Shalmanese

These knives are not difficult to sharpen. They use a softer steel than the classic line but even then, the classic line is standard VG10 stainless so it's not difficult at all. All the knives in the link that H20 provided are traditional single-beveled Japanese knives EXCEPT the Santoku and Nakiri...they are double beveled like any other western styled knife. Traditional knives are not difficult to sharpen per se but there is a different technique involved. The Wasabi line is definitely their budget line but people who own them seem to like them well enough. edited to fix my bandaid-covered fingers typo's (sharpened 5 knives last night) ← Oops, I sharpened my Wasabi Santoku as if it were a single bevelled knife . That would certainly explain a lot about why it never got as sharp as I would have liked... Do you have a link saying the Santoku is double bevelled? I don't remember reading about that anywhere.

I would approach it similar to Venison. They're both very lean, slightly gamy meats. Pairing it with a fruit based sauce is quite common.

The ice you're using for shaking comes from the freezer so it would be impossible to get a shaken drink as cold as a freezer one. If anything, I think your problem would be that the drink is too cold and needs to stand for a few minutes before drinking. As for the lack of integration, that can be solved much in the same way that it is with orange juice: A quick shake every time before serving.

Something I've always wondered about is why cocktails seem to be almost universally made one at a time a la minute. It seems like there's nothing inherently wrong with pre-making a large batch of them ahead of time and doling them out as needed. For example: for a martini, you could put gin, vermouth and a pre-measured amount of water into a sealed bottle and place in the freezer. When the time comes to drink, you can simply dispense into a martini glass, garnish and drink. This has a couple of things going for it: You get consistency across drinks, you can make large batches at once and it should keep for a decent amount of time in the freezer which means you can have one whenever you want. I don't see why a pure-spirit drink wouldn't be able to keep indefinitely and one with citrus should be able to keep for at least a couple of days without a noticeable degradation of quality. Given all this, the whole shaker and ice routine, while fun to watch and do, seems hopelessly archaic.

Well, uhm, yeah... I'm pretty sure Stephen Hawking is not physically able to do what Grant Achatz does...

I have to admit, as much as I would like to buy into the "cocktails as liquid cuisine" mindset, it's not really doing it for me. I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook and I think I've acquired a decent liquor cabinet but yet I'm still often stumped when looking at my collection and trying to craft something on the fly that will both match my mood and be tasty. Part of the problem is that so many cocktails seem to require a certain specific bottle that no other cocktail requires and so, building up a large repetoire involves more bottles than would be practical. But another part is that I just don't think mixing things together allows for the same space of possibilities as cooking does where you can play with heat, texture, techniques, chemical changes and elaborate presentation. Fundamentally, everything you do has to be harmonious with the base flavor of alcohol and it pretty much reduces down to a harmony between 2 or 3 base flavors with the occasional accent or two to keep it interesting.

Why not do a ghetto sous vide set up then. Put 4 tbsp of emulsified butter and a lobster tail in a ziploc bag and seal it so that all the air is evacuated. Poach in gently simmering water for 10 - 12 minutes. Same taste but less butter. If you want to infuse with garlic, you're going to have to do that before you add it to the bag or the garlic won't cook enough to lose it's raw edge.

I just noticed our very own slkinsey was mentioned in an article in the New York Times titled A Brotherhood Formed With Cocktails and Ice Congrats!

I've been struggling a bit trying to figure out how to make a proper salad dressing for thai beef salad. All the recipes I've seen have some combination of fish sauce, lime juice and sugar as their base but no matter how I adjust the proportions, it always seems flat, aggressive and one dimensional to me. It seems like there's some secret trick I'm missing.

It's relatively easy to make something smell like banana because the primary ester in banana is relatively simple. In fact, banana was one of the first artificial flavors every synthesized. There are even german beers which taste like banana.

Since Atchaz was there, when they started pulling out knives, I thought it would involve some funky sous vide challenge where each person had to serve food cooked to that temperature.

Vodka, in small doses, alters the texture without altering the flavor. For some sorbets, a pure sugar version has the right balance of sweetness. For others, sugar + some lemon juice can get you there. But if I'm making something with a slight savory component to it, a little bit of vodka can go a long way to cutting the candy taste.

What about in cocktails?

Is there any possibility of a bacon cracker?

I used to start with simple syrup but now I've moved away from it. To me, I want the minimum amount of water in the sorbet as possible so as to maximise flavor. Instead, I simply add sugar directly to the blended fruit mixture until I've reached the desired sweetness and then adjust the softness with vodka. If I get it wrong, I'll thaw it out, add more vodka and then refreeze.

