paulraphael

And it's far and away my favorite type (and my friends' too .... it's the only thing i've ever had people beg me to make). Not sure how it fits into the regimented 6 types or 12 types ... My favorite recipe, based pretty closely on Gilles Bajolles' version is here.

Which NM recipe are you using? I've seen a couple of recipes attributed to them (including the urban legend one) ... Also, has anyone tried the Jacques Torres recipe with regular AP flour? I wonder if there's anything special about his cookies at all besides the massive load of top quality chocolate!

No kidding! I'll have to look for it. I can't believe that my love Melinda has been cheating on me.

Of course it depends on what extra virgin oil ... I'm starting to think the designation hardly means anything anymore, since the range of price and quality within it is so huge. My local ghetto supermarket sells ONLY extra virgin oil. The oil I use for sautéing is their cheapest variety. To its credit it isn't half bad ... but it's no delicacy. I find even among the good oils that some just don't taste good to me. The best olive oils are often marked by an assertive flavor, which may or may not be one you want to slather on your bread. I like the fruity and spicy ones; some restaurants have served me very bitter ones that I don't care for with the bread. I have to admit that I've enjoyed some of the herb/chili infused oils I've been served at restaurants. But in a perfect world I'd take great bread with plain, great oil or butter.

did any of the her/spice confusion come from anye besides Linguine? I didn't mind it from him, since he admitedly knows nothing about food. so roller skate service isn't common in Parisian 5-star restaurants?

I really like the flavor of habaneros also. a coworker of mine years ago grew some in his garden that were MUCH milder than the ones I've found at the store. They had heat, but no more than an average jalpeno. and the flavor was amazing. I had read that the amount of capcacin is often proportional to the harshness of the growning conditions, so I assumed that the mild ones were just the result of a pampered growing environment. But maybe it was just the strain of the chili. Those indian chilis sound brutal! I don't know how I'd use something that concentrated. Does anyone else like Melinda's hot sauce? It's habanero based, in a carrot puree (not vinnegar based, like tabasco). My favorite.

I like the potential for food writers and art critics starting a bitter rivalry, each group calling the other a bunch of philistines. We'd hear about cases of families from the midwest visiting an avante garde restaurant before seeing the Lion King, based on a glowing review they'd mistakenly read in Art Forum. The rest of the scene practically writes itself.

One gain (apart from whatever lands directly on Adria) is that one more small step has occured in the world of cooking to move the work of cooking towards being considered a profession rather than a trade by society-at-large. ← Yeah, and I think it's helpful just to get the stuff seen by the critics, even if they don't respond at first. My guess is (and it's only a guess) that the critics just didn't know how to respond. They were confronted by something that truly comes out of an unfamiliar tradition. In that profession there's a certain performance anxiety about sounding like you know what you're talking about ... and history has taught them that dismissing something unfamiliar can backfire badly. So innocently neglecting to say anything might be the easiest way out. It would be nice if the experience sent a few of the critics scrambling to learn more about food.

the plot thickens ... I just did a search to find sources for the snow shovel story, and instead found this: a conspiracy theory suggesting that Duchamp actually made all that stuff from scratch, and only said that he found it! Some think that if this is true, the implications would be staggering. For instance, guys like Adria could no longer get away with just "finding" vegetables at the market or the garden; they would have to start constructing them from scratch in laboratories, perhaps using stem cells, or paper maché.

I love making crepes and do it now with very little measuring. I tend to like crepes with a lower ratio of egg than many people, so you can adjust this to taste. My basic proportion is one egg and one TB butter per half cup of flour. I don't measure the milk ... just add it until the consisency is right (about the same as heavy cream). Salt, sugar, and any liqueur can be added in whatever amount you like. Couldn't be simpler. I don't bother with a blender, which most recipes seem to suggest. Just mix the flour, eggs, and other dry ingredients with just enough milk to form a paste when you mix it (a wooden spoon or spatula works well). Then thin with milk while whisking. Push through a strainer, let it rest in the fridge, 20 minutes to overnight, and then stir in melted butter before cooking.

