paulraphael

very interesting. it must be delicious. i wasn't actually asking about cooking steaks sous vide; i was wondering if you did anything just like what you described (making jus with the sous vide method). i don't have a real sous vide setup; i'd like to investigate the possibility of doing something like this with less specialized gear. i'm still curious about quantities. about how much meat and stock would you use to produce a quart of jus with this method?

Thanks Mike, that's all really interesting. I'll take a look at Ducasse's method also. It seems to me that your approach actually shares some fundamental qualities with Escoffier's. He also starts with a bone-based stock. Then he makes a sauce espagnole by creating a meat stock by cooking roasted meat in the bone stock, reducing, simmering with mirrepoix (and usually adding tomato) and thickening slightly with roux. Then the espagnole is reduced at a low simmer, with its volume being compensated by adding fresh stock at several intervals. The biggest structural differences seem to be the roux, tomatoes, and other details specific to the sauce espagnole. Does this sound accurate to you? With the chicken you mention just using the juices from the sous vide bag. Does this strike you as similar to what's being suggested in the other thread on chicken stock? It seems like a great idea if you're going for an intensity of flavor, which I'm more likely after with beef jus/glace than with chicken stock. Have you ever tried the sous vide approach with beef?

i doubt there's an official definition, since it seems to be the kind of thing that artisan bakers don't always agree on themselves. chefpeon's definition is pretty good. a more prosaic one might be any bread that's made with some kind of preferment or delayed fermentation or soaker ... a major extra step to make it extra good.

i would relish an opportunity to be proven wrong, if the evidence is truly delicious. next time i'm in memphis!

Mikeb19, if you don't mind, i have a few questions about the methods you describe. roughly what quantities would go into making a quart of the final glace (for both stock and meat scraps)? were your chefs partial to any particular kind of stock (a meat-rich stock or a gelatinous bone-based one)? did you use any roasted bones in with the scraps? did put use any aromatic veggies or garni in the glace at any point, or were those all reserved for the final preparation of the dish? was the procedure based more on a particular amount of time of simmering (adding however much stock was needed to make up for evaporation) or was it based on however much time was required to consume a certain amount of stock? and finally, do you know if anyone has written much about methods like these? i remember seeing something about this here on egullet (maybe from you) and they seem like a natural outgrowth of some of the older techniques peterson discusses, but i haven't yet seen anything exactly like what you describe in print.

Mikeb, what you're describing does sound like an excellent approach (and I was specifically referring to what passes for glace at most non-world class restaurants, so it wasn't a dig at what you're doing). When I hear someone talk about modern methods, I think of the most common ones: extreme reduction of stocks made from bones. These are the shortcuts on shortcuts; the ones that pale in comparison to classic methods. What you're describing sounds almost like a return to pre-classic methods (coulis and double and triple stocks) which were abandoned for the classic methods on grounds of expense (when i talk about a shortcut on a shortcut on a shortcut, the first shortcut is actually the classical technique!) I'd be curious to hear more about what chef's are doing today in very high budget kitchens.

seasoning black skillets and manufacturing oreos are the best justifications for the stuff i've heard so far! (i won't comment on some uses suggested on adult websites).

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.