Shalmanese

Food is mind bogglingly cheap compared to some of the other outward displays of affluence that humans have managed to invent. According to this webpage, the top 10 restaurants in the world commonly only charge between $200 and $300 per diner. $300 per night, say you dine out 2 times a week, 40 weeks a year. Thats $24,000 a year. The difference in depreciation between, say a Mercedes and a Ford would be about the same in one year. Yet, somehow, buying a mercedes over a ford is seen as a perfectly normal activity for a upper middle class aspiring towards pretentions of greatness yet eating at some of the worlds absolute best restaurants every freaking weekend nearly every week is seen as mind bogglingly extravagant. My take on it is that there are certain things which are priced at such a point where you can either not afford to eat the best or you can afford to eat the best with ease but very little middle ground. Once your in the category of people who can afford million dollar houses and exotic holidays, the choice not to constantly eat at 4 star joints isn't economics, its because even truffled foie gras topped with caviar gets repetitive after a while.

I think it could be done and there IS a time and place for it but, 99% of the time, it really shouldn't be done. What most people are forgetting is that it's not Keller alone in the kitchen with his sublime genius or whatever, for the most part, even in 4 star kitchens, 90% of the work is going to be done by line cooks, skilled line cooks but not neccesarily the best of the best. Line cooking is more about technical ability than whatever angelic perfection we associate with head chefs. I think, given an unlimited budget for ingredients, a real knowledge of how to source ingredients, and about 20 or 30 trial runs of the exact menu and about 3 cooks for maybe 4 diners, you could churn out a meal that would be indistinguishable from a 4 star.

How much does your confit reduce by? Last time I did it, 2kg of onions reduced down to 200mL of confit which is roughly a 10:1 reduction. Given that most people are doing only 6 onions at a time, which works out to less than a kg of onions, do you really only end up with 100gm of confit? Thats hardly enough to scrape onto a few slices of toast! Maybe we should organised an egullet confit cookoff where a group of people organise a 100kg shipment of onions at wholesale price and then make a years worth of confit for each person.

I had: 1 small puddle of home made mayonaisse from my Chicken Schnitzel last night 1 small puddle of garlic cream from my Garlic Mashed Potatos last night 1 container of left over pasta from my Spaghetti Bolognaise 2 nights ago Combine them all together, add some chopped salami I had in the fridge, a liberal grind of black pepper and some shavings of a very good organic parmesan reggiano and you get Ghetto Carbonara. But oh... my... f**king... god... is it good, I swear, it's better than the stuff I had in rome, the slight tangyness of the lemon juice from the mayo, the tiny dab of mustard, the really fucking fantastic cheese, it just brought it all together. Even that slight rubberiness you get from left over pasta contributed, being able to stand it's own against the occasional chunks of salami. Sometimes, the most impromtu meal turns out to come out with all pistons firing exactly right... just don't ask me to figure out exactly how many grams of fat I just ate :D.

