paulraphael

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.

Agreed. This is my least favorite design of all the samples in this thread (the example in the o.p. isn't particluarly inspired, but I don't find it hard to read, and it doesn't offend). The grand cru menu causes me a bit of pain from a typographic standpoint. The colors and the gradients are also bring back some bad memories of the 1980s. My general rule with both script typefaces and gradients: don't, unless 1) you really know what you're doing; or 2) you're trying to be funny. In general I'm more proud of my food than my graphic design, but design pays the bills at my house.

I love this book. Got it free from the Amazon Vine program (which means I have to write a review ... which will be a pleasure). It's a food geek's dream. My favorite thing about it is that Eric Rippert seems completely candid about everything. It doesn't read in the least like propaganda for the restaurant. He's forthcoming about the chaos at the saute station, the total dependence on re-used plastic crab containers, and all the typical front of house issues that come up all the time ("1:00pm: VIP walks out because another VIP is at his favorite table"). A great read. And great affirmation that I don't want to be a line cook at a 4 star restaurant. I haven't even looked at the recipes, but plan to soon.

The meat has been delivered to D.C., in a cooler in the belly of a bus ... an operation resembling a low budget interstate organ transplant. It's rewrapped in fresh butcher paper, covered in plastic, in a basement fridge at my sister's that i have set to about 33 degrees. The oven has been checked out ... it holds steady at 214 degrees, but not a degree cooler. If I set it to 200, or 190, or 180, it stabilizes at 214. so that will be the roasting temp! If you can call that roasting, I don't know. I have a torch with me just in case the oven doesnt' brown the meat well with a short blast at 500. Will get pcs and post ... xmas dinner will actually be tomorrow night. I hope santa and your butchers treat all of you well!

I love butcher block counters, especially endgrain. In most ways they're my favorite. If I decided against the high tech option, I might go all the way the other way to wood. But I'm concerned about it in wet areas, like around the sink. And I also worry about leaving huge scars by putting screaming hot skillets and roasting pans on it. You've had no issues with this? Are yours finished with something like urethane, or are they just oiled? I can see bamboo being an interesting choice. It's a bit too hard for a cutting board, but it's practically indestructible and it seems to handle water without trouble.

Here's a product made by Durcon (a lab company) specifically for kitchens. and an article about durcon's kitchen counter endeavors.

Just a traditional binding ingredient. You can try any type of stuffing with or without. Or with more or less. Or with just yolks or just whites. All will give slightly different results. My only rule is that I don't want to taste the eggs, so I try to keep eggs (or at least yolks) to a minimum.

If the cuts were identical except for the aging, then it stands to reason that the aging was done poorly. I don't what you can do to actually reduce flavor when dry aging, but anything's possible. One of the caveats with artisinal grass-finished beef is that it's often butchered and processed by farmers who have a whole lot to learn about that end of things.

"In a 2,000-square-foot industrial walk-in cooler, famed porterhouses have been dry-aged to perfection for more than 100 years." That's what ... 520 weeks of dry age?? Seriously, I know it's dubious endeavor to try to judge meat from photographs, but the closeups I was able to see in that panorama weren't so promising. If you compare to the pictures FG posted of his beef from DeBragga, or some that I've posted from my butcher, the Luger beef looks a little sad. My general feeling is that NYC is one of the few places where it makes little sense to go to a steak house. I can buy better looking meat than that, have it aged any way I like, cook it myself, not get abused by surley steakhouse help (if you're into that, there's always casual engounters on craigslist), and it will cost me a lot less.

