paulraphael

The final word! All questions are definitively answered by this educational video. With subtitles, and remarkable precision:

Ok, the Taylor 9306 is really cool. I should suspend judgement until it's lasted a year without breaking (no other digital thermometer has ...), or at least til i've cooked with it. But after a solid half hour of playing with it, it seems like the coolest thermometer I've used. Found for $84 online; a lot steeper than than the $17 model it replaced. But it's got a thermocouple, an infrared sensor, pretty good ergonomics, and it's waterproof (or so they tell me). My only complaint so far is that the max temperature the IR sensor can read is 482 F. I would love it if it went higher. The probe measures over 600 degrees, which is absurd. "Would you like your tenderloin well done, incinerated, or turned to glowing gasses?" The probe seems accurate: I measured some boiling water and it was dead on. The IR sensor is harder to test. Details here: http://www.partshelf.com/taylor9306.html It was delivered to me at work. Within minutes I was pointing it at people and telling them how hot they are (within .5 degrees!)

I'm mostly dealing with small, non-flat fish, so I'm picking up a $25 forschner flexible fillet knife. Much more appealing than a deba that costs 5X as much. We'll see how it goes.

Thread back from the dead. Because my CDN quicktip thermometer joined the dead. Has anyone tried the Extech? Amazon has it for $36. And despite some warriness of Taylor, I'm close to making the move on this: http://www.comforthouse.com/cuissmarblen.html Some sources have it for around $83 ... a chunk less than thermapen, plus a decent looking IR feature. Edited to add: i'm too impatient to wait around for sage advice. i ordered the taylor probe/ir unit. will report back.

I was lucky enough to exchange some ideas with Michael Laiskonis (pastry chef at le bernardain) about brown butter ice cream, and a light bulb went off. I realized you could intensify the flavor of brown butter by adding some dry milk to the melted butter before browning it (it's the milk solids in the butter that brown and release the flavor). A little goes a long way. I adjusted the cookie recipe, and think it's an improvement. Not a radical difference, but the flavors are deeper.

Thanks Chad, that's a much better study than any of the ones I've been able to track down. I'm still interested the idea that wood somehow weakens the action of chlorine bleach. Do you remember your source for that? After looking into this topic a bit, I'm realizing that it's a very young body of research. Which means we should all keep an open mind about it and pay attention to new discoveries. There are bound to be some revisions and surprises as more specific research gets done.

How are you lining your mold with dough? Shrinkage often comes from stretching the dough to fit ths sides of tart pan (or whatever you're baking in). When I learned the way around this it stopped being a problem. Are you rolling out the dough larger than it needs to be, and then pushing down to compress it into the mold? I put a tutorial on tart shells up on my web server: www.paulraphaelson.com/downloads/tarts.rtf It's basically all my notes from the research and experimenting I did a couple of years ago. It includes pate brisee, sablee, sucree, and Pierre Herme's recipe, which is a hybrid. There are bakers' percentages and notes on achieving different textures and a lot on method. Some of the method is non-traditional (I have a wacky system of using preheated pennies for pie weights, to help brown the bottom of the shells) but the rest is textbook. I have another one on chocolate tart shells if anyone's interested.

I've been hearing more than a few cooks talking about applying Japanese knife techniques to western cooking. But there seems to be precious little information on the techniques themselves. Chad Ward mentioned this site: http://www.tsuji.ac.jp/hp/gihou/Basic_Techniques/index.html which is interesting, but the pics are small and it's stingy with details. One thing I've been wanting to learn is basic fish butchery ... at the very least filleting small fish, like trout, branzini, snapper, etc.. This is one area where I've heard people claiming the superiority of Japanese techniques, including japanese style knives instead of western style fillet knives. Does anyone know about this? Or about good sources edumacation?

I'm going to try some safflower oil, since no one seems to have much experience with it. Only issue is that the high smoke point comes from highly refined oil, and I'm not sure if that's indicated on the label. I'll let you know what I figure out.

