g.johnson

You’re being disingenuous. Mating a pig with a pig still gives you a pig. Moreover, change is slow and reversible. But the ability to introduce new genes into an organism will give us the ability to create entirely new species very rapidly. The concern is not, I think, that we’ll be poisoned, but that we don’t know what the effect of these new organisms will be on the ecosystem.

Very minor. Watts are a measure of power, i.e., the rate at which energy is generated with units of energy per unit time. BTU are a measure of energy. Therefore Watt-hours are a measure of energy and are equivalent to BTU. BTU per hour are a measure of power and are equivalent to Watts. The useful measurement in this case is power, Watts or BTU per hour.

I understand that all the tables in the bar area are left open for walk-ins. The three times we’ve been we’ve had no trouble getting one of those by turning up before 6.

Good article. Want me to tell you the (trivial) physics errors now or later?

No, that was David Bouley. Ahhh, thanks! And sorry about my last post being screwed up, just can't figure out what I did wrong there. No opening [ on the first

Why? Snobbery, I think. It appears a little vulgar and a little mean. (I‘m not suggesting that it really is vulgar or mean.)

The doggy bag is one of those things Europeans find amusing about America.

Peat rather than pine, no? Johnson Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland:

There, then, are those mitigating circumstances I talked of. I breathlessly await the first Scottish Michelin star since Gun Erikson hung up her clogs. Talking of which. We watched Gordon Ramsey on So Graham Norton the other night (we get it 2 years late in the US). Is he actually Scottish? Didn't seem so from the accent.

Eh, well. Cough, cough, cough... Haggis soup. Yes: tinned haggis with water, seasoning and cornflour to thicken it. Haggis soup with branston pickle. Haggis soup with baked beans and creme fraiche. Easily the worst of the three. Bran flakes, a tin of tomato soup, cheddar and pickled onions with a little milk for creaminess (?!) all blended then nuked. Hot dog and stilton omelette. Soy flour deep fried pancakes (can't think of what else to call them) served with smoked sausage and HP sauce. Corned beef and mushy pea stew and a chow mein pot noodle. Toasted Panettone with bacon, onion and edam and curry sauce. Pilau rice, onion bhajee and mushy peas. Bran flakes, baked beans and lager. Again, thickened with cornflour. I could go on. The most frightening thing about this post is that most of these inventions started out with edible ingredients. Are you trying to become the tcheucter Ferran Adria?

Maybe I haven't read enough of his posts. I haven't gotten the idea that he's a"smug bastard." Tommy has been busting my balls about being a smug European, Manhattanite, scientific bastard ever since I made some disparaging comment about Jersey.

How often do I get a chance to show off?

Would you be more comfortable if it were said that heat "migrates"? Really, heat does flow from hotter to cooler. How should we describe it? I've been working with heat for thirty or so years and have usually refered to its transmigration as travels, moves, or flows. Now, that I'm thinking about it, I mostly say that it flows. (As evidenced by my unconscious use of it in my second sentence.) Edit: Maybe you could get a carry over of 15 degress if you were cooking a whole pig and covered it after it came off the fire. Radiates? "Flow" is a good historical answer since heat was thought to be a fluid until the 18th/19th century. "Radiate" only applies to one method of heat transfer (i.e., radiation). Conduction and convection being the others.

A pedant writes.... Depending on the size of the flavor molecule, it probably won't get past the cell membrane -- cell's don't let any old stuff in. However, it will lodge in the spaces between the cells and that'll be good enough.

the salt isn't in solution. it probably has little affect on on anything, other than providing some salt to the exterior, and forming a shell that might hold in moisture. regards, faux scientific bastard. I'm with Tommy on this one. And I'm a real scientific bastard.

One meaning of travel is simply to move or to pass from one point to another. Coincidentally, the OED cites Rutherford.

Smothering a piece of fish with salt will draw moisture out of the fish, since the concentration of salt will be much greater outside than in. The recipe is going to produce a sort of confit and I’m not sure what the purpose of the salt is, other than seasoning. But I don’t think brining would produce an equivalent result. Edit: Right, "cured tuna". That's what the salt is about.

That makes sense. Thanks.

That's not what I said, Doctor, but I didn't make myself at all clear, so you can have that one. Thanks for the physics lesson, though learning physics from someone who thinks heat "travels" might be a fool's errand. Could you explain something less obvious? Does the surface lose more heat to the inside of the meat or to the air? This depends on the relative internal/external temperatures, doesn't it? Sorry about the calcium crack – I didn’t mean to cause offence. As it happens, though, the distinction between metals and metal compounds is very important when it comes to heat conduction. Metals are efficient heat conductors for the same reason they are good electrical conductors. They have many free electrons bouncing around that can conduct either a current or energy (i.e., heat). As for you question, I’m not certain. The rate of heat loss depends on both the difference in temperature and the efficiency of heat conduction in the medium through which the heat travels*. Meat is a better conductor of heat than air but the temperature difference between surface and air is greater than between surface and center of the meat. * A perfectly good usage, I think.

The question of what brining actually does came up on another thread. I’m puzzled. The usual explanation is that osmosis draws the liquid into the meat. However, osmosis is a process by which a solvent moves across a membrane so as to equalize concentrations of a solute on either side. In the case of brining, you’d think that the concentration of solute (salt) would be greater in the brining solution than the meat and that therefore water (the solvent) should leave the meat cells. If that is the case, the only explanation I can think of for the increase in ‘juiciness’ of the meat is that the loss of water causes some tenderising chemical change in the meat. This explanation is consistent with the preservative effects of brine since the chemical changes that tenderize the meat would also kill bacteria. Any thoughts?

I’m not sure I’m up to explaining physics to people who think that bones are metal because they’re mostly calcium, but I’ll give it a go. Heat travels from hot things to cooler things. Since the center of the joint is cooler than the surface heat will continue to move from the surface until the temperature equalizes. (Of course, the surface will also lose heat to the air.)

The $65 and up menus are from the main restaurant. The Tavern is menu is the one linked directly by Varmint. We were there a couple of weeks ago and the new menu has similar items but nothing is identical. (E.g., the scallops are now served with beets.)

The OED gives multiple spellings: yoghurd, yogourt, yahourt, yaghourt, yogurd, yoghourt, yooghort, yughard, yughurt, yohourth, yogurt, yoghurt There’s also a related fermented milk product yaourt, variants, yao(o)rt, you(a)rt. Edit: Added even more.

I use duck or goose fat for browning any red meat.

Does anyone else hate the term ‘fine dining’. ‘Fine’ is reminiscent of ‘refined’ which smacks of lower middle class pretension and no one ‘dines’ any more, they eat dinner. ‘Dining’ is what you’d do at Buckingham Palace. The phrase is altogether too precious, though I can’t think of an alternative. ‘Haute cuisine’ might be OK but a) it has a more specific meaning and b) it's French.