paulraphael

This if for a party called Slaughtered Hearts Klub Massacre and Dance ... theme will be anti-valentines. Everyone will be as unatractive as can be, will flaunt their loneliness, and be asked (probably unconvincingly) to observe the no-hookup rule. I'm thining it should be -red -sour -bitter It shouldn't actually be disgusting, but it might have ingredients that sound questionable. Like Godiva liqueur. Except for the last part, I'm a big fan of the Negroni. But we're open to trying something new or inventing something. Any ideas?

I've handled the knives and don't like them at all. The craftsmanship and the metallurgy seem good, but the designs are gimmicky, and don't reflect any knowledge serious cutting techniques (either European or Japanese). The edge geometry is also really thick and heavy, which makes a knife durable but compromises performance. A thick, handmade knife makes as much sense to me as a Ferrari pickup truck. I played with a few of them at Brooklyn Kitchen. That store has a knowledgable knife buyer, who has stocked the shelves with some much better (and cheaper) choices, including a couple of Japanese brands I'd never heard of.

I think that accounts for most of it. Also, some pastry items require more precision than others. Some offer as much room for improvisation as soup; others, especially certain cakes, will collapse if you look at them wrong. The better pastry chefs I've met have great improvisational skills. If they don't use them at work, it's because of the need for consistency. You see this in the professional hot kitchen too; as an extreme example, Thomas Keller has his cooks weigh out mirrepoix vegetables to the gram.

Chocolate ice cream. If you're talking about manual skills and not just theoretical complexity, I doubt I've done anything especially impressive.

I'd recommend a restaurant supply store. If you don't have one local check out places like bigtray.com. You should find plenty of plain aluminum pans, with a light (but unpolished) finish. I can't suggest a particular brand, but look for one with low sides. Most of the commercial pans are only medium weight, but they're heavy enough to go from oven to stovetop for deglazing. These pans aren't as nice or as easy to clean as expensive clad pans, but they will roast your food 100% as well. I cook with both and can promise that. Should be easy to get one for $50 or less.

A bit off topic, but as an experiment I tried seasoning an aluminum griddle. It's an old, heavy (almost 1/4" thick) aluminum slab with a slight lip. It always orked well but was a pain to clean. So I seasoned with safflower oil in the oven, using the method I outlined above. It took about five coats, and now is gloss-black and fairly stick resistant. Subjectively I'd say the coating is more fragile than the same coating on iron, but it holds up well to spatulas and scouring pads. I don't see any downside.

I've suspected the PUR systems were higher quality than Brita. I use Brita because it's so entrenched in NYC that I can get the filters just about anywhere. But PUR seems to be getting a bigger presence. Any sense of the price difference between the two company's filters?

I've heard that a lot ... the theory is that a polished edge doesn't have spindly, unsupported teeth that bend or break easily. Seems plausible to me but I wouldn't know how to test it in a meaningful way. On the other hand, knives made from softer steels don't stay sharp long no matter what, so they may do better with a toothy edge. An aggressive edge can cut reasonably well even when it's lost much of its sharpness. This is why few people bother to go past 2K or so on German knives.

If you were convinced of the evils of BPA, you'd want to eliminate canned foods. The amount of bpa leached from a polycarbonate cambro container is trivial compared with what leaches into canned anything. >> Should I not use the plastic take-out / doggy bag containers in the microwave? Most takeout containers are polypropylene. I microwave them without a second thought.

Some people disagree with me on this, but my limited experience playing around with grits suggests that sharpening to somewhere between 4000 and 6000 grit gets into a nowhere-land where the blade doesn't have enough tooth to be aggressive, and doesn't have enough polish to be refined ... so it does't do a great job at anything. But once you take above 8000, to a mirror finish, the blade starts slipping through the food. That said, my boning knife is a cheap forschner, sharpened to 1K or 2K, and banged into shape on a steel. It gets used around bones (and for cutting sandwiches, opening packages, etc) so it needs to take abuse without a lot of fuss.

A good (and delicious) test for glutamate sensitivity would be to eat a hunk of parmesan cheese. It has the highest known concentration of natural glutamate. My casual suspicion is that "Chinese restaurant syndrom" is a reaction to consuming a week's worth of salt at one sitting.

