paulraphael

I'd recommend against ANY expensive nonstick cookware. If you can get a good brand for cheap on closeout, go for it, but I won't spend more than $25 or so on anything nonstick. Just not worth it. None of the coatings are permanent. Even if the coating lasts forever, its performance will be gone, anywhere from 6 months to a few years from now. I think of nonstick pans as specialty items. I have one, that i use for crepes and fish with the skin on (i'd use it for omelettes too if I made them). But that's it. Literally everything else I cook does bettter on a regular surface. Stainless steel is the best all around, but seasoned iron, spun steel, aluminum and enamel all have their place. Many cooking techniques are actually impared by a nonstick surface.

A couple of the bigger Williams Sonoma stores in NYC have all the olive oils set out with bread so you can taste them. It's the only way I've ever been able to buy good quality olive oil, besides guessing. And it's about the only thing I ever buy at WS. There must be other merchants clever enough to figure this out, right? I would never have picked the oils I've liked based on labels, names, lore, or guessing.

As an amateur I have a limited amount of time to practice compared with someone who cooks or manages a kitchen and plans recipes all day. So I have to choose between being a jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none and being more of a specialist. My inclination is that I'm not interested in bothering with cooking unless the food is going to be great, or at least interesting. So I lean in the specialist direction. I usually choose projects one at a time and work on them for however long it takes to nail them. So my repertoire is small, and it grows very slowly. There are a few categories of food that I feel I've mastered to my satisfaction, a few that are in progress, and a few that I haven't touched. So there are some things I can improvise with a lot of confidence and little thought, some things that are more of a learning adventure, and some things that will force me to lean over a cookbook like a beginner. And there's another set of choices involving complexity. Some people equate good food with impressive food--which often means complex food. I find from eating out that it takes a pretty high level chef (many notches above my usual price range) to put together a whole repertoire of food that is both complex and good. And personally, I find complex, impressive looking, but mediocre tasting food to be a major letdown. So with my limited time resources, I focus on the simple, direct, and delicious. Working with fewer ingredients and flavors to balance can cut months off of the time it takes me to develop a recipe. I'm just as happy to dispense with the flash, learn something simple and tasty, and move on to the next project. These kinds of choices must be common even if they aren't always conscious. And it means that assigning a skill level to someone won't necesarilly reveal what they've mastered vs. what they haven't even tried.

I made version 5 of my brownie experiments this weekend; getting closer to the holy grail ... based on some ideas here i tried something new: i reduced the total sugar in the recipe by a tablespoon, and then sprinkled a tablespoon of superfine sugar over the top before baking. it did in fact make the top more crisp and crackly, but the brownies themselves were not overly sweet.

This is probably true from a historical standpoint (sauté means "jump"). But in practice, among all the professional cooks I know, sautéing includes both tossing and high-heat pan frying with minimum amounts of oil. The key isn't whether the food is moved by a toss, a shake, or a turn with tongs; it's about high heat that browns the food rapidly, with only enough oil to reduce sticking and to improve conduction. Any thoughts on this from the pros?

The different levels should be associated with diffferent colored belts. If you enter someone's kitchen and their belt indicates a higher level than yours, you have to bow.

I've seen these proportions before (for 1-fold, 2-fold, etc..). Seems like most of the people doing their own extracts here are using a lower concentration of beans, but much more time (3, 4 or more months). Thoughts on the difference betwence between fewer beans/more time and more beans/less time?

welcome! please post your results. i've been curious about this, but too lazy to make the c.i. cookies ...

I agree that the Chewy is a bit greasy. I'm wondering if the problem will be solved by softening the butter til very soft, but not melted...but the flavor is excellent and the texture was perfect. Definitely will experiment! ← don't think it will work. the whole idea of melting the butter is to release the water in the butter (break the emulsion). the water then gets soaked up and retained by the flour (bread flour is used because it can bind to more more water than lower protein flour). i'm also curious about the effect of higher fat butter. i'm guessing you'd want to compensate ... less butter and more of another liquid (milk, etc.). otherwis you might get more greasy and less chewy. but the better butter might improve the flavor ... butter is the dominant flavor with these cookies.

