paulraphael

The answer depends on what you're cutting and on how sharp your knife is. Slicing will always allow a less sharp knife to get through something with minimal effort and damage. But with a very sharp knife, it's not always the most efficient technique. Japanese trained cooks probably do most of their cuts with a hybrid motion: a kind of push cut that's mostly chop, but has a small amount of forward motion, just enough to allow the blade to drop through the food under the weight of the knife. Cutting anything starchy or sticky requires more specific techniques that prevent sticking. Either pull-slicing with the very front of the blade, or woodpecker-style chopping, also with the front of the blade. This type of cutting makes use of speed, which is often overlooked by knife skills teachers. A blade moving fast will cut cleaner, all else being equal. Chopping/push cutting motions, while not appropriate for everything, move the blade more quickly through the food. The conventional wisdom is wrong about how to preserve the edge of the knife. chopping or push cutting will preserve a knife's edge many times as long as slicing against the board. The traditional French rocking cut (where the blade slides forward on its belly on each cut) is the hardest of all the edge. The shearing motion abrades the edge agressively. Check out the knives of any euro-trained cooks after a long shift. Typically the belly of the knife will be dulled dramatically compared with the tip and the heel. A good test is to cut herbs like chives or basil, or chop fruits like apple or pear. Leave the cut food out on the counter. If it turns brown, your cutting technique or your sharpening technique needs refinement.

I don't know about "better," but I'm sure it would be different. Usually, herbs are used as a source of infused flavors, like tea; they're intended to release their flavors over time into a stock or sauce, which acts as a solvent. When you're preparing herbs for this kind of use, the goal is to damage the cells of the leaf as little as possible. Cuting exposes more surface area to speed extraction, and allows the herbs to be a less obtrusive presence in the food (if they won't be strained out). But generally you want to do the cutting carefully, to minimize oxidation, enzyme reactions, and the evaporation of aromatic compounds, all of which deaden the flavor if the herbs won't be used immediately. Careful, skilled cutting with a very sharp knife allows you to prep a pile of herbs for your mise en place and use them later. Brutish cutting, where herbs are squeezed between a blade and the cutting board, causes crushing and tearing, and forces you to use the herbs instantly (or to get disappointing resluts). This is the only kind of cutting possible with a mezzaluna. But it is not as brutal as the total the crushing of the herbs that you get from a mortar or processor. This treatment has an advantage when you're making a sauce like pesto, which is an unconventional use of herbs. In a pesto the herb IS the sauce. Pesto has a structure more like tomato sauce (where the body of the sauce is actually cellulose from the pureed ingredient) than like a typical herb infusion, where the presence of the herb isn't even important in the end. Some of the flavor in a pesto gets infused into the olive oil, but since the bulk of the pesto is actually made of chopped or ground leaves, most of the flavor remains there. The intensity of that flavor will depend on how easily the aromatic compounds can escape during the brief time that you're chewing your pasta. So in this case, thoroughly crushed or pureed herbs will deliver a greater intensity and immediacy of flavor than ones that are cut carefully. A mezzaluna will do a job that lies somewhere between the extremes of careful cutting and total crushing or pureeing. You probably won't get the intensity of flavor that you'd get from a processor or mortar and pestle pesto. The texture will likely be different too. Which you like better, or which one is more "authentic" probably depends on who you ask.

I'd be hesitant to try that ... hot water added to bones/meat, or vice versa, tends to disperse tiny particles of protein and cloud the stock.

I don't thoroughly thaw my bones, but I have them cut into very small sections, which speeds both thawing and extraction. I rinse them in cool water and let them sit out in roasting pans while the oven preheats. By the time they go in they seem thawed enough. If there's any difference in the final product from doing it this way, I haven't noticed. Magictofu, I don't understand that chef's method. First, do I understand correctly that the bones aren't browned? If that's the case then this is technically a white stock, not a brown stock. I'm also not sure what "bitter" flavors the method is avoiding, exept ones that could be introduced by burning the pan drippings during sloppy roasting. The more conventional way to make a white stock from bones is to just blanch the bones first. This removes stray proteins from the surface that tend to disolve in very small particles and cloud the stock. The roasting step eliminates the need for this when making a brown stock.

This is the same stuff that's used to make Epicurean cutting boards, as well as the handles for Shun (and some other) knives. I've used these boards while teaching; while I prefer wood, the impregnated paper has a number of advantages. It's tough, colorable within a limited range, and dishwasher-safe. I think it's a good choice for countertops. ← wait ... when I said "on paper" I was talking about the technical specs for the quartz/epoxy composite counters, like durcon. Not about actual paper composite counters. Those paper counters look like an ok idea, but they don't have the heat resistance that I'd like. All of them would get scorched by a very hot pan. I'm still curious about the subjective hardness of the quartz/epoxy materials ... if they feel more like rock or more like plastic when you set down a glass. Or knock one over.

