paulraphael

I just retired my Cuisinart toaster. Retirement, in this house, tends to be a loud process. It's typically earned by some kind of incompetence, and followed by a few weeks of little plastic and sheet metal shards appearing in the far corners of the room. But I digress. It's time to find a better way to make toast. Toasters in general bug me. I don't like appliances that do just one thing. But friends with toaster ovens have told me they don't make very good toast. Is this stil true? In a perfect world, I'd have a toaster oven that's small (no more than a foot and a half wide), solidly made, easy to clean, simple to use, able to make great toast, and good for reheating things like pizza, sandwiches, pastries, and anything that needs to be crisp. I don't need it to roast chickens, bake cakes, fit a half-sheet pan, or turn a wild boar on a spit. Does such a thing exist?

I'm interested to hear that this is thinner than a regular ganache ... the butter based ganaches i've made have had a smaller proportion of butter and quite a bit of added liquid in order to match the consistency of ganache made with cream. It looks like a good recipe.

You could also make a marquise. A bit upscale for a teen b-day party, but maybe they'd be into it. Intense chocolate flavor, no need to decorate (but it looks great) and very easy (chilled, not baked). Can be embellished with sauce like a flavored creme anglaise or a fruit coulis, or dusted with cocoa and a stencil, or whatever you dream up.

Did he talk at all about handling high hydration doughs? I love the flavor and crumb of breads made with Reinhart's (or Gosselin's) pain a l'ancienne method, but the 80% hydration doughs are tough to handle. Lately I've been stretching the dough in the conventional manner to make baguettes. I can't tell if the extra handling is doing more harm than good. I think Reinhart demonstrates just stretching this dough into strips, rather than forming baguettes in the usual way. Also, scoring the dough is difficult. I've started using scissors, since razor blades just stick. The results are only o.k. As far as very long fermentations, I've played with this a bit. I've retarded some dough for 36 and even 48 hours. My results couldn't be less scientific ... there was no control sample, and my technique is pretty inconsistent all around. But subjectively I couldn't taste any improvement, and if anything the 48 hour dough might have been LESS flavorful than the regular 24 hour dough. I don't know why this would be. I was actually afraid of off flavors developing, but this didn't seem to happen.

plastic is nice for this because if you drop it into the stand mixer by mistake, there's a chance you won't cause a disaster.

It seems that all the consumer mixers have quality control issues. I'd base any decision largely on availability of service. In other words, I probably wouldn't buy a Delonghi in the U.S., and I probably wouldn't buy a KA in Europe.

I had Grom for the first time today (Bleeker st.) and was impressed. Only tried three flavors: espresso, vanilla, and pistachio. Texture was uniformly excellent. Flavor was fairly bland in the vanilla but intense and excellent in the other two. Based on this brief encounter it's hard to compare directly to Il Lab. The styles are completely different. Grom tastes to me like a very low butterfat (possibly milk-only) gelato; Il Lab tastes more like a moderate butterfat ice cream. I like both, and might prefer the richer Il Lab style. But if I want something exceptionally light (and have cash burning a hole in my pocket), I'll choose Grom. I haven't had Cones yet. Every time I go in, I look at the display freezer and see all these colors that don't exist in nature, and I walk out disappointed.

I just picked up a Chico Bag at whole foods for $5. http://store.chicobag.com/ I like the size ... folds up into its own pouch, about the size of an egg. Weighs practically nothing and can be a permanent fixture in a backpack, shoulder bag, purse, or whatever you carry around (unlike those big, horsey canvas bags).

Sometimes the most important reason for cultivating and eating meat gets forgotten: ruminant animals can convert grasses and shrubs that we can't digest into concentrated, digestible (and delicious) protein. The growth of civilization was made possible in part by dairy farming, in areas where the environment did not support growing vegetables and grains. Of course, the total amount of dairy and meat that can be sustained by natural grasslands is small ... not enough to put a big mac on every child's plate. But it challenges the idea that meat fundamentally represents a rape of the planet.

I'd agree with this without ever having tried DeBragga in particular. I've tried all kinds of tomfoolery trying to get supermarket steaks to taste great. I've given up. If I can't get to a butcher that sells prime dry aged beef, I make something besides steak. Just not worth it to me otherwise. Supermarket beef is for stews and braises. This includes the "certified angus" choice beef (whatever that might mean) that they at d'agostino's in nyc.

It's obvious where the sci-fi community will go with this, but I wonder if it will open a new frontier for guys like Feran Adria. Synthetic meat analogs from the most inspired culinary labohratories. As far as feeding the hungry, I'm not sure I see the point of this. If the issue is protein and complete nutrition vs. resources, does lab meat have any clear advantages over traditional sources (soy, grains and legumes, etc. etc.)? I'm no vegetarian, but I suspect a traditional protein-complete meal made by an Indian chef would tantalize me a bit more than a filet de petry dish.

I think of custard as a pretty generic term ... it covers a wide range of egg yolk thickened dairy concoctions. Pastry cream, pudding (and the puddinglike dessert called 'custard'), creme anglaise, creme brulee, flan, cheesecake, and ice cream are more specific applications of custard. And as it so happens, pudding is in the news today: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/dining/2...r=1&oref=slogin

Another vote for the meat grinder. I have the biggest 6qt mixer and it doesn't strain at all with partially frozen meat. After few pounds the motor is just slightly warm. I did opt for a vintage Hobart meat grinder attachment. They're all cast metal. The newer KA ones are plastic and have a reputation for developing cracks (though aparently they keep working when cracked). The new ones have the advantage of going in the dishwasher. And costing a lot less than the old ones (always a feeding frenzy on ebay).

