RETREVR

I like mine underneath a ribeye.

It is pretty hard to overpower cilantro. Are you talking about mint and ginger with cilantro? Seems like such a dish would already have a ton of flavor elements that may not redily welcome rum. Who knows though....I have had crazier things that work. The last time I used rum I seared a pork tenderloin, finished it in the oven, removed when done, I think I tossed in some shallots, deglazed with dark rum, added pan drippings, a splash of grade B maple, reduced, dollop of home made peach preserve, and swirled in a little butter. It rocked.

If you leave saurkraut on the heat for an extended amount of time it will start to turn brown.

The potato salad usually contains a dressing of rendered bacon fat and red wine vinegar. The kraut you are talknig about....is it the red cabbage? To make the red cabbage, you use a mixture of red wine vinegar and brown sugar(and I think diced onion) in a big pot. Simmer for a few minutes and then fill the pot with shredded red cabbage and cover. Stir it once in a while, but try to keep it covered so it steams. I think it takes 10 to 20 minutes, untill it softens and wilts. I have never made the regular white saurkraut. It is basically pickled cabbage.

I use a $10 steel crepe pan...well seasoned. http://fantes.com/crepe.htm#steel The first crepe goes in the trash...always. You will not need to lube the pan after the first crepe. To tell if the pan is hot enough, hold it up to your ear....you will hear it. Make your batter a tiny bit thick and let it rest several hours. You can always stir(not wisk) a little liquid into it to thin it if you need to. Find the right sized ladle(or cup) for the pan. Pour and swirl. As the edge dries and lifts, use you fingers to peel the crepe up. Lift the pan off the fire and flip the crepe by hand. Or Use the plug in gadget. Read their directions.

The topic of the thread asks for what, in your opinion, is the ultimate knife. I respond that my Japnese knives are the ultimate knife. Then you tell me I can't say that, and that there really is no ultimate knife, and go into a rant about how your coarse edged knives are better for allround kitchen use and that polished edges are for making sushi. Give me a break. Humor me. Which Japanese blades have you used? You want to see a damaged blade? Try putting a 15 degree bevel on a Henkels. Those old Sabatiers have quite a lot in common with some of the Japanese blades. They do not have as much belly as a German knife. They, like many gyutous, are high carbon and thin bladed. Mr. Kinsey, I am sure your custom knives are just dandy. They are designed for a course edge. Fine. You like them, and that is great. I just don't think you are qualified to compare the performance of western knives to that of a quality Japanese blade. I may be wrong, but you show no understanding of how well the Japanese blades perform.

If we don't have a consensus and we don't have to agree, then the jury is indeed still out. What I am attempting to do is inject a bit of balance into some absolutist comments. I am quite confident that we will never be able to say that one style of knife is definitively "better" than another. You know that your Japanese style knives are far superior to your Western style knives for you. This could have to do with your preferences, or it could have to do with the fact that you're spending around 500% more for your Japanese knives than you are for the Western knives. Either way, others may just as certainly know that their antique French carbon steel knives are better than their Japanese knives, or that their custom extra-heavy Western-style knives are better. Where I think you will agree is that everyone has to find the style of knife that works with their hand, with their habits of use and with their preferences in a cutting tool. I have been given to understand that a finer grained, more polished edge makes it more likely that the carbide at the edge will "pop out" of the matrix, thus dulling the edge. I occasionally use a ceramic steel because the main action of the steel is to straighten the edge. To the extent that any polishing occurs, it is to portions of the edge that in some microscopic way are less likely to respond to steeling. Any time you deviate from a pure push cut -- which is to say, any time there is any sideways motion of the blade at all relative to the direction of the cut -- you are making a sawing motion. It is one of the two fundamental kinds of cutting motion: push cut and saw. I find it extremely hard to believe that you employ push cutting exclusively (in fact, I think this is imposible in most kitchen situations other than a few highly specific tasks). ← A jury has to come to a consensus. That is what I am saying...There is no jury, because we don't have to come to a consensus. Nothing absolutist about that. The only thing I am absolutely sure of is that my Japenese knives outperform my western knives. My main workhorse gyutou is a 10.5" Tojiro that costs $74.70. This is far less than what my Wusthof costs. I'm really not following your terminology. I have never heard of push cutting and sawing. Is this somehow related to chopping and slicing? Isn't this pocket knife terminalogy? I assure you that my fragile Japanese knives outperform my German knive for both chopping and slicing. I mean they work better for me...even though I don't think it is really that subjective. I use my Wusthof for hard squash and the like. Out of curiosity, which Japanese knives had you tried?

