paulraphael

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.

Anyone have the new edition? The 2nd edition is probably favorite cookbook of all time. I only glanced at the new one long enough to see the list of things he chose not to do: expand the asian section, add a section on newer "molecular" techniques, etc.. That seems strange. It's what's been going on since the last edition. Has anyone spent time with the new book?

Is there anything special about those cookies that you want to replicate (besides thin and crisp)? In general, thin and crisp cookies are the easiest to make ... people trying to make other kinds often end up with them by accident. Any recipe that uses 100% butter (preferably lots of it) and that's formed into balls and baked when the dough is warm should give you thin and crisp cookie. Other things to look for or to tweak: -not a lot of leavening, or maybe even none -made with melted butter instead of creamed butter / sugar -if made with creamed butter/sugar, go ahead and overcream it (until it acutally feels smooth to the touch) -try a slightly lower oven temperature / longer baking time (325) -use a high quality, low moisture butter (will make the cookies especially delicious, too)

Clay pots can't be used on the stove. Enameled cast iron is different from plain cast iron; it has a non-reactive enamel coating on all surfaces. This makes it useful for braising. It also makes it one of the few kinds of cookware that can be used to store food, without leaching anything nasty into it. You can make a soup or stew in an enamelled pan and it go back and forth from the stove to the fridge. They're definitely expensive. I got mine a few years ago from a Canadian seller who had them for less than half what they go for now. If I were in the market now I'd be looking on ebay. The dollar tanking probably has something to do with it. But they've always been expensive. My understanding is that they're made by a fairly primitive, labor intensive process that was developed back when labor was a lot cheaper. The good news is that there is no need for a whole set of enamelled cast iron. It's a great material for dutch ovens and oval ovens and similar braising vessels. You don't need an enamelled iron skillet, you certainly don't need an enamelled iron stock pot, and enamelled iron saucepans are completely useless. So if you can find a piece or two on ebay in the sizes you like, you're set for life. Just don't drop them.

Fruit ice creams are the most challenging to make, because every fruit has different levels of moisture and sugar (which are both structural ingredients in the ice cream). There can be other issues, too ... different levels of acidity, and other odd chemicals in specific fruits can react with certain stabilizing ingredients. I've been forced to treat each fruit ice cream as an individual project. The amount of sugar, added milk solids, and stabilizing ingredients will be different for each, at least if you're picky about texture. And of course, it will be hard to make the the ice cream at all consistent from batch to batch, because the fruit never will be. If you're hardcore, you can get some kind of hygrometer to measure the specific gravity of your puree ... then you'll be able to calculate the amount of sugar and get a head start on tweaking the other ingredients. I've always just winged it.

What about chefs who create completely new principles of cooking--ones that change the way a whole generation thinks about food? Is there potential for these (very few) people to distinguish themselves as geniuses? And if not, why are they different from people in other pursuits who get accepted as geniuses for similarly revolutionary accomplishments?

Off the top of my head, the only issue I can think of with magnetized knives is that when you sharpen, steel dust could stick to the blades and be very hard to get off (especially without scratching up the finish). It should be possible for the mag block guys to make ones that don't magnetize knives. Forschner makes cool edge guards that clamp over the blade with magnets. They claim that because their magnets alternate polarity at close intervals, they won't magnetize the blades. Assuming this isn't bogus marketing, the blocks could be made to work the same way.

I want to add a plug for Jeffrey's on Essex, at the Essex St. Market. I heard about them, and even though I've been more than happy with Florence and Ottomanelli and Sons, I went to check them out. Jeffrey himself greeted me, and when he heard the kinds of question I had, he tossed me an apron and invited me back to check out the meat aging in the walk-in. He has a huge assortment of meats, including black plume and black foot chickens, Berkshire pork, lamb from Colorado, Australia, and New Zealand, prime dry aged beef (aged in house and to order from an aging facility) and lots of offal and exotic meats. He made it clear that he was MY butcher and would get or do whatever I asked. I saw some 8-week dry aged strip steak in the case, and commented that I'd never had meat that was aged that long. He said, "well let's have some." He cut a steak, let me season it, and walked it over to the George Foreman grill at the fish monger's stand next door. we took it back and at it together. What kind of butcher does this?? I asked him if he'd accept free labor in exchange for some butchering education. He just said, "grab a knife!" So I've now spent two days following him around and cutting meat. The cool thing is that he'll really do whatever you want. Right now he has a small rack of rib steaks being custom aged for a customer. He doesn't charge for this (but you'll pay for all meat that has to be trimmed off, which will increase with aging time). I love the idea that if I plan a steak dinner for friends, I could conceivable have him age the meat for ten weeks, and my final price would still be no more than what I'm used to paying. So far he doesn't do "artisinal meats." Meaning, he doesn't deal directly with farms and get seasonal grass fed, organic this and that. He doesn't have a big enough market for it yet, but that could change if he gets enough requests. So, if you have some high end requests, give him a call or stop by. He really wants to be your butcher, and if he sees the market getting big enough, he'll be able to get in the kinds of products that could give lobel's a run for their money. He says he selects all the meat personally. The wholesalers don't pick it for him; he goes down and gets the best looking selections he can find. He doesn't focus on selling wholesale, but prides himself on helping restaurants in emergencies. His wholesale card says, in big letters, "Who Fucked Up The Order". A great guy selling great meat. And they've been in business as a family for four generations, since the late 1800s. 212-457-6521

So technically speaking, what's the difference between blowing one's head off and blowing one's brains out? sorry.

I realized that in my first post didn't address the original question at all. By slow, I thought you meant low heat, but you clearly said you meant not a lot of motion. Honestly, I think people still call this sauté. It's not the classical definition, but it's essentially the same cooking process. We talk about sautéed steaks and chicken cutlets; the cooking is still done by high heat in just enough oil to fill the gaps between the food and the pan. But large pieces that essentially have two sides are more sensibly cooked by turning than tossing. I think you're getting into subtleties of approach ... like when it's better to toss often vs. letting something brown for a stretch and then tossing. I think it's fundamentally still sauté.