Fat Guy

The eggs just didn't set up and thicken properly.

This is probably a whole separate topic but I find that with farmers'-market eggs the size variation is one problem but the performance of the eggs is a bigger issue. When making a fried egg or an omelet, it's no big deal, but in baking projects and some standard cooking projects (e.g., making an egg-based sauce) the variance in yolk-white ratio, thickness of yolk and firmness of white make things more difficult than when you use graded, sized, predictable supermarket eggs. A while back, for example, some friends and I got some eggs direct from a farmer. For fried eggs, they were terrific. Not so much for making carbonara.

I need to do more research on the whole large-eggs-and-recipes issue. I wonder what the assumptions of professional recipe testers are with respect to utilization of eggs. For example, most people when they crack an egg lose about 1/4 ounce of product because that's what adheres to the shell and most people won't bother to use a finger to get the last bits out. So if a recipe assumes a 2 ounce yield that may be more likely with a 2 1/4 ounce extra large egg than with a 2 ounce large egg (which will typically yield more like 1 3/4 ounces).

Same with ice cream and several other products. Homemade isn't always best. Nor did I say it was. That would be an interesting topic, though, if someone wants to start it.

True but in the hierarchy of food products there's more than just homemade and supermarket-industrial. With bread, for example, there are also bakeries. In most cases the real bakery's offerings are better than the supermarket bread selection. And so on.

Only the inferior ones are inferior. However, experience teaches that something on the order of 99% of commercial, industrial food products contain preservatives, additives and such that in my book make them "inferior." I don't mean to insult the other 1%, though.

For many years I've been purchasing Extra Large or Jumbo eggs. For those of you outside the US, our egg-size gradations are: Jumbo = >2.5 oz. (71g); Extra Large = >2.25 oz. (64g); and Large = >2 oz. (57g). There are some smaller sizes as well but I never see them in grocery stores. Sometimes if you buy eggs from a farm you see Medium, Small and Peewee. But the commercially available selection seems to be Large, Extra Large and Jumbo. Anyway, a few weeks ago I got some Japanese egg molds. These are plastic molds that you use to make a hard-cooked egg come out in the shape of a bunny, a car, etc. They're for kids' school lunches. And they can't accommodate Extra Large or Jumbo eggs. So I had to buy some Large eggs. I always check the expiration date on an egg carton, mostly to make sure the carton behind it on the shelf doesn't have a later expiration date (and is therefore fresher). But I rarely cross-check dates against the other sizes. That day I did, because my plan was to buy one carton of Large eggs and one of a larger size. What I noticed was that the exiration date on the Large eggs was 10+ days later than the ones on the larger sizes. I've checked this every week since and the pattern holds: the Large eggs are significantly fresher (unless I'm missing something about the date regulations). I guess it's also helpful to use Large eggs because most published recipes assume, or claim to assume, Large eggs.

Last week I was at a party and, in the middle of the buffet table, was a cloth-lined wicker basket teeming with warm rolls. I ate one. It was amazing, somewhere between brioche and a Parker House roll, but with more density and chewiness than either. I must have eaten five before asking the hostess for the recipe. She pretended not to hear me. A few minutes later, I passed her in the hall and she said, "Sorry I didn't answer you back there. Come with me." She led me to the kitchen and showed me the packaging from Stop 'n Shop (a Northeastern US supermarket chain) for a product called "pull-apart challah." In its off-the-shelf state, this product looks like a bumpy crown of pull-apart rolls in a round aluminum-foil tray. The instructions are to bake the cluster in the tray. So I was fooled. A generic supermarket product tasted better to me than the best from-scratch homemade rolls I've ever had. This happens occasionally to me. Does it happen to you? Are you sometimes fooled by inferior, commercial, industrial products? Tell all.

During my middle period, when I was going from novice to more experienced cook, granulated garlic was an ingredient I banished from my kitchen. Why would you use granulated garlic when you can use fresh? Well, the other day I was reminded of one reason: when making a rub for meat. A friend and I were cooking a boneless ribeye roast, about 8 pounds, on the grill. We wanted garlic but knew if we rubbed the meat with fresh garlic we'd have acrid, smoky, burnt garlic two hours later. Whereas, mixing granulated garlic with salt and pepper and then rubbing the meat with that gave us nice garlic flavor without burning. This can't be the only good use of granulated garlic. Any other ideas?

