scott123

One more vote for Reverware. They're dirt cheap (Walmart carries them), their solid copper base provides phenomenal thermal conductivity (water boils much quicker than in stainless steel cookware) and easy to clean.

No need for the kitchenaid. As long as the chocolate/coffee mixture isn't too hot, the egg yolks and sugar should emulsify it just fine.

Nope! On a couple of occasions, it caught my eye while walking past it. When I did notice it, I would take it from the shelf, give it squeeze, admire the design briefly and then place it back. The bottle has a nice feel to it. That's the extent of my experience Whoah... That's crazy talk. Over the last couple of years, I've spoken to, maybe... 30 people who've worked with Ztrim and not one of them actually preferred the ztrim supplemented food to the full fat version. That's a ridiculous claim. For what it is, everyone appears to love it, but I don't think anyone actually forgets they're eating a fat replacer. What does one mean by the quote above? I would be worried about ingesting anything that gave me anal leakage ← Anal leakage is a side effect of Olestra overconsumption. And a very cool sounding name for a band. If I had a band... that's what I'd name it

This is not 100% true. There are quite a few people who are sensitive to an increase in fiber. No, we're not talking anal leakage here, but it's still something that people should add to their diet discriminately. A while back, I was sent a free bottle of Ztrim for some work I did for a low carb store. That was a couple of years ago and it's still sitting on the shelf. I'm sure the expiration date is long past. I just can't get behind the idea of fat replacement, especially after the misrepresentation of products such as polydextrose and inulin as fat replacers. I also happen to LOVE the taste of fat. Lastly, and most importantly, I feel that fats, especially animal/saturated fats, are both heart healthy and essential to feelings of satiety/weight loss. Yes, you heard me correctly, fats help you lose weight and improve your lipid profile. This being said, I know quite a few people that love Ztrim. In fact, of everyone that's tried it, I know of no one that hasn't like it. Beta trim is another fat replacer that seems to have a large following.

Interesting... So this information comes straight from your car wash person? I've been to Wegmans in Bridgewater a few times, and, although the selection was great, it seemed like everything was about 40 cents more than what I pay for it elsewhere. For food. The non food items (like kitchenware) were double what I normally pay for them. Granted, I do have to hunt around a bit for my bargains and it does cost me some gas/time to do so, but even counting in gas, Wegmans is quite a bit more expensive. What I am happy about, though, is any hope whatsoever that the traffic headaches by Burger King can be resolved. The engineering of that intersection is probably the worst in the county. If it could be re-worked, I'd be very happy indeed. Happy enough that I might actually shop at Wegmans once in a while. Who know's, I've never gotten a Wegmans circular. Maybe with a circular in hand, I can score a few deals. Wait a sec... I get Kings circulars and laugh at those... I hope Wegmans isn't more of the same.

I said that 1 1/4" fire bricks wouldn't need supports? Moi? It was more of a guesstimation than a certainty, based mostly on the weight of my 2" fire brick (if you think 1 1/4s are heavy, you should try lugging around 2s!). Bowing is not good. You don't want your pizza toppings to run towards the middle. Can the end pieces not butt up against the hearth like they did on the shelf? Is there something in the way? Speaking of bowing... does the floor of the oven have a slight curve to it? If it does, I'm not sure this configuration will work. If it's flat, then I'd say it looks great. Even if the end pieces have to be leaning, it's not going to make that much of a difference. The end pieces are nice, but not crucial. Are you striving for a Vulcan oven style NY pizza or a Neopolitan wood burning oven NY style pizza?

I'm sorry but you're both wrong. What's in stock that isn't in fond? Rien. Nada. Nothing. With stock you brown bones/bits of meat at a high temp, the collagen/amino acids form a fond in the pan, you deglaze it with water, combine everything in a stockpot and simmer for 12 or more hours. With fond, you pan fry the steak, collagen and amino acids are released, and you deglaze the bits that stick on. The only difference is simmering. Simmering actually gives you a greater depth of flavor due to the maillard reactions occurring during the prolonged exposure to heat. Simmering will also extract more collagen, providing a more unctuous mouthfeel than deglazing. Neither the greater depth of flavor nor the increased collagen output differentiates stock from deglazing, though. They are both the same animals. Pan drippings + water = reduced stock Collagen, amino acids and maillard reactions. All of the building blocks that make up wonderful sauces. Maggie, if you read my initial post, I never recommended re-heating meat. As far as BBQing differing from pan frying... with both you've got intense, quick-cooking heat, resulting in browning and the formation of a crust. I'm not talking about mesquite chips here. I'm referring to two ways that provide a lot of heat to a steak in a short amount of time. Other than the obvious grill marks, the two methods are not that different. Toni, shallots vs. onions is a subjective thing. Shallots are traditional. I just happen to love caramelized onions with beef. If you like shallots, saute those in the beef fat. I don't think I'd do both, though. Cream is fine added ahead. If you're going to grill, make sure you have a full tank of propane. If you run out in the middle of grilling, you're up a creek. Believe me, I know If you have the steaks already, remove them from the packaging so they dry out a bit. Tomorrow morning, flip them so the other side dries out a bit. If you had another day, that would have helped as well. This is kind of a DIY semi-dry aging. It does amazing things for the crust. The drier the exterior, the better the crust. For people that like their steaks rare, go straight from the fridge to a blazingly hot pre-heated grill. That will give you good exterior color with a red middle. For those that like medium, remove the steaks from the fridge about an hour or two before cooking and let them come to room temp. Done like this, the rare and the medium steaks finish in about the same time. Btw, the quality of the sauce is almost directly proportional to the quantity of stock you add. Are you sure you have plenty of frozen stock? You want a LOT of stock, which you then reduce the crap out of. It's not a thick as a demi-glace, but you still want a concentrated, full flavored end product.

