paulraphael

Thanks for posting, JoNorvelle. The one remaining question I have is about time spent at temperature. Pasteurization works by heating milk for a specific amount of time, presumeably to minimize effects on flavor. For example, flash pasteurization heats milk very briefly to minimize flavor effects. Standard pasteurization today heats milk to around 161°F for 15 seconds; UHT pasteurization to 275°F for one second. I'd be curious to know if you pick up any cooked flavors by heating to 185 and holding for a minute (a slightly exaggerated mimicking of making custard with a low number of yolks). I might try this myself.

Nonfat dry milk can take on an off flavor. I'm guessing it's something oxidizing from age or bad storage. In my recipes I usually include a note to sniff the dry milk for signs of any lack of freshness. I can't taste it in the ice cream, even in delicate flavors. The best pastry chefs in the country use it. On the other hand, I'm pretty sensitive to the flavor of overcooked milk. Edited to add: a lot of nonfat dry milks have whey and other ingredients in them. I look for brands that are 100% milk.

A couple of general thoughts on Japanese knives ... First, consider any recommendations of specific brands to have an expiration date. Like maybe a year. The best knives go through a cycle: an insider discovers a knife that's newly available (in the U.S. or wherever) and which outperforms everything else in its price range. It gets cult status, and then it gets widely known, and then the price goes up. It's not a great value anymore. The Tojiro knives mentioned here were THE knives several years ago. They cost in the $50 or $60 range, and outperformed knives at twice the price. Word got out, and now they cost over twice as much. To their credit, Tojiro did improve the finish of the knives, but they are not the knockout value that they once were. A year after the price hike, Korin started imported knives under their house name Togiharu, and these became the next value leader. I don't know the status of these knives today, since I haven't been shopping. This happens at the high end also. I bought an Ikkanshi Tadatsuna knife, because its performance was the same as that of the much more expensive Suisin wa gyuto. Chefs were flocking to the Tadatsuna for a year or so. Now that knife costs as much as a Suisin, and everyone's buying something else. The new contenders are every bit as good; they just cost less. For now. Unrelatedly, you want to consider just how Japanese in styling you want to go. Many of the knives that people buy here are designed and made exclusively for export to the West. Shun, for example, is designed for American and European cooks who don't want to relearn how to use a knive. They have much thicker, more durable blades than the higher performance Japanese knives. They hold up to European knife techniques. People who are willing to learn new techniques—both for cutting and for sharpening—can use much thinner, higher performance knives. Both paths are legitemate and present different sets of tradeoffs. You just want to know which is your own camp so you don't buy wrong knife.

First, check out the thread on Alan Ducasse's method for cooking a thick steak. A lot of other methods get thrown in for comparison. Piles of information. Second, I'd suggest being warry of grass-fed beef. It's great when it's great, which is occasionally. Most of U.S. pastureland gets way less than 12 months of green grass. This means a significant amount of a steer's diet will be hay or sillage, which contributes little flavor or marbling: the worst of both worlds. I've given up on the many grass feeding ranches here in the north east. The best I've had is from Hearst Ranch in central California, where they have 12 months of green. That was great, but a completely different great from high end of prime, grain-finished beef (preferably with a lot of dry age). The latter is hard to find retail in most parts of the country, unless you mail order it. But it remains my favorite. Like a lot of people I'm not a proponent of grilling good quality beef. Grilling is about adding gobs of char and smoke flavor. It's not subtle. I love a nice grilled piece of meat, but when I get the really good stuff, it gets sauteed with butter, or cooked sous vide, with a pan sauce served on the side. No smoke or fire gets near it.

I'm not sure I understand the advantages of the milk heating method. I actually like to cook the milk as little as possible, in order to preserve it's flavor. I'm not fond of the flavor of cooked milk. To increase solids, just add nonfat dry milk. It's what all the pastry chefs I know do. In my own recipes I use 20 to 30g per Kg of mix, depending on the solids added by other ingredients.

Has anyone tried using a Vita Prep to pulverize pistachios? What about toasting them, and then blending them at high speed with the milk or cream? If I had the machine I'd try...

