paulraphael

yeah, the reason is expense. most contemporary chefs have never even tasted a sauce made in the manner of escoffier or careme, so they're really in no position to judge them. i happen to think that outside of world-class restaurants, what passes for glace is typically a shortcut on a shortcut on a shortcut, and is not even in the same league as the classics from which they devolved. as far as escoffier's recipe goes, it's possible that it won't actually be what the o.p. is looking for. the high ratio of veal to chicken suggests that it's really just a slightly more chickeny variation on a neutral white stock. the huge quantities of meat and bones will add savor and general deliciousness, but i doubt the overall effect will be an intensity of chicken flavor. if extreme chicken is what you're after, check out the thread on making stock in a sealed bag. i haven't tried it, but it looks like a promising idea.

yeah, yeah. i'd really like to see a blind test with a good sample size of tasters. in my own un-blind tests ... about a year of experimenting with tart shells ... the results were pretty clear. there will never again be any shortening in my kitchen. you could well prove me wrong, but at the moment i'm convinced shortening is a cheap shortcut. it's truly easier, and significantly cheaper, to get good texture with it. but it's flavorless, and it's incapable of the luscious, melt-in-your mouth texture of butter. it's on my ever lengthening list of 'why f'ing bother' ingredients. i don't bake professionally, but if i did, my response to people demanding vegan pastry would be the same as when I made ice cream professionally and customers asked for fat-free, sugar-free frogurt: Release the hounds!

this sounds like a great method to experiment with. i suspect i'll use the conventional method most of the time, since i use my chicken stock with pork and sometimes fish ... so i'm not looking for an intense chicken flavor. but if i ever am, this looks like the bomb. nathanm, i'm curious to know what spores can survive an hour at 190 degrees? that's surprising.

to make 10 liters of stock, it uses 22 lbs of veal shin, trimings, and bones; 4 raw chicken carcasses; giblets; and 3 "boiling fowls" ... whatever those are. and some mirepoix veggies and a bouquet garni. if this sounds reasonable to you, let me know and i'll scan the recipe for you.

Speaking as someone who has never tasted shortening-based pastry that was as good as butter-based (or butter/leaf lard based) I'd think you could use this ban as a motivation to make things better than you did before, not just as good. Is there really anyone who likes the flavorlessness and greasy mouthfeel of vegetable shortening (partially or fully hydrogenated)??

Yeah, there are all kinds of one handed peppermills like that. I had one for years that had a salt shaker in the top. It worked well, but it got disgusting really quickly. I don't have time to stop and wash my hands every time I want to salt or pepper something. And I'm not willing to add pre-measured ground pepper to my mise en place! So the solution is salt and pepper dispensers that are easy to clean. Salt is easy ... I just have a diner-style glass shaker. For pepper this funky stainless one is still the best thing I've found.

if it's real gold, it wouldn't be digestible; it would just pass through you. i don't believe gold is soluble in any of the chemicals in your gut (it's not soluble in much).

real bread-heads tell us that bread is best appreciated after it's cooled. but i remain a philistine and love nothing more than hot, fresh-baked bread ... cool enough to be done cooking in the middle, warm enough to melt butter. never had a belly ache, but might be able to blame a violent crime or two on it. any thoughts on why bread is supposedly better cool?

Has anyone used this? http://www.amazon.com/Vic-Firth-Grind-Stai...84507&s=kitchen I picked one up at bed bath & beyond, and it's become the only peppermill I've ever liked in the kitchen. It's thoroughly flawed: you can't adjust the grind, it takes a lot of force, and it doesn't spit out much pepper with each pump. But I really like a one handed mill in the kitchen, because I'm either stirring or turning things with tongs when I'm peppering them. And all the other one-handed mills I've seen or used have a serious problem: they're nearly impossible to clean. With this thing, I can pepper a raw chicken, or several fish fillets, and not worry that my slimy hands are all over the peppermill. When I'm done, it's fairly easy to wipe it off with a soapy sponge. It's stainless and plastic, with few gaps and crevices on the outside. The pepper stays dry, and I run little risk of killing the guests with salmonella when I later pepper and hand toss the salad. AND: it was designed by the former tympanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

usually when people say grain alcohol they're talking about very strong, neutral spirits, like everclear. i haven't heard the term used for whisky or vodka or other normal drinks, even though whisky is always made with grain and vodka usually is.

i've been curious about this too ... considering bleached flour isn't allowed in france. they don't seem to have any trouble making tender cakes. do the french use techniques that let them get away with out it, or do theymake cakes in styles that need it less?

The ethical way to do this is to make sure it's a fair fight. Considering you're probably much bigger than the hens, you need to find some kind of handicap for yourself. like have your hands tied behind your back, and face the hens a half dozen at a time. And yes, you should probably video tape it.

good point; the high fat butters make a big difference. in texture and also flavor.

egg is traditional in some styles of tart dough. so is milk. i haven't personally tried etiher. other things to keep in mind with technique (in addition to cold temps and minimal handling) are the sizes of the clumps of fat. small, uniform clumps result in a fine-grained, flaky/crumbly crust. completely blended fat results in a traditional crumbly tart crust. and uneven, varying sized clumps, with a lot of big ones, results in a traditional flaky pie crust. the kind of fat you use is less important than the technique used to control the size and distribution of it. but butter is more challenging to work with (since it melts at lower temperatures). i think it's worth it to use butter for the flavor, though. either all butter or a 70/30 mix of butter and fresh-rendered animal fat (leaf lard, suet, goose fat, etc.). never supermarket lard, and never, ever shortening.

