paulraphael

I've been looking for specifics on the New York State health code and restaurant inspections, and can't find any reference to NSF certification. I've also seen restaurants using equipment like Mauviel and Bourgeat pans that to my knowledge aren't NSF certified (they arent' stamped with the seal). NSF is a private organization, not affiliated with any government. It seems strange to me that governemnt agencies would use NSF's certifications as the basis for health codes. Does anyone have hard facts about this?

I'm having computer problems at home ... I'll try to post a picture soon.

I can't say I've kept up with contemporary sculpture, so it's hard for me to judge these from an art perspective. But I'm willing to bet these pastry chefs know even less about sculpture than I do. And I'm scratching my head about the point of all this ... is it a sculpture contest or a pastry contest? Granted, food is expected to look enticing, more than paintings are expected to taste good. But I still expect the primary values of food ... taste, texture, aroma ... to take great precedence over visual and structural values. Did the judges even taste these things??

I finally found a way to turn my old Cuisinart 11 cup processor (DLC 8, I think?) into a great machine, by disabling its most annoying safety feature. Please don't do this, or cut off your hand, or sue cuisinart, or sue me. The lid assembly has a white piece of plastic that gets pushed down by the feeding tube insert. This in turn pushes a rod that's part of the work bowl, which pushes a button in the base, which lets the processor turn on. The idea is that the mixer can't operate unless the insert is in place. The insert keeps you from sticking your hand through the feeding tube and into the blades. It also makes it completely inconvenient to add food. I found some open cell foam and stuffed it under the white piece of plastic in the lid. It now acts like a spring, keeping the plastic piece permanently pushed down. The result is that simply securing the lid to the work bowl allows the mixer to work. I don't need the annoying feeding tube insert. The only catch is that I have to resist that urge to stick my whole arm through the feeding tube and turn on the machine (an urge I've so far managed to resist with my blender and stand mixer and toaster, which similarly lack anti-suicide features). I know this description sounds confusing, but I bet if you hold the parts in front of you, you'll see what I mean. If not, ask and I'll try to clarify.

Ok, here's one. probably an unrealistic challenge due to cost and complexity. but maybe you're a genius: A stand mixer with an automatic transmission. Right now there are two basic stand mixer designs. Professional mixers have a motor with a fixed speed. The attachment speed is selected by shifting gears. There are typically three speeds. Gears are shifted by shutting the mixer off, waiting for everything to stop, moving a shift lever, and restarting. It's cumbersome. And a mixer is one of the few machines that benefits from having more speeds to choose (unlike consumer 12-speed blenders, which are just goofy.). Home mixers have a single fixed gear ratio, and control the attachment speed by varying the motor speed electronically. It's a much more convenient design. It's also fundamentally flawed, because mixers need the most torque at low speeds, but motors develop their highest torque at high speeds. The result is that any motor that's capable of kneeding dough at low speeds has to be tremendously overbuilt, or has to run at very high RPMs against serious reduction gearing. The result is more noise, wear, and power consumption than necessary. And also a motor that runs at screaming speeds with outrageous power output when you're doing the easiest tasks of all, like whipping cream. So my idea is a mixer with electronic speed control, like a home mixer, that will automatically chose between two or three gears depending on the speed and torque requirements. The user just sets the output speed; the mixer chooses the best gear/motor speed to get the job done.

Celeriac Purée with garlic Serves 6 as Side. I fell in love with pureed celeriac when I first had it at a neighborhood restaurant. With the help of some eGullet chefs, an Eric Rippert recipe, and a few rounds of experiments, I arrived at a recipe that hits the spot. This version seasons the celeriac with garlic, but you could substitute just about anything. You should also feel free to adjust the quantities of butter and cream to suit your preferences. It's delicious alongside fennel. In some ways this is even easier than mashed potatoes, because there is no chance of overworking it and turning it into glue. It should be prepared an hour or two in advance. 2 large celeriac knobs 6 garlic cloves, unpeeled 1 c whole milk 3 c water 1/4 c heavy cream 1/2 tsp salt 2 oz butter, chopped into 1 TB chunks salt and ground black or white pepper to taste -Peel and coarsely chop the celeriac. Trim off any hard or dark spots. -Put water, milk, celeriac, 1/2 tsp of salt, and garlic in a large saucepan on stove. If liquid doesn't cover celeriac, add a little extra water. Cover, turn heat to high and bring to a boil. Partially uncover and reduce to a simmer. - cook until easily pieced with a fork, about 15 to 20 minutes. -Strain, reserving the cooking liquid. Peel the garlic. Put the celeriac root and garlic in a mixing bowl and mash with a masher. -Scrape into blender and puree with the cream, and only as much cooking liquid as is necessary to to get it blending. Blend for a long time (five minutes should give a fluffy purée). -Season to taste with salt and pepper a minute or so before it's done blending. -Transfer to a metal bowl over simmering water. Add the butter in small pieces. Stir until melted and incorporated. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper. Hold uncovered over simmering water. -Ideally prepare an hour or so before serving; the heat of the bain marie helps drive off excess moisture and will firm up the puree a bit. Keywords: Side, Easy, Vegetables, Blender ( RG2113 )

