paulraphael

Business is bad. I want a piece of it. Is there any kind of online information clearinghouse for restaurant auctions?

All the consumer mixer manufacturers are expressing input wattage. All of them. None publishes output power. In the Physics textbook, yes, but in appliances you can't extrapolate anything about output power from input power. Why? Because marketing departments ask the engineers to make machines that draw stupid amounts of power. The evidence is everywhere if you compare specs of home machines to commercial machines. All commercial machines are rated for output power. Rating in the U.S. is given in horsepower.

Beyond that, the pro mixer manufacturers advertise LOWER wattage as a selling point. And why wouldn't they? It means efficiency. Who sells a car by bragging about worse gas mileage than the competition? I laugh when I see ads for viking and Cuisinart mixers claiming 1000 watts. That's more than the power consumption of a 20 qt hobart that could purée both of these mixers at the same time!

I think it's great that the schools teach classical technique (like Espagnole based demi that hardly anyone makes anymore). It gives you a lot of foundation and technique, and if you work in a restaurant that calls reduced veal stock demi glace (one of my biggest pet peaves in the world), you'll know enough to jump in. What seems missing is the techniques used at many of the best restaurants, which often blend pre-classical techniques (meat coulis) with contemporary methods of extraction. These techniques are just more advanced that what Escoffier was doing, and I think it sells kids a bit short to send them out into the world without awareness of them.

Which is perfectly reasonable. In fact badly made roux-based sauces are a big part of what sent them so radically out of fashion in the '60s. Any technique can be abused or misapplied. Keeping this in mind, I'd discourage you from generalizing too much from the gluey slurry-based sauce you tried. I'm pretty confident I could make sauces that you'd strongly dislike using any liason! I'm not sure what can be generalized from a bad example of something. It would be more educational to try a sauce made with purified starch by someone who's a wizard with those ingredients (as your chef no doubt is with roux). This would give a much better point of comparison.

I'm not questioning that definition of slurry--only the generalizations about them leading to Chinese restaurant-style sauces. And for that matter, any other generalizations you might make about slurry-thickened sauces. The point is that each of these starches is different. They each have their respective strengths and weaknesses (just like roux), and a good saucier knows how to work the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. As far as categorizing, it might be more sensible to label them refined starches, since you could make a slurry out of any kind of powder, and you could incorporate these starches in ways besides slurries if you wanted to. The main thing that sets them apart from wheat flour (roux, etc.) is their relative purity. Wheat flour is full of protein, which tends to cloud the stock and so requires hours of skimming. The protein also adds strong cereal flavors which are brought out by cooking and then reduced only through extended cooking. Refined starches avoid these limitations.

Interesting! If I could make a suggestion, you might want to seek out advice on liaisons from someone who learned about them more recently than the 1960s. A lot of that information about slurries is dubious. "Slurry" is a description of how certain starches are incorporated. Beyond that, you can't make any of those generalizations about them. Arrowroot is not cornstarch is not potato starch is not agar is not alginate is not tapioca starch is not anything else ... Chef is just revealing his biases toward the methods he initially learned. Escoffier didn't use arrowroot, and it sounds like Chef never really bothered to learn much about it.

Maybe you're talking about a different knife than the one I thought? The Shun utility knife I've seen has about a 6" blade. Which for obvious reasons won't be of much help with a 9" boule. As far as tomatoes (or any fruit or vegetable) if you have a serrated knife that cuts as cleanly as a non-serrated knife, it's because the non-serrated knife is dull. You might think it's sharp, but this test is proving otherwise!

I'm waiting for someone like Grant Aschatz to serve actual caramelized onions, for dessert.

Well, there's little practical use for a bread knife that's under 10" long. Unless you only eat mini boules or sandwich loaves ... then you can get away with 8". Anything shorter will require you to saw with so many strokes that you won't get clean cuts. And ... what use is there for a serrated knife besides crusty bread? If your answer is 'tomatoes," that means your chef's knife is dull. I mean really dull--it only takes modest sharpness to slip through even the most delicate tomato. Some people use reverse-scallop knives like the Mac to cut crusty protein, like seared tuna. But careful technique will allow you to do this with a non-serrated knife, and to make better slices. And in any case you'd want a long blade for this ... 8" minimum; 10" or more prefered.

Probably a rant for another thread, but is anyone else annoyed by the rampant wrong use of "caramelized?" It wouldn't be so bad, except, 1) the biggest offenders are chefs, who should know better, and 2) it's a whole lot easier to just say "browned."

