Shalmanese

I really liked that site but I disagreed with the author on the cold oil, hot pan myth (and sent him an email to him about it). The real reason behind cold oil, hot pan is that oil can only get up to around 500F before it starts smoking while pans can go much hotter. Thus, if you want to maximise the thermal load in your pan (and, conspequently, minimise the temperature drop) before you start searing food, you should heat up a pan dry first until it is very, very hot. Shows like Americas Test Kitchen religiously promote the oil in the pan approach (wisps of smoke!) because it's relatively foolproof but for best performance, go with dry pans.

Perhaps it's because there are inherent inefficiencies in generating electricty in the first place to be made back into heat. Microwave: Coal -> electricity -> heat Gas stove: Gas -> heat I'm not sure about the specific inefficiencys of either process so I can't plug numbers in but it's a possible hypothesis.

A clarification: Does the 12 course menu actually contain less food than the tour?

Hrmm... that thermometer your using has an temperature alarm on it right? Instead of going for fullblown PID, try just having a state machine approach. Hook into the signal circuit for the alarm, If the alarm is not ringing, then you should be in the "heating" state and pumping in lots of power into the crockpot. If the alarm is ringing, you should be in the "maintenence" state and keeps the temperature stable. A simple switch and a bit more wiring and you should get that working. Kudos for being the first one to try. Set the alarm to say, 5F below your target temperature and see what happens. The stirrer idea was mainly to alleviate hotspots caused by a concentrated heat source. With the winding design of the crockpot, I wonder if it's really neccesary. I wager that maybe the very top inch of the water might be significantly cooler than the rest but theres very little actual variation within the main body of water. As long as your sous vide bags are heavier than water (tape some weights to the bag), then I highly doubt the temp variations are going to warrant a stirrer.

I've stuck my digital thermometer into all sorts of different liquids at all sorts of different bubbling rates and they've almost universally read 99 - 100C. Even if theres only a bubble produced every second or so, the entire pot is still at 99C, no matter where I measure it. I don't know where people are getting their other numbers from but I suspect they're wrong. 185F water is perfectly clear, no shimmering or agitation. There are wisps of steam coming off the top but thats about the only indication you get. And forget about keeping it there reliably. Even the tiniest flame on my burner was too hot to keep it there for any appreciable amount of time.

I guess the engineer in me is just irked by the sheer primitiveness of the system. It just seems to me like there should be a better way to do this. The thermal charecteristics of water make it very hard to achieve good performance with and theres just too much that can go wrong. OTOH, even though a methanol heatpipe would be more complicated to manufacture, it would be almost foolproof to use and be both faster and more accurate to boot.

I have to say, this trend scares me. But not for any reason to do with bioethics or health. But because food inevitably derives it's greatest, most intoxicating tastes from complexity. The hundreds of thousands of different chemicals that all come together into a tantalising melange of flavours that rolls smooth across your tounge. Think of free range chickens, allowed to forage for natural seeds and grubs and how their feed adds a depth of flavour. Or think of a brisket or oxtail, made intensely beefy and assertive by constant exercise. Or a long aged cheese like parmesan or roquefort, the low slow fermentation giving pungency and headiness. Almost all of the great foods of the world revel in their complexity: bacon, tomatos, strawberries, salmon, bread, wine and many more. Tasting inferior versions of these against superior ones is night and day. They both have the same basic notes but the greatness comes purely from the added depth and intensity. Nature is inherently complex, every clod of dirt, every blade of grass is packed full of variation and randomness. With manufacturing however, order holds sway. What are you going to feed manufactured muscle? How many trace chemicals can you add to it before you reach the point of diminishing returns? And how is it going to taste? If it sells for 1/10th the price of real beef, is the general public going to care how it tastes? Will people forget and then become repulsed by the taste of real beef just as corn fed beef has made people dislike not only grassfed beef but game and stronger meats as well. Cows may be a hugely inefficient method of producing meat but the meat they do produce tastes damn good and it would be a shame for it to disappear.

