paulraphael

I've done this many times. An approach that works well is a chocolate butter sauce, which is basically a thin butter ganache. Depending on the final use, you can increase the proportion of butter to thicken it. This is the basic method. I've done this with fortified wines, which are already sweet and which I knew would work at leat passably with chocolate. Port is the obvious choice. With some experimenting, you should be able to find a chocolate that works with your client's wine.

Do you put your wood boards in the dishwasher? I wouldn't do that with mine. Residential dishwashers don't usually get hot enough to sanitize effectively. Unless they have a built in water heater and a sanitze feature like commercial models. I've heard of using chemical sanitizers with dishwashers, but don't know how to do it (I don't have a dishwasher). Commercial dishwashers that sanitize use water that's around 190°F. I've head of these temps warping sanituff boards. Plastic boards hold up fine, but I hate them! I just scrub my wooden boards in the sink with hot soapy water, and then spray with a light mist of quats at 200ppm. The protein board gets this treatment after every use; the vegetable board much less often. I also keep a side towel soaked in the quat solution by the vegetable board. It's useful for wiping the board down between uses and keeping knives clean. In this application, the sanitizer serves mostly to keep the rag from becoming a germ spreading medium.

not bad for under 20 bucks! the stuff I bought is actually more home use friendly ... an ounce makes a gallon, not 5+ gallons. so you use it at the same dilution as bleach. about a capfull per pint. not nearly as good a deal as the superconcentrated stuff, but more than good enough. if you're curious, just look around next time you're at a restaurant supply store. they're bound to have something.

I said to use a capful of the diluted stock solution that you mix up from the concentrated product. If the stock solution is diluted 1:4 with water, then it's a 20% solution. Using a capful of that per pint is the correct strength. Or at least close enough for government work. The final working solutions are a 200 part per million solution of the ammonium salts. This is considered a no-rinse solution. Spray it on a cutting board and let it dry, or give dishes a final 1 minute soak before air drying. Quats are often used in stronger solutions for cleaning equipment or for disinfecting, but in that case they must be rinsed off, at least if you're dealing with any surface that contacts food. You basically treat them like chlorine bleach. A 1TB/gallon bleach solution is no-rinse; any stronger you should rinse. I've been using the quats for a month now. I have a spray bottle for wetting down cutting boards and work surfaces, and a couple of takeout containers filled with the solution: one for sponges by the sink, and one for side towels by my cutting board. The trick is to rinse the sponges and towels well before putting them into the solution. No sanitizer works well when it gets dirty. I've been using the same three sponges for weeks now, and they smell good as new. Mmmmmmm, sponge!

My source is Harold McGee, whose book doesn't give many details on the timing. "...most meat in the United States is aged only incidentally, during the few days it takes to be shipped packing plant to market. This is enough for chicken, which benefits from a day or two of aging, and for pork and lamb, which benefit from a week (the unsaturated fats of pork and poultry go rancid relatively quickly)." "Rigor sets in (after about 2.5 hours in the steer, 1 hour or less in lamb, pork, and chicken) when the muscle fibers run out of energy, their control systems fail and trigger a contracting movement of the protein filaments, and the filaments lock in place. Carcasses are hung up in such a way that most of their muscles are stretched by gravity, so that the protein filaments can't contract and overlap by much; otherwise the filaments bunch up and bond very tightly and the meat becomes exceptionally tough. Eventually, protein-digesting enzymes within the muscle fibers begin to eat away the framework that holds the actin and myosin filaments in place. The filaments are still locked together, and the muscles cannot be stretched, but the overall muscle structure weakens, and the meat texture softens. This is the beginning of the aging process. It becomes noticeable after about a day in beef, after several hours in pork and chicken." So it seems possible that a significant amount of aging happens in 8 hours ... maybe that's all a chicken really needs. What I take from McGee is that there is at least a chance that more than a day of aging is beneficial, but that more than two is not. From personal experience I know chickens can be delicious and tender 12 or 14 hours after slaughter. But I don't think I've had any that were fresher than that.

Chicken feet are a great source of gelatin. Right up there with pig's feet. Butchers and ethnic grocery stores sell them, but the best way to get them is also the best way to get chicken backs: buy a whole chicken. The farmer at the market should be able to sell you whole chickens, feet, head and all. Keep the carcass, neck, and feet in the freezer for your stocks. And enjoy much better tasting birds.