I would do a bit of both ... a luscious flourless chocolate cake recipe, and then pop a ball of ganache in the center. Lava cakes seem really cheesy to me (not in the good way) when they have a firm cake consisteny and then a sudden transition to molten goo. They just seem like some kind of hostess product that's been injected with chocolate sauce. I like the illusion that the middle of the cake has actually melted. There's a spectrum of flourless chocolate cake recipes. On one extreme are baked custards that are made without any egg whites at all. These are generally used for the underbaked style cakes where the center is just melted. At the other extreme are baked souflées, which have structure from whipped egg whites that are folded in. These emphasize airiness. For your purposes, I think what would work well is something closer to the baked custard end ... not entirely without egg whites, but with a proportion of around one whole egg to egg yolk. And of course lots of butter. This will give you enough structure for the thing to hold together, but you should have a nice, smooth transition from solid cake to melted ganache. I can give you a recipe that I love ... something I worked on for a long time to get it to straddle the fine line between solid and melting. It should adapt well to a dolop of ganache thrown into the middle of a ramekin.

Interesting. I've gotten off flavors many times doing the same thing. Burnt oil issues can be minimized by quick timing, but i don't see a reason to use a more expensive, fuller flavored oil, just for the opportunity to kill most of its flavor and to race againt the clock to prefent burning. I find life simpler if there's a big cheap bottle of refined sunflower, safflower, or grapeseed oil to grab when the pan is blazing hot.

The phenomenon you're describing applies to anything technique-intensive, not just cooking. When I first started taking music lessons my teacher was elated that I wasn't self taught (I was un-taught). He knew how hard it was to get someone to un-learn bad techniques. Much easier to mold a completely fresh piece of clay. Same thing in anything athletic. I struggle weekly to improve as a rock climber. Half of what I do is force myself to use less comfortable, less familiar techniques, knowing that the new ones will be better when I eventually learn them. In cooking I'm always discarding things I've learned and practiced. It's really annoying, but much of the time it's the only way to improve. I labored to learn all the traditional Cordon Bleu standard knife techniques, and then threw half of them out when I saw that there were better ones to be learned.

Any thoughts on how it compares with their "Culinary Artistry?" ... also on my wish list based on recommendations.

For cooking I usually buy what's cheapest and lightest. When I'm at Whole Foods that's going to be one of the store brand 365 olive oils. Something strange in NYC: even the cheapest bottle at most stores tends to be labelled extra virgin (at lower end stores, the step down will be an olive oil blend rather than a lower grade straight olive oil). This seems silly since there's little reason to pay extra for cold pressed oil that you plan to cook ... and ultra cheap evoo seems dubious. Lighter oils have advantages in cooking, because there's some correlation between darkness and smoke point. The more stuff that's been filtered / refined out of the oil the higher heat you can use. But oddly, most of the very light oils I find are high end ones that I wouldn't cook with. When I bring home a cheap cooking olive oil, I'll taste it. Most of the time now it's plenty good to drizzle on bread or use for day-to-day vinnaigrettes. If not, I'll use one of the nicer bottles I keep in the pantry for the raw stuff.

Actually, it's not about the knife as much as the board. I don't like to use the bread knife on my regular cutting board (see earlier post), so sticking with a chef's knife sometimes saves me a few steps. This is if I'm making a sandwich that involves slicing cheese, tomatoes, fruit, shallots, etc.. For the amount of bread cutting that goes into the occasional sandwich, I'm not too worried about dulling the blade.

I've seen better reviews for the beaterblade, including this one by a pastry chef who replaced his sideswipe. Kim, the new mixer looks great. Can I suggest that you break it in slowly? I got advice from some engineering types at KA.com who think this should be their official suggestion. Make a few batches of easy things. Let the gears work in and allow the grease to warm up and distribute itself properly. These guys suspect that some of the reliability problems come from people setting up a new mixer and throwing triple batches of pizza dough at it.

Supposedly, scalloped knives like the mac are reasonable to sharpen. I'll find out when it needs to be done. So far it's lasted a couple of years without losing its ability to cut cleanly.

This approach has worked in Western kitchens for a long time, but there are reasons cooks have been adopting new ones. Talk to anyone with even second- or third-hand training in Japanese cutting techniques, and they'll probably say they're not going back. Sharp knives may be an object of fetishism (yeah, they're pretty cool). But their real value is that they support a range of techniques that allow you to prep food better. Meaning, more efficiently and with better results. A knife with 18 degree bevels sharpened by machine will do as good a job as any at cutting potato batonettes (even if takes a bit more effort than using a sharper knife). But it probably won't allow you to cut herbs several hours before serving, or to cut raw fish with a glassy-smooth finish that will retain perfect texture, or to make consistent, paper thin bias slices of skirt steak, or to cut apples and pears that won't turn brown. And sharp knives with hard edges will retain this performance for many hours of continuous use ... handy for pros, or for people like me who'd rather leave the house once in a while than hang out with a muddy table full of waterstones. The price of a thin, hard edge is that it's fragile. The good news it that the techniques it supports are delicate ones, so you won't run into too much trouble. This does generally mean owning a heavier knife for the rough stuff. And making a few other concessions to specialization (like a bread knife), which I tend to resist unless the payoff is pretty obvious.

