paulraphael

I used to have multiple sets of volume measures. When I got a scale, I de-accessioned all but one set of stainless dry measuring cups, and my single set of cuisipro measuring spoons (these rock ... in addition to being a cool design, they're actually pretty accurate, which couldn't be said for any of my others). I still find use for a few liquid measuring cups ... small and large pyrex, and 16oz and 64oz stainless. These get used for lots of things besides just measuring. For mise, an assortment of stainless mixing bowls from 10oz up to a few quarts, a pile of 16 oz deli cups, and what might be the most useful: 32oz and 64oz square-sided cheap plastic containers by ziplock and gladware.

Gelatin doesn't float to the top. You're skimming fat, and odd bits of protein and impurities (anything that shows up as froth and skin). Besides skimming like you've got OCD, one of the best things you can do for your stock is turn down the heat. Most books don't emphasize this enough. They say "simmer," but that's easy to interpret as a more vigorous bubbling than the ideal. Any stream of bubbles that you see indicates too much agitation. It's a recipe for fats and impurities getting churned into an emulsion and clouding the stock, instead of floating to the top. The French have an expression for a low simmer where the surface just barely shimmers, and a bubble rises once in a while: "making the pot smile." That's what you're looking for.

The m'cook pans look nice, but I wonder just how much nicer they are in practice than all clad. JB Prince has the lowest prices I can find. For a 10" fry pan they want practically double the price of a typical discounted all clad equivalent. In fact, their prices are about what I paid for Mauviel's copper pans just a few years ago!

Yeah, my dad was a victim of that ... he needed his hip re-replaced. But the point I was trying to make still stands. The implant issue is about physical wear, and debris becoming a physical irritant. It has nothing to do with chemical toxicity.

My take on this is similar to Slkinesy's, with a few shades of difference. I think there's reason to be more cautious with PTFE pans on high heat than with other pans. I routinely preheat my stainless lined cookware to temperatures that would incinerate food if the food itself didn't act as a heat sink, lowering the temperature of the pan on contact. With seasoned iron or steel cookware, I don't go quite as far, but almost. The biggest risk there is damage to the seasoning, which is renewable. But I never heat PTFE like this. Not just because foods suited to nonstick pans rarely require it, but because it will damage the pan. At best it will shorten the already short useful life of the coating. At worst it will kill it in one session. And the breakdown products of radically overheated PTFE ARE more toxic than the breakdown products of cooking oil. Take a look at the sources I linked above. The 1950s FDA study that was mentioned specifically sites temperatures of 482 degrees F. This is considerably lower than the temperatures a pan might reach when preheating for an aggressive sear. Even DuPont's current FAQ is based on the assumption that 500°F is a higher temperature than a pan will encounter outside the broiler. Not in my house! Above 530°F, significant quantities of organic gasses, of the types you probably don't want to be huffing, start liberating into the kitchen. So my habits with PTFE pans are significantly different from my habits with anything else. If I owned pans lined with tin, which melts a bit below 500°, I'd treat them similarly. As far as the comment on birds being more sensitive to airborn toxins, yes, that's true. But toxicity is ALWAYS a factor of dose. The world is full of chemicals that are harmless or even beneficial at one dose, and deadly at another. In fact most earthly substances could be described this way. Birds, not just because of size but because of their exceptionally efficient respiratory systems, suffer from many airborn toxins and irritants at radically lower concentrations than we do. The sensible conclusion isn't "don't expose the bird to anything you wouldn't expose yourself to." Rather, it's "keep the f'ing bird far away from the kitchen no matter what kind of pan you use." Because there all kinds of airborn vapors and particulates in the kitchen--ones we can breathe deeply if not happily for a lifetime--that can knock birds off their perches in short order. Click.

I'm not sure where you're getting this. Thermal breakdown products of PTFE include toxic gasses such as perfluoroisobutene, octafluoroisobutylene, and tetrafluoroethylene. (And I'm using the term "gaseous" because it describes the physical state of the chemical in the situation we're talking about). Some more info can be found here and here. But again, this isn't a panic alert, just an addtional reason beyond common sense to avoid incinerating your teflon pans. Significant pyrolysis doesnt occur until 530°F or so ... well past the point where any oil in the pan would be turning into clouds of smoke.