Oh... and although I've was recommending a ceramic ceiling (tiles or thin baking stone) to create a shelf above the hearth (for pizza), after putting in more time researching Vulcan style ovens, I don't think it's necessary. I would create a headspace with something, though, maybe a big aluminum cookie sheet. That way the heat from the stone will bounce off of the ceiling and back onto the pizza, just like a regular pizza oven. My guess is that you'll want about 18" from hearth to your cookie sheet ceiling. That should give you plenty of space to maneuver a peel. If you use parchment paper I will hunt you down Oh... and I just thought of one thing else. It's a gas oven with a flat floor, correct? Why not put the tiles right on the floor? The thickness of the brick should more than compensate for any hot spots. Just to make sure, I would preheat the stone to pizza temp (as high as the oven will go), sprinkle sugar on a cookie sheet and see where it caramelizes. My guess is that it will caramelize quite evenly. P.S. With the tiles on the floor, the weight is distributed much more evenly and is much less stressful to the floor.

Did you scrub them with soap? Those buggers will soak up soap and impart that flavor to food. If there's a chance they've got soap in them, I'd soak them in water for a bit. You could also try baking the taste of the soap out. Fire brick doesn't require seasoning. Just make sure they are perfectly dry- inside and out. If there's residual moisture on the inside of the brick, it could explode. Even if you've given them a couple of days to dry, still increase the temp incrementally. These brick tend to retain water for quite some time. It's a nice set-up. I think you'll be very pleased with the results, especially with pizza. The only thing that concerns me is the supports. For that entire supporting column, the heat is going to have to travel via conduction from brick to brick- which is much slower than the convective/radiant heat pre-heating the outer bricks. Unless you pre-heat the oven for a ridiculous amount of time (my gut is saying 1 1/2 to 2 hours), your going to end up with a heat void in the middle of your hearth. If you've read the DIY brick oven threads, you're familiar with the ceramic kiln supports I used. Look up ceramic supply in the yellow pages. If you can't find a supplier, look up pottery and find a potter who will sell you some of his or her supports. Kiln supports are cheap. For 4 little spacers and 4 columns I think I paid something like $4. Well worth it. Overall, I'm impressed. You've got a bread oven that's 50 times better than any flimsy baking stone, and, due to the thickness of the brick, superior to even the hearth kits- at a fraction of the cost. You've also used materials that were specifically engineered for high heat and thermal shock, unlike the ubiquitous unglazed quarry tile, which, imo, should play no part in the preparation food. I hope you've got a good pizza recipe. With a kick ass set up like that, it would be a crying shame to have anything less than a stellar dough and sauce.

Make beef stock today, and, once it's chilled/defatted, make the sauce (use the beef fat for caramelizing the onions). Do you have a grill that can accommodate 8 NY strips? That would be easiest. The bits that end up in the pan are nice, but it's not the end of the world if you lose them by grilling rather than pan frying. The stock you make today will suffice. All the wonderful flavors that end up in fond are the same components that end up in stock (if you make the stock correctly by roasting the bones/whatever meat is attached). If you don't have a large enough grill, I'd take deltadoc's suggestion and obtain a second pan. Get to the market, buy those bones and start that stock. If you can achieve a great stock today, your sauce will be wonderful tomorrow, fond or no fond. Having the sauce made in advance will also give you a little more peace of mind.

