paulraphael

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.

Darienne, your own experience is your best guide (although it sounds like ice cream doesn't stick around for too many minutes at your house ...) -33C is a mighty cold freezer. I've been taught that below -25C, ice cream is completely stable and that ice crystals simply won't grow (because 100% of the water in the ice cream, at least in any kind of normal recipe, will be frozen). If this is correct then your ice creams should last weeks and weeks without getting icy. But I can't vouch for this with personal experience.

That should read "asparagus" in both places, not "garlic". Gotta lay off the mid-day hooch.

I used to live next door to a insane person who also happened to be an ice sculptor. His setup for creating clear ice blocks used some kind of circulator that kept the water in motion while it froze i the molds. Somehow this kept air out of the ice and prevented imperfections from forming. His blocks were at least a couple of cubic feet and were clear as glass.

I've had stringy, flossy thin garlic before. But this is unusual ... generally I prefer the tenderness and the flavor of thin garlic. I'm curious to know why it's sometimes stringy, and if there's a way to tell before you buy it.

Next time I'll probably just juice the buggers.

So, I decided to make some sorbet with these beautiful Meyer lemons I found, and ended up with a bitter pill to swallow. This might have been the mistake: instead of just juicing the lemons, I peeled them and then pureed and strained them. I didn't think this would be a problem, since this has worked well with oranges, and since meyer lemons can be mild enough to eat whole. The puree itself had a fairly bitter taste to it. I went ahead anyhow, thinking maybe the sweetness would ameliorate it. No such luck. Basic proportions: 1000g total; 5 pureed lemons (270g after straining), 2 of them zested. Everything is great as far as texture, tartness, sweetness, etc., but the flavor tastes like grapefruit with extra helpings of pith. I don't have much experience with Meyer lemons. Was it a mistake to puree rather than juice, or might I have just gotten some nasty ones?

I usually make sorbet with strawberries, but I can tell you how I'd put together a strawberry ice cream recipe. First, look up online and find out the water and sugar content of the berries. Reduce your recipe's sugar and milk accordingly, based on whatever portion of the berries you plan to puree. Then add nonfat dry milk to the recipe. I'd try between 20 and 40 grams per KG of your recipe. For the berries that don't get pureed, I'd macerate them in a portion of the recipe's sugar overnight. This will suppress their freezing point. Add them right at the end of churning.

Amen.

Russ Parsons' How to Pick a Peach is a great resource. In many cases, especially with fruits, I'll use fragrance as a tie breaker. If there are two varieties of plums that look good, I'll let my nose decide. Probably not infallible, but it beats guessing.