It pretty much comes down to an issue of physical practicality. We have figured out ways to reproduce sound, images and videos relatively cheaply so they have permeated mass culture. I guess the only way we have now to replicate food is via cookbooks and those are what serve as the culinary equivilants of museums and concert halls. I'll note however that going to the source for any of these goods is still expensive. When I was in Chicago, a ticket to the musical Spamalot would have cost almost twice as much as my dinner to Alinea (and lasted about 1/2 as long). A concert by a world class orchestra or rock band is similarly priced. An original painting by even a talentless hack would cost the price of a mid-range meal. What has allowed the spread of mass culture has been technology, not philanthropy.

Oh, and actually replying to the original article, I can't help but predicting that this trend of ever increasing empires is unsustainable at the top end. At that level of dining, people want to feel pampered and unique. It becomes increasingly difficult to do so if you know that 3000 other people in 20 different locations are enjoying the same experience. What will happen is that the chains will move continually downmarket, gaining presence but loosing cachet. The people going to Nobu London are not the ones who enjoyed Nobu NY and want to eat the same food, its those who could never afford to eat at Nobu NY and want to feel some of the reflected glory.

I could not disagree more. If anything, the astounding trend of the 20th century has been the mass democratisation of haute cuisine and the reclaiming of good food by passionate gourmets. It used to be that the great restaurants of the past could survive on reputation alone. People went and ate to be seen and because they didn't know any better. But gone are the stuffy tie and jackets, endless arrays of cutlery and stiff, formal service. Instead, what has arrived is the discerning but sceptical palate. They don't care about your history or your reputation, if your food sucks, then they'll tell the world about it. Through blogs and message boards and any other medium possible. And while other people are afraid of contradicting the prevailing wisdom for fear of seeming stupid, these people are perfectly willing to say exactly whats on their minds. If you take a look at the list of the World's top 50 restaurants, the top 5 clock in at $225, $265, $220, $132 (not mentioned but its 175 AUD) and $213 respectively. None are over $300 and the average is around $200. This would hardly be a weeks wages unless you made $10,000 a year. In fact, for a person earning median wage, this would be not even 2 days wages. This has been almost the first time in history that great, and by that I mean the best food in the world, has been brought into the reach of all but the poorest of the western world. As I've said before on eGullet, people would not think twice about even the poorest person spending $200 a month on booze, drugs & gambling yet somehow it becomes a frivolous extravagance for a middle class person to be spending the same amount on a single great dining experience every month. The idea that great food is beyond the reach of the common man is simply fallacious.

OK, so maybe not methanol. But are you sure there isn't a single chemical that would be appropriate? If you double bag it, you can make the outside container anything you want. You could even use a metal box with an airtight seal. In fact, an alternative might be to use some sort of inverse heatpipe system. Instead of sealing up the food, you just seal up the methanol and use it as a heating element which can only ever get up to 64.7C. Immerse it in a well enough insulated water bath and you have worry free sous vide. This would move away from being home built to being an industrial product but I still it has promise.

I've been thinking a bit about sous vide of late and I think that using water baths may not be the best approach. Instead of relying on a feedback loop to maintain a steady temperature of water, why not use a different chemical that has the desired chemical properties you are after, namely, boiling point. Ethanol at 78.4C is probably too high to be useful. But Methanol happens to have a boiling point of 64.7C which is conveniently close to medium rare for meats. Propanal is at 49C which is just a tad too high for most fish but still workable. I'm sure other chemicals could be mixed to produce any desired range of temperatures. The key here is that if you do this, then the hardware can be made very very cheaply. You dont need computer controls, thermostats or variable heat. You just need a heating element to keep the liquid at a boil and a condensor to form a closed loop. The only real issue I can see here is worries about the permiability of the cooking liquid through the plastic pouches. If you only wanted a sous vide machine to do meats to medium rare, then you could just use methanol and have an almost perpetual sous vide machine for peanuts. If you wanted variable temperature control, then ideally, you should use a liquid that is cheap, non-toxic, has a boiling point of around 30C or so and can scale from 30C to 100C depending on the proportion you mix with water or another fluid. Whether such a chemical exists, I don't know. Someone with a bit more chemical knowledge would have to weight in. But I would love to know if the methanol rig has a chance at practicality. edit: It occurs to me that if you want an added layer of protection, you could double bag your food. Fill the inner bag with food and then place it in the outer bag and fill it with hot water. That way, only the water is in contact with your food but you get the accurate temp control as well.

