paulraphael

We just made our first two pizzas on the 1/2" steel in the broiler. Results were ok for a first try, but a fail if comparing to a couple of the wood oven places within 20 minute's walking distance, and embarrassment compared to the best Brooklyn has to offer. I think we can get in the ballpark of the former; probably not the latter. I made the mistake of dropping the broiler rack to the 2nd position, out of fear that the pizza would combust if any closer to the fire (I once sent a ball of flame all the way to the ceiling from the nachos I pulled out of a similar broiler. Made me shy). Because of the added distance, the stone only got up to 540°F or so, and the pizzas took a full 6 minutes. I'd like to get it under 4 minutes. I also cooked the pizzas on parchment, which I find necessary when working with very high hydration doughs. These crusts were about 75% hydration before any added bench flour, and were like glue. It's beyond my art to slide this kind of dough off a peel. I suspect that if we can get the temperatures above 600F and the time down significantly, we'll be able to use lower hydration and then dispense with the parchment. All together this might help get some char on the bottom. Right now we're working with commercial yeast and delayed fermentation (to get some flavor). Once we get the mechanics down we'll get a sourdough starter going. Our favorite pizzas are quite sour.

I contacted a few metal fabricators / scrapyards in the NYC area, and was quoted outrageous prices every time. So that led to shopping for the pre-packaged solutions. I decided to go for a 1/2" steel based on the slight thermal advantages, and since my back is ok. It came to a choice between ones by Dough Joe and by Nerd Chef. With shipping they each come to about $100, either from Amazon or direct from the companies. The Dough Joe is 15" square and would be ideal for using in charcoal grill or kamado. I went with the slightly more rectangular Nerd Chef because it has a couple of big finger holes to make it easier to handle. I assume there would be zero performance difference. In a trial run with my stove (one of those very cheap NYC apartment gas ranges that has a broiler compartment below the oven and no electronics). On the top shelf the steel got to about 510F in 1 hour. It might have gone higher but I ran out of time. More interestingly, the broiler rack down below got up to 640F. These cheap ranges use the same heating element for the oven and for the broiler, which might make them ideal. So for pizza test 1 today, I'm going to try the broiler shelf. I'm not sure if I'll leave the broiler element on for the whole duration of the cook ... that seems like it might set things on fire. Unfortunately there's no way to watch, so it will take some winging it.

I used to cook risotto in any old pan. If you're doing it traditionally, the pan makes virtually no difference, because you never stop stirring. I've used heavy aluminum, which heats very evenly, and enameled cast iron, which does not. Same results. And you don't need fast temperature response for risotto. Just the occasional small adjustment to keep things simmering at about the right rate. A fairly wide pan might help things go faster, since it speeds evaporation. Nowadays I always do risotto in a pressure cooker. So much faster than the traditional method, and no tradeoffs. I haven't tried using the fuzzy rice cooker. Not sure what the workflow would be, or the settings on the machine. With a pressure cooker, you use it as a stockpot when sweating the arromatics, cooking down mushrooms, etc., and then pressurize to cook the rice. I usually undercook slightly under pressure, so I can finish to the exact right consistency while stirring. This finishing step just adds a couple of minutes.

I really wouldn't worry about the legal implications of distilling spirits in a rotovap. While the law is quite clear here (distilling even a teaspoon of booze is verboten) who's going to know or care if it's for personal use? With the quantities you can handle in a vap, you're probably not going to be distilling anything for a group bigger than a dinner party. Smoking weed at home seems riskier. A friend and I looked into getting one and getting a microdistilling license (this is relatively now compared with years past). The plan was thwarted when I figured out how small the batches would be and how long each one would take. It's a lab tool, not a production tool.

Why not add a large hadron collider to the wish list? The cool kids are only doing quantum gastronomy these days. Seriously, I'd second that the centrifuge is probably more practical. I've been dying to play with a rotovap, and seriously investigated one once, but they're very big and very fragile, and it seems unwise to buy a used one unless you 100% know what you're doing, which was far from my situation. And new ones of course cost a bundle.

I'm reviving this thread after a lot of years, this time because we're actually shopping for new counters. We're not trying to spend huge money, so some of the more interesting options (like Dekton and other sintered surfaces) are off the table. So to speak. It looks like I was wrong about the lab countertops—they're pure epoxy resin. Not quartz bound by epoxy. I'm still interested, though. I saw a picture of a kitchen on Garden Web with all lab epoxy and it looked great. I'm just concerned about scratching. Most of what I read suggests you can't sand deep scratches out of the stuff. It's not a functional issue, but considering we're doing this in part to make the place more sellable, it's not a problem we're looking for. We're open to the various quartz/resin materials also, but don't want to spend $100/square foot. If there's anything good for half that price we'd love to know.

Has anyone tried a steel in one of those ovens that has a separate broiler compartment? The thing that looks like a drawer below the main oven chamber?

