paulraphael

I think our pending plan is Degustation followed by Chickalicious! Thanks for all the suggestions.

There are many different kinds of Stevia product, refined in different ways from the leaves of the plant. Some are white, others dark brown. The brown stevias tend to have a woody, almost maple-like flavor with some liquorice and other root flavors. It doesn't pass as sugar, but it has interesting flavor profile. I have no experience cooking or baking with it, so I don't know how it reacts with heat or other foods chemicals. There is almost overwhelming evidence that stevia is safe. It's been used as a sweetener for thousands of years in Asia and South America. I haven't seen a single evidence-based allegation about potential problems. Suspicion is that food industry lobbies (who have a strong interest in pattentable sugar substitutes) have exerted influence on the FDA in this matter. If you look on PubMed, you can actually find a decent number of clinical trials that support Stevia as an anti-diabetic supplement. It has a tendency to lower and to stabilize blood sugar, which cuiously has been known about for a long time in some native cultures. Unfortunately, as far as i can tell, these clinical demonstrate beneficial effects only with huge doses of stevia ... considering how sweet it is to begin with, you'd never get the benefit of it as a supplement if you're using it as a sweetener. But wouldn't worry for a second about sweetening food with it if you like the taste.

Yeah, I'm generally baffled by broiling. It throws out your precious pan juices, it doesn't give any smoky flavor like charcoal or hardwood, and it's really hard to control (I once set a mountain of nachos on fire in the broiler, thanks to a moment of inatention. The spectacle was brilliant, i thought, but there was nothing left of the chips and the guests almost ran for their lives when i brought the flaming platter into the living room). Also most home ovens have lousy, uneven broilers. I wouldn't even consider it unless you can get predictable even heat from yours. My friend's wolf range broils things nicely; my frigidaire (odd name for an oven, granted) has a useless broiler, in spite of a quite good oven. What's wrong with doing it all on the stove? You don't need a cast iron skillet. Any heavy pan will do. I actually prefer pans with shiny insides, so I can see how browned the fond is. I hate to saute all that beautiful meat and not have at least a basic pan sauce. Especially with fillets, which typically have quite a mild flavor. The sauce is an opportunity to focus the flavor. One other thought: if the fillets aren't already cut, you can cut them to slightly different thicknesses. this makes it very easy to cook them to different degrees to please different guests, while getting them evenly browned on the outside. People who like them bloody get thicker ones--they deserve them!

Camilia Panjabi has a book called "Great Curries of India," which I like very much. There seems to be some issue with the translations of the recipes in some cases, so I always cross reference with somethingg simmilar from Madhur Jaffrey's books. This problem asside, it's an excellent reference book with a lot of tempting ideas.

Normal! your pans are fine. That's just the early stages of oxidation. You can polish it away with any copper polish. but my wish for you is to learn to love the patina of a pan that gets used (as opposed to the coppery gleam of a fetish object in a show kitchen). A few more uses, and the pan will darken with a nice mottled, well-worn look that tells the world you actually coook with it. My good friend is a cook with a huge batterie of copper cookware. He used to keep it all gleaming. Finally his mom called and said, "David, stop polishing your copper and go out and make some friends." 'Nuff said.

which? Degustation, or the bar at the Modern?

What were your impressions of the truffles at the festival? Do you get the impression that American farmers and hounds are starting to know what they're doing?

(including a bottle of wine) My girlfriend and I got a present ... $150 to dine anywhere. We'd be interested in a place that serves interesting, at least somewhat contemporary food, with roots either in france of california (but we're open to some kind of asian fusion). Good value and fun, unpretentious surroundings are a plus. Broad question, I know. Just curious what ideas people throw our way. There seem to be more nuanced oppinions here than in Zagat and Michelin.

