chefzadi

Yes it is not knew to me. But this is what I appreciate about egullet the most. The different levels of experience and the clear expression that experience or expertise for that matter doesn't necessarily equate with passion for food or learning. I apologize if I sounded dismissive in any way.

The butter should emulsify into the sauce. If it doesn't something went wrong.

Jus isn't a modern development. Jus traditionally referred to pan juices from roasted meats and chicken. Beef bouillon and beef consomme are made from the meat. The contemporary versions of jus (well I've seen parsley jus on menus ). But the type of jus that Ducasse is doing is a new name for a sauce making method that isn't entirely new. Maybe he's the first to make it public.

Okay. You roast the bones, raw bones in the oven for browning for a brown chicken stock. You don't use the bones from an already cooked roast chicken to make stock. Keep us up to date about your progress.

I suppose in theory you could use the bones from a roast chicken to make stock, but there wouldn't be much flavor. There is no such thing as a medium stock, unless you want to make one up at home and call it that. If you practice your knife skills you should be able to cleanly debone anything with a clean finished product. If you don't have the knife skills and don't care to or can't learn and are bothered by and at a a loss to do with the shreds of meat you are left with, than I'd say don't do it. Just use the carcass or the whole chicken like a lot of home cooks do. You start with raw bones, not bones from already cooked chicken. As regards to the brown stock, I think that the egullet culinary institute has the answers you are looking for. It is more than sufficient for the home cook. I think the tutorial is really worth a read for you. Not that I don't want to answer your question here. But ecgi is worth alook.

It depends entirely upon their usage, IMHO. Raw Bones stock would be a better base stock for things like risotto, where I would want OTHER flavors to be brought forward (such as mushrooms or asparagus) but a Roast Bone stock would be preferable in a soup. It doesn't mean that one is better than another, just that there are ultimately going to be different uses depending on how the stock was originally made. ← Forgive a stupid question, but where do you get the roasted chicken bones? I mean, are roasted bones from roasted chickens, or are they from a deboned chicken and then roasted with aromatics? If I have 2 chickens and I want a light stock and a darker chicken stock, would I roast one and boil the other? then boil the bones of the roastd chicken and then reduce both? Also curious about the beef stocks. I've read the lesson. I think I'm having logistics problems. thanks ← It comes from roasting raw bones, carcasses. Light stock whether it's chicken, beef or veal= no roasting of the bones Brown stock= roasted bones. If you want to make a light chicken stock for the homecook you can use the whole chicken. If you want a brown chicken, veal or beef stock brown the bones, carcass. No such thing as a stupid question (well most of the time ) Stupid answers are found in abdundance though.

French kitchen- Chicken bones, no skin, no meat, add the neck intact if you want. White chicken stock is not used much in restaurant applications. Brown bones, make stock use for onion soups in homier restaurants. Reduce brown chicken stock to make chicken demi-glace (add some mushrooms perhaps for sauce forestiere), serve with Roast Chicken. Add skin, feet, meat, wings, beaks, feathers if you like. But the method above is the French version. Of course not the only version. Enjoy! P.S. No salt in stocks.

I'll add to your observations about the context of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters. The fresh fruit to me is a "message" as part of her "mission" to educate, enlighten and further the "eating fresh and seasonally" mantra. Likewise in the now abandoned Louvre restaurant there was a mission to send out a message about Food, the seasons and art. Chez Panisse occupies a specific place. She introduced this concept to an America that was for the most part unaware of it. When I attended culinary school in Paris part of the curriculum included lectures and demos on food as art. We even went on a field trip to Monet's house in Giverny. The French chef is well aware of the relationship of food to art. Alot of France's greatest chefs come from the Burgundy and The Rhone where the terroir is quite fertile and the idea of eating seasonally has never quite gone away. Yes, the farmer's market in the Beaujolais (where the Rhone and the Burgundy meet) is still damn good, the cheeses are still made by little farmers, the milk is still raw... Even though it's a small village, there are enough citizens that make it worthwhile for the farmer's to still come. Of course this is particular slice of changing France. So if you judge the food on just it's merits alone as some have suggested. What would the French think about the food itself? Well it's already there in France isn't it? So if you add the Chef back to the food, outside of the Louvre what would her message and mission be in France? By the way the French are already used to eating fruit for dessert. Namely watermelon after Couscous.

