paulraphael

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."

The question isn't what can be done ... it's what's the most efficient and effective way to do it? I like spoons and fish spatulas and palette knives for delicate things. But they're slower, they sometimes require two hands instead of one, and they force you to get your hands a lot closer to some things (a pan full of splattering grease, the edge of a burning hot roasting pan full of bones, etc.) than you might want. I can be as delicate with tongs as I can be with chopsticks. And when that's not delicate enough (sometimes it isn't) there are other tools better for the job. You have me intrigued by the straight spatula, though. Is there a reason to buy the $30 one you linked to? I see much cheaper ones in the pastry dept. and the restaurant stores.

Really interesting thread. I can see a lot of different, mostly related issues. Many have been raised already. I can sympathize ... some of the time ... with people who want rustic/imperfect instead of polished/perfect. Some reasons: 1. Mood. Sometimes you're more in the mood for one of grandma's cookies than one of Pierre Hermés. It's a comfort food thing. 2. Clientelle. Some people are probably actively suspicious of anything that looks too urban / European / New York / Androgynous. People gave John Kerry a hard time because he mentioned drinking wine! 3. Looks mass produced. It's an irony of the industrial age that perfection and uniformity--once the hallmarks of high craftsmanship--have become associated with cheap mass production. Now the same craftsmen who bragged about their precision and consistency point to the same qualities in machine-made products and dismiss them as lacking soul. They now brag about the imperfections ("human touches") in their own work. I haven't seen this among pastry chefs, but have among photographers, woodworkers, potters, and musical instrument makers. 3. Function following form. This is the most disturbing to me, because it reflects actual failings of chefs, not just perceptions. I've had a lot of desserts that look like modern sculpture, and don't taste much better. So much attention has gone into form and ornament that the fundamentals (flavor, texture, coherence) have been neglected. Sometimes this seems like a symptom of a chef over-reaching. Other times it seems more cynical: an assumption that people will buy something pretty or impressive, but won't even notice that it tastes mediocre. Here I'm certainly not talking about a perfect croissant ... more likely cakes, pastries, or plated desserts with multiple elements. In other words, fancy stuff. I'm hesitant to buy fancy stuff unless I know the reputation of the chef or the establishment. It's hard enough to get the simple stuff right.

You like the flat spatula more than the offset kind? Could you elaborate? I have an offset one that I bought for icing; now I use it at the stove a lot (mostly for very small things). The offset seems to make it easier to use. For larger delicate things I like a regular fish spatula, sometimes in combination with a spoon. And I still think tongs have a million reasonable uses, where they're efficient and won't do any harm.

This Times article from 2006 digs into the question. I can't really comment ... my copy is the 1964 version, found in a box in a high school darkroom. I keep it around because there's a recipe for 'possum (it starts with "Trap 'possum"), and a hand-drawn diagram on skinning a squirrel.

Ok, did some tests: 1) low temp dehydrate: leathery 2) high temp broil: uneven browning 3) #1 followed by #2: bingo I sliced the bananas thin, using a very sharp knife, so there was no need for lemon juice to keep them from oxidizing. put them on a buttered sheet of parchment on a sheet pan in a 175 degree oven. They dehydrated in about 30 minutes. I then brushed with a honey/water syrup on both sides and slid under the broiler (sheet pan, no parchment). They browned and crisped nicely. I had to keep a close watch; some went faster than others. Next batch i'm going to flip them to make sure they get hit evenly on both sides. I also tried browning some of the dehydrated chips with a torch. The broiler's easier (I used the broiler in a convection/toaster oven ... much more even than the broiler in my cheap gas oven).

I do want these to be crisp and not chewy. I remember the dehydrated chips that I've had being a little leathery.

Apparently Thomas Keller requires his cooks to weigh everything for this reason, right down to the mirepoix.

cool, i'll try it. what's better ... above or below boiling temp?

I have precious little deep frying experience. I could try to fry (would need to do on stove top), but would prefer to use an oven (or even microwave ... I heard about an Indian recipe that uses one for plantain chips). Any thoughts on the best way to proceed?

Many restaurants and bars that see a lot of tourist traffic (like in hotels) solve the tip problem by adding a service charge to all checks. But then the shoe is on the other foot ... since so many patrons fail to read the menu, they often double tip by mistake. In this situtaion it's up to the good will of the server to point the service charge, preferably up front. I think this is a pretty good system overall. When I complained to my friend that it removed your right to pay less for bad service, she said that it doesn't. You're not obligated to pay the 18% (or whatever) service charge. You could always pay less. In this case you're making a clear statement: you know what the expected charge is and you're deliberately paying less. You're not just someone who's absent-minded or who doesn't understand the system. At the same time it impresses upon the diner that a tip is not, in fact a "gratuity" ... it's a charge for service. It's separate, it's flexible, but it's part of the cost of the meal.