paulraphael

I've played with this a bit ... it's a cool concept, but by itself I haven't been thrilled with the texture or stability. The versions I've been making have some cream added for ... creaminess. I've also been stabilizing it with gelatin and xanthan.

The waiter is responsible for a portion of the dining experience, and generally only gets a portion of the tip. It's commonplace for tips to be pooled and shared according to some scheme by the whole front of house staff.

Interesting article on Salon about Western chefs taking Japanese knife skills class.

This common at hotel restaurants. They have to deal with people from other countries who don't / won't comprehend our tipping custom. A friend who has waited tables at a hotel restaurant assures me that you're not obligated to leave that amount. It's there so you don't forget. The only unscrupulous behavior is when people miss that line on the check, tip double, and when the server doesn't alert them to the mistake. It's best if the server mentions up front that service is included, to avoid confusion and build goodwill.

I'd think with a powerful range hood you could get away with just about anything (though you'll be cleaning out the filters ofen if you make a habit of bbq ... ). Having no hood, I've never experimented with this. I get smoked flavors by using other smoked ingredients in sauces (bacon, smoked salt, lapsang souchong tea). It's not bbq, but it's nice. At Alinea, they make authentic smoked water and use it as an ingredient. Evidently it's better than bong water.

Sure ... without care and maintenance, a $100 knife becomes a sub-$5 knife in short order. Unfortunately, decent sharpening stones cost more than $3. I'll usually coax people into budgeting a chunk of change for a decent combination stone, at least to get started. There's indeed a good $5 knife available: the forschner plastic handled pairing knife costs just that, and works great. I've talked to sonemone who's had to tourne potatoes by the crate, who thinks this is the best knife for the job. The same guy has spent over $300 a pop on his gyuto and yanagi, so this isn't just the opinion of a cheapskate.

If you're goig for a step up from the Forschner chef's knife (which isn't as great a bargain as their smaller knives), I'd recommend the least expensive Togiharu gyuto from Korin. It's $80 for the 240mm size, has good steel and great geometry. It won't compete with some pricier knives in edge retention, but is easy to sharpen, and will cut better than anything by shun or global or the big German companies. A gyuto is a much more versatile style than a nakiri or santoku ... it will do everything that those shapes do. The reverse isn't true. A few years ago Tojiro was the obvious choice in a budget J-knife, but their prices have gone up quite a bit.

I'll throw in a vote for the wood-handled forschners. Same blade. Slightly higher maintenance, but I prefer the way they look and feel.

The 'independent sales represntative' was probably their teenage son, or the next door neighbor. Besides supporing your local hapless kid, there's no justification for these knives.

Important blender question: is it pronounced BAY-mix or BAH-mix?

No idea about THC dacarboxylation, but I'd estimate the cooked temp of a brownie is in the 200°F range.

Ahh .. my only practical piece of knowledge on the subject. All salt is kosher. What gets sold as "kosher salt" is salt like what's used for koshering meat and poultry; it's coarser than standard salt for this purpose.

The thought of doing anything because Leviticus says so rubs me the wrong way ... BUT! At least we only preserved his dictums about what end of a cow to eat, and not the ones about our moral obligations to stone people to death for working on the sabbath or for blasphemy, or the ones about it being ok to sell our daughters into slavery.

I think the percentage of weed to butter is all that really matters. Maybe do a google search and see what different people recommend ... it's just a question of how concentrated you want it to be. It's possible for it to be REALLY concentrated ... someone I met says he makes brownies that are so strong he only eats half a brownie or less. It might take some trial and error to figure out your preference.

You are in for a treat. The secret, mined from the deep lore and wisdom of the Lebowski generation, is called cannabutter. A google search will no doubt produce other descriptions and instructions. In short, you want to boil water and butter together with the weed. The idea is that the THC and other significant compounds are fat-soluble; all the nasty tasting stuff is water-soluble (think bong water). The presence of water also keeps the temperature in the pan well below THC's boiling point of 390F. Simmer for 20 or 30 minutes, then strain out the plant material. Let the butter/water mixture cool in the fridge; the fat will rise to the top and solidify. That is your magic butter. Discard the water. This butter can be used in any recipe. Be warned that a little goes a long way, and that it's imperative to have non-magic treats around, so you'll avoid the tempting downward spiral of curing your munchies by eating more of what gave them to you.