My impression with CI is that they always suggest that they're an authority. It's partly their tone, and partly that they don't make the effort to acknowledge the limitations (or even the subjective nature of the choices) in whatever tests they're doing.

Sure, if you're doing your own tasting for yourself. But if you're going to publish a review, especially one with the air of authority that CI assumes, I think you should do your homework. Just like with wine, not everyone is going to like what the trained tasters like. There are recognized flaws wine that some people specifically enjoy, like taint from brettanomyces yeast. But it's irresponsible to print a review that goes counter to the industry standards without acknowledging it. CI was recommending oils that had rancidity flaws—not because they were championing a controversial position, but because they had absolutely no idea. Which means they had so much confidence in their own imagined authority, that they didn't even bother to ask anyone who knew anything. So looking at something like saucepans, why would I trust that anyone there actually knows anything about saucemaking? It's a craft I studied for years—the only meaningful opinions I have about saucepans are rooted in that knowledge. Without it, you'd easily arrive at very mistaken conclusions about what's important, or you'd subscribe to the usual lore, like "use a heavy thick-bottomed pan ..." How many times have we heard that? Advice like this could lead us to sauciers made from enameled cast iron, or ones with a 10mm aluminum disk on the bottom, both of which would be terrible. Useable—because you can make anything work—but definitely the most difficult to use.

I just don't trust CI on this kind of thing. Their ratio of self-assuredness to actual knowledge is just off the charts. It leads them to making sweeping, unquestioned judgements that end up 180° opposed to those of more knowledgable cooks and testers. A rare example of them getting called out was their 2006 olive oil tasting embarrassment, in which four of their top-picked oils were labelled "defective" by trained tasters. Full article here. Sauce pans are easier to test, but I'm still skeptical of everything in the magazine. Since they're so often wrong on things I know about, how could they be trusted on things I'm learning about. Here's some advice on sauciers: if you're using them as intended, for sauces that require rapid stirring and whisking (emulsified egg sauces, etc.), then the most important thing is low thermal mass. You want something that will cool off quickly when you turn the fire down. Good heat distribution is helpful, but by far the best way to ensure that is to use a burner / heating element that's the right size for the pan. Generally for pans this size, hot spots aren't an issue unless the pan is terrible and the burner is badly mismatched. And you want a stainless steel interior so you can see what you're doing. That's it. Something like an all-clad laminated pan with thin walls is perfect. There are lots of similar pans. Stay away from any kind of cast iron, or anything with a very thick disk on the bottom.

Chris, the way I secured the plastic wrap is exactly like what you did, only instead of bagging after the first layer of wrap, I added a second one. Take those pigtails of plastic and fold them parallel with the roll, and then put the second layer over this, to keep it all from unravelling. Dave Arnold demos this method at cookingissues.com ... it's their way of sous-viding anything tube-shaped. I don't remember needing to do anything to secure the roll in the water bath. It looks like you're getting a nice sear without any added glucose. If you want to try it with the enhancement but don't want to buy powdered glucose/dextrose, you can use any reducing sugar. This would include corn syrup, invert sugar, honey, or fructose. Unfortunately table sugar won't be as effective.

That s.v. method should work fine for frozen scallops. I'd expect a bit more moisture loss. And I'd make sure to include the brine step. Here's a good starting point for time: 1” diameter: 40 minutes 1.5” diameter: 80 minutes 2” diameter: 120 minutes 2.5” diameter: 40 minutes (don’t roll. ziploc bag with space between scallops) Here's a more exact formula for the brine: Water 100% ice 20% salt 6% (will be 5% after ice melts) sugar 4.2% (will be 3.5% after ice melts) -disolve sugar and salt into room temperature water in a plastic container -stir in ice and add scallops -cover and hold in refrigerator for 30 minutes -drain and replace brine with plain icewater -soak for 10 minutes

Never had that but am pretty sure I've read about it somewhere. Would be amazing with some very fresh, floral telicherry peppercorns.

Not really what the OP was asking, but the best scallops I've made/had were cooked sous-vide, after briefly brining in a 5% salt, 3.5% sugar solution. The brine helps firm their texture so they hold their shape—I use this step on a lot of seafood, especially before cooking s.v. Roll the scallops in a couple of layers of plastic wrap (don't use the commercial PVC type that stinks). Cook at 50°C. Time varies by size of the scallops. Chill in an ice water bath (still wrapped). this improves texture and keeps scallops from overcooking when you sear. Dry them. Optionally, dust very lightly with a 1:1.5 baking soda/glucose mix to speed browning. Get a pan very hot. Right before searing dust scallops lightly in wondra flour (also optional). Browning should take 15 to 20 seconds per side. The texture is absolutely insane with this method.

"Best" is hard to assert, since there are so many kinds. For rustic ones I leave the skin on and use a masher. For insane Joel Robuchon-style puree (which some call a butter sauce thickened with potatoes(!)) I use a method (probably like what Btbyrd links to). It involves retrograding the starch, which is easiest to do sous-vide, extracting flavor from the skins, and then whipping the potatoes with butter. I use about half the butter Robuchon specifies in his version (which gives me a stomach ache to read). I haven't actually done this in years, because for a very smooth puree I like the flavor of celeriac more. And pureeing it is much easier.