There are a million ways to roast a chicken, some of them slow. I strongly prefer chickens roasted fast with high heat. I'm sure there are other chicken roasting threads where we've talked pros and cons of different methods. If you're interested I can send you my recipe (which has evolved into more of a tutorial on method than a recipe). If you're planning on doing more chickens in the future there's no reason to rule out stock. I roast a couple of chickens a month on average, eat the legs and breasts and wings, and then seal the carcass in plastic in the freezer. After 6 months or so I have enough to make 5 or 6 quarts of stock (which gets divided into ziplock bags and goes back in the freezer). I also save the cooked meat that remains on the carcasses after stockmaking. It's not all that tasty anymore, but my cat considers it a delicacy. So in the end practically nothing goes to waste.

I've never heard of removing the gills of portobellos (isn't that most of the mushroom?). But a chef friend of mine insists on peeling them. I had never known that they even had peels, but he demonstrated. He used a spoon, the way some people peel ginger, and just exfoliated the thin outer layer from the whole mushroom. We stood side by side and did this to several pounds of them one night. It's the last time I ever did it. They did look nicer (cleaner, anyhow) with the peels gone, but if they tasted any better I didn't notice.

For this kind of thing I'll often forget about using fresh fruit and make the sauce with preserves or marmalade. The reason is that if you're going to take a lot of juice and zest and boil it way down, that's pretty much what you're making. There's little benefit to using a beautiful, fresh piece of fruit if you're basically going to cook down into a preserve. You can let someone else do that work for you, and use your fresh oranges for something where they'll be appreciated. If you do go with the fresh oranges, the first thing to consider is if you're grating too deep and getting some of the white pith along with the zest. That will make anything too sour and bitter. More sugar would help. Shalmanese's idea of using some liqueur sounds good too.

I had the olive oil gelato at Otto ... thought it was very good. I don't know if I love it. The flavor was great, but the texture was oily. it left a coating on my mouth that I wasn't crazy about. The idea definitely seems worth exploring. It's funny for me to think about salt on ice cream being a delicacy. It makes perfect sense. But when we salted the ice cream at the homemade shop where I worked, it was always a mistake (salt water dripping from the big rock salt and ice churns we used), and it led to customers screaming for their money back. Kind of like when a big black blob of machine grease ended up in their vanilla and white chocolate mousse sundae.

I haven't tried making them small, so I can only guess. The baking time would no doubt be less. Would you be interested in making on sheet of big ones and then experimenting with size with the rest? I'd be curious to hear about your results.

I've been up nights in the laboratory working on this one, and I think I nailed it. This is now the best recipe that I've ever tasted. It's on recipe gullet, here: http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r2108.html These are the first cookies I've had that are thick, chewy, not greasy, and that have such good flavor in the cookie itself that i've cut the amount of chocolate chips almost in half, so the choocolate doesn't get in the way. They're made with browned butter, light muscovado sugar, and a small percentage of whole wheat oat flour.