I can see using a mezzaluna for piles of parsley ... but that's it. It's a poor choice for other herbs. Most are damaged by any cutting action that crushes them against a cutting board. Everything you've read that says to use herbs immediately after cutting, or else! is a an attempt to compensate for poor tools and techniques. In the rare cases where you actually want to demolish the herbs (like pesto) there are more brutal tools that do the job better. Like a mortar and pestle, a processor, or a blender.

finally got a pic ...

Does quartz fail these tests? I don't know where they get the quartz, but I'm guessing it's from sand. Which doesn't have the same kinds of ecological impacts as quarried stone. I'm also curious about how forgiving it is ... is it closer to rock, or to other solid surfaces like corian? On paper I'm sure it flexes much more than granite, but the issue is what it's like in use.

I've been working with my butcher (Jeffrey on Essex) to get more artisinal farm products. Right now he sells what's basically the best from the standard wholesale distributors. But he doesn't have any direct farm sources. Lately he's had some issues with the quality of Berkshire pork loins ... but it's hard to know what to do other than complain to his distributor (who buys and sells boxes of sub primal cuts). He's been hoping to have more direct sources, which I think would benefit everyone. Can anyone recommend farms that deliver goods to the city? Ideally ones that do their own processing for retail, because Jeffrey isn't going to be selling enough of this stuff to be able to buy whole animals. Right now I'm especially interested in lamb, but a farm source for amazing pork and pasture-raised beef would be great.

Yup, it's the cocoa butter. The alternatives include switching to a lower cocoa butter percentage ice cream, or increasing the ratio of cocoa to chocolate. If you do this, you'll also have to up the sugar, and probably also the cream. Chocolate ice cream is tricky. I'm working on it now. The nature of the chocolate presents a huge variable.

sometimes it's the obvious that eludes me ...

Here's a test that shows off some of the less expected benefits of a sharp knife. I'm sure all the knives in Steven's arsenal would do well at this, but most of the knives I've seen in home kitchens and even pro knife bags would fail miserably. All I did was slice up a pear. I didn't eat it, because it was mushy and flavorless (is anyone else having a hard time finding good ones this season?) Instead of tossing it, I spread out the slices and let them sit at room temperature, to see how long it would take them to brown. Back before I learned to sharpen knives, pears would start to brown in under 10 minutes. These are my slices after 36 hours: They're drying out, and have just started browning around the edges. They're only really brown on the inside at the top and bottom, where I did a less than delicate job of coring. The moral of the story is that sharp blades do less damage to your food. You'll serve meals with better texture, appearance, and flavor. Some foods, like herbs, require excellent technique in addition to a sharp knife, but a monkey can slice a pear. This was all about the blade. The knife used has a carbon steel edge sharpened freehand to around 9° per side, and thinned to a very accute angle behind the edge. Last sharpened a week and a half ago. It did all the prep for the holiday meals, and was touched up lightly on a steel afterwards.

David, I'm not sure why you think bones can't contribute flavor if they've been separated from the meat. I suppose it's possible, but it's not intuitive, and I'd like to witness a side-by-side comparison before subscribing to it. There's one good reason I can think of to leave the bones attached: if you plan to serve the meat on the bones. This is a delcious option, but whether or not you choose to depends on your esthetics, and also on logistics. You're pretty much stuck with serving a huge bone-in rib steak per guest if you do this! Maybe it's a good option in the midwest. There are two reasons to split the cooking of a roast like this into a low heat and a high heat session. The first should be evident from the pictures. Notice on your roast that there's a band about a half inch to an inch thick along the top edge that appears to be cooked past medium. Compare with pictures of the roast that was cooked with low heat and then browned: no gradient. The entire interior is just barely medium rare. And the exterior is browned and crisped to an even greater degree than on the single temperature roast. Having a gradient isn't a bad thing, but some of us (especially if we're starting with a remarkable piece of meat) like to chase the holy grail of rare or medium-rare throughout. Split cooking temps can get you closer. The other reason is more subtle, and actually makes a much bigger difference on an unaged or wet aged roast than on a dry aged one. The enzymes resident in the meat that tenderize it and develop the flavors during aging are most active between 70 degrees and 120 degrees F. The more time the meat spends in this range, the more complex flavors will develop. This phenomenon can be exploited in braising as well. I am very skeptical of using time or weight to determine doneness. The thickness of the roast, not the weight, is what matters. Whether your roast is from the loin end or the chuck end will effect the time more than whether it's 3 ribs or 6. And as Tim predicted, dry age can greatly accelerate cooking time. If I had followed conventional wisdom on time per pound, I would have incinerated a once-in-a-lifetime piece of meat!