The safety issues with PTFE have been wildly exagerated (and sometimes fabricated) by the online pseudoscience community. Here's all you need to know: 1) PTFE is chemically inert as far as your body is concerned. You could eat a pound of it. And you'd poop out a pound of it. There isn't a single known solvent in your body that can absorb PTFE. This is one reason that it's routinely used in permanent implants in the body, like artificial limbs and heart valves. 2) The gaseous chemicals produced by overheating PTFE to the point of destruction are poisonous. Exactly how harmful they are is a subject of debate; they're known to be very harmful to small creatures like birds. Kind of like the canaries in coal mines that would die from methane gas before any people were effected. However, this is just one reason not to overheat your teflon pan to the point of destruction. If you're reaonably careful, and don't preheat the pan on high heat for a long time, and don't use it for aggressive browning of foods (which these pans are lousy for anyhow), you'll be fine. This destruction won't catch you by surprise. You'll actually see the coating smoking and deteriorating. If this happens, take it off the heat, open a window, and when the pan cools down, pitch in the recycling. 3) You probably only need one or two of these pans anyhow. If you consider them specialty items, for cooking eggs and delicate fish, then you'll never have to worry about heating them past the point of no return.

Is all Durum flour created equal, or is some higher in protein than others? Also, what about the mixing techniques, water temperature, used in manufacture, etc.? I wonder if any of these factors can have an effect on the way the pasta cooks. It seems to me that some durum pastas hold their texture better than others. Some crappier ones I've used are a bit tricky to cook properly while the better ones seem almost invincible.

Great explanation! At first I was going to assume that baking soda would come with the same considerations as baking soda. But since double acting baking soda actually produces additional gas in the oven, I can see how it might be different. So it seems like an open question.

It all depends. If you're dealing with a pan that actually needs deglazing, then you're right; a soft spatula will have a hard time scraping hard things off the pan. In those cases I like flat bamboo spatulas. For stirring things that don't brown onto the pan, silicone is a bit more efficient. It works like a squeegee and really keeps food moving off the surfaces. Nancy, where do you get these? They sound pretty deluxe.

I'm not convinced that oil can substitute for water when it comes to making things moist. A little oil can have a little effect, but if you go very far the impression is oiliness more than moistness. I would put more attention into ingredients that retain moisture, like invert sugars (or in some cases, higher protein, non gluten-forming flours), or ingredients like sour cream that add moisture in the form of a fat emulsion (the coconut milk/cream idea might also be an example).

I'm skeptical of the cold water start, and the idea of making a pound of pasta in 2 quarts or less water. Especially fresh pasta, which seems to tolerance little abuse. But I agree that bringing 6 quarts of water to a boil is huge waste of time and energy. I'd be inclined to do things a bit more restaurant style and reuse the water for consecutive batches. Instead of 6 quarts for a pound, boil 3 quarts, and then use the same water for two half-pound batches. Only disadvantages are that it's more labor intensive, and the first batch will have to sit for several minutes waiting for the second. But I find that once tossed with oil or sauce, pasta isn't going to self destruct in such short order. At least if it's decent quality dry pasta. I'd like to try McGee's idea of rinsing pasta with cold water first to keep it from sticking.

In this article McGee tries cooking pasta in small quantities of water. He also tries starting the pasta in cold water and letting it rise the boil. Grandamas are skeptical but good sports.

Ok, I got the beaterblade a couple of weeks ago. It's INSANELY GREAT, to quote Steve Jobs. Took a bit of fiddling to get my bowl perfectly aligned (actually had to bend the tabs on the side of the mixer bowl a bit). Now it fits and works perfectly. I'd say it cut the mixing time on a 2kg batch of chocolate chip cookie dough by two thirds. Not only does it mix everything more efficiently, but there's no need to stop and scrape the bowl. Ever. It also works as a handy bowl-shaped spatula to scrape everything out. No problem with the chocolate chips, though I haven't tried mixing anything heavier or chunkier. I wonder if these guys will supersize this product for commercial hobart mixers. This would save people a ton of time in pastry kitchens. The thing is already NSF / ansi rated for commercial use. Kitchenaid is really missing the boat by not encouraging products like this. I don't know why they don't do what Apple does with iPod accessories: have an approval program. Apple has to like the product in order to endorse it. The product gets an official sticker, the consumer gets peace of mind, and Apple gets a fee. Everyone wins.