Chinese cleavers are a valuable tool that have been around for hundreds of years. The santuko is the latest flavor. Sure, the cook that buys into all the marketing is going to buy whatever the food chanel throws at them every couple of years. However, tell a 6th generation Japanese knifemaker that his product is a fad. There is no jury on this one. We don't have to have a consensus. I know that my Japanese knives are far superior to my western knives. You don't have to agree. A toothier edge responds better to steeling because it requires steeling more often. A polished edge is less susceptible to abraision wear. If you like tooth then why would you use a very fine ceramic steel? I "saw" with a bread knife. I have not needed to to "saw" anything with a Japanese knife.

http://www.instawares.com/pizza-peels.4-499-3.0.0.2.htm This was the first page that came up on a search. I do not endorse, nor have I ever done business with this company. They have nice wood peels though

Exactly, although I suspect the shipping charges from the UK to Canada might be a touch prohibitive ← You want wood. Metal is for removing a pizza. You can trick the pizza back onto the wood, or pull the stone out of the oven. A metal peel is sticky. You can also draw a circle on a wood peel so you don't make a pie that is too big for your stone.

Usualy a 3000. I need to get an even finer stone, like an 8000. Some of the Japanese guys use unbelievably fine stones. The point is that after you aquire the edge, you use the fine stones to polish it. I suppose if you just spent $1000 on a aoko honyaki yanagi, you would want to use the finest stones possible and keep a mirror edge. If you don't let your knives get dull, you don't usualy have to use a coarse stone unless you damage the edge. Most nights (while watching TV) I will feel the edges on my primary working knives to see if they are smooth. If they are, I will give a swipe on a fine stone or give them a strop on an old leather belt.. If they are not smooth, or are dull, I will spend a few minutes and sharpen them. A dull knife that has not been worked lately can take a lot of time. I usualy don't have more than 5 minutes, because I keep them in good shape. This gives you a lot of insight as to the nature and character of the steel and edge of your various knives. I have a steel at the kitchen but don't cary it in my bag anymore. I am looking at getting a MAC boning knife that they call the Garishiki macBON-60. I also wouldn't mind having a very large MAC chefs knife. The knife I linked to is 240mm, which is the absolute most versitile size, but I would not mind having a big thundering MAC.

Lets not forget that harder steel can hold a more accute edge which gives better cutting performance. Chipping can be an issue. I use hard Japanese steel 99% of the time. If I need to chop hard stuff I use my Wusthof....even then I usualy end up with a tweeked edge. It depends on the high carbon steel we are talking about. Most of the high carbon Japanese steels can be hardened way beyond what you would find in German stainless. Even very hard carbon steel is sometimes fairly easy to put an edge on, and keeps that edge for a very long time. Carbon steel like old hickory knives is soft, easy to sharpen, and will not hold an edge very long. In my book the trade-off with hard Japanese carbon steel is cosmetic.