Brown Butter Muscovado Chocolate Chip Cookies Serves 16 as Dessert. These are for when you want to savor a cookie with depth, flavor, and a thick and chewy texture. If you just need to pacify the kids or cure some late night munchies, use the recipe on the package of chips. It's cheaper and less trouble! Key elements include browned butter, muscovado sugar, and a small portion of whole grain oat flour (which you can make). The method is also important. The butter is melted, not creamed while solid, and the cookies are thoroughly chilled before baking. Oven temperature is also higher than what's typical. You'll also notice a relatively low proportion of chocolate chips. Before you accuse me of heresy, allow me to defend this choice. The cookie itself actually tastes good. This is the one dessert I make with chocolate where the chocolate is not the main event. I didn't want huge amounts of chocolate, or intensely flavored dark chocolate, overwhelming the subtle flavors of the cookie. I've had good luck with Ghiradelli semi sweet chips, or coarsely chopped Callebaut 54% block. If you use chopped chocolate, try not to include too much chocolate dust and fine crumbs. They melt into the batter and turn it into something else. Recipe makes 16 to 18 big cookies 227 g (8 oz) unsalted butter 1.8 g (1/2 tsp) nonfat dry milk (optional) 240 g (2 cups mnus 3TB) AP flour 80 g (3/4 cup) whole grain oat flour* 6 g (1 tsp) salt 4 g (1 tsp) double acting baking powder 2 g (1/2 tsp) baking soda 250 g (1-1/3 cup plus 1TB) light muscovado sugar** 48 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar 1 egg 1 egg yolk 55 g (1/4 cup) whole milk 10 g (2 tsp to 1 TB) vanilla extract 170 g (1 cup) good quality semisweet chocolate chips *Use food processor to mill whole oats (oatmeal) as fine as possible. This will take a few minutes of processing, with a few of pauses to scrape corners of work bowl with a spatula. sift out large grains with medium strainer. store in freezer in an airtight container. **If you have to substitute regular light brown sugar or another unrefined sugar, substitute the same volume, not the same weight. Turbinado sugar can substitute for the granulated sugar. -Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Whisk in nonfat dry milk (if using). -While butter is melting, stir together the flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside. -Measure the sugars into a mixing bowl or a stand mixer's work bowl. -Brown the butter: bring to a simmer over medium to medium-low heat. Stir frequently, scraping the bottom, until milk solids brown and liquid butter takes on a rich golden brown color. It may foam up dramatically toward the end. Turn down heat and stir while the foam lightly browns. Don't let the solids turn dark brown or black! Overbrowning will turn the cookies bitter. -Immediately pour the melted butter into the bowl with the sugars. Mix on medium speed, until smooth (there may be some unincorporated liquid from the butter). Do not try to incorporate air. -Add the egg, yolk, milk, and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. This step can be done with a spoon, or with the mixer on low to medium speed. -Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. This step can be done with a spoon, or with the mixer's lowest speed. -Chill the dough for at least 4 hours (and ideally 12 to 24 hours) in an airtight container. If under 6 hours, spread dough thin against sides of bowl to speed chilling. If over 6 hours, pack dough tightly into the bottom. -Heat oven to 375 degrees F. with rack in the middle, or 2 racks in the top third and bottom third. -Scoop in round balls onto parchment-lined, room temperature sheet pans (heavy, rimless cookie sheets or upside down half-sheet pans are ideal), 6 cookies per sheet. I like a heaping scoop with a #20 disher: 1/4 cup / 60g - 70g dough per cookie. Chilled dough will be too stiff to form smooth balls, so don't worry if they're mishapen. Alternatively, if you have refrigerator space, you can form the balls before chilling, keeping them covered tightly with plastic wrap. -Bake for 14 minutes or until done, checking the cookies after 12 minutes. If necessary, rotate the baking sheets for even browning. If you make smaller cookies, reduce baking time. Keep dough and scoop refrigerated between batches. -They're done when they brown around the edges and begin to brown on top. If they cook more than this they'll dry out. Carefully slide parchment/cookies off of hot baking sheet and onto a cool surface (another rimless baking sheet or an upside down half-sheet pan work well) to cool for a couple of minutes. Try not to bump or bend them while transfering; this will cause them to flatten. -With a spatula, transfer to cooling racks. Cool thoroughly before storing in an airtight container. Flavor and texture are best after 12 hours. They keep for several days at room temperature if well sealed. High Altitude (these adjustments were tested at 6000 feet) -Increase flours by 8% -Increase milk by 40% -reduce sugars by 4% -Slightly reduce baking time Keywords: Dessert, Cookie, Intermediate, American, Chocolate, Snack ( RG2108 )

