Shalmanese

Some googling suggests that it's top round which is largely worthless piece of meat. About the only thing edible you can do with it is cook it in a very slow (130F) oven for several hours and then slice it thin for roast beef. Brined & seasoned, it might be somewhat pleasant but I've generally found that cut more trouble than it's worth.

I have an attachment that goes on my hand blender for just this task. Much more compact than a mini-prep and almost as good.

Adam: You forgot a 3rd class of people for which progressive cuisine is just food. Sous Vide & Maltodextrin are just another part of their kitchen arsenal. IMO, the "death" of progressive cuisine will come when it's no more exciting than the microwave is today.

Wikipedia's standard is verifiability, not truth for a very good reason. Before everyone gets all in histrionics over the internet, it's not like food history before the internet was much better. Go into Barnes & Noble today and you'll still find a dozen books published this year that claim searing helps seal in the juices.

I wonder if pressure steaming would be an effective way of sterilizing them. Put an inch of water at the bottom of a pressure cooker, add a cake rack and put the knife block on it so it's not touching the water. Bring it up to pressure for half and hour and then let it cool down naturally. The temps should kill any living thing. Would that harm the block?

For pineapple, I think frozen, concentrated pineapple juice is essentially that. Unless you're juicing pineapples yourself, Dole is going to be much better at concentrating than you are.

Can you take a small salt cellar with you and order foods with no salt?

For people who dislike noisy restaurants, I don't know how you survive at clubs. The quietest clubs are still louder than the noisiest restaurants. I'm not a fan of noise but it also doesn't bother me all that much.

I can't say what about this confuses others but for my own part I'm missing the advantage to doing this over just making the drink properly to begin with. If you can measure dilution with such precision that you would know the exact amount of water still required by the drink to come to full volume then certainly you can just stir or shake the drink until the ice has provided this water without adding an additional (and seemingly cumbersome) step. You can't tell the amount of dilution until the drink has come out of the shaker, at which time it's impossible to correct if you over-dilute. Thus, you're only solutions are to wing it and hope you have the right dilution level or always aim for underdilution and correct in the glass for perfect dilution. Don't get me wrong, winging it can be an acceptable solution especially if you have an adequate handle on the ice. But it's the difference between putting a roast in the oven at 10 minutes per pound and hoping it comes out medium rare vs using a probe thermometer and pulling it out when it's at exactly the right temp.

We are in agreement that it leaves something to be desired! I mean literally topping off. Make an underdiluted drink, pour into a glass where you know what the right level is, add just enough chilled water and stir. You don't need to reshake and strain, a quick stir with a swizzle should be enough to incorporate the water. It shouldn't affect the temperature overly much since it's only a tiny amount of water. All of this is leading up to a much larger rant about how poor a technique shaking is for making a good cocktail. Sure, good training can make up for poor technique but it seems unnecessary to have to continue to deal with the inherent imprecision of shaking unless you absolutely have to.

The average life expectancy of paleo man was ~30. The average life expectancy of modern man is ~75. And yet we're meant to get inspiration from them about health advice?

I used to be a big convert of low & slow but one big deficiency of it is that fat does not render out while roasting. What I now do is hot & fast to begin with and then letting it coast low & slow. 2 nights ago, I did a rolled leg of lamb which I seared on the stovetop, then roasted at 350F until the internal temp hit 110F, turned off the oven and let it coast up to 140F and then turned the oven back on at 140F and let it sit for 2 hours. I got about an extra cup of fat out of the roast which I never would have gotten if I have roasted at 140F the entire time.

One way to control dilution is to severely under-dilute and know how much went into the shaker and how much should be coming out of the shaker and then topping the rest off with chilled water.