Duchamp first presented his "readymades" in 1915 ... and while this might have been the most blatant challenge to classical heirarchies, it certainly wasn't the first. There are some interesting impilcations in the whole endeavor of found art. It suggests that it's not just the intent of the creator of a work that makes it art, but sometimes the intent of the person who shows it or the person who views it. Any of these paries can put something in a context that causes it to be seen as art. Which isn't a free ride for anyone. If I hang my dirty socks on the wall at MoMA, they WILL be seen as art. But this also means they will be judged by the standards of contempoary art criticism--a sharp double edged sword. They may be very nice socks, but the chances of the curators and critics and audiences thinking much of them in their new, heightened context are not so promising. How sad it would be to see a merciless review of my lucky socks in the Times. And a funny story about Duchamp: apparently an assistant curator at MoMA managed to break Duchamp's snow shovel while hanging a show. I don't know how someone schooled in handling priceless antiquities can break a snow shovel, but that's another story. At any rate, they called Duchamp in a panic, begging for forgiveness and for a replacement. Duchamp just said, "ok, get another one." The curators didn't get it. "Just go down to the hardware store on 59th street and get another one." The curators said they couldn't do that, it was Duchamp's piece. To which he said, "what are you talking about, that's where I got it. The curators expained that this would be stepping outside their bounds ... that they'd be happy to pay for it, but that Duchamp would have to get the shovel. So, exasperated with the clueless curators, Duchamp went to the hardware store and bought another f'ing shovel!

I don't know about that. It's really just the difference between the classical idea of an artist, which is based on a normative definition, and the modern idea, which is based on a descriptive one. The modern idiom is broadly inclusive as far as what is art/who is an artist, but it's no less rigorous regarding what is great art/who is a great artist. Absolutely true regarding momentous and important. But I haven't seen a serious curator or critic try to wield the idea of validity in a very long time. The 20th century taught people they'd likely put their foot in their mouth when making proclamations about that! Yes. But what makes him a great artist, or an influential artist, or an important artist, if he is indeed any of the above, is a whole separate conversation. That's where the critical aparatus and the historical perspective come to play. Not my critical decisions; just some observations on how the curatorial and critical worlds have evolved in the last hundred years. Ha! now you've leapfrogged my argument with a postmodern one--the idea that the artist just provides the raw material and the critic/curator creates the Big Idea. If your conspiracy theory is true, these curators are the most clever I've heard of ... I'm much more impressed by an ingeniously procured free meal than by thousands of words of artspeak ...

It's useful in helping you understand WHAT is being performed and HOW to look at it. The point is really a simple one: whether or not you're a an artist is a completely different question from whether or not you're a good one. The idea that you have to be good to be an artist makes the definition a confusing one. Good at what? A carpenter is someone who makes stuff out of wood. A cook is someone who prepares food. We don't expect some level of genius from anyone before we bestow these titles on them; we just expect them to show up at work. And we know that some of them will be a lot better at what they do than others. It's just confusing to have a whole different type of definition for artists. Why shouldn't an artist just be someone who endeavors to make art? Some will do it with great genius and some will fail. Let them all be artists. Save all the philosophy and the critical apparatus to decide whose art is most significant, and for whom, and for what reason.

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart! ← with a little ingenuity, you could make 4 different kinds. why not 8? i'd like to see someone make a pie where every slice was a different kind (i'm not volunteering ... postmodern baking isn't really my forte).

Always a big question, and one we'll have to wait to find out. But I think this question is about how great and influential an artist he is, in the eyes of history ... which is different from the simple question of whether or not he's an artist. I think it's a mistake to make "artist" some kind of grand judgement, or even a compliment. It's just a description. You can be a good or bad artist, just as you can be a good or bad plumber. If you're working toward giving form to some kind of vision, then in my book you're an artist. So maybe your vision is myopic, you're craft incompetent, your food inedible. You could be in the wrong line of work ... but you're still working at art.