David Lebovits includes these instructions on his website: "To Peel the Banana: Hold the banana in one hand near the base. With your other hand, grab the top stem, and pull it firmly downward. If it gives you trouble, rock it back-and-forth, trying to break the area between the stem and the skin just beneath. If that doesn't work, take a sharp paring knife, being careful not to cut yourself, hold the blade facing away from you and make a small incision on the side of the skin near the tip. Set the knife aside the tear the skin of the banana using your hands, which should make the skin peel away nicely. Pull each side of skin down from the banana, exposing the fleshy fruit beneath. Once the banana is almost completely visible, firmly yank the skin down as far as possible and extract the banana from the skin. Discard the skin (it can be frozen, well-wrapped, for up to six month and saved for another use, if desired.) The banana should be used immediately. If not, it can be pureed then stored in a container with a sheet of plastic film pressed against the top, and refrigerated for up to 48 hours. (Disclosure: The International Association of Banana Peelers, Slicers and Blenders, nor any liquor companies, are sponsors of the site. The instructions for peeling bananas and the recipe are a direct result of my trial-and-error methods, which I developed exclusively for readers.)"

You win.

And it's easy to make: http://italianfood.about.com/od/aperitifsc...e/r/blr0492.htm

I haven't tried making ice cream since I did it professionally over 10 years ago. Probably because I don't want another single-purpose gadget (and because I know how much ice cream I'd eat if I had one). So I'm exploring options for making the ocasional batch (icluding liquid nitrogen). And I'm wondering about the possibility of using a blender. Partially freezing the ingredients, blending the bejeezus out of them, returning to the freezer to firm up, and maybe repeating once or twice. I've got a nice 1/2 gallon commercial blender that's in need of a project. Has anyone tried this?

I just made my first buns last weekend. They used Peter Reinhart's pain a l'ancienne dough (I happened to have some retarding in the fridge), so they weren't at all like conventional buns. They turned out like extra flavorful, chewy French bread. The crust was thick enough that I decided to steam them for a bit in the microwave, just so the crunch wouldn't be overwhelming. Anyway, I thought they were great; my girlfriend thought they were too crusty and chewy. So if you happen to like the hard roll style of bun, this is a delicious and easy way make them.

or dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, or anything else strongly alkaline!

Usually I can get what I need from CI with a couple of minutes of browsing at the magazine stand. Like, what vegetable peeler is the best bargain. The recipes have generally struck me as uninspired. Someone upthread suggested that the CI approach is all science and no art, but I think there's more to the problem than that. It might be that the science part is done unscientifically. There's a lot of testing, but very little goes into designing the experiments to isolate variables and produce quality information. I'm grateful for this, because it would take teams of grad students years to get to the bottom of a single cake recipe if you were really thorough. And the result would feel like a trade journal, not a mag. But CI presumes thoroughness, and tone of authority, both of which seem unearned. Then take into account the alleged lack of artistry (which I agree with), and the result is a lot of long articles outlining flawed procedures, a vision (and quality standards) that are often poorly articulated, excessively fussy recipes, and workmanlike (but uninspired) results. It feels to me like chefing-by-committee. I love the general idea of CI. The execution keeps me from buying it.

I wouldn't use any scouring pad labelled "heavy duty" on any cookware. The sandpaper analogy is accurate; many of these pads have aluminum oxide abbrasives in them. This is essentially the same stuff that hard anodized surfaces are made from. They can eventually abrade through the anodizing. They're one of the few things hard enough to actually do so. I wish the pad makers would be more clear about how abrasive these things really are. I see people buying them for doing the dishes all the time, and they wonder why it looks like their cookware was cleaned with a disk sander. A softer pad with with a mild abrasive like ajax works well on all but the nastiest calphalon messes.

I posted an idea here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...0entry1556769 thinking that thread was this one.

One possibility is to make a butter/liquid based ganache instead of a cream based one. I have a similar recipe (chocolate butter sauce) listed here: http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r1994.html With less liquid this should be able to make a truffle ganache consistency. The ingredients would be chocolate, butter, and liqueur. It's a more fragile emulsion than a traditional ganache, so it's a bit harder to work with, especially if you have to reheat. But it's delicious. For strawberry you could make your own fragalo: http://italianfood.about.com/od/aperitifsc...e/r/blr0492.htm Or see if it works with fresh strawberry juice.

yep ... or "stable," as the manual says. I think the biggest barrier to people getting down with scales is habit. Using a scale sounds more complex to people, so they don't give it a chance (and find out how much simpler it is). And there's a chicken and egg issue. People say "why do I need a scale? my cookbooks are all in cups and teaspoons." And the cookbook people say, "how can we sell books that use weights? Nobody owns a scale."

You can do that? My 12" fry pan bulged out a couple years ago and I'm tired of propping it up with a salt shaker. ← Yep! Although I uncermoniously used a steel hammer (with a bit of tape on the end to protect the finish). My calphalon 10" frying pan and 2-1/2 qt. saucepan have been de-wobbled with said cave man technology. Heavy aluminum will warp if you use it a lot with high heat. I don't think there's any way to get around it. My calphalon is the old stuff (from when it just said "commercial aluminum cookware company" on the pans. It's 5mm or 6mm thick. I suspect this thicker aluminum is even more prone to warping than the the newer thinner stuff.