EdS

Another vote for grapeseed oil for its high smoke point and neutral flavor. Canola has a subtle flavor that I don't like.

Cooking under the influence is an opportunity to use up all that crap you've got in the kitchen that you want to get rid of. That bag of quinoa? That goes in the pot. The one can of Bud your buddy brought over but that you refuse to drink? Chug it and the rest goes in the pot. We're cooking Belgian! Insanity sauce? Why not? Raisins? Hell yeah. BAM! BAM! BAM! Toss in a Japanese curry cube if you've got it. Boil. Go take a nap. The next morning, scrape out the sludge. Grab a bag of chips. Go read eGullet.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the LTD and Master Chef 2 series use thicker aluminum than the Stainless series and will thus outperform the latter, maintenence issues aside. The thickness is nearly double as I recall.

My mom would visit a market in the Japantown in San Jose. There I always made it a point to grab a few boxes of Botan Rice Candy. They each came with a little toy. I had those stuffed in a drawer for years.

Thanks, everyone, for the advice. I loved ketchup on my eggs as a kid. Now I've found justification to do this as an adult.

OK, I can't believe I am asking this. What ketchup is used in making authentic Japanese cuisine? Is Heinz #1 in Japan? Or do they use their own variant of ketchup just like they use that Kewpie mayonnaise which is different than our Best. Do the people in Tokyo use more strongly flavored ketchup than those in Osaka?

Llama and alpaca steaks in Peru. I recall the alpaca being more tender than the llama (I think) and that both tasted a lot like lamb.

I just double-checked my book, thinking I made a typo, and it really does say two weeks. I totally agree with you. This must be an error, unless this is a recipe for fermented dashi! I wouldn't even use chicken stock after several days unless it was either frozen or boiled, and I wouldn't even be happy with doing the latter. BTW, I just returned from the Japanese grocery store. I bought some Pocky for the first time. I've already eaten two boxes in 30 minutes. Someone save me from this.

Thanks for the links and info. There doesn't seem to be any kind of consensus. James Peterson's Sauces says that dashi will keep in the fridge for two weeks or it can be frozen indefinitely. Yet in a different part of the book he says that fish stocks should be used immediately. I'm beginning to think that freezing dashi is just plain weird and I should drop this idea. OK, the next time I make some dashi, I'll try to remember to freeze some of it and try it out a month later, comparing with fresh dashi, and report back here.

Is there any reason that dashi should not be made in batches and then frozen? Will it keep for long? I am thinking that the quality would be higher than dashi no moto (instant dashi). I know I should just try this but would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

I like it made with water. Garnish with a generous swirl of creme fraiche.

Cookware with a 2.5mm thick copper core and stainless steel interior and exterior.

This pan, being a griddle, has lower sides than a fry pan. That's an advantage or a liability depending on what you want to do with it. The lower sides mean it's easier to get a spatula in there to flip a crêpe or tortilla, for example. However, you don't have the sides needed to slide a French omelette up against or to contain a pan sauce. I'd get a good fry pan first before thinking about adding a griddle.

Also be aware that due to the shallow "Lyonaisse" profile, the inside diameter may be less than you expect. With my ~10-1/4" pan, the inside diameter is about 7-1/4". That compares to about 8-1/2" with a comparable Lodge skillet and about 7-5/8" with an All-Clad frypan.

French steel pans come in various thicknesses, materials, and handle types. I have a couple De Buyer Acier Carbone Plus pans in carbon steel with cast-iron handles just like the ones on high-end copper pans. While some steel pans are lightweight like those crêpe pans you often see with the thin handles, others are quite heavy. My 10" "omelette" pan of 3mm thick carbon steel is 4 lbs. 10 oz. which is just a little less than my Lodge 10-1/4" cast-iron skillet. Here is a link with information about De Buyer steel pans. I found mine at a local Sur La Table. When I picked it up, the salesman approached and told me that they rust and tried to direct me to some plastic-coated pan. Needless to say, I ignored him like I do most salespeople and never regretted it.

A little detergent (different from "soap") to remove a particularly greasy mess isn't going to hurt anything despite the panic that idea seems to instill. The seasoning certainly isn't going to just come right off unless there's little there to begin with. Just don't go scrubbing away more than necessary with the detergent and refrain from using it unless you need it. Also, the amount of seasoning will increase *and* decrease, ebb and flow, over time just from cooking. In any case, you only need enough seasoning to fill in the "pores" and just cover the exposed surface. I wouldn't use any detergent until the pan reaches this point.

She'd better be good.

