paulraphael

Chris's idea of authenticity as fiction is a useful way to frame the issue. Although even this could suggess that there is one fiction, while very often there are multiple fictions vying for the the crown of Authentic. My definition of authenticity is recursive, open ended, and deliberately unhelpful: Something is called authentic when it gives the impression of being authentic to someone who holds opinions about authenticity. Which qualities specifically lead to this impression are likely fictional, historically and logically fallacious, and unrelated to anything that will determine the thing's success or failure. But still the impression is likely to be a strong one. This doesn't make the concept completely useless. If you are aware of the perceptions of authenticity surrounding a type of food, you have the choice to either play to them or play against them. Perceptions count, regardless of what, if anything, they're grounded in.

This advice that given to me by guys who break down fish professionally ... I can't personally vouch for it, but plan to act on it one of these days. 165mm is ideal for home use, especially if you don't plan to work with fish bigger than a few pounds. 180mm is good for fish up to 20lbs or so, and 210 for fish bigger than that. Smaller is cheaper and easier to learn; bigger is more versatile. Bigger also gives you the option to put a back bevel on the couple of inches of blade by the heel for smashing through bones and shells. I will probably get a 180mm, in a cheap and not very pretty model, and sharpen it like this. As far as the utility of a Western Deba, I've decided to save space and money and just get a $10 Chinatown cleaver for the abusive tasks. It works fine. I haven't actually used it on crab or lobster, so I don't know if the shape is clumsier for this. But it's great for lopping off heads, talis, feet, etc. etc...

I'd never seen the full text of the law. Good to know that you can brandish a blade longer than 4 inches if it d) is displayed or carried by a duly enrolled member of the Boy or Girl Scouts of America or a similar organization or society and such display or possession is necessary to participate in the activities of such organization or society. For all practical purposes, I think you're fine if the knife is packed away and not easy to get your hands on. A folding knife in your pocket might be pushing it, but who's going to find it?

Still, the term "modified starch" never means GMO. It always refers to chemical or heat or enzymatic altering of starch molecules to change their physical properties. While it's possible for modified starch to be made (at least in part) from the grain from GMO plants, this would have nothing to to do with the "modified" label. With either modified or unmodified starches, the lack of labelling requirements means you won't know if there's any GMO content, unless you're buying certified organic, which is supposed to mean GMO-free (but this may not be guaranteed).

I've seen that model used in the highest end pastry kitchens, so I assume there are no glaring issue with off flavors. The one I have is a bernz-o-matic with an automatic starter. Similar, but you have to turn the gas on before clicking. Works just fine, though not as convenient as ace model if you're using the thing all day long. The most important feature is a pressure regulator. If you have one of the unregulated torch heads, the flame will blow out when the canister is half full and you tilt the torch toward the food. You'll end up with a stockpile of half-full propane canisters. Or half-empty, depending on your point of view.

That's a really standard ceramic rod sharpener. They work very poorly. Better than nothing for old beater knives, but you wouldn't want to use it on good knives.

Also, pickling is a curing / preservation technique. When you pickle you really saturate the food with the pickling solution. Brining is just about adding moderate amounts of salt and water, as a preparation before cooking. Pickling has a long history in savory foods. I haven't heard of pickled turkey, but pickled herring is an old tradition.

I don't think bitterness and acidity are a problem in coffee desserts. In fact, I think some of both is necessary to stand up to sugar and dairy. The best coffee for drinking black isn't likely the best with gobs of cream and sugar. Most of my experience is with coffee ice cream, but I think the same principles would apply to a component of cheesecake. I like a coffee with good body and prominent acidity, and generally one roasted a bit darker than what I'd like for drinking. Not an espresso roast, but somewhere between that and a medium or "new city" roast. For ice cream I extract directly into the milk, but you can use water also. Proportions are about 20g coarsely ground coffee per 100g liquid. Heat the liquid to 190 to 195°F, pour over the coffee, and cover for 30 minutes. Strain through a chinois. The ensuing sludge is undrinkable, but the flavor is amazing and three-dimensional when diluted by other ingredients. You can experiment with this general approach to get the strength right for your application.

Small chips are innevitable, but people avoid big chips (ones that are more than cosmetic) in a couple of ways. One is using the right techinque for going through bones. The other is putting a double (fatter) bevel on the couple of inches of blade closest to the heel, and using that for the brutish work. I definitely agree that there's no need to spend $$$. Two of the pros I know who use a deba every day are partial to the cheap-o house brand sold by Epicurean Edge. Well under a hundred bucks for the 180mm length.

I'll use a temp probe, but find them unreliable in chickens. Any conventional form of "cook it til it's done" will be fine. I do have a theoretical interest in the nonlinear time/temp releationship. It's possible that I hallucinated that graph. It's certainly nowhere in McGee, which is where I'd assumed it had been.