The standard way to do this is to mount the butter in the liquid (beurre monté). It works best with a small amount of liquid relative to the butter. You add butter only as fast as it will incorporate and emulsify. There's no limit to how much butter you can add, because it's already an emusion. But too much liquid and the butter will break regardless of heat. Boiling will definitely break a simple beurre monté. In general you don't want it to get above 180F. For the potatoes, I think you'll get better results adding the butter and milk seperately. Butter first, whole and unmelted. Mix it in as above, as if the potatoes were your liquid. The butter will stay emulsified, if you mix as it melts. The amount of butter you put in depends only on how rich you want the potatoes to be. If you want to use garlic the best way to get the flavor into the potatoes is through the butter. Mince the garlic and work it into softened, solid butter. This is called a compound butter and is delcious by itself. The aromatic compounds in the garlic are highly soluble in fat ... much moreso than in water based liquids. Add milk at the end, purely to adjust the texture. Use hot milk, and only whisk in a little at a time. It goes a long way.

There are many steps on the quality chain. And a place like Lobel's represents a whole range of steps, probably from a little below the best NR has to offer to quite a bit above. My concern with an operation like NR is consistency. I'm sure a lot of their meat is spectacular. But how reliable can it be when they're working with so many big farms, and when it seems that volume and profit are becoming higher and higher priorities.

I haven't found the reduced sugar to make things less moist. Most of the recipes I've found (including the French ones, oddly) seem a bit too sweet. If moistness becomes an issue you could try substituting invert syrup for some of the confectioner's sugar. Haven't tried that or seen it recipes, but why not go for it? I'd be curious to know if interferes with the final shape. It might be good for other uses of the batter, like cakes, if you're going for a lighter consistency. I actually haven't been making proper financiers ... I'm interested in other uses of the batter, since it's so delicious. But I realize there are some issues peculiar to getting the things to rise to the right shape in small molds.

I use the French Dowel type for everything. It's about 2' long, beechwood, and cheap. I like the simplicity. But I notice that with this kind of roller, as you roll out dough you're also rolling out the flesh on your hands. When I use it a lot, I get a strange "over-massaged" feeling ... hands get red and tingly. Anyone else noticed this? No big deal for me, but I can see this causing problems for someone rolling out dough many hours a day.

I can't speak for their beef, but have buying their jambon royale ham weekly for the last couple of years. It tastes the same to me, and it tastes really good. Even under Niman's ownership, the beef operation was so huge ... so many different farms over such a huge area ... that I just assumed they were not going to be in the very top tier of U.S. beef producers.

I just tested this one again, using the smallest amount of butter and no other tweaks. It came out really well. I don't have any financier sheets so I made a cupcake in a pyrex ramekin and a 9" round in a cake pan. For the cupcake I tried a two temperature method that I'd read about ... started on 400°, let it rise, then turned down to 325°. For the round, I did it all at 325. This was in a small convection oven. Both took about 25 minutes. The two temperature approach supposedly gives an especially crisp outside and moist inside, but I didn't find any significant advantages. The recipe had a nice moist consistency, good density, and good melt-in-your-mouth character. The higher butter variation would be more decadent, but hardly necessary. I'd only consider this for baking smaller forms. I can imagine using a higher proportion of almonds, and possibly toasting them before grinding.

I looked at the PDF on the site ... it's for the older style mixers where everything is built in to the chasis of the mixer itself. Totally different construction. Good news is that the newer models are so much more simply laid out that you can probably figure it out on your own. The old ones ... good luck!

This thread got me snooping around online, and now I'm worried. Because 1) wild salmon (the kind I like) seems overwhelmingly prone to parasite infection, and 2) I like to cook it very rare. Is this stupid? I don't plan to change my habits, but would like to find out if I'm stupid.

How would you define the fad? None of these chefs who get described by the term "molecular gastronomy" seems to embrace it. And the term was coined by people giving a talk on something completely unrelated to any style of cooking. The cooks who get placed under this umbrella frequently have little in common, besides the desire to innovate. I don't see how radical innovation can be called a fad. Look at Adria, for example. He completely redefines his approach to cooking every year. The commercial mocks pretentiousness ... which also, sadly, is not a fad. We've always had it, probably always will.

I don't think this is a dig at Alinea. It parodies that style of cooking, but face it: many of the attempts at that style are worthy targets of parody. A lot of the food inspired by Adria / Achatz / Dufresne, etc. captures the trappings of the real thing without any of the underlying sensibility. In other words, its merely pretentious. Besides, good parody shows affection, not just scorn. It looks to me like they had a lot of fun making this commercial, and assembling those ridiculous dishes. Too bad it's all for diet coke!

What's "4 spice?" If it's some kind of ground spice, I think you'd get much more flavor out of it if you incorporated it in the butter (maybe after it's cooled just a bit) than if you put it in with the dry ingredients.