Shalmanese

Okay, I made Pate a Choux as my first ever pastry since apparently this is the one even idiots can't get wrong. Well, guess they were wrong. Instead of one large, hollow cavity in the middle and the dough increasing to 3 or 4x the size, mine only maybe wen't to 1.5x the size and was filled with a light, webbing like interior. Kind of like really rustic sourdough. They still tasted good but were useless for filling or decorating. The recipe I used was an amalgam of Alton Brown, Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique and is as follows: 100gm of flour 1 tiny pinch of salt 1 tbsp of confectioner sugar mixed in a bowl 50gm butter 250mL water brought to a boil flour was added all at once to the water and mixed until dough came together and was smooth to the touch. It seemed to me that mine was slightly softer than Alton's dough but he didn't play around with it too much so I'm not quite sure. After that, beat in 2 eggs and 1 egg white until smooth, when a fork was lifted from the mix, a V shaped tear formed. So far, I'm pretty confident that I've done things right. Now, put into a piping bag and then pipe onto a silpat/silicone paper (btw: Is there any easy way to fill a piping bag or is it pretty much just spooning it in?). I tried both eclairs and cream puffs. Here is where I vary from the standard recipe. I didn't have silicone paper so I just used normal baking paper with oil brushed on top. The choux still stuck to the paper when it came out. I didn't have a large, round piping nozzle so I used my star shaped one. Could the cavities have caused it to not form properly? I baked the eclairs for 15 mins at 220C(425F) and then dropped down to 180C(350F) for another 10 minutes to dry them out. I noticed at the end that there was a pool of liquid around each eclair that was soaked up by the paper, could this have affected it? Also, I tended to pipe each tray right after I put the previous one in the oven so it was about 20 minutes between piping and baking. Could it have formed a skin on the choux that inhibited it from rising? Any thoughts?

I was always puzzled by the batali recipe and although I've made the dish several times, I've never had the guts to go at 375. OTOH, russ parson writes that braising can also be achieved at 400F in a tightly covered heavy dish although the result is markedly different. To add a further wrinkle to the picture, pressure cooked meat cooked at temperatures far above boiling also inexplicably result in tender, falling apart meat. I'm guessing the effect of both the 400F and the PC methods are the same and rely on a different chemical process from conventional braising. So is it every customary to braise at the temperature of med rare meat? I suppose it would be a mix between a braise and a poach.

I agree that sublime confit takes many hours to make but not all that time is used productively. I feel that the first few hours of gentle simmering until the onion water is almost completely gone does nothing for the confit and merely allows volatile flavour molecules to waft off and disappear forever. I'm advocating a relatively high simmer at the start until the onions start to wilt and dry followed by long, slow heat to let the delicate Maillard reactions to take place.

Luckylies: How does frozen garlic compare with fresh? I would love to not chop garlic every time I made something but I'm absolutely unwilling to compromise on flavour. Right now, I'm using roasted garlic whenever I can. Additionally, is there any way to keep diced onions or mirepoix in a suspended state? I tried making roux for storage once but for some reason, it completely lost it's thickening power. Very odd. Mayo I am leery of on food saftey grounds since we don't get through it fast enough. I will make a mayo based dressing from scratch though and fridge the remainder. Good call on the clarified butter, never tried that before.

I love the idea of just going on a massive cooking spree and then having a whole bunch of prepared ingredients in my fridge from which I can compose a meal in just a few minutes. Things I have right now: Duxelle, frozen into ice-cubes Beef stock (4x reduction), frozen into ice cubes and plastic containers Chicken stock (2x reduction), frozen into ice cubes and plastic containers Chicken Fat in fridge Roasted Garlic in fridge under a layer of EVOO Herb Oil (Basil, Parsley, Garlic) in fridge Simple Syrup in pantry Sauerkraut in pantry Things I have made but don't have in stock Onion Confit (should make some more) Roasted Red Capsicum (should make some more) Chicken Liver Mousse Salad Dressing (I make all mine fresh now to match the salad vegtables) Things I plan on making Tomato Sauce Sun dried/oven dried tomatos What things do you commonly make?

I think it depends on how much you are reducing. Keller frequently reduces entire bottles of wine down to a glaze which I presume would get rid of at least 99% of the alcohol. Reducing by 1/2 should reduce at least 1/2 the alcohol since alcohol evaporates easier than water. If I rememebr my HS chemistry experiment properly, a single evaporation at simmer of 14% alcohol ended up with about 25% alcohol in the final solution. Working with these numbers, I'm guessing you should be able to, at best remove about 75% of the alcohol with a 1/2 reduction. Less if you boil rather than simmer. The problem with reducing the final sauce instead of the wine is that you end up reducing much less proportion wise of the final sauce and the concentration is lower so it's less efficient at removing alcohol.

I've thought about this some more, merely heating onions to 100C does not a confit make. After all, stocks, stews soups and the like regularly have onions in hot water for significantly lengths of time with no apparent progress towards confit. Unless the onion water the onions are simmering in is significantly above boiling, the long, slow, covered process contributes nothing towards the confit. I haven't formally measured the temperature but I've dipped my finger in and it doesn't feel like the napalm temperatures of caremal water. I doubt it would be over 105C. I suspect the only reason people are getting browning at all at this stage is the same reason why thick soups often scorch in cheap pans, namely, the onions touching the pan end up hotter than the rest. In fact, when I first made confit, it was in an electric pan and when left for 6 hours without stirring, there was a notable dark circle where the heating element was. The method I used to make the 30 minute confit was to use a non-non-stick pan over medium high heat. Heat until all the water is gone and there is notable stickage to the pan, then deglaze with 1/4 cup of water, rub all the browned bits up and repeat.

