paulraphael
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Posts posted by paulraphael
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8 hours ago, dtremit said:
You can get the skinny type with a nice ergonomic handle:
https://www.microplane.com/premium-classic-series-zester-grater-turq
This is the only kind I've ever had, but I've been pleased with it.
I think I'll try one of these.
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If I were shopping for knives, I'd take a look at those Misono Swedish steel ones with the dragon graphic. Good prices for classic workhorse carbon steel.
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My main microplane is so dull it was defeated by a lemon today. Time for a new one.
I'm curious which model people prefer. I've noticed just about every professional cook uses the long skinny ones. They seem like they'd be kind of inefficient. Are they popular because they fit easily in a knife roll?
I've always bought the paddle-shaped ones, with a more rectangular plane. They make more sense to me. And can be stuffed into a knife roll if needed.
Am I missing something?
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I recently finished the bottle of Uigedail I was so enamored with. By the end I'd gotten kind of tired of it. I love the smoke and peat, but started to find it a bit too sweet, almost like a gingerbread house. Something cookie / biscuity about it. I then had a sip from an old bottle of Lagavulin 16, and thought, hello old friend.
I'm intrigued by the special editions of Lagavulin but don't have the budget.
Has anyone tried the other no-age-statement Ardbegs, like Corryvreckan?
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Yes.
Looks like you could experiment with cooling rates.
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From what I gather, aging with an espresso machine is just hard work. Breville has great customer service, but once the thing is out of warranty, it may be difficult to find parts. They're all proprietary.
If you go with an E61 machine, you have the promise of eternal life (high-quality, industry-standard parts that will be available forever). But people tell me it can be almost impossible to get service. There are so few people in this country who know how to work on these things, they're perpetually backed up, and they give priority to restaurants and cafés who have service contracts.
My friend's Profitec machine has been out of service for over a year while he waits for an opening from the one guy in the midwest who works on them. His wife has started to go down youtube rabbit holes and attempted to replace parts, with very mixed results.
Edited to add: this all stacks up in the Breville's favor, if you want to be completely rational about it. You can probably replace the thing for the price of overhauling an E61.
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Stick blenders also do a good job. The whipping attachment for our Bamix is just a smooth flat disk. Looks like it wouldn't do anything but is fast almost to a fault. I like it for whipping small amounts of cream.
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Dave Arnold implores everyone to only buy Isi. There have been cases of off-brand siphons blowing up in people's faces. I don't know how serious a deal this is, but considering that Dave is usually a "safety third!" kind of adventurer (and is not sponsored by Isi) this caught my attention.
You say you're only interested in whipped cream. But who knows what you'll want to experiment with once you get the thing in your hands. They're super versatile. And fun.
I recommend the 1/2 liter Isi ... the one that can do either hot or cold. But not the insulated model. This one is the most versatile for most uses.
My one rant about Isi is that they don't sell the containers separately. You should be able to get a separate containers in various without buying whole additional siphons.
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On 11/25/2023 at 11:03 AM, TdeV said:
@rotuts, ham is a many splendored thing. With which I think one could make quite a few dinners! E.g.
- Indonesian-Style Ham stir fry, from @ElsieD
- Ham & Swiss stuffed boneless chicken legs with tomato sauce, from @HungryChris.
- Toast, Ham & Egg Sandwich for dinner, from @Kim Shook
- Asparagus, ham, havarti, mustard rolled in crescent roll dough with Hollandaise, from @Shelby
- Crab and Ham Succotash with Cornbread, from @Kim Shook
- Chopping up ham in the Cuisinart, with ideas, from @kayb
- Mosaic Chicken Terrine, from @lemniscate
- Fake Crab & Ham Salad, from @Kim Shook
- Spanish-Inspired Ham and Pasta Salad With Smoked Paprika Vinaigrette | Weinstein and Scarbrough via Washington Post
- Caramelised endive with Serrano ham | Yotam Ottolenghi
- Top Notch Ham and Egg Salad, from @Norm Matthews
- Roasted Hasselback Ham with Pineapple
- Glaze for Baked Ham, from eGullet
- Calzone Classico from Betty Bossi
- Zucchetti Strudel (Zucchini Strudel) by Kochen
- Creamy pasta bake with beetroot & smoked ham
- Macaroni and Cheese with Peas and Ham - Fine Cooking
Actually, I went looking for a photo of this
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Gebackener Kürbis mit Hackfleisch (Baked Squash with Minced Meat), I think from Kochen & Küche,
though I had interspersed ham slices in place of the ground meat.
