Boris_A

"Fettuccine Alfredo": noodles + butter + cream + parmigiano. Alfredo di Lelio became famous around the globe with this dish.

There's even a pasta dish with raw tomatoes in the Campania. In summertime when I can find ripe heirlooms, I peel them and I use to sautee them for no longer than 2-3 minutes to preserve the fresh taste. Lemon juice with tomatio sauce? For sure it's not Italian, but why not? Some people prefer Pomerol mixed with Coke, I was told.

More non-US counterparts: chardonnay: Macon and Saint-Veran village wines by Verget ($11-16) zinfandel: Italian primitivo (Amano ($7), maybe others)

I asked my grilfriend (she lived for 4 years in China during the early 80ies), because she worked several times as a European tour guide for groups of chinese. She thinks there is no such thing as a French style chinese or Italian style chinese, maybe just a somewhat adapted Europaen style chinese. For most of the time, the chinese visitors (groups of engineers etc) wanted to have simpler, home-style dishes than the one the regular menu lists, because most of them didn't want to spend high European prices on "better", more complicated dishes prepared without authentic ingredients. Another reason for lower quality may be that many chinese cooks in Europe are not really cooks with a professional education. Finally, most chinese restaurants offer a kind south chinese (cantonesian) style chinese cuisine mixed with Shezuan. The best Chinese meal she (and I) ever had outside China was years ago, when an award winning chinese cook opened a restaurant in Vienna and brought along a container with authentic ingredients. Now, years later, the ingredients are gone but it may be still quite good: Zhang&Deng

For a party like the Oktoberfest, I think it's industrial-made. Some qualities (acitiy etc.) of Sauerkraut are driven by the fermentation process (for example temperature; you start at higher temperatures in the first week week and lower afterwards) and the addition of spices or wine. It takes some experience and knowledge to learn that, I guess. I don't know of anybody who's producing Sauerkraut at home. Hengstenberg , my preferred producer of canned Sauerkraut, offers no less than 5 different styles.

Do you mean recipes *with* Sauerkraut or do you mean the process of producing Sauerkraut (a malolactic fermentation requiring ~8 weeks)? I found some descriptions in German when googling.

Sometimes, I believe, the author doesn't even care whether it's art or not. For example, when Cartier-Bresson started with his photography, was this documentary, photojournalism or art? All I know is that HCB never liked to talk about his pictures. I assume, he didn't care. Why should he? And the few artists I personally know are not interested in a categorizing of their works. "Everyone is an artist", postulated Joseph Beuys. In this sense, tonight I'm going to interpret an oeuvre of classic food art, tagliatelle al pomodoro.

To imagine an artist who's going to say: "I want to produce avant-garde art instead of normal art " is somehow a comical, no? I still feel very uncomfortable about the food as art paradigm. Historically, I believe the first "chef as artist" portrayed by media is Robuchon and the concept was introduced by his nuntius on earth, Patricia Wells. Ironically, Robuchon was a perfectionistic neo-classic and for sure not "avant-garde". The "food=art" notion has ideologial aspects as well, because ideological work aims at masking profane mechanisms and economical interests. The notion of art has always been a preferred method to achieve this.

OTOH, isnt' Dehillerin mainly a shop for the pros? I know tool shops here that address mostly pros, not the home inprovers. They have pro-stuff only, and the clients (employees) buy the stuff they need and the employer gets an invoice and and some fixed rebate. Time is money there. All goods exept the special offerings have usually no price tags, because the salespeople dont want to loose time with tagging. And many times, the many-questions-asking-different-colours-discussing-privates are not that much welcomed there.

Looks like the grandmas got it right. Use a Dutch oven or similar equipment, make some maillard with meat and mirepoix, deglaze with wine, fill up to about 1/2 level with broth, use a slow running cooktop, braise slowly for some hours and when served rewarmed the next day, it will be even better. Interestingly, Escoffier found this to be a difficult technique. And I remember Georges Pralus, the "inventor" of sous-vide, referring in an interview to the cooking techniques of the grandmas and their daylong simmering pots in the corner of a flat top.

