paulraphael

I'd love to hear more about how someone would choose pellet vs. charcoal vs. wood.

Financier. Not just the traditional shape. It's the world's best pound cake. Also good for muffins. The batter's good for cake of any size or shape. Rarely comes up anymore; my girlfriend pilfers all the egg whites to make healthy stuff.

Strawberries, raspberries, pears, dates, figs, honey (ones with sharper, herbaceous flavors maybe), blood orange. Maybe goat cheese.

I checked my notes from ages ago and saw this method for thyme ice cream (~5g thyme / L ice cream): Add thyme to milk; heat to 180°F/82°C Take off heat and cover; hold 30 mins; strain Whisk in dry ingredients and yolks; cook Etc. I also worked some lemon zest into the sugar, which complemented the flavor The thyme flavor from this simple method was fantastic. If I do it again, I'll experiment with infusing the thyme into the fully-made mix in a sous-vide bag while cooking. It will be a longer time but a lower peak temperature. I'm hoping this works out; if not, I'll go back to infusing on the stovetop as a separate step. Thyme is relatively easy because it's so robust and stands up to heat and long cooking. This all gets more challenging with leafier herbs.

If you get your LBG from TIC gums or Modernist Pantry (I believe it's the same product) it can be hydrated at a 75°C. I like to use this stuff for the flexibility it offers. Let us know how the thyme flavor is.

Any thoughts on propane vs. Mapp gas? They seem to be pushing the latter, but it's more expensive and harder to find.

I love that the guy who plays the janitor / handyman is a Canadian celebrity chef.

Here's one. A close family friend was dining there when Perrier came into the dining room to talk to guests. My friend asked him to explain something on the menu. Perrier said something to the effect of, "if you need that explained, then perhaps you are in the wrong place." And he walked away. In other words, the kind of caricature of snooty French chefs that I remember from bad sit coms when I was a kid. This was shortly before the restaurant closed. I don't think Perrier talked to guests like this when he was well.

I don't think that's true. Fine dining is built on a precarious economic model. No one's figured out a good one. A restaurant like Per Se can have more people in the kitchen than in the dining room. Skilled people who are at the top of their industry. They're using the highest quality ingredients available (often investing in suppliers to just make those ingredients available) and putting together meals of over a dozen courses, each with multiple components with complex preparations. It's been common for restaurants in this category to grossly underpay staff, and still to lose money on the food. Profits often come from the wine list, where the markup can be several hundred percent and there's no labor. All it would take to create an $800 price tag is to break the broken model. Pay the staff what their worth. Give them reasonable work schedules and benefits. Mark up the food enough to pay for its preparation and the overhead. I don't know if that's what's going on at these restaurants. But that's all it would take. I wish there were other ways out. Not being a member of the oligarch class, I will not be enjoying one of these meals. Not being a fan of the oligarch class, I share the world's annoyance at the prices. But I see value in the preservation of this kind of cuisine as an art form. Not sure what the solution is here ... NEA grants?

Yup. And it's an industry with few role models who have that skill.

Sounds like an emulsifier problem more than a stabilizer problem. Still kind of surprising it would separate in the freezer. Did you cook all the ingredients when hydrating the LBG?

Here's a Paco vs. Ninja comparison at Modernist Pantry.

Always neat, unless in a cocktail. Some whiskeys, especially stronger ones, I add a few drops of water too. But this really isn't about dilution. Subjectively the whiskey tastes stronger after the drops go in, and the aromas bloom. I haven't read an explanation for this. I suspect it has to do with stuff being liberated at the interface of the high-concentration booze and the zero-concentration water. I have an Ardbeg Uigedal (sp?) and a knob creek single barrel that are both high proof, and that taste more full and balanced with a few drops added.

I believe the historical reason is that carrot cake was a 1970s attempt at healthy. Butter was being demonized so oil was seen as a good substitute. And carrots! Oil is also has a quasi-moisturizing effect, since it's liquid at room temperature. But you can get moisture in other ways, including from actual moisture. I'm making a carrot cake today, as it turns out. I've been working on a recipe that replaces just over 60% of the oil with brown butter. There's also sour cream and trimoline for added moisture. And cardamom. It's my favorite version by miles.