I have lots more in my "notes" database. So, a lot more can be done with ham!
Skimming this thread, I thought for a minute that the bullet list was your Thanksgiving menu. Mind blown.
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Anyone have this? Comparisons with earlier editions?
The 2nd edition is my all-time favorite cookbook. But it predates all the good stuff of the 21st century ... pressure cooker and sous-vide extractions, modern hydrocolloids, whipping siphons, etc.
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On 11/23/2023 at 7:24 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:
I'm not saying the acacia board is hard, just that it felt hard when I tapped on it. Just now I did the same experiment with a couple of walnut boards and they felt hard too. I think tapping may be more a test of density than hardness.
However after a few moments googling I found an article on acacia hardness. Apparently acacia is hard...
https://woodworkly.com/how-hard-is-acacia-wood/
Whether acacia is bad or good for a cutting board I still don't know.
The Janka hardness is within the usual range for cutting board woods, but I've heard that it has a high silica content, which quickly dulls blades through abrasion.
Some species of Acacia are also skin irritants.
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Chana Masala. I'm a bit of a one-trick pony ... if vegan friends are coming over, this is what they get. It sits alone at the intersection of "vegan," "things I know how to make," and "insanely delicious." I've even made it for Indians.
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12 minutes ago, Enchant3ress said:
Eggs make the stuffing moist and help bind everything together. They also add flavor and create a fluffy texture. So, they bring a lot to the party! 🍳🍞
I don't use enough eggs to taste them (I don't like the flavor) but definitely use for binding and moisture. The stuffings I make are basically forcemeats with bread and a bit of egg binder. I use the duck meat left over from making duck coulis for the sauce, and a bit of pork shoulder. Then something for character (wild mushrooms, chestnuts, dried fruit, etc.)
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On 11/20/2023 at 8:57 PM, liuzhou said:
Most research concludes the opposite of your opinion. Plastic or, heaven forbid, glass etc are more prone to "bacteria". Wood actually contains antibacterial properties. Any bacteria are not all bad!
Studies have gone back and forth on this over the years. Most of them have been poorly funded, and so far from definitive. The closest thing to a consensus I can tease out: wood, plastic, and rubber are all fine. They all need to be maintained, and if they get to a point of having grooves in them that you can't get out, they're no longer safe.
Wood doesn't really have magical antibacterial properties, nor does it have pro-bacterial properties. It can draw bacteria down away from the surface where it dies on its own, but this isn't something you want to rely on. You want to keep the surface smooth, and wash well with hot soapy water. Just like any board. Plastic has the advantage of the dishwasher, the disadvantage of being much harder to refinish.
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The assumption used to be that the best coffee (espresso or brewed) would come from a perfectly uniform grind. This idea persisted because there was no accurate way to measure grind distribution, and very few people who cared enough to figure it out.
Now the coffee science community has the drive and the budget, and all kinds of tools, including laser interferometry and statistical image analysis. One of the first things these newly-equipped, over-caffeinated scientists did was measure the grind distribution from the most respected and beloved high-end grinders. They did not find what they expected. In all cases they found a widely ranging particle distribution, with a peak at the selected grind size, but a slope in the histogram extending far in both directions—toward fines and boulders. And in grinders with certain bur designs, they discovered what they call bimodal distribution—2 peaks, indicating high quantities of grinds at two different sizes, along with the same slope into boulders and fines.