My research corresponds prettly closely with emmanth's. Here are my notes, which at the risk of oversimplifying the issues, are a bit easier to follow: Recycling Symbol Type Hazard 1 PET / PETE Don't Reuse (porous / hard to clean) 2 HDPE No Known Hazards 3 PVC May leach various plasicizers 4 LDPE No Known Hazards 5 PP No Known Hazards 6 PS Can leach carcinogens / endocrine disruptors 7 Other Many plastics with many characteristics. Some contain BPA; some are forms of PVC It's certainly possible that closeer scrutiny will find more and more trace compounds with potential hazards in any of these materials. But this isn't limited to plastics; stuff leaches out of glass, ceramic glazes, and stainless steel as well. This is in fact the case with everything in the world: the more closely we look, the more potentially scary stuff we find. The trick is evaluating the risks, which requires educated (or wild) guesses. Bear in mind that we're all gonna die from something.

If a steel is improving an edge after you've sharpened on stones, then it's working by deburring. It's the only way that a steel could improve a freshly sharpened and polished edge. And there are better ways to deburr. Knives that past a certain hardness or that are sharpened more accutely than a certain angle will actually be damaged by steeling, so I'm not a big fan of the steel for my better knives. I'd rather use something like cork or felt for deburring, and a strop for touch ups between sharpening sessions.

That's true. And some will use it even for the final sharpening, on certain knives. Last I spoke with him, Dave Martell at japaneseknifesharpening.com uses a belt sander and nothing else on European stainless knives and on Globals. On Japanese knives with better steels, I don't know whether or not he uses the sander for reprofiling and repairs. But on these knives he does the regular sharpening and polishing on a long succession of waterstones. I had him do some work (repair damage and grind down the bolster) on my German Schaaf chef's knife. He did the whole thing on the sander and the work was perfect. As good as can be expected for that type of steel and for the kind of abuse I give the knife.

From what I've read, a brita filter removes all kinds of contaminants, including particles, metals, and organic compounds ... but you can't count it doing an especially thorough or consistent job. Its ability to filter will change as it ages and clogs. And even fresh, it's not up to the standards of higher end filters. I use one, because it takes the chlorine out and makes my water and tea and coffee taste better. It's also comforting to have another line of defense against any unknowns in the water. If I were actually afraid of something like lead or campylobacter, I'd use something more heavy duty. Btw, it just crossed my mind that a carbon filter could be taking the fluoride out of the water along with everything else. Anyone know about this? I'm curious, since the only cavities I ever got in my life came during two years in France, where they don't fluorinate the water supply.

I'd assume that the chance of contamination is almost zero. But there is a possibility of chemical reactions that happen very slowly. Compounds break down into smaller ones, smaller ones sometimes recombine into larger ones. I think the most likely risk is that the stuff would taste a little off. I'd be very surprised if there was any health hazard. My inclination would be to buy a new can and taste them side by side. There are some black beans in my pantry that might predate the condensed milk. Maybe we should pool our resources and have an antique food potluck.

With both the Globals and the German knives, the biggest challenge is deburring. Both types of steel a very "gummy" and tend to form tenacious burs. If you sharpen well down to a fine grit, it's possible (likely) that the burr will remain as a microscopic wire edge. This edge will be sharp but fragile; you'll find the initial sharpness of the edge deteriorating much faster than it would if you'd managed to get rid of the wire. There are many ways to get rid of a wire edge, all with their advocates. And all take practice. I have a very hard felt pad that I strop the edge on after each successive stone. Also, after polishig on my finest stone, I make a couple of long strokes parallel to the blade, with very light pressure. Both of these techniques help, although I don't think I ever do a perfect job of getting rid of the wire (and my knives are made from steels that hang onto a wire edge less agressively than either global's or the german's steels). Another trick is to draw the edge through a piece of soft, end-grain wood, or a wine cork, after each stone.

It will improve most ice cream recipes. You can also improve most brown butter recipes by whisking a small percentage of it into the melted butter before browning (it's the milk solids that brown and give the flavor; dry milk is 100% milk solids).

The trick to finding your ultimate hot chocolate is figuring out how much dairy you like. Pure, traditional hot chocolate has none. This creates the most intense chocolate flavor possible. It's amazing, but you might find it to be too much. Dairy (especially cream) actually mutes the chocolate flavor. The question is how much of this richness / muting you like. If serving hot chocolate as an intense dessert, in a demitasse, I'll sometimes make it dairy-free, with excellent chocolate in the 70% cocoa solids range. If it's more of a fun drink, served in bigger cups, I'll add whole milk. But I generally don't use a lot of it, and I don't use cream, because I want a fair amount of directness from the chocolate. Using some proportion of cocoa powder is also a way of upping the intensity. It has less cocoa butter, which also mutes flavors somewhat. But I keep the proportion of cocoa fairly low, because whole chocolate generally has better flavor overall. Here's a recipe I like. It steals liberally from some of Pierre Hermés ideas. You can vary it any way you like. Cinnamon/Caramel Dark Hot Chocolate 1/2 to 1 cinnamon stick 360g / 1-1/2 cups water 60g / 1/3 cup sugar 120g / 4-1/4 oz bittersweet chocolate 24g /1/4 cup dutch cocoa 1g / 1/8 tsp salt 240g / 1 cup whole milk -Heat sugar and cinnamon, undisturbed, in a heavy saucepan. -boil the water separately -when sugar starts to caramelize, stir vigorously until amber -pour water on sugar/cinnamon, and keep stirring and heating until clumps liquefy -whisk in cocoa -stir in chocolate, continuing to stir until melted -stir in milk -keep on heat until the first bubble pops on the surface -remove from heat and whip (with a whisk or a stick blender) until slightly frothy I generally use Valrhona Guanaja and either Valrhona or Pernigotti cocoa powder.

