paulraphael

Here's a brownie theory question (and if no one has an answer, this might be a self-nomination for a test ...) The recipe I like uses a food processor to grind the chocolate and incorporate all the ingredients (including the tiny amount of flour at the end). The only ingredient that gets melted is the butter. I haven't come across any other chocolate recipes that use ground chocolate instead of melted. I gather the reason for grinding is either 1) for convenience, 2) an adaptation for an appliance cookbook, or 3) it does something different to the texture than melting. Any thoughts?

I'm curious to know what qualities people like in brownies. I've always been partial to having as intense and rich and chocolatey an experience as possible, without the brownie having the quite density and (especially) stickyness of fudge. I just assumed this is what everyone liked, until I stumbled onto a cooks illustrated article (one of those quests for the perfect ______ installments) on brownies. The author's ideal was specifically for something closer to cake than what I like. So where does everyone else stand? Brownies are the one recipe I've gotten from my mom. For most other desserts I go to people like Pierre Hermé and Alice Medrich and Gilles Bajolles, and experiment with their ideas until I need bypass surgery. But mom's recipe is so right on that I've hardly even tweaked it. I have no idea where she got it (it definitely isn't original) so I don't know if it would be within the rules to post it.

I wouldn't be sure without checking up on it. There are lots of different flavor compounds that get broken down by visible light and ultraviolet. The beer example is just a particularly obvious one (just a fraction of a second in direct sun makes beer skunky). Lots of other phenolic compounds and esters are effected in one way or another by light. It's obviously a bigger concern with foods that we store for a long time. Thos brown glass apothecary bottles you mention are brown for the same reason. It's not just food compounds that get broken down by light. Almost all my darkroom chemicals are stored in brown bottles. The most sensitive ones (developers, which contain strong reducing agents) benefit form old school amber glass. The rest are in brown plastic. I'm resisting the temptation to use my darkroom bottles for vanilla extract!

I've noticed that commercial vanilla extract always seemed to come in dark brown bottles (whether plastic or glass). This suggests that the extract is light sensitive. This wouldn't be too unusual ... a lot of chemicals are broken down by various wavelengths of light, and are supposed to be stored in amber bottles as a result. If so it might be worth using opaque containers or amber glass for the homemade stuff. Especially since everyone's making enough to keep around for ages. Any thoughts?

the point might be academic, but Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking considers Cassia to be a variety of cinnamon, not a substitute.

Could you give an idea of how much the basic sharpening kit (2 or 3 stones, or whatever you're recommending, plus stone flattener) costs? I haven't looked into it, but my casual glances at pricetags make it look like these tools could cost more than any knife I decide to get!

Peterson't Essentials of Cooking doesn't really have recipes in the traditional sense. It's more like "here's how to cook," with a lot of specific examples (but little in the way of measurements).

I'd like to try the homemade extract experiment. Does anyone have opinions on a neutral tasting alcohol for the solvent? I suppose you could always dilute some everclear, but I never see that anywhere. I've noticed that most vodkas aren't nearly as neutral flavored as people sometimes say. Good vodkas can have a pretty complex set of flavors (and a big price) and cheap ones can have solvent-like flavors. I just want the extract to taste like vanilla.

No, it doesn't. It will trash the bearings, or at least void the warranty. The spiral hook transfers a lot of upward force to the gear box, which the old one wasn't designed to handle.

The trouble is that if these soups didn't taste like salt water, then campbell's would have to figure out how to make them taste like soup. which is a little trickier. As far as what you can call salt, are there rules in food labelling that say it can only be sodium chloride? In chemistry there are millions of compounds called salts. including ones that would melt the skin right off your tongue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt

Cool, thanks. I'll see if my butcher can get some shoulder/butt (why is the shoulder called the butt??) for the next round of experiments. I'll post the results.

Do you think omitting the whites might produce a smoother or more succulent texture? By volume, do whites tend to give more or less structural strength than yolks?

Ok, if you don't experience with berkshire, what about regular pork? What cuts would you recommend for a succulent braise?

I've experimented quite a bit with flourless chocolate torte recipes. In general I prefer the ones with unseparated eggs (these are more like baked custards; the ones with whipped egg whites seem more like souflés). The finally recipe I developed uses three whole eggs, very lightly beaten. Since arriving at this, I've found a couple of similar recipes by pastry chefs I admire (Pierre Hermé and Gilles Bajole) that use a single whole egg plus three egg yolks. I'm curious to know the idea behind this is--why it might be beneficial to use a much higher proportion of yolks to whites. I plan to try it next time, but it's helpful to understand the theory. Any thoughts?

In my effort to duplicate the orgasmic berkshire pork experiences i've had at a couple of restaurants, I finally got my hands on some. The only cut they had was loin, so I had a couple of chops cut. They did not have the intense marbling that I've seen in pictures online, but had more than regular pork chops. I sauteed them, and thougth they were only ok. Better than your average chop, but still very lean, and nothing like the melting textures I've had before. I want to go back and try again. My two thoughts are that maybe I need a different cut (something fattier, perhaps with more collagen) and a different cooking method (like braising). Any ideas? My butcher said that they can get their hands on any cut of berkshire if I give them notice. I'd like something intensely flavorful and fatty with a melting texture.