Most of the chicken used in my stock is carcasses from roasted birds. The amount of salt remaining in thesse probably contributes at least 1/4 tsp per final quart ... another reason I'm shy about adding more.

I'm happy with my plain aluminum 20qt stock pot. True that it's less versatile than stainless, but this hasn't been an issue. It gets used for making stock and poaching turkeys ... nothing acidic. Heats very evenly (it's about 6mm thick) and was cheap. I'd rather have a similar quality stainless one with a disk bottom, but all the ones I've seen cost much more. I saved the money for sexier cookware. If you plan to do more with yours ... like make 16 quarts of chili ... then by all means pony up for the stainless.

I'm assuming you can't get half and half. But if you can, just substitute that for the cream and the milk. It will be like using half of each, and put you into the 14 to 16% milkfat range. If you don't have that, you could try a creamless gelato, either thickened with egg yolks (northern style) or corn starch (southern style). I've never made any of these recipes so I can't comment on how they'd turn out. I expect they would be very low on creaminess. If you're willing to mess around with some less conventional hydrocolloids, there are tons of recipes for low fat and no fat ice cream like substances. supposedly some of them mimic the texture of cream really well. Again, I have no experience with this approach. Cream abounds where I live!

To be scientific you'll need a panel of tasters. In the interests of science, I could be persuaded to volunteer some time.

I think you just have to adapt time and temperature to different thicknesses. 10 minutes per side on medium heat seems to be the right treatment for a 1-1/2 to 2 inch steak. A 1 inch steak will need less time (to avoid overcooking the center) and more heat (to brown the surface in that shorter time). I don't know if there's an advantage to cooking steaks at a single temperature all the way through. My habit has been to sear them on high heat, and then (still in the pan) let them continue to cook on very low heat. I feel this make the timing a little easier, since you're taking care of the browning and cooking the center in mostly discreet steps. But I'd be surprised if the results would be substantially different from the consistent temperature method. It would be interesting to compare both side by side.

The idea of stock being made with just bones is a new one. Until recent decades, no one would have dreamed of doing it, at least within the French tradition. The exception would be the first stock of a double stock ... they often made the first stock with just veal bones (purely for gelatin) and then used used that stock as the liquid for simmering the meat to make the final stock. Bone stocks as final stocks came into vogue during the Nouvelle Cuisine era, where they primarily contributed gelatin and roasted flavors, in place of traditional stocks that carried the full flavors of meat. There were lots of rationales for this, but the overriding one was economy. And that's why bone stocks are still popular today. As an example of a classical stock recipe, Escoffier called for 13lbs shin of beef on the bone, 13lbs knuckle of veal on the bone (or lean veal trimmings) 1 knuckle of raw ham (on the bone), and 1-1/2lbs of blanched pork rind, to make 10 liters of stock. This is not the same as ordering, say veal knuckle bones from the butcher--this is the lower leg of veal, on the bone, and lower leg of steer, on the bone. This works out to 3lbs of very meaty bones per liter of stock ... probably more meat per liter than most people would use to make broth today. Our modern bone stocks are short cuts derrivied from this kind of stock.

More significantly, mirepoix doesn't stand up to the extended cooking that the bones need. In the amount of time it takes to extract the flavor and gelatin from the bones, you'll extract the flavor of veggies and then cook most of it away. I think putting it in 2 or 3 hours before the end is a good solution. And some people put in two batches; one halfway through cooking time, one closer to the end. If you put in aromatics, I think the timing depends on each individual one (it's why I rarely make a traditional bouquet). Bay leaves can go in near the beginning; thyme can go in with a couple of hours to go, parsely can go in for the last few minutes. You can also omit them entirely and just add them when you make your final sauces.

