fiftydollars

That's more than enough for me. I am now convinced that it is not rigged and I am glad as I had always hoped guys like Batali would not be involved in a crooked contest. Is there just no accounting for taste?

Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook has two solid, classic roast chicken recipes. One is a brined bird recipe that yields some of the crispiest skin I've ever had and the other is a completely simple roast chicken recipe that can easily go from grocery bag to oven in 5 minutes. However, my favorite roast chicken is from Judy Rodgers' Zuni Cafe Cookbook. The difference is Rodgers simply salts the chicken two days in advance and without having to brine and whatnot the bird, it comes out ridiculously moist and delicious and the skin is just disgustingly crispy and perfect just-about-no-matter-what every effin time. She's an effin genius. If you've ever been to Zuni or tried her recipe, you know what I mean. It is the simplest recipe for roast chicken ever devised and yet it yields a chicken that I don't think can be substantially improved upon... ever.

I put my starter to ferment in the oven with just the light on after feeding it and then forgot that I had put it in there. A few hours later I decided to just make a pizza with the dough I had made with the starter and I cranked the oven to 600 degrees. It didn’t take long for the starter to remind me where I had put it…

I use mostly Diamond kosher. I used to buy Morton’s, but now I prefer Diamond’s smaller, more delicate, and irregular flakes. Morton’s also has an additive listed as an ingredient, yellow prussiate of soda, while Diamond simply lists salt. I have nothing against yellow prussiate of soda, but it’s not in DKS and I certainly don’t miss it. I bake with Sno-white brand salt made by the good folks that bring us Morton’s. It is non-iodized table salt that sells for $0.17 per 1 lb. can wherever off-brand, dirt-cheap grocery products can be found. I really want some of that Japanese salt Jeffrey Steingarten mentions in the article quoted by Slate. If anyone has hooks, let me know.

I really hate the rivets. My favorite 10" frying pan is an AC. I love the pan, but I hate having to clean around the rivets. The rivets are a huge pain in the ass and when I go looking for a new pan, it won't be an AC and it definitely won't have rivets. Trouble is, that damned AC pan just won't die.

I have a cloth-lined basket that I would like to use to proof bread, but I'm worried the tacky dough will stick to the cloth. How do I prevent this?

Would bacon be inappropriate? Or maybe baking cookies might be more suitable.

I'm confused. I have always used the method described by Suzy to scald milk. I've never quite known what it does aside from warm up the milk. I imagine your method produces something quite different. What does this milk look like and can you use it in place of the "warm milk" that seems to be called for in other recipes?

Is 25% a more appropriate rule-of-thumb percentage on restaurant tips? More? At what point should I feel comfortable that the staff has been adequately compensated for providing high quality service? By which I mean in most situations. Of course if the staff goes above and beyond (food or drink not reflected in the bill, the Heimlich maneuver) there really is no limit. But for your average situation where you go to a great restaurant and get a good meal and service. What is a good rule-of-thumb percentage?

I received the Eggstractor as a gift and while it is perhaps the single most useless, poorly designed, and just plain stupid device in my kitchen, the instruction manual did give a decent tip: shock the eggs in ice water after cooking. This does, in fact, make them easier to peel and it is pretty much the only way you are going to get the Eggstractor to separate egg from shell. I do love the Eggstactor, actually. Although, after dozens of attempts, it has only yielded one (1) properly peeled egg, it has provided quite a bit of entertainment along with scores of mangled, abused eggs (and one pretty good tip on egg cookery).

Eggs are required to display the date they are packed as a Julian date, as explained by Fat Guy somewhere in this extensive and enlightening Q&A on the topic of eggs. I'd really like to hear that somehow there is a good reason that these eggs are easy to peel... other than they are old eggs. I just hate peeling eggs and yesterday as I tried to work through my third dozen, I would have been quite happy to try any eggs that could safely prove to peel easier... brown, cage-free, all-natural, whatever. But I'm not quite willing to eat old eggs just to have an easier go of it. Here is a direct link to the Julian date converter linked in Fat Guy's article.

Thanks for a great course! I don't have a lot in the way of fancy dinner wares and I figure it's about time I gets me some matching plates. I generally eat average-sized food. What plate size would you recommend?

Epicurious had a show featuring Michael Lamonico, another FoodTV refugee, and I thought it was good. I really liked Lamonico's show on Food TV and unfortunately the epicurious show was not as good and at the time Food TV still had some pretty good offerings, so I rarely watched him on Epicurious. Some network out there should pick up the slack and start showing some cooking on TV again. PBS is great, but I need more than saturday mornings. I want it to go back the way it was... when Moulton, Batali, et al were at their peak... although back then, Food TV didn't have many viewers.

I'm terribly sad to see Sarah go. While I did watch more of her in the Cooking Live days, I always stop to see what she's cooking up whenever I have the chance. She's in my Instructional Television Hall of Fame... along with Norm Abram and Jeff Smith. I agree with Jason that she is one of the few Food TV chefs that still care to teach technique from the ground up. I started watching her in college when I had no idea what the hell I was doing in a kitchen, which is not too different than today, but she provided excellent instruction such that I was able to follow many of her recipes and feed myself successfully. This is a lot of the reason why I still love Emeril. He, along with the old stable of Food TV chefs, pretty much taught me to cook, and as scary and pathetic as that probably sounds, I will always be grateful for that.