Forgive me for going off-topic, but I'm curious if it's actually impossible to season stainless steel, or whether it can be done but people don't because A) it's unnecessary to prevent rust and/or B) it spoils the pretty finish. In my experience, grease certainly can be burned onto stainless in a manner that's extremely hard to remove without badass solvents. If grease were intentionally burned onto a stainless pan in a uniform manner, would this not function similarly to the seasoning on a carbon steel or cast iron pan? ← It might work a little, but stainless is a lot less porous than carbon steel, so I'd think the seasoning would be more fragile. Also, stainless is a lousy conductor compared with carbon steel.

I don't use shortening in anything (although I experimented with it in tart shells for quite a while). In the end it's going to come down to what flavor and texture you like most. Personally, even when I follow the conventional steps for a crumbly pate brisee crust, I end up with a fair amount of flakiness that I like quite a bit. If I wanted super flaky, I'd just go get some puff pastry and see what I could do with that. !00% flaky, and 100% buttery goodness. Here's an intetersting article by Melissa Clark of the NY times on her quest for the perfect pie crust. Good insight on alternative fats: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/dining/1...serland&emc=rss

I wonder would it would take to actually change the system. A union? Rabble rousers turning everything upside down? I can't see it happening spontaneously. There seem to be so many people lined up to replace to anyone who walks out.

How is this racism (economic or otherwis)? Isn't it about people having the qualities required for the job? Would a restaurant that hires illegals cooks typically have a problem hiring an illegal waiter IF that person spoke the language well, had the people skills, and looked presentable? Is the person's nationality, skin color, or demographic an issue, or is it more commonly their simple ability to do the job and make the right impression? If there's prevalent racism in the FOH, I suspect it more often takes the form of french restaurants only hiring french waiters (regardless of who cooks the food), and other similar nationality/image preferences. But is this really racism? It's an interesting conversation. Like a high-end dress shop only hiring skinny, beautiful saleswomen. Of course they do, although many people question the legality of this kind of practice.

I found a great wok at one of the many restaurant supply stores on the bowery in NYC. They had the regular spun steel ones for about $12, but I fell for the hand-hammered ones that went for $17. They're beautiful ... you can see the grain pattern from the wood mold on the outside, and they're smooth on the inside. The metal is actually a bit thicker at the bottom than at the top, so it tends to balance, like a weebil. It seems like the same carbon steel as the machine made ones. Only caveat is that I thought i was getting a small one, suitable for my home stove. It only looked small because it was sitting next to piles of umbrella-sized and jacuzzi-sized commercial woks. The one I brought home must be 18" across. It does fit on the stove (barely), but I don't have a fraction of the BTUs I'd need to cook with the thing at full capacity. So I have to cook much smaller batches than it's designed to handle. Next time I shop at one of those places I'm bringing a ruler.

All year round, the street vendors and grocers in chinatown have a good assortment of veggies (at least ones used in chinese cooking) that are amazingly fresh and cheap. How do they do it? Where does this stuff come from?

Surely the list would include the merciless Quetzylsaccatanango Insanity Pepper, used in Chief Wiggum's chile-- "grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMIVBwwmZDk

I've fallen in love with these pigs! After Momofuku and now a stellar meal at Aburiya Kinnosuke, I want to cook it myself. Lots of it. Every day. Any suggestions on cuts and cooking methods? I've never cooked this kind of succulent, fatty pork before. Not sure which cuts are the standouts in these pigs, or which cooking methods would bring out the best. Someone here suggested that Momofuku uses shoulder (and I read somewhere that they cooked it sous vide). Not sure what Aburiya served, but it seemed like some kind of braise. I lean towards braising or roasting, but will explore other options. I'm open to any ideas, and whatever thoughts and experiences you care to share. Thanks!

Roasting is a dry heat process. What we do in the oven is actually baking at a high temperature to simulate authentic roasting--which is meat turned on an open spit in front off a very hot fire. A covered roaster takes the process many steps furtherer away from true roasting. It accumulates steam, so you lose the benefit of the dry heat in crisping the skin and concentrating the maillard flavors on the surface. And you radically reduce the temperature at the surface of the bird, by blocking the radiant heat of the oven. Much of the browning and concentrated roasting flavors come from the high surface temperatures, which you get largely from radiant heat--this is true in an oven as well as in front of a fire. You can dry out a turkey with a fire, a dry oven, or with steam: drying comes from overcooking it. The covered roaster just makes it harder to screw up, because you're cooking with gentler heat, and things take longer ... you'll have an easier time cooking the bird through without overcooking the beast meat. But you'll have an impossible time making a great, roasted tasting bird. There are many better ways to confront the issue of proper cooking without overcooking ... ones that can give you crisp, delicious, mahogany brown skin without sacrificing any juiciness. I'd convert the covered roaster to a litter box if I had one.

That sounds like a fine solution. Demiglace in stew seems like a silly use of resources. Stews and braises release plenty of their own savor, and part of what's great about them is that they make such great meals out of pedestrian ingredients. I'd save the demi for sauces. FWIW, I've used the demiglace gold product a fair amount, and always thought it was just ok. Until this Christmas when I made a sauce duxelles with it, and found it to be outrageously salty. I spent most of my cooking time improvising ways to mask and balance the salt bomb I'd made, so I wouldn't have to throw the whole thing out. Has anyone else had this experience? It was a first for me. At any rate, I've given up on all that stuff and now just make my own. Good project for a rainy weekend (rent a bunch of movies!) ... and it's way better than the commercial stuff. But not necesarilly cheaper.