A voice for the minority opinion ... My sauté pan is a 12" copper fry pan with sloped sides. I find it more versatile than an official sauté pan. The French-style straight-sided sauté pans have sides that are just too high for my taste. Makes it harder to reach in and turn the food. The sharp corners cans be a liability if you're making a pan sauce that needs whisking. I find the American style sauté pans (with sides that are only about a 1/4 as high as the pan's diameter) to be more useable than the high-sided pans. But I don't much like any of the actual pans that come in this style. There's no problem flipping food by shaking the pan back and forth with sloped sides. I don't know where this idea came from. The sloped sides actually flip the food. But with a large sauté pan, I'm usually turning the food, not tossing it. The high sided sauté pans are great for a lot things besides sautéing. Anything where you actually need a lot of volume (because meat will be in the pan along with the sauce): braises, fricasees, etc.. My favorites are the 12" copper slope sided pan for large things that get turned, a 10" clad aluminum/stainless slope sided pan for food that gets tossed, and a 5qt rondeaux for all the non-sauté things that a straight sauté pan does so well. This is like a sauté pan, but with loop handles intead of a long handle, so it fits easier into the oven. Mine is anodized aluminum, but heavy copper would be a treat. Whatever you chose, mrsadm is right ... skip the copper lid. you can get aluminum lids in every imaginable size at a restaurant supply store. If you get a few big ones, you can always just grab one of them and throw on top of any pan.

I've always done it from start to finish in a pan, also. However, I suspect the pan-oven approach gives you the flexibility to handle different thicknesses of steak and different degrees of doneness easily. I always get steaks cut around 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches, and I always cook them rare. Tossing them onto a blazing hot pan until they're nicely browned on both sides cooks the inside to perfection, and gives me nice mahogony brown pan drippings for a sauce. But if the steak was any thicker, or I was cooking for someone who wanted medium or medium rare, finishing in the oven might be the best bet. Do the people who go from pan to oven find there are other considerations?

I'll be curious to hear about the differences. I remember you talking about industrial odors coming from the tahitian extract in the early days. I've smelled nothing but vanilla deliciousness coming from the all-madagascar brew. Curious, because everyone talks about Tahitian beans as being the aroma champions ... At least in theory, a mix of the two seems like a great idea.

This thread's been dead for a couple of years, and seems the landscape has changed since then (fulton st., etc.) ... Any thoughts on current excellent fishmarkets?

That pretty much echoes my feelings toward food in general. Look to the mad geniuses for inspiration, and to the refined basics for pure deliciousness. I'm curious, how would characterize Herme's desserts (especially flavor-wise)?

Great suggestions, thank you. I think I've been going the wrong way with the butter.

Art, thanks for the reply. The original recipe used baker's semisweet chocolate. I've read this is about 55% cocoa solids, but I don't know how much of the remainder is sugar and how much is added cocoa butter, lecithin, or god-knows-what. For that matter, i don't know the formulas of the good chocolates I'm trying, either. I'm sure they have less sugar than the baker's, but I don't know if they have more or less cocoa butter. Thoughts? I have so far tried 1) less sugar 2) less butter 3) less chocolate (thinking maybe the recipe was maxed out with chocolate to begin with) 4) more flour some of these adjustments have helped the brownies hold together better, but none have given them the fudgy texture of the original.

No, part of the reason I'm making the substitution is to get more cocoa solids. I'm using chocolates that range from 67% to 72%. I know this is likely a factor; I just haven't figured out how to compensate.