The conclusions to be drawn from this are complex and evolving. The especially tricky part has been trying to map these various distributions to predictable flavor profiles. The only thing that really holds up from the conventional wisdom is that the good grinders do produce a tighter distribution than bad grinders. But none produce a very tight distribution.
TL;DR: There are more things in heaven and earth and your coffee cup, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.
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On 12/4/2022 at 8:38 AM, lindag said:
I've heard from a couple of sources who've built their outdoor ovens that they're are really not practical because it takes an enormous of time to get them up to the proper temperature. None of my own personal experience.
I've thought about this. It's helped discourage me from this particular flaming rabbit hole.
One approach would be to get community involvement. How many people can you meet who would bring their own dough to your place on fire day? What about bread bakers and other bakers who could use the residual heat? You could be a local hero.
Designing an oven that excels at all these things ... you'll need a serious kung fu master to help with that.
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Any decent hood can handle smoke. Most domestic hoods have a hard time with plumes of atomized grease. Then there's the problem with what happens to the grease after it's ingested. The centrifugal theory used by ventahood works poorly in practice and makes a mess. The standard restaurant-style baffles can work well if there's enough air flow (in linear feet per minute ... cfm by itself won't tell you enough here).
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On 11/6/2023 at 6:10 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:
I am puzzled. I like to try new things. Tonight I received a Kuhn Rikon board of which I had high hopes...
https://kuhnrikon.com/ch_en/blog/post/colori-cutting-board
The product verbiage claims the board is soft on knives, but to me it feels rather hard. The material is said to be "PP", by which I assume they mean polypropylene. Thoughts on polypropylene for cutting boards compared to other plastics?
I think most boards are polyethylene. Not sure which would be softer. Subjectively, not all polyethylene boards even feel the same, so you probably just need to trust what it feels like (and if your knife seems to dull faster).
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On 11/2/2023 at 3:45 AM, Deephaven said:
The driving force to switch is two fold. A somewhat simple meal will turn my 70f kitchen into an 80-85f in the summer and the grease propagation from the heat is seriously insane. I have a ventahood and it is basically useless. Perhaps a large 1600cfm vent would deal better but even then the amount of residue you'd have to clean out of the vent is awful.
Ventahoods are fundamentally useless; the technology doesn't work. I'd suggest looking up threads on Houz (formerly Garden Web). There are couple of engineers who post there who have cracked the code on hoods, and explain pretty well how and why most consumer hoods fail. The answers have more to do with creating a large boxed-in space above the range ("capture area") than with cfm. But also, standard restaurant-style baffles do the job for removing grease as long there's adequate air speed going over them. The centrifugal ventahood method is a mess.
Edited to add: I've been planning a kitchen renovation for a year now; the hardest part (besides coming up with the money) has been figuring out how to get decent ventilation. The consumer options are mostly terrible. And it's hard to find a commercial installer who will talk to a homeowner. The best solutions I've seen are by people who hired an HVAC engineer and had a custom installation, but I'm hoping not to spend my life savings on a vent.
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Getting rid of fossil fuels is a great idea, and I look forward to the day I can replace my gas boiler and hot water heater with heat pump models.
The gas use of a range is negligible in comparison. I like to cook; I don't believe my gas stove use contributes to my Big American Carbon Footprint by much more than a rounding error.
Indoor pollution is still a big deal. But pointing the finger at gas ranges is just plain stupid. The real problem is that we don't require effective range hoods. We barely even make them available for residential installations. Almost all the range hoods designed for homes are terribly designed compared with real restaurant hoods, and the differences aren't even expensive.
Hoods are THE solution to the indoor pollution problem. Because all high-heat cooking, even on an induction range, produces smoke and particulates you shouldn't breathe. If you sauté or stir fry, you're sending plumes of irritants and carcinogens into the air. It's absurd that building codes don't require real hoods. In NYC, in most buildings, you're not even allowed to have them.