If you're willing to be patient, you can accumulate a great set of stuff for astonishingly cheap but if you want to get everything all in one go, expect to pay a 100 - 200% premium. Knives: They seemed to have sadly stopped selling them but the Kai Wasabi Gyuto is a ridiculous bargain at $30 which is only $2 more than your Victorinox. Don't bother spending amazon prices for bread/paring knives. I've picked them up for $3 at a restaurant supply store. I owned the Faberware set and they all split within a year. Go with bamboo instead, it's slightly less cheap but far better made. There's a set at Costco that I think was $20 for 2 that are still going strong. Pans: Your suggestion seems very skillet heavy to me. That's fine if you do a lot of sauteeing but I would probably supplement that with a cheap, SS pasta pot instead of the wide pan. Oven: Pyrex is good for casseroles etc but I like hotel pans + silpats for things like roast potatoes etc. I would say get 1 or 2 pyrex pieces and 4 or 5 different Steel pans. Weights & Measures: If you have a scale, there's no way you need that many measuring cups. I have a single 2 cup pyrex measuring beaker and that's all I need. I suppose if you're a beginner cook, tsp/tbsp measures might be helpful but I've always eyeballed them. Thermometers: Digital only please. I have a digital probe thermometer & a digital instant read thermometer, both by CDN. Oven thermometers can be analog but stick with digital for the rest. Tools: I am devoted to the OXO Good Grips line. I have a peeler, can opener, tongs & whisk that I wouldn't part with for the world. I wouldn't even consider any other brand for these. As much as I love microplanes, a cheap grater has worked fine for me all these years. Bamboo spoon over silicone is a definite for me but I understand most foodies are switching to silicone now. You didn't suggest ladles & spatulas but, IMO, these are also essential. Gadgets: A cheap hand blender is an easier investment than a blender and if you find you do need a blender, it makes sense to invest in a decent one. Get a hand blender with a mini-prep attachment. It's a great compromise over a full food processer. Microwave is a must, Spice grinder is a nice-to-have and only $20. A hand mixer is also. My advice: Go to a restaurant supply store and buy anything that you want as cheap as possible. Then supplement that with amazon purchases for where quality matters.

It's quite simple, the "national cuisine" is whatever I was eating when I was 12.

Cooks Illustrated claims that the technique used to grind has a significant impact on the end result and that cryogenic grinding is meant to produce the best results. I don't know about you but I might be inclined to leave this up to the professionals and find a source that can deliver you high quality, fresh ground cinnamon at a good price.

Rendering and using fat that's been separated from the meat is a completely different discussion. I'm hoping to focus this specifically on the challenges of fat that's surrounding the outsides of a piece of meat.

It's true that the latent heat of fusion for water is much greater than the specific heat capacity but, when chilling drinks, energy comes selectively from specific heat first so the effects can be significant. Assume you are chilling 100 mL of 50% ethanol solution (specific heat: 3.3J/g/C) from 25C to -5C. This takes 30*100*3.3 = 10kJ of energy. If you take the assumption that all ice will come to temp before any ice melts, 300g of -10C ice (specific heat: 2J/g/C), is going to contribute 10*300*2 = 6kJ from heating up the ice and 4kJ/0.333kJ/g = 12mL of water melting or 12% dilution. 300g of 0C ice will contribute 10kJ/0.333kJ/g or 30mL of water melting or 30% dilution. The difference between 12% and 30% dilution in the final drink will be quite significant. Now, granted, the assumption that no ice will melt until it all comes to 0C is not a realistic one but it demonstrates how the relatively weak effect of specific heat can dominate over the strong effect of latent heat. As to shaking off surface water being impractical, I don't see why it has to be. If you modified one of those wire strainer baskets like they have in noodle shops to scoop the ice, it would be a quick 3 second shake to get the bulk of the surface water off. Another idea that occurred to me in the shower just now was that you could add in something that would contribute chilling without dilution. My first thought was to get some stainless steel ball bearings and mix it in with the ice at the start of service. The ice will cool down the ball bearings to 0C which will help chill the drink without contributing additional moisture. On further reflection, perhaps some kind of plastic would be better from a logistics point of view. It might be an approach worth exploring.

