paulraphael

It works fine. My standard recipe uses 190g flour and 60g water. I've substituted 20g water plus 40g vodka (80 proof). The results are a bit crisper, but the shell shrinks more. I find it to be more of an interesting option than a necessary improvement.

I've been interested in using gelatin (and possibly xanthan or other gums) in mousses ... not for moulding, but to let me get away with less egg. The idea being that eggs work in much larger quantities and so dilute the chocolate more. I have a recipe for chocolate marquise that I've already modded this way and served. It got good reviews, but I think it has a way to go before the texture is where I want it. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has played with this idea.

I take "eat local" as a very general good idea that's bound to have a lot of exceptions. Especially since I live in neither Northern California nor Southern France. Even here in New York, which has bountiful Hudson Valley and Pennsylvania for a back yard, eating local only takes you so far. We don't have citrus fruits. If someone tried to grow them, I'd probably pass. We have winters that go on a lot longer than i'm willing to endure with canned food and root vegetables. And I hate to point it out, NYC locovores: our local grass fed beef gets green green grass for at most 2/3 of the year. The hay and silage they get the rest of the year adds neither fat nor flavor. You just can't compare that stuff to grain finished beef, or to beef from Southern California that dines on green pasture year round. I'm willing to pay the cow's bus fare.

Probably through misunderstanding, just as many terms from philosophy, physics, or other specialized disciplines enter popular culture. They enter the mainstream mostly stripped of their original meanings. However, I'm open to the possibility that chefs like Adria and Achatz actually do some things with food that nod in the direction of Derrida. They certainly go beyond taking dishes apart, and I think they also go beyond ripping a dish from its traditional context. In Philosophy, deconstruction is a kind of meta-approach, in that it addresses existing philosophical arguments, rather than the subjects of those arguments (being, knowing, ethics, etc. etc...). Deconstruction is an attempt to critique and also discover alternative, latent meanings within the philosohical texts. Likewise in food, some approaches address an existing dish or tradition, and rather than just putting a new twist on it (or disassembling it), they discover or illuminate new relationships and possibilities within the existing ingredients and techniques. Naturally, I can't think of a concrete example while I sit here at 2 a.m. ... something about the mention of Derrida's name divorces me from concrete reality or any ability to say something helpful. Maybe someone who's eaten at El Buli can find an example that supports what I'm saying (or just tell me to go to bed). But yeah, "deconstruction" as practiced on Top Chef looks like the brainchild of the kid who showed up stoned every day at Philosophy 101. Please, chef, I'd like my burrito assembled.

I don't think there's anything besides a major defect that could cause this kind of break. There are many, many ways that you might inadvertently mess up a knife ... this isn't one of them!

Uncooked pirepoix freezes fine. Which is great, considering the smallest size bunch of celery most places will sell you.

Just sounds underbaked to me. If the top was cooked properly and the crust wasn't, then (as you suggested) you need to have the dough on a much hotter surface. People seem to do well with a stone, quarry tiles, or slab of metal right down over the firebox of the oven, where it can be blazing hot compared with the top of the oven. You should get some char on the bottom, or at least some deep browning. If the oven is hot enough you'll achieve this without turning the crust into a giant cracker. There should be a lot of rise ... generally if I don't stretch the dough out to well under 1/4" thick, it poofs up more than I like. Oven temp / stone temp is probably the first variable to play with. There are a million others ... pizza takes a lot of practice. If you're working from my recipe, I'd encourage you to think of it as a template. The method described is a basic one, and a good one. The exact proportions of ingredients, the hydration, oven temperature, etc.. can be monkeyed with to suit your tastes.

It would be interesting to do a blind taste test ... hot chocolate made with cocoa vs made with chocolate ... if you used similar quality chocolate and cocoa, and if you kept the fat percentage the same in each (say, by adding cream to the one made with cocoa). I bet it would be harder than people assume, unless they're intimately acquainted with the flavor of the paricular chocolate or cocoa powder.

Yeah, this one bugged me enough that I actually wrote a comment at the site. Overdone, obnoxious, pointless food that gets called molecular gastronomy ... yes, I've had enough of that too. But the concept, as misunderstood as it is? I try to learn everything I can about food science, and rarely with the goals of impressing guests with magic tricks and lab equipment. I want to know how to make my food better.

So, those of you with sous vide cookers in this price range ... what are you using for a vacuum sealer? Has anyone come out with one at the right price / performance point? Betty Crocker E-Z Suck Cryovac?

