paulraphael

Digital oven controls (like the ones on my oven) make me want to go on a shooting spree. It's not just that they're unintuitive. Even after you learn how to use controls like mine, it takes half a minute to click the thing from 500 degres to 200, instead of the half second it takes to turn a knob.

First of all, I've never seen prime steaks like that. I assumed from the pics that they were Kobe. Which of Lobel's steaks did you buy? On their site they list prime, prime dry aged, and natural prime, and maybe others. Your results are beautiful, and I don't understand them. I don't understand how steaks can cook for 45 minutes even on medium heat and not be cooked through at least to medium. Likewise for resting in a 150 degree oven. I agree wholeheartedly with ducasse about not wanting to char a good steak. And with you about the glories of butter. But the nerd in me has trouble grasping why this particular method works.

Hervé This answered this one. There's are a whole slew of experiments testing various wives tales about how to use salt when cooking meat. The conventional wisdom is all based on ideas about osmosis, and it all falls flat. Apparently the presence of salt in poaching liquid makes no difference at all, at least in regard to the juiciness of the meat. The reason turns out to be simple. Osmosis is the diffusion of water through a semi-permeable membrane. But plant and animal cells aren't covered with semi-permeable membranes. Plant cells are covered with cell walls, and meat cells are covered with collagen. While these are both ever so slightly permeable, allowing a bit of osmosis to occur, once the cooking gets underway they break down and become completely permeable. So osmosis doesn't happen; cells take on or lose fluids (and salt) like sponges. Based on this, Shalmanese made the winning point. Since I plan to use the poaching liquid to make stock, I'm not going to add salt.

Yeah, that's my assumption. I'm wondering if there's a standard starting point for salt %. Many poaching recipes I've seen omit salt, and this seems like an oversight.

My one Bayliss book is Authentic Mexican. Is this not representative of his other books? It strikes me as fiercely authentic, and so full of recipes that seem geared towards a kitchen full of daughters spending days preparing feasts, that I've used it more for salivating than actual cooking. Are Kennedy's books even more authentic and impractical than this one??

Is there any conventional wisdom on the ideal salt content for poaching liquid? I've seen recipes that don't include any, but I'd worry that this would leach juices out of the uncooked meat (osmosis and whatnot). Thoughts?

I'm waiting for the end of sauces with the consistency of oil paint wiped in pseudo artistic, completely useless smears on the edge of the plate. I LIKE sauces. Meaning, I like to TASTE them.

Just to clarify, parboiling bones and carcasses is called for when making a white stock. If you're making a brown stock (browning the protein and bones first) the blanching step is unnecessary. The browning process stabilizes the proteins that would otherwise turn into scum and contribute cloudiness.

Sure ... any form of light simmer like what I'm talking about would be way above the 140° needed to keep bacteria from reproducing. I'd guess I'm talking about a range of 180° or so in a big stock pot to 200° or so in a small one.

What sort of temperature are we talking about here? Can we put numbers on it? ← I've never measured, and I don't think precision is all that important. My guess is that the temperature reading would vary by the size of the pot. A small amount of stock is reaching 212 at the bottom of the pan, but you're not pouring enough energy into it to get everything that hot. That bit of simmering liquid carries much of the heat away. The idea is that you want the water hot, to speed extraction, but you don't want it churning, which would emulsify too much fat and bind up protein particles, clouding the stock.

The key studies cited in that paper strike me as too limited in scope to allow any broad conclusions. This is the study that showed a preference for wet aged over dry aged steaks. It tells us that 46% percent of the subjects prefered wet aged and 28% prefered dry aged. But we don't know much about the steaks in question, besides the cut and grade. And much more significantly, we don't know much about the test subjects, other than that they were from Denver and Chicago, and that they were "consumers." What results would you expect if you asked a similar population to compare a craft beer to Buddweiser? I think it would be much more of a litmus test of the population than a serious taste test of the beer. Steve, since your meal at the steakhouse offered no direct comparisons (the same cut from the same beef cooked the same but aged differently), it really only allows one conclusion: that wet aging CAN allow for good tasting results. But it doesn't tell us anything about how that steak might have tasted if dry aged. My personal experience (unreliable for all the same reasons) tells me it's no contest. Prime beef that's well dry aged tastes different (and better) to me than beef that isn't. My experience with beef that's aged a long time is very limited, but so far it suggests that the differences are drastic. And I could imagine that they wouldn't be to everyone's taste.

