Shalmanese

My first reaction was that there was no such thing for me, I mess with everything. But then I remembered what I had for lunch yesterday: Salami, Mustard, Cheese & Apple sandwich. It's something which I refuse to mess with, it fulfils a platonic ideal of a sandwich for me and any addition or removal of ingredients would hideously unbalance it.

Pot holders annoy me, I feel clumsy using them. I prefer to use plastic handled pans when I'm stir frying or sauteing because I get far better control tossing my food when I don't have a giant oven mitt on.

Does Australia have a native tuna fishing industry? If not then I suspect most of the otoro is being diverted to Japan so very little actually shows up on the Australian market. When it does, you would be paying Japanese prices for it.

Has anyone tried to make stock sous vide yet?

Old eggs.

I would go so far as to say it's almost mandatory to reuse the duck fat. Yes you can freeze it but it also keeps indefinately in the fridge.

In truth, it doesn't really matter. You need enough oil in there to adequately conduct heat to the flour so it doesn't burn and that's all it is. Putting too much oil in there is going to lead to more oil in your final dish but it's not going to break anything.

Someone with a immersion circulator needs to volunteer for this.

I think Burger King should go the whole hog and ban foie gras at all of their restaurants as well! edit: damn, beaten.

Unlike restaurants, I only get a chance to make stock once every 2 months or so, my procedure is still very much in flux. The bones are essentially fully deep fried for half an hour before they get cooked for the stock. Because they've had so much prior frying time, the process of gelatin conversion is already underway so the extraction time can be much shorter. I use the floppy bone test to figure out when maximum gelatin extraction has been reached. One thing I've been pondering for a while is, in an earlier stock making using a more conventional method, I needed to weight down the surface (another tip for easy skimming is to put a weighted colander on top so all the aromatics are pushed below the surface) so I got a cast iron pot and filled it with cold water to weight down the surface. When I came back 3 hours later, the inner pot was filled with exactly 100C hot water but absolutely calm with no bubbles. I wonder if making a stock in the inner vessel would lead to absolute clarity since there is absolutely NO agitation. The logistics of it have still eluded me though. Another thing I've been considering is cheesecloth sachets. Instead of having to deal with laborious strainings, why not put all of your bones and aromatics into sachets so they can be simply fished out of the stock once done?

I always love reading about cooks talking about their stocks because it reveals so much about their cooking personality. Are they the fastidious type or the highly rigourous experimental type or do they prefer to go with tradition and mysticism. And for those who have not given it any thought, well, if you're not paying attention to the foundation of your cooking, then how much actual thinking is going on in that kitchen? As for me, my latest discovery is that fat actually makes for a far superior stock to bones. For my brown stocks, all the trimmed skins and pockets of fat I carve off from roasts and chickens, I save in a ziplock and when I have enough, I render it all out until it's crisp. I then add any bones I have to the pot and keep the rendered fat at a steady 300F or so until the bones are well browned. I find this avoids the pesky problem with oven roasting where some bones become overbrowned since you're roasting at 500F. Finally, I add carrots and onions only to the hot oil and cook them until they become sweet and fragrant. Add in the water and cook it down for about 2 hours and it's done. Because the bones are so cooked already by the fat, the extraction can work much faster producing a cleaner, lighter stock. The stock is very sweet and rich without that overly browned soggy note common in brown stocks. For white stocks, I get around the problem of vegetables overcooking by doing a double stock procedure. I first simmer just the bones with dried herbs such as bayleaves, strain, remove the fat and then set it back on the burner. While the stock is reducing, I add in the vegetables and let it cook for 30 minutes more with far more vegetables and fresh herbs than is usually called for. This has a number of advantages: 1. You don't overcook the vegetables so you keep the fresh light flavour 2. Your stock has reduced by about 1/2 during this time leading to a more flavourful stock 3. You essentially have mirepoix cooked in chicken stock which you can then use for other dishes rather than being wasted. 4. You can save the fat from the first cooking which won't have funky vegetable flavours. 5. You can create a few different variations on the base stock for different dishes, ie: throw some mushrooms in one reduction, some parsnips in another etc. There were quite a few good ideas in this article and I'm looking forward to integrating them into my procedure. Gabriel: The amount of water removed from a stock is a function of the amount of heat you put into it while the degree of reduction is a function of the total amount of water which means larger amounts of stock need to be cooked longer to achieve the same amount of reduction. Say you have a 10 gallon vat of stock which needs 2 hours for a 2x reduction. If you cook it the conventional way, the entire vat of stock will be cooked for 2 hours longer, leading to flavour breakdown and a flat feeling. If you cook it adding 1 gallon at a time every 12 minutes, then the first gallon will be cooked for 120 minutes, the second gallon will be cooked for 108 minutes and the last gallon added will be cooked for only 12 minutes. That way, a large part of the stock is not overcooked.