Hey, I love heavy copper. I don't think it makes sense for every pan, though. I use copper for saucepans and for bigger saute pans. for a small (10") poelle, like what I use sauteing and tassing smaller portions, I find the copper offerings from Falk and Mauviel and bourgeat to be unsuitable. Too heavy, badly shaped, and badly balanced to toss food in. I find aluminum to work great in this size. i used anodized aluminum (calphalon) for years ... it cooked beautifully and was well shaped and balanced, but it got beaten to hell, it warped, and i got sick of trying to figure out if the fond was burned or not on the dark surface. Now I use an alclad s.s. pan in this size. As obnoxious as the company can seem, the pan is excellent both on the stove and on the oven. Light, fast and responsive, even, easy to clean. And i paid just under $100 on amazon ... pretty competetive with Sitram, Demeyere, etc.. In many other sizes I think you'll find choices that make more sense than copper. There's little need for a copper dutch oven or stockpot. Something we should be thankful for. One day I would like a copper rondeau, though ... something in the 5 or 6 quart size. That would be a nice pan. Not sure what this has to do with the original topic ... all these pans have riveted handles. They inspire a certain amount of confidence (even if a spot weld is bombproof, you have no way of knowing for sure), and the few seconds of extra effort to clean them has never seemed like a big deal. I have noticed that my calphalon pieces use aluminum rivets, and some of the older ones have corroded on the inside. This seems like an esthetic annoyance more than a structural one.

agreed. for my copper pans i went to the restaurant supply store and got the generic commerical aluminum lids. they come in every imaginable size, are cheap and indestructible. half the time i don't even use the correct size; i just grab a big one and throw it over the top of the pan. maybe for a copper pot in a dutch oven size (if you can afford it, and then if you can lift it) there would be some advantage to honkin' heavy copper lid. but for that type of pot i use enameled cast iron.

I suspect these issues with welding concern the kinds of spot welds that we see in cookware, where two pieces of sheetmetal are connected with very low surface area welds. TIG and MIG welds, in applications where you have substantial metal contact, are going to be stronger than any kind of rivet connection could ever be. A bike frame held together with rivets wouldn't hold together for long. The switch from rivets to welding allowed steel-framed sky scrapers to be made with much lighter girders, because the connections are so much stronger. I just don't know if it's possible to get these benefits from welds in clad metal pans, or other pan constructions where you're attaching pieces of stainless steel that are a fraction of a milimeter thick. In a clad pan, the walls seem to be thinner than bicycle tubing. At the butted end, most road bike frames are .5mm to .9mm if they're steel. These steels are made of chrome moly and nickel chrome moly alloys that are way, way stronger than the 300 series stainless steels used in cookware. And the welded frames are typically heat treated after welding, which i suspect happens at temperatures that would destroy a clad metal pan. On the topic of galvanic corosion, or rivets working loose from thermal expansion, has anyone seen this happen on a high quality pan? I just don't know what the material science would be for some of the combinations we use. I can imagine the iron/steel/copper/s.s. sandwich of my copper cookware working like a car battery and self destructing in a matter of days, but it doesn't seem to happen. This kind of construction has been around almost forever (at least the tin lined versions). Clad metals in general would seem like a questionable idea for use at cooking temperatures, except in reality they have such a good track record. I've never heard of the stainless steel delaminating from aluminum or copper. Does it ever happen?

There's a dive bar on East 4th Street called appropriately enough, East 4th. But the sign just says "BAR." It's right across from the KGB bar ... off 2nd ave, i think. They serve mostly greasy bar food, but the bourbon wings are the tastiest, melt-off-the-bone wings I've ever had. I'm no wing expert, but these are amazine. I found out about the place from a wing-loving coworker who grew up in Buffalo and makes special trips downtown for these ... so that should be worth something.

Michael, that sounds almost too good to be true. A bit of prep work for a private lesson and a free meal? Sign me up! I hope you don't my asking where this was.

