paulraphael

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.

I always thought the essence of the financier was brown butter. I suppose you could make a version with plain melted butter, but why would you want to?

Working on one right now. Will report back. If anyone's interested in being a guinee pig, let me know, and I'll share notes. Hard to test all the versions myself without clogging few remaining arteries. I'm using a Michael Laiskonis recipe as my starting point.

So, if all raw fish must be frozen, then does that mean there shouldn't hypothetically be a difference between eating sushi near the ocean and eating sushi more inland like the Midwest since both sources will be getting frozen fish? ← That's generally true. However, there's some debate surrounding frozen fish for sushi and sahimi. I've heard some sushi chefs say they prefer high quality flash frozen fish because it's fresher than any unfrozen fish they can get their hands on, even if they're in a port town (in other words, damage from freeze is less than damage from time). And I've heard other dispute this. In addition, some sushi chefs simply disobey the law and serve certain fish fresh. It's usually pretty high end chefs who do this. They get away with it because little is done to enforce this particular law.

And you cut yours into steaks, which are much better seared in a pan ... the surface area makes it easy to do in a pan, while the thinness makes makes it too easy to overdo in the oven. Likewise a whole roast is easier in the oven.

Different chocolates vary from each other quite a bit in terms of cocoa butter and sugar content. I think you could use either of the estimates you've gotten here as a starting point and tweak according to taste. My inclination would be to use butter for the fat (keeping in mind that it's up to 19% water). Butter lends wonderful flavor and a succulent melt. More authentically, you could use cocoa butter, but if you're going to be that authentic then you might as well just use chocolate to begin with. Doesn't make much sense to buy parts that have been refined from chocolate and then put them back together again.

Howsmatt's method is similar to what I oulined in this thread, with a ten week dry aged prime rib. Although I did most of my final searing in a very hot oven and only used the torch for some touch ups. I just used the Ducasse method the other night on some thick (1-3/4" or so) pork chops. Overdid it, in spite of using a thermometer. The temp climbed several degrees higher than I'd anticipated during rest. I took them off the fire at around 133°, but after fifteen minutes rest they were medium-well all the way through. Kinda disappointing. Good news is that even though these were pedestrian pork chops, without a whole lot of marbling, they did not dry out. Even at this degree of doneness they were tender and juicy ... a benefit of the slow cook. In general I find pork loin much less tolerant of quick cooking than beef.

I've heard cookbook authors complain about a chicken and egg phenomenon ... publishers don't like to publish weights because customers don't have scales; customers don't have scales because books aren't published with weights. It might help if people who like to measure in a way that makes sense made some noise. Has anyone thought about petitioning publishers? For me, a book needs to look unusually good for me to consider it, if it omits weights. Too much bother. I'm not interested in regressing and trying to make something like a cake with volume flour measurements. I just wrote to Dorrie Greenspan yesterday to find out what conversions she used for one of her books. Just so I can reverse engineer it to the actual meausurements she used while developing the recipes! (This phenomenon pisses her off too).

It's just that there are some physical concerns to address when you increase or decrease quantities. This is true in all things, but cake recipes involve some of the most delicate balances that we work with, so small changes can sometimes break the final result. depends on the kind of cake, of course ... some are pretty robust. Some things that are not addressed by simply changing quantities while keeping ratios constant: -As quantities increase, volume increases at an exponentially higher rate than surface area. So you'll have less surface area exposed to the air, and proportionally less evaporation -As quantities increase, volume increases at an exponentially lower rate than diameter. This can make changes in baking time tricky to calculate. -Larger cakes get proportionally less support from the pan. A cake that has enough structure to support itself at one size might not have enough at double that size. Unless you address this by tweaking the recipe or changing pan shape (a tube pan, etc.) the whole thing might collapse. I'm not familiar with the rule of thumb, "..a large cake needs a smaller proportion of leavening and a larger amount of liquid than a small cake." And I don't know why that would be. But there might be something to it! I mess with most recipes with impunity, but am still pretty shy when it comes to cakes. They can be delicate creatures. And recipes written by people who lack the technical mastery of Rose Barenbaum and Shirley Coriher are often held together in the first place by little more than blind luck and good intentions.

This is the starting recipe. What I'm doing now is a cross between it and Hervé This's "chocolate chantilly" idea, where he makes mousse using nothing but the emusifying powers of chocolate itself, and a bit of gelatin. What I have now is a ganache, plus butter, plus a touch of gelatin. It's really good ... just a little crumbly, and not as melting as the original. My next step is going to be reducing butter and increasing cream. But I'm looking past that in case it isn't enough. I might ask Laiskonis what he thinks but I've been bugging him a lot lately too!

Would you be able to incorporate these into the cream in the recipe? What kinds of quantities would it take to simulate, say, a dozen yolks? And can you recommend a good educational source on this stuff, so I don't have to keep bugging you?

I'm working on improving a chilled chocolate dessert that in its current state has tons of raw egg yolk in it ... practically an equal weight to the chocolate. On general principle I want to get rid of the eggs. I'm not a fan of the flavor, and I don't want that much stuff between me and the chocolate. I have it in an ok place now, but it's essentially a whipped ganache that lacks the unctuous (sorry for that word) mouthfeel of the egg-laden original. The flavor, as I'd hoped, is much improved. Any thoughts? If this can be done with more conventional ingredients (gelatin, cornstarch, arrowroot, etc.) rather than unfamiliar things that I'll have to measure by the miligram, so much the better.

That looks great. I wish peeling pounds of shallots wasn't such a drag.

I haven't, but it's a good idea. There's a lot of supoptimal coffee out there.

Those Molly Stevens braised shallots are one of the few recipes from the last few years that left me thinking, "there isn't anything I could do to improve this." Just amazing. On the first recipe, with the honey, I'd suggest that it's important to taste any shallots you're using before cooking them. They vary enormously. Think of that honey as corrective seasoning. Some shallots are going to need more than what's specified, and some might not need any at all.

So I've been experimenting on and off with salt in the coffee ... amounts ranging from 1/8 tsp to 1/4 tsp per 48oz pot. Some of the conventional wisdom seems correct: bad coffee was improved, good coffee was made worse. It helps with coffee that is thin, bitter, or overly acidy. Prime candidates would be overroasted beans, or a pot that you made trying to stretch too few coffee beans by brewing them too long. The salt seems to bring out the midrange and the sweetness in coffee that's lacking it. When those aren't issues, then for me it threw the coffee out of balance. The time I tried 1/2 tsp per pot, it actually tasted salty. Interesting, because that's still a tiny amount of salt. Anyone else play with this? edited to add: i just reread the thread ... the comment about barnyardy flavors getting accentuated is part of what i'm tasting when i say "out of balance."