Thank you for the encouraging words. I’ll bake up some bread with my own starter and I’ll see what happens. Baking my own authentic San Francisco sourdough is my goal (I don’t actually live IN San Francisco, but as I am so obsessed with authenticity, the flour was purchased and cultured in San Francisco to hopefully insure that the mix is indeed infected by authentic microbes. I’ve heard the bugs infect the whole SF Bay Area, but I don’t want to tell people this is Authentic San Francisco Bay Area Sourdough Bread anymore than I want to say it is authentic San Francisco-style sourdough bread. I want to be able to simply call it San Francisco Sourdough with no measure of inaccuracy (at least in terms of lineage)… and I hope the bugs don’t vary by neighborhood. I don’t want my financial district bugs deemed inferior to the bugs in more scenic locales or more popular neighborhoods). But a secondary goal is to actually succeed at some form of bread-like substance, which to some extent I have. The Goldrush did yield a pretty good round of bread. But I felt cheap and dirty using it… so if I am going to keep starter around as a pet for a while, I want it to be a pure bread (in this case a stray). I did ask the good folks at ACME if they would sell or give me a bit o’ starter and I was firmly (rudely, actually) rejected. Of course, we have many good bakeries around here and at some point I will try to put the rejection behind me and go and ask a kinder, gentler, baker for help (I realize the starter is their “special sauce” in a way, but give me an effin’ break. I’ll be buying my baguettes from someone else, for a while as recalling the event brings back a flood of angry indignant feelings). Thanks for the information and link on the SFBI, but I especially thank you for your course. It lured me into baking some bread and I appreciate that.

I want to make an authentic loaf of san francisco sourdough. So I am trying to start a mixture of flour and water per the course and I'm not sure how well it is going. I started some flour by combining roughly equal amounts with water and leaving the mixture in a warm spot in San Francisco until it bubbled. It has been about 6 days, the mixture bubbles and smells a bit acidic... although I might not describe it as a "clean acidity" as someone described above. It is a bit slow (by comparison- see below) and by the time I feed it again, what was a relatively tight batter/wet dough, turns into a veru runny batter... like thick tempura-ish. I also have a starter I purchased in an envelope (Goldrush- San Francisco-Style Sourdough Starter made by the same company that sells Marie Callender's corn bread mix) and it is very different than the stuff I purportedly might have caught in the wild. The stuff is a lot more active and although it does settle into a puddle of bubbly glop, it has a lot of strands of dough and as I try to stir it, it comes together and is definitely not runny. I have fed both of them the same type of flour and pretty much treat them the same way. They smell similar, but in almost every respect they are quite different. I realize they ARE different, but I wonder if my wild yeast is normal. I read in Cook's illustrated that it takes about two weeks for the starter to develop properly and it's only been half that time... but am I getting there? Should I just keep to the stuff out of the envelope? It's from San Jose and for most that's probably close enough...

I buy tubs of individually wrapped "Moto Moto Yama Seasoned Roasted Seaweed" and they come with these HUGE packets of a desiccant made with "quick lime." Although the packet still instructs not to eat I wonder if it is safer around food.

I prefer the flat because it is easier to cut into nice slices. However, some prefer the flavor of the point and either is great if you like to shred your brisket. Either way, I usually like to buy the whole thing and I enjoy every last bit of it. The flat is what I prefer when making pastrami because I can cut myself a nice rectangular piece that fits in my brining tray just so. I do think, though, that most folks prefer the flat, so if you have a choice...

Of course. Anything that succeeds in the US is bound to take over the entire world. ← Quite naturally... ...and we are very glad that you see our side of things. It will facilitate assimilation. Your code name is Pan Dulce.

nah the world cusine is chinese more people on the world eating it chinese then any other cusine followed closely by indian. hahaha ← In the US, Mexican food is rapidly gaining ground on Chinese food and I would argue that it is already far ahead of Indian cuisine by almost any conceivable objective measure. To quote a now popular saying, "Rabbits are now reproducing like Mexican restaurants." So as you can see, through my clearly relevant example, quote, and rigorous application of logic, that the spread of Mexican food dominance worldwide is an inevitability. Many people in the Guangdong Province of China, to quote a pertinent example from my research, are not eating Mexican food more regularly because they lack an available market for tacos, tortillas, et al. Perhaps most tragically, many of China's people remain unaware of their strong predilection for Mexican food. It's really very sad, but luckily, as I argued earlier, no human border is impermeable to Mexicans, or our food. ...it's coming.

This argument is just plain ridiculous... everybody knows Mexican food is the world's undisputed king of all cuisines.

Wow. That meal sounds incredible. I love the way you name and describe the food and I have a couple of questions: What is xoconostle? and What do you call a capon (I'm thinking of a castrated male chicken) in Spanish?

The article in the LA Times says, or at least implies if I remember correctly, that wild mushrooms are still available for sale at restaurants and grocers. Is this true?

Oh, yeah... this is the Canada forum. I thought Tony Bourdain might be out of a job...

I like the flavor or Pernod, black licorice, 5 spice, et al… But if you don’t like it, why not substitute something you like instead of finding something you will dislike the least? When you are substituting ingredients in a recipe because you don’t have them, can’t get them, or can’t have them it’s great to find something that is a close match, but if you are substituting because you don’t like it… why bother? It’s not going to be the same recipe without the ingredient… so if it is going to be something else anyway… just add what you like.