I was at some friends' house over the weekend and they served a cake for dessert. About 7/8 of the cake was served and eaten immediately by the assembled guests. The remaining 1/8 sat there of a bit until somebody took 1/2 of it, leaving 1/16 of the cake. Another person took half of that, leaving 1/32 of the cake. Then someone took half of that, leaving 1/64. I realized that what I was seeing in action was one of Zeno's paradoxes, specifically the dichotomy paradox. If people keep taking half of what's left, finishing the cake will require an infinite number of steps and is therefore impossible. This seems to happen a lot. Refrigerators around the world are filled with milk cartons with one sip left. Platters with one slice of meat remaining. People don't want to take the last bit, so they take half of it. Is this some sort of act of perceived politeness, this never willing to finish anything? Me, I'd rather someone take the last piece so I don't have to throw it out and can put the serving vessel in the dishwasher. By the way I ate the remaining 1/64 of the cake, demonstrating once again that Zeno is wrong. But if my friends ran the world, he'd be right.

Yeast goes bad. Put a little in warm water. Eventually it will bubble if it's still live. Storing in fridge works well. Some yeast freezes well too. Mine does.

My guess is that, with brisket, the most reabsorption is going to occur if you slice it after refrigeration and reheat the slices in liquid. The next time I cook a brisket I have to remember to record weights at the various stages in the process.

I wonder what the variance is between smoking (dry heat) and braising (wet heat).

It would seem that, for a publisher looking to move the ball forward on this issue, the most painless thing to do in a cookbook (or any written recipe) context would be offer alternate measurements in parentheses. Once such a system is set up it represents little additional work. Indeed, a recipe tester (in this case, somebody who writes cookbooks for chefs) I spoke to recently told me she works in metric weights and then does a bulk conversion to volume using a standardized table, 1 cup of flour = x grams, etc. At the very least, a publisher could offer its assumptions in an editorial note: "for the purposes of all our recipes, 1 cup of flour = x grams." That way at least those of us willing to use scales could do the conversions ourselves. But as it stands, with a few notable exceptions, we're mostly kept in the dark about what a cup means in any given recipe. Being an author is a little bit like being a screenwriter, in that there's a whole hierarchy in which you're on the bottom. If the editor, director, whatever wants things a certain way, that's how they're likely to happen. You have a little bit of political capital to spend and need to pick your battles. Having never written a cookbook, I have no idea how hard I'd fight for weight. But I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to damage sales, and the fact of the matter is that a weight-only cookbook will sell fewer copies. Still, I think I'd at least try to get both weight and volume measures included. There's so little cost to doing this, and everybody in the industry knows the superiority of weight, so I have no idea why this doesn't just get made standard operating procedure.

It's crazy, right? Equal parts sugar and cornmeal. But it doesn't make for an overly sweet product. Indeed, if you cut down the amount of sugar, it goes from being brilliant cornbread to being pedestrian cornbread. And I say that as someone with very much not a sweet tooth.

There may be some generalizations to be made here. Does this sound right? - Non-North-American cookbooks generally use weight. - In North America, professional cookbooks of all kinds, as well as advanced-amateur baking books and advanced-amateur books on unusual aspects of cookery (charcuterie, home brewing, whatever) often use weight.

It so happens that I've been using my Waring blender fanatically of late in the manufacture of smoothies. Sometimes I put it in the dishwasher and sometimes I fill it with soapy water in the sink -- it depends on the schedule for running the dishwasher and its impact on when I'll be able to use the blender again. I will say, if you put anything like flax (or a protein powder, I imagine) in your blender as part of your smoothies then hand washing is inadequate. If you hand wash it a couple of times in a row, it starts to smell. Whereas, the dishwasher gets it good and clean (and sterile).

You're not supposed to put the Waring pitcher in the dishwasher? Oops.