They are actually significantly less sharp than a well sharpened steel knife, and significantly less thin than the thinnest. And there's nothing you can do about it. It's impossible (or at least wildly impractical) to sharpen them and I don't think you could ever thin the blade like you can a steel one. The advantage is that they hold an edge for a longer, but still very finite time. Then what—send it back to the company once a month? Other disadvantage is that, yeah, it will shatter. The non-reactivity thing is just smoke. Any decent stainless is non-reactive enough for anything you'll do in the kitchen. If herbs are turning black, that's from a dull knife, not a reactive one. You can prove this by trying an expertly sharpened carbon steel blade.

The Michel Cluizel chocolates have been a revelation. They knocked Valrhona (my previous fave) off its perch. I'd try baking with it, but it's so expensive that I've made excuses to avoid trying. Would hate to get hooked on that habit. Valrhona's pricey enough. I recently tried Mast Brothers chocolate, made artisinally by a couple of backwoods-looking hipsters right here in Brooklyn. I was hoping to hate it, since their prices lie on the hazy border between comedy and insult (more than DOUBLE Michel Cluizel, which is close to double Valrhona, which is close to double Callebaut ...). Tragically, I liked it a lot. Not sure when I'll be buying any more, though. For good chocolate, great value, and surprising accessibility, I'm a fan of Lindt 70%.

The other issue is that carbides are there to provide extreme wear resistance ... but it's been shown that abrasive wear is not an important process in kitchen knives dulling. Wear resistance does make a knife hard to sharpen, as Dakki says. For a knife to get sharp, do so easily, and stay sharp in spite of of an a thin / high performance edge geometry, it needs a steel with excellent edge stability. This requires, among other things, a relatively low carbide content. Carbides are big compared with iron molecules. A high volume of carbides gives you a very weak, brittle edge that can't be made very sharp. Putting a coating of carbides on the surface would gurantee from the get go that the blade isn't sharp by any serious knife standards.

You can categorically assume that any knife sold with the claim "never need sharpening" or "10X sharper than ________" or "stays sharp 10X longer than_________" —or anything similar—is going to be utter B.S. Usually these claims are associated with cheap informercial knives, but in this case it's a $200+ rip off. Never mind that it's not even in a useful chef's knife / gyuto shape. For that money you can buy an excellent chef's knife, a decent set of sharpening stones, and some books or instructional videos to get you started. In practice, becoming a competent sharpener is the only way you'll even have sharp knives (at least for more than a few days at a stretch).

Tri2Cook mentioned it in another thread but in case you didn't see it, dry milk powder disolves completely. Once in solution it will be as smooth as ordinary milk. It's one of the ingredients that tends to clump when mixed. You can avoid this by stirring it together with your other dry ingredients (including the sugar) before trying to disolve it. Another solution is mixing in a blender, but unless you're making very large quantities I think this is just extra work. You'll notice most pastry chefs using some portion of dry milk in their recipes. It's a killer ingredient.

It can also be difficult to get good texture without a high enough proportion of nonfat solids, either with ice cream and sorbet. The solids, more than anything else, provide freezing point suppression; they help keep the recipe from freezing hard as a brick. In sorbets the solids typically come from the fruit or other flavor ingredients. In this recipe they only come from the soy milk and the arrowroot ... probably not enough. Vanilla is so concentrated that it essentially gives you none. You want nonfat solids to be around 33% by weight. The traditional ingredient to boost solids is nonfat dry milk, but if you're making a non-dairy recipe you'll have to try something else. Soy protein powder? Might work. Flavors with more stuff in them (fruit purees, etc.) will make the job easier in this regard. There are also stabilizers that will work more efficiently than arrowroot, like gelatin, xanthan gum, and locust bean gum. Or you can buy a commercial sorbet stabilizing blend. Counterintuitively, fats don't influence ice crystal suppression or freezing point, so adding oil probably won't help solve this. Fat obviously influences texture in other ways, though.