Oh, yes, and now the infuriating part, one of my friends "doesn't really like mushroom" although he will eat it if I serve it. I get the feeling it's really the texture of the things he doesn't like so I think duxelles should be alright. Another one is "incapable of tasting fish". Apparently, all fish from salmon to trout to lobster tastes exactly the same and completely tasteless. It boggles my mind how this could be but apparently this is the case. I'm trying to shy away from the overly wierd or even what should taste perfectly normal except the fact that it happens to have ingredients they never tasted before. In my mind, the amuse sets the tenor of the entire meal and a particularly bad experience can cast a pall over the rest of the evening so I would prefer to play it slightly further away from the edge than if I were just cooking for myself. Heres my ideas as it stands: 4 bubble toasts, each on 4 corners of a white plate with the words "Spring, Summer etc." next to each, atm I'm thinking non-permenant marker just because I can do it ahead of time since plating is going to be such a bitch. However, I've also toyed with the idea of symbolic markers such as, say, a leaf for spring, a flower for summer, a piece of bark for autumn and a sprinkle of dirt for winter. Probably add some froufrou to the middle of the plate, just to anchor the scene and give it focus, I would love to do a tomato rose but I doubt I could get the skills in such a short time so its probably going to be a non-edible garnish (which I'm against in principle but principles be damned :D). Anyway, each bubble is going to be filled with either 1 or 2 things depending on how ambitious I feel and then topped with a tiny chunk of whats inside to hide the piping hole. Heres my preliminary idea: Summer: At the moment, I'm going to wing it and see what looks good on the market but I'm leaning towards peaches, apricots, cherries or something of that nature. Autumn: Some sort of creamy mushroom filling as the base, slightly lighter on the mushrooms than I would like due to guest A, possibly topped with some sort of nut, hazelnut? How would I get the texture working? I basically want a savoury version of hazelnut cream. Winter: Easy, Pipe in mashed potatos, pipe in onion confit, top with a dab of confit. Spring: I really am stumped on this one, Spring, to me is all about the first tender shoots of green vegtables and the first of the herbs sprouting. What do I suspend the herbs in? I can't fill an entire bubble with EVOO or Butter, that would be far too rich. And what vegtable should I choose? Spring vegtables, to me, are more noted for their texture than their flavour, Lettuce, Leeks, Cucumber, none are really amenable to puree. I guess I could do something funky with the gel parts of the tomato, tomato gel and basil? Would provide a nice texture contrast to the others. The only problem I see is that it's going to be a LOT of work to plate, even if I get much of it ready beforehand, Spring and Summer I'm happy to do cold but autumn and winter I want to be hot and I'm dealing with such minute quantities that I need to be piping 32 different things out of 8 different syringes. Times like this I wish I was running a 4 star restaurant and I have a line of assisitants willing to do all the leg work :D.

Okay, I've gone away and thought about this some more and I was thinking about making 4 of them somehow involving the 4 seasons, Spring would be tender vegtables and herbs, Summer would be fruits, Autumn would be mushrooms and nuts and Winter would be mashed potato and onion confit. Although after reading all your suggestions, my head is spinning and I need to go away and think about this some more. The full menu is this: Pre-Dinner nibbles: Home Made potato chips (possibly gaufritte if I can convince myself a new mandoline should be on my ever increasing list of christmas presents to my self :D) fried in carefully hoarded beef tallow and topped with Atlantic Sea Salt and crushed black pepper. Palate Cleanser: Taiwanese Green Tea, picked from god knows what mountain by god knows what peasant for god knows how much money. All I know is that it's expensive and tastes damn nice :D. Amuse Bouche: Something involving the bubble toast Soup: Gazpacho soup with a dab of creme fraiche Entree: Seared Sea Scallops with a cabbage/carrot mini-salad with a garlic butter sauce and a red bell pepper sauce. Palate Cleanser: A single slice of watermelon sprinked with sea salt and mint Salad: Still working on this, atm, a greek feta style salad but may change on the day depending on what looks good at the market. Main: Roast Leg of lamb atop marinated, grilled summer vegtables with a au jus reduction and a rosemary and garlic infused olive oil. Dessert 1: Passionfruit & Lime sorbets, might change if I stumble across some particularly beautiful other type of fruit. Dessert 2: Rich Chocolate Mousse with raspberries

I've put some pictures up to show you what I'm talking about, apologies for the crappy camera skills. Pictures of Bubble Toast

