closet. Don’t use soda bottles, as the flavorings in soda can persist in the bottles, and you’d probably not want to get stuck with two gallons of lemony-limey-brau.

Ingredients

Malt, hops, yeast and water -- Beer advertisements over time have extolled those four ingredients, which are the bare minimum needed to make a beer. Marketers love the ancient German beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot for its mysterious name and simple message: pure beer is good beer. Under that law (since overridden by the EU) only malt, hops, yeast and water could go into beer, and Germany still managed to produce a wide range of beer styles. Other countries without such a legal restriction on what goes into a beer have created a wildly varied array of beers by adding herbs, spices, non-yeast microbes and alternative sources of fermentables.

Since this is designed for new brewers, we’ll keep it simple early on, and only talk about what we will use to brew the first batch in our next lesson.

Malt

When a kernel of grain begins to sprout, a complex alchemy of chemical reactions begins, converting the starch we grind into flour into sweet sugary compounds to feed the growing plant. Malting grain is the process of capturing the kernels in the midst of their transformation from starch to sugar, and then heating and drying them to kill the sprouting plant and take its energy stores for our use. These dried malted grains have a set of activated enzymes within them that will transform most of the starches into sugars when exposed to the right environmental conditions. When brewing directly from grain, part of the brewer’s art is setting the environmental conditions such that the transformative enzymes turn the starches into the right mix of fermentable and unfermentable sugars that will give the beer both its strength and its body. As a bit of trivia, the brewer’s word for the sugary solution is “wort,” though we’ll try to keep the specialist vocabulary to a minimum early on in these lessons. (Brewing does have its own well developed jargon that can confuse folks who don’t speak the language.)

In this introductory course, we are going to use a common shortcut and employ malt extract. Malt extract is the concentrated sugars derived from malt that has gone through its enzymatic transformation. There are two broad types of malt extract, liquid and dried. For our purposes, we’ll be using dried malt extract because it is easier to deal with in small portions, and is frequently available in pound increments at homebrew shops, whereas liquid extracts are often only sold in big cans that would leave you with sticky leftovers to deal with and sticky measuring cups and kitchen counters and clothes. In your homebrew shop, you’ll find a variety of dried malt extracts -- most often you’ll see light, amber, dark, and wheat extracts. Light extract is the best base extract to use, as further on in this course we’ll learn about using specialty grains to add color, flavor and body to our beers. We’ll learn about specialty grains in the second brew we make in this course of lessons.

Homebrew shops may have dry malt extracts from various sources. Keep in mind that Dutch type extracts tend to contain more unfermentable sugars, which give a beer a heavier body and thicker sweeter flavor and mouthfeel. Extracts from other sources tend to be more fully fermentable, and produce drier beers. By mixing Dutch and ordinary extracts you can affect the body and mouthfeel of your beer.

Hops

Hops are the flowers of a vine that sprouts from underground rhizomes. They contain an array of aromatic and bittering compounds that both preserve beer and give it the characteristic flavor we associate with beers. Hops can contribute many aromas and flavors, ranging from grassy to floral, from piney to citrusy, and all of them contribute a bitter counterpoint to the sweetness of the malt. Using hops is an exercise in the art of balancing, and where brewers demonstrate their skills. Since bitterness is such a personal matter of taste for people, a beer that appears well hopped to one person can seem overwhelmingly bitter to another. You’ll have to learn what you like and don’t like, and remember it the next time you brew.

The effects of adding hops to a brew changes depending on how long you allow them to boil. The longer the hops boil, the more bittering effect. In homebrewing there are conventions to hop usage, commonly called bittering, flavoring, aroma and dry. Bittering hops are supposed to be boiled in your wort for an hour. Flavoring hops are boiled for about 10 minutes, boiling off most of the volatile aroma compounds, adding a bit of bitterness and leaving the flavor compounds from the hops in the beer. Aroma hops are added right at the end of the boil and liberate their aromatic compounds, which don’t boil off because the boiling stops. Dry hopping is a technique where the brewer adds hops to the cold beer after it has already fermented, this adds even more hop aroma to the beer. Since brewers love experimenting with the rules, there are beers out there that don’t boil any hops for 60 minutes, but instead boil more hops for less time to achieve the same level of bitterness, but with more hop flavor retained in the beer as well. Other all-grain brewers have revived an old practice called first wort hopping, where hops are added to the vessel collecting the wort as it runs off of the grain. This long steep before the boil changes the way the hops express themselves in the brew, increasing the hop flavor. For our introductory purposes, we’ll break our hop addition into thirds to acclimate you to the different hop additions.

Hops are usually labeled with a name and a number. The name is the varietal of the plant that produced the flowers. Hops are like tomatoes or wine grapes, insofar as they are all one species but exhibit a wide array of flavors. The number is a measure of the percentage of Alpha acids present in the hops, and is most often abbreviated %AA. Alpha acids are the bittering compounds that turn into the bitter flavor in beer once they have been boiled together with the malt sugars for a period of time. High alpha acid hops require less hop volume to contribute bitterness than low alpha acid hops. The longer the hops are boiled, the more of their aromatic compounds vaporize and waft away with the steam from your brew pot, and at the same time more of the alpha acids are converted to bittering agents.

Hops are sold in three forms. For our purposes they’re equivalent since we’ll be using hop bags to contain them. The options you might be presented with are “whole leaf” hops, which are just the dried flowers of the hop vines, “plugs,” which are those flowers crushed down into a compact little puck, and “pellets,” which are the flowers pulverized and then extruded into little pellets. The pellets will leave much finer particles in your beer if you tossed them without any hop bag or other hop separation technology. While doing so with pellets would be problematic, it is theoretically possible to just throw whole and plug hops into the boil and strain them out later, but we’re not going to do it that way because the spare change that each hop bag costs is worth it.

Yeast

Yeast are the microbes that eat sugar and turn it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. They produce other byproducts as well, often depending on the temperatures at which they are working and the magic of the organic chemistry going on in the fermentation process. There are many varieties of yeast, each with its own characteristics. Many types of beer, particularly Belgian beers, are distinguished by the contributions of the yeast used in brewing it. The crisp dry aspect of lagers that we are accustomed to is a byproduct of the species of yeast used to brew it and its preference for fermenting over long times at low temperatures. Since most homebrewers don’t have a fridge dedicated to brewing, lager beers are an advanced brewing project that requires significant investment. Ale yeasts, another species, are happy to do their work at room temperature or thereabouts, but they do contribute a number of flavors if they ferment too warm. Often flavors like banana, clove, bubblegum and butter are produced by yeasts fermenting outside of their favored temperature range, but you can also get spicy and complex flavors out of yeasts as well. Most ale yeasts prefer to ferment between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, which should not put too much inconvenience on the average brewer who lives in a climate-controlled space.

Brewing yeast is sold both in liquid preparations and dried. Dried yeast keeps better and requires less effort than liquid yeasts to use, but is more limited in the varieties available. Early in the evolution of homebrewing the consensus was that dried yeasts were inferior to liquid yeasts. That is no longer the case, since dried yeast manufacturers have increased the quality of dried yeast available to consumers. Liquid yeasts are more expensive than dried yeasts, and when used in standard 5 gallon batches, they benefit from having their cell counts ramped up by making a starter culture before throwing the yeast into the hopped wort. Surf over to some online homebrew shops and look at the range of yeast available to get an idea of how distinctive and different yeast’s effects can be. That’s why it is a very bad idea to use yeasts bred for baking in beer. Don’t be tempted to try it, because you’ll probably not like the results.

