Shalmanese

Ok, heres a good one. I was making a romesco sauce and I got out the hand blender to buzz the sauce into a puree. As I'm blending it, I hear this odd noise with the hand blender. Puzzled, I take a look at the bottom and theres this chunk of bread stuck between the blade and the side hole of the blender. Evidently, one of my chunks of bread was a bit too big and hadn't softened fully. Not fully thinking, I then hold the blender up closer for inspection and press the button. Hot romesco sauce goes splattering over the kitchen including a good bit over my arms and face. The worst part was that since I had the blender in one hand and the pot in the other, my thinking process went something like this: Holy Hell, I have romesco sauce on my face... I need to set this stuff down to get my hands free Shit, theres not enough flat room here to put down a pan, what am I going to do? MY FACE!!! I know, the counter behind me is free *starts turning* Shit, the cord for the hand mixer isn't long enough, how am I going to get over there IT BURNS!!! Shitshitshitshit Hang on, I can put down the blender first *throws the blender among the pile of assorted kitchen detritus* *turns around quickly and sets down the pan* GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF *wipes off all the burning lava sauce from my face and arms* You ever tried thinking clearly with hot romesco sauce on your face? I didn't think so. So quit your bellyaching!

Ugh, no pictures but follow me in my litany of trainwrecks. So I'm leaving the country soon and as a result, I've been trying to find... creative ways to use up some pantry items before I go. I had some cornmeal so why not make cornbread since I'd never made it before. Mistake the first: Only after mixing the cornmeal with the flour did I discover we were out of milk and only had a carton of soy milk left from when a healthnut girlfriend of one of my friends was staying over. Mistake the second: All my oil supply/fat/shortening had been depleted. The only fats I had left were butter and not-extra-virgin olive oil. The butter went into the batter but I didn't want it to burn in the pan so I went with the olive oil in the pan. Mistake the 3rd: I thought a bit of cheese would hide all of the other flavours so I rifle through my cheese locker and the only appropriate one is a chunk of truffled pecorino I had left over. In that went. Mistake the 4th: All of the recipes I looked at gave quantities of 1 cup cornmeal/1 cup flour/1 cup liquid. This is evidently fine if you have a my-first-cast-iron-skillet but it barely filled my skillet to 1/2 an inch. I should have doubled the amount. Mistake the 5th: I didn't check the bread until it was slightly overbaked. Unfortunately, there are no photos but it came out looking like a giant cow turd and tasted about as good .

Yah I hear ya on that. On a humorous note -- I was playing around with some sodium alginate / ca cl from willg and noticed my kitchen scale only had a resolution of 2 grams. Kind of sucks when you need to measure out 1.5 grams of this and 3.5 grams of that. Ended up finding a good scale place that was in Brooklyn not too far from my house. Found a good deal on a Ashiba MP-500 -- resolution of 0.1 g ← Try the uh... time tested method for accurately measuring out small amounts of white powders. If you need 1.5 grams, take 12 grams of powder, a credit card and a flat surface... you can figure out the rest.

I agree with the others that the starter is too heavy for this time of year but if you have your heart set on it, roasted peppers & Onions & goats cheese go GREAT with a nice rustic country pate of pork or chicken livers, even foie gras if your feeling decadant. That might be a tad too adventerous though but it's a wonderful pairing. Linguine looks fine, just make sure you get the best olive oil, parsely and garlic you can. Maybe some toasted breadcrumbs over the top. One very fancy way I've seen of serving poached fruit is to take some caramel to the hard crack stage and then oil the back of a ladle and drizzle the caramel over it in thin lines to form a delicate, lacework bowl. The bowls can be made the day ahead and is a really wow presentation. I could never do dinner with a female without some sort of chocolate being involved. Perhaps if you made a rich chocolate sauce of just good 70% or higher chocolate and butter and kept it in a squeeze tube. Microwave or submerge it in warm water just before serving and artistically drab the plate with it.

