paulraphael

Jeff Varasano commented that the best pizzerias in Naples often don't bother with VPN certification.

I'm waiting for some 100g samples. Can its life be extended by freezing?

Insulation only buys you time. No matter how well insulated the container, the LN2 is going to pick up heat from outside, and a certain amount will boil off. A cryogenic dewar (the only thing liquid gasses should be stored or transported in) is basically a thermos that can't be fully sealed. The better ones are spill proof, but still vent to the outside. A fully sealed thermos is 100% guaranteed to explode ... eventually.

Yup! Imagine a thermos with a glass vacuum bottle ...

I don't know about your home kitchen, but mine is a controlled environment. I'm usually in it by myself, the pace is measured, and I won't get kicked out for failing to comly with the chef's (or OSHA's) rules. If I'm wearing flip flops, which I often do on hot summer days while cooking, I'm all the more careful when tossing food in a hot pan. Then you're working for people who don't observe even the most basic industry safety rules and recommendations. Yes. But street shoes are not protective gear, partial or otherwise, with LN2. They're a hazard. Like wearing a neck tie around a printing press. (Edited to add: in previous post I wrote "LNO2," which may or may not exist. I meant LN2)

I strongly disagree. Regular shoes and socks are the least safe thing to wear with liquid nitrogen. You're right that a drop in your shoe won't cause frostbite, but a big splash most certainly will. There are two safe approaches: protective gear (boots that won't let any liquid in, with an apron or cuffs covering the tops) or no gear at all. Spilling LN02 on bare feet won't hurt you ... it rolls off just as it rolls off your hands. Flip flops are the same. If you're in a commercial kitchen, obviously bare feet and flip flops are not going to fly ... but working with it at home, that's exactly what I'd do.

Very different. The Guide Culinaire is a recipe book, based 100% on style and orthodoxy of La Cuisine Classique ... the cooking style developed largely by Carême after the French Revolution and further codified by Escoffier. It's important largely as a historical document. Much of today's cooking points back to classical French cooking in one way or another--either by direct descent, clever reference, or outright rebellion. Because of this it's useful to have the original text for reference, whether or not you plan to actually make any of the recipes. Peterson's book attempts to be encyclopedic. He provides a researched history of Wetern saucemaking, starting with ancient Greece, continuing through classical French and Nouvelle cuisine, and culminating sometime in the late 20th century. He then discusses ingredients and techniques and styles, establishing a kind of theoretical and historical framework for understanding the recipes. The book (starting with the second edition) branched into Latin and Asian sauces and techniques, but these are clearly peripheral interests to Peterson. It's not where he comes from. His inclusion of these sauces demonstrates that he understands their importance, but if you want to dig deeper you'll need to look to his bibiliography (which is one of the most useful sections in the book, btw). The core of the book is classical French sauces and techniques, along with two major waves of their reinterpretation: Nouvelle Cuisine (where demi-glace is replaced with glace de viande, reduced cream, and mounted butter); and more contemporary versions, like 1990s-style, unbound, broth-like sauces. He talks about bad contemporary practices in restaurant kitchens (shortcuts that squander flavor in the name of economy) but he also promotes many contemporary techniques that were unheard of in classical times. Like alternatie methods for making meat coulis, and alternative liaisons, like purees and a whole range of purified starches. What's missing is the latest wave of techniques and ingredients. You won't find anything about gums and other modern hydrocolloids, or about gelatin clarification, vacuum reduction, or laboratory filtration. I'd be happy to have Peterson for the fundamentals, and to get another book that thoroughly teaches the new stuff ... but that other book doesn't seem to exist yet.

Like what?