My best flavor this year is one I call Quartet of Dark Sugars. The flavor comes from the sweeteners: dark muscovado sugar, caramel, maple syrup, and chestnut honey. There's also salt and a bit of vanilla, just because those flavors blend so well. It's not overly sweet; I keep the total sugar levels relatively low. The honey includes some inverted sugar, which helps suppress the freezing point at at lower sugar levels. There's ample bitterness from the chestnut honey and the caramel, and a sense of a lot of layers. People tell me it's full of familiar flavors that they can't quite name. And that it's grown-up's ice cream ... it takes a bit or two to decide you like it.

I estimate that there's just over 110mg calcium in this recipe from the cream, which wouldn't be enough. I did some calculations and came up with the following: 175g heavy cream 30g liqueur 15g sugar 9g calcium gluconate-lactate 1g salt 100g dark chocolate, chopped This is assuming the mixture sold as gluconate-lactate is 50:50. This brings the total calcium to just below where it was with the chloride recipe (I didn't even take the cream into account when I worked it out before). I'll see how making spheres from liquid ganache goes. If I flub that, then I'll try the freezer molds. Thanks for all the great advice.

This may be the simplest solution. I should probably try it before the others. The recipe could stay the same; it will be liquid enough when it's still warm. Is this true? Does all the chloride get rinsed off? I thought spheres made this way would continue to thicken over time. Especially with ganache, since the cream must have some calcium in it. If this isn't an issue I'll try standard spherification. If not I'm interested in other sources of calcium, like the lactate Tri 2 Cook mentioned.

That sounds great, Robert, but it's a different dessert. It also sounds harder, not easier. Hand-rolling to make smooth balls was one part of my process I'm trying to eliminate.

Well, I like the idea of avoiding the calcium chloride flavor. In the chocolate it just tasted like salt, but it ruined the fruit. Do the lactate and gluconate not have flavor? Are there problems with making those substitutions? I'd be grateful for recommendations on sphere molds. never used them. Sounds like they're easier Than i had assumed.

I thought about freezing in molds but was hoping for something easier. I don't want to use xanthan because i want to mimimally influence the texture when it's melted. I just want it to adhere to iteself better so it's not just a mess when making the balls. If I could use a mellon baller that would be great. No unpleasant taste in the chocolate from the calcium chloride, but I made some spherized straweberry this morning that tasted like road salt. It's an acquired taste.

So, half a decade or so after everyone got sick of spherification I decided to start doing it. I needed to bring something to an erotic dessert party, and thought chocolate truffles that explode in the mouth would be the ticket. It worked pretty well. People loved them, and made incredible faces, wondering about what was going on in there. One friend said they were like "yolks of the ganache vulture" ... a name that has stuck. Unfortunately, making them was a gross process. My assumption that a mellon baller would work for scooping the cold ganache into the alginate was thwarted by their crumbly texture. I ended up forming the balls by hand, which left me looking like I was covered in poop. Here's the recipe (it's for reverse spherification): 175g heavy cream 30g liqueur 15g sugar 3.2g calcium chloride 100g dark chocolate, chopped The chocolate is chilled in the freezer before making balls, and then soaked in hot water to melt the centers before serving. Two thoughts I had are substituting invert syrup for the sugar, and adding gelatin (enough to give them better adhesion while cold, but not so much as to thicken them noticeably while melted). Any better ideas?

