paulraphael

You're in luck ... I just exchanged some email with David Lebovitz on incorporating sugar, and have been researching it elsewhere as well. Short story is that whisking sugar into the yolks won't make any difference to your custard. You can mix the sugar with the eggs, mix it straight into the milk, mix it well, or mix it badly. The point of whisking it \ into the yolks is just to disolve the sugar. And when the yolks get pale and thick, this is all that it means. You haven't caused any magical physical changes to the egg protein; you've just disolved the sugar in the eggs' water. The only reason I like to add sugar to the eggs (assuming I'm making a custard with enough yolks to disolve the sugar) is a hunch that the sugar might make the yolks a bit more resistant to curdling when you temper them. Just adding a bit of thermal mass to the yolks would help in this regard. But I have no idea if it's a significant difference. Most of my ice creams have a low number of yolks (too few to really disolve the sugar) so I just whisk the sugar into the milk.

My first trial with the arrowroot went pretty well. I made a 14% butterfat base (equal parts milk and heavy cream). 2 egg yolks per quart (cooked into the milk) and 2 teaspoons (6g) arrowroot. Nice and smooth, though I'm not completely sold on the feel of the ice cream after it melts in my mouth. Just the slightest sense of chalkiness or pastiness that you sometimes get with stabilized ice creams. I don't know for sure if this is from the starch, but that's my guess. It also remains to be seen how well the texture holds up. I'd like to be able to keep the ice cream around for a few days. Has anyone used gelatin in ice cream? That seems like a common choice. I like the idea because it's flavorless and it also loses viscosity when it warms up. I've never worked with it before, so when I read instructions to "bloom" it I have no idea what to do.

Great, thanks for all the tips. I've consulted McGee, but not Corriher. I'm making ice cream for non-commercial use, and am just chasing the holy grail of my own ideal ice cream. I've made it commercially before, but the stuff we made represented the owner's holy grail, not mine. And I wasn't at all involved in the theory behind the mix. So right now I'm thinking that traditional French (custard based) ice creams aren't my thing. Too eggy. But I like the smoothness and the mouthfeel. So I'm looking for some kind of compromise: maybe a couple of egg yolks per quart, something like 12% to 14% butterfat, and something else besides egg to improve smoothness and texture. I'm curious about corn starch, but am warry of it because I don't want to introduce any cereal flavors that could peek through more delicately flavored ice creams. I'm also a little wary of milk powder, since reconstituted milk tastes so bad. My first experiment (which I'll freeze tonight) uses arrowroot starch. I'll let you know how it goes. By the way, I got in touch with David Lebovitz about the sugar mixing. He says he mixes it with the milk because some people curdle their eggs by throwing sugar on them and not mixing them thoroughly right away. But other than that he can't taste a difference in side by side comparisons. And I've found that with lower numbers of yolks, it's not very practical to whisk the yolks and sugar. Too little liquid for all the sugar.

I'm just starting to make ice cream at home, and have been working from David Lebovitz's excellent book. But I'm finding the book to be thin on theory, which I'd like to learn more about so I can waste less time while experimenting and inventing recipes. I made ice cream professionally for a couple of years, but we had our base custom mixed for us by the dairy. So there's a lot that I didn't learn. Are there any good sources out there for ice cream / sorbet / gelato theory? Things like ratios of sugar to fat to liquid, emulsifiers, stabilizing ingredients, temperatures, etc. etc.?

I just got the first thermometer that I really like: a CDN Quicktip: http://www.amazon.com/Q2-450-Proaccurate-Q...12091967&sr=8-3 It seems like half the performance of a Thermopen at a quarter the price. Which about right for my purposes. I haven't used the thermopen, but people say it responds in a couple of seconds. The CDN responds in about 2 to 10 seconds (depending on how big the temperature swing is). It reads the temp right at the tip, can be calibrated with the push of a button (using ice water) and so far seems accurate. Not bad for under $20.

