paulraphael

Hosting Team Note: This topic has been split off from the The knives you reach for topic in the Kitchen Consumer forum There's a void of information on Japanese cutting techniques online, with the exception of instructional fish butchering videos (Japanese fish butchery is a high craft, and there as many variations on the techniques as there are fish). There's a guy named Itasan who has a lot of content on youtube. He's a real master: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfzGe...e=channel_page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTHi...e=channel_page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVFMj...e=channel_page I can point to a handful of informal videos on vegetable technique, but unfortunately not much instruction. i've had to seek out chefs with Japanese training and bug them for pointers. Here are a bunch of homemade videos by my friend KC ... he's got serious skills. Here's his chicken fabrication video (using a deba).

I used to be of the single-honkin'-german-chef's-knife-to-do-everything school. Over the last couple of years I started learning about Japanese knives and the associated sharpening and cutting techniques, and have become a convert. I still try to be a minimalist, but I use a couple more knives than I used to. The slight additional complexity is made up for by the huge improvement in results and efficiency. And fun. I like doing prep now. My #1 knife is 270mm Ikkanshi Tadatsuna Gyuto, which is the most high performance knife I've ever had in my hands. I've had to throw out virtually all my hard-won European cutting techniques in favor of much more delicate Japanese techniques, because the blade is not designed for man-handling. What it does, though is stunning: it falls through the food under its own weight, even though it weighs half as much as my German knife. It makes such clean cuts that food stays fresh longer. Sometimes hours or even days longer. This thing has gotten me to completely rethink everything about prep. A five pound pile of onions or apples doesn't seem like a chore anymore; it seems like martial arts practice. For the things that the gyuto won't do, like lopping off fish heads, chopping chocolate, and rock-chopping woody herbs, I still love my old 8" german knife (a cool Eberhard Schaaf Goldhamster, that has just been improved by Dave Martell, who ground down the bolster). This is a knife I can hand to a guest cook without too much fear of disaster. For hand work, a 3" paring knife. I have an inexpensive Japanese one by Al Mar. A lot of chefs like the $5 Forschners. I cut a lot of bread, so my 270mm Mac bread knife is a godsend. The gyuto does fine on soft bread, but if there's a hard or brittle crust, I grab the mac. Meat slicing: a 270mm kikuichi carbon steel sujihiki (basically the japanese version of a western slicing knife). This is cool, but I'd survive without it. Boning/utility: a 6: Forschner with wood handle. Cheap, perfect. For sandwiches, trimming meat, attacking packages. Soft steel, but easy to whack back into shape. And! I recently got a $10 cleaver from chinatown. Literally $9.95. Medium weight. I got it because even my chef's knife turned out to be no match for the neck bones of an 18 lb turkey. I thought it would be nice to have a heavy, cheap blade for any food that I really need to get medieval on.

I try to have the flavors balanced by the time the food goes on the plate. I'm not interested in correcting or enhancing anything at this point, because I can't taste it. The plating is about presentation, which is both esthetic and practical ... making the food like pretty / interesting / inviting, and making it easy to eat in a way that combines the flavors according your intent. I have less natural aptitude for plating than probably anyone here, so I'm not going to lecture on techniques. But I generally think the final elevation comes from thoughtful arrangement of what you have, rather than the addition of some kind of secret sauce. And I hope the trend of splashing dry spices on the edge of the plate ("BAM!") has been burried deeply.

ha ... I don't take the temp on the water either. I have one of those Japanese water heating gizmos (because I'm a compulsive tea drinker) and it's set to 203 ... that's basically what I have on tap. My scale is always on the counter, so for me weighing is the easiest way to measure anything. Ok, saving my pennies for another trip to the Ace.

I don't like eggs. I do like reheated pasta and reheated coffee. Cliff bars are a major part of my diet.

I think you'll get better and more even results in a pan. One approach would be a very hot pan with refined oil. I'd suggest trying a medium hot pan in butter, after brushing on weak solution of a reducing sugar and baking soda on the meat. This will give you a very well browned crust quickly, without charring, and without any of that intrusion of well done meat you can see in the top photo. Save the torch for touch-ups.

Most of the stabilizers are also texture modifiers, so they can indeed firm up your sorbet. The issue is getting just the right consistency. There are many versions of firm, and many versions of the sense of melting in your mouth. This becomes clear when you taste a weird version. Classic example of something that's overstabilized ... and of the kind of weird consistencies you'll want to avoid.

I like to use brighter, fruitier tasting vinegars for this reason. My go-to vinegar right now is made from grenache grapes and is almost sweet (though I don't think it actually has residual sugar in it). It helps avoid that heavy, vinegariness you're talking about. Another thing that helps is using it very sparingly.

The commodity butter I buy is whole foods' house brand. $2.69/lb. The cheapest at my local supermarket is much more expensive. For some things I go for the European butters or farm butters from upstate or Vermont. These cost more than double the cheap stuff.

No, what I'm calling hysteria is the tendency to read a warning about one kind of plastic, and then leap to the conclusion that all kinds of plastic are equally dangerous. And also the corresponding leap of illogic, which is to then assume that all things not made of plastic are somehow without issues. Sadly I've been encountering a lot of this. I strongly encourage everyone to research the specific plastics that they use. My original post was an effort to find resources to make this easier.

It would be a good enough reason for me ... I just got a pasta roller and it's not designed to be taken apart for thorough cleaning, and it can't be soaked in anything. Best to keep salt away from it.

I think the problem is just too little heat for the quantity of onions. All these other factors make small differences, but no matter what they're not going to brown if you stew them ... at least not before they've cooked off all their moisture and turned to mush. You just don't want to go TOO hot ... if you do they'll blacken on the outside before browning all the way through.