Water

By volume, your beer is mostly water, so you want to make sure your water is as tasty as it can be. If you have treated municipal water, you might want to boil it all by itself for a bit to boil off the chlorine so that it can’t latch onto compounds in your brewing ingredients. In more advanced homebrewing, some people advocate using distilled water and water treatment products to replicate the local water of the origin of the style of beer you’re brewing. That is well beyond what we’re doing here, but it does point out that your water chemistry will make your beer unique to your locality, so that if you went to visit friends in another state and brewed your beer at their house with their water it might not come out exactly as you expect. This is also why some parts of the world gain fame as centers of brewing or baking. Burton-on-Trent in England became famous for its beers because its water chemistry affected the grain and hops in ways that most other British water did not. New York bagels and Philadelphia cheesesteaks and hoagies are distinctive because of effects of the local water supply on the breadmaking process.

THE RECIPE

For a first small brew we’ll aim for a strong pale ale type beer, with a medium hoppiness. This beer will be about as strong as a Belgian trippel. We’ll use light dry malt extract to provide the fermentable sugars. For our hopping, we’ll use the archetypal citrus-y American hop, Cascade, which should be readily available in homebrew shops.

We’re shooting for a beer with the following characteristics:

Original Gravity 1.068

IBUs 23

Light yellow color

Original gravity is a measure of the density of the solution you drop your yeast into. Water has a specific gravity of 1.000. Ethanol’s gravity is less than that. The sugars in the solution push the number up to 1.068, though it will drop again once the yeast convert most of the sugars to ethanol. Your final gravity should be somewhere between 1.005 and 1.014. If you take density measurements at the beginning and end of your fermentation, you will be able to calculate its alcohol content exactly. As a rule of thumb, the digits after the decimal point in the original gravity reading will let you estimate how strong your beer will be by dropping the 1 entirely and moving the decimal 2 places to the right. That tells us that our beer will be somewhere around 6.8% alcohol, or about 1.5 times as strong as average American beers. The tool used to measure the density of a solution is called a hydrometer. For the moment, I’m going to advise strongly that beginners not get a hydrometer because it will provide the temptation to take lots of readings while the yeast is working and is better not disturbed. As you progress in your brewing you might want to get a hydrometer, but I managed to break mine a couple of years ago (they’re fragile glass things) and haven’t missed it and haven’t replaced it.

IBUs (International Bitterness Units) are a measure of how much hop bitterness is in your beer, calculated from the amount of alpha acids in your hops, and how long they’ve been boiled. The 20s represent moderate hoppiness. Some extreme beers have IBU measures above 100, and others have measures in the single digits.

The following recipe will yield something like what we want.

2 Gallons water

3 lbs. Light Dry Malt Extract

1oz. Cascade hops, divided in three parts for different stages of the brewing process

.25 oz crushed coriander seed (optional addition with the aroma hops, for its bright citrus-y notes)

Danstar Nottingham dry yeast

Now you have a shopping list for ingredients and supplies. Find your nearest local homebrew shop and stock up.

If you can't find a shop nearby, there are homebrew shops on the web that do a fine mail order business. I've had good experiences with morebeer.com and Hops & Dreams, and have read that many people are happy customers of Northern Brewer and Homebrew Adventures.

(Three of these have very active discussion forums that attract vocal homebrewers who write about brewing and are worth reading, although you should realize that there are plenty of contradictory opinions out there.)

Shopping list for the brewing supply store or website:

3 lbs light dry malt extract

1 oz Cascade hops

1 packet yeast

3 Muslin hop bags

Siphon hose

Racking cane

Bottle filler

A packet of priming sugar (we'll use this later as we bottle -- and carbonate -- the beer)

See you in a couple of weeks.

Please post your questions about the homebrewing course here.

We're trying a few new things this term, including some longer, multi-part courses and more of our new eGCI Demos. We also have a newly organized index, which we hope will make it easier for members to find our older courses.

If there are any topics you'd like to see presented (or anything you're interested in teaching), please let us know. We want to make the eGCI as informative and useful as we can.

For information on how to attend a class, click here.

For the index of past courses, click here.

Hope to see you in class!

First, read the introduction of the course you wish to attend. The introduction will give a brief overview of the course and some information on the instructor. It will list any ingredients or special equipment you will need to participate in the course and will provide a timetable, when appropriate. In some cases, the introduction will be quite brief; in others more involved. We try to time the posting of the introduction to give everyone ample time to prepare for the course.

When the course is posted, read the material. Sometimes the entire course will be presented in one segment, but generally the courses comprise two or three parts. These are generally presented as different posts in the same topic, although occasionally they may be presented as separate topics.

Although it's usually not necessary to do the work (i.e., follow the recipes or do the assignments) to participate in the Q&A session that follows, we recommend it. We think you'll get more out of the course, and the more active participants in each course, the more valuable the Q&A session will be.

A Q&A session will run concurrently with the course and will be active for a short time afterward. This is the place to post questions about ingredients or procedures, to discuss your results or to comment on any other aspects of the course. A link to the Q&A will be provided at the end of each segment of the course.

To attend older courses:

Although each course and Q&A is officially active for a short period of time, members are free to read and follow older courses whenever they wish. In many cases, the Q&A remains active long after the class has ended, and many of our instructors will be able to continue to answer questions. In those cases where the instructors are no longer available, we will do our best to answer any questions you may have about any of our older courses.

Still have questions? Please send a Personal Message to the eGCI Team.

See you in class!

If you want to read any of the courses, please keep in mind that in some cases the original instructor may not be available to answer questions. However, we will do our best to find answers to any questions you post.

Introductory Survey Courses

Chinese Cooking: Southern Home-Style Dishes Course and Q&A

"Drive-in" Cooking Course and Q&A

Beginners Guide to Regional Indian Cooking Course and Q&A

Japanese Cuisine Course and Q&A

Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine Course and Q&A

Thai Cooking Course and Q&A

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone Course and Q&A

Cooking Methods and Techniques

The Truth About Braising Introduction, Assignment #1, Discussion #1, Assignment #2, Discussion #2,

Assignment #3, Discussion #3, Assignment #4, Discussion #4, Q&A, and What To Do with All That Leftover Braised Meat.

Brining Course and Q&A

Basic Knife Skills Course and Q&A

Cooking Equipment

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto and Q&A

Understanding Stovetop Cookware Course and Q&A

Knife Maintenance and Sharpening Course and Q&A

Stocks, Soups and Sauces

Stocks and Sauces Course Introduction, Intro Q&A, Simmering Unit, Simmering Q&A, Straining, Defatting and Reducing Unit, Reduction Q&A, Stock-Based Sauces Unit, and Sauces Q&A

Non-Stock-Based Sauces Course and Q&A

Cream Sauces Course and Q&A

Basic Condiments Course and Q&A

Mexican Table Salsas Course and Q&A

Consommé Course and Q&A

Soups, Part One: Thick Soups Course and Q&A

Single Ingredients and Dishes

Chiles Course and Q&A

All About Eggs Introduction, FAQ, Hard-Cooked Eggs Course and Q&A, Poaching Eggs Course and Q&A, Omelettes and More Course and Q&A, Souffles Course and Q&A, Cooking Eggs With With the Pros Course and Q&A

Pasta Around the Mediterranean Course and Q&A

Stuffed Pastas Introduction, Course on Pansotti, Tortelloni and and Raviolo, Course on Tortelli, Ravioli & Cappelletti, and Q&A

The Potato Primer Course and Q&A

Risotto Course and Q&A

Leaf Salads Course and Q&A

Soy Course and Q&A

Meat

Science in the Kitchen: Cooking Meat Course and Q&A

Smoking Meat at Home Course and Q&A

Pit Roasting a Pig Course and Q&A

Baking, Desserts and Confectionery

Baking with Dan Lepard Course and Q&A

Sourdough Bread Course and Q&A

A Sampling of North Indian Breads Course and Q&A

A Sampling of South Indian Breads Course and Q&A

Confectionery 101 Course and Q&A

Preserving

Preservation Basics Course and Q&A

Autumn and Festive Preserves Course and Q&A

Beverages

Homebrewing for the Absolute Beginner Course and Q&A

Evaluating Wine Introduction, Course, and Q&A

Classic Cocktails Course and Q&A

Evolving Cocktails Course Part 1, Part 2, and Q&A

Holiday/Traditional Cooking

The Festival of Lights Diwali Course and Q&A

Cooking through the Jewish Year Course and Q&A

Meal Planning and Presentation

Plating and Presentation Introduction and Course, and Q&A

Menu Planning Course and Q&A

Specialty Topics

Taste and Texture Part I: Taste, Part II: Texture, Taste Q&A, and Texture Q&A.

