paulraphael

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.

Inox just means stainless steel. With copper your options are stainless or tin. I've never been attracted to tin linings, because they melt at under 500 degrees ... this makes them unusable for aggressive browning or high temperature roasting. They do supposedly offer even more responsiveness than stainless lined pans, though. Mauviel now has a line of non-stick pans, the thought of which horrifies me. My guess is it's just a marketing ploy. I think of nonstick surfaces as being both specialized (for the few types of cooking where sticking is a problem, not a benefit, and where browning and developing a fond or seeing how well cooked the drippings are don't matter) and disposable (I have yet to hear of a nonstick finish that can hold onto its nonstick qualities for more than a year or two). By the way, Zabar's used to have an excellent selection of Mauviel copper, at prices that were much better than Bridge's. Haven't been back in a while, but they're worth checking out.

Not a direct answer to the unquenchable-thirst-for-mineral-oil isuue, but this link offers some interesting science on oils and wood (from a musical instrument perspective): http://www.recorderhomepage.net/wood.html Personally, I've been using a butcher block made with a 3 foot piece of maple countertop material (that I sanded the urethane off of) for about 10 years now. I oil it with cheap olive oil, and have never, ever had an issue with rancidity or bad odors. It doesn't even smell like olive oil, even after it drinks up several ounces of it. It smells like wood. Once every few years I sand it (with a finishing sander) and then oil it with a lot of oil. The only issue I've ever had is that recently it's started warping upward (suggesting that the top surface has dried out a bit). My question based on the linked article is if there are any food safety issues with using a polymerizing oil (like tung oil or boiled linseed oil). These are the "real" oils that offer significant protection for wood. If they're not hazardous, it might make sense to do an initial coat with one of these oils to form a protective seal. After this, the surface could probably be maintained with food grade oil, and I'm guessing it would require less of it. For what it's worth, I've been advised by a couple of custom musical instrument makers to never use lemmon oil ... that it's just lemmon sented mineral spirits, and it will actually dry out the wood over time.

I love the old school wooden spoon, but like phatj, the bamboo spatula is what I reach for 90% of the time. When I want to taste something, I grab a clean metal spoon ... I find the wooden spoon makes any liquid i sip taste too much like ... wood.

It's funny, I've never thought about it but I've felt the stigma. It seems to me there are broadly speaking two uses of sugar in savory cooking: where it's a main ingredient (honey glazed ham, seet/sour sauce, duck a l'orange, etc.) and where it's used to balance flavors, maybe in a case where perfect ingredients wouldn't require balancing (tomato sauce, etc.). In the latter case I've sometimes felt like I was cheating when using refined sugar. It makes little sense ... I don't see why honey would be better unless I wanted the sauce to taste like honey. Or why it should be seen as 2nd rate cooking to make sauce with less than perfect tomatoes --if they were truly perfect, I wouldn't even be cooking them! So many classic dishes and techniques were designed to make good use of less than perfect ingredients. Adding a bit of sugar seems no less pure in this regard than simmering something for an hour.

Thanks to feedback here I picked up some glad and some ziplock containers (seem about identical). i've had them a few weeks and so far they've solved all the problems. i realized that stacking is the key, and it's what was missing from my old stuff. now i have a total of 3 sizes, they all stack and take up very little room. no trouble finding lids or having piles of odd shaped plastic tumbling onto my head. thanks for the great ideas!

A KA technician would have a heart attack if they heard this! They're adamant about using speed 2 only for kneading bread. On speed 1, the engine doesn't have adequate cooling, on 3 and above it's working too hard. Also, 20 to 30 minutes is a long, long time to be kneeding by machine. If you're using an unusual dough that requires this, it might be helpful to try a couple things. First is Autolyse, which means to let the dough sit for 20 minutes or so after it's been hydrated (sometimes just the flour, without the yeast and other ingredients added) and knead afterwards. This lets time take care of much of what the kneading ordinarily does, and you can knead much less. The other is to to do your kneeding in 5 or 10 minute rounds, with some cool off time in between. In any case, I'd be sure to do a windowpane test early on ... my guess is the dough is ready long before 30 minutes, and all you're really doing past that is oxidizing the dough and heating the motor.