Briefly, in Italy, the dairy producing regions and the seafood producing regions in Italy didn't overlap so, due to the hyper-regionalised nature of Italian cuisine, there weren't any dishes that contained seafood and cheese. When Italian cuisine arose in America, those regional boundaries were erased and the uniform "Italian-American" cuisine was created. "authentic", regionalised Italian cuisine was created largely as a backlash to this and the no cheese with seafood rule became an emblematic touchstone of all that was wrong with Italian-American cuisine. It eventually made it's way back to Italy too but it was essentially largely popularised by Americans.

I've generally never found much use for lamb fat. It's melting point is too high so unless you're serving food piping piping hot, it becomes unpleasantly waxy. Did you simmer the fat with the stock? The lamb stocks I've made have all been full bodied and aromatic, I don't know whats up with yours. You could always beef it up(no pun intended) with some demi-glace if you have that lying around. Before shanks became trendy thing du jour, they were fantastic for making stocks with. Braise it just for 3 hours and then make the meat into shepards pie and have stock as well.

But... but... but... The purpose of using wrappers is to separate the meat from the broth - because meat will cloud up the broth. Chinese (Cantonese anyway) typically like clear broth with wontons. The minute you add the left over meat in it, it will cloudy up the broth. ← Really? I thought the purpose of the wrappers was to keep a couple of hyperactive kids occupied for 3 hours.

I love that stuff! You don't even need to cook it, just soak in some cold water to get the grit out and then drop it straight into the simmering soup for 30 seconds and it's done. It's great for wonton and noodle soups.

it's to ensure a thin, uniform film of oil and to prevent oil from pooling in the bottom of the wok.

Sounds like an incredible trip, make sure to take lots of pictures!

Huh, so I guess there really is a reason to go to the soulless suburban wasteland that is the U Village.

Oh, one other tip, I store my cookies with a slice of sandwich bread in a cookie jar. The bread moderates the moisture which keeps the cookies from drying out.

Brown sugar, molasses or honey adds to the chew. Personally, I love honey in my oatmeal cookies.

Acorn Squash Risotto Cakes in Panko, Fresh Pear, Orange Juice. Bread, Butter, Peach Jam, Cheese, Pineapple, Pear, Orange Juice.

Inch thick loin chop from whole foods, High heat sear, cook in the oven, let rest, still inedible around the bone. I still don't get it, I know how to cook the damn things, there's nothing wrong with my technique, it's simply a matter of chemistry. Bone conducts heat slower than meat and areas near the bone will be higher in connective tissue which results in a tough, raw, inedible finished product.

I made a browned butter apple sauce tonight for my halibut. The nutty taste really accentuated everything. Thanks egullet!

Whole Foods have the new season halibut and I've never cooked it before so I decided to give it a try and I made a Halibut en papillote with Parsnips and Green Apple with a Brown Butter Apple Sauce: Simmered the parsnips in water laced with some salt, sugar and lemon juice, seasoned the fish with some Hawaiian Red Salt and Pepper and threw in some Apple slices, Lemon slices and Lemon Zest and then topped it with a healthy glug of olive oil and some Moscato wine. In honour of this thread, I made a brown butter apple sauce. Let some butter brown with some lemon zest and then threw in diced apples and some sugar and let it cook. Finally, garnished it with a fish skin chip. Maldon sea salt on some fish skin and then into a hot pan with another hot pan on top to keep it flat. So simple yet sooo crispy. The sweetness of the parsnips, tartness of the apples and sweet nuttiness of the sauce played perfectly off each other and produced an amazingly light, tender fish infused with a delicate perfume. For dessert, I had a Plum and Peach Galette, made from fruit picked at the peak of summer that I had in my freezer:

You'll have to ask Ling, it's her recipe.