Is heavy cream that effective of a stabilizer? Even if it is a good stabilizer heavy cream has a strong tendency to coat the palate and mask flavors, flavors, that, in this instance, I don't think you'd want to be masking. The protein in the chicken and the egg are good emulsifiers/stabilizers, the port might be a nice addition to flavor, but the cream... Regarding the port, if you can reduce it even further (2 T.) without impairing the taste, I'd recommend it, as water tends to run contrary to stabilization. With less water, this recipe shouldn't require quite so much chicken and egg to maintain an emulsion when heated. If methocel works, other, more easily obtainable hydrocolloids, such as xanthan and guar gums, should work as well. With a very thin layer of pasta, these ravioli shouldn't need to cook that long. If the filling starts out chilled and the cooking time is short, the final temp of the filling may not be that high. My guess is that the foie mousse shouldn't require that much stabilization. One could also combine different stabilizers in hopes of achieving a synergistic effect. For instance, one could try a little chicken protein, an egg yolk, a tiny amount of xanthan and a tiny amount of guar. The net amount of additional ingredients would be quite a bit less, providing a bolder foie flavor, at the same time, the level of stabilization might be the same (or even higher). Lastly, if you had a lot of time on your hands, you could form the filling in two layers, the outside having a greater proportion of stabilizing ingredients/less foie flavor and the inside with less, as the inside will be exposed to quite a bit less heat than the layer closest to the pasta. If it's a very small ravioli, this may not be practical.

Ever since reading Steingarten's thoughts on MSG a few years back, I have contended that anti-MSG rhetoric is just xenophobia. As time goes by, though, I find there's more at stake here. It's not just xenophobia, it's puritanical xenophobia. MSG is pleasure. The high levels of glutamates in human breast milk reveal that we're hardwired to get off on this stuff from the very get go. MSG is part of the reason why our eyes roll into the back of our head when consuming a phenomenal cut of beef. It's part of the reason why pizza is listed as the favorite high school yearbook food for just about every senior in the continental U.S. It's the sole reason why Doritos makes millions of dollars every year. We don't just like these glutamate rich foods, we LOVE them. Because of our puritanical beginnings, this nation has always had issues with pleasure. If it feels good, it must be bad. This is no different. MSG touches on both our fear of pleasure and our fear of foreign things. Puritanical xenophobia... With phantom fears such as these, psychosomatic symptoms are not far behind.

If you take a look at the link Susan provided, you'll see that CTM is most definitely of Indian origin. Pam, CTM can cover a fairly wide variety of interpretations. I've seen some recipes with cream, some without and some that utilize cashew paste for a creamy texture. They all have their fans. If your favorite source makes a creamy CTM, use a cream-based (or cashew paste based) recipe.

Cnspriggs, an onion can be caramelized in 8 minutes, but it involves a few factors, the most important of which is the quantity of fat/oil you're using. A single layer of onion in a wide pan will cook faster than an overcrowded pan. A fresh onion will have more water content/take longer to cook. A thinly walled, harder to slice onion will take longer to soften/cook than a less fibrous, thicker walled onion. A larger onion can sometimes be more fibrous, but not always. Small onions can be tough as well. A finer dice will take less time to cook than a larger one. Fat is key, though. Restaurant style Indian cooking isn't fat phobic. For good Indian cooking, you want to use a ton. I'd say use at least 1/4 C. fat for every onion. Additionally, the fat content will give you the 'glistening' the recipe is referring to. Not only is canola oil one of the worst tasting oils, recent studies have revealed it to be much less healthy than commonly perceived. Ghee is the perfect choice, but if you don't have it on hand, I'd suggest a much better tasting oil like soybean or even peanut. I'm sure you're local Indian restaurant is using soybean oil, not canola. Waaza, the onion frying experiment in your blog is quite interesting, but I noticed one major flaw. The rate of evaporation is drastically higher in a shallow/wide saute pan than a beaker. In a real world setting, the water evaporation data will vary greatly from yours. Onions initially release a lot of water (more if the onion is fresh), and an open pan (rather than a closed beaker) drives this moisture away quickly. After that, the rate at which the onion releases liquid/rate at which this liquid is evaporated slows considerably. Not only is the shape of the pan play a critical role in moisture evaporation, but the number of layers of onions are important as well. A single layer of onions will create an entirely different graph than 3 or 4 layers stacked on top of one another.