I haven't been following the creami thread, is there concern that it doesn't grind as fine as a Paco? Maybe. I haven't experimented enough yet. Thyme is a burly herb compared with things like mint and basil; I've found that it infuses nicely on the stove when you cook ice cream the old fashioned way. My curiosity with sous vide is about 1) is there an ideal extraction temperature to get the best flavors, and is it close enough to the ideal cooking temperatures for dairy proteins? and 2) can you capture more vibrant flavors by infusing in a sealed bag? The sealed bag aspect is often the most interesting. You can retain so many delicate aromas when you use sv for things like seafood and vegetable stocks. But sometimes you can get more than you bargain for (garlic!) As far as temperatures, I've been reading all the food science papers I can find, and there's very little guidance on temperature vs. flavor for herbs. You could fill a library with papers on this topic regarding teas and coffees. One of these summers I'll have to do a whole lot of tedious experiments. Please post your results!

One thought: if you're mostly making ice creams and sorbets with a Paco Jet, you get most of its advantages if you serve right after processing. While you can certainly make ice cream ahead of time to store in the freezer, you'll then have to formulate your recipes much more like conventional ones, in order to preserve the texture. You won't be able to do magic tricks like making a sorbet out of 100% fruit unless you're serving it immediately.

Most freezers should get that cold. That's the temperature I keep my freezer and it's not a fancy one.

Funny, I always do the opposite. When I see a recipe like carrot cake that uses oil, I see how much butter I can substitute. Butter tastes better. Especially if you brown it. I'll get additional moisture from water in added dairy (yogurt, sour cream, creme fraiche etc.) or by subbing in a sugar syrup (honey, trimoline).

Same Sorrel. She's doing something really clever by taking advantage of the Paco Jet. By grinding up the herbs after they're frozen solid, she's not allowing the enzymes to go to work and brown leaves (and wreck the flavors). The enzymes are inactive at those low temperatures. It's a similar idea to what Dave Arnold does with his nitro muddling technique for cocktails. My approach to herbs in ice cream is always changing. I'm a little surprised by how adamant my earlier posts are in this thread; some of these herb flavors—especially mint—are the most challenging to get right in my experience. Mint is just so incredibly delicate. Lauren Eldridge's approach should work with mint, but only with a Paco Jet or equivalent. Next week I'm actually visiting a consulting client on-site to help him work out a process for fresh mint flavor. He's opening a liquid nitrogen ice cream shop, so we're hoping to work out a process that takes advantage of the LN2. Probably will share some elements of the Dave Arnold and Lauren Eldridge methods.

Yeah, when I got much above 70% in my pizza attempt days, the dough became unmanageable. My kung fu wasn't good enough. Kitchen ended up looking like a kindergarten craft project gone wrong, and there was lots of yelling.

This was my idea of heaven when I was a teenager growing up in Chicago. Of course back then, the only thing I wanted from food was MORE. I can't eat this stuff anymore. It doesn't even register as pizza.

I'd like to see a side-by-side comparison of the Nemo, the Paco Jet, and the Ninja. Not holding my breath ... probably not too many people have all 3.

I convert almost every recipe to grams. I found a downloadable table online years ago, and have added to it and changed some of the values based on my own measurements. It annoys me to have to do this. I'd rather punish publishers and never buy a book that's so retrograde as to only have cup and teaspoon measures. But alas, in some cases there's no better book. I don't like volume measurements at all, even in metric. You've got a scale; why not just weigh your liquids? Measuring cups are all wildly inaccurate anyway. The exception to all this is cocktails. Even the most science-minded mixologists have found that the old-time volume measures work best for booze. I also sometimes use measuring spoons for ingredients like leavening, if I'm in a hurry and accuracy isn't important (pancakes, etc.). Breaking out the 0.01g scale for this stuff can be a bit time consuming.

Since discovering sherry vinegar I almost never reach for regular red wine versions. This palomino vinegar is a great all-purpose choice, and costs around 72¢ an ounce. Makes everything better. One red wine vinegar I still keep around, mostly for certain kinds of vinaigrettes, is this Grenache vinegar. Very bright and fruity, in a way that sherry vinegar never is. But it's over the budget, especially if you include shipping (they have it on Amazon for about $1.40/oz last I checked).

My policy is to cook the meat properly, and send the barbarians to the microwave. Walk of shame.