Please a humble request, if your phase 2 website contains flash, background music, an intro screen, a menu which you can't copy and paste or no contact details/menu/directions/prices, then fire your web designer and start back on phase 1. It would be a shame for a team to have gotten everything else so RIGHT about how people think and play with their food to fall down and fundamentally misunderstand what people want from a webpage.

Chef, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this thread (In praise of out-of-season fruit).

I'm becoming increasingly more convinced that the long cooking times are unneccesary and even possibly detrimental to a good confit. It seems the initial cooking stage is all about getting rid of liquid, nothing interesting happens until the water level drops enough for high temp maillard reactions to start occuring. But while the 30 hour reduction is happening, flavour is turning into aroma and wafting away. I started a onion confit for french onion soup the other day and tried to leave it on medium-high for the first 30 minutes or so of cooking and then dropping it down to low. At 30 minutes, it tasted indistinguishable from a 10 hour confit I made before. It's only after this point where you have to be really careful with it.

Try making a vegtable stock and then fortifying it with pure gelatin powder. You get the same mouthfeel and unctiousness of a while veal stock without the distracting flavours.

One says dunk, then cook, the other says salt, cook then dunk. Personally, I would be interested in what happened if you tried to confit a whole suckling pig, dunno if I can afford that much oil though.

The answer is fairly simple. Take a deep whiff of a pot with wine reducing in it. Anything you smell is flavour that is escaping from the pot and into the air. Whether the effect is significant enough to be noticable and under what conditions is another matter. My initial guess is that the thing you would notice the most is the reduction in alcohol. Boiling a high concentration of alcohol leads to more being evaporated in a given period of time. Acidity might be affected, depending on what sort of acids are in there. Acetic acid definately boils off as anyone who has every made a balsamic reduction knows. OTOH, long simmered wine sauces are still appreciably acidic so who knows. I doubt significant maillard reactions would be happening, a dry wine should have a fairly negligible sugar content AFAIK and fruity/sweet wines seem to have a rather limited use in cooking.

Bacon & onions & mushroom Tomatos & EVOO Onion Confit & Duxelles Potatos & Onions & Bacon Butter & Onions Duck Fat & Potatos

Argh, stupid NYT and it's liberal dose of spoilers without adequate preamble.

Yes, the purplish/greenish stuff. We buy it as a big round disk of tangled dried seaweed, not pressed flat sheets like the japanese stuff. It's wonderful in all sorts of asian light broths, especially seafood inspired ones. A favourite simple soup is spring onion and dark soy quickly seared, then covered with water, seaweed, chinese greens, vermicelli and an egg stirred in near the end. Top with sesame seed oil and cilantro.

You use breasts to make stock? Seems like theres not enough flavour in the breasts to make a decent stock and would be a waste of good chicken breast. Breast meat can be tender and succulent if cooked right, marinading, brining and spice rubs can all boost the flavour content and short, high heat cooking will leave you with juicy, tender meat.

Could this be the solution to the "savoury sorbet" question asked in another thread? PD without any additional sweeteners should reproduce the same texture as sorbet with only 1/10th the sweetness right? Has anybody tried experimenting with using savoury ingredients and PD in areas which were traditionally sweet because the chemical nature of the sugar was essential (fudge, candy, caramels etc.)

Oh, you didn't make that clear, I dumped in the moisture as soon as I was worried that caremalisation was about to occur because I thought that was unwanted :P. The mushrooms did seem softer than would have imagined, I was expecting chewy lumps.

I just made some and the taste is sensational. Chopping mushrooms by hand was a major PITA, next time, machine all the way. I used onions because I had no shallots and used a mixture of a full bodied red wine and some dry sherry instead of the port. I also didn't use cream as I was concerned if the dairy would hasten it going off. A small amount was put in a glass jar to be kept in the fridge while the rest is in an ice-cube tray under plastic wrap. I thought the amount of flour in the recipe was a bit excessive, I wasn't a fan of the excessively gummy texture. I guess I'm treating it more as an ingredient rather than a condiment. A condiment has to be edible pretty much as it is without further manipulation whereas with an ingredient, you want maximum flexibility. Have you tried adding beef demi-glace to it? It seems it would complement the flavour well and add a bit more body requiring less flour. I'm planning to use some on a roast chicken tomorrow and I think it would also serve as an interesting garnish for some of Bourdain's mushroom soup which is also in the near future. Eating some plain on a piece of toast, these are the things I think it would naturally pair with: Onion Confit Liver Pate Roasted bell peppers full bodied cheese rare roast beef

The tradition at our house is to always add Chinese seaweed and chinese greens to our wonton broth.

A few rather idiosyncratic traits when I roast: I roast 2 chickens but remove the breasts of both birds. I don't think roasting is the best way to treat breast meat so that gets frozen and is usually used in stirfrys later in the week. If I do roast the breasts, they inevitably get chopped up and added to something else. Chicken ceaser salad for example. The hot schmaltz for the chicken goes in the salad dressing, no arguments. The flavour of the chicken adds a huge amount of body to the dressing and makes it taste amazing.

Well, the traditional accompiament to miso is daikon. Perhaps some of the sweet, tender root of the daikon as a base to the cake?

The correct answer is that the Kim Chi went bad about a week before she gave it to you. ::ducks and runs::

If you have any staple meals in your house that can freeze easily, make a batch for 12 or 20 instead of 4 and freeze the rest in meal sized portions. a month from now, take one out and re-heat and it will seem like new. Works well for soups, pasta sauces, braised dishes etc. Some things like muffins can be kept edible in the freezer for a suprisingly long time so making large batchs ensures your kids will always have a treat to munch on if they've been good. Also, if you trust your oven/slow cooker, you can prep a dish at night, start it cooking in the morning when you go to work and then have dinner on the table 10 minutes after you walk through the door.