Shalmanese

Has anyone tried the Brita filter trick on everclear to get rid of some of the harshness? It seems it would produce the optimal limoncello. Also, why is lemon juice never used in lemoncello? Does it discolour? Is the flavour unpleasant? The fundamentals of X-cello seem to be quite basic. You want to bring alcohol, sugar, water and essential oils into the correct balance. IMHO, the most logical way to do this would be to filter through a whole bunch of everclear (and store whats not used for later infusions) and then use only a minimal amount to infuse the zests with. Make up a highly concentrated sugar syrup of about 4:1 sugar to water, the water is only there to help the sugar dissolve (again, make more than you need, the excess can be safely stored in the pantry). Then, just play around with varying amounts of lemon extract, sugar syrup, chilled vodka/everclear and chilled water until the right balance is reached. This way, it's almost impossible to screw it up as you can always correct the balance if something goes out of whack. Even better, the components by themselves are useful. I always have concentrated sugar syrup on hand as it can be used for lemonade and other mixed drinks as well as when you need a quick, subtle sugar boost for something like a tomato sauce. It's also great as a base for caramels. The lemon extract, you could use like you would use vanilla extract in desserts, as a subtle flavouring agent. Or you could use it in other cocktails or mocktails in which you dont want the sweetness. With a bit of experimentation, an enterprising person could determine the optimal amount of alcohol to lemon zest by infusing the spent lemon zest with some more everclear and seeing if anything is extracted. I'm willing to bet you should only need 1/10th or less the stated amount of alcohol to do the extraction properly. This seems like a far more sensible way to make lemoncello IMHO.

My 20 skills: 1. How to cook 2. How to taste 3. How to think about food 4. How to talk about food 5. How to experiment 6. How to invent 7. How to improvise 8. How to share food with those you love 9. How to appreciate others cooking for you 10. How to explore new foods and food cultures 11. How to expand your culinary horizons 12. How to select the best produce & ingredients 13. How to respect your ingredients 14. How to refine your cooking constantly 15. How to be aware of everything that you do 16. How to plan ahead and schedule 17. How to learn from those willing to teach 18. How to teach those who are willing to learn 19. How to present food so that it is pleasing to the eye and finally: How to be passionate about every aspect of cooking and love the process of cooking in all it's glory.

I think a difference in technique would make it difficult to use a SS wok in the same manner as a carbon steel wok. Western meat cooking relies on letting a piece of meat stay in contact with a relatively cool pan for an extended period of time to build up fond. Wok cooking relies on pieces of meat being in constant motion against a much hotter pan with not much fond production. SS is fine for the first because meat will stick at first but then naturally release when an adequate sear has been achieved but not the wok method because meat will stick and tear rather than stir fry gracefully.

Is it just me or does this law have no teeth? If you want to buy foie, then it's just a short trek to the suburbs or mail order it. If you want to eat foie in restuarants, well, the ban is enforced by "user complaints". All you need to do is to know the chef fairly well, ask for the "special menu" and your in. The fine is also a mere laughable $500 and theres no provision to escalate it for repeated offenses. In short, it seems more like a token gesture to appease the PETA folk than any real serious ban on foie.

Ha! I was reading this and thinking "Wow, I didn't know you could make Tempura in twenty seconds!"

IIRC: Mussels need a constant stream of water going through to provide fresh oxygen. If you put them in a stagnant pool, they will use all the oxygen available around them and then die of suffocation.

I've done dark choc orange, dark choc lime, white choc almond and white choc passionfruit. The lime one was my favourite.

Well, the inspiration came from him but I couldn't find his actual recipe anywhere on the internet so I just sort of winged it myself. I roasted 4 heads of garlic in some OO (not extra virgin) to scent the oil and then mixed it 50/50 with EVOO. heated it up to 50C, added in the deboned and deskinned trout filets which dropped the heat down to 40C. Put it in a 50C oven (the lowest mine will go) and took it out when it reached 45, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I cooked the fish skin in a non-stick pan until crisp. The result: The fish was moist and meltingly tender. Not much garlic flavour or olive flavour I have to admit so I don't know if just poaching it in a neutral oil would make much of a difference. The fish wasn't seasoned when it went into the pot and the oil wasn't seasoned so the fish was a bit undersalted (although the cous cous made up for it). I don't know what would be a good way to get some seasoning into the fish, can you brine fish? Apart from that, it's a great method of cooking fish and the oil is lent a subtle, fishy aroma that would work great in some of the more robust salads.