As a side note, there are two tricks to improve considerably the seal of a lid : 1) ancient method: make a dough of flour and water and apply it it between lid and vessel. You have to know your oven and your vessel pretty well, because lifting the lid is an almost definitve act. Only recommended for advanced French grandmas. 2) modern method: place a once or twice fold alufoil between lid and vessel. Lifting is easy, and the seal is almost as perfect. Recommended for all others. Sorry for being unable to participate anymore, but I caught an infection/flu/whatever the first day. Lab#1 was already a major PITA then. Can't stand the smell of braised meat for the moment. Following with great interest, though.

Welcome to the world of veal liver! Salting *after* cooking is a standard trick to have it more tender. And really - try to gently sautee (never brown) some very thin garlic slices before in the butter- if you love garlic, of course. And check butter-poaching (poêler) with butter only slightly foamy, not brown. You can also cut the 1/3" thick slice in stripes ("geschnetzelt") of a bit more than 1/2"x1". Then you can really sautee and just wait 1-2 minutes until there's some juice in the pan. Then add salt and pepper and some lemon drops. When I was young, I knew a restaurant where they served geschnetzelte veal liver only once a week (the day of slaughtering). It was a pretty basic restaurant, but on that day, you had always to make a reservation. Usually, it was served with rösti, but I always preferred it puristic with bread only.

At Dehillerin, you might consider the 9"/6qrt. "Bassine de Ragout" (160 Euro hors taxes, lid included), a 2.5mm copper Dutch oven for braising. It serves as soup pot or pasta pot as well and it's looking nice, so you can use it as tableware. Very versatile. I did choose the variant with iron cast handles, but brass is standard. One hint: never ever add salt to cold water inside. Unresolved salt grains might cause holes in the 0.3mm steel layer and your pot is unrepairably gone!

Veal liver has a softer texture and a subtler taste than beef liver. If you cook it too long or at too high a temperature, the soft texture tends to get "rubberish", as we say here. A matter of taste, of course. If it's perfect - according to my taste - the liver slice has a slightly pink colour inside and an almost mellowing texture. If the slice is thin (1/3 inch maybe), this can be a matter of 15-30 seconds more or less cooking time on each side (2 minutes as a rule of thumb). I never brown it to have some more margin of safety wrt. cooking time. There are also recipes for whole veal liver prepared like a roastbeef. Safety issues? I don't think so. In my youth, raw (but fresh!) veal liver in milk was a treatment for anemic babies. But freshness is everything with offals.

Dont' start with the recipe. Make reverse enegineering. Cooking is always a logistical problem. Check what you can get in decent quality. There are always differences, even in supermarket stuff. Compare. Check for farmer markets. Maybe check for additional, easy to ship mail order ingredients. Then choose possible recipes respecting these limits and your technical skills. For instance, a simple, braised beef doesn't require any exceptional ingredients or tools, but can be very rewarding. It seems to be rather a question of technique. So it's completely up to you to achieve a great results. That's the art of cooking.

Just a remark about wine (if used again). I saw Cabernet and Merlot in the seminar discussions. I'd recommend lighter stuff. I'm normally using local Pinot Noir (rather light, similar to Burgundy village wine or Beaujolais) and lighter Cote-du-Rhone. Maybe one wants you try an US counterpart to not so much extracted Cote-du-Rhone.

Offals have in general subtle tastes. I think a very important issue about offals is it's very soft texture, notably brain and sweetbreads. All in all, you love it or you hate it. Fish liver is maybe THE divider when it comes to hate/love.

Actually, here around "Maitre chocolatier" is used as a title like "Maitre Chocolatier A. Jones" aka "Chocolate master A. Jones" Maybe "couverture M.C." stands for "artisanal couverture" or simply "class A couverture".

Try to get always the freshest possible products. This is crucial with offals. Maybe start with a handsome slice of fresh veal liver, butter-poached for two minutes each side together with 3 or 4 very fine slices of garlic. Serve with salt and some lemon drops. Chicken liver is also great. For tripe, I'd suggest a "Trippa alla Fiorentina", which is prepared with tomato. (You'll find a recipe with googling). For many tripe-non-fans, the tomato softens the offal-taste sufficiently.

A typical conversation when we were constructing: Boris_A: "But what about X?" A: "We'll fix that, there's always a solution." Boris_A: "Will it cost more?" A:"Yes, somewhat more." Boris_A: "Much more"? A: "No, no, not so much." Boris_A:"Ok then, how much?" A:"..." Remembering the floorplan, I can imagine about your great space coming soon. You won't regret a single dime.

