paulraphael

Really interesting article. I'd love to know the reason for these differences. It's not like coca cola, or nutella, where they actually manufacture the product in the continents where they sell them. Campari all comes from the same factory in Italy (I assume the same factory). So why would they go through the trouble of so many different formulations? I can imagine countries having different arcane labelling rules ... which could account for the same product being marked 24% abv here and 25% there. And I can imagine certain colorants being banned some places and not others. But why some countries would get beetles and others synthetic coloring, I don't know. And why one country (Sweden?) would get 21% ABV. Last I checked the Scandinavians could hold their liquor as well as anyone. Maybe to sneak in under some liquor tax threshold? I also wonder if they change the sweetness levels for different countries. Many products seem to get extra sugar for the US. This doesn't always get reflected on the labels, but is apparent.

I don't know what (why) they used to coat that thing. I suppose the good news is that when the coating loses its effectiveness you can just sand it off and then have a perfectly good skillet.

Mine's 9-1/2" too. Probably a difference in the consistency of doughs. They all behave differently.

That makes sense. Do you use just the leaves or are there any small stems still attached? I think both my garden containers together would be cleaned out if I harvested 30g of leaves. They're very light! I've been on a drawn out quest to find the best extraction method for different kinds of herbs. It's challenging because there's practically no science on this. Not even rigorous blind tastings and experiments by chefs. Some herbs are pretty durable and taste good no matter what you do, but the delicate ones like mint and basil are mostly surrounded by a lot of dubious lore.

Not you, Mitch! Maybe easy, but never cheap I think of Ghiradelli as cheap because they have it at the supermarket around the corner. It's not like the Michel Cluizel stuff I have special order, and then stash locked up underneath my most boring financial documents, to keep it safe from certain other household members.

I made a batch of mint ice cream, with a variation on Teonozo's infusion method. It got great reviews from my house-bound tasting panel, but still needs some work to get to where I'd like it to be. I made this with a variation on my standard base that's lower-fat: 9% milk fat, 10% total fat with 2 yolks/KG. 37% solids. For a 1kg batch I used 12g fresh mint leaves (mystery mint from the garden). I'd planned to use more but this seamed like a big enough pile of leaves. I brought the milk to a simmer, took it off the heat, added the mint and 0.5g citric acid (as an anti-oxidant). Blitzed with a stick blender. Infused 1 minute and strained. At this stage the milk had a hint of green tint and a nice fresh mint aroma. I then cooked the mix sous-vide, and homogenized in a vitamix. Before the blender I added 0.1g peppermint oil. The result has great texture and tastes great, but for my tastes still has too little fresh mint flavor and a bit too much mint oil flavor. Next batch I'll try 18g mint leaves (which is most of our summer crop!) and drop the mint oil to 0.5g. It's ridiculous how potent that stuff is. Possibly my biggest problem right now is that our mint isn't great. I waited until we had a good sized crop, but by that time it was getting rangy and starting to flower. So it's more mutton than lamb ... bright mint flavors are giving way to grassy ones. FWIW, I also threw an inclusion into half the batch, which I almost never do. But the little kid in me really likes chocolate chips in mint. To avoid cocoa butter boulders, I took some of the cheap chocolate we had around (Ghiradelli bittersweet chips) and melted it 9:1 with refined coconut oil. Added 0.5% salt. Spread thin on a sil-pat, freezed a few minutes, then broken into pieces. (Use a spatula or something to break, because this stuff melts quickly in your hands). I'd prefer a slightly less sweet chocolate, but this turned out really well. I got the proportions from Dana Cree.

Really? Does yours have the spiral dough hook? I can make as little as 450g with the spiral hook in the 6qt bowl. That's what I do when making pasta dough ... it can't properly mix less than that, but more risks breaking the machine.

Sure, and some people don't even need an excuse to go knife shopping. But if you like your knife and want to keep it cutting well for its useful life, you'll have to thin it from time to time. If you're old school you'll get to the point where your chef's knife becomes a slicing knife. But you have to be pretty hardcore for that. I've had my current gyuto 11 years and it's only lost about 1-1/2mm. I've only thinned it once, and it was part of reprofiling the thing.

People who make lots of bread love those. I find the bigger KA mixers do great with up to a couple KG of high-hydration bread dough. But if your priority is bigger batches, or really tough doughs like pasta or pretzels, spiral mixers like the Ankarsrum are monsters.

I'd echo the idea of fixing the KA. There's very little that can go wrong with one that can't be fixed economically. The bowl-lift models are much, much easier to take apart and get back together, but all of them are serviceable, and every imaginable part is widely available for a reasonable price. Youtube videos and maintenance sheet PDFs are all over the web. Replacing the grease is the first order of busines. If there are no obviously worn parts it may be all you need to do. KA's grease is TERRIBLE quality. They use an ancient formula called Shell Darina #2 that separates and drips oil into your food, has poor resistance to oxidation and high temperatures, and gets too thick when it's cold and too thin when it's hot. To make up for these faults they pack cubic meters of it into each mixer, and pretend that quantity will magically make up for quality and make the thing run without maintenance forever. It's not a great plan. At least not for people who actually use the things. I really like Super Lube, which I found out is popular with people who rebuild these mixers. Make sure you get the #2 weight, to match the original grease. It's fully synthetic, it never separates, it's resistant to extreme heat and to oxidation, and it lubes well over a wider temperature range than you'll ever need unless you're crazy. You'll also want a good non-toxic degreaser, like an automotive product made with citrous oil. The biggest part of the project will be cleaning out the old gunk. If you have a bowl-lift model, pop off the lid to see if you have one of the older plastic gear housings. If you do, this is an opportunity to replace with the newer zinc model. It's a big upgrade. Whether you replace the housing or not, you'll need to replace the gasket. For some repairs on the bowl-lift model, you'll need a snap ring plier in the right size. If you have a filp-top model, I don't have any helpful experience, but the internet is full of instruction. I have a whole new relationship with my mixer now that I've rebuilt it a couple of times. We trust each other with our deepest secrets.