And of course, illegal to make it. I have a friend who used to be a high end moonshiner. She only sold her booze to friends at underground parties, for fear of getting caught. Among her creations was a very authentic absinthe, and also opium- and marijuana-based liqueurs. I can absolutely say that I got a strange buzz off of the Absinthe. It wasn't exactly pleasant ... kind of like alcohol plus cold medicine. But I can see how some people would be into it. There are kids who party with Robitussin, after all. Her beverages are very high quality. I trust her not to poison anyone with methanol (which evidently happened with some bargain brands of absinthe in Europe, leading to the myth that absinthe-level doses of wormwood could be toxic).

Welding seems like a reasonable option for heavy, unfinished aluminum. It holds together much thinner aluminum tubing for racing bike frames without too many issues. Big pieces of bar-stock handle tig welded or mig welded to a 5mm thick aluminum stock pot should be fine. I'm happy to have the rivets on all the other things.

All my cookware (different brands, different materials) has riveted handles ... it makes sense to me, based largely on HKDave's reasoning. I don't find them that hard to clean, and I don't actually care that much about bringing the edges of the rivets to a mirror polish. They're just going to get covered in hot food again tomorrow. The one piece that raises my eyebrows is a little calphalon butter warmer, which weighs around 6 ounces, and has a handle attached with not two but THREE industrial strength rivets. I guess it's worth the peace of mind, knowing that next time I wield a dangerous load of melted butter from one burner to the other, even if two rivets fail I still have some backup.

Cool, thanks for the replies. Next time it's getting baptized by fire. I wonder why the manufacturer's tell you not to?

Is it ever possible to stage part time? For people who work full time jobs and want to stage on weekends, or for dinner hours, or does this just conflict too much with the restaurant's actual schedule? On a separate note, does anyone have advice on finding a restaurant to stage at? I have a friend who's interested. She'd rather do it at a solid restaurant where she'd have a lot of learning oportunities than reaching for an über-restaurant with a star chef who may not actually have time to show anything.

the manufacturer says not to, but i'm wondering why. it looks like a piece of ceramic to me. hard to imagine any temperature that the steel oven could survive would have any effect on it. anyway, I roast a lot at high temperatures, and the stone lives in the bottom of the oven and gets spattered with grease. i'm too lazy to take it out, or to cover it with foil or anything like that. I'm wondering if it would be worth risking it. thoughts?

Poelle is just the french name for a regular, slope-sided frying pan. I use the word to distinguish it from a cast iron skillet shape, a saute pan, or anything else that might get called a frying pan.

Ahh, gotcha. For that kind of thing I love a 5qt or so pan with 5" high or so sides ... the shape the french call rondeaux and that americans call casseroles. Infinitely useful. Can be used for soups, sauteeing, braising, fricasees, small amounts of pasta, huge amounts of pasta sauce, risotto, etc. etc.. I have a beat up old calphalon pan in that size. It cooks wonderfully, but if it vanished I'd replace it with something that has a stainless interior. Clad aluminum, or if I was feeling weighted down with excess currency, heavy copper.

You think so? what quantities of sauces are you usually making? I have a 1.8 qt saucepan and a 3qt, and the smaller one gets used most often. I sometimes think it would be nice to have a much smaller one ... around 1 qt or so, for sauce quantites under 2 cups that I want to simmer for a while without a lot of reduction.