I do it somewhat unconventionally by first making a meat only stock at first. Once I've strained out the meat and skimmed off the fat, I'll put it back on the stove with a fine dice of vegetable and set it on a hard boil for 3 minutes to reduce in volume by 1/3 to 1/2. This way, the vegetables stay fresh and vibrant right through to the end of the process.

Carbonnade a la Flamande Beef Beer Onions Flour Bay Leaf

Am I the only one who adjusts the heat of the pan depending on the thickness of the steak so that the crust and middle finish at the same time? It always seemed kind of pointless to me to give a steak an intense blast of heat only to have it languish in the oven with no further browning. For a steak that's 2 inches thick, it's 10 minutes a side. For one that's 1 inch, I do about 4 minutes a side with slightly higher heat. For steaks thinner than that, I'll actually cook it directly from the fridge to give a bit more time for the crust to develop. Butter and rendered beef fat always.

Are you planning to use the poaching liquid in any way after the food has poached? If not, I tend to go with the standard "as salty as the sea" (3%) which I also use for pasta water. If so, I tend to go to taste and keep it slightly undersalted (1%) to account for the reduction and ability to add more salt later.

Paella

My assertion was not that we should forever ban all unbrowned meat dishes and that this would result in a better world for all. I acknowledge that some of the oldest and most classic dishes in the world are made with unbrowned meat and that many people enjoy them immensely. But when I see quotes like this (original thread): I know that if I were to eat the same dish, I would be underwhelmed and wanting the browned flavor. My way of making chicken soup is to first brown a batch of skin on chicken thighs, remove the skin as a snack for the chef and then brown again the newly exposed meat on the skin side for maximum brownage. In short, every time I've taken on faith the recipe writer's exhortation that such a dish simply HAS to use unbrowned meat and that browning would change the characteristics of the dish COMPLETELY, the resulting unbrowned dish never ends up tasting as good as what it would have been if it were browned.

Maybe you could just ask your diners.

Have you read the eGCI on menu planning? It's pretty good. I think I've only ever done two dinner parties under six courses. The most I've done is 22. This is my standard progression of 6: Appetizer Soup Salad Main Cheese/Fruit dessert Chocolate dessert If I do more courses, I usually add a amuse bouche, sorbet, pasta, and second soup in that order. I've ended up settling upon this sort of progression because it's relatively flexible in providing the needed contrasts. It goes from a cold appetizer to a hot soup, then a cold salad then a hot main. It goes from crunchy appetizer to smooth soup then crisp salad. It goes from light to heavy to light to heavy again. Here are some relatively unorthodox tips I almost always use to great success: Have your guests help you plate and serve. It still always stuns me just how time consuming plating can be and when you're bringing together several last minute elements, more hands can be a life saver. Schedule a half hour break right before the main course, shuffle people from the dining room into the living room. That way, you give your guests a chance for their stomachs to settle away from the sight of food and you can invest some time into preparing an a la minute main. Invest in some really high quality, card stock and print your own menus half an hour before serving. It's a great souvenir for your guests to take home. Tasting menus are a lot of fun and they've become kind of a specialty for me. One of my favourite ones was for a friend's birthday, I flew in at 1pm with just a knife and a wooden spoon and managed to shop and cook a 10 course meal for 8 by 8pm that night.

I submit that there is not a single dish in existence which would not be improved by changing it so the meat is browned rather than unbrowned. I know all about cantonese steeped chicken and new england boiled dinners. I've heard all the rapturous praise about the subtle, complex flavours of pot au feu or bollito misto. But I find myself consistently underwhelmed by any dish that does not involve sigfnificant amounts of maillard reaction. Tonight, I had a hankering for poulet au pot and it hit home to me that it was just not a dish that I could enjoy. Yes, I made it correctly, yes there was the requisite layers of subtle, chickeny flavours. But it was all so boring and staid. Boiling, steaming and poaching are great for vegetables, fish, grains and meats which have been previously browned but I'll always be reaching for the frying pan, deep fryer or oven when I'm faced with a chunk of raw meat.

It's possible to freeze them but, honestly, I find it's less of a hassle to just cook them from dried. By the time the frozen food has finished defrosting in the microwave, the egg noodles are done cooking and the heat from the noodles often helps in tempering the cold spots where the microwave hasn't completely heated through.