I haven't tried one. Seems like a reasonable use of ceramic, since a peeler isn't something I even know how to sharpen. The peelers I like most are the harp-style kuhn-rikon (for thicker fleshed things) and the straight messermeister (for everything else). The messermeister works like magic. Only drawback is that the serrations leave fine grooves in whatever you peel.

I've tried sirloin in the mix and found it added a lot of expense but not much flavor. I was trying to figure out why some of the better restaurants include sirloin in the mix; Mitch (Weinoo) guessed that these restaurants all do their own butchery and use their trim for the ground beef. That's as good a guess as any of mine. If you don't happen to have a bunch of sirloin trim around, I wouldn't buy it specifically for burgers. I'd say there are three factors in a burger blend: fat, flavor, and price. -Burgers need 15% to 20% fat, depending on cooking method, level of doneness, and personal preference. You need to work it out so any leaner ingredients get balanced out by the fattier ones. -Flavor is of course the whole point. Some cuts have much, much more than other. Some have flavor that we traditionally associate with burgers, others less so. -Price: don't grind up expensive meat! As soon as you catch yourself walking toward the grinder with a dry-aged, prime ribeye, it's time to find someone to talk you down. There's a reason we love chuck so much ... all by itself it fits all these criteria. It tastes good. Good quality chuck tastes like a good quality burger. It has the right amount of fat. It's cheap. Something like tenderloin fails all three. It's too lean, has too little flavor, and costs too much. When we add meat to the chuck, it's generally because we want MORE flavor. This should narrow things down quite a bit. What cuts have more flavor than chuck? Which ones would taste good in a burger? Which ones are fatty enough to hold up their end of the bargain? Which are cheap enough? As I said before, my personal holy grail is hanger steak, but I think these questions could lead you in a few other interesting directions. Especially if your butcher ever has anything special on sale, or if you find yourself with a bunch of trim.

Oh, yeah, I wince when I hear "vegan dessert." Usually what kills it for me is the lack of butter. And I've had the same experience with weird textures from the egg substitutes. But while I haven't had a great eggless brownie, I'm convinced that any pastry chef fluent in the language of texture ingredients could do an amazing job. I've been working on removing the eggs from my chocolate marquisse recipe ... not because I'm averse to eggs, but because I want less stuff between me and the chocolate. It's been a tricky project, because I'm still learning my way around the various gums and related ingredients.

Pomegranate seeds are a new fave.

You may be right, but eggs aren't in the recipe to taste like anything. They're just structural additives. I'd be all over this thread with wisecracks if someone were looking for a chocolate substitute! Or even a butter substitute. But the truth is, pastry chefs and chefs in general have become such wizards with texture that I believe almost any traditional texture can be duplicated. Sometimes even improved upon. For example, if someone can find an ingredient that gives the texture of eggs, but in much smaller quantities, this would allow you to make much more intensely flavored brownies ... there'd be less structural stuff diluteing the flavors.

Air drying overnight will make a big difference, but I still think that with a good quality bird (or a good quality anything) you can get better results without brining. Brine adds water weight to the meat, and also partially denatures the proteins, slightly tenderizing the meat and making it less likely to dry out from overcooking. The trouble is that added water weight is a bad thing for good meat; it dilutes flavor. What superficially seems like juiciness is largely wateryness. Those abundant juices will not taste as convincingly like turkey. They will, of course, taste salty ... an effect which is easy to overdo, unless you and your guests have grown accustomed to salty foods. Brine's ability to tenderize the meat, and to encourage it to hold onto its natural juices, makes it tempting. However, if you look at the rate of brine penetration, in days per inch, you'll see that to do anything more than a superficial job on a 12 lb turkey would require many days. The price you pay in lost freshness, in my mind, would not be worth it. Besides, most of what you're getting is insurance against overcooking. I think it's much better to just cook it right. None of this is to suggest that you can't get excellent results with brining. I just believe that you can get better results without, especially if you're dealing with an excellent quality bird to begin with.