My understanding is that rigor mortis gets underway in poultry about an hour after slaughter. If you could butcher and cook the bird within this timeframe, you'd have some unusual and very fresh tasting chicken. Enzyme action starts to loosen up the tensed muslces after several hours, and probably completes its work after a day or two. But the bird should be properly hung for this to happen, and the temperature needs to be right (I have no idea how to do it ...) After this one or two day age, the chicken should be at its most tender and have the best flavor. It doesn't benefit from extended aging, like beef. I have no idea how common these practices are. My butcher gets local poultry that's freshly killed; judging by the eyes they were walking around within 12 hours of the time I buy them. And they're not hung; they're kept in a display case on ice. And they taste great. So maybe I've never had poultry that's prepared as I describe. Typically, "air drying" means that the bird isn't wrapped in plastic after it's been washed or steamed or whatever it is they do to get the feathers off and clean it. Factory chickens are wrapped wet and take on 10% or so of their weight in added water. Most artisinal birds (and I believe kosher birds) are air dried. Air drying makes for a more flavorful bird, and a crisper skin if you're roasting.

Chicken soup has been supported by research; most of the ideas about salt have not. There's a lot of study on the topic in the food science literature. Most of the mistaken ideas are based on assumptions that osmosis goes on during cooking. Study after study shows that it doesn't. I also frequently reduce poultry stocks a lot when making pan sauces. The pan sauce will often start with a fair amount salt from the roasted / sautéed bird, which ends up in the pan drippings. I don't want any extra salt in the stock. If you never do this, then it's less of an issue.

The more meat still on the bones the better! Using bones is actually an economizing measure; stocks were traditionally made with piles of meat. If you have meaty bones, be happy. The only thing I look out for is lots of marrow. Shin bones especially are packed with it. If I see a big volume of marrow I roast at a lower temperature, like 375°, so it doesn't burn before the meat and bones brown. A heavy, light colored roasting pan also helps.

Ok, so I have mice. It's hard not to ... I live in a civil war-era brewery in one of the filthier corners of Brooklyn. The long term plan is to block off the points of entry with steel wool, metal plates, whatever. Short term I'm trying to trap them. Trying really hard. Actually, it's gotten personal. For the last month I've been the straight man in a cartoon. The little bastards (I once thought they were cute) have outsmarted me every step of the way. Here's what I've tried: -Live catch traps. In a month I caught a total of one mouse. I let him go out on the street, a dozen paces from my gate. He hit the pavement, turned around, and sprinted back into my courtyard. I headed him off and then he disappeared ... probably into my pantry. -Cat. Once a competent mouser, in spite of looking more like a throw pillow than a predator, he's made it clear that he's retired. -Conventional traps. I put them out with cheese and peanut butter at night. In the morning the trap is still set but the cheese and peanut butter are gone. These are not traps, they are feeders. -Glue traps. Supposedly the most barbaric of all. But in the morning the peanut butter is gone (see note on feeders, above). But this time there are little paw prints in the glue, placed there no doubt to mock me. Suggestions? And if this is one of those candid camera shows, I'll eventually get paid ... right?

There are many old wives tales about salt; most of them have no basis in reality. A tiny bit of salt in stock won't hurt anything, but I haven't seen any evidence to suggest it helps anything. Almost all these ideas about salt are based on mistaken notions of osmosis.

If you have a long, strong wooden spoon or spatula, or set of tongs, you can insert it deep into the turkey's cavity and use it as a handle. The other hand can hold the head side of the turkey with a towel or silicone mit. If the turkey is big and you are small, you might want to delegate. At any rate, get the roasting pan and platter on a surface right next to each other so you don't have to go far. Actually, your biggest concern is taking the turkey out of the oven at the right time. That spells the difference between a really good bird and the kind of dried out bird everyone seems to be used to. If it's your first time, I'd skip any turkey lifting gadgets and treat yourself to a remote probe thermometer. And if you get one of those birds with the built-in indicator that pops up, ignore it! Using that thing is no better than using the smoke alarm to tell you dinner's ready.