I like grapeseed a lot too, and when I used it, searing meat was a more leisurely process. But it's pretty expensive. I've gone to using inexpensive olive oil for all my stovetop use. It's not as robust. I was thinking about trying canola oil again, but then safflower caught my eye with that high smoke point. I'm guessing it's cheaper than either olive or grapeseed oil. But I've never tried it.

exactly. especially at the start. what I do now is preheat the bejeezus out of the pan, hold the protein in tongs or a spatula in one hand, the oil or clarified butter in the other, ad the fat, swirl it around, and then try to get the protein into the pan before everything goes up in smoke. with a 500 degree smoke point, everything would be a lot more relaxed.

I know there's often a debate about this, but after spending a year brining chickens before roasting I stopped. I didn't like the effect it had on browning, and I realized the juiciness was artificial ... chicken juices replaced with salt water. The way to get the breast meat and dark meat cooked properly is ... cook them properly. The breast needs to be held about 10 degrees cooler than the legs. There are lots of ways to do this, but the easiest I've found (by far) is basically barding. Cover the the breast meat with something, like foil, for roughly half the cooking time. This was standard practice for hundreds of years when spit roasting fowl in front of a fire. They used fat, not foil, but the effect was similar. For some reason we've lost this useful practice, but retained ones that make no sense in an oven (like trussing).

I'm working on chocolate ice cream right now. I'm pretty close to getting what I want, which is: very intense bittersweet chocolate flavor with lots of depth, good body (but not chewy), fairly slow, creamy melt, and a creamy but not at all greasy mouthfeel after melting. If anyone wants to be a guinee pig, here's the version of the recipe I'm going to test next week (the last version still needs to get eaten!) 612g (2-1/2 cups) whole milk 75g (1/3 cup plus 1 TB) granulated sugar 30g (3T) nonfat dry milk 14g (2T plus 1tsp) cocoa powder (i'm using pernigotti) 11.2g (1 TB +1 tsp) cornstarch 1.4g (1/2 tsp) powdered gelatin 1 g salt 227g (8 oz) bittersweet chocolate (i'm using valrhona guanaja) 115g (1/2 cup) heavy cream 10g (2 tsp) vodka or alcohol based vanilla extract -thoroughly mix the sugar, cocoa, dry milk, cornstarch, gelatin, and salt -whisk the dry ingredients into the milk while heating in a saucepan. disolve thorougly. -bring to a light simmer until it thickens. -stir in the chopped chocolate until melted. -just barely bring to a simmer again -cool in an ice water bath -stir in the cream and vodka/extract -chill overnight -no need to strain. freeze in the machine. -allow to harden in a very cold freezer (minus 5 degrees F or colder is ideal) -serve at normal serving temp (6 to 10 degrees F) to make half: 306g whole milk 37.5g sugar 15g nonfat dry milk 7g cocoa powder 5.6g cornstarch .7g powdered gelatin .5 g salt 113.5g bittersweet chocolate 57.5g (1/4 cup) heavy cream 5g (1 tsp) vodka or alcohol based vanilla extract Butterfat: 6% Cocoa Butter (guanaja and pernigotti cocoa): 9% total fat: 15% nonfat milk solids: 8%

In the past I've used canola oil or grapeseed oil, but I just found some info online (no reliable source given) saying that refined safflower oil has a smoke point of 510 degrees F. That's pretty impressive. Is anyone familiar with this oil? Pros and cons? Other strong choices?

The OP was interested in Santokus, right? I don't think it's true about $100 knives if you look at other Japanese brands. Just a quick look at Korin and JCK showed plenty of knives in this price range from makers like Misono, Hiromoto, Glestain, Mac, Tojiro, and Suisin. I'm sure you could find lots more. Who has the hardest or best steel is always up for discussion, but all the ones I saw are made with excellent, hard knife steels, either stainless or very high carbon. The cheaper shuns look like a very good value, but one thing for sure is that carbon steel edge on the Hiromoto will completely spank the edge on the Shun. But there are bigger issues with geometry. The shuns are made with blade thicknesses closer to what you'd expect from a German knife. Some people like this; others don't. I sense that a lot people who like the way Japanese knives perform don't like it. These issues are much more significant than the effect of any texture of the cladding. If you like the damascus look, then great. You have a gazillion options. Just know that this choice is generally unrelated to performance, and that you might expect to pay a bit for it.