Bob, it's generally preferable to do your aging with as much bone and fatcap as possible. You'll lose less good meat to dessication this way. The drying that you want is the gradual drying that occurs throughout the meat; the radical drying at the surface does you no good ... you have to trim all that meat anyhow. It might be worth reassembling the roast ... just put the bones right where they came from (if you kept them intact) and tie it all tightly together. My roast aged with the bones on; this morning my butcher removed the bones and tied them back in the way I'm describing. I plan to do the low temp roast with the bones on, and then make some jus while the oven gets up to searing temperature. The short answer to making a jus is to do just what you described: simmer the roasted bones in some stock. But there are a lot of ways you can tweak the process to get more flavor. One thing I like to do is start with a little of stock and add more gradually as the simmering stock reduces. This preserves much more of the fresh flavors than making it all at once and then reducing the whole batch: some of the stock is highly reduced (which concentrates certain flavors but loses the more volatile flavors) and some is only lightly reduced (which preservs the volatile flavors. It's also helpful to simmer the bones and trimmings in batches. Instead of doing them all at once, simmer them sequentially. The last pieces should only simmer for a few minutes. And you can add some mirepoix, herbs etc ... whatever you like.

Looks gorgeous, Marlene.

I couldn't find anything about price when I snooped around. Chris may have put his finger on it; the material cost might be low compared with fabrication and installation. It may be hard to get an idea without an actual quote. It definitely seems like there's a wide range of composite countertops for labs, and they're not all created equal. There's probably a wide range of cost, too.

22lbs! that must look like the opening scene in the Flintstones.

I'm not sure about the thermal shock issue. The web page for duratec's consumer kitchen line suggests using a trivet, but makes it sound more like a precaution. The lab part of the site says they test the commercial tops by setting glowing-red poercelain crucible on them. Scratching does seem to be an issue, but I doubt moreso than with softer stone (like marble or soapstone). The truth is, I consider my kitchen counters to be a work surface. I don't need them to be pristine. I don't mind them having a lived-in look. Silstone is not nearly as heat reistant as the real lab surfaces. I don't think it uses anything like the same grade of epoxy. Some ground quartz is quarried; some is synthetic. But even the natural stuff doesn't requre the impact of an open quarry. Quartz can be refined from scraps, gravel, sand, etc. etc... I seriously doubt they're pulling huge blocks of quartzite out of hillsides to grind them up into countertops! Concrete is basically artificial limestone. It has many of the same issues as marble ... needs to be sealed (only much more often) is attacked by acids, etc. etc.. Depending on the durability of the sealants I can see it being a reasonable choice. But I just don't like work surfaces that are so hard and unforgiving. I have granite and marble in my (rented) kitchen. The owner is a stonesmith and did all the renovations. EVERYTHING in this place is covered with rock. I like it most places except the counters. With patterened rock, function follows miles behind form. The counters drive me nuts.

It's not! This stuff is quartz in an epoxy resin. Did you check out the link? Try heating a porcelain crucible to a dull red color and setting it on a corian countertop until it cools. Or pointing a lit bunsen burner at corian for 5 minutes. Or leaving a puddle of 40% sulfuric acid on corian for 12 hours. I don't know about you, but I can't be bothered to clean up each and every sulfuric acid spill in my kitchen.

After using all the common countertop materials, I can safely say I hate all of them. Not completely ... many have their charms. I love the look and feel of wood. I half like the look of granite, and love that you can put a 500 degree pan on the counter. I like the low maintenance of corian. I like the idea of soapstone. But they all have drawbacks. I don't like the hardness and completely unforgiving nature of stone ... the sense that if a glass topples over it will shatter. I don't like that it's quarried. I don't like that the patterns hide dirt. I don't like that wood and corian can' handle hot pans. I don't like the maintenance required by wood. I don't like the sterility and scratchability and dentability of stainless steel. It seemed like there was no perfect option, until I heard about laboratory counters. Once upon a time they were made of soapstone or slate, but in recent years they're mostly rock dust (like quartz) bound with high tech epoxy resins. They are 100% non-porous, almost completely chemically inert, scratch resistant, and heat proof for anything short of nuclear experiments gone wrong. Here are the performance specs for the counters made by Durcon. This company has recently branched into selling counters specifically for home kitchens. Many other lab companies make similar products. I'd love to hear if anyone has first hand experience with this stuff. It sounds perfect.