Cooking with Disabilities Course Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Q&A

Cooking for One Course and Q&A

Cooking with Kids Course and Q&A

How To Be a Better Food Writer Course and Q&A

Amateur Cooking Competitions Course and Q&A

How to Dine: Getting the Most from Restaurants Course and Q&A

eGCI Demonstrations

Jewish Foods (introduction and index)

Note: We've done our best to make sure that all the links work, but if you encounter any problems, please let us know by sending a PM to eGCI Team.

Justice with Balance

by Darren Vengroff

What's the Big Deal?

In modern home kitchens in Europe, a kitchen scale is standard equipment. In the US, one rarely sees them except in the kitchens of compulsive dieters and very serious amateur pastry chefs. Because most people in Europe have scales, recipes generally specify quantities of bulk dry ingredients as weights. For example, a cake recipe might require 250 grams of flour. In the US, the same recipe would most likely use cups, which measure volume, not weight.

So why the difference, and does it really matter? Is weighing ingredients just a complicated, confusing, and unnecessary consequence of going metric? The answer is that it does really matter, and once you get the hang of it it's actually easier than using cup measures.

It matters because the amount of an ingredient that fits in a cup varies a lot depending on how coarse the grain is and how tightly it is packed into the cup measure. Weights, on the other hand, tell you exactly how much of the ingredient you have, independent of how much air space exists between the particles. The amount of flour in a cup can vary as much as 25% depending on how it is packed. Sifting before or after measuring can make the difference even greater. Needless to say, this kind of disparity makes a tremendous difference in how a recipe comes out. One morning pancakes are light and fluffy, the next they are thin and rubbery.

Another advantage to weighing ingredients is that when you share your recipe with others, they can more easily reproduce results similar to your own. The number one complaint of home cooks is that they followed a recipe, but it didn't turn out. The number one reason this happens is that although they used the same number of cups of each ingredient as the recipe author, they actually used a very different amount.

For ingredients that require cutting or chopping, there is even more ambiguity. Despite claims to the contrary, "one cup chopped onions" isn't really a whole lot more informative than "one medium onion, chopped." How finely are they chopped, and how tightly are they packed into the cup? It makes a big difference. "Two hundred grams of chopped onion" is a much more reliable description.

Weights also help you shop for a recipe, especially if you are not familiar with some of the ingredients. For example, if you don't regularly cook with parsnips and a recipe calls for "three medium or two large parsnips," what are you to do? You go to the market, and you see parsnips for sale, all about the same size, but you have no idea if they are small, medium, or large. If the recipe called for 20oz of parsnips, you could weigh them at the store, and buy just a little extra to account for loss due to trimming.

Aside from being more accurate, weighing is usually easier and less messy than scooping and leveling ingredients.

Breaking the Cycle

So if weighing ingredients is such a good idea, why don't we all do it? The problem is a classic case of the chicken and egg. American cookbooks, magazines, and web sites don't publish recipes by weight because most of their audience don't have scales. Americans don't buy scales because few recipes call for ingredients by weight.

Well, we here at the eGCI have never been ones to let convention get in the way of the quest for a good meal. So, with this manifesto, we are drawing a line in the flour.

We highly recommend that every member who doesn't already own a kitchen scale make one their next kitchen equipment purchase.

We request that everyone who contributes recipes to RecipeGullet specify weights of dry ingredients rather than volumetric measurements.

This manifesto will introduce you to the various types of scales that are available, and guide you through the process of shopping for and using a kitchen scale. It will also show you how simple it is to update existing recipes to use weights instead of volumes. No math is required, except for the "difference method," and then it is only substitution.

Types of Scales

There are three basic types of kitchen scales on the market: spring scales, balance scales, and digital scales. Spring scales are the least expensive but also the least accurate. Balance scales were, for centuries, the most accurate available. Although they are extremely accurate, they can be difficult to use. Digital scales are the best of both worlds. They are extremely accurate, and simple to use. In recent years, they have even become affordable.

Most kitchen scales have a maximum capacity between two and twenty pounds. The smaller the maximum capacity of the scale, the more accurate it is likely to be in the range it covers. For most home kitchens, something in the five to ten pound range is just fine. If you cook very large quantities or certain items, or are dying to know exactly how much that Thanksgiving turkey weighs, then you may want a larger scale. But in that case, you probably want two, one for every day use, and the big one for special occasions.

Spring Scales

Spring scales, as the name implies, use springs to measure weights. The more weight that is placed on the scale, the more the spring stretches. A needle attached to the spring moves as the spring deforms, causing it to point to a number indicating how much the item on the scale weighs.

Some spring scales allow the position of the indicator to be adjusted. This is useful for resetting the scale to zero after placing an empty bowl on it. This is called taring the scale. It allows you to weigh only the product you put in the bowl, not the bowl itself. It also means that you can measure one ingredient into the bowl, then tare the scale back to zero and add a second ingredient without dumping the first out. This is convenient because you can measure and mix in the same bowl.

There are two types of spring scales you are likely to see. The first is a stand-up type with a either a needle that moves up and down or a large round dial on the front to indicate the weight. The second is a low profile model where the dial is built into the base of the scale. The low profile type is normally much easier to tare. To do so, you just rotate the base. The stand-up type generally has a small knob on the side or back of the scale for taring. This is much less convenient than the low-profile type. Effectively, it means that you always have to weigh in the same bowl, and dump each ingredient out into a mixing bowl before weighing the next one.

Balance Scales

Balance scales determine the weight of an ingredient by comparing it to known standard weights. There are two basic varieties of this type of scale, and a third variety that combines the first two.

The first type is the straight balance. This is what you see blind justice holding up. The item to be weighed goes on one side, and one or more standard weights go on the other. If the two sides are in balance, then the item being weighed weighs exactly the same as the sum of the weights on the other side. A straight balance is very accurate. Some laboratory models are good to a small fraction of a gram. But it's not very practical for the kitchen.

The second type of balance scale is the sliding scale balance. With this type, there is a single known weight, but you can slide it from left to right along a scale until it balances. You have probably seen one of these in your doctor's office. These aren't as absolutely accurate as the straight balance, but they are easier to use and there are no little weights to lose.

The third type of balance is the hybrid. It allows you to use individual weights like a straight balance, but also provides a sliding scale.

Another drawback of balance scales is that that have the most delicate mechanical parts of any of the three types of scales. The main pivot on which the balance rests is particularly crucial. It must be as close to absolutely frictionless as possible. Over time it can wear down or become gummed up, causing the scale to lose accuracy.

