paulraphael

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.

I had some fun with this last night, at a ritual steak night with a few friends. I bought a nice, dry aged prime t-bone from my butcher, about 2" thick ... he threw in the "trim" for free, which amounted to a second, 1" to 3/4" steak. I cooked them sided by side; the thick one using the ducasse method, the thin one with a quick sear in a very hot pan, and a short cook over lower heat. I timed it so they'd come out of their pans at the same time, rested them on a hot plate, loosely tented, for 10 minutes. It was interesting to contrast the two approaches. Both can give a perfectly cooked steak, with very little temperature gradient. The Ducasse (low, slow) method makes control and timing easier, allows you to get more butter flavor into the crust (assuming you want it), and won't smoke up your kitchen. The high heat method gets the meat on the table much faster.

that's exactly what some restaurants do. The pastry chef always has ganache on hand, so they just have to put a dollop in some hot milk, and voilla ... instant hot chocolate that's way above average. As you might expect, this kind of hot chocolate is very rich, but not as intensly chocolae flavored as some others.

I find that lightly oiling the parchment helps prevent sticking. I think this is because the very wet doughs that I prefer tend to seep water into the parchment and actually glue themselves to it if there's no oil there. It also helps to build the pizza at the last possible minute, but this improves everything else, too. I haven't found any need to modify recipes or techniques when using parchment, although it presents the opportunity to use much less bench flour. Snoop around on pizzamaking.com ... there's plenty of discussion of parchment. One guy discusses the drawbacks, and they're purely practical (he can't find parchment wider than 15 inches, but he likes to make pizzas bigger than this. Fair enough!)

Why, because they'll kick you out of the club? It's not a traditional method, but it works better than any other I've tried.

The parchment will burn, but not dramatically. You'll end up with an interesting charred sheet of paper, with the unique outline of the pizza baked on it. I've thought about mounting and framing a few (a wine-induced idea). I haven't tried it, but there's releasable foil available ... basically aluminum with some kind of nonstick coating. The brand I saw advertised was good to over 600 degrees. I'd like to try that some day, because it might allow you to reuse the foil if making multiple pies. The parchment, obviously, is a one-shot. You can also simulate that fancy mechanical peel with foil and a cookie sheet or regular peel. build the pizza on a piece of foil that's around twice the depth of the peel ... you can probably visualize how it would work. The pie would end up on the stone and the foil would end up in your hand.

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, the penalty for putting a good quality steel knife in the dishwasher isn't Culinary Hell ... you get inducted as an intern on the Sandra Lee show. Forever.

Those things don't CUT food. They crush and tear it into odd-sized and odd-shaped pieces. They are implements of destruction, not cutting tools.

Yes, you will go to culinary hell, where you'll meet all the people you actually want to hang out with. Seriously, ceramic knives are basically a disposable commodity, as you've discovered. Do what you will ... maybe try not to drop them on a tile floor. If they suit your working / shopping style then who cares. Just don't spend a lot on them.

Are you trying to do a formal, Frenchie-style dice? Perfect little cubes? If so, then good luck! If you're willing to be more liberal and have irregular shapes at roughly the same size, then any of these suggestions (besides ... um ... the slap chop) will work fine. The trick is do a lot at once. After you cut the strips, you can stack them and also lay several side by side. A big knife helps ... at least 10". You should be able to do a few lbs in a few minutes, not counting washing and the initial trimming.

I might experiement with replacing half the oil with butter, and then seeking moisture from some other source: applesauce, sour cream, etc... I tend to think of oil-based cakes as creating the illusion of moisture rather than being truly moist. so I think this could be an improvement, not a compromise (unless you like corn oil more than butter!)

I think that it is. A different gourd anyhow. My understanding is that canned pumpkins are made with those green, pumpkin-like squashes that are cheaper and easier to grow than traditional pie pumpkins.

I think with a good sugar pumpkin, fresh just tastes much better. But it can hard to equal the texture of the canned pumpkin. Part of the issue is excess moisture, and part is the all the fibers. Moisture you can take care of by baking in the oven, like Theresa said. I go hotter than she does, but I don't mind it getting a little toasted. The fiber requires diligent pureeing and straining. If you have a vita prep, you're set. Easy peasy. I don't, so I blast it in a food processor (the blades seem to cut the fibers better than the blades in my commercial blender). and run it though the fine disk of a food mill. If you're a fanatic, you could try forcing it through a chinois. I also let the puree sit in a strainer over a bowl in the fridge to let excess water drip out.

The Kenwoods have a certain exotic appeal, since you can't get them here, but I've never seen anything to suggest they're superior machines. They're belt driven, full of plastic moving parts, and break down as often as any consumer mixer. The Delonghi and Cuisinart and Viking mixers are basically repackaged Kenwood designs. I don't think any of these outperform the humble KA.

Has anyone made carrot cake substituting butter for a siginificant chunk of the oil? Seems like it would be a much better cake, but I don't know what structural issues you might encounter.

My usual choice is pancakes, they're a personal fave. Crepes are king, though ... they do anything. Sweet, savory, simple, fancy, breakfast, dinner, dessert, plain, stuffed with anything. Love em. French toast is lower on my list since I'm not a big egg eater, but I love it for the traditional purpose: getting rid of stale bread. I'm happy to eat it any morning if it's not too soggy. Waffles are more of an occasional treat. They sit at the bottom of my list because they require special gear to make, and to me aren't quite worth owning the gear. I have them at pancake houses, or at motels that have the do-it-yourself waffle iron.