paulraphael

I made Rachel Khong's 2-minute chocolate microwave mug cakes. They're pretty good! I used decent chocolate (callebaut 70% and cluizel cocoa) and substituted melted butter for half the oil. This time I served them in the mugs (when I tried de-mugging, the results were unaesthetic in a fecal sort of way). This is a good one to have in your trick bag.

Several years ago I bought a boule from a bakery in Manhattan (one I'd bought from a few times before). There was something bizarrely wrong with it. The texture was strange, and it seemed to have no flavor whatsoever. It was like eating nothing. A friend of mine finally figured out that they'd left the salt out.

Agreed ... I've tried it both ways and the pressure-cooked stocks are a bit better and much easier. I still use SV for veggie stocks, as BTB says, and it's sublime for fish stock. I use ziploc bags, which are close to the temperature limit when making stocks, so leaks are a concern. Sometimes I double-bag stocks, out of paranoia. The outer bag stays clean and is easy to reuse. SV is also useful if you're doing Modernist Cuisine-style low-temperature "jus" kinds of stocks, where you're aiming for a red color and rare meat flavor

Certainly it works to just use a pan. It's probably what most people did over the years. The other ways are for if you're in a hurry, or want to make sure you get the smoothest or most durable finish. At least the smarter versions will accomplish this.

It's so easy with a pressure cooker to get the same (or better) result in a fraction the time that I think it's an obsolete technique. Do a test and see for yourself. Make a triple stock, and then make a single stock with 3X higher ratio of solids to water. You're doing the same thing—but simultaneously rather than sequentially. I don't stock up on classical glaces or anything similar anymore. It's so easy to make a superior equivalent (with a specific protein chosen for the sauce) that I'll just do it as needed.

I'd practice a LOT on some cheap knives. But yeah, that's probably what the pro knife sharpeners use for thinning. Even the ones who do all the basic sharpening and finishing on waterstones. Dave Martell said he uses a belt for European knives and for Globals.

Probably doesn't need saying, but the machines are out if you're particular about your bevel angles, or if your knives are ground asymmetrically (most everything from Japan). You can certainly sharpen an asymmetrically beveled knife in one of these machines, but you'll end up with 50/50 bevels on a knife that's designed otherwise, and you'll have funky edge geometry that won't perform so well.

I doubt you'd have to compensate for that reduction. 12g salt / 500g flour is on the high end of normal ... that's 2.4% salt. 5g salt would be 1%, which is low but not outrageously so. I think 1.5 to 2.5% are pretty typical. I haven't seen much change in gluten structure or yeast activity with salt in these ranges. None of this looks to me like a ton of sodium. The real high-sodium bread is the salt-free stuff from Tuscany, because it's inedible until you pile prosciutto on top. Small variations in salt can make a bigger difference with sourdough; the wild yeasts are often quite sensitive to salt level.

My girlfriend thinks we're all nuts for not using GitHub, which would allow for version control and all kinds of collaboration features. I don't exactly know how it works. After looking over her shoulder, I suspect it's not going to catch on around here anytime soon.

That's something i hadn't thought of. Interesting idea. I'd still like to tame the freezer with a shelf or two, even if canning becomes an option.

From the site it looks like a disk-bottom pan, which isn't my first choice for sauces. If this is the one you mean, then there's a 1/4" aluminum disk in the bottom which has a lot of thermal mass, so the pan will be slow to respond to temperature changes. Heavy disks are good for evenness (which is adequate with thinner, clad pans) and for heat retention (which is not helpful in saucemaking). I'd be inclined to look for a similar shape in a thinner clad pan, like allclad or any of the less expensive equivalents. Avoid the ones that are more expensive because they're extra thick or have bizarre numbers of layers.

I've got a fairly small freezer (standard fridge with freezer on top) and an always-growing pile of stocks and glaces and carcasses in ziploc bags. These bags compete for space with things that ordinary people consider food, and I'm feeling some heat around here to fix the situation. The freezer's basically a single box, with a small shelf for ice trays. I'm thinking an additional freestanding shelf might be a good solution, or maybe something with vertical dividers (like what you'd get at Staples to manage papers on a desk). Any other thoughts on solutions, and good places to look for them?

You wouldn't miss it so much if your handwriting looked like mine

I'd be curious to know also. No trouble getting parmigiano around here, but the prices are at least double what your site charges for the 24-month-old. Looks like the minimum is 1kg, which would take me a while to get through. I'm curious to know the best practices for storing a piece of cut parm. For vinegar I'm thinking about ordering from here. They have Montegrato sherry vinegar, which I like very much. Amazon carries my favorite sweet vinegar.

You must be hungry.

I've been all digital for many years. Nothing fancy—mostly text files and pdfs. I keep it all synced via DropBox, so I always have access by phone or web. Here's a screen shot, drilled down to some folders that happen to have lots of stuff.