I would absolutely not wet brine such a bird. The amount of brining it would take to get penetration into a big bird would essentially cure the meat on the outside. It will also be oversaturated, with diluted turkey flavors, difficult to brown properly, and very likely too salty. A dry salt rub, partially covered, for 12 hours or so works really nicely on a high quality bird. No! I'd go 15 degrees lower. I pull the bird when the temperature between the breast and thigh hits 155. It then rests, lightly tented for up to 45 minutes. You get at least a 5 degree rise during this time. I like to see the thigh cook to 160, the breast to 150, or even a bit less. I haven't used your method of starting the bird breast down, but it probably helps keep the breast meat cooler than the thigh meat. Which is probably the most important thing to do. Another option is barding the breast for a good portion of the cooking time, either with strips of fat, bacon, or foil. I wouldn't worry about the meat being too tough. This kind of turkey is generally more toothsome when you bite into it (sorry ... i hate that word, but don't know a better one). But it's not chewy or tough. If it is indeed lower in fat than a factory bird (and I wouldn't assume it is) then it will dry out more easily, and needs to be more carefully guarded against overcooking. If you cook this bird nicely, it will be delicious and juicy on its own. You'll have gravy because you like it, not because the bird needs to be hidden!

Eggs are just a structural ingredient, so it shouldn't be a problem replacing them. You'll probably discover many choices, all leading to different textures. The challenge might be finding one you like. I had a Ferran Adria flourless, eggless cake recipe once ... the experience was a bit like eating chocolate flavored nothing. Not my favorite, but some people loved it. It used some combination of hydrocolloids to create structure. Some other combination would have given a different result. You could try looking at vegan recipes (although I don't know if I ever ate a cake or cookie labelled "vegan" that I didn't want to spit out). Another great option, if you don't get a good answer here, is to join the Alinea Mosaic site and ask that community. Many of the world's high-tech ingredient ninjas gather there, and they could probably make you an expert in no time.

The difference is that butter is subtle; browned butter works in the background, especially with dry aged beef flavor, much as the salt does; char flavor is extremely powerful and walks all over every other flavor in its path. I love it on supermarket grade beef that needs help. But I'd never char a great piece of beef anymore than I'd slather it with A-1. Butter doesn't tenderize. I associate butter-sautéed meat with France and with high end restaurants in general more than with New York.

I love the taste of char too, but I don't want it on a first rate steak. Char is a powerful seasoning. If you've got a prime, many-week dry aged piece of beef, I find it a waste to overpower it with anything that strong. I want accompanying seasonings to be subtle ... salt, pepper, a hint of butter, a nice browned crust. Any other sauce / compound butter I'll serve on the side, and they won't be overpowering. You can't get away from char.

Sure, the recipe I listed earlier in the thread (adapted from Pierre Hermé and some traditional sources) uses a chocolate mixture that's 1/6 cocoa powder by weight. But, golly... What would you call it? Hot mess?

Sure, the recipe I listed earlier in the thread (adapted from Pierre Hermé and some traditional sources) uses a chocolate mixture that's 1/6 cocoa powder by weight. The chocolate vs. cocoa thing here is a bit pedantic. Cocoa is chocolate with much of the cocoa butter removed. Sure, all else being equal, cocoa will give a less rich drink. But all else needn't be equal. Higher fat milk or cream also give richness. And richness isn't always what you want. Sometimes you might like a lighter drink. And counter to some people's intuition, more richness mutes chocolate flavor, it doesn't enhance it. I like to use chocolate because in general, I think the best chocolates have a better, rounder flavor than cocoa powders. But great cocoa powders taste better than lousy chocolates; I'll take Perignotti or Valrhona or Drost cocoa over Nestle or Bakers chocolate any day. Cocoa is useful for intensifying the flavor of chocolate when you don't want to add more fat. That's also how I use it in other kinds of chocolate recipes.

The parchment that's not right under the pizza blackens and sometimes crumbles. Doesn't do any harm. The parchment right under the pizza just gets charred ... like the pizza. If your oven is truly hot enough to incinerate the parchment (like a real woodburning pizza oven would be) then you could use lower hydration doughs, and there'd be much less to gain by using parchment. In a 500 to 600 degree oven, where high hydration doughs rock, parchment makes life good. It's imaginary. There's no absorption of moisture by the stone. The paper doesn't make any noticeable difference in the crust. Except for indirectly: it lets you use less bench flour, which makes the crust better.

It's possible. Warm temperatures up to 120 degrees accelerate the enzyme ativity that causes aging effects. There's some evidence of this working slow (many hour) braises. Seems a bit of a stretch that you'd notice it when cooking something for 20 minutes, but who knows.

That's one style of hot chocolate. It's not going to be everyone's favorite. Certainly not mine.