paulraphael

I think of cast iron and spun steel as being in a separate category from teflon pans. The seasoning on iron/steel does offer some stick resistance, but with everything I ever cook besides eggs (which is rare) sticking is a non-issue. If stuff sticks to stainless steel, 99 times out of 100 this is a technique issue, not a pan issue. You should be able to cook the most delicate fish, skin on, on a stainless steel surface. It's not a mindless exercise, like it would be on teflon, but that's kind of the point: if you can do it on bare steel without sticking, you know your technique is solid, and the chances are decent that you'll cook the fish well. Teflon doesn't enforce discipline like that, and it offeres no such assurances. Unlike teflon, cast iron and spun steel excell at high heat cooking, where thermal mass and getting a good sear are priorities. This is what teflon pans do worst. Other materials are better than both of these for some kinds of cooking.

This SeiousEats article says they picked Valrhona in their blind tasting. I'm planning to order some to check out, but don't have any 1st hand opinions yet.

I can get my oven to about 540°F. But it has no top broiler. Even with a 1/2" thick steel, pizza is not good enough. I live in Brooklyn, 40 minutes or less from a half dozen of the best pizzerias in the known universe. So I'm not going through the trouble. I gave up, but in the process learned how to make sourdough bread, and am now addicted. So that's a bit of a consolation prize. I wish they'd just included pizza in Modernist bread. It's hard for me to believe that they'll come up with more than 50 pages of new discoveries on this one topic. And it's delaying Modernist Pastry!

Anyone know if there are any basil varieties that would taste better than others when grown in too little sun?

Yeah, soap! Detergent! Scrub sponge! Don't baby it.

There's a lot of romantic hogwash about cleaning cast iron. Just grab a regular scrub sponge and some dishwashing detergent and hot water and scrub until it's clean. If this does any damage at all to the seasoning, then the pan wasn't really seasoned. To get seasoning off, you need chemicals the equivalent of dishwasher detergent or oven cleaner, or abrasives the equivalent of sandpaper. I've removed seasoning from manky old pans ... it took two days soaking in a cocktail of dishwasher detergent and draino. That "seasoning" is a matrix of polymerized oil and carbonized oil. Polymer=plastic. Tough and nasty stuff. Which is why you want to apply it in nice thin even coats in the first place, because you'll suffer trying to get any off. Incidentally, this is one reason to be careful using teflon pans on any kind of high heat, especially if you're using an oil that's high in unsaturated fats (canola, safflower, sunflower, etc.). If any of that oil polymerizes on the teflon, you may never get it off. I don't know if there's anything that will attack the polymerized oil that won't attack the teflon coating harder. If anyone knows, please share. One problem I've discovered with using non-stick pans solely for what they're do best is that I end up using mine about twice a year ... the rest of the time it's on a wire shelf, where, thanks to my terrible range hood, it gets a mist of airborn oil every time I saute something. When I looked at it the other day, the oil had oxidized to the point where it wouldn't come off with hand washing detergent. It eventually came off off after soaking for an hour in a solution of dishwasher detergent. I don't know if this is harmful to the coating. Luckily, it's a $15 pan (see above!)

Interesting. Maybe it's not the variety, but inadequate sun? FWIW, the plants thrive. Just not the flavor.

2 in our party. All the rest is negotiable.

I was able to use it without creating an account. It wouldn't let you?

One of those sample combinations, coffee and carrot, is explored in another book I'd like to check out: The Art of Flavor. I listened to an interview with the authors, and they used this as an example of an entirely new flavor being created by an ingredient combination; one that doesn't seem to reference its constituent parts. So I can imagine that some of the other pairings, like strawberry and mushroom, might be similar. This could be the exact value of a book like this—the discovery of combinations that no one would think of because they sound terrible. Art of Flavor is a more conventional book, in that it's the product of a chef and a perfumer finding overlap in their creative processes. They then attempt to systemetize a process of combining and balancing flavor. I have and enjoy The Flavor Bible, which is probably the most conventional (conceptually) of all these books, but is useful for its rigor. It doesn't attempt to discover new possibilities; it just catalogs combinations that have been discovered by hundreds of chefs around the world, and ranks these combinations based on how standard or harmonious they are. All these approaches seem useful, but I find the one explored in the Matrix the most exciting. Edited to add: the Flavor Matrix team has a website which gives access to their flavor pairing engine. I haven't played with it yet, since last I checked you needed a paid account. But it looks open now. The project is a collaboration between IBM's Watson AI team and some chefs, including the book's author.

We grow herbs in our little container garden, and for the last few summers have been happy with everything but the basil. It's mostly had a sharp, thin, not very basily flavor. No idea what variety it is ... we've just been buying seedlings from a local farmer's market. Seems like we need to shop more carefully. What should we look for? Our garden gets maybe 5 hours of sun during the summer months, and we'd like something that isn't too bothered by casual caretaking (read: benign neglect).

Not really. An electric range tends to minimize the differences between pans. It heats pretty evenly by design, and changes temperature slowly. Also, the pans people are recommending from places like Ikea I think are pretty similar to what you'll find at restaurant stores.