The difference is that unlike selection processes (where you're accelerating the effects of natural variation) or hibridization (where you're combining existing traits of two or more plants) genetic modification is the creation of a significant mutation. It's an unknown quantity. Luckily, "modified food starch" doesn't mean GMO ... it just means that a regular starch has been altered, usually with enzymes, in order to work better as a thickener or emulsifier or binder or somesuch thing. There are no known dangers and these things are used in tiny quantities. Strange and unfortunate story about your daughter. Did the specialists say they've seen much of this sensitivity? Azurite, if a fraction of what you say is true about Monsanto (and I've heard it elsewhere) I think you've given the best argument so far against GMO foods ... at least their current manifestation. I'm going to do some research on the state of the evil empire.

The secretaries at a friend's office banded together and created a cookbook for all the administrators. A sweet gesture, most likely made under the assumption that suit-wearing types don't get enough old timey home cookin'. This was in the era before Blurb ... done entirely by hand with Kinko's technology. I was just learning to cook at the time and thought I might be able to learn from the nice ladies. I was especially intrigued by the technique tips scattered among the recipes. One of these stood out ... How to prevent lumps in creamed soups: Shake the can before opening it. But even this is no match for Chris's Blend Tec ice cream.

I remember once seeing a graph that plotted times against temperatures. It allowed you to make an educated guess at what the time change would be if you tried roasting a bird at 475 instead of 450 (for example). Because of the physics of heat transfer, the graph was not linear, so it's not so easy to guess without it. Does anyone know where I might be able to find this or something like it?

Yup, my world too. All my friends cooked out of Moosewood and Enchanted Broccoli Forest (and nothing else), while all our more sophisticated parents cooked out of Silver Palate. I've never cooked recipes from any of these books, but I remember thinking my friends' results beat dorm food, at least by a little.

We're not arguing the contribution of salt; my goal either way is to salt the meat appropriately. But it's absolutely been my experience that the chicken flavors of brined chicken have been more diluted. The difference isn't subtle. I played with brine for a year and stopped. I'm not the first to come these conclusions. Here's one of a few eg discussions.

I don't quite follow your reasoning here: we add salt in modest quantities to enhance our ability to perceive flavors. I don't see how the salt is "diluting the natural flavors": in my experience, it enhances them. It doesn't mask the natural flavors any more than just cooking the food does. A bit of fond never bothered me one bit, even if it does "dilute the natural flavors." Not the salt, the water. I find brined chicken to be extremely juicy, but the juices don't taste much like chicken. Processes that intensify flavors often do so by removing water and concentrating the juices (like dry aging). Brining does the opposite. It's analogous to the extra water injected into cheap poultry and hams. I also found brined birds to border on being excessively salty. This can be fixeed through careful calibration, but dry salting makes it easier to get the quantities right.

In practice dry salting doesn't dry out meat. Samples that have been salted and weighed before and after long rests in the fridge show no more weight loss than unsalted meat. It's been suggested that the salt draws water to the surface, and creates brine which is then absorbed. The advantages are that you get the partial denaturing of the proteins (which allows them to retain more moisture) and the flavor, but not the dilution of meat flavors that comes from the added water of traditional brining. Personally, I stopped traditional brining after a year or so of experimentation with it. I didn't like the dilution of the natural flavors. But some things, like poultry, I like to rub with salt a day ahead. If you add salt to a cooking medium, like a poaching stock or the fluids in a sous vide bag, you're not brining. Brining works by osmosis, as percival says, but once the proteins denature past a certain point they become a fully permeable membrane, through which moisture flows freely, regardless of ion concentrations. You will get salt into the meat (and probably more deeply / more quickly than brining would) but it's not going to have any effects besides making the meat salty.

I recently made a plum and rosemary sorbet, and was surprised by the intensity of the rosemary flavor. I used 10 grams of rosemary per 1000g of mix, and infused the herbs, un-minced, in the syrup when I cooked it. I had actually been afraid that the flavor would be weak, since rosemary seems more soluble in fats, and likes to be simmered for a while. A couple of days ago I ran into a research chemist who's a partner in an artisinal soda company. He explained this phenomenon. Aparently sugar syrup, if it's strong enough, is a powerful solvent for aromatic oils ... comparable to alcohol. He finds that it not only makes stronger infusions than water alone, but that it draws off a somewhat different flavor profile. I plan to experiment much more with this. Next batch of sorbet will include less rosemary ... FWIW, the syrup infusion I made included, in addition to the 10g rosemary, 200g water
 75g granulated sugar 40g glucose syrup 12g trimoline