I was making a large amount of potato and leek soup the other night. I peeled the potatoes, cleaned and chopped the leeks, boiled them. Ran about a half dozen batches through the blender. I wanted a particularly fine consistency so I spent a fair amount of time pushing this through a chinois. Soup tasted great but was a bit runny. I had added too much liquid. So I decided to reduce it all. I filled my 8-quart dutch oven and set my burner...to HIGH...and left the room to surf eGullet. What was I thinking? Well, you can guess what happened. I got caught up in some thread and then smelled something burning. Soup looked okay. I grabbed a wooden spoon and stirred. Would you like some soup with your charcoal? Perhaps some potato and leek carbon-ara? OK, those of you with me so far are thinking that my point of this post is to advise you to never use too much heat with a thick mixture and especially don't leave it unattended. Well, that's besides the point. What was I reading while making charcoal soup? THIS Start to finish. It was painful. I will never read "that thread" (say it like Bill Clinton) again. But hey, it gave me something to do while soaking my pot.

I've managed to collect too much cookware. Out of my collection, I use these items at least once a week. 10-in wide chef's knife 4-in paring knife 9-in bread knife vegetable peeler large cutting board several wood spatulas small and medium whisks rubber spatula tongs 11-in (4.6-quart) copper curved sauteuse evasée 10.25-in cast-iron skillet 10-in French steel omelette pan (eggs only) 1.4-quart copper curved sauteuse evasée 2.6-quart stainless-steel/aluminum clad curved sauteuse evasée 2.5-quart copper straight-sided sauce pan 3.5-quart oval enameled cast-iron dutch oven 8-quart stainless-steel/aluminum clad casserole pot fine-mesh chinois mixing bowl 8-inX12-in? hotel pans half sheet cookie sheets with Exopats (Silpats)

EVOO grapeseed oil butter sea salt, fleur de sel black pepper crème fraîche steel-cut oatmeal basmati rice bananas eggs soy milk Edited to correct the obvious omission of pepper.

I like soy milk. I like tofu. I see each as a standalone product. But I don't like those phony soy burgers, soy burritos, and the ilk. It's just wrong. I think it's silly when people substitute ingredients to the point where flavor is significantly compromised. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here. I don't think one needs to give up high-calorie, which means calorie-dense, foods. Instead, reduce the quantity while maintaining quality. Eat a smaller portion. Eat less of something else to allow more room for the thing you really want. Or, dare I say it, exercise and increase the amount of daily calories you can eat so you don't have to penny-pinch so much with the calories. People in France, for example, generally aren't eating what one would call a non-fat/low-fat diet yet they tend to be thinner than Americans. If you notice how they eat you'll see that they aren't going crazy with the portion sizes on a regular basis. Here's my free (worth what you paid) diet tip for the day. Use plates with a rim rather than plates without. There's less room for the food. You might find yourself scaling your portions down to fit thus leaving room for dessert with less of the guilt. p.s. I know I might be a hypocrite about the soy milk but I've really learned to like it, heh. But I *never* cook with it.

That dishrack is taking up prime real estate next to that range. I saw a double-decker narrow dishrack at IKEA that would fit perfectly to the left of that sink.

I carefully remove that sludge with a paper towel, as part of my skimming procedure, while initially cooking my stock. By the time I've strained it in a fine-mesh chinois and refrigerated the stock and skimmed off the fat, I don't see much of a ring when reducing. I do skim with a fine-mesh skimmer while reducing too. When my reduction begins to thicken significantly, in the latter stages, I'm careful to slowly whisk it from time to time. I'm probably washing that sludge off at that point before it becomes noticable.

A couple of ideas popped into my head while reading the Aga web site about trying to simulate some of the advantages of these Agas with a convention stovetop and oven: 1. To create the radiant heat of an Aga oven, get the largest dutch oven you can find, put a rack inside, preheat with the dutch oven so that the heat is even all around, open it up, put your roasting pan or whatever inside, and put the lid on. You could even use a large "camp" dutch oven with legs and place it directly on the floor of your oven. 2. To create a a stovetop hotplate, get a large two-burner cast-iron griddle, place it over your burners, bring it up to temp, and then move your pans around on that to change the temperature. I haven't found uneven heating to be a problem in my typical cheap oven but I don't bake bread and that sort of thing. I use my oven for roasting, braising, and broiling. Perhaps my use is less critical. I know that some commercial stovetops have hotplate setups as well. How good are these to use compared to individual burners where you turn a knob to alter the temp? Hmm, I've got a Poor Man's Aga Project in my head.

The Professional Chef, CIA Runner-up: Complete Techniques, Jacques Pepin I know those are more "cooking" books than recipe books. For recipes: Bistro Cooking, Patricia Wells Runner-up: Simple French Food, Richard Olney