You're not alone; thinning hardly ever gets mentioned outside of knife nerd or Japanese cook circles. But it's a simple byproduct of geometry. A simple option if you want to keep using the knife sharpening machine is to get a cheap, coarse stone or a coarse diamond stone to thin on. You might just use it once a year or so, while you maintain the edges on the machine. It will it keep the knives performing like new until they've been sharpened down to nothing. For anyone who still doesn't know what I'm talking about, here's a diagram (drawn by someone else) with exaggerated angles for clarity:

I haven't tried bacon, but I often s.v. chicken thighs that come vacuum packed like this, and they pose the same challenge. I put the package inside a big ziploc bag, just for insurance. The ziploc stays clean unless the inner bag leaks, so you can reuse it. It's relatively quick and unmessy to bag an already sealed package.

I think part of the problem here is double-cooking the lobster. You can also improve your results by killing it better. To kill lobster in a way that's both humane and most delicious, anesthetize them first. This has become common practice with fish in Japan (I suspect more for flavor than conscience), since the older methods of instantaneously destroying the fish's spinal column require more time and much more skill. Basically, with any sentient creature, time spent writhing in pain or anxiety leads to spontaneous muscle contractions (spasms), that deplete the stored glucose and ATP in the muscle tissue and replace it with waste products. Even instantly beheading a fish causes the autonomous nervous system to create spasms. This doesn't happen if the creature is put all the way to sleep with a central nervous system anesthetic. Commercial fish anesthetics use pure isoeugenol. This happens to be the primary constituent of clove oil, which you can get at any fragrance or aromatherapy shop. Just make sure you get pure clove oil. Some will say something like "contains 75% eugenols," which is ideal. The procedure is to create a solution of 2ml to 4ml clove oil per gallon of salt water. Sea water is ideal, or you can simulate it with a 3.5% by weight table salt solution. Clove oil isn't miscible in water, so you have to dissolve in alcohol first. You'll need 40ml of your cheapest vodka per gallon of water. Be careful handling the clove oil; it's very strong when concentrated and can burn your skin and eyes. Mix the clove oil into the booze (it will get cloudy), and mix this solution into to salt water. Drop in your lobsters. They'll squirm around and then stop. Give them a minute; usually they'll start squirming or backwards-walking again before coming to a final stop. At this point they should be completely limp. If this doesn't work with 2ml / gallon, double the concentration. Some lobsters are resistant to the drug. Once they're out (they'll be alive, but completely limp) they're ready to cook whole or to be be butchered. If you're steaming or sous-viding them, rinse first with clear water to get rid of the clove smell. I've done this several times and the results have been perfect. There's more info on the method at cookingissues.com (If you want to try this with vertebrate fish, start with 1ml clove oil / gallon. They're more responsive to the stuff).

The coarse slot on the chef's choice machine doesn't thin the blade. It's about removing larger nicks and damage, as you suggested. Thinning is about the broad bevel of the blade well above the cutting edge. The more height you grind off the knife during routine sharpening, the fatter the blade will be behind the edge. Your knives aren't magical; if you've been sharpening them regularly they need thinning, if they're to retain the performance they had when they were new. This true of all knives and all sharpening methods without exception. If you're unaware of the loss of performance, it's because it's happened gradually.

To the original post, there's one situation where mail-order sharpening makes sense to me. If you have typical european knives, with fat bevel angles and soft steel, then you have blades that can be maintained for a long time on a butcher's steel. Anyone can learn how to do this, and it takes 10 seconds. Your knives will never be really sharp, but they'll be effective, and you can keep going months or years like this. Just send them off for sharpening when they're so beat-up that you can't bang them back into shape on the steel. I'd still strongly recommend sending them to someone good, like Dave Martell. He'll charge more than the commodity services, it will just be an occasional expense.

There are a couple of things to consider with any kind of automated or semi-automated system. One is that after several regular sharpenings, your blades will have to be thinned. Otherwise, the constant removal of metal is going to change the knife's geometry and the blade will be much too thick behind the edge. You'll have knives with great edges and lousy performance. Thinning requires sharpening higher up on the blade at a very acute angle ... typically lower than 5°. This can be challenging on an edge pro. It's not possible with a machine like the chef's choice. The other challenge is dealing with the blade's geometry at the tip. This requires changing angles both when sharpening and thinning. Gadgets can make this challenging, if they allow it at all

Exactly. When you're a rank beginner you'll probably get more curve than is ideal, but you'll get steady enough. No human can hold a perfectly steady angle; this has never been a problem.

If saving time is in an issue, you can just make the hollandaise sous-vide with plain eggs, and it will pasteurize while cooking. The cooking step takes about 30 minutes; at 65°C eggs will be pasteurized in about 10 mins. I haven't found any downsides to this approach.

Here are the guidelines for pasteurizing eggs I compiled from Cooking Issues and Modernist Cuisine: Standard method: 55C / 131F x 2 hours Fast method: : 57C / 135 F x 75 minutes (appearance not as good but otherwise ok) With both methods, whites may be more difficult to whip but properties are otherwise unchanged