Balance scales can still be found, but unless you really like how they look, you are probably better off with one of the other types. Spring scales are less expensive and digital scales are as accurate, if not more, and much easier to use.

Digital Scales

Digital scales are the newest form of kitchen scale. As with all things digital, their prices continue to fall. Digital scales work by passing a small electrical current through a material that is pressure sensitive. A sensor determines the weight on the scale by the amount of current that flows. This is converted to digital form and displayed on a small screen.

Digital scales are extremely accurate. They are also very easy to use. Taring is generally just a matter of touching a button. Most digital scales are quite small, like low-profile spring scales. Some of the newer models also have additional features, like timers, built in. Others, aimed at dieters, contain databases of common food items and can tell you not only the weight, but also the fat and calorie content of food.

Historically, digital scales were quite expensive, ranging up to $250. However, that is no longer the case. As of this writing, entry-level models are selling for as low as $30. There are a number of very good full-featured options in the $60-70 range. More expensive models generally add more stainless steel, chrome and glass, but

they don't weigh foods any more accurately.

Shopping for a Scale

Now that you know the three types of scales, it's time to start shopping for the specific model that will work best for you. For most home kitchens, a digital scale is going to be the best bet. Ten years ago, this might not have been the case due to the high cost, but that is now much less of an issue. If you really want to save money, you can get a mostly plastic low-profile spring scale for as low as $10, but chances are it is not going to be incredibly accurate or built to last.

Three primary factors differentiate one digital scale from another, and determine the price for which any given scale sells. These are durability, appearance, and extra features. All digital scales are more than accurate enough for kitchen use. Some are more precise, in the sense that they measure in 1 or 2g increments instead of 5g increments, but this only matters when measuring very small quantities of ingredients. It is wrong to think that spending an extra $50 is going to get you a substantially more accurate model.

The durability of a digital scale depends primarily on what materials it is constructed from and what kind of buttons it has. The most durable scale surfaces are made from stainless steel. They wipe clean and wont react if you spill acidic materials on them. Some scales have glass surfaces. These are also very easy to wipe clean, and they are stain resistant. The only drawback is that if you use your scale often you are likely to end up chipping the glass against a backsplash, mixer, or other counter-top appliance. A few digital scales are made of plastic, but this is generally reserved for low-profile spring scales.

Another thing that affects the longevity of a digital scale is the type of buttons it has. Every digital scale has at least one button, for taring; some have many more for all kinds of advanced features. Ideally, these buttons should be flat sealed buttons, like those found on most microwaves. This way, food particles can't easily get into the interior of the scale and interfere with the operation of the electronics. Some models have individual buttons with gaps between them and the shell of the scale. These are less desirable.

The appearance of a scale is largely a matter of personal taste. Some people like the simple industrial look of a basic metal model with a stainless steel tray. Others prefer the high-design Euro-style models made of glass and brushed aluminum, chrome, or stainless steel. At the extreme end, some of these scales look more like sculpture than kitchen appliances. When it comes to appearance, everyone's tastes are different. The best thing you can do is choose a model that you will be happy to keep out on your counter-top, instead of buried in the back of a cabinet. The more accessible your scale is, the more you will use it.

Beyond just weighing things, some newer digital scales offer a number of additional features. Some, for example, include clocks and/or timers. This can be a convenience, or an unnecessary gadget. Most of us already have clocks and timers on our ovens and/or microwaves. You may also be the type who has no need for yet another appliance to constantly blink 12:00 along with your VCR.

Another feature some scales offer is a calorie computer. You select the type of food you are weighing from a menu, and then the scale determines not only the weight of the food, but also the number of calories. If you really think this is a must-have feature, try to get one that lets you select by the name of the food being weighed, as opposed to entering a code number in a guidebook.

Finally, there is at least one scale now for sale that includes a thermometer. A temperature probe plugs into the scale and displays temperatures on the scale's screen. This is possibly convenient for making chocolate or candy. The down side is that you may not necessarily use your thermometer directly adjacent to where you weigh raw ingredients.

As you can probably tell, we aren't huge fans of lots of extras on digital scales. A scale is already a wonderfully multi-tasking device. What else other than a bowl can you use to help you make almost any dish you would ever want to make? Pushing it further than weighing things just puts all your eggs in one basket. If one part malfunctions, you have to replace the whole thing.

Using Your Scale

So you've got that new scale home, and it's time to start cooking. Of course you've popped over to RecipeGullet and found several tempting treats that you are eager to re-create in your own

kitchen.

Luckily, using a good kitchen scale is easy. In fact, it's substantially easier, not to mention a lot less messy, than old-fashioned cup measures.

Taring

The most important thing to remember when using a kitchen scale is to always tare it properly. Taring means eliminating the weight of the bowl of other container from the weight of the food item it contains.

Normally, the best way to do this is to put the empty bowl on the scale by itself. If you are using a spring scale, there will be a knob or dial somewhere on the scale that you can turn until the scale indicates zero, even though it has a bowl on it. On most digital scales, there will be a tare button you can press which will reset the scale to zero. On a balance scale, you will either have to add some weights to the side of the balance opposite the bowl or move a sliding weight along the beam of the balance to counter the weight of the bowl.

Once you have properly tared your scale, you can slowly add the ingredient you wish to measure to the bowl, carefully watching the needle or digital display until it reaches the desired weight. If you add too much, you can obviously scoop it back from the weighing bowl into the storage container it came from. With a little practice, however, you will find that you can dump in most of what you want, then carefully sprinkle in the last ounce or two so that you never overshoot your target.

For ingredients where a tablespoon or less is involved, it's generally wise to stick with teaspoons and tablespoons. The reason is that many kitchen scales are just not accurate enough. For example, if you have a digital scale that works in 5g increments, and a recipe asks for 7g, what do you do? Your scale either says 5g or 10g. It can't display a 7. Newer scales are more commonly accurate to 2g, or sometimes even 1g, which makes this problem less severe.

The big exceptions to the volume for small amounts rule are salt and yeast. Salt is an exception because kosher salt takes up twice the volume of regular salt, and so people will either put in double, or half the amount they need if they mistakenly use the wrong kind. Luckily, though, salt in many recipes is a matter of taste, rather than an exact amount.

Yeast is an exception because getting it significantly wrong in either direction can make a mess of your bread. Getting it wrong a little can affect the rising time, which can be annoying, but is not the end of the world. If you are using fresh yeast, many recipes call for enough to weigh reasonably, around 15g or so.

The Single Bowl Approach

Weighing a bunch of ingredients for a recipe can take some time, although rarely as much as carefully scooping and leveling with measuring cups. Once you get pretty good at judging quantities by weight, you may wish to adopt a single-bowl approach to weighing several ingredients. The idea here is that instead of pouring each ingredient out of the weighing bowl into a mixing bowl after weighing, you simply re-tare the scale and load the next ingredient right in on top of it. There are some risks to this approach; in particular, if you put in too much of the second ingredient, you may have a hard time scooping it out without removing some of the first ingredient. Whether you use this technique or not depends largely on how careful you generally are in adding ingredients, and how much you really care about not having to wash that second bowl.

If you are dealing with metric units, the single bowl approach can be extended to include water as well. The reason is that 1ml of water has a mass of exactly 1g. So if a recipe calls for 400g of flour and 300ml of water, you can weigh out the 400g of flour, tare the scale, and then weigh another 300g of water into the same bowl. Note that this does not necessarily apply to other liquids, which may have different densities than water. Also, this does not work with US standard weight and volume measures. In the US, one fluid ounce of water weighs 1.0425 ounces.