Risotto - Par cooked, blech Steak soups clearly made from leftovers Garden Salad - $6 for 30c worth of ingredients?

Soy Sauce on Meat Pies nuff said.

btw: some newspaper listings here take it a step further and list houses with only their thousands. eg: 3br 1 bath, 123 Fake St - 561

My completely WAG is the whole .95/.99 phenomena has been associated with down market and "bargain" places. To me, things priced in nice solid numbers just have a more high quality, no-nonsense feel about them to me, but also a sense that your paying a premium for the quality. Think about something priced at $24.99 vs $25. One feels like your buying it from an infomercial, the other feels like your buying a solid piece of hardware which you could pick up almost the equivilant for at Walmart for $10.99. Thus, lopping the ends of numbers gives your menu a slightly upmarket "if you need to look at the prices you shouldn't be eating here but we'll give them to you anyway" sort of feel.

over at Television Without Pity, they confirmed that it is actually a house that is for-rent on a weekly basis on PEI. I think it was something like $10,000 a month.

People should be perfectly free to believe that freeganism is stupid and people should be perfectly free to believe that eating foie gras is stupid. Nobody is advocating outlawing freeganism like foie gras was outlawed. The two positions are morally consistant.

I didn't find any significant olive flavour to come out of the oil so I use extra-light olive oil now. After poaching, I bring the oil up to 150C/300F which should steralise it and then bottle it again and use it for dishes that need a subtle fish flavour. Why throw it out?

get thee a nice wooden spoon!

Finally, I get to contribute in this thread again! These are balsamic glazed green beans, you stir fry green beans until they are wilted and mottled brown, then toss in some garlic and balsamic and reduce until it forms a glaze. It's incredibly delicious but impossible to make look presentable. The sesame seeds were a vain attempt to put lipstick on a sow.

Hrmm... this is hard. The risottos is very delicate so you don't want to overpower it. Do you have any saffron on hand? Maybe just a simple saffron cream sauce. You would sort of riff off the classic risotto milanese flavours with the saffron and the creaminess. The other thing I'm thinking of is mushrooms which should be another really nice pairing but I don't really see it working in sauce form. If you want a nice colour, a roasted red pepper sauce is great. Just roast some red peppers, remove the skins and then puree in the blender with some S&P, tomato paste, olive oil and roasted garlic if you have it. The subtle sweetness of the peppers should pair nicely with the duck without overpowering it. Nothing is really jumping out as really compelling though.

I don't know why you didn't just render the pork fat in the wok, you would have gotten a slight head start. As with all seasoning, it's not a one day thing. Gradually, as you cook more food the seasoning will darken and even out.

Hrmm... I don't recall enough physical chemistry off the top of my head but it seems to me that the brita should do much the same thing as rectification does. If cheap vodka is less rectified than expensive vodka and britaed cheap vodka tastes like expensive vodka, then its quite possible that active charcoal filtering does much the same job as rectification. Then again, maybe I'm off base. I certainly don't see how any sort of filtering can remove methanol but not ethanol and that seems to be the major contaminant in most alcohols. Or it may be moot anyway, if your only using a tiny bit of everclear as the solvent and using vodka as the main base, then perhaps the level of contamination is negligible. The main advantage of the everclear method, IMHO, is that you are not restricted to using it purely for lemoncello, it can be used as a general purpose ingredient in food as well.

I don't see why it wouldn't work. The reason everclear has such a bite is not because of its proof, it's because it contains lots of impurities due to a not-so-strict filtering process. Diluted down to the same proof as vodka, it should in theory taste exactly the same if those impurities were not present. I'm saying why not zest AND juice? I'm saying that instead of the traditional 750mL of vodka to 15 lemon zests, you could probably get away with 75mL of everclear and get something akin to super-concentrated lemon extract. Sorta like vanilla extract.