I think you can draw some parallels between curry powder and chili powder or say, dry rub -- there might be perfectily acceptable commercial varieties out there, but that doesn't make it pointless to make your own. Also, commercial curry powders tend to vary quite a bit in taste, so if a recipe calls for some supposedly ubiquitous curry powder, the end result might be wildly different, depending on what particuarly commercial powder was used... Besides, making your own means you get to learn what goes into the mix, and that's always a good thing. ← Hmmmmm.... Do commercial curry powders vary that much in taste? Are there really that many recipes that request specific brands of curry powder? Chili powder + beef + veggies = chili Curry powder + chicken + veggies = ???? Definitely not curry. I think most people will agree that curry powder, is a shortcut. If you browse this forum, you'll see that it's a shortcut that many on the Subcontinent proudly take, but regardless of it's ubiquitous use, it's still cutting a corner. Short order cooking. People from other countries don't come to the U.S. and go to diners to learn how to cook. Sure, some diners could be more educational/illuminating than others, and there are quite a few chefs that could learn a thing or two in a diner, but, generally speaking, to begin to grasp the intricacies of a particular nation's cuisine one doesn't deconstruct that nation's equivalent of diner food. Curry powder/curry powder based recipes aren't for those that want/need to learn. They're for those people that want/need to put food on the table quickly. It's a mundane, very utilitarian tool, used by thousands of people every day. From a scholastic perspective, though, it's an inherently frivolous ingredient. You're deconstructing something that was never meant to be deconstructed. You're taking seriously an ingredient that plays no serious role.

I also stumbled across this:

Actually, "Congris" is most likely a contraction of the creole "congo y riz", Congo and rice. "Congo" peas = gungo pigeon pea = goongoo pea = gunga pea = gungo pea = congo pea = congo bean = no-eyed peas = gandules (Cajanus cajan). Like black-eyed peas/crowder peas (Vigna unguiculata) they are old world peas (actually beans). Seems pretty obvious that the Lousiana version is derivative, with gungo peas being substituted for the locally common black-eyed/crowder peas. Find the region where gungo peas were historically common and you most likely have the original source. ← From the USDA Forest Service

Why make curry powder when you can buy it? I can see how someone might toast/grind their own garam masala to obtain the freshest taste possible, but garam masala (and other masalas) are key players in a lot of dishes. Authenticity/Subcontinental use aside, curry powder is not that major of a player. Even if you do find it to be the primary ingredient in a recipe, the recipe was mostly likely developed for commercial powder. If you buy fresh curry powder, that's probably a good idea, but making it yourself? It's kind of silly, if you ask me. Curry powder is not a serious ingredient. At least not serious enough to grind your own. Commercial varieties are fine.

Hmmmmm... smaller onions translate into longer prep time/the more onions you have to peel. Also more waste. If I have a recipe calling for 3# onions, I can peel 4 huge onions a lot faster than, say, 9 small ones. Does no one make a dicer that will accommodate a very large onion?

Thanks for all the great leads. I actually came across a dicer in Target that looked pretty good. One more question. I've been noticing that the dimensions of the cutting area are generally not that large. I've been consistently getting 4+" diameter onions for the last year or so. Doe anyone have a dicer than can handle an onion of that size? The thought of having to quarter the onions to fit them in the machine doesn't excite me.

Actually, I was kind of hoping you'd come back and say that ganache can be tempered Is it possible that the way ganache is cooled might impact in some way the cocoa butter crystal formation? Or does the water in the ganache/the fact that it's an emulsion dictate the type of crystal formed? Since you're fully immersed in the topic of tempering and the ingredients that inhibit it, I've got a question along those lines. Can corn syrup be used in a tempered chocolate? How about a very high brix/low moisture activity corn syrup? If the moisture activity were low enough, the cocoa particles wouldn't hydrate/seize, correct? The reason why I'm asking is that I've consumed a bar of what was supposed to be tempered chocolate that contained what I believe might have been a liquid form of sugar. Although the taste was good, the texture was a tad mealy.

I had a chance to talk to a sales rep from House Foods (the manufacturer who makes the tofu shiritaki) and she swore up and down that the weird, seaweedy taste is removed in it's entirety by just a rinse with hot water. I'm a little hesitant to try this technique, but I have been par-boiling the noodles a lot less then the recommended time with excellent results. The one thing that really drives me nuts about these noodles, though, is if you eat them quickly and aren't extremely careful about chewing, it's really easy to partially swallow a noodle. It is not a pleasant sensation. For this reason, I like to chop up the noodles a bit before I serve them. I enjoy them with sesame sauce as well. And although I've done a fair amount of scoffing at people that put tomato sauce on them, over the years I've warmed up to a handful of non-Asian approaches, including cheese sauce.

One of the things added to chocolate is hot cream. Hot, almost boiling cream + chocolate = complete loss of temper. Since the ganache is cooled via refrigeration, this temper never returns. Truffles are untempered chocolate, unless, of course, they are enrobed.

Natural stone? What type of rock is it? If it isn't soapstone, I'd track down a more suitable material for baking.

Steak and bacon? Are you doing Atkins? If you are, Atkins definitely isn't barley friendly. At least not until maintenance.