Chris Amirault

The UP is designed to allow for a range in the gap between the granite base and the granite rollers, which enables them to handle the corn kernels I grind for masa both when they are whole (~5-8 mm) and as they grind down. For that reason, I think they'd be fine to handle any grain. Regulating the grind would be entirely up to you. According to this, there's a limited 1 year manufacturer's warranty.

Pedro, Elie, and e_monster, thanks for your replies. This is the torch of which you all speak, yes? And is this the butane cartridge?

How hot does the Iwatani get?

I don't know if it works better or not. But it works, and works well for my needs. And it's dirt cheap, requires no refills, and has no potential for a chemical taste (as some have suggested elsewhere in this topic).

I grabbed a Wagner heat gun at Home Depot for $25; here it is on Amazon. Turned it up to high/1KF, brushed a bit of fat on the short ribs I just pulled from the SVS, and it did a great job. Maybe for restaurant production it's a bit too slow, but I can't imagine needing anything faster.

I'll start. I've been fiddling around with this and think that I've finally got the proportions right. Subbed out the Licor 43 for a lot less Grand Marnier, the orange twist for a lemon twist, and a combination of Regan's and Angostura for Fee's OF bitters. It's brown, it's bitter, and I stirred it. The drink is named after Max von Sydow's character in "Three Days of the Condor," a Scandinavian guy with a French name whacking a bunch of Americans with style. Joubert Cocktail 2 oz Rittenhouse rye 1/2 oz Suze 1/2 oz Aalborg Jubilaeums akvavit dash Regan's orange bitters dash Angostura bitters dash Grand Marnier Stir; up; lemon twist.

For a good while now, Paul Clarke over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays: The next MxMo takes place Monday, August 30, hosted by Lush Life Production's Lindsey Johnson. She'll host the event at her blog, Brown, Bitter and Stirred, which she's selected as her theme: I'll email everything posted here by Monday, August 30 at midnight to Lindsey. Given the bitter-lovin' crowd around here, I'm sure we've got a lot of ideas!

That's smart. The UP definitely heats up after 40-50 minutes or so. It's never been an issue for me; masa's the most time-consuming item I've made. But I'd be concerned about several hours of nib destruction.

A little too free with the water, so the masa was a bit sticky. Otherwise a successful batch of tortillas. One more note: when I was grinding up each successive batch of corn, I left a bit of the previous batch in, which enabled me to drop handfuls and not single kernels into the Ultra Pride at a time.

Is there a specific model or do you have one dedicated to chocolate? The components that have contact with food are primarily nonporous granite and stainless steel, so they don't retain odors, flavors, and so on. There are small components that are hard plastic, and when I used fresh turmeric in a kroeung it stained slightly. Those stains are gone now, and I haven't noticed any retention of flavors at all. Clean up is a breeze. For masa, I clean it in about three minutes with hot, soapy water. The kroeung and other pastes can require a bit more work, but not much. In addition, the parts that come into contact with the food can be put in the dishwasher.

When I was in college in the 1980s, those living off campus either cooked from the execrable Katzen books or the Rosso/Lukins Silver Palate books. Whatever their own problems, Rosso and Lukins at least believed that food should taste good and be well-prepared.

I have a piece of brisket here (ground some for burgers last night) and got inspired by your idea, Nick. Rubbed the brisket with some smoked salt, smoked coconut powder, and roasted Thai chile peppers, along with a scant tablespoon of peanut oil. I'll give 30ish at 57C a try as soon as I take the short ribs in the SVS out.

Used the Ultra Pride this afternoon for masa for tortillas, and I think I'm going to defrost some penang paste I made with it for dinner later this week. Anyone else buy one of these lately?

Today's batch: 20 hour soak, finer grinding, plenty of water. Letting the dough rest for about four hours before making the tortillas. More in a bit.

I don't understand. Wouldn't the setting on the range for both be "medium"? Or are you making a point about efficiency or something else?

I have eaten far more bad food prepared with one book cracked open on the counter than all others combined. Shockingly, those dishes were usually served as if they were food, glorious food, morally and culinarily superior to the gruel I usually forced down my gullet. Thus, for the gastrointestinal misery and self-deluded superiority I endured at cooks who used it as a blunt instrument for decades, I nominate Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook as the Worst. Cookbook. Ever.

I think crepes/pancakes are a great example of items that quickly and definitively separate new cooks from experienced ones. Whether it's a throw-away crepe, the dancing water droplets, rate of butter melting/browning, those are all maddeningly difficult to understand when you're just getting started and in media res. I wouldn't call that simple!

I think that Crema is very hard to figure out. Best that you get a bottle of Chichicapa. Or Minero. Or both.

1 oz of lemon plus 1/2 oz of sloe gin? Seems like a tart mouthful, that. Gotta try it.

I wonder if it should be improved slightly, with a dash of absinthe.... Perhaps I should find this out right now. ETA: Yes, it can, and Marteau is just the stuff to do it.

Made this as a rocks drink with J.M VSOP and Scrappy's grapefruit bitters. Hemingway OF it is, and a regular it will be.

Do they also use "low," "medium," and "high" labels? If so, what are the corresponding temps?

Well, I guess we finally figured out what Muji means by "freeze slowly."

I've just moved to a new house where I have the great benefit of a terrific Thermador electric range, after several years of using a serviceable gas range. Both have numbers and the descriptors "Low," "Medium," and "High" on them, but that's where the similarity ends. A pan on medium on the gas range would require five minutes to get to an adequate sauté temperature, whereas oil poured into a pan that had spent five minutes on medium on the electric range would smoke instantly. Of course, range manufacturers aren't the only culprits when it comes to labels, temperature and relativity. Recipes use the labels as if they mean something useful, particularly recipes written for less experienced cooks. That's really bizarre: I'm convinced that managing this relativity is one of the key skills of a skilled cook, and that confusion around range labels and temps is the biggest curse of the new cook. There are build-arounds that we all use. If you have enough of a cooking medium (water or fry oil), you can take a temperature. You can use impressionistic information, like butter's color, an oil's shimmer. But unless you have a thorough understanding of your cookware, stove, and ingredients, you can't use, say, the rate at which an onion browns to learn anything conclusive about what "medium" means -- and by that time such labels are useless anyway. So I ask you: is there any way to standardize this language the way we have for oven and oil temperatures? Or is it just impossible? If the latter, how in the world can one explain "set the burner to medium" to a novice cook?

Sorry -- that wasn't very clear. To vacuum and seal the tasso at the bottom of the very long bag, you have to insert the top of the bag into the vacuum slot. That means that the machine seals the bag about an inch below the top edge of the bag that's in the slot. So now you have a massive bag that's sealed but with a ton of waste. As it turns out, that waste isn't really waste if you keep adding things into the bag. To do that you have to create a new bottom for the bag AND create a new seal that's right next to the tasso. Thus the next seal. That seal doesn't require a vacuum, because you already did that. However, to add more tasso, the bag has to be opened again, which means cutting off that top seal.