Why not? HFCS comes from corn. Corn is natural. What makes something unnatural? The generally accepted definition seems to be that it comes from something that is not conventionally thought of as food such as artifical vanilla.

I'm overage in Australia but underage in the US (20) and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I never once got carded in my trips there. I went to snooty restaurants, college dive bars, local pubs and run of the mill joints, all solo.

I'm trying an olive oil poached "confit" of ocean trout tonight.

It seems to me that foie gras has no muscle so it should be fine with multiple freezing and thawings. If not, you can always lop off a piece and just defrost that.

Theres a couple of tips in my Professor Shalmanese's 2 week cooking school thread. Feel free to steal some inspiration from there if you want.

Are you sure about that? I have a friend with a fancy fill flash. He inserts colored pieces of plastic to vary the light. It may just be that a standard flash has the wrong color light for food. Maybe a photographic expert could explain this. ← I'm assuming that nobody is going to be setting up light boxes and meters in a restaurant. In this context, flash means the flash you get on a consumer grade, P&S digital camera.

holy crap, thats cheap meat

The problem is that your using flash at all. Food never looks as good under flash as it does under natural light. Just get a tripod and set the shutter speed to very low and your food will come out much, much better.

Not only do we share asian foods, when the family goes out to eat at a western restaurant, everyone gets at least a few bites of every dish.

I wonder what would happen if you glued together thin slices of meat cut against the grain with meat cut with the grain?

Use a tripod, find a good location to shoot from, set it to manual shutter speed, calibrate the light metering before any plates come out and move the plate, not the camera to get it into view. Set it relatively far away from the food and, If you can, invest in a remote. If the camera is relatively out of the way and your not always fiddling with it, it should remain relatively unobtrusive and you can generally clear up most shots in post processing using judicious cropping and colour balancing.

I like the concept but the actual execution seems a bit contrived. They should just skip the artificially forced spontenaity and artifice of "just happening" to have the right piece of equipment lying around. Still, I have to admit I lust after that dehyrated fruit jacket.

Could you go into a bit about why? How did you find the sauce?

Can I ask why? It seemed to ruin the meat to me.

