Reefpimp

I went out and bought 12 big stainless steel dog bowls for a gumbo feed. Only had one guest refuse to eat out of that container. A couple even asked me where I got the amazing bowls. "Petsmart." Eyebrow-lifting ensued.

I ws thinking along the same lines myslef, but I was going to take a couple of salmon skins and overlap them by 1cm or so, glue them together and then roll my shellfish farce in that and poach in a fumet; kind of a seafood galantine. Maybe crisp the skin by rolling it around on a hot griddle right before serving.

I have recently come around to this way of thinking. Yes, the sizzle and snap of a fast sear is impressive and certainly time-saving--but braising is, to me, slow food; and if you're going to cook slow food, why rush any given step? For the Maillard reaction, all you have to do is get the salient protiens above 300* f or so. That's it. I sometimes flour and sometimes don't, but I find that as my searing temps come down, I'm flouring more and more often. Burned flour==gross. Toasted flour=/= gross. Flour won't scorch on a 350* surface unless it's there a long, long time. TK is the closest thing to Gospel I've got. But even Matthew, Mark, Luke and John disagree on specifics.

Mr Keller flours his meat for braises when he browns. Perhaps--and I'm gonna just throw this up there-- he knows something we don't.

I don't have time to go trolling for it, but wasn't there a guy offering some sort of reward for a replicable, low-cost system for sous-vide? Does that ring a bell with anyone else? BTW every time I see an old trolling motor for sale on Craigslist I think it would be perfect for kitchen use....

Yeah, sorry, kids. My whole haul came to about ninety dollars. I went back this morning to see if I could score some more stuff (for my sister) and they were cleaned out. But I did get a little cut glass pickle dish (not really, lol) and a half-dozen stainless Chinese knives with phenolic handles for 8 bucks apiece. Stocking-stuffers.

I went to Delaney's surplus last week. This is a place where you can find everything form an incomplete Pratt&Whitney radial engine from some obsolete military aircraft to #22 fishhooks. Given an unlimited amount of welding rod, and an unlimited amount of time, a fella could make a career out of making things out of other things found in this place. 27 acres of. . . crap. But I digress. Inside the building, I came across two boxes filled with restaurant stainless!! So I got: 1x20" dia. bowl 2x 5-qt double-boilers 6 hotel pans, 2 each in 2", 4", and 6" depths 6 half-pans, ditto 6 third pans, ditto 6 quarter pans, ditto 3 sixths pans, 1 each in above depths Perforated inserts for each of the above to use them as steamers Lids for all the above 3 12" sautee pans, brand new with some kind of odd semi-nonstick one giant roaster, heavy-gauge aluminum, too big to fit into a standard home oven skimmer, two ladles, giant spoons slotted and not A bunch of round bains-marie and cast-aluminum salad dressing containers, to be used as flowerpots and utensil holders All for two bucks a pound. GO ME!!111!!

Two thoughts occur to me: One, a liquid surrounded by another liquid forms a sphere (surface tension equalizing in all directions, I'd guess). Not a lot of opportunity for mechanical bonding on a spherical surface. B) Given that emulsification and consistency are closely related but are in fact two separate things, are there emulsifying agents and thickening agents that are incompatible with each other and combinations to be avoided?

Last night I braised a couple of boned Canada goose legs , just to see what I came up with. Turned out to be a pretty good idea! I flamed them with a little gin, added maybe that amount again of sherry, then some duck stock with the caremelized mirepoix and the whole thing then simmered for about two hours. I ended up with about a pint and a half of braising liquid, which I really didn't want to use all of; so I just ladled some off into a smaller pan and reduced slightly, added a spoonful of duck demi, and finished with beurre manie. Worked a treat. Point being, just because you have a given amount of something, that doesn't mean you have to use all of it right then. I still have a cup or so of very intensely-flavored liquid that can be the base for a quick sauce some time when I'm running behind or whatever. Which reminds me, I need to go buy more ice-cube trays.

Mist them with a little bit of fresh water before putting them in the bag. 2-3 days they should be bright and sunny.

Well, I used to work as a logger; I was a soldier who served (if not with distinction then) with pride; I've shot competitively for years; I've worked construction; took Thai boxing for several years; I worked as a Mississippi River deckhand for years--in fact, I daily used to take a poo, on a tugboat, while smoking a cigar and reading a gun magazine (no lie. :forserious: ).I like quiche in all its forms. I used to stop in at the local jazz bar in Minneapolis while waiting to get on the boat, and have soup and salad as my midday meal. Often washed it down with a glass of Sauterne. Dated a couple of the waitresses there, too. I don't understand how in the world food is either manly or feminine. It's a stupid question, and a divisive one. It impedes the propogation of the species and interferes with tranquil digestion. Sorry for the bump but I wanted to get it off my chest.

As experimental as I've got in my life, I've never had the true and authentic gelato. My sister says it tastes and feels like really good ice cream but with the fruity flavor intensity of a first-class sherbet or sorbet. Is that close? Am I missing out?