This is what I'm imagining yet it's evidently not what your suggesting: This is what Chad suggests a western and japanese knife look like from his diagrams. I can only assume that a 70/30 knife looks like the 3rd example but it seems like your saying that's wrong.

Abra, quick question: Have you ever tasted the water in Perth or Adelaide or any other place with horrible water? I know the water is safe, I'm wondering if it tastes good. In Australia, Melbourne water is so good they bottle it and sell it across the country. Adelaide water is so horrible it smells like a fetid swamp and is undrinkable.

Heh, that would be my mothers idea.

Huh, I'm pretty sure the convention for recipe books is large eggs.

Yup. Just mixed it up, put it in a low oven until dry and then blended it to a fine powder. It should be awesome on popcorn.

Quick question: Whats the tap water like in Seattle?

What does 70/30 50/50 mean? I take it it's the proportion of the angle on either side of the knife? ie: a 30 degree overall angle would be 21 degrees on one side and 9 degrees on the other in 70/30 but 15 and 15 in 50/50?

One of my biggest revelations from plating, surprisingly, came from this lecture entitled "What Art can tell us about the brain". A large part of good plating is to make it easy for us to tell what it is we're eating. Thats it. Not in the sense of "Is this quail or duck", but what sort of textures we expect to encounter, how flavourful a sauce is and how much of it should we use, what is the preferred order of eating things, how easy will it be for me to break something etc. Your eyes are trying to glean clues from the plate about how everything will taste and a good plate should make this easy. I've becoming increasingly aware as I now look at plates I admire exactly what elements were done so well and how the pieces were put together just so to provide all of these subtle visual cues. If you have roughly 45 minutes, listen to the lecture because it's fascinating and if you managed to internalise it, then maybe 6 months later your plates will start to look better.

Hrmm... I'm not Vadouvan but I'll give it a shot. Do you know how to quenelle? If you do, a nice, tight quenelle looks very elegant. If not, then an ice-cream scoop will do the job. You should get rid of the foam on top of the beet juice. Spoon that off before service to give a nice, unmarred surface. Try use a gravy boat or some other cup with a spout to pour the beet juice. That way, you won't get unsightly splashes or smudges on the side of the bowl. Finally, that fennel frond is way to big as a garnish. Consider just using 1 branch of it. Those are the main technical things. From a stylistic pov, I find that I like to serve intensely coloured liquids in deeper bowls to give it more body. I really like these bowls Vadouvan has: . With a soup of that intensity, the natural human inclination is to want to see just how dense the colour is. Our eyes are naturally drawn to the edges of the bowl in order to see the colour gradation. Unfortunately, your choice of bowl and the foam on the edge makes this impossible. Take a look at Vadouvan's soup, the edge has a nice curve and the soup is clear and unblemished so you get a very nice gradient. Also, the blue rim on your bowl doesn't do any favors for the colour of the soup. Either go with nice, understated white or something which doesn't clash. Alternatively, you can try serving it in clear glass which is quite fun. Either martini glasses or the rippled glass bowls. The next decision you have to make is whether you want to go with a more geometric/modernist style plating or organic/impressionist style. The sorbet and soup are already inherently geometric so the only thing you can really play around with is the fennel. Either place a single large fennel frond in the centre of your sorbet for a geometric look or gently place some snippets of fennel around your soup for a more organic and chaotic feel. edit: With that an intense a coloured soup, you shouldn't really be serving that much. My natural instinct when I look at that much soup is that I just wouldn't be able to finish or enjoy it. Part of that is your choice of camera angle. For something that dark, only a spoonful or two should pack such a depth of flavour that I'm satisfied. Again, Vadouvan has roughly the right idea in terms of portion size (although I gather his meal has more courses). If you can, make the bowl deeper. Deep bowls makes it looks like you have less food. Or, you can do what I do is plate a smaller portion than I would eat for the photograph and then just have seconds. In terms of photography, your lighting is not optimal. The light is mainly coming from above and to the front. What that means is that you've wiped out a lot of the texture of the dish. Take a look at the sorbet, it's a huge mass of orange on the front. Lighting from the side would have brought out the craggy, icy texture of the sorbet. Thats all I got for now. Hope that was a help. But remember, plating should be fun. If it's not fun for you, don't bother. It'll still be equally as delicious.