A few months ago, I made a rather intriguing discovery; if you take ordinary white bread and take the crusts off, then roll it flat with a rolling pin and cut the sides with a sharp kitchen knife so it becomes a perfect square, when you toast it, the moisture on the inside of the bread has no place to escape and you end up with a "bubble" of hard toast. In a few days time, I'm hosting one of my traditional semi-annual dinner parties and I'm planning to go the full hog and do a ten course tasting menu. I thought the concept of using the bubble toast with appropriate fillings would be a cute amuse bouche. Each toastlet is only about 2 bites worth so I thought it would be kind of fun to do an entire array of flavours, hopefully with some kind of connection. I've already done a concept version using some onion confit and the only problem I had with it was that the sweetness was far too rich and the balance of filling/shell didn't quite work. I'm thinking a splash of balsamic might alleviate that problem. I was toying with "the deconstructed english dinner", Roast beef, Mashed potatos, gravy and mushy peas each in it's seperate toastlet but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how to pipe meat through a small hole, besides, it doesn't really fit the theme of the rest of the dinner which is very summer oriented atm (ha to all you folks suffering winter doldrums, Tomatos are just coming into peak ripeness over here! ). Another idea I was toying with is to present familiar ingredients which present very different flavour profiles when manipulated. Onion confit is the most obvious one, the tart astringency turning into almost jam like sweetness but still with a distinctive onion flavour. However, I can't really think of many other examples that exhibit such a dramatic change. Or even just throwing themes to the wind, what could possibly taste good in paste form, piped into a bubble? I was thinking a duxelle of mushroom might be one, some sort of nut paste, a herb paste of some sort, very reduced beef demi-glace. Any inspirations?

On another note, has anyone tried pressure cooker onion confit? I'm not sure how that would turn out, I'm guessing a slightly higher pressure would caremalise the sugars faster leading to a rich, brown confit without any blackness from carbonation. Also, I'm considering staggering the onions, 2kg of onions almost fill to the top of the pot when raw but reduce down to barely covering 1/2 the bottom. I'm thinking next time I should get maybe 6 or 8kg of onions and add them in 2kg batches every 2 hours or so. Seeing as confit is practically indestructable when kept in the fridge, making lots at a time make sense.

I made my second batch of onion confit today, using something like 14 onions or 2kg, eventually reduced down to 200mL and placed in a small glass jar. It only took around 6 hours with my version but I didn't cook it nearly as dark as some of the others, I just had it reducing until all the liquid was gone and the onions were basically frying in the pan. Anyway, it's intensely sweet and very soft, not a hint of crunchyness. Had some this morning with scrambled eggs on toast, simply magnificant.

I too generally save the green parts for making stocks. It's a nice economical, practical use of something I would have discarded anyway. edit: I also occasionally quickly blanch them and then place them in the bottom of a roasting pan so the flavour of the leeks infuses into the final pan gravy.

But how much of the copper pan cost is the cost of raw copper? I would assume not much unless they used some special type of copper that's different from what's used in ordinary machine workshops. Is lining copper with SS any harder than lining aluminum with SS? If copper pots in europe cost much the same as non-copper pots and there are clear benifits to copper, why is it so unpopular in the US? AFAIK, Falk Culinar is a US based company and make their pots in the US so shipping can't really be the reason.

Copper pans regularly go for rather high prices around the place and is regularly considered the king of heat distribution in cookware. But why does it have to cost so damn much? I see big sheets of copper lying around chemistry labs and machine workshops everywhere, about 2.0 to 3.0mm which is how thick pans are. A couple of whacks with a mallet and I could a very dodgy copper pan for all of $2. So why do copper cookware pieces regularly fetch over $100? Whats the big secret?

Actually, a butter roux would be less caloric. Fat is fat so all fat has exactly the same calories. Butter is 10% water though so would have 10% less calories. However, the amount of poly/mono/unsaturated fat is going to be different which would have health benifits but would not affect calorie count.

From what I gather, the amount of butter is rather flexible just so long as there is enough to coat each flour granule. It really doesn't matter how your measuring it.

If you look at birth rates in most developed countries, apparently we DO apply CBA to having children :P. nearly every 1st world country is at below replacement rates. I still think factoring the cost of the kitchen is valid since many people are increasingly opting for kitchens that are smaller and smaller when land prices become ever more expensive. Compare kitchen sizes in New York vs Idaho and it's plainly obvious. It's much harder and much more unpleasant to prepare meals in small kitchens vs large ones so this makes eating out a more attractive option. I don't think theres any place yet which you could sell a house with no kitchen but I can certainly envision kitchen facilities no more advanced than what is present in most hotels.