This is true if you have a really hot flame at your disposal; like double or more the BTUs that a typical home rangetop delivers. If you have more modest fire, then the problem is that the stove just can't deliver heat at a rate that can properly brown a medium or large quantity of meat. If the pan doesn't have a high heat capacity, you can preheat it almost to the melting point, but the the meat will suck the heat right out of it, dropping the surface of the pan temperature before much browning can happen. From that point on, the stove will have a hard time delivering heat at a rate that can get the temp where it needs to be for effective browning. So a lot of stewing / steaming goes on. A big, heavy iron or copper pan will take a long time to heat, but then it has stored enough energy to do the bulk of the browning. The ideal material for this is heavy copper; if it's heavy enough it rivals the heat capacity of iron, but is much more conductive ... so it delivers the heat quickly for a great sear. My iron pans are heavier and have more heat capacity that my copper ones; I find they do a slightly better job on big pieces of meat, while the heavy copper does a better job on smaller pieces. Some people tested different kinds of cookware during one of the braising labs in the egullet institute. They found the Creuset pots, which were the heaviest tested, to give the best results, possibly because high heat capacity allowed them to buffer the temperature swings of the oven and deliver the most consistent heat level. There is some discussion of material choices here. At any rate, the nuances of browning seem to make a very small difference in a final braised dish; in fact, the difference between thorough browning and no browning at all is mostly evident in the level of roasted flavors present in the final sauce. At any rate, I often brown braised meat in a different pan from the braising vesel anyhow, because I don't want retained heat to cook the interior of the meat too quickly. I'll brown on a blazing hot pan, and then tranfer to a cold pan and put it in a cold oven that will come up to temp slowly.

In other news, I've been looking into the use of trimoline in ice creams, and am finding it in sorbets, presumeably for its ability to prevent sugar crystalization, and also possibly for other effects on texture (glucose syrup can add body; trimoline probably does the same). Some recipes use sugar in three forms: sucrose as the main sweetener, trimoline for its effects on texture, and glucose to keep the sweetness under control while keeping the level of solids high enough. Michael Laiskonis says he uses trimoline for up to 10% of the total sugar. It's possible that using more causes textural problems like gumminess.

Since WS is so maddeningly expensive, I use gift certificates to buy things I can't get elsewhere (I really like their microfiber dish towels), olive oils (if they have them open to sample), or things that might break (WS offers an endless warranty).

That's certainly interesting. I bet it's going to attract a lot of attention, primarily because almost all previous studies find weight gain or loss to be identical in calorie-controlled trials of anything. PubMed does list a couple of other studies that suggest some weird weight gain potential from fructose itself ... which implicates honey and fruit juice alongside soda. At any rate, there are bound to be a bunch of followup studies and attempts to duplicate these results, so I'll keep my eyes out. It's important to note that these rats were fed diets where sugar syrups made up a high percentage of their daily calories. A very different circumstance from eating the ocassional dessert with a few grams corn syrup.

The color of a pan used on the stovetop doesn't actually effect the browning of the food. Raw cast iron browns more efficiently because there's no enamel layer slowing heat conduction. Browning effectiveness is determined by the heat capacity of the pan (very high in a heavy slab of iron) and the the conductivity of the material (medium low for cast iron, lower for enameled cast iron). In the oven, pan color increases the absorbtion of ratiant heat, so you will get more browning ... but it's the color of the outside of the pan, not the inside, that matters. This is why dark, nonstick sheet pans tend to overbrown cookies on the bottom, and why polished aluminum tends to underbrown them.

Interesting. Suggests my paranoia isn't completely misplaced. For whatever it's worth, I haven't had any cracks from doing it slowly on the stovetop.

Raw cast iron is better, but enameled is good enough. The difference is that enamel is an insulator, so a comparably hot enameled pan will brown the meat a bit more slowly. In practice I don't find it to be a big deal ... you won't notice any difference in the final dish. One thing I do, more out of paranoya than anything else: when preheating an enameled pan to searing temps, I go slowly. Get it hot on a lowish flame for a while, then turn the heat all the way up and give it a few minutes to preheat. Considering that cast iron is only a moderately good conductor, and that enamel is brittle, I'm afraid of cracking the enamel from fast, uneven heating.

Seems like every big suburban supermarket has a deep freeze full of the stuff. Here Google only reveals a few industrial places that sell it in bulk. Anyone know of a grocery or sea food retailer that will sell a few pounds?

I think I figured out the solution, and it will be genuine carbonation. Easier than the fake variety and easier than I thought.

This is because the goal in baking is generally not to have the most radiant heat absorption possible, but the amount that gives a similar level of browning on the parts of the food in contact with the pan and the parts in contact with the air. Dark colored pans will brown faster than the air; you'll have bread or cakes that are darker on the sides and bottom than on the top. Brightly polished metal will brown more slowly than the air; you'll see the opposite result. Light but unpolished metal (which describes most professional bakeware) generally comes closest to even browning. Insulating the sides of cake pans is for the purpose of a flatter top, as you suggested. It will also give you less browning on the sides, but presumeably no one cares much, if the cake will be frosted. I've found dark (black steel) pans to give the best results with tarts; in this case crisping the bottom without overcooking the top can be a challenge.