paulraphael

I used a few of the stainless with aluminum disk bottom pans at a vacation house. There were a couple of saucepans and a medium and large saute pan. I thought they were surprisingly good. I used the saute pans on the stove and as roasting pans in a 500 degree oven with no issues. I actually like them better than some commercial lines, like Sitram and Paderno. On the Martha Stewart pans, the disk bottom tapers at the edge and covers the entire bottom of the pan. On a lot of disk bottom pans, the disk leaves a pretty big gap at the edge. If you don't keep a close watch on the flame (especially tricky on home stoves that spread the flame out to the sides instead of projecting it straight up) you end up with a nasty hot spot all around the outside rim. Some disadvantages to the M.S. pans are that the stainless steel is flimsier than on the pro pans, and the lids are glass. The glass is conventient, but in my kitchen its lifespan would be about ten minutes. I found another line of pans that has a nice disk bottom and is roughly in the Martha Stewart price range: Optio by Lincoln. It's their budget line. Big benefit is that you don't have to have something in your kitchen with a "Martha Stewart" logo (I'd pay a premium for this feature alone).

The phrase "molecular gastronomy" was coined in 1988 by Heve This and Nicholas Kurti. It wasn't originally about a style of cooking. As This describes it, they needed a pithy title for a series of lectures they were giving on the physical and chemical aspects of cooking. Their lectures were as much about soft boiled eggs as they were about futuristic ingredients and techniques. Since then, of course, the phrase has been applied to many new approaches to food. It's been embraced by a generation of chefs, and it's been rejected by a number of them who have been closely associated with it (nothing surprising here ... creative people have often shunned categories and dogma that they helped invent). If there's anything truly distinctive about Molecular Gastronomy as an approach or a style, it's not that it employs chemistry. Cooking has always been about chemistry, whether the cooks knew it or not. I think the difference is that traditional cooking evolved through trial and error, and was taught as a tradition. The science behind it was only studied and understood much later. This newer approach to cooking starts with lessons from those scientific investigations, and uses them as the foundation for brand new techniques and traditions. So the difference is about the role of science. Science used to be applied retroactively. In the new approach, it's used as the starting point.

You could say similar things about almost any creative pursuit. It's not just foodies romanticizing chefs; it's outsiders romanticizing any creative process. Granted, not all endeavors involve miseries equal to the hot line, but as life choices many come close. Being an artist/writer/composer/whatever involves a lot more toil and repetition and tedium and failure than most fairy tales acknowledge. And who can blame them? If the fairy tales were accurate, no one would like them.

Interesting. I never saw that big a difference. What kind of container did the dough age in?

I bet the problem is less about gas vs. electric and more about one of the ovens (or even both of them) having innacurate thermostats. A good oven thermometer or infrared thermometer can sort this out for you. I'd get a reading on the oven you're familiar with before leaving on the trip. Make sure you know the actual temp that you've been using. Then just make sure the new oven preheats to that temp. I'd be surprised if temperature cyling is a big problem with something that has the thermal mass of a turkey. At any rate, pay less attention to cooking time and more attention to the look, feel, and smell of the bird. Pull it out when it's ready, not when the recipe says it's ready.

Good point. I wonder if the restauranteur realizes that. Maybe he'll make them sign a contract constricting their diet? ← They could just do like they do with heritage pigs. It would be great for marketing" "Ice cream made with milk from free-range moms raised on a diet of chestnuts and acorns."

Well, that gives some idea of what this ice cream might cost. All I can say now about breast milk is, "it better be good."

My mom evolved a dish that fed us for years. It was a blend of French regional and American lazy, and we loved it. She called it the Permanent Dinner. It was basically a pot au feu, but heavy on the broth, so you could think of it as a braise or a stew or a soup, depending on your disposition. The broth wasn't thickened. Some of the ingredients were browned and cooked long, others just simmered til tender. The key was that the ingredients were in constant rotation. Chicken, beef stewing cuts, French sausages, leeks, carrots, cellery, pearl onions, herbs, whatever, all rotated in and out. More broth would get added as needed. It lived in a giant Creuset enameled cast iron pot, that could go from the stove to the fridge to the freezer. Bringing it to a simmer several times a week kept the microbes away (I have since learned that the Health Department frowns on this concept, but we all survived our childhoods). Anyway, we had it a lot and it was delicious and low maintenance and always changing.

yeah- I would second that. One of my housemates got me one a while ago and its worked like a charm. Sincerely, Dante ← But have you tried the Messermeister? I have both. The Messermeister mops the floor with the Oxo and costs about the same.

I've noticed most pros using ones like that one in the picture ... with the blade perpendicular to the handle. I've always used ones with a parallel blade, that you hold like a paring knife. The all time champ of these is the Messermeister serrated peeler (don't fear the serrations ... they're so small they make little difference). It's similar to the oxo but better. You can use this thing to cleanly peel a ripe tomato, or even a ripe peach. Ever since it got a couple of rave reviews it's been in stock at most cooking stores. You can pick them up retail for $6 or $7. I've given about 10 of them as gifts.

It's interesting that the idea of human milk gives almost everyone the heebie jeebies ... even thought it's the milk we were actually intended to drink. I admit it weirds me out too. I just don't understand why. There doesn't seem to be any logic to it--so it's from the breast of a strange woman. How is that more revolting than the breast of a strange cow or goat? Meanwhile, most men (and a whole lot of women) have a pretty strong affinity for the breast itself. While there may be a few "udder men" out there, I have yet to hear from any (or see any fetish websites devoted to their special needs). Where do you suppose the revulsion comes from?