Certainly true. Sometimes in these cases I'll run for the hills, but other times I'll take a couple of steps back and see that in spite of all the theory, these people have doing this for years (and maybe it's a tradition that goes back farther than that) and no one seems to be dying, so maybe they actually know what they're doing with that mop bucket and used meat!

Octaveman, would you mind talking a bit about what sharpening stones / other devices you think are reasonable to have for maintaining Japanese knives? I'm curious to know if there's a way to do it for less than the prices I saw at Korin (where I'd be spending about double the price of any knives I get on a set of water stones and a how-to DVD!)

there's a little french/tunisian place called Epices ... right off columbus, i think on 70th street. I'd steer clear of the tunisian wine, but other than that everything i've had there has been delicous. very moderate prices.

The nice thing about a food mill is that it purees and strains at the same time. So a lot of things that you'd have to strain or peel if you pureed them in a blender or food processor you can just toss in there unpeeled. It also has a much gentler action than a machine, so it's less likely to turn starch into glue. The food you put in needs to pretty soft, otherwise you'll give yourself more of a workout than you need. And you can get the Strawberry Peeler attachement for it just a couple of thousand dollars

People can be pretty precious about the seaoning on their cast iron; I personally don't think a lot of fuss is necessary. If you really want to maintain the maximum non-stick qualities, like for making omelettes or crepes, it might make sense to handle the pan with kid gloves and keep the heat moderate. Under high heat the seasoning, which is really a slightly penetrating coat of polymerized oil, will become partially carbonized. It will still protect the pan, it will still look good, and it will still maintain some non-stick qualities. It just probably won't perform AS well as an uncarbonized coating. I crank the heat on my cast iron pans all the time. I use them mostly when I want to brown the bejeezus out of something, so I don't put the food in until I start seeing smoke. Most likely my seasoning has been carbonized, at least somewhat. It still works well enough for me. A bit of new seasoning gets applied every time the pan gets used. Sticking and rust have never been issues.

I have a couple that are filthy, that I've used as recipe books in the kitchen when I'm lazy. But most are clean, not counting my notes and post-its. I use them for reference. Usually if i need help I consult a lot of sources (including books, and the fine people here) and develop my own recipe which I keep as a text file on the computer. This lets me take a printout into the kitchen, which I'll scribble all over with notes, then updated the file on the computer, and sometimes work through many revisions until I get it right. This works great because I end up with a library of my own recipes on the computer, which can easily be printed or emailed to someone else, and are a snap to revise or convert to different quantities, etc.

I have bags of beef and veal shank meat in my freezer, verterans of my last batch of brown stock. I figured this would be good for pasta sauce, dumpling filling, that kind of thing. So last night I made some tomato sauce with the meat ... something really simple: canned crushed tomatoes, onion, white wine, olive oil, a bunch of the meat, thyme, salt, and pepper. I was curious to see to what degree the meat had had its flavor extracted. What I noticed immediately was that 100% of its fat had been extracted. I had to compensate for this by adding siginificant amounts of olive oil (never ever an issue with the kinds of meat i've normally used in a sauce like this). I also noticed that the meat had some pretty good flavors (especially some of the more browned pieces) but that it was missing some other flavors. The overall sense was that some flavors had been completely erradicated but not others. I don't know how to articulate what was there and what was missing ... just a sense that some of what makes the meat taste meaty and beefy was there, and some wasn't. In the end, I thought the sauce was half good. It was flavorful, but it had holes in the flavor that I didn't know how to adjust for. In the future, I think I'll use the spent meat along with some cheaper, fattier, fresh meat (ground chuck or pork, perhaps). Something with less interesting but better balanced flavors. Any other thoughts on how to get the most out of this stuff?