Updating Existing Recipes

If you have a large collection of recipes calling for cup measures, and you would like to convert them to more reliable and repeatable weight-based recipes, it is not hard to do. There are three ways you can do this. The supposedly simplest, but actually not so simple, and unreliable to boot is the estimation method. The second is by converting recipes on the fly. The third is the difference method. The latter two methods are the best to use whenever possible.

The Estimation Method

The estimation method for converting recipes relies on the idea that there is a standard amount of any given type of ingredient in a cup. Unfortunately, that is the same fallacy that makes cup measurement of dry ingredients problematic in the first place.

However, if we are willing to assume that there is a standard for how much flour, sugar, etc., fills a cup, then we can easily construct a table of conversion factors from volume to weight. For example, an entry in the table might indicate that one cup of flour is equivalent to 125g. So, we could convert the 1-1/2c of flour to weight by multiplying 1.5 x 125 to get 187.5g, which we would probably round to 190g. Conversion tables like this can be found at various sites on the internet, but if you examine them, you will see that they don't come close to agreeing with one another.

Despite the problems with this method, it is better than nothing. However, you are much better off using one of the more accurate recipe conversion methods described below.

Converting Recipes on the Fly

The obvious approach is to fill your cup measure with the same two cups of flour you always use, packed exactly as you always pack it, and then dump it into a pre-tared weighing bowl on your scale. Make a note of the weight on the original recipe. Repeat for each dry ingredient, and then you are done.

If you are unlucky with your cup measures, and your favorite recipe doesn't come out quite right when you are gathering your weight information, all is not lost. You still know exactly how much of each ingredient you used in the botched attempt. It's much easier to use a little more or less of a particular ingredient the next time when you know precisely how much you used before. With the variation inherent in cup measures, this would be almost impossible.

The Difference Method

Weighing each ingredient as you go is not the only way to determine the weight of each ingredient in a recipe. If you are the kind of cook who goes more by appearance and texture than by weight, adding a few extra tablespoons of this ingredient or that, you can still accurately record how much of each ingredient you used. The method for doing this is called the difference method.

The first step in the difference method is to gather each of the ingredients you intend to use, leaving them in their storage containers. Before you start cooking, weigh each container. Don't worry about taring the scale with an empty container first; simply weigh the whole container and its contents. You can record the weights either on a sheet of paper or on a post-it affixed to each container.

The next step in the difference method is to actually cook your dish. But you already know how to do that. So let's move on.

Once you have finished cooking, go back and weigh each of the ingredient storage containers again. The weights should be less, since you used some up. Now, subtract the after-cooking weight of each container from the before-cooking weight to determine how much of the ingredient you used. For example, suppose that before you started your flour storage container weighed 5lbs 2oz (=82oz) and after it weighed 3lbs 14oz (=62oz). This means that you used 20oz, or 1lb 4oz of flour.

The difference method is also great for reconstructing secret or unknown recipes, like your grandma's famous biscuits. If she has been making them the same way for 65 years, she may not use a recipe at all. If she does, it may be a cryptic one that only makes sense to her, or in her kitchen. It may call for 2 regular scoops of flour, but only she knows which scoop that means and how to pack it. If you weigh her flour before and after the biscuit making, you'll know she uses exactly 7oz.

What to do with Your Leftover Cup Measures

Once you start weighing ingredients, you'll never want to go back. So what should you do with all those cup measures you have lying around. One good thing you can do with them is put one into each of your dry ingredient storage containers. You can still use them for scooping the ingredient out onto the scale, just not for measuring.

Liquid volume measures are also fine to keep around. Liquids may change slightly in volume with changes in temperature, but the variation is miniscule compared to the variation in weight of a particular volume of most dry ingredients.

Click here for the course Q&A.

The Instructor

Pamela Reiss (aka Pam R) grew up in her parents' company, learning all she could about kosher catering. After attending the University of Minnesota (Crookston) and earning a bachelor's degree in Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, Pam returned home to work in the family business, Desserts Plus. She quickly combined her interest in devising recipes with her love of writing to create Soup - A Kosher Collection -- her first kosher cookbook.

Pam continues to work in Desserts Plus, though it's changed over the years: in addition to catering, it now includes a specialty kosher food store that supplies kosher ingredients to customers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Pam writes a bi-weekly recipe column in the Jewish Post and News (Winnipeg) and a monthly column in Around The Corner Magazine (New Jersey). Her recipes have been published in the Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Jewish Journal, and Canadian Living Magazine. She plans to put together an entire series of kosher cookbooks -- from soups to desserts.

The Series: Jewish Foods

by Pamela Reiss

As somebody once famously said (and has often been quoted), if you ask two Jews one question, you'll receive three answers. Nowhere is this truer than in the kosher/Jewish kitchen. If you do a search on any Jewish food, you'll find that recipes are plentiful -- and many of them are very different.

There are many foods that I consider to be "Jewish" foods, but most are really just Jewish variations of foods from other lands. As a people, the Jews have lived across the globe, so much of our food history is influenced by the various communities we lived in (though it also worked in the reverse). The differences in the Jewish versions stemmed primarily from the limited variety in kosher meats and seafood and the prohibition of mixing milk and meat in one meal.

Families that hail from North Africa, Southwest Asia and Southern Europe have generally used more spices and the vegetables native to their regions. Families (like mine) from Russia and Eastern Europe have diets heavy in traditional foods of the region -- perogies, cabbage rolls, etc. To you it may be a perogy, but in my kosher kitchen it's a vereneke (potato perogy) or a kreple (cheese or meat perogy). Potato pancake? No -- that’s a latke.

Then there are some items that I think of as ours alone. Sure, they may be similar to a food of another culture -- but it was the Jewish people that brought these items to the world. Bagels, kugels, matzo balls and knishes are some of these famously "Jewish" foods. One might think that a bagel is a bagel, a knish is a knish. Ah ha! One would be wrong. There are so many varieties and geographical differences in these foods that there could be (and probably are or will be) books dedicated to each single item.

In these demonstrations, I'll present some of the preparations of these "Jewish foods." I'd love input and I'd also love it if people would post their versions of recipes for these dishes. For some, I'll give more than one preparation; for others it'll just be the one I like the best. If you have questions, please ask. I don't claim to know all the answers -- but there are so many knowledgeable members of the eGullet Society that I'm sure an answer will be found.

To quote my grandmother: "Ess, ess!" (Eat, eat)

Index of demos:

Knishes (topic started Jan. 26, 2006)

Chicken Soup (topic started June 26, 2006)

Meat Kreplach (topic started June 26, 2006)

Sufganiyot (topic started Nov. 29)

By Andie Paysinger and Mary Baker

Wecome to the eGCI class on the "little sauces" that enhance the foods we love.

The sauces we will prepare will not require any exotic or unusual ingredients or special equipment. The directions given will include additional instructions if the appliances used are not available. We've used different methods for the different recipes, but you can use whatever method you prefer.

We will be using whisks, spoons, measuring spoons and cups, a heat source, a food processor or an immersion blender (or mortar and pestle if these are not available), a stand blender or similar appliance.

Session I: Mayonnaise

Note: If you are concerned about the possibility of salmonella in raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs.

Basic Homemade Mayonnaise

(Andie Paysinger)

Makes 1 1/4 cups

Ingredients

1 large egg yolk, chilled

1 cup chilled oil

1/4 teaspoon mustard powder

Lemon juice, approximately 1 tablespoon or a little more

1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper (freshly ground if possible)

Kosher salt to taste.