I went to Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago at the apartment of a friend who's a chef. She's married to a high school friend of mine who is not a chef. It was he who greeted us at the door, with a pained expression and a filthy apron and bags under his eyes. It turns out chef was flat on her back with stomach flu, but in the spirit of hardcore chefyness, had decided the meal must go on. The apartment was one of those Brooklyn railroad flats with the tiny kitchen right off the bedroom. This allowed chef to bark orders at her surrogate between fits of doubling over and moaning. Her husband had been doing the cooking all afternoon, but she put him on entertainment duty and had me take over the kitchen as soon as my coat came off. In her fever, chef had forgotten some details. "Is there any sauce?" "Oh, shit. Sauce. Can you make some sauce?" "Ok. Do you have any wine?" "Get it off the dining room table. See if one of the bottles looks cheaper than the others." "What should I serve the turkey on?" "I don't know. Look in those cabinets and see if anything's big enough." That kind of thing. The meal ended up being ok. Not as good as meals when our host is actually did the cooking, but perfectly edible. Unfortunately, it wasn't perfectly digestible. My girlfriend and I, and likely all the other guests, picked up the virus from the bedridden chef and spent most of the night and the next day purging ourselves of all holiday cheer.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree that the trajectories are far from clear, and that there's a lot of mixing and matching. Athough I don't think that's so different from what goes on in the art world at large. I can think of a lot of visual art that has qualities both of modernism and postmodernism. And there are plenty of idealogical paradoxes. Wallace Stephens made a case that William Carlos Williams' complete rejection of Romanticism was a fundamentally Romantic position. I'm not about to argue with Wally.

If we're going to get into labels, I'd call much of the avante garde cooking going on today post-modern, not modern. Postmodernism is if anything broader and messier and harder to define even than modernism, but art that falls under its umbrella often includes the following characteristics: -a rejection of modernist formalism and classicist heirarchies (I think of the 'new paradigm' restaurants' challenges to the tradtional structures of the dining experience) -appropriation of masterpieces (complete reinterpretations or recontextualizations of classic dishes) -appropriation of pop culture (cheeky reinterpretations or recontextualizations of comfort food ... Keller's bacon 'n eggs, surf 'n turf, etc.)

Ok, great! Pre-tested. So tell me which ones to get. I'm looking for simple stainless ones with a flat rim (easy to level off). And ones that I can find easily. Surely one of the sets in your collection fits the bill.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Part of this is tied to Fat Guy's point that our context is almost always commercially viable restaurants. But even if you point out that people buy ugly art and pay to see confrontational futurist theatre, there's something different about food. Dining involves primal bodily functions in a way that looking at painting doesn't. You put the art in your mouth. It makes sense that even sophisticated diners will hang on to basic conservative values (the food should taste good; it shouldn't be poisonous), even when they seek conceptual challenges. This might change someday, but I suspect it would mean completely recontextualizing the food. Like a meal served in an experimental theatre context instead of a restaurant. One that makes no promise of satisfying your hunger, and requires a liability release. Think of the different expectations for a typical feature film vs. an esperimental video insallation running on endless loop at PS-1.

I agree, in general. I prefer to use a scale. But seems to me that a measuring spoon shouldn't be off by 30%. Especially a professional looking one sold by NYC's most expensive cookware store.

because currently there are no real problems in the world, so i decided to hunt for one.

I work a few blocks from Bridge Kitchenware in NYC, and picked up a professional looking set of measuring spoons last week. Simple, stainless steel, flush rims for leveling off ingredients, markings in teaspoons and mililiters. So I was surprised to discover that they're completely innacurate. I only noticed because I was putting together a recipe by weight, with a 0.1g resolution kitchen scale, using the tablespoon as a scoop. The numbers didn't look right. So I weighed a level tablespoon 15ml of water. I would expect it weigh pretty close to 15g, but it weighed 11g. My other set of measuring spoons--cheap and sloppy looking--was imperfect but came close to 15g. What's up with this? I assume I should be able to return the things.

There's a theory that what makes music enjoyable is the right mix of predictablility and surprise. Melodic patterns, familiar chord progressions, familiar forms, and familiar chord/note relationships set up expectations for what's coming next. Music that you like satisfies these expectations enough to be comforting, and surprises you enough to be interesting. The catch is that this mix is going to be different for everyone. A little kid who hasn't heard much music can revel in the simplest patterns repeated over and over. Barney singing "I love you" in major triads, while the parents start looking for the most potent bottle of pills to swallow. At the other end of the scale is a musical sophisticate ... like a composer or a jazz musician who's studied most popular traditions until they sound predictable and even boring. They'll like some music might sound like random noise to me; I wouldn't grasp the pattern so nothing would be predictable. And with nothing predicted there can be no surprise. Food strikes me as similar. The most enjoyable dishes have some mix of predictability and surprise. Comfort food (whatever your version of it might be) leans heavily on the predictable. Avante garde food leans heavily on the surprise. Whether or not the food goes so far into the realm of suprise that it just seems ungrounded and random depends on the context that you bring with you to the table. Guys like Achatz and Adria are probably riffing in subtle ways on existing traditions (some of which might be fairly sophisticated themeselves). You'll probably like a dish best when you can grasp where it came from, but be surprised and delighted by where it takes you. It seems t me like a delicate act to pull off; customers are going range from pizza-eating brooklynites like me to chefs who crossed an ocean to sample the new ideas. I don't know how you can create a peak experience for everyone.