My girlfriend and I want to cook ourselves a celebratory dinner, and I thought some black truffles would be fun to splurge on. But I just discovered that aux delices no longer has a store, and I don't have time to order any. Who should I check out? Also, I'm a truffle newbie, so any tips on how to buy would be most helpful. Starting with how much ... I'm planning to make a demiglace based sauce for a couple of filet mignons. I'll probably make 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sauce at the most. How many grams would be reasonabel? I want the truffle to be the primary flavor of the sauce, not a mysterious background element. Thanks!

I don't agree with this 100% ... it's true if the reason you won't drink it is bad flavor, but in many cases wines that have general qualities that you don't care for make excellent wines for cooking. A wine that's boring and two dimensional can work very well, as long as it has the basic qualities called for in the dish (acid, or full body, for example) because the subtleties of flavor and aroma will be cooked off anyhow. Red wine in particular is transformed by cooking and by the presence (or absence) of proteins in the food. Red wines that I would normally consider too insipid to drink (like most cheap merlots) can work great in cooked dishes and sauces, provided they have enough body to hold up. I also find, as others have mentioned, that recorked wine that's been sitting in the fridge for days or weeks can be great in a sauce or a risotto. The oxidized flavors that make it unpleasant to drink don't seem to show up in the dish. Possibly because cooking will oxidize the bejeezus out of it anyhow?

I'd check out the discussion boards on kitchenaid.com. A lot of experienced people there who can advise you. Also tips on where to get them for cheap. I wouldn't bother with the copper bowls unless you can find a great deal on them. For silly reasons they'll void the warranty, and I suspect you can get equally good results with a bit of acid (cream of tartar, etc.) and the brute force of the machine.

I'd start by reducing your dependence on recipes like these: http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Gui...e/dp/0375751408 after that, it seem like there are a couple of issues. the first is cooking method itself. Raw food is obviously the winner here, with multiday bbq and smoking the loser. i'd look at techniques that originated in places without a lot of cooking fuel (stir fry, etc.) The second set of issues is the amount of C02 that went into producing and delivering the food. that's a more complex can of worms, but interesting to consider.

This thread inspired me. I'm cooking a dinner for my parents as a present, and have decided to send them a fake menu in advance. I'm aiming for something that will be at first glance pretentious, and at second glance horrifying. here's my first draft: Amuse Bouche blowfish carpaccio fleurette on a "spoon" of cinnamon chewing gum Entré Fire-blackened quail's eggs embedded in a block of ice. Suckling urchin en papillote served with a brine shrimp aspic and a seasonal meddley of cured, distressed West Brooklyn riverfish. Tossed Salad of Frisée and "Dirty Money" fresh baby greens and "leaves" of various international paper currencies, tenderized in a week-long simmered balsamic reduction, sprinkled with fine grains of truffle soil. PLAT PRINCIPALE Twice-fingered Harris Ranch Wagyu beef, prepared sous vide in tepid water, garlanded with imported thistle and served in an unfired clay pot. Handpicked, drawn and quartered young rabbit, punished with a shock of mezcal-infused habannero chili marmalade, steamed in a cornhusk and balanced on a pyramid of maize. Medallions of milk-fed veal-fed veal, hand-hewn turrets of baby harp seal foie gras, wild dolphin roe, collard greens. Partially sedated live monkey, bamboo shoots and papaya, moistened with coconut holandaise, wrapped in grilled banana leaves and presented on a skewer. DESSERT Demolished Cake Five layers of time-ravaged angelfood, interleaved with dessicated bastions of ganache and creme anglaise, scorched and helmetted by a sheath of whipped cream fallen in ruin, served on crystal platter shards partially supported by a collapsing tower of butter. Sweet Triage a demitasse each of lightly sweetened waters, made with cane sugar from Hawaii, Barbados, and Suriname, served precisely at body temperature. Arrives with three brown rice flour "communion wafers" for cleansing the palate. (Note: it is not legal and therefore impossible for us to serve sweetened water made with Cuban sugar cane. Please make a discreet inquiry with your server for more information.) Black Opium mixed valrhona bittersweet chocolate vapors, inhaled through a pâte feulleté hookah