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1 hour ago, Deephaven said:
Glad you found a fix for your current unit. In the future though I suggest a more serious look at induction. I have bluestar and the two critical things you cite are definitely the strength of induction and not the bluestar. Even on the 8k burner with a deflection plate and an extra 2 stacked grates you can't simmer on the range. I gave up and do it in my oven. Wok cooking as well. Compared to other gas ranges (wolf/dacor directly tested often) it is brilliant but even the cheaper wolf induction destroys it. Shocking how much less "boiling" proteins do on the induction. After a bunch of testing my bluestar is about to get sold. It's a 36" range top, but about to be a 36" induction. Was a hard swallow as well since I have a near complete collection of deherrelin copper.
What induction cooktop did you settle on?
With the bluestar simmer, are you sure it can't just be adjusted lower? I haven't heard this complaint before. Here's a how-to.
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Dry towels. Cotton ones ... we have some microfiber towels kicking around, which are great for some things, but they'll melt if you're pulling something out of a 500°F oven.
I do keep a pair of big dumb silicone mits for times I have to wrestle something big and heavy out a hot oven. Like a turkey on a heavy roasting pan. They're not essential, but they offer protection up your forearm, and you don't have to worry about a towel slipping and exposing some metal, or bumping your knuckles into a hot surface. It's nice that they don't absorb water.
The real drawback to things like this is they can get gross inside and are hard to clean. You should make sure your hands are clean before putting them on. This adds to the hassle, and is a reason towels are usually more convenient.
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9 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:
No, borax is not flammable, but there's little of it in briquettes to start with, and even less by the time it's packaged for sale, because it's only used to promote release of the briquette from its mold.
You're right; I misread the MSDS.
9 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:I'm not sure what to make of the Myhrvold claim, because he's an award-winning BBQ cook, because he's right so often, and because he seems immune to received wisdom. It's true that controlling air flow is a key to maintaining temperature control, and it seems so obvious that lump contains more air that perhaps he didn't see a need to test it. It's hard for me to imagine, however, that the difference in the amount of air in the fuel matters more than the amount of air surrounding the fuel, which is bound to be much greater in volume.
I reread the passage in MC; he attributes the difference not to air, but to ash. Which also might run counter to the Cook's Country test result:
QuoteThe composition of the charcoal does affect its ash content. Briquettes contain more incombustible minerals and thus leave behind a lot of ash. The blanket of ash insulates the embers somewhat but also diffuses their heat, so they burn cooler but also slow and steady. Hardwood charcoal leaves less ash, so it burns hotter but usually faster and less predictably.
Neither of these effects matters to the flavor, however. Carbon is carbon; as it burns, it imparts no flavor of its own to the food being grilled .
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On 9/19/2023 at 11:21 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:
The stated CRI of 95 is most impressive and the price is eyewatering* for a non-smart LED. I now have the Soraa Vivid in my amazon saved for later list. The Soraa specs state for use in damp locations.
*This from someone who yesterday purchased a $95.95 Hue smart bulb from Philips.
It's a rabbit hole. I've got a house full of Hue bulbs, and now 7 of the Soraa Vivids. It's cheaper than redecorating the place ... this is the story we tell ourselves.
One nice thing about Soraa is they also publish TM-30 data, which is a much better standard than CRI. A bulb can have a CRI of 95 and still look terrible, but TM-30 is very reliable.
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James Peterson's Sauces, 4th Edition
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
I've had a chance to look through the 4th edition, and I'm impressed. Also surprised ... several years ago I wrote to Peterson, half fan mail and half proposition. I'd been immersed in Planet Modernist Cuisine, and had been rejiggering all my sauces and stocks and glaces with new ingredients and techniques, and thought maybe the sauce guru himself would like some help updating the classic. Or at least some encouragement.
He said he liked the idea, but would need someone to pay for it. He sounded more tired than enthusiastic. I didn't hear anything more from him. And then the 4th edition came out less than a year later! With zero input from me. I have a sense of how long publishing takes, and have no idea how he pulled this off. Unless it was already in the works when we talked, and he was keeping it a secret ...