paulraphael

I'm not talking about a crap German knife; I'm talking about a great one. It's one that I happily used for 100% of my chef knife-type prep work for about 6 years. I love my Japanese chef knife as well; my point is that it doesn't actually replace the all-purpose workhorse. It's more specialized. If I had to have one chef's knife, it would therefore have to be the German one, as much as I like the Japanese one. FWIW, with a couple of more specialized knives (bread and paring) my Japanese knives have completely replaced their predecessors. Just my personal experience.

Interesting. I imagine this would hold true for cookies and brownies that use cocoa? I have a brownie recipe that has some cocoa in it in addition to the chocolate (it provides a bit of structure and added intensity, and lets me get away with less flour). Right now I incorporate the cocoa at the end, with the flour. It just gets stirred into the batter right before baking. Do you suppose I'd get more flavor out of it by incorporating it with the buttter and chocolate, in the beginning? Would there be any drawbacks to this (like losing the structural qualities of the cocoa)? Right now I melt the butter, whisk in the sugar until it melts, then melt the chocolate into the butter/sugar mixture, all on direct heat. I'd be inclined to whisk the flour into the butter/sugar before melting the chocolate, but I'm open to suggestions.

Looking way back at the original post, if I had to have just one good knife, it would be German. I love my Japanese knives, and use them about 75% of the time now, but none is a do-it-all knife. My Hiromoto gyuto is fabulously sharp and holds its edge well, makes prep work fun, and guts with precision. But there's a lot I won't use it for. It's fragile. I don't use it to chop up chickens, chop blocks of chocolate, cut the heads and tails off of fish, or cut pineapples. My 8" Schaff Goldhamster does all of these things without blinking. And it does everything the gyuto can do, just not quite at the same level of performance. It's my desert island knife. Luckily I haven't been forced to move to a desert island, so I can enjoy both ... the Japanese (which I use most of the time) and the German (which I used to use all the time, but now mostly grab for the rough stuff).

We may have a prototype in 2 months. They'll send it to me to test, but I'll want to pass it on to someone working in a pro shop who can really beat on it with big volume use (preferably in the NYC area). I'll be asking for guinee pigs if/when it arrives.

Here's a commercial Warring for $60 ... http://www.yourdelight.com/waring_immersion_blender.htm I think these are 100 watts. Would these be in the same league as the Bamixes, or more like the home blenders?

I've found that the strength of spices depends a lot on how they're incorporated. Spices mixed dry into a batter don't give up nearly as much flavor as spices infused into oil. When I started infusing cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and ginger into the butter of a pancake recipe, I had to cut the spice quantity in half to maintain the same strength of flavor.

For most things just a towel. But for a hot oven (450 degrees or more) I reach in the drawer for the Orka silicone mits. They're great. They give a solid grip, insulate well, and unlike any fabric (nomex included), I don't have to worry about dampness insta-steaming my hands on contact. They're also easy to clean. The company says they're only good to 500 degrees, but I've occasionally grabbed roasting pans out of a 550 degree oven with them. No damage to the mits. This was pushing what my hands can take, though. Even at 500, if the pan is heavy, I start to feel the heat in a hurry. It's important to to have a path cleared and get the thing out of the oven and out of your hands pretty fast. Some silicone spatulas have a 900 degree plus melting point, and are rated for continuous use at over 600, so I doubt a few seconds at 550 degrees will damage the mits. I still don't like reaching deep into a very hot oven with the things. they don't have enough coverage. I have some 16" tongs that I can use to pull out the rack, or reach in and rotate pans, etc.. I only need the mits for picking up and putting down.

I would forsake any god that demanded eating margarine.

You'd want an attenuation button in a kitchen scale?

just checked their site ... it does. but it costs close to $200, which seems to put it out of the kitchen category. they call it a jewelry scale, though it looks great for the kitchen.

That should be a given ... the current My Weigh scales toggle with a button on the front. Some have the added feature of remembering the last unit you used, so you don't have to always reset to your preference.

I like Stubbs also. Mostly for the packaging ("ladies and gentlemen, i am a cook.") I haven't done a real side by side comparison with others.

In this thread http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...60#entry1528456 I lamented that no one made a scale that worked directly with bakers' percentages. It seemed so obvious that a scale should allow you to establish a 100% weight, and then have it give you the weights of all other ingredients in percentages. Chris Hennes pointed out that some scales have a "count" feature that can be used to this effect, though it isn't really their intended use (and I don't know in practice how well it works). So I wrote to the good people at My Weigh, and they want to design a scale that does this. They want to know exactly how the percentage feature should work so they can explain it to the programmer. I told them my idea, but wanted to solicit the ideas of experienced bakers and cooks. What food related functions are missing from current scales? And are there common features that you don't use that could be eliminated? My assumption is that this would be a serious production scale, so it wouldn't have an interior-design look or features like calorie counting. So ... How would you like to see bakers percentages implemented? What capacity would be most useful? Is 1gram readability enough? Do you need 0.1 gram? How much more would you be willing to pay for 0.1 gram readability? What else? Maybe I could talk them into giving an eGullet discount as thanks for your input.