It sounds like you've mastered Western fish butchering techniques, for which a deba is no help at all. It's designed to support Japanese fish butchery. A completely different approach. Each way has its advantages ... the western way is quicker and also easier to learn. The Japanese way gives cleaner results (the difference is generally too subtle to be noticeable if the fish is cooked, but is significant if you're going to block the fish for sashimi). Chipping is purely a technique issue. It usually means that a cook is using the deba for cutting the fish's spine, without knowing the right way to do it. Sharpening technique plays a role in this as well. Size? For a big fish you need a bigger knife. I think people routinely break down 40lb salmon with a 210mm deba. For your purposes, if you're happy with the results you get from your current knives, and aren't looking for an excuse to get new toys and practice a whole new skill set, I don't see any advantage to switching.

It's not even that simple. Look at something like a hollandaise sauce. The sabayon is going to cook at a set temperature, but you're always using a pan that's much hotter than this. Beginning cookbooks tell you to use a cooler pan (like a double boiler) which means whisking for a long time, with relatively little risk of screwing up. More exprerienced cooks work on fairly high, direct heat, which allows the sabayon to whip up faster and to a much airier consistency. In both approaches, we're concerned with heating power, not pan temperature. And in both, the correct power will be determined largely by the size of the pan and the quantity of sauce you're making. I don't see how a temperature metric would be of any help. In these cases, the vague language of "low heat" and "medium high heat" may be the best thing we have. The distinction of foods that bake in the pan might be a good one. Those are cases that argue for ranges with thermostats.

Right, but even there, we're not cooking with a thermostat. Heat enters the pan, heat leaves the pan (through radiation, conduction to the food and air, and through evaporation of water). The rate of heat entering the pan vs. these other processes determines the final pan temperature. Suppose you crank the fire as high as you can on a high powered range (as you would for sautéing). If you don't put any food in the pan, the temperature will climb to the point where your oil will incinerate. But putting in the food bleeds off heat immediately, dropping the pan surface down into the right range for browning. There are some cooking processes where you could use temperature, with the right equipment. Like crepes or pancakes. Here an electric griddle with a thermostat works fine. But without a thermostat, I find it tricky to work like this. I like my to cook crepes at 375 to 395°F, but if I get a frying pan that hot (using an IR thermometer) and drop batter into it, the temperature immediately drops 20 degrees and takes a long time to recover. More time than it takes to cook the side a crepe. So I start with the pan hotter ... how much hotter depends on the pan and god knows what else. In the end, I find it easier to skip the IR thermometer and just eyeball the fire.

Yeah, it's true. High on a typical home range like mine would equal medium-low on 30,000 BTU commercial range. That's no exaggeration. Temperature isn't a solution, because we're not actually talking about temperature ... we're talking about power, which is the rate of energy transfer. A stock pot full of water will only get to 100°C whether it's on a hot plate or a monstrous commercial burner. But it will get there in a fraction of the time on the latter. We could use BTUs (but I don't think it'll happen). We're stuck, unless major player in the industry, and cookbook authors, could agree on a simple, power-based standard. I don't see it happening. We can't even get cookbook publishers use weight measurements.

For good steaks I don't like anything that could be considered a condiment ... sauces with strong, contrasting flavors. I like options that enhance or harmonize with the flavor of the meat without overshadowing it. Options include -salt & pepper -compound butters (particularly beurre maitre d'hotel) -veal stock and wine-based pan sauces, particularly ones that include mushrooms and / or shallots. I serve all sauces on the plate separate from the meat, so you can choose bite by bite how much, if any, you want.

All fruit is high in carbs. Exceptions are the ones we don't think of as fruits ... like cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.

The trouble is, the rules governing the Organic designation are so complex and replete with loopholes, and conversely, of such narrow scope, that it's almost impossible to generalize. Some of the organic rules are good. Some aren't. Some are potentially good or bad, depending on context and other factors. In the end, it's very hard to codify good and responsible farming practices. The organic designation is an imperfect and extremely incomplete attempt. There is delcious, ecologically responsible produce that is raised both organically and conventionally; likewise there is terrible, ecologically disasterous produce that is raised both organically and conventionally. I'd say that your odds are a little better if you go with the orgnic label, all else being equal. But that's not a resounding endorsement. GMO is a different sort of issue. I think you're right that its potential to feed underfed nations is huge. I also think it's irresponsible to dismiss the concerns. There is a difference between conventional breeding and genetic modification. The ramifications of altering the genome of a plant simply can't be known without experimentation and observation over a long span of time. At the very least, GMO food should be labelled. People not willing to take a completely unknown risk would be free to avoid it. Braver people, including those who face the very known risk of malnutrition, would probably make the opposite choice.