My assumption is closer to the opposite! Creating that pattern costs money. No matter how automated the process (and in a $100 knife, it's done completely by machine), it's going to be more expensive to make the decorative cladding than to make a plain, purely functional cladding--like regular type 405 stainless. So think about two $100 knives, one with damascus and one with plain cladding. The makers of the latter knife had more money left over for other parts of it. Like the core steel, the fit and finish, the grinding of the edge, etc. etc... At any price point, I think you tend to find better performance in things that are simple, as opposed to things with decorative flourishes and bells and whistles. There are exceptions here and there, but I think that's a good general principle.

But this has nothing to do with the damascus pattern. There are lots of clad knives that use regular soft/resilient stainless steel on the outside of a hard knife steel core. The real comparison should be with knives of a similar quality, either clad or solid.

The machine you use will also make a difference. Horizontal ones that spin fast give you the most overrun. I don't know what home models work like this ... maybe there's something out there.

The damascus pattern would only effect the knife edge in a true damascus ($$$$$) knife. In the more common faux damascus (clad) knives, the layered cladding doesn't go to the edge.

Some people think food is less likely to stick to the slight texture. But some people think it's more likely to stick. Most consider it pure decoration. There are a few makers of true damascus blades out there. In this case it's one way among many to get both hardness and resilience out of a blade. I've never used one of these knives though; they start at around ten times my budget!

Adding some nonfat dry milk is also supposed to increase whipability. It will also suppress the freezing point, so the ice cream will be softer at any given temperature.

Is a carving fork a good idea? I don't like the idea of poking unnecessary holes in meat. I ususally use tongs or my fingers, but sometimes it feels inneficient. I'm wondering what people like to use for roasts, birds, and fishes. Especially people working service at good restaurants.

I've been enjoying the book (just started reading it today) but wanted to comment on a couple of health-related pieces of misinformation. First is the assertion that there's no such thing as "24 hour flu," and that all cases of this are really food poisoning. What we generally call 24 hour flu is some form or another of Norwalk virus, which infects the lower digestive tract. It can be transmitted in ways besides food. But it CAN be transmitted by food, which brings me to the second issue: the recommendation to use vinegar instead of bleach to sanitize cutting boards. There are many foodborn pathogens that frolick happily in an acidic environment. Norwalk-type viruses are among these. Vinegar has no effect on them. Chlorine and peroxide bleaches are much more effective agains these viruses and other acid-resistant bugs. The book claims that wood "neutralized" the free oxygen in bleaches. Is this true? I'd like to see a citation of some credible research. I understand the appeal of vinegar, but the only evidence I've seen supporting it is a single study showing that it reduced e. coli on cutting boards. And the study was conducted by the Nakano Vinegar Co. Ltd .... so take it for what it's worth!

That's probably my #1 also. Then, the Cake Bible, by Barenbaum, and the Breadbaker's Apprentice, by Reinhart. I don't do a whole lot of cake or bread, but I like those books for the same reason I like McGee: they teach me what's going on. With that kind of knowledge (and with a little help from my friends) I can ween myself from the tyranny of recipes. If I want to make brownies, I decide how i want them to be, and then figure out how to do it. Much more fun for me than the endless recipe hunt. The internet is also a priceless resource. Both for the articles you can find, and for the communties of people who already know what you're trying to find out (like this one!)

Basically, alcohol and all disolved solids effect the freezing temperature. The amount of freezing point suppression you get from a solid depends on the size of the molecules. This sounds like pure geekery, but it's helpful to keep in mind with sugars. While all sugars will suppress the freezing point, monosacharides like glucose (dextrose) and fructose have around twice the freezing point suppression power of disacharides (like table sugar, or sucrose), because the molecules are half the size. Pastry chefs take advantage of this by vaying the proportion of sugars to control hardness. This gives you a lot more flexibility than just varying the amount. It lets you control sweetness and freezing point suppression separately. Another ingredient that helps is nonfat dry milk. This suppresses the freezing point and also adds body. Most of the professional recipes I've seen have fair amount of this. I was shy about using it at first, because I had memories of it tasting terrible. But if it's fresh, it adds nothing unpleasant to ice cream. Any added water, whatever form it takes (pureed fruits, etc.) will have the opposite effect. They'll raise the freezing point and make the ice cream harder at any given temp.