Steve, are the lousy tomatos you're finding obviously lousy when you see them at the market, or do they only disappoint when you get them home?

i'm an heirloom tomato neophyte, so i can't comment on trends (or the names of the varieties in question) but this discussion inspired me to try several of them. i went to the greenmarket this weekend and picked out five of the best looking examples i could find, each one a different variety. final score: one was insanely delicious, one was so flavorless that i threw it out, and three were ok ... no more flavorful or well textured than what you normally get this time of year at a supermarket, though a bit more interesting tasting and a lot more interesting looking.

I have a feeling that in coming decades this kind of thinking is going to be a big deal. rising energy prices are going to effect food costs and (obviously) the cost of running an oven. it will be interesting to see how the changing energy picture effects cooking habits and even what's on the menu.

1) electric can opener 2) my mom's rotary cheese grater (had a hopper on top, a flat thing at the end of an arm that you'd use to press the cheese into the hopper, and a horizontal, round grating drum that you turned with a handle with your other hand). It disassembled into many parts. I have no idea what advantages it offers over a simple grater with no moving parts, but I thought it was a fun toy when I was little. 3) ... maybe the greatest of all. Never seen with my own eyes, but it's As Seen On TV: the Ronco Inside-the-Egg Egg Scrambler.

I've used a food processor for bread quite a few times. It works surprisingly well. But it can't make a lot of dough (not sure how many lbs it can handle, but I doubt more than a couple) and the machine works so hard I'm afraid it might explode if I made bread often.

the forums at the KA site are a great source of info. there are people there who live and breathe mixers ... kinda strange! but some of them know a lot. one tip i got is to call the actual ka outlet stores. they often have mixers/colors etc. not listed on the refurb site, and possibly with even bigger discounts.

A great place to get a KA mixer is from their online outlet store. You can get a factory refurb Pro 600 for $240. Most of these have never been used ... any mixer that gets returned by a store or freight company has to be sold as a refurb. I wouldn't worry about the quality issues. Most KA mixers break because people don't know how to use them. Some of them are legitemately defective. In either case, the KA warranty is excellent. They replace the things no questions asked. The only way to get superior quality is by paying many times as much for a pro mixer like a hobart. I think this would only be worthwhile if you're making production quantities of bread. Other home mixers like the DeLohghi have plenty of quality control problems of their own, but without the customer service network that comes with KA. That all being said, I would absolutely get the mixer over a bread machine. I really don't like single-purpose appliances. I don't even think a bread machine is as useful as a mixer for making bread.

Phenomenal Food Processor Brownies Serves 30 as Dessert. This is a subtle variation on a longtime family recipe. It's fast, easy, and almost foolproof. I traced the original recipe back to Maeda Heatter, but the source of the food processor methodology has long been lost. Probably an interpretation from an appliance cookbook. These brownies are remarkably dense and fudgy, and incorporate more chocolate by weight than any other brownie recipe I've come across. They are the best brownies that I've tasted made from inexpensive chocolate (Bakers or Nestle, etc. from the supermarket). In fact, this recipe does not work properly when made with high end couverture chocolate. The higher percentage of cocoa solids keeps the the starches from setting properly and the brownies fall apart. For my favorite high end brownies, take a look at my Heart of Darkness Brownie recipe, also in RecipeGullet. 1 lb bittersweet chocolate, at room temperature, cut in 1/2 inch chunks 448g 4 eggs 200g 1 TB vanilla extract 12g 1-1/4 c sugar 190 g 1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter 224g plus 1TB for greasing pan 2/3 c sour cream 160 g 1/2 c all-purpose unbleached flour 63g 1 tsp salt 5g 1/2 tsp baking powder 1.6g 1 c bittersweet sweet chocolate chunks (optional) 2 T cocoa powder, for dusting pan 1. Use 1 tablespoon butter to coat an 9 by 13 inch baking pan. Dust lightly with cocoa; set aside. Adjust oven rack to middle position. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. 2. Mix sugar and butter in small saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until sugar partly dissolves and mixture thickens. 3. Use metal blade in food processor. Add 1/4 of the chocolate to processor. Pulse several times tobreak up large pieces, then process continually until small beads form. While machine is running, drop remaining chocolate pieces through food chute one at a time. Process to small bead texture. 4. Add eggs and vanilla. Pulse once or twice to mix. 5. With machine running, pour hot butter mixture quickly through food chute. Process 20 seconds. 6. add sour cream. Process 5 seconds. 7. Add four, salt, baking powder. Process with 8 to 10 half-second pulses to mix in dry ingredients. Batter will be very thick. 8. Pour batter into prepared pan. Smooth top. Sprinkle chocolate chunks on top. Bake at 300 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center is withdrawn clean, but not dry. Cool to lukewarm. Slice with sharp knife while still warm. Cool to room temperature. Keywords: Dessert, Food Processor, Easy, Chocolate, Brownies/Bars ( RG2007 )

70% butter, 30% leaf lard works nicely too ... gets you more butter flavor. some interesting lard substitutes are suet, duck fat, and goose fat. you can also use shortening, but i hate the stuff. it's forever banished from my kitchen.

My experience too. When I made ice cream at a home made ice cream store, we did a side by side test, Madagascar vs. Mexico. We unanimously liked the ice cream made with the madagascar better.

yeah, just about everything looks bad in that recipe. i prefer a ganache to any American style chocolate sauce or hot fudge. But my favorite is a family of sauces called chocolate butter sauces. If you do a search in recipe gullet you'll see a recipe that i posted ... it's really just a framework that you can interpret a million different ways. it's simple, versatile, and delicious. but you have to use good chocolate if you want it to taste good!