Begin with a chilled 1-1/2 quart bowl and place it on a damp towel or a piece of rubber foam shelf liner so that it remains stable.

Using a whisk, electric beater or immersion blender, whip the egg yolk until it is creamy.

Slowly add half the chilled oil in a thin steam and continue beating until the mixture begins to thicken.

Add the remaining ingredients, using 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice.

Continue whisking or beating still adding the oil gradually until the mixture is thick and creamy.

Add salt to taste and if needed, add a bit more lemon juice and beat until it is completely incorporated.

Cover and immediately place in refrigerator. This should be used within a few days.

Variations

Once you learn the basic recipe, you can make numerous variations, including fresh and dried herbs and spices, a paste of green peppercorns, or hot pepper paste. Avoid anything that is too liquid as it will make the mayonnaise too runny.

Aioli: The classic garlic mayonnaise

(Andie Paysinger)

This can be made entirely in a small food processor or a blender. However, the traditional way is to make it in a mortar and pestle; there are many people who contend that it tastes better made this way.

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients

Garlic cloves, peeled, about 8 fat cloves

Kosher salt, 1/4-1/2 teaspoon, approximately

Yolk from an extra large egg

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground white pepper

Juice of half a lemon

Hot water, about 1-2 teaspoons (if needed)

Crush the garlic cloves in a mortar with the salt or in a small food processor until you have a fairly smooth paste. Add the egg yolk and continue mixing until it is a thick paste.

Add the olive oil, a little at a time, blending constantly until all the oil has been incorporated.

Add 1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice and mix well.

Add the pepper and more salt, if needed. At this point, you may want to add more lemon juice if there is any bitterness from the garlic.

If it seems too thick, add a little of the hot water and blend until the desired consistency is reached.

Cover tightly and refrigerate for an hour before use.

This must be used immediately. It will not keep more than a couple of days, even in the refrigerator. It is best if used the day it is prepared.

Easy Chipotle Mayonnaise

(Mary Baker)

Chipotles are smoked jalapenos; they are very, very hot. This recipe is for an easy, blender-made fresh mayonnaise with a mild kick. You will be using only a small spoonful of the sauce in which the chipotles are packed. Save the chipotles in an airtight container in the fridge for adding a smoky kick to soups, chiles, and roasted meats. (To make a really easy sauce, of course, you can always "cheat" and just mix a little chipotle into prepared mayonnaise.)

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients

1 medium egg, warmed to room temperature

1 yolk, room temperature

1 juice of half a lemon

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon of chipotle adobo sauce

Whisk one entire egg in a small bowl until frothy then let settle. Measure 2 tablespoons of the beaten egg into a stand blender. Add the egg yolk and whip for 5 seconds. Add one teaspoon of lemon juice and blend at a low speed for 2 minutes. (For a food processor, whip the eggs for 15 seconds, and blend the lemon juice for 15 seconds.)

Remove the center cap of the blender lid. Through the small opening, slowly pour in 3/4 cup of olive oil in a thin stream while blending on low. When the mixture reaches a thick, creamy consistency, add the adobo sauce and pulse until incorporated. Taste and add more adobo sauce if you like, a little at a time.

Saffron Mayonnaise

(Mary Baker)

A garlic-saffron mayonnaise called "rouille" is used as a finish for boullabaisse and other Provençal fish soups and stews, but this version is pure saffron. Its bright golden color and tobacco-like aroma make it an excellent condiment for beef sandwiches.

Ingredients

1 medium egg, warmed to room temperature

1 yolk, room temperature

1 juice of half a lemon

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon of saffron threads, loosely packed

Place one teaspoon of lemon juice and the saffron threads in a condiment bowl or small measuring cup. Let stand for 10 minutes, until the lemon juice is a deep gold color. Whisk one entire egg in a small bowl until frothy then let settle. Measure 2 tablespoons of the beaten egg into a stand blender. Add the egg yolk and whip for 5 seconds (if using a food processor, whip the eggs for 15 seconds).

Add the lemon juice and saffron, and blend at a low speed for 2 minutes. Remove the center cap of the blender lid. Through the small opening, slowly pour in 3/4 cup of olive oil in a thin stream while blending on low. When the mixture reaches a thick, creamy consistency, taste and add more lemon juice if desired.

Click here for the class Q&A.

The Instructors

After spending her childhood on a farm in western Kentucky, Andie Paysinger (andiesenji) worked in her mother's bakery, eventually attending Dunwoodie School of Baking (later the Dunwoodie Institute) in Minneapolis. She joined the Army and was stationed in San Antonio, Texas, where she developed an avid interest in Mexico and Mexican food. A later post in San Francisco increased her international food interest.

Settling in California's San Fernando Valley, she worked in the medical field, but after taking some private cooking classes, she began working part time as a personal chef. Although she is no longer a personal chef, she retains her enthusiasm for baking and cooking, collecting cookbooks and recipes, trying to reproduce recipes mentioned in historical sources, and growing her own vegetables and herbs.

In addition to her abiding interest in food and cooking, Andie has been involved in showing basenji dogs and in painting and etching animals, mostly dogs and horses. One of her paintings is in the permanent collection of The Kennel Club, England, and has been published in the Illustrated Standards Book (frontispiece) 1998, and in Treasures of the Kennel Club (2000).

Mary Baker (Rebel Rose) is the administrative partner of Dover Canyon Winery, a small artisanal producer in Paso Robles, California. She has taught college-sponsored courses in wine appreciation, and frequently speaks on wine appreciation and food-and-wine pairing. Thirteen years in wine hospitality and winery business management include stints as the first tasting room manager for Wild Horse Winery, and later the business manager for Justin Winery. As one of the original moderators on AOL's Food and Drink Network, Mary hosted monthly online winemaker chats. From 2002 to 2004 she served as a director on the board of the local vintners' association, representing the Paso Robles appellation, entertaining international visitors, and speaking at local wine festivals and seminars. She was also chairman of the 2004 Paso Robles Zinfandel Festival, an annual wine festival featuring a grand tasting, live and silent auctions, press events, artist receptions, and open house events at over 80 wineries. In her spare time she writes and plants vegetables and flowers, many of which promptly die. She is the author of Fresh From Dover Canyon: Easy Elegant Recipes from Dover Canyon Winery.

The Course

The course will cover the basics of making mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup, including instructions and recipes for several variations of each. It will be presented in two sessions, the first on Monday June 13, and the second on Wednesday, June 15.

Session I: Four variations of mayonnaise

Shopping list:

Eggs: 1 or 2 per recipe

Extra virgin olive oil: Approximately 1 cup per recipe

(Optional: Corn or canola oil, mild nut oils, or grapeseed oil)

Powdered mustard: 1 tablespoon total

Lemon: 1/2 lemon or less per recipe

White pepper: 1/2 tsp. or less per recipe

Kosher salt: 2+ teaspoons per recipe

Garlic: 1-2 heads total

Chipotles (canned, packed in adobo sauce): One small can total

Saffron: 1/4 tsp of threads total

Equipment:

Whisks

Spoons

Measuring spoons and cups

Food processor, an immersion blender, or regular blender (or mortar and pestle)

Click here to go to the course.

The instructor

Currently a Chef Instructor at a Central Florida culinary college, Chef Tony Adams first developed an interest in culinary arts in his hometown of Fairfield, Maine. He pursued his passions and pursued a Bachelor's Degree in Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. While in Providence, Chef Adams joined the team at Empire, the restaurant owned by Chefs Loren Falsone and Eric Mosier, two of Food and Wine Magazine's Top Ten Best New Chefs, working up to Operations Manager there when the restaurant closed in the early fall of 2003. He then traveled, working as a stagier in the kitchens of some of the world’s best restaurants and hotels: Le Manoir Aux Quat Saisons in England, Daniel in Manhattan, Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, Primo in Rockland, Maine, and Magnolia Grill in Durham.