I've tried that, but in general I like the machine for sticky doughs. A lot of people seem to get great results with these doughs in a KA; I just don't have a good sense of when to turn it off.

I've just read through this thread, and I'm interested in Jackal's earlier comments on mixing and overmixing dough. I mostly work with dough in the 70% to 80% hydration range (especially one's based on Reinhart's/Gosselin's pain a l'ancienne delayed fermentation techniques). And I have a hard time telling when the dough is properly mixed. It never gets to the point where I can do the windowpane test (as shown in various books and websites). The times I've pushed it really far, using a KA mixer, It's overmixed. The bread is still tasty, but it loses its ability to fully rise. The last couple of batches of baugette I've made used a 20 to 45 minute autolyse, refrigerated, after the dough first came together. Then mixing in the mixer after that. I'm always guessing at when to stop mixing. This is sticky dough, and I don't know what it should look and feel like when it's ready.

I just got the book and am curious about the method Mr. Lebovitz recommends for making custard. I've always whisked the egg yolks and sugar together, and heated the milk/cream separately. He suggests mixing the sugar with the milk and cream before heating. Are there advantages to this? Or significant differences between the two outcomes? I'd be inclined to keep doing it my way unless there's a compelling reason to switch. It seems to me that it's easier to temper the yolks without any curdling when they're already well liquefied, and when they have the added thermal mass of the sugar. Thoughts?

I'm not sure about that. I found a technical paper online about vanill extract manufacturing, and if I remember right the difference between single and double strength was purely the quantity of beans (by weight) to liquid. I'll see if I can find that anywhere. At any rate, I remember the standard for double strength being a huge amount of vanilla ... much more than what I have going on in the pantry.

How are sneakers not "slip resistant" ... ?

That was the only one I actually knew with certainty. I had one of those when I was little (and I miss it!)

That was a funny test. All the easy ones were at the end (I think because the questions included better hints). By the 13th question I'd only gotten one right, which makes me about a third as smart as a monkey guessing randomly. Then I got the right answer on all the rest of them. Which overall is a little better than the random monkey, but not much.

I think some of the best dishes of all have just a few ingredients. Roasted Chicken -a chicken -butter or olive oil -salt -pepper optional: stock (for pan sauce), garlic, herbs, other seasoning. Roasted Vegetables (fingerling potatoes, asparagus, brussel sprouts, anything roastable) -salt -pepper -olive oil Flourless Chocolate Torte -chocolate -eggs -sugar -butter -salt

So, I went off the deep end and bought a nitrogen dewar on ebay. Now I need some nitrogen. I've been reading things like, "oh, yeah, just go to any welding or hospital supply place and they'll hook you up." But I'm not having much luck. Google is getting sick of me. Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms? Any thoughts? A pint of futuristic gelato (or one amateur wart removal session!) to anyone local with the answer. Also: this dewar is a pressurized one and has a lot of aparatus attached to the top. Does anyone know about these thing? I'd like to find out if I need to do anything to make this safe (test any pressure relief valves), if any of the gadgets can be removed, etc. Here's what it looks like: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...bayphotohosting

I just went to amazon and answered my own question about the size. AND ... i got teased by this link to the cuisinart pizza oven: http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-PIZ-100-St...d_bxgy_k_text_b Anyone familiar with this? Looks like a terrible pizza oven, but might be a killer toaster.

Thanks for the insights. I'm intrigued by the cuisinart brick oven. Even though it seems like more of an appliance than what I was looking for. Can you give me a sense of its size? And does it seem well made? Some of these things look so nice in pictures, but when you get close and twiddle the knobs they have that uninspiring Easy-Bake vibe.