I've had my Exopats since the 1990s. They still work great despite many trips through the dishwasher. If it's cavalier -- or smug -- to say that I think the hours and hours of my time I've saved by not hand washing them are worth more than $15, so be it. I hasten to add that the cost to me has not even been $15. I've not yet needed to replace a single mat. And these things add up. If you slavishly follow every manufacturers' direction that wastes your time or hinders your performance as a cook, that's an impressive amount of faith to place in corporations that are -- by near-universal agreement on this topic -- engaging in a lot of ceremonial ass covering. I don't feel an overriding need to play along with that. I prefer to do whatever works. It's also kind of amusing, or perhaps alarming, when people take the position that the manufacturer knows best. Not only is it an unrealistic view of the way manufacturing works, but also it ignores the role of the educated consumer. In many product categories -- not just kitchen wares -- it's often the consumers that figure out how best to utilize a product. Manufacturers learn a lot when their customers figure out more efficient, better ways to take advantage of their goods. That's why we have things like the Microplane. If everybody just acceded to manufacturers' directions and recommended uses, we'd deprive ourselves of a major source of product innovation. I also think it's pretty clear that manufacturers' directions are targeted at the lowest-common-denominator consumer. I imagine nobody posting or reading here falls into that category. The expressed fear of departing from manufacturers' recommendations is puzzling. Is it really the case that anybody taking that position has never departed from any manufacturers' recommendation about any product? I'd find that extremely difficult to believe.

To repeat what has been posted above, the Silpat website says: The Matfer (Exopat) website just says "easy to clean with sponge." There is no mention on either website of any concern for human safety. All this talk of liability is a non sequitur. The language clearly says only that the dishwasher may harm the Silpat. I don't care. Let it harm my Silpat. It's not a child, a pet or even a plant. It's a rubberized silicone baking mat that costs $15. Not a question of liability. Just bad advice.

I doubt that's a realistic suggestion but if you can figure out where to "send it in for testing" and it doesn't cost too much money I'll happily do it.

You would think. And surely there's a reason. But it doesn't mean it's a valid reason you need to listen to. If for example the reality of Silpats is that if you wash them in the dishwasher they degrade after 100 washings, whereas if you wash them by hand they last for 200 washings, that to me is just not worth it for a $15 item. That waste of 5 minutes over the course of 100 washings is 500 minutes. I'd rather spend that time doing something enjoyable and letting a machine wash the dishes. And of course, the Silpat people say nothing about danger. So it's probably not a product liability issue. If there is a danger, Silpat has still failed to warn of that danger. If the manufacturers' directions said that washing in the dishwasher could be dangerous to me, I might consider that. If it's just that the dishwasher increases wear, as I imagine is the case, I don't care. One way to educate oneself is to read Wikipedia. Another way is to run an actual Silpat or Exopat through the dishwasher a few dozen times and see what happens. I've done the latter. So has JAZ, as she noted on the Silpat topic. No harm has befallen our baking mats or us. This is not the only time something like this has happened. Over the course of years of cooking, I've learned that manufacturers' directions often do not predict reality. I've surely saved myself hundreds of hours of hand-washing things that survived the dishwasher just fine. And that's just the beginning of why I treat manufacturers' directions with a healthy dose of skepticism. Every culinary professional I know does too. This body of evidence -- and I'm sure we'll hear more and more testimony as this topic carries on -- is more than adequate justification for the ongoing assumption that manufacturers' directions are no substitute for real-world experience.

Yes, corporations always tell the truth. They know best. We should always listen to and do exactly as they say, rather than listen to common sense, lest we appear smug.

Someone might also put one in the oven and get burned. With kitchen tools we're talking about things with blades, things to which we apply flame, etc. It seems like warning against speculative minor hazards while selling such products is like, I don't know, putting a warning on a firearm that says "CAUTION: Do not drop on toe."

That certainly explains why food processors have become so much more difficult to turn on over the years. Safety interlocks run amok are the order of the day, and that's directly attributable to lawyers and product liability. But what injury is going to come of putting a Silpat in the dishwasher? I vote for denseness not lawyers.