I love leftover cooking after a big party. Just throwing together dribs and drabs. Pita Chips with Chilli-Lime Powder, Hummus, Almonds with Chilli-Lime Powder, Lemonade, Strawberries, Oranges, Passionfruit, Tomatos and some briefly cooked ceviche. That Chilli Lime Powder is incredibly addictive. I should bottle it and use it as a general, all purpose condiment. It's got salt, pepper, chilli powder, lime zest, citric acid and a touch of sugar in it.

Got my friend to send over images of the burgers. Unfortunately, they're not very good and theres none of the completed thing. Putting them here just to complete the record. Wagyu Truffle Burgers with Fontina, Bacon and Fried Egg

This might have better luck in the Australia forum but I remember a friend from melbourne informing me that there were several pretty decent tea shops in Melbourne, probably in Chinatown.

I could see this happening. The McTartare! Only $5.99!

Let me just double check but... wow. Every single dish, I was only in the kitchen for the first 5 minutes to set everything up and the final plating. ALL the cooking was handled by other people on the day. I don't think my cumulative time in the kitchen exceeded 2 hours over the span of 21. For the plating, I rented all the plates. I'm slightly peeved because the plate place got my order wrong. I orignally asked for 25 small, square plates, 25 large, round plates and 25 large martini glasses as well as some wineglasses and highballs for drinks. I ended up just rounds and martinis. Amazingly, not a single piece of glassware or plate was broken. Props have to go out to my parents who were tireless behind the scenes waiters and dishwashers and did all the nasty scutwork that bedevils a real, commercial kitchen. They managed to keep the entire place neat and tidy and have clean dishes whenever I needed them and I couldn't of done the thing without them. Lets see... the Pancake batter was made on the day, that took 10 minutes. Then I got a friend to cook up the pancakes in 3 pans while I picked up some ice and another friend. The pita chips cooked while I was heating up the oven for the bread, and the dips were made while the bread was baking. As soon as the bread was done, I dropped the oven down and put the pre-rubbed brisket in and just let it slow cook all morning. Carrot soup was made beforehand and chilled, foam a la minute. Plating that was trivial. Oyster plating was trivial. The thai salad for the duck was handled entirely by my cousin, the dressing was made the day before. Duck breasts were seared by two volunteers with me checking every 2 minutes about the doneness (btw: my volunteering process for the day consisted of my shouting out "Who likes X" and then grabbing the first person to raise their hand. It says something about the intellectual calibre of my friends that this kept on working ). I just sliced the duck and it was plated. Lamb was done the day before, put it in the oven with the brisket to reheat. Got a volunteer to stir the polenta, I made some quick gremolata and then that was plated. Brisket came out of the oven Coleslaw was done the day before. I just sliced and plated it. Mushroom risotto got another volunteer to stir the risotto while I sauteed the mushrooms. Another one to make the cheese shavings and then just plated it. Ceviche, just tossed a whole bunch of stuff into the fridge, let it sit for 3 hours and scooped it out. Sorbet and Bread & Butter Pudding were made the day before. Just had to stick the pudding in the oven. Coca Cola chicken was handled entirely by my mother. Lamb, just seared it while making the herb crust. Stuck it in a hot oven and let it go until the thermometer said 55. Chimichurri sauce was made beforehand and stuck in squeeze tubes. Cake was made beforehand, creme brulee was made beforehand. Really, there was barely anything needed to be done in the kitchen. Thank you rachel and all the others for the kind words.

