paulraphael

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.

Here's a good source for parts. I haven't been able to find an actual service manual, but if you give me your email I can send you the KA parts list, which has an exploded view of the thing ... it should help you figure out how it comes apart and goes together. Be sure to get the KA grease with whatever you buy. And some degreaser from the hardware store so you can clean out the transmission. I believe a replacement gasket comes with the new transmission housing, but it's worth asking. That needs to be replaced. If you get the thing working again, it would make a great photo essay. ←

Chad, a lot of people have had this problem. There are also people banging out bread and pizza every week with the plastic gear case who have no problem. But anyway, the failure rate for the old style mixer seems to be unacceptably high--among people who actually use the thing hard. This last point, as you suspected, explains why KA (and Delonghi, and Viking, and Cuisinart, and Kenwood ... all the consumer mixer companies) get away with crap quality control. Since so few of their customers actually use the things, especially for anything heavy duty, it's cheaper to spend money on waranty service than on quality control up front. At least the new gear case is a big improvement. I wouldn't spend $200+ for repairs. That's nuts, considering you can get a factory refurb of the same mixer for $240. If you're handy with tools, parts are widely available, along with diagrams of the innards. You could probably replace any broken gears, put on a new metal transmission cover, and pack it up with fresh grease for well under $100. Let me know if you need the info ... I have it around here somewhere. There are also some helpful people in the forums on KA's site. The KA employees tend to be every bit as sweet, clueless, and annoying as you've experienced, but some of the customers there understand the engineering and have a good grasp of common sense.

I've been playing with different knives on bread ever since this thread first erupted. And I'm absolutely sticking with the Mac bread knife. It might come down to how much bread you eat at home, and especially what kind of bread it is. I find my unserrated knives don't do a good job on most of the crusty/tender boules that I like to eat. I've been playing with my gyuto and my suji. Both are sharp enough to drop through most vegetables under their own weight. If I have to push, I generally know I'm doing something wrong. And to get through the crust on these loaves (both top and bottom) I have to push and saw. The slices aren't great. And doing this does dull the edges. Not after 300 loaves, but after half a dozen.

A few posts back I linked to Gaston Lenotre's recipe. And in the same post I linked an egullet thread that also includes Lenotre's recipe. Predictably, they're not the same recipe So for now there are two versions of The Original to consider. For anyone curious, I posted my current recipe with notes and variations here.

I see a lot of recommendations for temperatures for custard mixtures ... the trouble is it will vary enormously depending on the concentration of egg yolks. A custard with 12 yolks per quart might curdle at 150°; one with two might not curdle until closer to 190°. Other ingredients also have an effect. If you have some starch in the mixture, it will practically eliminate the possibility of curdling. At least in theory, a bit of flour or cornstarch (the latter actually being a useful ice cream ingredient) would let you bring the custard to a rolling boil. Which there's no reason to do, but, at least you'll know you have some slop insurance. Overall the best bet is to get comfortable making custard / creme anglaise the old fashioned way. Have an even-heating, responsive saucepan and a flat-bottomed spatula, stir constantly over medium heat, and pay close attention to the consistency. When the mixture thickens, stir for a few more seconds, remove from the heat, and then stir some more. When you get the hang of this, you'll never have another problem. unless you get into making huge batches, which can be tricky.

You can get some of the best pork in the world in the US if you're willing to shop around, and pay more than $2/lb.

Or how about French, wood, and $7.00? I have one like this.

Some general tips on preventing crystalization: -make sure your freezer is turned down very low. the ice cream will harden faster. and if you use a frozen bowl mixer, it will freeze much faster while you spin it. My freezer is set to -4°F, which is great for ice cream making. -use a bit of alcohol in your recipes (vanilla extract, vodka, brandies, liqueurs). try about 2tsp/qt. -add some nonfat dry milk to the recipes (this works like magic). about 25g/qt. -add a small amount of gelatin to the custard while it's heating. try about 1g/qt. -substite a small amount glucose syrup or corn syrup or invert syrup for a portion of the sugar All of these recipe tweaks will also result in ice cream that's softer and more scoopable. You just don't want to go too far. And of course, dropping the freezer temperature will have the opposite effect. But ice cream needs to warm up a bit before serving no matter what.

When people ask about your $80 French pin, all you have to say is, "that's how I roll."

Here's as good a starting point as any... this is Gaston Lenotore's, who presumeably invented the financier. And there are pictures! Formula is ... Flours: 100% (almond 70%/AP 30%); Sugar: 136%; Egg White: 80%; Brown Butter: 125% (be sure to account for water that will be boiled off ... most butter is 81% fat). This will be very rich and very almondy. It won't have much leavening (low quantity of egg white). Unlike most cake recipes, financiers seem really robust. You could probably vary any of these proportions quite a bit without things falling apart. Due to a badly transcribed recipe, I made a batch with 50% too much butter last night(!) They held together fine. And were delicious. But a bit over the top (my girlfriend kept saying, "gimme some more of that grease cake!") edited to add: Here's an older gullet thread.