paulraphael

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.

Oh, I get that. My issue is that it wasn't even searing the surface. It was blackening the irregularities tht poked above the surface. Kind of like if you ran your arm past a hot flame ... it would instantly singe all the hairs before it started searing your skin. I was ending up with cool, unbrowned pear that had a speckling of charred texture. I'm guessing that the water content of the fruit was the problem, and that the surface of cooked meat would brown more easily. I might bring the torch just for fun and see if it seems useful. Anything that costs under $20 and can scare the whole family out of the kitchen is a good thing, right? By the way, the torch I have is the most basic bernz-o-matic pencil flame model. Is this the type people use in the kitchen, or is there a model with a mellower flame?

In general i agree. Except that the degree of simmering/boiling is a great visual indicator of how hot the water is. Still water might be more than hot enough, or it might be so cool that you're just slowly turning the food to mush. But if you see bubbles, you know the water is plenty hot to cook your veggies or pasta. The other day I cooked about 12oz of brussel sprouts. Thinking of this thread, I decided to do it right and cook in a big stock pot with around 10 quarts of salted water. It took my stove ages to bring it to a rolling boil (evidence of the huge energy cost of doing it restaurant style for a single batch). The sprouts cooked to the right consistency in around 7 minutes. The water didn't start simmering until the sprouts had been in for around 5 minutes ... most of the cooking time. The water wasn't back to a rolling boil until right before cooking was done. So I think that for practical purposes, you can consider the exact time the water returns to a boil to be irrelevent. But it's important to have enough water/BTUs to keep the water hot enough throughout the cooking process. The bad reputation boiled vegetables have with so many people probably comes from bad technique ... the mushiness of greens cooked for too long in barely hot water.

It came out great. just what I was hoping for ... tender enough to be succulent, but not disintegrating. so it could be sliced. and eaten with a knife and fork. I ended up doing the first roast at 220 degrees, which took a bit over an hour/lb. Pulled out of the oven just below 148 degrees. A couple of hours later (at friends house) put in a preheated roasting pan in a 500 degree oven, and pulled out when center hit 148. Rested about 20 minutes. It would have been easier with a shorter wait between the low and high ovens. The interior temp dropped to 122, and it took a long time to warm up. The smoke detector had to be dismantled in the mean time. The surface was nicely crisped, but unfortunately the long browning time burnt the pan drippings so I couldn't use them in the sauce. But the sauce was nice with the sage and blackberries. I'm waiting for a friend to send pics.

um ... i've seen tongs in use in most of the high end restaurant kitchens i've ever visited. i rarely see them in home kitchens. which is why when asked to cook at someone else's house, i bring a pair. i don't doubt that tongs damage a lot of food. but it's not the tongs, it's the indelicate use or misuse of them. truthfully, i think much more food gets damaged by the indelicate use and misuse of knives. but i don't think knives should be abolished; i think people should learn how to use them.

This kind of thing has never been my style, so I decided to go for it! Had some fun with a boning knife disassembling the shoulder and turning it into a boneless, 2 foot long rug. I improvized the stuffing with some of the pork trimmings, a but end of Jamon Iberico that I stumbled upon, some mushrooms, shallots, bread, and a splash of white wine. Next up is some sauce. I'm planning to make a jus with some stock and roasted pork bones and mushrooms. And I have some blackberries ... maybe I can work that in somehow to brighten up the flavors. Mushrooms, sage, and blackberries? Maybe? Roast is in the oven now at 220 degrees. I'll try to get some pics and report on how it goes.

I agree. Ultimately, tongs are the wrong tool only when they harm the food. Or maybe when they create a dangerous situation (ok, I just pulled a couple of pans out of a 500 degree oven with tongs ... if there had been other people in close quarters this would have merited collichio's wrath). In any case, they can be used delicately and respectfully, or they can be used in a hamfisted manner. Like knives. Like anything. I think the embargos on tongs are just the product of pet peeves ... chefs who have seen them abused so often that they've decided to draw a big line in the sand.

Alright, I do have a blowtorch, but have never used it on meat. The thing burns REALLY hot. I tried to brown a peeled pear with it and it just charred the outer fringes while leaving everything underneath untouched. Is meat easier? And someone mentioned the propane leaving petroleum flavors behind ... is this a real issue?

while i take a break from circulating petitions against dihydrogen monoxide, can someone fill me in on ozone activated water? is this for real? i'm intrigued.

Baratza is selling refurbed Maestro Plus grinders (normally $140) for $63. click! I just pulled the trigger. Based on my 2 minutes of research it's a good machine, with typically Italian quality control quirks, even though it's not really Italian. They seem to have excellent customer support though, and for $63 I won't scream too loud if it isn't perfect.

maybe so, but i've neve roasted one before also, a lot of the trickery we're discussing is about the same simple goal ... how to keep as much of the meat rare/medium rare as possible, while still browning it well. the nicer the piece of meat, the more obsessive you might be about this.