paulraphael

so what's the story? does the sugar just act as a wick, or does it actually burn? if it just wicks the alcohol, i don't see much of a problem. if the sugar burns, isn't there also the issue of a dessert with ... burned sugar?

It's about flavor, not consistency. It seems there are a couple of different points of view; some people like the flavor of cooked egg yolks with chocolate, and others think it's a distraction. I'm in the second camp. Chocolate is also one of the flavors that gets muted very easily by milk fat. Because of this I use less than half as much cream in chocolate ice cream as in most other recipes. The fat in yolks may have the same effect. In general, I use about a third as many eggs in my ice creams as most people, because I don't want to notice them. In chocolate I don't use any.

They list guanaja as as one of the chocolates recommended for ice cream. Along with quite a few others. But they don't give their rationale ... i didn't see any clear connection between cocoa solids or cocoa butter content and their recommendations. Agreed about avoiding the egg base. Though not sure why you'd need a stick blender or need to pour the dairy over the chocolate to emulsify it. I have no trouble just heating the milk and disolving in the chopped chocolate. There's enough liquid that it's not a fragile emulsion, like with ganache.

The only thing that surprises me about mroybal's recipe is the 25 minutes of machine mixing. That seems way excessive. I can't help but think that results would be better with a 20 minute or longer autolyse, much briefer mixing (maybe much of it with only a portion of the flour but all the water) and a decent amount of time retarding in the fridge.

Oh, I think you can you do as well as anyone here. The only secret ingredients in NYC pizza are territorialism and nostalgia! The best crusts just come from ones who work like serious pizza artisans. Una Pizza Napoletana imports wheat and sea salt from outside Naples, mills their own flour, leavens with natural starters, and ages the dough for three days before using. I don't know if Patsy's in East Harlem ever talked about their methods, but here's a website listing the hoops jumped through by a dedicated immitator: http://slice.seriouseats.com/jvpizza/ Anyway. As far as scaling goes, this is your recipe: Flour: 100% Water: 68% Yeast: 0.9% Salt: 2%

ahhhh, perfect. Thanks!

I've been looking all over both websites and can't find anything about which chocolates are best for ice cream. The callebaut site has a few recipes, where they mention using their 70% standard classic chocolate, but that's about it. Do you have any specific pages you can list?

On this subject, how would you say they compare with some of excellent lower priced butchers, like Florence Prime Meats and Ottomanelli & Sons?

And it's like any other manual skill: don't try to do it fast until you've learned how to do it right. Learn the right technique, and then practice it SLOWLY until it becomes second nature. The speed will come on its own. If you try to go fast before knowing what you're doing, you'll just reinforce bad habits. And you might end up adding your fingertips to the salad.

For a long time they've been the cheapest place in town for certain kinds of things. Organic milk (not too surprisingly), but also regular butter. I think it's like $3.70 a pound. Everywhere else in the city butter is $4.50 to $5.00. And for my most guilty of culinary and outdoor pleasures: Cliff Bars. 99 cents. Less than the discount drug chains. Worth a special trip.

I've been making a lot of ice cream at home. In an effort to not eat a lot of ice cream at home, I'd like to bring some of it to other people's homes. But it's kind of hot outside. Are there any compact, cheap, ingenious solutions to this? I saw in another thread that someone uses the freezer bowl of their ice cream maker for transport, but I'm hoping for something less bulky and fragile. Something like a quart or half gallon sized, soft sided cooler, or a wrap-around freezer pack. Thoughts?

Isn't it normal in some French restaurants for the pastry/dessert kitchen to be completely separate from the main kitchen? I've heard them talk about the cuisine, and then about the laboratoire. It makes some sense that they'd have different chiefs.

I've given up on my LN2 ambitions. Locally I found the price and inconvenience of getting the stuff to be discouraging (the price per liter isn't high, but all the suppliers I found had a minimum order). If anyone's interested in my dewar (especially in the NYC area) give me a shout. Otherwise it's going back to the great ebay next week.

I should have added that the foil only needs to be on the breast for half the cooking time. The breas will brown thoroughly in that time (being so close to the radiant heat of the top of the oven).

Super easy. Cover one side of the breast with a double or tripple layer of foil. Roast the bird with high heat, until the thigh meat is properly cooked. The covered breast should be perfect. The uncovered breast will be at least 10 degrees hotter. Maybe not quite 175, but it could get close.

No preserves ... that's the Alton Brown trick, right? The secret there is pectin, which works as a stabilizer (you could also just buy some pectin). I ended up dealing with three different issues: body, stability (which basically means resistance to an icy texture, when it's fresh and especially when it's been in the freezer a few days), and freezing point suppression. Body and freezing point suppression are handled really well by adding nonfat dry milk. I resisted this, because I always thought the stuff was gross, but when I saw pastry chefs like Pierre Herme and Michael Laiskonis using it with abandon, I gave in. It works brilliantly. A small amount of alcohol also helps with the freezing point. For stability, the easy answer is to buy commercial ice cream stabilizer. This stuff is some blend of natural gums like guar, carageenan, and locust bean, and it's simple to use. I wanted to do it from scratch, though, so I wouldn't be dependent on a commercial product. Rather than using gums, which work in such tiny quantities that they're hard to measure for small batches, I ended up using a combination of the two oldest stabilizers: gelatin and corn starch. These are used in very small amounts, so there's no effect on the flavor, and the effect on the texture is a small but positive one. With the right amounts, ice cream lasts over a week in the fridge without deflating or getting icy. Ice cream is such a personal thing ... everyone has their own idea of the perfect texture. The great thing about deconstructing the ingredients is that you can create your own perfect version. If you like the taste of a French custard base, your project will be easy. It's not my cup of tea, though, so I had to jump through a few hoops.