The Peterson book is the best sauce book I've seen. In fact it's the best cookbook I've seen, in terms of the sheer depth and breadth of the knowledge it encompasses, and its clear and systematic approach. That said, I think it's showing its age and limitations. I'm ok with it being euro-centric (or whatever you want to call it). I don't think one author and one book can be expected to conquer the entire world. My problem is that Peterson hasn't kept up with the important things going on in his own tradition. He was the beacon of cutting edge saucemaking up until 1990 or so, and then aparently just stopped caring. I was excited when the third edition came out. I assumed he'd been busy cataloging all the various hydrocolloids, new methods of reduction and clarification, and other techniques gaining traction throughout the U.S. and Europe at high end restaurants. Instead, these ideas are mentioned in the intro in a list of what WON'T be covered. Hello? I was disappointed. But this is because the book isn't living up to its potential anymore. Not the same as saying another book does it better..

I can't speak for the article, but in general find that people who work with LNO2 don't respect its dangers as much as they should. This includes friends who are chefs, and friends who are molecular biologists! Everyone I know is clever enough to prevent an explosion. What's worrisome is lack of eye protection (a small splash in the eyes is bad, bad news) and lack of respect for the problems associated with spills. There are issues with big spills in enclosed spaces (suffocation). But a more likely problem is small spills that get inside your clothes. People get lulled into complacency by the cool way a blob of nitrogen just beads up and rolls off your hands. They don't stop to think about what happens if it falls inside your shoe and has nowhere to go. The result can be excised, frostbitten flesh, or amputated toes. At a minimum, people should where lab goggles, roll up their sleeves, and kick off their shoes (or wear open shoes like flip flops).

That's interesting, and suggests that n-zorbit might not be identical to generic tapioca maltodextrin. There are a couple of other uses for n-zorbit. One is to keep powders powdered ... like when trying to make flour out of oily nuts. If you throw some zorbit in with peanuts before grinding them, you get peanut powder instead of peanut butter. Same with almonds, macadamia, etc... It can also be used as a kind of super emulsion stabilizer--though technically this probably isn't an accurate description. For example, brown butter ice cream is difficult to make, because the butter fat cells have been damaged during the churning process. Butterfat emulsions are much less stable than cream emulsions, so ice cream with significant quantities of butter tend to "break" and get grainy. N-zorbit can be used to turn the brown butter into a solid ingredient, which disperses easily into the ice cream base. The result is smooth and stable, and the flavor release is excellent. I'm sure there are other uses out there. Things like this interest me more than edible powders.

This is about the long fermentation time, which isn't unique to no-knead recipes.

Yes, except I think the lower the oven temp, the wetter the dough needs to be. Bread in general is improved with high hydration doughs for the reasons Mitch mentions. Pizza is an extreme case, because it's thin, and because we like to brown and char the crust. In a very hot oven (a legitemate wood-fired pizza oven is typically 800 to 900 degrees F) baking time is a couple of minutes or less. The crust can char in the time it takes for the middle of the dough to just set ... so you get the neapolitan ideal of a crisp outer curst and a tender, airy inner crust. In a typical home oven, you'll be limited to 500 to 600 degrees F. Baking times can be as high as seven minutes. That's plenty of time for standard dough to dry out and toughen. Very high hydration helps prevent this.

I think the easiest approach is to lightly oil a sheet of parchment while it's on a peel (i use flat cookie sheets for peels); stretch out the dough and build the pizza on the parchment, and slide the pie, parchment and all, onto the stone. If the parchment insulates the crust and reduces char, the effect is minimal. There's no need for bench flour or cornmeal. Working with wet dough becomes easy (I use up to 75% hydration, depending on the flour). An option I haven't tried is the self-releasing aluminum foil. Regular foil, even well oiled, is a disaster. I love Jim Lahey, but not enough to pull a hot stone out of the oven.

That was my favorite bit of product placement in all of top chef. completely botched and completely honest.

Are the others in your co-op in NYC? If so, I have some ideas for you.