Sorry, I missed the question a while back. That was just my descriptive name for a stuffing recicipe by George Perrier, who I thnk has some great ideas about thanksgiving turkey. His version is basically this: olive oil 1/2 lb veal stew meat, in 1” cubes 1/2 lb pork butt,, in 1” cubes 2 shalots, finely chopped 9 slices firm white bread 1 cup milk 1 egg 1/4 cup cognac 1 Tbs chopped fresh parsley salt white pepper 1 lb chestnuts (prepared ones are great) Heat olive oil in sautee pan, add veal, pork, and shallots. Cook but do not brown. Soak bread in milk until soft. squeeze out excess milk. Put meat and shallots and all pan juices and bread in food processor. Chop until sausage-like. Beat in egg and parsely, cognac and seasonings. Gently mix in whole chestnuts. I've played with it over the years. The last version I made was this: 1 lb. veal stew meat in 1” cubes (or half can be replaced with ½ lb pork butt, 1 inch cubes) 2 shalots, finely chopped 2 granny smith or macintosh apples, peeled, cored, and chopped into small pieces 1/2 cup golden raisins 5-7 slices lightly toasted sourdough bread 1 cup milk (for soaking bread if it's stale; otherwise don't bother) 2 eggs 1/4 cup calvados 1 Tb chopped fresh parsley 1 Tb chopped fresh thyme 1 tsp ground allspice 1/2 tsp ground mace 1 ground nutmeg nut 2 tsp ground cinnamon salt, cracked pepper, cider vinegar to taste Macerate the apples and raisins in the brandy (in a covered bowl) for at least an hour before mixing. Heat olive oil in sautee pan, add meat and shallots. Cook but do not brown. Soak bread in milk until soft. squeeze out excess milk. Put meat and shallots and all pan juices and bread in food processor. Chop coarsely. Beat in egg and parsely, cognac and seasonings. Gently mix in apples and raisins.

Well, you and Ducasse. And a few others I think finishing in the oven is a convenient technique for restaurants. The oven is the fastest way to do the slow cooking of the center ... if that makes any sense. The heat can be low, but it's hitting the meat on all sides. And more importantly, it frees up a burner on the stove for the next round of food. If you don't face a restaurants time and stove space constraints, I think finishing on the stove is a better option, if for no reason other than it gives you more control.

This is a classic definition that people argue about. I personally think the difference, if there is any at all, is intent. There are many kinds of broth, many kinds of stock, and the overlap is almost 100%. It's usually called broth if you plan to consume it as is, either as a soup or the main ingredient of a soup. It's usually called stock if it's a component. The word "stock" implies that you're making a bunch of it to keep in inventory, for multiple purposes. Particularly for saucemaking. In French cooking, broth has been around since time immemorial. Stock was invented (or rose into prominence) after the Revolution, when the chefs started cooking for the middle class in restaurants, and had to start cooking a la carte and with a budget. Instead of elaborate integral sauces made with jus and braising liquids for all the dishes, they needed a system for making sauces from economical, pre-made components. Stock was a key part of the answer. As far as technical differences, broth might be seasoned; stock never is. Stock may be used in many applications, including reductions, so it's always a mistake to season it in advance.

Are you talking about sanitizer in file I linked to? That one's 5 times as concentrated as the brand I got locally. With mine a capful per 16oz is just right. With a super concentrated brand, the trick would be to do what photographers do with concentrated chemistry. Mix up a less concentrated stock solution. If you filled a gallon jug with a 1:4 solution of that stuff, it would still be concentrated enough to keep indefinitely, but you'd be able to mix the working solution with a capful or teaspoon full per pint of water.

I find thermometers tricky to use on steaks. Maybe a steak this thick would make it easier, but typically it's hard to know exactly what point of thickness is being measured. And for a steak that's even 1-1/2" thick, even if i'm sticking the probe in at an angle, the temperature gradient can be steep enough to throw me off. That's my guess too. Well I like to cook for about 120 hours, at 41C (the temperature of a steer who's running a strong fever). And I find it best to sear before, after, and (with a handheld torch, leaning over my guest's shoulders) several times during the meal.

When I sear steaks on very high heat I never char them. However, I haven't cooked steaks that are as thick as yours. I'm guessing that someone calculating the heat conductivity of meat would find the ducasse method used on a fat steak to basically be an adjustment of the high heat method used on a thin one. For the medium steaks that I usually cook (1 to 1-1/4", my method is a bit of a hybrid. I sear the first side on very high heat, flip to the second side, and after a minute or two, turn the heat very low. Then I pour out excess cooking oil, and finish with butter, which browns slowly as the meat heats through. The disadvantage is that the first side isn't actually cooked in the butter (but gets basted). I'll have to see if a variation of the ducasse method might work on medium thickness steaks (forget about rendering fat on the edge; cook a bit hotter than medium for maybe 7 minutes per side, etc.).