A solid, cheap one from the restaurant supply store. Something like this. Or if you insist on a stainless exterior, this. Don't think of it as an investment. If you take good care of it, it will last a few years, but it's eventually going into the recycling bin. Teflon coatings just don't keep their performance forever. The difference in durability between the cheapest ones and the fanciest ceramic /diamond studded ones isn't what you might think. Those additives help protect against physical abuse, but not against the gradual breakdown from cooking and washing that all the nonstick surfaces suffer. I cry when I see things like $500 copper pans with a teflon interior. The pans will last by far the longest if you use just for what they're good for, which is eggs, and other things that are genuinely sticky and that don't ever cook on high heat. Don't use the pans for things that need a hard sear. Doing so is bad for the pan and bad for your results. Edited to add: I'm talking purely about teflon, not anodized. Anodized surfaces are not non-stick.

As far as the science goes, I'm not sure what difference it makes to feed a dormant starter separately, vs. feeding it by just adding it to a bread recipe. I haven't yet heard a good argument for why this would matter to the yeast and LAB. It would extend the bread's fermentation time at any given temperature, as you did ... this would seem to cause more enzymatic development relative to yeast / LAB. I'd love to hear a microbiologist/breadmaker's thoughts on this.

Has anyone played with CO2 / N2O blends?

It's interesting because it illustrates how easy it is to remain oblivious to racist tropes when we're not on the receiving end of them. I doubt you'll find find any African Americans who grew up during the Civil Rights years who aren't intimately familiar with the implications of watermelons.

Exactly. You can't just ignore 100 years of minstrelsy and ridicule and disenfranchisement by saying "who doesn't like watermelon?"

We stumbled into Ops in Bushwick and were very pleasantly surprised. Perfect crust, well made all around. The tomato sauce on the marinara was a bit unbalanced, but otherwise flawless. They say they use a sourdough crust, although it wasn't as evident as it is (or used to be) at Roberta's.

Looking for places up to $75 / person, all included. We won't drink much. Definitely would like money to go toward food rather than linens and formality. Interested in non-sushi choices at the moment. Thanks for any thoughts!

Nope, I don't even know the market. Please report back when you've tried it.

I looked up C02 prices online and came up with some price comparisons. These are average prices of C02 for carbonating a 2L bottle of water: -CO2 bought to fill 20lb tank in NYC: $0.20 Initial investment: $150–200 -Soda Stream, 3rd party cartridges on Amazon: $0.50 Initial investment: $50–$80 -Generic Seltzer bought at supermarket: $0.70–$1.20 Initial Investment: $0 -iSi siphon (2 chargers/liter), 3rd party chargers: $1.76 Initial investment: $100–150 Seems like from an economics point of view, the whole enterprise mostly makes sense if you want to carbonate stuff besides water, or if you consume a LOT of seltzer. If you're in the I-want-bubbles-in-all-kinds-of-stuff camp, one reason to consider the big tank, under-counter, DIY approach is that you can also use nitrous oxide. Dave Arnold talks about this in some detail. The idea is that N2O gives a completely different texture (softer bubbles) and flavor (sweet, not sour), and so being able to mix both kinds of gas with your regulator gives you fantastic control. He shows a picture of his under-counter setup, but declines to give instructions, since technically, N2O is a controlled substance (20lbs of whip-its, anyone?). But he invites you to decipher the picture, and assures you that you can indeed buy pharmaceutical grade N2O in bulk from welding shops, if you ask the right questions (you don't want to use industrial grades in anything you eat or drink).

Awesome, CDH. This should have its own thread.

I admit to liking the big fat ones, if they're done well, with a crisp outside and the right firmness inside. But everyone I know who expresses strong opinions about fries tells me this is sacrilege. They're all skinny pomme frites or go home.

I just learned that Apple recently allowed app makers access to the raw camera files. This has led to several new camera apps that can all make better pictures than the stock app. I downloaded ProCamera, and will play with it soon. Another app that gets good reviews is Halide. I've never been a big fan of the iphone camera, partly because I feel it's extremely heavy-handed with noise reduction, leading to a mottled, pointilized look at high magnifications. They call it a 12 megapixel camer, but in practice it looks more like 3 megapixels. I assume all the great reviews are in comparison with other phone cameras. Being able to shoot raw should allow for much more control, and probably image quality improvements, at least some of the time. On my professional camera it would never occur to me to use a format besides raw. I use Lightroom as my raw converter / jack-of-all-trades photo library organizer. There are other choices that I'm less familiar with. There must be some free options. Many serious photographers believe that PhaseOne's Capture One is the best in terms of quality. I find the workflow maddening so I don't use it.

I'm a big fan of iSi generally, just not for carbonating drinks. Even at 42 cents it's wildly more expensive than the other options. And slower, and less controllable, and more of a nuissance. Ideally I'd like a big tank under the sink that holds 20 lbs of CO2, with a regulator and an attachment to carbonate things in regular 2L bottles.