Tim is right. And you don't have to worry about skimming away the gelatin; it doesn't float to the top. If you keep the simmer very low (just a bubble here and there rising to the surface) you'll get better clarity, and you won't have to skim quite as often (there's much less risk of the scum getting churned and emulsified into the stock). This will let you wait for a pretty good accumulation of scum before you skim, so you'll remove more scum and fat and less of your precious stock.

They haven't yet but they're going to soon, according to the barrista at 9th st. (yes, they use stumptown and sell the beans, too). I've had great espresso at 9th st. (the 10th st. location), and Joe (the grand central location). I've heard nothing but great things about Abraco, but they close early and I never get there in time. I trust they know more about coffee than about coffee shop hours.

I'd worry about that more in a commercial setting (where test papers are usually required). If it's at home and you're mixing the stuff yourself, it's easy to know the concentration's right.

There's been a lot of talk about the best way to sanitize cutting boards. Most is about the relative merits of bleach and vinegar. I've used both and don't like them. Especially because sanitizer has other uses, like soaking side towels and sponges so they don't become biological experiments. I like to keep a sanitizer soaked towel handy for wiping down knives and tools and food surfaces over the coarse of prep. Bleach smells, corrodes metal (like knives), breaks down sponges and towels, can irritate skin, is unstable when diluted, and is pretty inefective in the presence of organic material. Vinegar smells, attacks carbon steel knives, is relatively expensive, and has no effect at all on viruses (like noroviruses, which are one of the most common foodborne pathogens). I decided to try a commercial sanitizer that's based on quaternary ammonium compounds. These are the most popular among food service establishments. They're odorless, stable, non-irritating, noncorrosive, won't break down sponges or cloth, and are effective against a wide range of bacteria and viruses. Clean surfaces are considered sanitized after 1 minute of contact. With a standard dilution of 200ppm, there's no need to rinse. I picked up a gallon jug of the poetically named Nu-Foamicide at a restaurant supply store. It cost about $25. One ounce dilutes to make a gallon of 200ppm working solution. Filling a 16oz spray bottle costs less than 3¢. Way cheaper than a 1:4 solution of vinegar. You can get this product online for much cheaper than what I paid. It's over 5 times as concentrated, so measuring it out for home use would be trickier. Probably best to make a less concentrated stock solution and dilute from.

The steaks I've bought most often are aged 21 days. Compared with wet aged beef they have a more beefy flavor, and are a bit more tender. I've tasted some of that mineral flavor you mention in some cuts (like the rib) but not others. I have yet to serve this to anyone who doesn't find it superior to wet aged meat. The 42 day steak took on much more of a distinctive aged quality. The nutty, sweet, buttery flavors dominated ... but there wasn't any of that funkiness or gaminess people mention in this particular sample. Only two of us were able to compare, but we both thought it was incomparably better than both the 21 day dry aged and any wet aged steak we've had. I won't even buy steak that's been aged in a cryovac (with the exception of cuts like hanger, where you often don't have a choice). It's just not worth it to me. I'll save up and have the dry aged stuff half as often.

alright, now my dinner is starting to feel inadequate.

Holy wow, 60 and 72 days. I've never heard of anything like that. I wonder if they have to do anything special (control the temperature differently, age only whole primals, etc. etc.)

I measured them before cooking them; not when they were first cut. Now that you ask, I realize they were probably cut straight but shrunk unevenly. Jeffrey cut them on the bandsaw ... a machine with few charms, but straight cutting is one of them.