Yeah, the KA attachment does a really good job, especially if you can turn the temp down really low in your freezer when chilling the bowl. My freezer is gets the thing between -6F and -10F. I've been able to freeze a pint of ice cream in as little as 4 minutes and a quart in as little as 12 minutes. The result is a very smooth texture. LN2 is obviously going to be faster and smoother. But the real test, I think, is the texture after the ice cream hardens in the freezer. Ice cream continues to metamorphose indefinitely ... small ice crystals merging with larger ones, etc.. So past a certain point of initial smoothness, I suspect the stability of your mix and the stability of your freezer make a bigger difference than the freezing method.

The only thing I'd be concerned with if you're using the dry ice in the manner of an ice/rock salt machine is that the frozen ice cream could build up on the sides so fast and so hard that it would defeat any attempts to scrape it off ... either stall your machine or stall your arms. That's where the elegance of blumenthal's methods come to play. Maybe you could do some research on the purity of dry ice from the supermarket. My guess is that it's considered food grade. I gave up on LN2. Too big a hassle if you're not working at a lab or restaurant that stocks the stuff in bulk. Expensive, too. Every supplier had a minimum order. And you need quite a bit of it. I reaized it would double or tripple the cost of my ice cream. And then there's the hassle of driving to go get the stuff. And the money I already spent on a tank (been too lazy to photograph it for ebay!)

At any rate, putting a pinch of salt on your tongue won't tell you anything. Except maybe which salt is better to eat straight!

I would follow Dougal's advice with sea salt, too, before spending extra money to use it in cooking. I saw a blind test of chefs a few years ago. The results were that everyone could tell one salt from another when sprinkled on food at the table, but no one could tell the difference between table salt, kosher salt, regular sea salt, or fleur de sel when in solution. The strong suggestion was that the textures and sizes of the crystals, and not the chemical compostions, were responsible for the differences.

Cool, thanks. I might have just browned the butter too aggressively. I split the last batch in half ... baked one after a day and the other after three days. I didn't notice any significant differences in flavor or texture. Which is fine with me. It's nice to have the flexibility to bake them whenever.

Great, I'm glad you liked them, Isomer. Did you make them with the added dry milk? If so, I'm curious to know if you noticed any kind of bitter aftertaste. I noticed this in a couple of batches I made lately, and am thinking the recipe might be better with a little less of the dry milk. Or maybe with the butter browned a bit less than what I've been doing.

I'm far from an expert sharpener, but I'll add the observation that everyone I've seen who sharpens Japanese knives for a living (Dave Martell, the bladesmiths at Epicurean Edge and Korin), and everyone I've seen who makes these knives by hand, uses waterstones. Many of them seem to like the diamond stones in the coarse grits for repairing and rebevelling knives, but for sharpening and polishing they're all about waterstones. And strops, but that's another story. One option that seems to work equally well is automotive wet/dry sandpaper mounted to a piece of float glass or ceramic tile. You can improvise your own setup with scrap materials and gluestick. This method is popular with some woodworkers as well. The advantage is very low cost of entry, and it's cheap and easy to experiment with lots of different grits. Also, no water or flattening needed. The disadvantage is that the longterm cost is high, and switching from grit to grit is a pain. It's a good way to learn, though, because the techniques are the same as with stones. People have as many opinions about stones as they do about knives. I decided to get an inexpensive Norton set. It comes with a 220/1000, a 4000/8000 stone, and a flattener. Total cost was about $120 delivered. I figure that by the time I wear these out, I'll have gotten my money's worth and will then know enough about sharpening to figure out what stones to buy next. These inexpensive stones are probably less efficient and less nice to work with than top stones like the Shaptons, but they're capable of doing a good job ... right now I'm the weak link, not the stones.

I've got a big kitchen and I'd be lost without a pot rack and wall mounting. I love the idea of the magnets from the hard drives. Those things are mighty. I've mostly used them as toys, but this post has the wheels turning ...

Here's an idea for anyone who likes experimenting more than they like math: Get a cheap hygrometer (or improvise one). Drop it into milks and creams of known fat content. Put your own marks on the side with something indellible. If you have marks for 0, 2, 4, 20, 30, 36, 40 percent (or whatever you come up with) you'll be able to estimate reasonably well for cream percentages that fall between the lines.

I wonder why it wouldn't. Cream has a pretty low proportion of milk solids, right? So by far the most important components are water and fat, which have very different densities. Why wouldn't a density measurement at least get you within a couple of percent (once you figure out the formula)?

That Ming Tsai recipe looks like a cruel joke. The butter is replaced by two completely flavorless ingredients. This is what I think of as the cuisine of self-punishment.

That's a great point. Instead of "medium rare," get a description out of the customer. "warm but bright pink in the middle, brown on the outside." No room for confusion. On the larger issue, I think a lot of confusion would vanish if the resaurant decides exactly what business it's in. Is it primarily in service to the food and the culinary arts, and to the vision of the chef? Or is it in service to the customers? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question. Both anwers are equally valid (but if your answer is the first one, you'd better be f'ing good, or people will stop coming). If everyone in the resaurant is clear on this question, then there won't be any awkwardness when the customer orders the tuna well done. The quick answer will either be Yes Sir or No Way!

I would aim for making it intensely flavored, with very high quality butter. Then just use half as much of it. Notice that the French were all skinny before mcdonald's showed up.

What a drag that none of these things is available there. It's surprising. Is it just because the bakeries are so plentiful and so good that no one bakes at home? I think there was talk about more of the KA line becoming available in Europe. I don't know why it would take more than just addapting the motor and curcuits for different voltage, but they make it sound like a big deal. Maybe it's because of CE regulations and things like that.