Finally got around to sorting out all my photos. I dined there April 20th and heres what I ate: Hot potato, Cold Potato: This was a lovely dish. A chunk of hot potato suspended over a cold potato soup with black truffle. Your meant to pull out the pin and have everything drop into the soup and then eat it like an oyster. The contrast in textures and temperatures is really not possible without this unique serving piece and it was a real demonstration of creativity. Radish with a Pine nut puree: I don't remember too much about this one. It was decent but not spectacular. Salsify, parsley, salmon and steelhead roe: Inexplicably, this tasted almost exactly like Burger Rings to me. I have no idea why since none of the ingredients even remotely resemble whats in a burger ring but there you go. Lobster with Heart of palm and yuzu: This was pretty good. The lobster was sweet and paired will with the yuzu. Heart of palm was rather tasteless. Mussel with Chamomile and cucumber: I honestly remember nothing about this dish. Skate with brown butter, haricot vert and banana: inexplicably listed as being paired with capers, the skate wing was tender and the brown butter powder was interesting if a little harsh on the palate. It tended to overpower the other two powders and I didn't really see how the haricots or the bananas added to this dish. Would love to know how they powderised the butter though. Pear with Celery & curry: Wow... this was one of my favourite dishes of the night. Pear juice was encased inside a tiny shell, I don't know how... if anybody knows, please tell me. You take a shot and the shell unexpectedly bursts in your mouth providing a rush of flavour. Phenomonal dish. Australian lamb with eucalyptus leaves and akudjura: I swear the waiter said it was a fava bean puree but the menu says akudjara. Maybe it's because I'm from Australia but I found the lamb underwhelming in flavour. The eucalyptus was a nice touch but I didn't think it lifts the dish to a whole new level or anything. Bison, gruyere, pumpernickel & ramps: The bison was nice and tender but again, mild in flavour. The ramps paired well with it. I think thats brown butter powder again in the corner but I'm not sure. Sweet Potato & bourbon on a cinnamon stick: This was really fun. Your meant to grab the cinnamon stick and pull the food off the end. Very well executed and clean flavours. Verjus sorbet and foam with lemon thyme and beet: To be honest, I didn't taste any thyme or beet, it just seemed like a rather conventional palate cleanser, the foam was underwhelming. Granola in a rosewater envelope: This was my least favourite dish of the night. It was far too dry and sucked all the moisture out of my mouth and made it hard to chew and swallow. On top of that, it just tasted like your standard, supermarket granola. Nothing special. I also think the serving device was rather contrived (although apparently I was the first person to think of taking the thing apart and eating it from the stick rather than plucking it off like most people did). Frozen Yogurt with juniper and mango: Mmm... this one was quite nice. The texture of the yogurt was very interesting and the flavours were clear and well executed. Yuba with prawn and a miso & orange sauce: The prawn was nice but rather boring in flavour, the miso paste was really good and the presentation was cute, but I didn't think it fundamentally added much to the dish. Asparagus with "egg drops" and lemon foam: This dish was very clever. The chef took egg yolks and used an eye dropper to drop them into clarified butter. The resulting texture was very interesting, almost like a rice. However, they seemed a tad overcooked to me, I don't know if thats an inevitable outcome of the process or not. Bass with vanilla, artichoke and a pillow of orange air: The air seemed to work far better than the eucalyptus from the previous one. The bass was tender and robust in flavour and the elements general seemed to play off each other successfully. I guess it was technically an accomplished dish but I wasn't feeling anything for it. Kobe^H^H^H^HWagyu beef with cucumber, lime rocks and soy sayce reduction: This was another not-so-great dish. The soy sauce reduction was far too salty and obliterated any of the delicate flavours of this dish. And the Wagyu was ridiculously stingy, 5 cubes maybe 1/4" in size, barely a mouthful and not enough to actually get any of the rich, smooth mouthfeel that makes Wagyu worthwhile. By the time I had gotted to the 3rd piece of Wagyu, it was already cooling from the cold cucumber layed on top and the fat congealing into a generally not so appetising mess. Foie gras with blueberry soda: On the other hand, this was fantastic. The foie gras was rich and meaty and the soda cut through the richness wonderfully. The serving vessel was gimmicky but effective. Squab with strawberry, sorrel & pepper cubes: Wow... this was phenomenal. The squab was perfectly cooked with crispy skin and tasted pure and meaty. The sauce paired with it was fantastic and all the elements just fell into place. Sable with jasmine, plantain and toffee: I honestly can't remember much about this dish. I rememebr being underwhelmed with the little bean of ice-cream or whatever it was. Argan oil with white chocolate and sumac: I thought the anti-plate it was presented on was a bit gimmicky. Sure, it was effective but the servers seemed to hype it up a bit. The sumac was an unexpected but not unpleasant note. The argan oil was interesting but I don't know if I would willingly go out and seek it ever again. Choclate with a coconut ice cream, honey emulsion and thai basil jelly: The chocolate was a bit too intense for what I was looking for at that time of night. Having played around with chocolate a bit, it's incredibly easy to fall into the trap of making desserts which try and pack huge wallops of chocolate flavour into a single bite. Which is fine in its way but not the be all and end all of chocolate desserts IMHO. The honey emulsion was fantastic, absolutely amazing. The basil, OTOH, seemed rather out of place and I just can't see the pairing between basil and chocolate. Coffee with mint, passionfruit and buckwheat: The coffee log was very clever. You break it open to reveal an intense, minty liquid inside that works very well. The buckwheat has a gritty sort of texture which I'm ambivilant about. I can see how it can work in a dessert but I found it unpleasant. Peanuts served 5 ways: Celery, Grape jelly, and 3 others. Interesting I guess if your an american and these are food memories for you. For me, it was just a bunch of random flavours that were neither here nor there. Overall, I would say I found the experience great but not phenomenal. I've discovered that I'm really not a big fan of the huge, elaborate, multi-course tasting menu idea. 8 - 10 I can handle. 24 is just too much. By about the 15th course, I was just crying out for a big chunk of FOOD I could dig into. All the frou frou on the plate doesn't impress me much. It just strikes me as a bunch of wasted effort if it doesn't really add much to the actual taste of the food. I guess, in theory, I like Thomas Kellers idea of each plate of food leaving the diner wanting just one bite more... but sometimes, I just want to revel in the too-muchness of food, I want to have that one more bite. The majority of the dishes were well executed and certainly pretty without any major flaws, but they seemed lacking in soul... or magic. There were a few truly outstanding ones: Hot potato, Pear & Celery, Sweet potato, egg drops, squab and coffee. There were a few real stinkers: the granola and the kobe. I certainly have no complaints about the meal and it was well worth the money but I think once is enough for me for a long time.

I've been wanting to make a sourdough pizza for a while now. Good idea/Bad idea?

I mainly use coconut cream. a 1:1 mix of cream and water does a fair approximation of milk when I need milk consistency in a recipe and cream is just a more compact form to store.