I've spent the summer working on vanilla ice cream. I wanted the creaminess and body of Lebovitz's ice cream, but without the strong egg flavor and the slightly greasy mouthfeel (which are common to all very high butterfat ice creams made with a custard base). I finally nailed it, but it was a more complicated projectt than I'd imagined. For me, the best ice creams I've had haven't been from ice cream shops or people's homes, but from the pastry chefs at good restaurants. These guys have a lot of tricks ... some from the world of artisinal pastry, and some from the world of industrial ice cream. I've cut back a bit on the fat, cut way back on the yolks, and substituted other incredients to adjust the body and make it stable. And to make it scoopable at the right temperature.

I've experimented a lot with air drying. I think it works wonders for supermarket chickens that have been processed with additional water. These birds take on additional water weight, which dilutes the flavor and makes it harder to brown and crisp the skin. With better quality air-dried birds, drying uncovered in the fridge seems like too much. Drier is not better past a certain point. What I've found works well with these birds, if you have the time, is to salt them and let them sit overnight in the fridge partially covered ... like in a plastic bag that's been ventilated wtih a few holes. The results are much better than brining, in my experience, and you get benefits that you just don't get when you salt shortly before cooking. Keller's Simple Roast Chicken is very good, but keep in mind that it's his simple chicken, not necessarily his best! If he's roasting a chicken at the French Laundry or Per Se, I'm betting he's using more sophisticated methods that give even better results. You can too.

So? That's ok in China.

Ha! I still think it's a just a chocolate chip cookie. But if there's naming and marketing involved, we should remember that these are American Cookies, so they deserve some corporate sponsorship. How about "Batman Dark Knight Special Edition Summer Blockbuster XTreme Chip" cookies.

Philosophical Question of Great Importance: what exactly is a chocolate chip cookie? Bolstered by positive feedback from fellow egulleters, and by my girlfriend rejecting a Thomas Keller chocolate chip cookie from Bouchon Bakery, claiming to be "spoiled," I wrote a shameless email to David Leite. Without putting it in so many words, I tried to suggest that the Times publish a Major Retraction of its cookie manifesto, preferably on the front page, including an apology to the public and to world leaders, for omitting my favorite recipe. Unexpectedly, Mr. Leite wrote back, and not just to tell me to get a life. He proposed the following: "I will certainly make your cookies, but I need to state that yours aren't chocolate chip cookies; they're cookies with chocolate chip. And, I'm not splitting hairs. There is a difference... ...they don't fit the parameters of a traditional drop cookie--by definition of ingredients and method. The melted butter (which intrigues me the most), the oat flour, the milk, the non-creaming method speaks of a cookie unto itself." So I'm wondering if something like a chocolate chip cookie is best defined by a particular ingredient list or methodology, or by a more subjective impression: would people eating it recognize it as a chocolate chip cookie? As a variation? As something completely different? Thoughts?

I'm so glad you liked them, Snowangel. So I take it you have a bunch of unbaked batter? I'll be curious to know if you taste much difference in the cookies you bake later ... if you get the improvements suggested by the NYT article.

I couldn't find any info on their site about buying any way besides mail order. Did they mention any plans for a brick and mortar retail location? I'd love to try them, but can't imagine having meat shipped from a company that's 20 minutes from where I work.

After a lot of research (conducted mostly on my unwitting employer's dime) and seven trials, I finally got a basic vanilla ice cream recipe that I like: http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r2135.html From the recipegullet description ... I wanted to create an ice cream base with the smoothness, body, and stability of an egg yolk-ladden, very rich, custard-based ice cream--but without the strong egg flavor or the greasy film that these ice creams can leave in your mouth. I turned to some of the tricks used by pastry chefs. There are two yolks per quart, instead of the usual six or more. There are also added milk solids, and very small amounts of gelatin, starch, and alcohol. The recipe is a bit more complex than typical homemade ice cream, but I think it's worth it. It has a full body, a natural and creamy melt, and it will last several days in the freezer without deflating or getting icy. It will be a bit too hard to serve when it's at freezer temperature, but not rock-hard like typical home recipes. This recipe will work best with a slow-turning machine that doesn't introduce a lot of air (overrun). It will give you between 3/4 and 1 quart of 15% butterfat ice cream.

Interesting! not my experience at all. I love the depth of the brown butter flavor. In fact, I don't strain the browned solids out. And I'm considering increasing the intensity a bit by adding some nonfat dry milk to the butter when it melts (a Michael Laskonis trick he uses in brown butter recipes).