paulraphael

I wish we could find a teacher with Japanese and Western fine dining experience to update the EGCI knife skills course. That article is seriously long in the tooth.

I might play with this too. It saves some measuring and makes dissolving the stuff easier. Have you tried a 1% solution? to get your 0.08g, it would take 8ml of solution ... easy to measure with a baby doser, and not so much water added to the recipe.

I'm visiting family in Chicago, and my cousin who's an executive chef from Wisconsin is here. We're both broke bastards, but interested in grabbing a bite. Any thoughts?

There's no simple answer, because collagen breakdown depends on how much time the meat spends at a given temperature. The higher the temp, the less time the meat needs to spend there to get the consistency you want. How long did it take at 170? That would be a sensible starting point. The advantage of lower/slower approaches (to a point) is the ability to tenderize the meat while drying it out less.

This is something I've been wanting to test with regular milk. I've been following that general advice, but I assume that 170°+ cook doesn't do the milk flavor any favors.

Ok, good to hear. That's something that drives me crazy, but it's hard to judge when coming at it from the other side. Craftsteak is definitely not our model. We're looking at a couple of things that they do well. But we're aiming for a lower price point. I haven't seen that much dry age at any restaurant personally. We're not going to be entering the "my beef is aged longer than yours" contest ... it's kind of like the recent trend among brewmasters to see who can make the hoppiest IPA, or the ancient trend among backyard chefs to see who can make the hottest chili. I'd like to aim for a good balance between fresh and aged flavors. There's bound to be some debate on this topic ... everyone seems to have a different preference. I'm thinking 2 to 6 weeks, depending on the cut and the source of the beef. This is also something we'll likely have to test with the actual customers.

I'll try it if there's only a small cost premium, and if there's some other advantage, like longevity from the way it's packaged. But speed? Really, if it's a chore to peel the garlic, you just need to learn some better skills. It should always be way way way quicker than peeling a stubborn onion. With or without a bang from the side of a knife. If the peels are the only things keeping 20 cloves of garlic out of your dinner for 2, maybe a little inconvenience is a good thing!

I know of some restaurants that use the pre-peeled garlic. What's the price difference? I think you have to factor in more than lost quality when evaluating these timesaving products. There's price, and also, an honest look at if there are better ways to save the time. For a Mediterranean restaurant that goes through 2 cases of garlic a night, the 3 seconds that it takes to peel a garlic clove add up. At home, how many cloves do you peel at any one time? And chopped garlic? If it takes more than 20 seconds to microbrunoise a garlic clove, or 10 seconds to roughly mince it, the real time saver will be learning better knife skills. Nothing could justify the lost freshness. With the pre-peeled, whole garlic, I wonder if there are some advantages like longevity (if it's refrigerated in a jar) vs. whole heads of garlic sitting in a pantry.

Another possibility is the kasumi grade house brand deba sold by Korin, but I don't think this is as good a value. A bigger question is what length to get. This is a subject of some contention. I'd be inclined to get a 180mm, but I know some people advocate getting a longer (more expensive) one, and putting a back bevel on the few inches of the blade closest to the heel, for chopping through bones.

You can get great traditional knives in all the shapes for reasonable prices. The real trick is developing your cutting and sharpening techniques. All these knives will require a ton of hand work out of the box to flatten the bevels and polish the edges. If you've never done it, there's a lot of oportunity to completely jack up the knife ways that are difficult or impossible to repair. So I'd put at least as much attention into learning these skills as you put into chosing the knives.

Western yo-deba or Japanese wa-deba, single or double beveled? ← A Yo Deba is really just a fat, brutish chef's knife. It's not for any traditional Japanese techniques. A Wa Deba is traditional and for butchering and filleting fish, although it's also sometimes used to mince herbs and to to a few non-fish butchering tasks. You can get a great one for under $80 at Epicurian Edge. It's their house brand, called (confusingly) Hon Kasumi (it's not a hon kasumi style knife). I've heard from pros who use this knife butchering in restaurants ... it gets a big thumbs up.

This could be a DIY project. It probably just requires drilling a hole. The spigot might come with the washers, gaskets, etc.. If it doesn't, that's all basic plumbing hardware. I'd look for silicone gaskets, so they can take the heat.

I've done this with lapsang souchong, to infuse that smoky flavor without doing any actual smoking. It also worked beautifully as an herb in the sauce. I've tried lapsang souchong with less success in desserts. Green teas of course work in all kinds of desserts ... I prefer herbal tasting ones to the stronger, grassier ones.

I'm going to push hard for the dry age! As far as artisinal meat sources, that's an idea we're playing with. My guess is we're going to start out with some wagyu on the menu, at least as a special. But the main sources will probably be unnamed ranches. I've been investigating the artisinal providers for my own use in the underground restaurant world. The meat is amazing but so is the cost premium. And my butcher's standard sources, while lacking pedigree, are really, really good. The chef and restauranteur tasted my butcher's meat against DeBragga and Spitler's finest offerings, and it was a clean sweep. DeBragga is out. So our baseline is already high. I think it would be dangerous to start out with meat that's marginally better but that comes at a 30% to 50% price premium. If the venture takes off, then it might be able to afford adding more high end / high priced options.