This is exactly the kind of thing it takes some time to figure out. It's not just about the steel, but about how the manufacturer forged and heat treated it. Also, what angles a knife will take depends on who's using it (and a bit on who's sharpening it). There are some who sharpen knives like my gyuto to 5° on a side. They must have flawless and delicate cutting techinque. I have a feeling that I'm too hamfisted to get away with it. I also doubt my sharpening skills are good enough ... if my margin of error is plus or minus a couple of degrees, then aiming for 5° is bound to be a disaster. Trying to balance caution and adventure, I go a little thinner and a little more asymmetrical with each sharpeinging session, and wait to find out how far I can go.

I think a couple of German knives are definitely worth having. When it comes time to chop chocolate, whack the head off of a trout or bronzino, bone a chicken, etc., a tough knife is a good friend. There are specialized Japanese blades for all these things, but unless there's a task you're doing all day long, there's little disadvantage to a single go-to chef's knife that can take all kinds of abuse. It's also really nice to have a chef's knife you can hand to a guest if they want to help out. Hardly any of my friends with pro cooking experience know how to use a really sharp knife without destroying it. None of my amateur friends has a clue. The solution is to have a tough knife that you don't have to hide. It sounds like you've discovered the problem with knife comparisons. The only way to really know a knife is to live with it and use it for a while. With repeated sharpenings you'll find an edge geometry that works best. And with repeated use you'll find a set of techniques that works best. Any attempt to use a new knife the same way as the ones your used to, or the same way as the ones your testing against, sets up an artificial situation. Of course, some knives will immediately reveal themselves to be crap, either through use or through attempts to sharpen them. But the good knives are more often separated by subtleties. I said in a recent thread that a knife is really just a medium for your sharpening and cutting techniques. It's not much on its own. I traded up to my latest 270mm gyuto about three months ago. I liked it immediately, but its real value has been the continuing education it gives me in cutting and sharpening. Every time I take it to the stones I push it toward a higher performance geometry. And every time I cut with it I work to refine my technique. In a year or so it should be a pretty good knife, and I should be pretty good at using it! Then I'll be able to compare it to something else.

I'll have to find out if my dad wrote down the wines ... he was sommelier for the night. i just asked for some fairly mighty bordeaux. A couple were st. emillion, another (the really good one that i didn't get to try!) was something i'd never heard of. and we had some kind of prosecco with the cheese. you mention the smell ... it was way more pungent than the flavor. when the roast first started cooking, the funk was thick enough to cut with a knife.

I had a No Duh! epiphany over the holidays. I needed to blanch a ton of brussel sprouts for nine people, and set them aside for later browning. This was in someone else's kitchen and the biggest available pot was about 5 quarts. Thanks to this conversation, it occurred to me to just do what restaurants do (on a smaller scale) and blanch in batches. It worked brilliantly. I filled the pot with salted water, brought it to a raging boil, had a bowl of chilled water nearby to shock the sprouts, and just ran them through in four small batches. Water stayed at a boil or just below. veggies stayed crisp and bright green, and during each 4-5 minute blanch I was able to prep the next batch. This was a bit more hands-on than doing it in one batch, but I suspect overall time and energy cost was way less than trying to do it at once in a 16+ quart pot. I plan to do it this way often, even if a bigger pot's available.

I'd suggest just getting a gyuto. It will do most things. Get comfortable with it, and then decide what else (if anything) you need. I can't imagine why anyone would have both a gyuto and a santoku, but people do a lot of things that boggle my imagination ... You need sharpening stones. A good knife is just an ornament without them. It won't even be close to its potential when it's new out of the box. You can start simple, like with a two sided combo stone. By the time you wear it out, maybe sooner, you'll have an idea of what other stones you might want. Steels are controvercial. I like them, some don't. I find they greatly increase the time between visits to the stones. Fine grained ceramic ones are good, as are smooth ones like the ones sold by handamerican. The knife has few magic powers of its own; it's a vehicle for your technique ... both cutting technique and sharpening technique. Even if you get an inexpensive japanese knife, like a togiharu, expect to do a lot of growing with it. When your sharpening and cutting techniques develop, the handle will become irrelevant. You'll hardly touch the handle. Any time you find yourself gripping or slipping, it will be an indication that you're doing something wrong. I used to be very picky about knife handles. Now that I've started learning better ways to use the knives, I don't notice them anymore. The exception is with things like boning and butchering knives, which you have to grab in a lot of different ways, and use in a more brutish fashion. And which tend to get wet and greasy. With these I like wood handles ... but they don't have to be fancy.