Chris, I believe you are a genius.

I've had a chance to use the My Weigh i5000 a bit. It's a great scale ... fast, repeatable results, good capacity, good display, easy to clean. The 5kg capacity is great. I can measure out anything in any container (my old lab scale topped out at 300g). The company says the scale uses higher grade load cells than many of their scales, for improved accuracy and durability. My one complaint is the auto power-off "feature." The thing constantly shuts down while I'm in the middle of using it. The power up cycle is fast, and it will automatically tare any weight that's sitting on it when you turn it on. But still a nuissance. i wrote a note to the company asking if there's any way to disable it. Only other potential issue is that the platform is small, so if you need to weigh a large container it might hide the display from you. But I'll mostly use it with mixing bowl or saucepan-sized things, so I don't anticipate trouble.

You have a scale that translates percentages? What is it?

That's interesting. Especially because I've had issues with some of my mom's ceramic dishes that have designs done in metallic glazes. They arc like crazy in the microwave, and the glaze actually gets pitted. I've assumed you'd have the same kinds of problems but worse with big pieces of metal. I'd be curious to see more details of the study, and to know if it was subject to peer review, since it (and an earlier, similar study) was funded by metal packaging manufacturers.

One of the main reasons I throw dinner parties is to experiment on the guests! The only times I've had major failures, I was the only one one at the table unhappy with the dish. Seems I've been blessed with hungry, undiscriminating friends. There was one time I probably went too far. For Christmas a couple of years ago I gave my parents a gift certificate for a big, home cooked meal. I decided to pull out all the stops, and planned a six course menu, of all original recipes. Only one of the two desserts was something that I'd made before, and this was a new variation. Looking back, this was just an act of hubris. I am not a good enough cook to pull off something like that! It all turned out ok, but I think most of the courses could have been much better (and would have been, if I'd made them several times and refined them). I might do something like that again for close friends who know what they're getting into, but for a meal given as a present, I should have made something that put the emphasis on good food and not on invoking the stress of a Top Chef episode.

Some cancellations knocked the group down to 8, so we stuck with Kampuchea. It was great. The long tables worked well for a big group. We would have been fine with 10, too. 12 would have been pushing it, but that's a lot of people for any table. We ate off each other's plates and ended up ordering about half the menu. Food was great all around. Though we wish they served dessert. Service wasn't so hot. Our waiter was a bit pushy, and brought us a couple of things we didn't order (and left off a couple of things that we did). The place wasn't busy; we sat down at 6:30, and it didn't start hopping til near the end of the meal. I'll definitely be going back. The food more than made up for any rough patches. Total came to around $50 per person, including tips but not drinks.

The Slate article is an absurd example of a journalist butchering science. Ironic considering its allegations against the Times. The key quotation from the study cited (from Environmental Research): "The fish eaten in the Seychelles contains the same amount of mercury found in fish consumed in the United States." Two things to note about this. First, it's a generalization so sweeping that without elaboration it's of no use at all in this discussion. Is the assumption that all fish eaten in the United States contains a uniform amount of mercury? If the study is using an average figure, then we have to keep in mind that the Times' informal study dealt not with all fish in the U.S., nor even with all tuna, but with mostly higher end tuna found at good restaurants and fishmongers in NYC. And second, the study in E.R. was done in 2000. The Slate journalist is using it to refute an artidle based on data collected over seven years later. If anyone here with a science background has had a chance to review the full text of the study, I'd be curious to hear if contains any information that might possibly illuminate the issue. The passages cited by Slate certainly don't.

I was more than happy to let the plumber take care of that one. It was so nasty in fact that I usually found an excuse to get far away until he was done. Of course we waited until the sinks backed up before calling him in; in retrospect that might have been a bad way to handle it ...

My worse problem is getting old coffee stink out of the thermos that I take on climbing trips. The inside is stainless steel, so I don't want to use chlorine bleach. I'd also rather not use a process that takes days. What's the story with that oxygenated water system? I remember seeing "oxygen bleach" cleaners in commercial kitchens (which I assume is some flavor of peroxide, meant to for stainless surfaces) but I never see it at stores.

I like the spatulas and the oven mits. The mits sit in a drawer most of the time, but when I roast at 500+ degrees they're the only thing that works. I've singed cotton, melted microfiber, and burned myself through three layers of side towel. Even with the mits, if the roasting pan is heavy and hot you gotta move fast!

The conversation makes me wonder if anyone uses egg whites to clarify stocks used for glaces or concentrated jus. My stocks tend to get a bit clouded during the straining process All the stuff that accumulates at the bottom of the stockpot roars through the coarse chinois, and in a heartbeat clouds up the stock. I suppose if ladeled the liquid stock off of the sediment the problem would be avoided, but there's so much of it down there, and it harbors so much stock, that I hate to throw it out. So I've wondered about clarifying with egg whites/other protein after defating. I've never made a consomme, so I don't know how much flavor is lost and if it would be worth it.

Peter Reinhart recommends using some kind of spray oil for several stages of the bread making process. I made do without it back when I was getting into bread, but would probably try one of those mistos if I got started again.