Kinda like a starter, but it doesn't usually substitute for the yeast. One of the English names for the technique is just "old dough." It serves like a bigga or poolish or any other kind of preferment to enhance flavor. Dough that's been kept around for a long time develops more flavor than fresh dough, thanks to enzyme action in the flour.

Thanks Daisy, I'm using a burr grinder (barazza maestro) and french press. I weigh my beans (generally 80g beans for 1400ml water with a medium roast). Filtered water 203°F, 4 minutes brewing. The Guatemalan you mentioned is another of the staff picks. So was the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Grade 2 (is that worse than grade 1? better?). I'll try one of these next time. Interesting about the seasonality ... I hadn't considered that. Maybe I'll start with africa.

The "third wave" coffee revolution of the 1990s has recently found its way to New York, and among other lofty participants, Stumptown is roasting their own here. I had a pretty convincing blind tasting when I ordered coffee at the brick oven pizza joint that recently opened in a semi-legal industrial shack in my neighborhood deep in brooklyn. One sip into it, I hollered for the waitress to come back. "What IS this?" ... It was the best cup of joe I'd had in years. Stumptown, of course. I forgot to ask what variety. So I finally made my way to their stylized storefront in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, and after reading all the flowery descriptions and then getting advice from the staff, chose their one Indonesian coffee. What can I say? It was lousy. I'd asked for something full bodied, earthy, and spicy (I'm generally a sumatra fan). What I got was thin and spicy and metallic. Nibbling on the beans gave the same flavor profile, so I don't think it's anything I'm doing in the brewing. Anyone have a favorite stumptown variety? I'm especially interested in the big body, spicy, earthy kind of flavor profile.

I use britta-filtered NYC tap water. The filter makes a difference, primarily because the water hear has noticeable amounts of chlorine in it. Sometimes in the summer, they put in gobbs of chlorine (like when they detect cryptosporidium, or other such things) ... then the water makes ghastly coffee and tea. In general the water here is quite good, besides that, and a humble britta removes enough to make it undetectable. Some people in the city have nasty pipes ... their water tastes strongly of rust and other minerals. Brittas work well for them, too. I would not trust a britta if I thought there was anything actually hazardous in the water. It's not purifier ... not even close. Boiled water tastes bad because most of the disolved air has been driven out. You can make it fresh again just by shaking it up. Try a side-by-side test. It's pretty cool.

I wouldn't say you did anything 'wrong,' but by messing with more than one variable at a time you made it a lot harder to figure out what did what!

The 3000 has the same flame shape as the other torches I've used: narrow. The shape is helpful for touching things up, and a pain for browning large areas. If anything the flame is too hot. It's tricky to brown food without scorching the surface texture. I'd love a torch with about half the BTUs, and a flame that can adjust from narrow to wide. In practice the 3000 is fine for the way I use it, though i can imagine a more perfect torch finding more uses in my kitchen.

Seems like it would be a smaller issue, but there's no way to know for sure without testing. Some of the tests of other kinds of can linings gave results that surprised the manufacturers. I'd assume that a small piece of material makes less difference than a big one, and a lid makes less difference than the walls ... but those are just assumptions.

I'm trying to figure out when they started lining metal cans with epoxy ... it's possible that we've been chugalugging BPA since the 1930s. In one sense this is scary; in another sense it's reassuring. If we've been heavily exposed for that many decades, then it would seem the real-world risks aren't so apocalyptic.

i'm interested that the glucose is helping ... since it's less sweet, you generally use more of it, so you get a softer texture. i thought maybe fructose would be promising.

I mistrust this information even more. There is no science here, not a single citation of any kind. Statements like "All plastics can leach chemicals under certain conditions" are pointless. All known substances can leach certain chemicals under some conditions, so where does this leave us? I looked for studies that showed polypropylene leaching anything harmful under any reasonable kitchen conditions ... this is what my storage and takeout containers are made from. I found nothing. Doesn't mean it isn't possible, but it does mean that it appears to be safer than, say, most stainless steels, which can leach nickel (toxic in solution) into acidic foods. Not that I'm afraid of stainless; I use it for food in a million ways. Just trying to put things in perspective. I think it's as foolish to casually dismiss all plastic as it is to casually embrace all metal, glass, or ceramic. The world is full of glass and ceramic formulations known to be toxic, known to leach metalic compounds, etc. etc... The smart rule is the same for everything: know what you're using. And if you're going as far as pitching your lexan nalgene bottle, you really should consider banishing canned foods: that's where most of your BPA is lurking.

I'm not convinced the petroleum content is an issue. is the amount of petroleum used to make a polypropylene takeout container as much as what's used to manufacture a glass or stainless steel one? I think it's unlikely, especially if the plastic container has recycled content. The amount of energy that goes into steel and glass fabrication (even if the raw materials are recycled) is huge; and you can bet most of that energy comes from fossil fuels.

[quote name='Edward J' date='12 January 2010 - 08:25 PM' timestamp='1263345942' post='1723415' Callebaut and Belcolada are fine, but methinks the Belgians have a monopoly on chocolate in N.America. ------DON'T GET ME WRONG!!! They make good stuff, but it's kind like saying that: "only _______ (insert name of a wine making country) makes the BEST wine"...You'd have every other wine making country after you begging to differ!!!

Not my field, but the info in the chart corresponds with what I've read elsewhere. The format is user-friendly. Seems to me the real elephant in the room is canned foods, which may be the biggest source of BPA in most people's environment. Cans are lined with epoxy that leaches the stuff during the canning process. There are currently no regulations governing it, and since consumer fear has been directed at plastic containers, the industry hasn't been forced to make changes. Link