I posted final notes on the method here. That makes a lot of sense. My butcher ages some meat himself in his own walk-in, and has some done by a vendor. I doubt there's a lot of scientific repeatablility, especially in the meat he ages himself.

Roasted, documented, eaten! And a success. I had to squirrel away some of the last scraps to make a sandwich for the bus ride back from D.C. today. Ribs have been removed and re-attached. salted and peppered and about to get buttered. after 2:45 in a 214° oven. The oven wouldn't stabilize any lower ... something wrong with it. Lower and slower would have been more ideal (low oven, alto shaam, sous vide, butter poaching, or whatever). Tim was right about the aged meat cooking fast! Cooked to an internal temp of 122°. My target was 118°. Here are the ribs after removal. I broke them all the way down, browned them on all sides, and simmered them in veal stock, beef coulis, and mushroom cooking liquid as part of the sauce preparation. Some of the sauce fixins are in the tupperware on the left. Browned in about 25 minutes at 500°. Cooked to 125° internal temp; rose to 130° out of oven. Target was 122°/127°. Some pyrotechnics for the final touch. Stopped short of charring (did not want charred flavors competing with the beef). Torch in one hand / camera in the other leaves no free hands for wine glass. This will need rethinking in the future. This cooking method gave a finished roast with basically no gradient ... browned and crisped exterior, and medium rare-ish from center to edge. Next time I hope to have more control over the oven and will cook 3 to 5° lower. I like it a bit more rare. Flavor of the meat was wonderful ... but not "startling" as my butcher warned it might be. Aged flavors were actually less pronounced than on some strip steaks he dry aged 6 weeks for me. None of the guests fainted or needed medical attention. All meat that wasn't hidden was consumed. The roast had a balanced, mellow, nutty, warm, beefy flavor. Tender and succulent throughout. Definitely the nicest roast i've ever made (and probably the nicest I've had). Thanks everyone for all the input! (the rest of the meal: some spanish cheeses (cow, sheep, goat) and crackers, porccini corn chowder, sautéed brussel sprouts, roasted potatoes with sage, green salad, roasted pears with brown butter cream sauce, heart of darkness brownies. my dad selected the wines, which I didn't write down, and the best of which got consumed behind my back while I was in the kitchen ... they were all bordeaux of one type or another, and I was told they were delicious).

I don't mind "patina" on wood, the way I mind it on plastic. But huge burn marks are another story. As is rotting wood around the sink.

There are also lots of detailed reviews on seventypercent.com click. I like the valrhona chocolates also, and typically combine them ... Guanaja for depth, manjari for brightness and aroma. And their 100% when it's called for. In the high end chocolates, the flavor profiles are typically more important than the cocoa percentages, at least when they're in the same range. The difference between 66% and 72% cocoa matters a lot less than the overall quality and character. One of the most important qualities in any chocolate is your familiarity with it. If you work with two or three chocolates for a long time, you'll learn how their flavors behave in finished products, and you'll produce better results than someone who's playing with them for the first time. The best chocolate I've ever tasted (as a bar) was by Michel Cluizel. Amazing. But I don't bake with it. Partly because Valrhona is expensive enough; partly because it would take a lot of work to become sufficiently familiar with the Cluizel.

Hmmm ... my next question is how reliable is your thermometer? Very unusual for a piece of meat that size to rise 20 or more degrees. I'm going for rare, not medium rare (subjective terms ... let's call it red and warm in the middle, browned on the outside), and am planning to pull at 120 to 122, expecting 4 to 5 degrees rise.

I like press pot coffee. Can I just brew the coffee in a stock pot and strain through a chinois into thermoses? Maybe without force it would take too long to filter through the grounds, but maybe with a big enough strainer this wouldn't be an issue. Any thoughts?

Do you know how much the temp rose after resting? Here's the problem with the X minutes/pound formulas: the weight doesn't matter; the thickness does. And rib roasts don't typically get thicker when they get heavier; they get longer. The size is determined by the number of ribs you get. So it's possible for a 6lb rib roast to take exaclty the same amount of time as an 18lb roast. Which end of the rib your roast comes from (chuck or loin) will have bigger effect on thickness and cooking time than the overall size of the roast. So yeah, I'm being guided by my trusty dual copilots: probe thermometer and wild guess. We're having xmas dinner tomorrow, a day late, so I get to be the lucky beneficiary of all your beautiful roasts.