But why wouldn't they, if the food was truly good? I think, or hope anyway, that if the food is good, people would come no matter what nationality the chef is. And I can think a few French restaurants in Paris, which get excellent reviews, whose Chef's are not French and no one seems to mind-- Le Timbre where the chef is English, La Cave Gourmand (American)--I'm sure there are others. Edited for typo. ← No it shouldn't matter. And in a sense it doesn't matter. But we are not talking about just any non-French chef. We are talking about a particular celebrity one named Alice Waters. Also the non-French chefs you mentioned, most likely did not walk into their current positions without some considerable work on the line in France.

Yes and no. The answer is not so simple. These are the border countries of France Andorra 56.6 km, Belgium 620 km, Germany 451 km, Italy 488 km, Luxembourg 73 km, Monaco 4.4 km, Spain 623 km, Switzerland 573 km. French regional cuisine is informed by this. Britanny is more celtic than it is French. If you go from there to Provence, it's almost like being in a different country. The cooking of the Pays Basque is different from the north. There is olive oil based regions and the butter regions. France was a colonial force as well. Parts of Africa, Asia, Polynesia,etc... The French colonizer was not as segregationist as say the Anglo one. French post-colononials were "welcomed" to France to do hard labor jobs mostly. But their children were accepted as French with all the benefits of being French, great FREE education being only one. France also has been invaded many times. To be French is not to be something "ethnically pure". A blond French couple would not be too surprised to have a child with dark hair. The model for what makes a pluralistic society is different over there. I might add that it is for the most part a quite peaceable one. Sometimes it is good look for what is missing in a country or culture. Sometimes it's better to look at what the country or culture has achieved. I might add all this "celebrating diversity" in America is relatively new.

Off topic a bit, but not so much really. The restaurant industry is like no other especially these days. The French chef of Los Angeles's top rated French restaurant who was creating very simple, modern French dishes was summarily dismissed in favor of a chef who had more "avant garde" style. The restaurant before was highly regarded and well recieved and on the surface by a all accounts a tremendous success. Why would the owner "play" around with something that was working so well? Who knows? The chef may be the most visible person in a restaurant, but please remember that they are other forces (egos) at play.

Yes Margaret and we talked about some of the economic reasons for that in other threads. The move away from agricultural to industry and the cost of doing business for the small business owner, etc. It's not that there aren't chefs who are capable of producing this sort of food in a restaurant or the French public wouldn't be appreciative of this type of cooking in a restaurant.

The French would easily have identified a category for a restaurant that was primarily about beautiful ingredients, very simply prepared, "shopping" rather than "cooking": Italian. ← The French would also identify it as home cooking especially in the Beaujolais for example. There is French restaurant food and there is French home cooking. When I go back to visit my maman I just go to the farmer's market and do very little to the ingredients. It's all very simple, green salad, good cheese, crusty bread (LIGHT on the inside), grilled meat (salt and pepper seasoned only), etc... Maybe I'll make a rabbit with mustard sauce if it was available and I felt like "cooking" more. We cook the same way in LA, but the ingredients aren't so good.

What, no mint leaf on top? Forget it! ← No mint, but I think you get a sprinkling of granola.

Someone asked if $500.00 shoes are worth it. Yes, I wear them to work everyday. Okay so they cost $450.00 and I've had them for years. So the cost per day comes out to nickles and dimes. I really like my shoes. I like great food prepared by a master chef even more than my shoes. But I bought my shoes before the second kid and before private school tuition for the first kid and nursery school for the second kid. (Those with children in a large metropolitan city in America can easily do the math on the costs of those alone). So would I give up sending my child to private school to eat out more often at better restaurants? NON! Would give up other little conveniences to eat out more often at better restaurants? Non. As much as I like great food prepared by a master chef I value my child's education more, the comfort and quality of life of my children more and I value my little conveniences more. So if money weren't as consequential to me. I'd be calling up Masa right now to make a reservation to see a master chef that is dedicated to his craft and art. It is not about comparing this piece of tuna to the one I had for cheaper at another place. It's the whole experience. As an industry professional I can only say that what Chef Masa Takayama is achieving and communicating with his cuisine is a born of hard work, non-stop persistence towards achieving perfection. It's a pain in the ass position to be in. There are easier ways to make money as a chef. Also sometimes when it's about the "best" ingredients. The ingredients fail the chef, the chef doesn't fail the ingredients. This is the "trap" of the claiming to use only the best ingredients. Mother nature is fickle and inconsistent at times. I'll eat my words later if he opens a Masa in Las Vegas.

