Chris Amirault

Catherine, you're right: vertical is what I meant. Andy's got me trying to think horizontally about these damned names... OK, here's another: anything with the word "carob" in it.

Why is "Chicken One Way" absurd but "Chicken Three Ways" interesting?

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think that you can say "duck breast, confit, and cracklings" without saying "three ways." And if you say "three ways," someone's gotta explain what the three ways are, making the name redundant.

Interesting. Is it the name or the concept you are opposed to? If the name, what alternative system to describe this would you propose? The name. It's a cliché at this point, implying a dated reference to Thomas Keller, and yet, when I see it on the menu, it's not because I'm at French Laundry. It's the nomenclature version of horizontal plating. As for another name, I'd suggest X.

Like Montreal, Alex and Aki at Ideas in Food smoke flour, and they make pasta with it.

X Y Ways, where X is an ingredient and Y is a number between two and infinity, usually three.

I'll start. Oven-fried chicken.

Agree with you, Renn. Salting throughout the process also means better distribution of salt and much less chance of unwanted salty pockets or surfaces.

Does anyone know how to make the Chinese red bean and coconut sweet gelatin? My wife loves it.... The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning Vietnamese this year. Kinda had a big Chinese meal last year around this time.

I'm skeptical - as salt (in any form) tends to dissolve upon being introduced to moisture.Well, yes, and all salt will dissolve in enough moisture given enough time. But that's not the point I'm making. Smaller crystals dissolve more rapidly than larger ones, and there are situations in which that's beneficial.

I don't understand. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

Because finer particles are absorbed more readily. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

100% Diamond here. In addition to the issues mentioned here, it's more difficult to crush Morton's to a powder for adding to cooking oils, rubs, etc. I can do that with Diamond between my fingers.

That Towle is one awesome fork. What do you use it for?

Higher water content than savoy, yes? That would concern me a bit....

Fair enough. But note just how terrific two very good versions of mundane tools are....

It used to be that the any given fork in my silverware drawer consisted of four lengthy, slim tines attached to a firm, sizable shaft and handle. But then hell broke loose, in the form of smaller, fatter tines and shorter, slimmer handles. I was dejected. And then I found this Gibson fork -- not one, but two of them: That's it at the bottom. This 8 1/4" piece of genius is perfect for flaking chicken, beating an egg, shaping gnocchi, and doing about a thousand other things. Perhaps you don't have one of these perfect forks and wish you had this one, in which case I'm sorry for you. Perhaps, like me, you do have a perfect fork, and you can share in its glory here.

One three pound box per month. Family of four, and I do a ton of curing -- bacon, smoked salmon, dried sausages.

What Andy said. I don't know a single bartender serving quality cocktails who uses mixers.

YUCK! Someone once tried to serve me Rare chicken. On purpose! It wasn't yucky at all: very clean and smooth. But -- for I'm sure purely cultural reasons -- I just couldn't relax and treat it like tasty food. It was RAW CHICKEN. I think this is how some of my customers feel when I offer them a cocktail with a raw egg in it.

I'm assuming "Arbderg" is a typo for Ardbeg?

Chicken sashimi. Just couldn't wrap my mind around that one.

I use google docs and Memento, an Android database app, for cocktail stuff. But I never try to do this with food recipes. I long ago gave up any confidence that I could keep on top of that chaos.

Well that's a pretty damned good thing to explore -- for at least a few more years. Granted, I have a complicated relation to the drink.

I like it.