I've been looking a while at some Japanese knives and I haven't been able to find a resource either on the internet or on egullet that goes into exactly what each knife is and does. So I thought this would be a good place to have a central repository of Japanese Knife knowledge and all the different details about them. So far, this is what I've gathered: Knife Names - as a very rough approximation, this is the following conversion: Gyuto - Chefs Knife Petty - Paring Knife Santoku - A hybrid between a Chinese Cleaver and a Chefs Knife Usuba - Small, rectangular knife built for cutting vegtables Yanagiba - Long thin slicing knife designed for sushi but can be used as a carving knife Deba - I'm still not really sure about this one, It's meant to be a thicker, more durable cleaving style knife? I would be interested to know just how each of these knives differ from the western equivilant. Japanese knives vs Western knives - Japanese knives are generally lighter and thinner than western blades and do not contain a bolster. The blade is made of a harder metal which means a sharper blade but shorter times between sharpenings to maintain it? Japanese knives are only ground on one side as opposed to both sides of Western knives. Japanese knives come in left and right handed versions because of this. Popular brands of Japanese Knives - Global, Kershaw Shun, Mac, Tojiro, Hattori, Watanabe. Places to buy Japanese Knives - Japanese Chefs Knife Watanabe Blade Amazon Wiki article on Japanese Chefs Knives (which is not very good at the moment) People more knowledgeable in this subject, please feel free to weigh in.

So for my birthday, 4 of my friends are going to chip in and buy me an "uber knife" less than $150. At that price range, I'm looking at: Hattori 210mm Gyuto Tojiro Pro 210mm Gyuto Watanabe 195mm Deba Shun 8" Chefs Knife Mac professional series knife Now I know that knives are very personal and you should try them for comfort but I don't know where I can go to actually see all of these knives side by side. For reference, I love my Furi handle and chose it over the much more expensive wustofs and henckels for the feel of the handle alone. I can't stand the handle of the Globals and I don't mind Wustofs although I think the weight is a little excessive. I like the handle of the Shun I tried once but I didn't try using it for an extended period of time. Anybody care to weight in on the pros and cons of the knives listed above?

So I'm wondering which of these things is best bought from Amazon and which is best bought in person at stores or at garage sales or whatever in Seattle: High end Japanese Chefs Knife (either Hattori, Tojiro, Shun or Mac) Cast Iron Pan, new or second hand Chopping board, plastic Stock/pasta pot Saute Pan, SS (probably a Sitram or something similar) Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven Roasting pans and other bakeware Glasses, Plates & Cutlery Decent wine glasses (not riedel but a step down) I'm bringing my boning knife, kitchen shears, paring knife, peeler and a few other small things over. I pretty much only need to buy the stuff too bulky or annoying to bring over.

If your going to make a 7 hour leg, you might as well make some demi to go with it. Ask your butcher for any lamb bones of offcuts while he debones the whole leg for you. Roast those at 425 with the lamb and leave them in while the oven cools to 160. Then, just simmer them with some mirepoix, rosemary, bayleaves, strain and simmer down. It should be done right on the 7 hour mark. Another tip with oven browning, since the lamb is only in there for 20 minutes, you need to make absolutely sure the lamb is bone dry on the surface, otherwise it will steam and not brown. This can be hard if your marinating it so one method I've had a bit of success with is to put it in for 1 hour at 160 which will dry the outside out, take it out, ramp it up to 450, brown for 20 minutes, take it out, bring it back down to 160 and cook for another 5 hours. It's slightly more complicated but it works very well.

PS: Who is Diann and why is this thread for her?

Nice idea. I will definately have to steal that one. Why rice wine vinegar though? Is it just the most neutral one? I would also supplement that with a bottle of citric acid solution and a bottle of MSG solution. Acetic acid and Citric acid, although both sour, have radically different flavour profiles. Citric acid is very useful when you want the same sort of sourness as lemon juice except without the fruit flavours. MSG, is a contentious one but I think in moderation, it can only serve to enhance food.