Oh, and the other point I wanted to address was what WOULD happen if cooking became a hobbyist activity? For one, the local supermarket produce section would all but disappear. Fruits would still be very much in demand as well as cheeses and deli meats. But in the same way I wouldn't expect a furniture store to sell untreated wood, I suspect these things to be all but banished: fresh meat cream Most vegtables (mushrooms, turnips, onion, potato and other things which are inedible raw would be particularly hard hit) Spices Oils Flour, Rice, Beans, pasta I suspect there might be stores catering exclusively to obtaining these things in the larger cities but at a fairly marked up price. The upside is that quality should be excellent since they are catering to those who really care about food. Good kitchens would also be a hard thing to find and many people without extravagant amounts of money or are willing to buy and restore older houses will have to make do with whatever area of the house that is free. Gas cooking seems particularly hard to retro-fit into an existing house so I suspect it would become very rare. I suspect that even people who are enamoured with cooking will only do it occasionally and it will be treated with more reverence and dressed up as a special occasion.

Wow, this thread certainly has sparked some lively discussion :D. I guess many of you just aren't used to this sort of cost/benifit analysis so some of the ideas seem rather strange. A "dollar" in CBA terms isn't really the same thing as a physical dollar but is used as a convenient placeholder for a unit of effort that would correspond to $1 in traded. For example, if you were given the choice of taking the bus or taking a taxi costing $1, you would obviously take the taxi. If it was taking the bus or taking a taxi costing $1,000,000, you would obviously take the bus. Somewhere in the middle, you reach a balance and that is the "cost" of taking a bus over taking a taxi in intangible terms. It's a very blunt but powerful tool, useless at making precise predictions about a single person but it allows us to easily talk about trends and payoffs. I'm sure there will always be home chefs like there will always be people who make their own clothes or build thier own furniture or grow their own food. Yet, for the majority of urbanised westeners, we buy our clothes/furniture/food at the local strip mall and I suspect in a few years time, we'll be eating there as well. Obviously egulleters are going to be at the extreme end of the bell curve so its hard to put yourself into the mind of the "average" American but I think it's safe to say that currently, cooking is viewed on average as somewhere between a chore and a mild pleasure. Just exactly how much can be factored in as "cost of labour" which is how much value an alternative activity would have over cooking. Lalitha: Your point has always sounded counter-intuitive to me. Think about it, in one scenario you have a group of 100 people who own 25 - 30 lots of very expensive equipment which is used maybe 2 times a day, 25 - 30 seperate rooms which are again, used primarily but not exclusively for the task of eating which only happens sporadically and each person is tasked with buying their own produce and preparing it. On the other hand, you could have 100 people all eat in 1 kitchen which is in almost constant use and a larger dining hall and produce bought by a larger customer who can leverage economies of scale and chefs who can produce large batches of food in only a bit more time than it took you to prepare a single batch. Surely, at some point, the overheads of restaurant dining are going to be outweighed by the massive economies of scale. Except when people try and sit down and work out the figures, they don't include stuff like cost of maintenece of appliances or floor space used or even labour because the most obvious cost is ingredients so thats what they focus on. But subconciously, we weight up all these factors all the time which is why stuff like CBA *IS* such a widely used tool in econometrics. Jujube: It's true that not many houses are without a kitchen entirely, but theres a fairly standard gradation from "Kitchen lite" (bar fridge, microwave, kettle, sink) to "Kitchen standard" (full fridge, range, oven, microwave, sink, lots of counter space) and upwards. What I predict is that the trend will be increasingly moving towards kitchen lite style living where the space increasingly becomes used for other purposes such as a larger and more spacious living room. A friend I recently visited living in a ultra-modern apartment had a kitchen the size of a bathroom and a laundry *inside* a closet. Obviously, they made a lifestyle choice where cooking took less of a precedence. Daddy-A: It's interesting you mention that because one trait of a skill that is going into decline is that theres actually MORE activity in the high end market. I think it's very accurate when you say it's becoming a hobby and not a chore, for the two are treated very differently in terms of how we buy them.