How about reflection, just like with those alu-foil accident blankets or bags for roasted chickens? These are used as thin layer insulators. I was completely astonished that even Pyrex glass did better than the foil tray wrt. boiling. If true, then the alufoil sucked almost from the beginning, when it had only the adavantage of much less vessel weight to heat up and somewhat less inertia tehrefore.

A product which is somewhat similar in taste to speck and served always crudo in Italy would be coppa , a somewhat less fat "bacon". It's a kind of a firmer, dryer, fatter procsiutto crudo.

As I described, I couldn't see any boiling at all in the alufoil vessel (at 180C in a purely radiation oven), when sametime 2.5mm copper boiled a tad under vividly. The evaporation of the liquidity is taking up a lot of joules, and the alufoil vessel seems unable to transmit the same amount of heat as the heavy ones. The liquidity gets' "cooled" by internal evaporation. Something like "a thin layer cannot take up/transmit the same amount of thermo-radiation". I could imagine several problems with the higher temperature strategy: that you need a too high temeperature to reach a sufficient degree of evaporiation/condensation (think of the meat surface of the liquidity, heated by condensation/radiation/convection) an that you still have not enough radiation/convection inside of the alufoil vessel, and that some of your liquidity is getting burnt at a hotter circualr spot, where the alufoil is just in contact with the remains of the evaporating liquidity. Also burning/drying of the touching surface between meat at the ground could happen at higher temperatures. What's about liquidity loss in pyrex vessels? Mine was considerable. Normally, pyrex is used for gratins, where cooking time is rarely more than 1 hour and some evaporation/top surface browning is desired. So their seal is not required to be perfect, and would need to bee brushed or so for better sealing and less loss of liquidity. Well, at least my pyrex vessel was an old one.

It's "2L" in the original.

Oven was preheated to 180/355 [C/F] Two beef shanks, cut into 8 pieces, total weight before/after [g]; loss [%] copper vessel: 470 / 306; 35% pyrex vessel: 420 / 228; 46% cast iron vessel: 384 / 234; 39% alufoil vessel: 380 / 248; 35% core temp after preapring and cuttin: ~ 12C/ 54 F. After slow browning (12-15 minutes) 35-40C/100F For liquidity I used a rather thin vegetable stock. For browing ts clarified butter. kept oven temp at 180/355 (no convection) After 30 min, core temp: copper: a bit more than simmer boil: 80C/176F pyrex: simmer boil: 75C/167F cast iron: even less simmer boil: 75C/167F alufoil: no boil: 70C/158F After 60 min: copper: almost boiling: 92C/198F pyrex: less boiling, 87C/187F iron cast: even less boil, 82C/180F alufoil: no boil: 70C/158F After 90 minutes: no change in temps anymore (though reading was rather difficult and random and dependent from proximity of measuring zone to the bottom of meat piece (close to the simmering liquidity) Cooked fo 180 minutes (unfortunately, when manipulating the vessels, the lid on the iron cast Dutch oven got shifted a bit and it came close to a roast with strong maillard. Here and with the pyrexvessel I had to add liquidity (water) during the braise. Observations wrt. meat: copper: meat was tender, juicy and mellowing, perfect at the outside pyrex: meat was dryer (also due to liquidity loss), not much difference in the core though. cast iron: strong maillard, hence a somewhat odd sample, the core of the meat still tender. Tasty caramelization. (!) alufoil: meat seemed to be rather boiled/steamed than braised, but still tender and juicy. Not bad at all. Observations wrt. vessel: copper vessel was easy for browning, lid sealed well, hence not much loss of liquidity, temp was rather too high for copper. pyrex: very easy to control temp (boil can be watched), lid was not so sealing, hence more loss of liquidity, meat was somewhat dryer. iron cast: easiest for browing, zwero stick, boil was rather a simmer at 180C (even less boil than in pyrex(?)), difficult to assess because of incident alufoil was difficult to handle (torsion), not much loss of liquidity though. My conclusion: Copper and cast iron preferable, mainly for simplicity with browning and handling, copper somewhat more economically wrt. temperatures. Well sealing lid seems to be very important.