This has been a big winter for me and soup. I can have soup for dinner every night when it's cold, and it's the perfect comfort food to freeze for my girlfriend, who works 80 hour weeks as an indentured servant (a.k.a. medical resident), in a neighborhood where the best local food comes from the hospital cafeteria. I've been making 7 and 8 quart batches of hearty peasant soups; the kind that could pass for stew. Most of my recipes are variations on ones by James Peterson in his Splendid Soups book. My favorite is a moroccan lamb soup with tomatoes and dried apricots, served with cous cous. I've made variations with chicken, with and without tomato, and with beef. Also great are a chicken soup with apples and leeks, and a soup based on Hungarian goulash (paprikash). No photographs yet ... been too busy eating.

From about.com (no sources cited, but I've read this elsewhere. maybe a real chemist can comment ...) "Hydrogenation is the chemical process by which liquid vegetable oil is turned into solid fat. Partially hydrogenated oils contain trans fatty acids, or trans fats, which are thought to be more harmful than saturated fats. When liquid vegetable oil is fully hydrogenated, however, almost no trans fats remain. The resulting fat is even more solid, taking on a hard, waxy consistency, even at room temperature. Full hydrogenation increases the amount of saturated fat, although much of it is in the form of stearic acid, which is converted by the body to oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, which doesn't raise levels of bad cholesterol. This makes fully hydrogenated fats less harmful than partially hydrogenated fats. Crisco's trans-fat free shortening contains fully hydrogenated cottonseed oil, which is blended with sunflower oil and soybean oil to soften what would otherwise be a too-hard fat. To be clear: just because it is trans-fat-free doesn't make it low fat. One tablespoon of trans-fat free shortening contains 110 calories, 12g of fat, 3g of which is saturated. It is cholesterol free, however. Beware: if a package simply lists "hydrogenated oil," without expressly stating whether it is partially or fully hydrogenated, it may not be trans-fat free. Sometimes the terms "hydrogenated" and "partially hydrogenated" are used interchangeably. If the package clearly states that it contains fully hydrogenated oil, then it will be trans-fat free. Since stricter labeling laws came into effect, trans fats are more transparent than they used to be, and many food manufacturers continue to look for healthier alternatives for their products."

That doesn't necessarily mean trans fats. What you need to look out for is partially hydrogenated oils.

This amazes me! I think good bread is one of the best bargains in the world. $5.75 for a 24 oz loaf seems reasonable. If it's great bread, then it's a great deal. When I get great bread for $4 a loaf at local bakeries or at whole foods, I wonder how they do it. I have no trouble spending more than that. I make bread from time to time at home, and would have to value my time at pennies per hour to have good bread for cheaper. Maybe it will take some PR to wake people up to the realities of food costs?

Definitely the 11. Keep in mind that you're never going to have the thing filled up to the top, so it doesn't actually hold 11 cups of anything. And if what you're processing includes a lot of liquid, you can use a much smaller portion of its capacity. Otherwise it will leak. I've had an 11 cup Cuisinart for fifteen years and it's been a good size for one to a dozen people. Number one use is making pastry dough. It's the grand poobah of pastry dough. Infrequent uses include thick purees, making oat flour and nut butters, and industrial-size grating tasks. I used it for making bread and pizza dough before getting a stand mixer. The processor did an excellent job, but didn't have much capacity, and I could tell it was straining. I made sure to work in short bursts and give it time to cool off. This is a case where the 11 cup was adequate, and the 7 cup likely wouldn't be. I never use it for chopping anymore (knives just do a better job) and i don't think I've ever used the slicing disk or the silly plastic dough blade.

I remember reading that chocolate chips are formulated so they don't melt at baking temperatures as much as plain chocolate would. Is this true? I like chocolate chunks in cookies, but the only ones I ever see are made out of crappy chocolate. If I chopped up some high quality bittersweet chocolate, would it stay intact in the cookie dough, or would it melt all over the place?

I've noticed a lot of these recipes are leavened just with baking soda. Where does the acid come from. The bananas??

