paulraphael

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.

There are a couple of fundamentally different low and slow approaches: one is basically a dry braise (or a smokeless barbecue). And one is a roast, typically of something large, that you're trying to cook evenly from edge to edge. The difference is primarily the internal temperature. The former style requires breaking down the collagen, and depending on what you're after requires internal temps from 140 to 180 (at the low range, the temp has to be held for many many hours). The latter style is generally for meat that's rare to medium rare. Obviously you'd choose different cuts and dishes for these approaches. Both approaches lend themselves to a high-heat sear, which I think works best at the end, right before serving.

shoulda said: won't be deadened by cooking. the issue is chemical reactions from the heat, not the phyical state change.

Bud, where did you get your steel plate? how thick is it?

I hope some will play with it. The possibilities are interesting. The resulting liquors might taste especially fresh and three-dimensional. And all kinds of interesting things might be done with the stuff left behind, sinci it won't be deadened by boiling.

Oh, but he has plenty of fancy recipes. The ones I've stolen use real chocolate. The most amazing ones don't use any dairy. If you haven't tried a dairy-free hot chocolate, it's a revelation. Supposedly this is how chocolate was served thought most of its history ... milk is a more recent addition. The water and chocolate based drinks are like crack. The sensation is that there's nothing between you and the chocolate; it seems to pass straight from your mouth into your arteries and your brain. Incredibly intense. So much so that I make this style of cocoa mostly as a dessert shot ... something you can have by the demitasse and not need anything else afterwards. For a regular beverage, I soften the intensity a bit with milk, but only a small amount. Here's one that I like, adapted from a couple of Pierre Hermé Ideas. Not truly dairy-free. Medium-intense. : Caramel-Cinnamon Hot Chocolate 1/2 to 1 cinnamon stick 360g / 1-1/2 cups water 60g / 1/3 cup sugar 120g / 4-1/4 oz Bittersweet chocolate 24g /1/4 cup dutch cocoa 1g / 1/8 tsp salt 240g / 1 cup whole milk -Heat sugar and cinnamon, undisturbed, in a heavy saucepan. -boil the water separately -when sugar starts to caramelize, stir vigorously until amber -pour water on sugar/cinnamon, and keep stirring and heating until clumps liquefy -whisk in cocoa -stir in chocolate, continuing to stir until melted -stir in milk -keep on heat until the first bubble pops on the surface -remove from heat and whip (with a whisk or a stick blender) until slightly frothy

If you shape the dough and build the pizza on parchment, you don't need to use all that added flour, because the dough won't have to be handled and won't have to slide. You'll be able use higher hydration with less trouble ... or if you have a super hot oven and don't need such high hydration, you won't risk the bitter tastes that come from bench flour overcooking. parchment's hardly essential ... I consider it a cheat. But I'm not a ninja when it comes to handling gluey dough, and the cheat improves both my success rate and my mood.

I don't think the porosity of the stone makes any difference. I've slid pizzas onto my stone on a sheet of foil and it doesn't seem to affect the crispness or char at all (it does tend to stick, so I've stopped doing this). My hesitation with skillets isn't the metal, but the sides. I think a plate of steel or a big griddle would be much better.

Cast iron doesn't absorb moisture, so it isn't exactly ideal for dough. People who use metal report great results. A stone doesn't actually absorb moisture; nothing absorbs moisture when it's above the boiling point. Any water that comes in contact with the oven deck (stone, metal, or whatever) flashes off as steam instantly. A stone is just the traditional way getting a lot of thermal mass. A chunk of iron could have at least as much, with the advantage of higher conductivity. This could get you a quick cook and char on the crust at somewhat lower temperatures than a stone. And it could improve cooking in smaller ovens or grills where you don't have much temperature differential between the deck and the top of the oven.

Ok, Stumptown has opened in Brooklyn, and has a café in Chelsea; Intelligentsia has opened their training lab in wherever. Neither company has info on their websites about retail locations for beans. Has anyone found them around town?

Haven't, but it should work great. I'd use a heavy pizza stone, or if you can find one, a slab of iron or steel, so you don't have to contend with the sides of the pan. The only issue I can imagine is that the toppings might cook too fast. managing a wood fired oven is a kind of balancing act between the temp at the floor of the oven and the temp at the top. I don't know what the situation would be like inside a weber grill.