A few words on the actual mixer problems ... I think the majority of mixers break from abuse. Few people understand how fragile the transmission of a planetary mixer is compared with the direct drives of machines like blenders and food processors. You can demolish a 90 Quart hobart by throwing frozen sticks of butter into it ... it doesn't happen often because the people who own these know how to use them. I don't think this is the case among people here on egullet, but if you read some of the complaints elsewhere on the web, the posters don't inspire much confidence. A source of real mixer problems is that KA doesn't instruct their customers to properly break in the mixers. I've heard from more than one technician that the food-grade grease in the gear housing is extremely viscous until it warms up. In a new mixer it will have settled into the bottom or sides of the gear box where it is relatively useless. If you unpack a new mixer and make a full size batch of low-hydration bread, you are possibly taking years off the life of the mixer. The mixer should run unloaded for many minutes, preferably in a warm room, and should be used for a few light duty tasks before being worked hard. This will liquefy and distribute the lubricant properly. Among the real flaws that have caused mass headaches for KA users is the plastic gear housing issue mentioned by Ericthered. The earlier version of the "professional" bowl lift mixers had a thermoset plastic gear housing (earlier mixer designs used the chasis of the mixer itself as the housing, which was solid but made assembly and service much more labor intensive). The housing would get hot under load, distort, let the gears fall out of alignment, and then gears would break left and right and the housing itself would fail. This was a disaster for many people who used the mixer for what it was advertised for. KA eventually found a contractor that could injection mold the cover from magnesium. This material is rigid, heat-stable, and dissipates heat efficiently (it even has a built-in heat sink). That problem was solved. It only persists in that KA refused to acknowledge the origninal design as a flaw, and so they will not offer the new cover as a preventative measure (it's a drop-in replacement) nor will they tell you what serial numbers use the old vs. the new part. At this point, though, it's very unlikely that you'll get a plastic one, even from the refurb store. I got my mixer as a refurb and the first thing I did is pop the cover to check the gear box. The remainder of the problems seem to be sample variation. The gears in these units are not industrial quality. They spin on bronze friction bearings, not sealed ball or roller bearings, and there's a fair amount of wiggle room. The gears themselves are not precision machined. It follows that a certain number of mixers made this way are going to fall outside of spec and have more problems than others. Unfortunately, and once again, if you demand Hobart quality you'll pay Hobart prices.

Ghoul, you are correct about the belt drive in the Hobart mixers. I looked at the diagrams and it appears to deliver power to the transmission before the speed is reduced and the torque is increased, which makes perfect sense.I I don't find reason to agree with your assessment of superior Kenwood quality. It doesn't take much of a search to find plenty of people complaining about broken Kenwood mixers. The difference is that the complaints on this side of the Atlantic extend into the near impossibility of getting good service. KA mixers break all the time, but if they break under warranty, KA's doting service people apologetically send you a new one ... all the while maintaining the happy illusion that you're the first person this has ever happened to. If a mixer breaks out of warranty, parts are available everywhere, and the repairs are pretty straightforward. Plenty of independent techs can do it for you or you can figure it out yourself with online help. I don't doubt doubt that the situation is reversed in other parts of the world. If I lived in Europe, I'd buy a Kenwood. No way would I buy one here. I would greatly prefer it if KA did better quality control, but I understand their gambit. Probably only a small percentage of their mixers actually gets used. Most are eye candy and wedding present fodder. If ten percent of the five percent that get used breaks, then perhaps it's cheaper to pay for after-sales service than strict QC. Annoying as hell, but I get it. If anyone actually wants Hobart quality, you're going to have to pay Hobart prices. No way around that. The best bet is to often to buy used, if you live near a city that has restaurant supply stores and authorized technicians.

I've looked inside the Kenwood / Cuisinart / Delonghi mixers. If anything they strike me as a notch down from KA in robustness. For one thing, they are belt-driven, something that seems like a curious choice in a high torque appliance, and one that you never see in a professional mixer. As far as reliability, I get the impression that the Kenwoods and rebranded Kenwoods are about as spotty as KA and everything else. The big difference is that in the U.S., there is excellent warranty service on KA but not Kenwood; in Europe the situation is reversed. I think the smartest bet, if you are going with a consumer planetary mixer, is KA over here and Kenwood over there, and realize that there's a decent chance with either that you'll need warranty service. Just be sure to use the bejeezus out of thing in the first year so you'll know something's wrong before too late. The other choices are a professional mixer (like Hobart) at around four times the price, or a spiral mixer (like Electrolux) which require a different working style and which have different abilities and limitations. As far as the plastic gear goes, Shalmonese is right. This did not represent a cheapening of KA mixers. They used a plastic gear (originally phenolic) since 1909. It was eventually changed to nylon. The larger bowl-lift mixers have an all-metal drive train. They get their protection from a thermal shutoff switch. This is a newer design. I find it works well, but it's by no means free of QC issues. My first one went back after 3 months. It didn't break; it just gave hints that something was wrong with the gears. The replacement's been going strong for 4 years. I definitely recommend going to KA's site and getting a factory refurb. The prices are excellent, and the only downside is a shorter warranty (but if you get a bad mixer, it won't take you a year to figure it out).