I've recently discovered the glories Muscovado sugar; it's taken my experiments with chocolate chip cookies (and my sugar addiction) to a new level. But the India Tree brand, which the only kind I've found, costs $4 a pound. Pretty steep for sugar. I've been looking for more economical source, possibly in larger quantities. I've found similar sugars, but nothing called dark Muscovado. Billington's makes it for much less, but I can't find it anywhere in the U.S.. I do see some Billington's "molasses sugar," available for cheap on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Billingtons-Natural-...04558822&sr=8-2 And at Whole Foods there's a concoction called "Sucanat," which has a similar description, but looks a bit more like light Muscovado. And it has that horible name. Anyone know how similar molasses sugar is to muscovado? Or of any cheaper sources of muscovado in the U.S.?

.... or French onion soup, or French anything, really. Check out any bistro cookbook. The French could feed the whole nation with stale bread.

It turns out my idea is just a reinvention of the wheel. It's similar to the method Gosselin used, which Reinhart adapted for home baking. From a 2004 thread: Hi Seth, Thanks for asking that! My version is based on Gosselin's but is modified for the home and small batch baker (I noted that in the book, so do tell those who were tweaked to please go back and read the text). The ongoing theme of the book was the idea that we need to master the rules, the so-called letter of the law, in order to be free to break or tweak them, to bake by the "spirit" of the rules. In this case, the key is understanding why Gosseline's cold fermentation works at all. What he does is mix water and flour but no yeast or salt, and then chills it overnight. In big batches it would be risky to add the yeast because it takes hours for the dough to cool down and the dough might overferment. This won't happen in small batches which can cool quickly in the fridge (plus using cold water during mixing), so I add the salt and yeast right up front and then chill it. This saves hours of production time the next day as the dough is basically ready to use when you retrieve if from the fridge. Gosselin, on the other hand, remixes on the second day and adds yeast and salt, then waits six hours for the dough to gradually awaken and ferment. This is a good example of two ways up the mountain that both get to the peak. More importantly, though, is grasping why the technique works so. The cold fermentation (or in Gosselin's case, the cold "blank" dough) allows the amylase enzymes that exist in the flour to break apart the starches and free up many of the various sugars trapped in those complex molecules. It is not the bacteria or yeast that does this, but the enzymes (which is why, in the intro, I called understanding enzymes the next frontier of bread baking). In the end, it is always about the balancing act between time, temperature, and ingredients. The Gosselin method achieves a flavor release beyond even what preferments (which are working towards the same goal) can do, which is why I think it has great, but still underappreciated, implications for American bakers. My variation achieves the same end goal and, especially for home bakers, eliminates a step that big batch bakers need to use, but not small batch bakers. So yes, I give Gosselin credit for opening my mind to the concept and for perfecting a brilliant method for implementing it, but not for inventing this method, which certainly other bakers have also stumbled upon and use. I doubt if Gosselin has the slightest idea why, scientifically, his method works so well--it took me a year of peeling back layers of the onion (so to speak) to get past the conventional wisdom (that it's about the yeast or bacteria) and finally realize that it's more about the enzymatic action. This kind of detective work is part of the joy and "aha!" of baking, and why it never seems to get old.

There's a lot of territory between Le Bec Fin's minimalism and all these Python-esq celebrations of culinary b.s. helenjp makes a case for description when it would be legitemately helpful. But I think a bit of description can also serves the purpose of making the food sound more appealing--not a bad thing if the description is accurate. And if the food is in fact appealing. When I managed an ice cream store years ago I formulated new flavors from time to time. One thing my boss understood much better than I did was importance of the flavor's name. One of our new flavors was simply rum ice cream (like rum raisin without the raisins). It was good ice cream made with good rum, and I liked the simplicity. But no one bought it. No one! My boss thought about it for a minute, and changed the name to "Jamaican Rum." There was no b.s. involved ... it was in fact made with rum from Jamaica. The five gallon tub sold out by the end of the day. I also noticed that the name did more than sell a flavor; it actually influenced the customers' perceptions. We made the standard "sweet cream" ice cream, which is just the base ice cream without any flavoring added. Time after time people would try a sample and declare that it was too sweet! In fact it was much less sweet than some of the other flavors. The name changed the way they experienced it. Since a restaurant is in the business of selling food, and selling an experience, I think it's a mistake to underestimate the influence of names on both these endeavors. Granted, if the descriptions smell like b.s., then the customer will assume that's what you're selling. But you have choices besides b.s. and nothing.

Ok, you guys talked me out of it.