Who's your farm? I might try to include them in an upcoming beef tasting event. For my tastes, that's the best way to do it. Keep the cows in the pasture longer, and finish on grains (not necessarily corn, and ideally with grass still in the mix) to fatten them up. Some of the best farms, like Prather Ranch in California, keep the cattle in the pasture their whole lives, but supplement their diet with grain at the end. It's worth mentioning that ALL cattle are grass-fed for the first year or so of their lives. What's at issue how they're fed for the last few months. "Corn finished" or "grain finished" are more accurate terms than corn-fed. Also worth mentioning that grass-fed doesn't always mean pasture-raised. Farmers have lobbied to have all kinds of things considered grass, including hay. Think about the climate in any farm's region ... you can be pretty sure that in New York State and Montana, the cattle aren't roaming the pastures and eating grean grass in February. They're probably in an enclosed barn for much of that time, eating hay. You'll get greener tasting beef from Southern California.

Mony Python was skewering food descriptions decades ago. This is for "Crunchy Frog" : "We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose."

The trouble with the grass fed vs. corn fed debate is that it falls into a false dichotomy, where the only available choices are pristine, pasture-raised beef vs. abused, industrial feedlot-raised beef. This presumes that all cattle finished on grain are the products of filthy and inhumane factory farms, which just isn't the case. There are plenty of small to mid-sized artisinal farms all over the country that choose to raise their cattle humanely and without hormones and antibiotics--and to finish them on grain. If you want to compare the results of grass finishing to those of grain finishing, then compare beef from similar quality farms. Otherwise you're engaging in a meaningless debate. On another topic, there's a good reason producers of grass-finished beef choose not to have their meat graded: it's usually too lean to even make the Choice grade. Very little of it would even make Select. This doesn't mean that the meat is poor quality, but it does mean that it will be utterly lacking in one of the qualities (succulence) that people raised on grain finished beef often value.

Dave, have you ever been able to get a ceramic knife truly sharp? Like in the same league as a good steel knife?

or plain carbon steel, blue/black steel, etc ...

That's a good point ... I was thinking about cast iron. I have to be a lot more gentle with my carbon steel wok.

A well applied seasoning can handle almost any scrubbing you throw at it. I'd stop short of steel wool or ajax. Most of the mythology about handling seasoned cast iron with kid gloves comes from people's experience with improperly seasoned pans. They thing the greasy film left after cooking is the seasoning!

Seven, I think think you've partially seasoned that pan. There's more to seasoning than polymerized fat; theres also the carbon that comes from some of that fat burning. This what makes seasoning black, and what makes it slippery. The most efficient way to do it is to find an oil that's very high in polyunsaturated fat, and that has the smoke point printed on the label. The unsaturated fat molecules are the ones avaliable for oxidation, so using the right oil lets a thin coating produce a much more substantial finish. Corn oil isn't a bad choice; grapeseed, safflower and sunflower are probably even better. If you can get a brand like Spectrum that tells you the smoke point, then there's little guesswork. Set your oven for about 25 degrees higher than the smoke point, put a very thin coat of oil on the pan, and open a window. Give the pan 30 minutes or so; it will turn very dark. Repeating once, should do it; twice definitely will. I assume the surface characteristics will be similar to seasoned cast iron. But I have no idea how durable the finish will be in comparison; cast iron has the right porosity to hang onto the coating tenaciously. The other question is, do you want this? A seasoned surface, in my opinion, gives you a more specialized pan. It's great for eggs; it's handy for fish and other delicate protein if you want to be lazy with technique; but otherwise it just gets in the way. It retains and transfers strong flavors, it can discolor light colored sauces, and the dark surface makes it harder to tell how browned your pan drippings are.

I've never seen aluminum that's been seasoned in the manner of cast iron. In my opinion this would be a less versatile surface than bare aluminum, because it adds the idiosyncrasies of polymerized oil/carbon and is still somewhat reactive. And the recommendation from the Lincoln site to season stainless steel is just bizarre. Good example of Steven's observation about cookware company credibility.