I'm on the periphery of a new steakhouse venture in NYC ... it's going to be run out of a hotel restaurant, and built on the meat of a well known local butcher. The idea is to revive the restaurant in an all-too-hip hotel, which can't seem to get anyone in the door on a non-clubbing night. I've been consulting with them on the menu. My feeling is that they should not to go head-to-head with the city's traditional steakhouses. Those do what they do reasonably well, and it seems to me that they're specialized almost to a fault. For the most part, you don't go there for a great meal that includes some great meat; you there when you want a gagantuan steak on your plate, and are willing to suffer terrible side dishes, terrible service, and often terrible prices in order to get it. The approach I'm pushing is more more along the lines of Craftsteak, in that it would be based on a small plate / medium plate / large plate model where you can construct a meal. Not to the radical degree of craftsteak, where there's often nothing on each plate but the main ingredient ... but each plate is minimalist. So you could, for example, choose a large plate that would be a giant steakhouse steak including a couple of sides. Or you could get a couple of medium plates ... one that has 8oz of steak and a (good) vegetable, another that has something like a wild mushroom plate or a leek salad or a celereac purée. That kind of thing. There would be at least one non-steak main (in large and medium version) and non-steak special all the time. The menu would be simple, fresh seasonal. The meat will be the equal of what you can get at Craftsteak, and significantly better than what's at Peter Luger or the equivalent. Prices will be on the low side for this kind of restaurant. I'm pushing for a significant amount of dry age on the steaks; the chef is afraid people won't like that. I'm interested in people's thoughts on this. The goal is a steak-centered restaurant that will appeal to the big eating steakhouse type, without alienating a more typical NYC restaurant sophisticate who likes more moderate amounts of meat (or maybe even something else) and who wants the whole meal to be good. As a general concept, does this sound like a take on the steakhouse you'd like?

When I come up with a recipe, there's a typical arc that the process follows from the early versions to the final one. It starts simple, then gets absurdly complex as I address all the problems, and then it gets simple again as I figure out how to streemline the steps and make the recipe smarter. I assume there's always room for it to get even simpler. However, it would be hard for someone besides me to know how to simplify it, since they won't necessarily understand the full purpose of every step as it's written. If you're just riffing on the recipe's basic idea, then this probably doesn't matter much. But if you're trying to get the intended result, it's best to trust the recipe. Or do a thorough job analyzing it. Or best yet, write to the recipe author.

If the xanthan solution gets nasty, maybe you could try adding a preservative to the next batch. citric acid? sodium sulfite from the darkroom? also, are you keeping it in the fridge?

that slimy "aftertexture" pretty well describes the results when I tried to stablilize ice cream with arrowroot. I'd always liked arrowroot more than cornstarch in sauces, so I thought it might be better in ice cream, too ... in spite of warnings from people smarter than me that arrowroot does weird things in the presence of dairy.

I'm guessing this is the photographer in you, mixing a percentage solution like you'd do with phenidone. Which has crossed my mind ... it would make both measuring and mixing easier. The trouble is preserving it. It would make the most sense if you could keep the solution around for a while, and I suspect it would spoil pretty quickly.

Maybe. My immediate association with it was that this is one of the things I don't like about processed foods. Maybe there are contexts where it doesn't have that effect, like baked goods or in combination with other ingredients that cut through the slime (acids? alcohol?). I haven't experimented enough with it yet myself. ← Sliminess for me is just a sign that too much was used, or it was used inapropriately. I'm wondering (worried) if I could make something that feels fine to me and would feel slimey to you or someone else. In general, I find every colloid, including the more traditional ones like cornstarch, arrowroot, roux, and reduced gelatin, has some bad textural quality that's brought out by overuse or use in the wrong context. I started using xanthan to get away from the shortcomings of cornstarch and arrowroot, which i started using to get away from roux.

Are you guys suggesting that the slimy mouthfeel is a reaction some people have and others don't? One of the things I like about xanthan is that if it isn't overused, I get no weird lingering mouthfeel. But I'd have to rethink some of my recipes if a significant number of people would find them gross (for some reason I can't test for).

I can't comment on much on content, but you can definitely tighten up the writing. Instead of "cunduct training for kitchen crew," say "Train kitchen crew." "asian and chinese" is absolutely redundant. The easy fix is with specificity: "experience cooking Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese, Philippine, Laotian, Japanese, mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, and Mecau foods" (assuming you're actually experienced in all that. yikes!) The last two lines, about being a hands-on team player and being mindful of quality ... that doesn't really belong on a resumé. Those are your appraisals of yourself. A resumé is for information that's factual. Those appraisals belong in a cover letter. But better yet, say things in the cover letter (supported by factual lines on your resume) that lead the boss to come to those conclusions on his own. Saying "I'm a hard worker!" won't impress too many people. Pointing to facts like the shifts you worked, the responsibilities you took on, the improvements you made, etc., show that you're indeed a hard worker. The comments by Niki and Katie and Pastrygirl are spot on.

I haven't used it in ice cream. My inclination would be to save for stronger flavors, like coffee and chocolate. I wouldn't want that cooked, ultrapasteurized flavor invading my vanilla. For herb and spice flavors, and more delicate fruits, I go the other direction and use the barely pasteurized milk from stoneybrook.

The Activa I've used will definitely cold set. But I don't know if every variation of it will cold set in every circumstance. Ajinmoto sells a bewildering array of activa products, and their descriptions of the different properties aren't as clear as they could be.

In some ways should be able to do a better job than the bandsaw. Butchers seem to have a hard time getting slices of perfectly even thickness with those things. The challenge will be getting steaks the exact thickness you want, since you'll be forced to cut between ribs. I'd use the longest, thinnest slicing knife you have, and cut as far as you can without banging into bone. Then cut the bone with a hack saw. That transition between knife cut and saw cut might be a bit ragged, but I doubt it would call any attention to itself once the meat is cooked. That's going to be a lot of steak. Are you planning a big dinner party? (hint, hint)