There are many things in the world to be worried about. Teflon isn't one of them (unless you're a bird, and someone's incinerating a non-stick pan in the next room). PTFE is so innert in the human body that it's used in permanent installations, like artificial joints, artificial heart valves, and vascular grafts. The only reason to avoid teflon in cooking is that it's a lousy surface for 95% of cooking. If you're cooking eggs, or very delicate fish, it's perfectly fine. You will die of something one day, and it almost certainly won't be your omelet pan or potato chip bag. The chips themselves might be a culprit.

I wish you'd do your own research before posting distracting statements like this. First—most of the research in question is done at the university level, with funding form the NIH and grants from other public health agencies. All of it goes through the scientific journal peer review process, which, while far from perfect, is the best system our species has yet devised for controling bias. Second, and please think seriously about this—the only reason you've even HEARD about the dangers of any plastics is because of research published by the very same people and institutions that you are now systematically dismissing. If researches were universally corrupt and in collusion and wanted to hide something from the public, it would be the easiest thing in the world. But they took on the research, they chose to spend their limited grant money on it, they got the results, and they went through the (substantial) trouble of publishing it. If you trust the intitial reports that say "this stuff might be hazardous," why would chose to dismiss continued research that modifies those initial findings? This is how science works: continued research supports, contradics, or refines the initial findings. We are learning that plastic is something to consider, but not blindly fear. This is good news, IMO.

If you're interested in using the pressure cooker to make stocks — one of the most interesting applications of the technology — be sure to read the cooking issues blog post on the subject. Interestingly, pressure cooker designs are different in fundamental ways. Some allow you to make stocks that are better than conventional ones, and others do not.

One of these is right down the street. They were on the short list, but they close at 4pm on xmas eve. I'm a bit worried about trying to hold a pizza that long. What's their pizza like? I just checked this place out in person ... they give you an unbaked pizza to take home. I don't have high hopes for the quality, but as far as convenience it's tempting. I think baking our own will be a good fallback position.

One of these is right down the street. They were on the short list, but they close at 4pm on xmas eve. I'm a bit worried about trying to hold a pizza that long. What's their pizza like?

Thanks everyone. Butcher and Larder looks a great choice.

My family's Xmas eve tradition has always been Giordano's pizza and champagne. We would buy it half baked, finish it off at home, and dig in while passing presents around. Bliss. But last year just about everyone spontaneously came to the same conclusion: the pizza is not very good. It was a bit deflating to wake up from a delusion that goes back to childhood, but man, that pizza is basically a deep dish cheese casserole in a pastry shell. The little kids didn't like it, the grownups could barely get half a piece down before feeling queezy, and I found myself missing Brooklyn. So what are some better choices? I've become a convert to the neapolitan-styled pizzas of New York's new wave. I realize these things don't travel so well, and I don't know what's available in Chicago, in the downtown / near north / lincoln park region. Preferably near north. We'd like something delicious that can be taken home, and that could survive the trip and being reheated or held in the oven. Any ideas?

I'm at my parent's for the holidays, and have been unable to continue my ridiculous tradition of flyning from NYC with a dry-aged roast in a cooler in the belly of the plane. It will be a small crowd for xmas this year and I'm thinking about lamb racks. Who would have something really good? Preferablly not too far from downtown or the Lincoln Park area? I've been browsing Yelp but don't find too many trust-inspiring reviews. Paulina meat market looks good, but is stratospherically expensive (the lamb there costs about double the wholesale price of lamb from the best couple of farms in the country) so I worry that all the money goes to the boutiquiness of the place. I would love a no-nonsense place that sells great quality meat, ideally from some identifiable farm that whose reputation I can check out (I realize this last bit may be asking too much). Thoughts?

This seems to be new over the last couple of years. It corresponds (surprise!) with the Tojiros getting more expensive. The blades also look much thinner than they used to ... a good thing. The Tojiros I saw last year at Korin definitely had a sharper factory edge than most knives, but they were still not close to their potential.