The course

The Plating and Presentation course will teach the participants what to look for during the cooking and plating process in order to make their presentations more visually appealing. The course will cover the handling of food, equipment that will aid in the presentation of the food, and the merits and pitfalls of certain plate and platter styles. It will not include any assignments, but after the course, students are encouraged to present photos of their own plating and presentations for discussion and critique by Chef Adams and fellow students.

By Mary Baker (aka Rebel Rose)

Wine is meant to be enjoyed, but for many, approaching a glass of wine is still an intimidating experience. By using the following ten simple steps, you will be able to determine your own flavor preferences, learn how to judge the overall quality of a wine, and feel confident about voicing your opinion.

During this course I’ll be asking you taste and evaluate certain types of wines. The availability of wines in various markets makes it difficult if not impossible to choose specific wines that would be available to everyone, but we’ve tried to assemble a list with some widely available, affordable suggestions (click here and scroll down). You might have a preference for whites or reds, Austrian or American, and you should begin with wines that are familiar to you -- keeping in mind the varietal guidelines that the suggested list implies -- although I hope you will explore other varieties and regions during your exploration of wine. I encourage you to submit your own choices for future exercises.

Figuring out what you like is the point of this class. But when you exercise your newfound confidence and knowledge with your friends, remember that everyone will have different flavor preferences—some like white wines, some lean toward reds. Some people prefer bright, fruity wines, while others prefer tannic, or slightly spicy wines. Variety is part of the mystique of wine.

Wine-tasting protocol

Wine tasting is often more educational, not to mention fun, when enjoyed as a group. Ask each guest to bring a bottle of wine and six wine glasses. Provide fresh bread cubes or baguettes and filtered water for your guests. If you plan on serving appetizers or cheese, ask your guests to evaluate the wines first, then try them again later with food.

For assignments 1 and 2, use the following procedure.

Trace six circles on the placemats and place a glass on each circle. Pour a 3- to 4-ounce sample of each wine. Mark the circles with the name of the wine. Study each wine carefully, using the following criteria. (If you want to use our evaluation form, click here to download it). Then go back and re-taste the wines again to see if your perceptions have changed. Compare notes, and have fun!

1. Color of the wine

First, examine the color of the wine. Hold the glass against a white background and tilt it sideways—a white wine should be pale straw to deep gold, and a red wine can be anywhere from brick red to deep, plummy purple. Older wines may have a brownish tinge around the edge, which is perfectly normal in an aging wine, but it may also indicate that the wine has peaked in flavor. A tinge of brown will prepare you for the flavors of an aging wine, which can range from dusky cinnamon to a rich caramel effect. In a white wine, any tinge of brown is a clear warning that the wine may be too old; the lighter, more tropical flavors of a white wine don't normally hold up well to the caramelized flavors that develop with age.

2. Swirling

Next, swirl the wine gently. This has two purposes. The first is to prove to everyone in the room that you are a wine geek (try not to splash wine on the person next to you). The second purpose is to gently aerate the wine. When you smell the wine after swirling, your nasal receptors will pick up more bouncing esters and molecules than if you sniff a resting wine. It is not necessary to give wine the washing-machine treatment. Swirling your wine for ten minutes will only exhaust the wine and make the wine room attendants dizzy.

3. Nice legs

After swirling, lift your glass up above eye level and watch the wine drip down the glass. (There is no real purpose to this exercise other than demonstrating that you know how to do it.) You'll see a thin film of wine cling to the glass, then gently release in long drips, called "legs." Wines with a higher alcohol content have a stronger surface tension and will cling to the glass more, having thicker "legs." Swirled water, for instance, has no legs, compared to swirled brandy, which has drips like cake frosting. Alcohol content is relative to taste. At thirteen percent alcohol, a delicate white wine like sauvignon blanc may not have the necessary flavor to survive the hot mouthfeel of a strong alcohol content, but a heavier chardonnay or red wine may balance the alcohol perfectly.

4. Aroma

Now it's time to smell the wine. Take your time and use your imagination. If it were not wine, but perfume in your glass, how would you describe it?

A well-crafted wine should give hints of the fruit flavors to come, ranging from melons, peaches, and pineapple in white wines, to plum, cherry and cassis in red wine. Oak is often more evident in a wine's aroma than in its taste, and depending on the type of barrels used, you may also find esters of cedar, vanilla or cinnamon from oak aging.

Although aromas of mint and herb are often attractive, wines should never have unusually "green" aromas like asparagus, fermented grass, or pureed baby food.

5. Fruits and vegetables

Next, taste the wine. Savor the wine and roll it around in your mouth before swallowing. Most people have habitual methods of chewing and swallowing that probably do not include all the tasting receptors. Make sure the wine hits the middle, sides and back of your tongue, as well as the top of your palate.

What is your initial impression? Is the wine tart? Soft? Caramelized? Spicy? Take another sip, and close your eyes. If it were not wine, but food in your mouth, what would you be tasting? Just as a Bing cherry is very different from the vanilla-like Queen Anne cherry, every wine varietal is different and distinctive. White wines are often described as tasting like pear, apple, or pineapple. Red wines are compared to cherries, plums and berries. Cool growing seasons and some vineyards impart slightly vegetal characteristics that may remind you of herbs or asparagus.

(Taster's Tip: If you like, you can also aerate wine by swizzling it behind your teeth for a moment. This is most appropriate for young, tannic reds as it aids in evaluating the fruit and longevity of the wine. It is, however, considered gross to do this in a restaurant, and it is very pretentious to do it with every wine, particularly whites.)

6. Toast and butter

After the fruit and vegetable comparison, look for toast and butter characteristics. Various yeasts and wine making techniques can, if the winemaker so chooses, give wine a lingering bread-like smell, or the sweet-sour lactic aroma of buttermilk.

Toasty, yeasty wines are often the result of allowing spent yeasts to remain in the barrel with the wine for a period of time, called aging sur lies. Buttery and creamy aromas are the result of a process called malolactic fermentation, a secondary, post-alcohol conversion in which a specialized yeast changes the tart, green-apple malic acids of the grape into creamier lactic acids.

These characteristics apply mainly to white wines, as all reds are put through ML as a matter of course, and the deeper flavor and astringent tannins in red wines make sur lies aging more difficult to detect.

(Taster's Tip: Sometimes barrels do not completely finish malolactic conversion, or winemakers will put part of their barrels through malolactic fermentation, and then blend those barrels with non-malo lots, resulting in a wine with partial malolactic. You can ask about the percentage of ML in a wine, and with practice you will be able to guess accurately.)

7. Tannin

White wines have little or no tannin, which is a woody component extracted naturally from the skins and seeds of the red grapes. If you remember Boris Karloff craving his tanna leaves in The Mummy then you may have figured out that tannins are a natural preservative which facilitates the aging of red wines. (You should drink most white wines within four years of their vintage date—they lack the preservative tannins and will darken and caramelize with age.)

Although white wines are often completely dry, red wines taste even drier because the fresh tannins in a young red wine are very astringent. As these wines age, their tannins decompose in the bottle, creating an earthy effect and, one hopes, a more complex wine. The subject of aging reds before consumption is a controversy which has lasted for ages, but there is one simple guideline. If you like young wines, drink them young; if you like older wines, age them.

8. Oak

Now study the wine for oak. Can you smell it? Can you taste it?