Well, say your faced with the choice of an apartment for $1,000,000 with a kitchen and $900,000 without a kitchen, everything else being equal. If you chose the $900,000 one, you could then stick the $100,000 you had left in a bank and earn $5,000 interest off it per year which you would not have otherwise. Similarly, you could be doing something else rather than cooking which you would personally "value" at $10/hr. It's a fairly non-intuitive way of thinking about it if your not an economist but it's a very powerful analysis tool.

It seems to me that the overwhelming trend in rich, 1st world societies is tending towards going to eat out more and more at the expense of home cooking with from scratch ingredients. Is a person who cooks at home with raw ingredients in 50 years time going to be viewed as someone who builds their own furniture or performs their own car maintenence is viewed today? It seems skills like these have virtually disappeared from the average person's life unless they specifically choose to make a career out of it due to a variaty of factors. Looking at the economics of it all, I can't say I blame most people. With wages rising and food costs falling, it seems more and more rational to outsource your cooking needs. Indeed, if we take a place like Manhattan, an apartment might easily top $1,000,000. Assuming 10% of the space is taken up by the kitchen and that's $100,000 just for kitchen real-estate. Figure 5% rate of return on investment per annum and that means your using $5000 per year just to maintain a kitchen or a bit less than $15 a day. Figure an hour to prepare a meal per day at maybe $20/hr and its now up to $35 a day, add $10 for ingredients and it's $45 a day. Now for $45 a day, there are usually a lot better options that home cooking unless you specifically enjoy that terype of thing which it seems most people do not. Economically, it would be more rational to ditch the kitchen and eat out every night for a single yuppie living in manhattan. On the other end of the spectrum, say we have a 4 person family in middle america. $200,000 house with 1/5th the space for cooking, works out to be $2000 or about $6 per day. Figure $10/hr worth of labour so $16, $15 worth of ingredients so ultimately around $30 for a family of 4. Your pretty much on mcdonalds for that sort of budget so, economically, the advatages of home cooking are pretty significant. But as land prices go up and real wages go up and new technology makes it easier to prepare food on a mass scale, the numbers are going to get closer and closer to the point where it doesn't make sense for anyone to cook their own meals unless they derive pleasure from it. After all, when psychotherapy costs $100 per hour, cooking clocking in at $50 is still relatively cheap . And after that point, could it ever reach the stage where not even people who wanted to could cook at home because the infrastructure that surrounds it has disappeared (uncarpeted rooms, gas lines for stoves, supermarkets etc.)

It seems to me the entire australia cookbook market is devoted to rather inspid collections of recipes accompanied with gorgeous pictures. Where can I get some of the classic books that delve more into the fundamentals of cooking. Things like: Joy of Cooking Mastering the Art of French Cooking Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques Larousse Gastronomique On Food & Cooking

Most of the people I know said they've tried it once when it was an option on the menu just so they could say they ate it but didn't regard it as anything special enough to integrate into their repetoire. I think part of the reason is that Kangaroo is rather demanding to cook as it's a lot leaner than beef, theres a fear that leaving it on the grill for a second too long would reduce a $20/kg piece of meat into something that tastes like bad beef. An interesting variation I've seen on it is as an asian preperation, cut up into paper thin slices and then dipped into boiling water for maybe 20 seconds before dipped in some kind of sauce and eaten.

I guess that's better than Oyster Ice-Cream

I think part of the reason I like thicker sauces more is just the damn logistics of it. Every time I've gone to a fancy restaurant and ordered some fancy slice of meat with a "light pan jus", the meat just doesn't soak up the sauce properly and the meat/sauce ratio is skewed. Whats more, because it's a jus, theres so little of it which means that some bites are sauce drenched while others are practically dry. And in the end, I'm left with a puddle of sauce on my plate that's too intense in flavour to enjoy on it's own yet too light to be sucked up by errant vegtables. Call me uncivilised(or rustic if your being polite ;)) but give me a nice bucket of globby gravy and a big hunk of meat and good bread and I'm as happy as a clam.

Yes, the high heat from the roasting turns the bitter components in the garlic into a sweet pungency which makes it a lot more mild and mellow.