You remove a bunch of metal when you rebevel a knife for sure. Doesn't matter whether you use a machine or edge pro or water stones. And after you've done enough sharpening to significantly shorten the height of the blade, it's important to thin the blade overall. This also removes a bunch of metal. I don't know if you can thin a knife on an edge pro or not. You certainly can't use any of the machines like the chef's choice. Edited to add: a ruler is more useful than a milligram scale to know in practical terms how much metal you've removed. You want to think about thinning when your blade has a couple of mm height.

How would you describe it? What distinguishes it?

Also, did you check the popsicle thread? Some people there really know what they're doing.

I'd be inclined to go light on sugar, and don't use anything besides table sugar (unless you can find a sweetener that has less freezing point depression for the same sweetness). And maybe skip the cream, or go light on it. Popsicles don't usually have dairy in them ... the lactose in the dairy depresses the freezing point. And the fat displaces some of the water. So if you just try to make pops with an ice cream formula they may be too soft. You won't have enough ice. Just a guess—I haven't played with popsicles. There's no problem with leaving out eggs or stabilizers. They won't do anything helpful in a popsicle, unless you like the effect they have on the melted texture.

Maybe so. I avoid milk and cream that have added stabilizers, just because there's no way to know exactly how much of what is in there. I'm not courting additional mysteries. It's possible that there's enough gum in these creams to muck with your stabilizer formulas. It's also possible that it's just enough to make up for the viscosity lost during ultra-pasteurization, and you won't notice a difference. I really don't know.

Great question. You have to find brands that hydrate at lower temperatures. I use TIC Gums POR/A, which hydrates at 165°F. The LBG sold by Modernist Pantry has the same specification and is probably the same stuff repackaged. Will Powders' version may also hydrate at low temps ... can't remember for sure.

New Favorite: Ford's gin instead of Plymouth. It has the low notes and the body and the oily mouthfeel of Plymouth, but more juniper. Really good stuff. I'm looking forward to trying the navy strength version. Still 1:1:1 with Cocchi di Torino. As posted elsewhere, I've been drinking a variation of this fromnot-yet-clean empty jars of Wilkin & Son's Tawny Orange Marmalade. This might be my favorite thing ever. And not just because of the lion.

Patio or outdoor café table.

The numbers might be optimistic, but there are many ways you could blow more air than a leaf blower and make less noise. A bigger motor is usually quieter than a smaller one. A bigger fan spinning more slowly is quieter than a small one spinning fast. There's also a question of the quality of the noise. People are less sensitive to low-frequency whooshing sounds than they are to high-frequency whining sounds. Apple gives a master class in these principles with the their desktop workstations. By using large fans that spin more slowly, and by keeping air paths direct and open, they make air-cooled machines quiet enough to use in recording studios even when all the processor cores are going bonkers.

Did I understand correctly that codes in NYC don't allow you you to vent to the outside?

I haven't found sharpness to be a problem when infusing mint into ice cream. The problems are more about avoiding cooked, grassy, and vegetal flavors, while retaining a real sense of the fresh mint. We have the same problems identifying garden mint. Absolutely no idea what variety we're growing now. It tastes more like peppermint than spearmint, but I think there are dozens of possible types.

It does taste fake, like mouthwash or candycanes or most of the world's mint ice cream. But I think it can be useful in minute quantities. If you use a fraction of what someone would use if it were the sole flavor ingredient, you can bring back some of the vibrance that fresh mint loses in extraction processes. I always want the fresh mint flavor to dominate, and the oil to fill in holes in the background. Has anyone experimented with cold-infusions of mint? I'll try the one-minute method and see how it goes. My garden is full of mint at the moment.

We did a lot of inclusions at the ice cream shop where I worked ages ago. Crunched up heath bars might have been the champ for keeping their crunch. That's basically your toffee idea, plus chocolate. Grape nuts worked well, but I don't think it was such a sharp crunch ... more like nuts. Oreos don't really crunch that much in ice cream. M&Ms lost all their color. Grey disks in gray ice cream. That was a flop. Best bets might be candies cooked to a hard stage (but in small pieces) or any crunchy stuff enrobed in chocolate or caramel. Mix it in by hand after the ice cream has partially hardened.

I think mint is one of the most challenging flavors to get right. In anything ... ice cream, cocktails, whatever. I've done some experimenting with different infusion techniques, and have looked at research (haven't found much). Dave arnold has nailed it, but his approach requires liquid nitrogen. There's often a catch with him. My next attempt at mint ice cream is going to be with a tiny bit of mint oil, and then cold-infusing the mint into the base after the base is cooked and cooled. And with some citric acid in the base to slow the mint oxidizing. How are you doing it?

Thanks everyone. It turns out Daniel will do a table for 5 if you ask nicely, so we got a reservation there. It's for later in September, so who knows what the weather will be. We're utterly at its mercy. If a hurricane or cold snap rolls through we may need to rethink things.