...You make fresh pizza dough and tagliatelli when the person you're seeing mentions that they haven't eaten Italian in a while, and is disproportionately impressed that you got this done while she was showering and getting dressed to go out. (we went out anyway, I'm not stupid)

I do, but in the kitchen. When they have a back cover I like, I buy two issues so I can frame the back of one, and keep the other to use. Some issues are better than others, true; but none are in point of fact bad. I have ::leaves room to check:: 13 different ones up. Didn't think I had that many. Used to have a bunch of salt&pepper shakers in various vegetable shapes, but I gave my collection to my sister for a 10th anniversary present. Now the only non-print art I have is the kitchen design itself (poor) and the knives I made out of Damascus billets I bought from Dixie Gun Works a couple years ago. Got a French knife with a curly maple handle and a gun-blued bolster (soldered on) and a small santoku with a cocobolo handle and no bolster but a gun-blued blade.

No kidding ! Mine love the asparagus bottoms, too (if it came off the chopping block, it must be meat ! dogthink) so no waste there ← In my case it was my Nana's cat, Ike. Nana didn't believe in trimming the asparagus, just washing it, so when you ate it from the top down, you'd get to a point where the last bite left a fuzz of silky fibres attached to the tough "butt end". Ike's idea of heaven on a plate was all the stringy leftovers! I saw him go thru about 10 pieces at one time. He was a GREAT cat! ← I can only imagine what his litterbox smelled like.

I'm afraid of eating them because of the pesticides and fertilizers sprayed on the crops the deer eat; which would be concentrated in the liver and kidneys. I'll use the heart, though. Great on its own or as a reinforcement in stock.

The book The Omnivore's Dilemma talks about how it's more the ratio between Omega-3 and Omega-6 that are currently thought to be important for good health.

The only thing I get obsessive about not wasting is anything I've caught/shot/trapped or otherwise killed myself. I have my deerhides tanned, I've pulled the "achilles" tendons out and cured them and used them as thread, I've splintered the thigh bones after I've used them to make stock and then carved needles out ot the bones... about all I won't use are the kidneys, livers (organophosphates, anyone? The deer I shoot eat mostly corn and soybeans) and the brains (CWD, similar to BSE); if I could stand the way it smelled I'd render the tallow and use it for soap.

Actually, you did. Be glad they didn't take you up on their offer.

BryanZ, next time somebody in your area cocks an eyebrow at MG techniques, you can point to a homegrown (Paducah, KY) product: Dippin' Dots. They would never have happened without liquid nitrogen. It seems to me that a lot of the fuss over MG cookery is from old-school chefs who feel they are about to be made irrelevant; or from organic/Slow Food/Eat Your View purists who think that if there's plastic or chemicals involved ANYWHERE it is de facto eeeevil. It's just a new set of methods; the food is still the food. Lamb is still lamb, whether you braise it in Le Crueset or food-grade polyfilm. Ya know? I'm interested in the new techniques, try them out as I can, and consider them useful tools to have in my toolbox (so to speak). But whether or not what comes out of the immersion circulator is good to eat is still up to the cook. The chemicals and machines don't in and of themselves mean anything; they're just another way to manipulate the food to get to an end-product.

That happened to me when I was about 6 or 7. I can still taste it. How did the first peoples ever figure out how to make them taste good?

Heat is heat. One should be able to tell what's going on by listening to the food as it hits the pan, by how fast or slow it's cooking--I've had some truly memorable meals cooked on aluminum foil halfway up the side of a mountain. I think that if a person is going to call oneself a "chef" they need to be able to (In the words of one of my old sous-chefs) "cook out of a brown paper bag." He had trained as a cook on a guided missile frigate, and when I asked him what they did when it was blowing Force 11 for days on end and they couldn't light the fires in the galley, he said that they cooked in the engine room. That there was a propellor shaft bearing that ran hot enough to heat kettles of soup on, and they would use the turbochargers on the engines to get sautee pans hot enough to warm up minute steaks. Nothing fancy, but enough to get something hot into the crew.He never had a lot of patience with me when I'd start whining.

"Why, you could eat off that deck!""Yes... yes you could...." I dropped my sextant into a pot of marinara once, but no harm was done to either.

Worst thing so far this year (or maybe it just seems like the worst because it was so recent: A jacquarded "Calamari steak" from Trader Joe's. Although once cut into strips and stir-fried, it made it all the way to the poor end of mediocre. MY roommate in Florida went absolutely-bay-leaf happy on the "lasagne" she made me on my birthday. Calling it a lasagne is to do a disservice to every Stouffer's frozen layered pasta product out there. All I could taste was bay and pork bones. Although I must say, my burps were a delight for the next two days.

I ain't ready to give up my Spicy Chicken Crunchwrap, No-Nacho-Sub-Shredded, Add Guacamole yet. They can have that when they pry it out of my cold dead hands.