The Bo Bo chickens are fantastic! I made soup with a black plume and a white plume (great flavor) and then had my mind blown yesterday when I roasted a black plume. Incredible. To anyone who tells me they don't like white meat, I'll say "get a real chicken. And don't overcook it." The dark meat was very good ... prominent, fresh, chickeny flavor. But the breast meat was actually sweet. It reminded me of heritage pork, where you can actually taste the fruits and nuts that where fed to the pig. I have no idea what these birds eat or if this has anything to do with it, but this was a delicious experience. The breasts are small, sadly, since the birds have not been bred to hulk up like Schwartzenegger. So you might want to buy an extra bird. One nice thing is that they come with the heads and feet on them. You can check the freshness by looking at the eyes, just like with fish. The three birds I got were exquisitely fresh ... probably slaughtered early that morning. The heads and feet are a great addition to sauces and stocks, though I don't have the stomach yet to chow on them. In other Jeffrey's news, I got some 42 day dry aged NY strip steaks, which I refuse to shut up about in this thread.

In another thread I raved about Jeffrey's Meat on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. One of their best perks is that they'll dry age meat to your specifications. It's a free service; you'll pay for the pre-aged weight of the meat and will expect to lose weight and volume the longer it goes. I haven't had a chance to take them up on this yet, but at any given time they usually have a few subprimals that have been aged like meat was meant to be aged. Yesterday I saw some six week NY strip steaks, and couldn't resist. To put it in perspective, my other favorite butchers age up to 21 days. A friend who works at Craft says their meat gets custom aged for them for 35 days. Lobel's in NYC ages some of their meat for 42 days, for more than double the price I paid. But for just a bit more than what I paid, Jeffrey's sometimes has 8 week aged beef (sadly, none yesterday). And if you're patient enough to have them do it for you, and have a big enough order for it to be worth it, they'll go longer. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says in The River Cottage Meat book that he's gone as long as nine weeks, and liked it. He describes this as hanging time no butcher would risk, but I'm sure Jeffrey would age meat for a decade if you bought him a beer. Anyway, on to the steaks: The raw shell steaks coming up to room temp. Thinly sliced hen of the woods mushroom for the sauce Searing in grapeseed oil that's about to combust Basting with brown butter Sauce with beef coulis, maitake mushroom, and thyme, finished with butter Out of focus but delicious. No pics of the plated meal. We were too hungry. The steaks were the best tasting I've ever had, easily. The cooked flavor was forshadowed by the smell of the raw meat--sweet, nutty, and almost buttery. The texture was tender, but with a satisfying resistance to the tooth. Unfortunately, the steaks weren't cut perfectly evenly; they ranged from 1-1/4" to 1-1/2". I cooked the thick parts rare but the thiner parts became medium rare and were decidely less succulent. The flavor of the meat not only stood up to the earthy/beefy intensity of the sauce, but harmonized with it wonderfully. The meat was great on its own. With the sauce it picked up added dimensions without losing any of its unique character. The meat had a kind of volatile aromatic character that reminded me of truffles. It gave a sense of potent, exotic vapors that filled my head with flavor, lingered for a long time after the meal, and made me feel a bit drunk. Not a bad buzz for $22 a pound.

It's not just the lack of trappings ... there's something about the Momos that leads me to spend double what I expect. The dishes are reasonable priced. Maybe the trouble is that I can't get enough of them. At any rate, now that they have three restaurants, I think it would be great if there was a more serious price difference between the lower two. Noodle bar and saam bar seem really close together in terms of menu and price. I'd love it if they could make noodle bar more cut rate.

ha! i don't think i'm going in the chex mix/pigs in a blanket direction. maybe some kind of cruditee, if i can thing of something seasonal and interesting that also works the rest of the meal. some kind of bruschetta thing might also work. i don't want to do anything heavy or anything that will require complex assembly/plating.

wait ... are you implying that if the extra cost went into subsidizing a worker's wine siesta, it wouldn't be worth it?!? i really don't know the answer to your question. the only enameled cast iron i'm familiar with is creuset, staub (more expensive), and desco (inherited from grandma).

This is a first draft: corn chowder with morels poached and roasted amish farm turkey french farm-style stuffing with apples duck demiglace-based brown sauce cranberry grand marnier sauce peter reinhart's outrageously great corn bread celeriac puree with garlic and fennel blackened brussel sprouts w/truffle butter pumpkin tart w/ vanilla cognac ice cream chocolate marquise w/ pear and clove sauce i feel like there should be some kind of finger food type hors d'oeuvre. i don't know much about these things ... if anyone has ideas, i'm all ears.