I think the moral of the story is that if you cut a lot bread (especially crusty bread, and extra-especially crusty bread with a soft crumb) a good bread knife is probably worth it. If you don't, it probably isn't. As far as bread actually shredding sharp knife edges .... I've had this experience, with a Hiromoto AS, actually. But as my sharpening technique and cutting technique got more competent, the problem vanished. Now I just find bread dulls the blade quickly, so I only use it on bread in a pinch, like when I'm making a sandwich and don't want to dirty up a second knife.

Like you said, the toughest breads have a hard crust and a delicate crumb. These are the ones that an unserrated knife, even a very sharp one, will tend to crush. You can often compensate with technique, as you discovered ... finding a weakness as a point of entry, or a firmer corner, or poking through with the tip. Incidentally, these are all the same techniques you'd use on delicate protein that has a crisp crust, like seared tuna. A good serrated knife makes short work of any bread, no technique and no effort required. It's faster, and can even be brought to the table for guests to cut their own slices. It won't rip up the crumb, crush it, or make piles of sawdust. The catch is, there aren't many good serrated knives. This Mac is the only good one I've ever used, though there are probably a few others. Notice the reverse scalloped teeth ... they don't attack the crust as aggressively as pointy ones, but the benefit is that they actually cut the bread rather than grinding it up like a saw blade. A reason to not depend on a chef's knife for crusty bread is that crust seems mysteriously potent at dulling blades. No idea why. But a caveat with serrated knives is that they rip up cutting boards. I learned not to use a bread knife on my good endgrain block ... I use a small board that's just for bread. It's full of deep grooves from the serrated edge.

If you like Peterson's style, you might like "Glorious French Food," in spite of the title. It's not quite as authoritative a tome as Sauces, but it reads much more like a textbook than a cookbook. And it has an interesting organizational style: each chapter starts with a very basic, classical dish. Then the rest of the chapter expounds on the ingredients and techniques of the dish, and and elaborates by adding a range of more and more sophisticated dishes that are built on the foundations of the basic one. It's great reading. I'd suggest you approach the recipes with caution, though. Some seem to be untested, and thrown in just as hypothetical examples. If you're a slave to recipes, this book will get you in big trouble. It might just be his way of saying "stop being a slave to recipes!" A warning would have been polite.

I realized that I haven't used a wooden spoon in years. They've been rotated out in favor of these bamboo spatulas, which I have in a couple of sizes. For serving or tasting, I use metal spoons or ladles. For stirring or deglazing, the spatula shape works better (can clean the bottom of the pan and reach into corners). And bamboo seems much less absorbant than wood, so it doesn't transfer flavors as much, and is easier to clean. It lasts practically forever. It's such a useful shape ... I'm surprised it almost never turns up at restaurant supply stores.

Here's a thought. Hypothetical, and I don't plan to test it, because I won't pander to the well-done crowd! It's routine to cook meat well-done and have it retain at least the impression of juiciness. It's the result of braising, and the succulence has less to do with fat and the braising liquid than many people assume. Most of it is the result of collagen breaking down into gelatin. Interestingly, the cuts that make up the bulk of most burger blends are braising cuts: chuck, brisket, etc... they're packed with collagen, which makes the meat tough when cooked like a steak, succulent when cooked like a braise. The two elements that break down collagen are temperature and time. Hamburger cooking methods tend to overdo it on temperature (excising more fat and moisture than necessary) and underdo it on time (so the collagen doesn't have much chance to break down). We don't suffer toughness from burgers, because the meat grinder is the mother of all tenderizerrs, But we don't get the benefits of all that collagen, either. I bet you could make a killer well done burger, by using the usual braising cuts (with no more than 15% or so fat), and slow cooking. You could do them sous vide, or butter poach them Keller style, at 180 degrees or so. You could hold them at 160 indefinitely. Then, right before serving, throw some sear on them with a torch, a salamander, or a blazing hot grill. It's hard to imagine that a burger done like this wouldn't be insanely juicy. And if the meat were brought up to temperature slowly enough, it would actually stay pink ... which would confuse the diners to no end.