I think the question presents a false choice. If you look at curatorial standards for art over the last century, they're wide open, and highly dependent on context. The standards that a critic or historian would use to examine something as art have NOTHING to do with whether or not something is made with a medium traditionally used for handicrafts, whether it's heavily dependent on science (photography and video are more science dependent than anything Adria cooks up), whether it's permanent or fleeting (think performance art) or even whether it might kill you (guns and amo have been used in art since the Futurists invaded nearly a hundred years ago). Someone could be a chef, a craftsman, and an artist ... or any one or two of the above, or none of the above. The standards are separate and not at all mutually exclusive. I happen think that high cuisine is generally practiced and appreciated as an art form, in the sense that everything revolves around the expression of a chef's unique, unmistakeable vision. Craft is important, but as a means to this end. If I were such a good craftsman in the kitchen that I could execute all of Thomas Kellers recipes to perfection, I wouldn't be rivaling his real accomplishments. It might get me a job as a worker bee under some other chef who can use my skills in service to his or her vision (and it might go over really well with my friends) but it wouldn't make me a great chef ... any more than the ability to clone Anselm Kiefer's paintings would make me a great artist. When we call something a "craft" as opposed to an art, I think we're usually talking about making things that point back to the tradition that they come from. A woodworker making a shaker chair is honoring a particular craft tradition. The work is essentially anonymous, even if it superficially bears evidence of the craftsman's style. This is similar to a cook making an authentic risotto or sauce bordelaise. Contrast that woodworker with a sculptor who uses the same materials and tools. She might be working within a tradition, but her goal is essentially to point beyond that tradition, to something new. The shaker chair is about the shaker tradition and about being a chair. The sculpture is likely about seeing some aspect of the world in a new way. In these senses, I think people like Keller and Adria are more like the scultptor than the woodworker. Let me put it another way... if it kills you, it's not art (or food). It's poison. It's not stimuli to your senses. Music needn't be harmonic to exist, or painting figurative (or any of the two aesthetically pleasing, or at least in a conventional way, at that). But applied arts (aka crafts) need some sort of practical goal, whether it's creating a chair you can sit on or food that's digestable. And to me, trying to redefine Adria majestic craft as art somehow lessens it. He creates a magical effect out of existing elements (the food, the sorroundings at El Bulli, etc...) which still is edible! Its main purpose is not conveying a political agenda or a mood, although it can do all that, but ultimately it is to nourish and feed. Don't know, I've just got on let's-go-back-to-college, theoretical rambling mode! ←

i've seen a recipe for something called chicken lollipops that was different ... baked chicken breasts rolled up into tubes, sliced crosswise into round spirals, and served on skewers with dipping sauces.

Unlike chef's knives, I'm happy to use just about any pairing knife as long as it's sharp. When I finally had to put a new edge on mine (a 3-1/2" Schaff) I tapered it to 15 degrees ... very sharp. This would be too fragile for a lot of purposes, but I only use the pairing knife for light duty things like coring and trimming. So it holds up fine. I find this makes a big difference ... allows me to do things like cut out stems of strawberries with almost no pressure, just by turning the berry into the blade. This kind of task feels a lot safer when you don't ever have to push hard.

I've suspected some of this. It seems that there's a lot of batch to batch variation in cookies that must be based on variables that we're not controlling (this is cookie baking, not analytical chemistry ... right??) I've had identical recipes turn out differently two days in a row, so I can only assume this can influence our comparison of recipes. We might think we're comparing recipes when we're really comparing relative humidity, or karma. I especially wonder about this when people declare a particular recipe "bland" compared with another, when the ingredients are the same and the proportions extremely close.

One reason is to make scaling much easier. A bread baker knows if he needs to make two loaves or a hundred, and in each case how many kilos of flour it will take. He can start with that flour weight, and with very simple math calculate the amounts of all the other ingredients. Another reason is to help compare recipes. When they're given in bakers percentages, you can directly compare any of them. With traditional recipe format, you'll be dealing with whatever recipe size the authors chose to give you. You have to do math just to get the recipes on a common footing. And obviously, this is an even bigger nuissance when the recipes use volume measurements. Cup sizes do not vary in the U.S., (it's always 8 fl oz) but no matter where you are, how much flour actually fits in a cup will depend on how it was transported, stored, handled, scooped, and measured.

I love bakers percentages, but the standard system stops being useful when you're dealing with dishes that have a main ingredient besides flour. Are there variations that bakers use in these cases? When I've worked on dessert recipes, and needed to compare known recipes to find out what's going on, I've often had to use a different ingredient as the 100% ingredient. Typically chocolate! A lot of tortes, mousses, and even brownies have little to no flour in them. But standardizing the chocolate at 100% puts them on an equal footing. Other kinds of baked goods might be best described with yet a different 100% ingredient. Is this a standard way to do it, or is there more accepted (probably smarter) way?

Maybe Jacques just doesn't keep AP flower in the pantry?

Such a great movie, for all the reasons mentioned. Anyone know how it was received in France? I'd be really curious to see some French reviews (ideally translated, or at least summarized).

I would just use butter and an intensely flavored, well strained fruit coulis (or combination of coulis and liqueur). This recipe is for a chocolate butter sauce which is ganache-like, but is more versatile and easily flavored. A lower proportion of liquid would let you get the consistency of a ganache filling. Please post your results ... I'm curious to know.

Curious that Jacques mixes almost equal amounts pastry and bread flower. Isn't that a bit like making all purpose flower? Thoughts from the pastry geniuses?