Not all wines should be oaky—the delicate fruit flavors of light white wines can be overwhelmed by too much oak, and even red wine can sometimes smell more like furniture than fruit. The effect should be subtle—wines should not taste of pine, cedar, toothpicks or planks.

9. Good body

What is your overall impression of the wine's textural feel? Does the wine have body, and structure? Were its components multiplexed and interesting? Did the wine titillate all the surfaces of your mouth, and seduce your sinuses? Or did it seem to stick to just one portion of your tongue?

Body generally refers to a wine's ability to satisfy a multitude of sense in your mouth. Structure implies that the wine has layers of experience—flavors that echo the initial aromas and lead into a lingering finish. Some tasters prefer a thick, viscous, high-alcohol wine, while others enjoy a wine that seems to expand on the palate, throwing out a joyous array of flavors, aromas and teasing texturals.

10. The finish line

Does the wine have a nice finish, a lingering sensation of flavor? Wines designed to be pleasant, fruity gulpers should leave a clean, brisk finish; more expensive wines designed for longevity should leave hints of interesting, mysterious and pleasantly spicy flavors, much like an expensive and well-designed perfume.

The instructor

Mary Baker (Rebel Rose) is the administrative partner of Dover Canyon Winery, a small artisanal producer in Paso Robles, California. She has taught college-sponsored courses in wine appreciation, and frequently speaks on wine appreciation and food-and-wine pairing. Thirteen years in wine hospitality and winery business management include stints as the first tasting room manager for Wild Horse Winery, and later the business manager for Justin Winery. As one of the original moderators on AOL's Food and Drink Network, Mary hosted monthly online winemaker chats. From 2002 to 2004 she served as a director on the board of the local vintners' association, representing the Paso Robles appellation, entertaining international visitors, and speaking at local wine festivals and seminars. She was also chairman of the 2004 Paso Robles Zinfandel Festival, an annual wine festival featuring a grand tasting, live and silent auctions, press events, artist receptions, and open house events at over 80 wineries. In her spare time she writes and plants vegetables and flowers, many of which promptly die. She is the author of Fresh From Dover Canyon: Easy Elegant Recipes from Dover Canyon Winery.

For the wine tasting exercises

Later this week we will post a file you can download to print an evaluation form for the wines you taste. It's not necessary to use the form, but to get the most out of the class, you should plan to take notes as you taste.

Wine Recommendations

Before and during the class, students will be asked to find and purchase wines that are good yet inexpensive models of common red and white wines.

Suggested varietals include

* chardonnay

* sauvignon blanc

* pinot gris or pinot grigio

* riesling

* pinot noir

* merlot

* cabernet sauvignon

* zinfandel

* syrah

Here are some recommendations from the wine forum for varietally accurate wines from affordable producers. If you can’t find these particular wines, ask your local wine shop for recommendations. Make it clear that you are looking for “varietally accurate” wines, in other words, a good example of a single grape varietal. For this course, we will not be tackling blends yet, but learning to recognize the distinct aromas and flavors that a particular grape contributes to a wine.

You do not need a bottle of each varietal to participate. Shop within your budget, and invite your friends to participate.

Chardonnay

Argyle (Oregon)

Catena (Argentina)

Meridian (California)

Wild Horse (California)

Sauvignon blanc

Galzebrook (New Zealand)

Geyser Peak (California)

Mulderbosch (South Africa)

Pinot gris or pinot grigio

Alois Lageder (Italy)

Chehalem (Oregon)

Erath Vineyard (Oregon)

Hugel (Alsace)

Livio Felluga Esperto pinot grigio (Italy)

St. Michelle (Washington)

Trimbach (Alsace)

Riesling

Bonny Doon Pacific Rim (California)

Chehalem (Oregon)

Erath Vineyard (Oregon)

Hugel (Alsace)

Trimbach (Alsace)

Pinot noir

Saintsbury Garnet (California)

Leaping Lizard (California)

Louis Jadot (France)

Wild Horse (California)

Merlot

Blackstone (California)

Columbia Crest (Washington)

Valdevieso (Chile)

Wild Horse (California)

Cabernet sauvignon

Rodney Strong (California)

Sebastiani (California)

Valdevieso (Chile)

Wild Horse (California)

Zinfandel

Dry Creek (California)

Ravenswood (California)

Wild Horse (California)

Syrah

Columbia Crest (Washington)

Hardy’s Stamp (Australia)

Jacob’s Creek (Australia)

Lindemann’s (Australia)

Wolf Blass (Australia)

Glassware

It will be helpful but not necessary to use fresh wine glasses for every wine you taste. The brand and style of the glass is not important, but for evaluating the color and aroma of the wines, standard stemmed wine glasses are preferable.

Component Descriptor Kit

One of the exercises for this class will involve what the wine industry calls component descriptor kits. Although these can be purchased, it is not difficult to make your own. Assembling it will take only a short time, but the ingredients will have to steep for a couple of days.

Equipment

12 quart jars with lids or stretch plastic to cover

12 half-pint jars, with lids and screw rings

fine sieve

cheesecloth

small 3M sticky note strips

Ingredients

Neutral white wine (a box of Gallo chardonnay or similar wine is fine; you won't be drinking this)

red food coloring

2 cups rocks (gravel or small stones)

2 cups green olives, rinsed

2 peaches

1 box raspberries

1 box blackberries

1 bunch mint

1 mixed bunch of thyme, rosemary and lavender

1 bunch tarragon

3 pears

3 tablespoons cloves

1 box cherries

2 tart apples

*Optional/alternates: Meyer lemon, kiwi, plums, peppercorns, alfalfa hay, sage, vanilla extract

Put a pint of wine in each quart jar. Add the rocks to one jar, the olives to another, and the cloves to another jar. Gently crush and twist the bunch of mint and add to a jar, pushing down to cover with wine. Quarter the peaches and add to a quart jar, pushing down to cover with wine. Add the remaining fruit and herbs to separate jars.

Allow to steep for 12 to 48 hours. Pour off a little of the pear infusion and smell. When the pear and apple infusions are strong enough to identify, the others will be ready as well. Clean the half-pint jars and rinse well. Make sure they do not smell like cardboard or soap. Strain each infusion by pouring through a fine sieve lined with a layer of cheesecloth. Pour each infusion into a clean half-pint jar. Color the "red" aromas --raspberries, blackberries, cherries, mint, tarragon, and cloves -- with red food coloring. Add one drop at a time and stir until the wine turns ruby red. Olives and herbs may be left white or colored red as they can apply to both. Seal the jars until ready to use, and label with sticky notes.

Please post any questions about class preparation or logistics here.

If you have results related to the labs, please use the individual lab discussion threads for those.

Thanks.

Lab Assignment #4

Seminar Led By Steven A. Shaw (aka "Fat Guy")

It has been a long week, and this lab should be the easiest of the four. In Lab #4, we'll look at the effect of browning on the outcome of the braising process.

We will be using three samples:

Sample #1 should be browned in a braising vessel or skillet on the stovetop

Sample #2 should be browned under the broiler

Sample #3 should not be browned at all

After the samples are ready, braise them all in the same liquid at the same temperature until fork tender. Taste, compare, photograph, report.

This experiment will probably be more reliable if you do the braising in three separate vessels, in order to avoid commingling of flavors. But you can do it in one pot if you're careful about preserving the order of the samples or you find a way to mark them.

Finally, for our last trick, reheat the Lab #1 samples yet again and share your observations.

Hang in there -- it's almost over!

Click here for the discussion of Lab #4.

Click here for the Braising Q&A.