The French cooking books I have are the Bistro book by Hirigoyen, the original Julia Child books, Pepin's Complete Techniques (which I think of more as a reference than anything else), Larousse Gastronomique (also a reference) and Peterson's Glorious French Food (in spite of its title). My most used ones are the Julia Child vol. 1 and the Peterson book. But I rarely make recipes as written; I'm mostly interested in learning about the ingredients and techniques and the history and idiosyncracies of a particular style. I then like to apply all of that to whatever ingredients I can grab, or to whatever I'm in the mood to cook or eat. I only ocassionally cook "authentic" French, and when I do it's more for frame of reference than anything else. Peterson is a demigod for anyone who likes to cook like this. His explanations of ingredients and techniques and concerns for improvisation are much more thorough than anyone else's that I've seen. And the books are such a good read. I like his philosophy of trying to wean you from the recipes so you can just go into the kitchen and cook. On the other hand, if you do want to cook from a recipe, Peterson might drive you crazy. I get the impression that half of his recipes he just pulled out of thin air, without testing. They should be prefaced with the disclaimer, "See what happens when you try something kind of like this ..." Some of it is odd tastes (he likes chicken dark meat cooked to 145 degrees) and some just seems like mistakes (his cooking time/temperature for pate brisee tart shells will probably start a fire in your oven). I sometimes wonder if this on purpose ... if he throws in things like this to keep you on your toes, so you don't fall into the habit of slavishly following recipes. At any rate, when I do want to make a recipe, I learn the theory techniques from Peterson, and then cross reference the recipe against Julia Child of Jacques Pepin, just for a second opinion, to keep myself out of trouble.

Generally the better the steak, the simpler I like to keep it. I don't cook steak very often, so when I do I usually splurge and get something nice ... so it's rare that I make a complex sauce. I usually go for a sauce that intensifies and harmonizes the flavors rather than a condiment-style sauce that contrasts the flavors. So I make use of pan drippings, brown stock, and/or demiglace as the main ingredient, ocasionally with a flavor base of white wine infused with shallots--really basic stuff. Other ingredients that I like to use are mushroom preparations like duxelles, which just seem to bring out the best in meats without overpowering them. And also herbs, especially thyme as a background seasoning, and parsley as a finishing herb to liven and freshen the final flavor. And of course some salt and pepper for final balance. But not usually in the quantities you'd associate with a poivrade. I like to keep the thickness of the sauce on the loose side ... I'm comfortable with anything from an unbound brothlike consistency to a very light syruppy consistency that's just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. I think it's important that the sauce doesn't cling to the meat in such a high quantity to overwhelm it. Generally, the thinner the sauce, the more intensely I like to flavor it. which works out well, because most liasons tend to mute the flavors a bit. I'll often make a loose sauce with unbound, reduced stock, and then give it just a bit of sheen and body at the end with some butter. The demiglace that I make is quite intensely flavored, so I tend to use less of it than what's called for in most traditional recipes, and dispense with any additional reduction. With a good steak I'm inclined to plate the meat with the sauce, usually on top of a small pool of it. I'm always afraid that dinner guests will look at a separate sauce container and think of Mom's Gravy, and drown their poor piece of meat. So I take care of it in the kitchen.

I think there are a few differences. Shape, most obviously, which you've gone on to address. And which I've found isn't something you can take for granted. Finding a high quality pan in a shape that seemed reasonable was no easy trick. The materials also make a difference when you use the pan on the stove. Which of course isn't roasting, but there are a lot of times I need this from a roasting pan. Usually it's related to the roasting process (searing a piece of meat before putting it in the oven, or deglazing the pan afterwards). Sometimes it's unrelated to roasting--browning a bunch of meat quickly before making stock. There are some non-roasting things like this that a roasting pan is just better suited for than anything else. I also think the materials/thickness/surface finish make a difference while roasting. Most of the meat is going to get cooked by convection and radiation, but the bottom of the meat, and the pan juices, are going to be cooked largely by conduction from the pan. The surface of the pan is going to be influenced not just by the ambient temperature of the oven, but also by its absorption of radiant energy (dark surfaces absorbing more, polished stainless the least, brushed stainless or aluminum somewhere in between) and by its thermal mass and conduction. The result is that some pans seem to do a more reliable job of browning pan juices and the bottom of a roast than others. There are likewise some pans that don't brown very well, and others that seem to burn the fond almost every time. In my personal experience, aluminum clad with stainless has been an exellent all-around performer. Especially if the outer surface is a dull or brushed finish, rather than a mirror finish. I'd be willing to bet that plain, heavy aluminum would perform comparably well, but I very much like to have a stainless steel interior for ease of cleaning.