How about combining the threads on stocks?

barnyard could be a combination of hay, leather and musky.

RE: Ludja's question "But given some of what you've said, could the cuisine be based on it merits or lack thereof primarily? If then, how would it be received? Would it just be too different from what is already there or would it be similar other cuisine in Paris?" Your question and my answer exist in a vacuum, becaue it is simply not the case that Chef Waters was even considering opening up a restaurant in France outside of a tourist attraction. (And I don't mean that in a disparaging way, I'm refering to the context) I haven't dined at her restaurants, nor have I read her cookbooks. I have visited her website and seen her menus. There is nothing on them that is necessarily similar or different from what is offered in Paris. Her menu wording is different from what a French Chef might call the components. (For instance Lucy's question, why call it a chutney, why not a salsa?) Her compositions aren't earth shatteringly out of this world that a Parisian wouldn't be able to identify (given a translated or recontextualized menu) what the components are rather easily. Let's assume her cooking techniques are solid (I have no reason to question that they wouldn't be, but I don't have first hand knowledge of them). Acting on this assumption I don't see anything on her menus that suggest that food wouldn't be good. How would the cuisine be received in Paris? My first question back would be, what is the point of having a California-French restaurant that emphasizes fresh local ingredients (terroir style) in Paris? She would have to get her fresh, seasonal produce locally or at least regionally or to take it further in country. (Isn't this her philosphy, correct me if I'm wrong. It seems to me that her approach to cooking is about the freshest, local ingredients and not neccessarily about pushing the envelope with innovation in other ways). Than in essence she has taken the California out of her California-French cuisine and she is left with French cuisine. So then my next question is, why would a Parisian or any other Frenchperson be interested in French food, expensive French food prepared by an American Chef? I ask my questions as a French diner. It goes without saying that the concept of eating seasonally and lighter dishes is already known in France. EDIT: to add local

By the French public? Other Chefs in France? The French press? Or the group that would likely be most represented in a Museum restaurant (Louvre or not) Tourists?

Is the Chinese Jujube the same as the Korean jujube? In America my wife has always heard Korean jujubes referred to as Korean dates. So they also considered Chinese olives? If so this olive is not related to the Mediteranean olives, at least not in tast, appearance, etc... Maybe they are botanically related.

A Derridian press spin: The center of the plate is unstable, it does not hold. That which is signified is between the lines, in the courses in between the next courses, where there is silence and the table setting is void. So the course is a plate and we look to the margins, the perimeter, the rim of the plate, we see the other that which has been silenced so long by an unstable center. So now the rim is on the center of plate. Here's your empty plate. Did you say, check please?" Do you have another egullet "contest" here?

Precocious= Young wine that has more complexity than expected Ponderous= complex, long finish ????????? Guessing here. But it sounds good to me. ;-)

Goes with my empty wallet ... but, isn't that so incredibly esoteric that someone will just have to give it a try, chefzadi? ← I'm practicing my press spin already! Extra heavy French accent here "Well you inseest I talk. How to talk about an expeRIENCE of what eez not there. To understand what eez there one must epxerience eet's absence. You're inseestance on talk is fueld by the ennui of those who eat too much and are blinder than the blind"

could an empty dish, somehow, provoke contemplation? ← Of course it could. But only a sucker would pay for it. ← The sucker also pays for lots of little vegetable "dusts" and dollops of "essences" lining the perimeter of a plate like a painter's palette. The flavors of so much dust and drippings arguably not contributing to the main ingredient. Assembly line cooking, lot's of little keebler elf fingers making the plate look pretty. The towers have fallen, but the extraneous garnishes are still there. But hey if the diner at that moment "experiences" food as art or art as food maybe it's money well spent for "jouissance."

How about empty dishes in a totally dark restaurant with a blind FOH.