You need a peel

Random responses: Full Carbon is misleading. A high carbon knife will only have around 1% Carbon. I know what you are saying though...It is simply a carbon knife and not a stainless knife. Quality high carbon knives generaly take an edge with less work and keep the edge longer than a typical Solingen steel. Japanese Knives being a trend? Sure they are trendy right now. Once you own a good one, there is little chance that you will go back to German knives. The blades can be more brittle since they are harder(generaly) and thus can hold a finer edge. I still use my Wusthof for brutal chores. By the way, most of the fine Japanese knives are carbon steel. You do see a lot of super hard high tech stainless knives, shun being one of them. Global. Owners of Global knives are 87% more likely to own a Wiemerhiner than non-global owners. They are decent knives if you can stand to look at them, but Shun is far superior Ceramic knives are short lived and for home use. Keep one around for tomato. Sharpening. Some japanese chefs will sharpen every day. Keep in mind they are using incredibly fine stones. I touch up my blades at least once a week and hardly ever steel. A steel will not put and edge on a knife no matter how long you work at it. All it does is line up the edge. If you have a good edge, a steel will bring it back. If you are a home cook and have a good carbon blade, I could believe that you need to sharpen only rarely. Especially if you have a grip of them and use all of them. I can cut in one day, what a home cook may cut in two months. The finest knife I have ever owned is this one. It is Japanese and it is carbon steel. It is made by Watenabe. http://watanabeblade.com/english/pro/gyu1.jpg

That is like asking what your favorite color is. It all depends on the occaison, and how it is prepared. I had a very fast tuesday night dinner of simple cod that considering the context could not be beat. Halibut and sea bass are pretty dammed good.

When you buy a santuko and know how to spell it. You drizzle olive oil over everything and refer to it as EVOO. You call things confit that aren't really. You call sauted greens braised. You refer to the fruit you are eating by the latin name. You consider cheese to be dessert. You use French words to describe mundane food.

I have never been a home cook so here is a thought from a different prespective. I was in the bookstore the other day and saw a used copy of the CIA textbook. It is really a reference and "cooking amnual for dummies".

For breakfast I rolled out some fettucini extra thin and had it with butter and jam.

Simply goat cheese

We used to make something like this in highschool. We used a superfine parchment for the wrapper. For the interior, most vegetables will work but we would use canibus most of the time.

Poke it with a fork. Salt.

I made a metric shit-ton of curried butternut squash soup....it was good....especially with my french rolls that had just come out of the oven. Although....I had a few cheetos that were pretty dammed good also.

We used to smoke prime rib every day out in the alley behind the kitchen. This was downtown and we never had one dissapear. hmmmm, I wonder if they will be smoking one tommorow? I am in a catering kitchen right now. It is in a 80s circa building with the skewed roof line wich allows for a row of windows. It really helps my mood. We have a wireless network in the kitchen right now, although I don't use it(my laptop is way too old). We sublet from an HP engineer that has a bakery but doesn't need the rest of the kitchen. We are in the process of building a new kitchen right now. It will be pretty basic. The bakers table is right in the middle of the kitchen, right where you enter. I fought to change that. The bakery needs to be near the ovens and out of the way of everything else. I think that I can rearange it once we get up and running. The cool thing is that we will have an overhead garrage door adjacent to the kitchen. We will be able to back a trailer in and load-up catering gear. We will a have walk-in fridge and freezer. One thing that I am pushing for is to use one of our reach-in fridges for outgoing finished products (near the bay door). This will prevent someone from overturning a tray of labor while rooting around in the walk-in. One thing I suggested is that storage for pots and pans be closer to saute than to the dish area. My thinking is that the higher paid saute cook spends less time walking and more time cooking. The inverse is true for the disher. One thing I have never had on a line is a good place to put my knife. The house knives get stuck betwene tables...which is un sanitary, and the personal knives get put up on a shelf with the plates....which is unsafe. If you are going to integrate utensile wells, it would not be much of a stretch to accomodate a few knives for the line cooks. Perhaps each station could have a little three slot knife block made out of a sanitary material. The station where the desserts are plated should really have a bath for wetting and heating a slicer. Here is a must have: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...4350508364&rd=1 .............and a cotton candy machine.

That is sort of where I was going with my dish with the smoke salmon. I saw Flays loin that was rare(raw) and sliced four inches thick. I was thinking that if he sliced it differently it would be better.

I was thinking pemmican was more of a jerky, but it is a dried meat blended with berries and fat. http://www.recipesource.com/munchies/snacks/01/rec0108.html Tatsuta is cubes of meat marinated in a soy sauce mixture, coated in flour and fried. Very simple, very tasty. You can use other meats, even chicken. This is the first recipe I came across...there may be better ones. http://www.kikkoman.com/cgi-bin/rcp.cgi?re...d+daikon+radish