Ice serves 2 primary purposes and one secondary purpose. It adds pure H2O to dilute the drink, it reduces the temperature of the drink & it sometimes can be used to add tiny ice crystals & aeration to change the texture of a drink. The problem with warm ice is that it both adds too much dilution and not enough temperature reduction. Thus, your goal is to rectify this. One way of doing this is to start with colder ingredients, keeping liquors in the fridge rather than at room temp would be a good idea but generally not practical (although keeping a bottle or two of vodka in the freezer might be practical if you're a vodka heavy bar). Another would be to use higher proof liquors that can stand up more to dilution. 100 proof instead of 80 proof. For mixed drinks where the proportion can be tweaked slightly (like a cosmo), making them more aggressive to begin with can also counteract dilution. Switching to a 2:1 simple syrup and using less of it can shave off an additional bit of water. Pre chilling glasses brings the temp down and it seems like a no-brainer but maybe 1 in 10 bars I go to do this. Finally, a lot of the dilution comes from liquid water clinging to the ice. Having a device that allows you to shake the ice dry before it goes in the shaker might be all you need to significantly improve quality.

MrSpiffy's technique may not be optimal but there's no way poor technique alone could cause a 2 hour risotto. Even if you were actively trying to bollocks risotto up, it's hard to see how you could ever get a version that's so badly prepared that it would take 2 hours. Rice granules placed in warm tap water will swell up in less time than 2 hours. You could get Ferran Adria and have him spend 6 months in his top secret laboratory and. at the end of it, he maybe, MAYBE would have come up with some fantastically intricate recipe that retards the chemistry of risotto just so so that you indeed have a recipe for 2 hour risotto. One of your ingredients is completely out of whack and my best guess is your rice.

Regardless of anything else, it shouldn't take 2 hours to cook a risotto. I don't have any idea what the problem is but I would first suspect that it's the rice.If you still have some of the rice left over, try this experiment: Set a large pan of water at a rapid boil and add a handful of rice grains. Every 10 minutes, take out a few grains at taste. If they're not all completely cooked in 20 minutes, I would suspect there's something wrong with the rice.

Hmmmm - it's CANADA! We do metric so I think that's .4 Kg. The only issue I have here is that I can buy fresh duck parts but rarely a whole fresh duck. Mostly they are frozen. Oh wow, duh, complete brainfart. That's a really good price for duck breasts. I don't think I've seen them for under $15 a lb in the US.

When it comes to foods like duck breast, leg of lamb, rack of lamb, rib roasts or pork belly, there is often a thick layer of fat on the outside. This layer can be delicious if cooked correctly, with a thin, crispy, juicy layer of well browned fat that packs a lot of flavor. On the other hand, if cooked incorrectly, it's flabby, greasy and downright unappealing. What is the best approach to cooking these fat caps for optimum results? One trick I sometimes use for large, flat pieces of meat with fat only on one side like duck breast or leg of lamb is to leave it uncovered in the fridge for as much as 4 days. The skin side will dry out which increases the amount of fat rendered. One thing I've taken to doing recently is pre-salting the meat which tends to render out even more fat. Nathan Myrhvold claims to have a novel way of cooking duck breasts which involves using dry ice to cool down the skin beforehand. I've not yet tried it but it seems interesting. One thing which I've only recently been experimenting with is to continually slash the fat cap during cooking. I always used to score the fat cap before cooking but I've noticed that cooking tends close those pores up and might inhibit the fat from escaping. For my next leg of lamb, I'm going to flip every 30 seconds and recut the fat every time I flip to see if it makes any difference. Finally, one quick tip for cooking steak. A pair of locking tongs (I prefer OXO) make an excellent impromptu device for keeping the steak upright during cooking of the fat layer:

0.4lbs is awfully small for 2 duck breasts. this is a more typical example. a 5lb whole duck for $15.15 or 2 7.5oz duck breasts for $14.30.

Any restaurant supply store should have the full array of monin syrups as it's a pretty common ingredient in the cafe trade.