I've been struggling to adapt a brownie recipe. The original vesion is made with supermarket chocolate (baker's semisweet). The flavor is what you'd expect, but the texture is exactly what I want: dense, fudgy, smooth, just a bit of crumb. When I substitute good chocolate (I've tried El Rey, Callebaut, and different versions of Valrhona) the flavor improves just as it should, but the consistency goes to pieces. they become tender, fluffy, and barely hold together under their own wieght. I assume a good bit of this is due to cocoa butter percentages, but I really have no idea if that's it or even how to deal with it. Does baker's chocolate (which I've read is 55% cocoa solids) have more or less cocoa butter than the good chocolates? And is there anything else i should be thinking about?

hard to generalize ... some baking requires precision, some is only a little less casual than making soup. When I'm making something like crepes I don't even measure. I just know the general proportions and what the final consistency should be, and i throw it all in a bowl. Making brownies or pastry dough I measure, but not in any way that looks like organic chemistry. If I want half a cup of flour, I'll dunk the measuring cup in and eyeball about a half cup. That kind of thing. But some things (certain cakes, etc.), are a delicate balance. A tiny bit too much or too little leavening, or a slight tweak in the ratio of sugar to fat or fat to flour, and the whole house can come tumbling down. So for recipes like that I break out the digital scale.

I flavoered a creme anglaise with lapsang souchong tea once. The sauce was delicious, but I wasn't completely convinced by the whole dish (i served it with a pear tart). I need to think of something that would work better with the smoky flavors. I also made a green tea infused creme anglaise once. I forget what I served it with. My local tea shop (porto rico importers) has a huge selection of teas and they let me stick my nose into the tins. A lot of the green teas smell like freshly cut grass (more or less), and this wasn't what I wanted. I picked one that had a more delicate, herbal smell. The sauce was nice ... not much of a stretch, considering how common green tea ice cream has become.

Glad to see this thread ... some compulsive buying has led to about 8 lbs of imported chocolate in the pantry, and it would be nice to figure this out before the place turns into an oven. Is there a problem with the fridge if you seal the chocolate from moisture? I'm going to use all the chocolate for baking, not for eating directly.

I think your instinct to keep it simple is right on. Not that you don't stand a chance of impressing them if you cook something high-end that you do well. Just a sense that a chef going to a dinner party might be happy to have some home cookin'. Thomas Keller joked that he started Bouchon so that he and his staff would have some place to get a meal after slaving in the kitchen at the French Laundry. It's easy to imagine that steak frites would hit the spot after a long day preparing alginated urchin carpaccio. A cousin of mine who's a chef commented that he likes to cook in the oven at home ... stews and braises. Because at work he mostly does fast, a la carte, stovetop cooking. That might be true for other chefs as well.

looks like it's just a design thing. people pay that much for pretty faucets, so in that context it's not so much to pay for an appliance (if it matches your copper flooring, your copper spoon, and your copper hat ...) i usually go the opposite route ... i'm still celebrating last week's ebay purchase of a hamilton beach commercial blender, in war-ravaged battleship gray, for $7 plus shipping.

My comparison to the copper is based purely on the subjective experience of using the two materials side by side. And comparing to heavier aluminum. If anything, the all clad stainless pan feels a bit quicker than my copper pans. The difference between the metals seems to be more than offset by the difference in mass. You're right that any issue of evenness is more than offset by the way a small frying pan gets used (tossing food). And by its size. And also about the weight. I use this pan instead of a 10" copper pan, because I find the copper in this size to be too heavy and badly balanced to work for this style of cooking. My 12" pan is copper ... but I don't try to toss that thing around. I like the stainless finish for sauté/fry pans (more than a spun steel pan, for instance) because I really like the stainless cooking surface for deglazing and making pan sauces. For the way I cook it's a kind of best compromise. I don't believe the extra layer of stainless steel makes much difference. It might be measureable, but it has so little thickness and so little mass that we can still think of the all clad pan as being aluminum. The stainless series is just a thinner piece of aluminum than the MC. The issue of the sides getting hot does not seem like a hot-spot issue. The sides heat up completely evenly. It seems more like too much conductivity up the sides, rather than too little (even though the physics of this makes little sense). It's not about flames wrapping up around the side of the pan ... I'm not letting that happen.

Another vote for the Chicago Metallic commercial. Aluminized steel, dull metallic finish. No non-stick anything. Use parchment, like every baker in the world. This material combination works great. Any similar weight, light (but not polished) aluminum works virtually as well. I have a couple of air bake insulated sheets also. I use those only when i don't want the bottom of what I'm baking to get browned. But they work great as baker's peels ... I use them all the time to slide things in and out of the oven.