That's funny ... I use my Forschner filleting knife (cheap!) on watermelon and squash even more than on fish. The paper-thin blade is perfect for not getting wedged in the thick rinds of that stuff. Often the knife just slips through. Mine is much too small for the initial butchering of a big mellon (a thin Japanese bread knife works nicely here). But for making slices once the thing is sectioned, the fillet knife is great. I consider using it for a lot of things where the food is hard and rigid, and so the main impediment is the blade getting wedged.

The most compelling reason to replace eggs is if you don't want the ice cream to taste like eggs. Even then, you can do fine by reducing the number of yolks—which is generally what I do. I wouldn't consider all those ingredients egg replacements, though. Most pastry chefs use some kind of stabilizer blend, even if they're making a French-style ice cream with a ton of egg. Such a blend might contain all those ingredients, or everything except the emulsifiers (the gylcerides). While the stabilizer blend looks like a lot of stuff, its advantage is that it works in minute quantities. By weight you'd use between 1/10 and 1/30 as much as you'd use egg yolk. So you can get the texture modification of egg without the interference in flavor release, or the egg flavor itself. Some people look at modern ingredients like these as "additives." But if an additive is an ingredient that doesn't contribute anything you want toward flavor, I'd consider egg yolks additives in ice cream. Then it becomes a simpler question ... which additive to I prefer? The yolks or the powder?

Point being, boilsover, for every restaurant in a given category that uses copper cookware, you'll find many more that don't. So, correct, there's no correlation. You're grabbing all the restaurants that use them, and saying "see? They're used by good restaurants!" I'm systematically looking at restaurants that meet a particular criterion and seeing what they use. I'm also considering work by the best saucier in NYC who's food I've sampled. This was in 2011 when I staged at Le Bernardin. I don't know what kind of evasees he had, but they looked like all clad. Everything else there was spun steel or disk-bottom aluminum. I know for sure chef Ripert would buy the guy a couple of copper pans if he asked! So out of the 6 3-star restaurants, I see one with a closed kitchen that uses copper. Out of the 10 2-star restaurants open or closed, only Daniel. I saw one picture of the Momofuku Ko kitchen (open) where a single copper pan hung among the others. Maybe it was someone's lucky pan.

There may also be a French nostalgia for copper. At bistro DBGB Daniel Boulud decorates with so much of it I wouldn't put it past him to use for planters and umbrella holders.

Sure, some restaurants use them. I don't think you'll find much correlation between the quality of the restaurant the use of copper. You'll see a strong correlation between open kitchens and the use of copper. When the pans become a design element, the criteria change. And obviously you won't find copper at restaurants that use induction, but this technology is still a rarity in restaurants due to costs. Although it's likely more restaurants will start using the El Buli / Alinea model of not having a range at all, and just using little induction hobs that can be stowed when you're not using them. Right now among the Michelin 3-star restaurants in NYC, only one of them with a closed kitchen seems to have any copper cookware (11 Madison Park). Le Bernardin, Per Se, and Masa use shiny stainless whatevers. Jean Georges and Chef's Table have open kitchens and copper pans.

Back in the days when all milk was raw, most recipes called for "scalding" it for various reasons, including killing pathogens, denaturing some of the milk proteins that can interfere with gluten development in bread, and who knows what else. Scalding meant bringing it to a simmer. If you wanted to add eggs right away to make a custard, you had to temper them first so they wouldn't scramble. These steps have long outlived their original purpose. Nowadays there's no need to scald the milk in the first place. Even if you were using raw milk, we know that there are benefits to pasteurizing the ice cream mix as a whole, after everything's been mixed, and that this can be combined with the custard-making process. So you might as well just add the eggs when the milk is cold. Easy peasy. mono- and di-glycerides are emulsifiers that you'd have to buy as a specialty ingredient, like from Modernist Pantry. I haven't used them, but some pastry chefs do when they want to avoid using eggs entirely. Here's a stabilizer / emulsifier blend used by Francisco Migoya, who was Thomas Keller's pastry chef and who will be collaborating with the Modernist Cuisine team on their dessert series. This blend is stored and used as a single ingredient. He recommends using it in eggless ice creams at 0.35% by weight. 100g Xanthan Gum 175g CP Kelco Unflavored Locust Bean Gum 175g TIC Gums Pretested Flavorless Guar Gum 50g Mono-glycerides 50g Di-glycerides FWIW, I've tried using this stabilizer formula in an ice cream with eggs ( minus the emulsifiers), and did not care for the texture. I've eventually come to believe xanthan gum isn't the best choice in ice cream stabilizer blends. But that's just my opinion ... I'd encourage you to start by taking Migoya's advice over mine.

Believe it or not, there is never a reason to temper egg yolks. It's a vestigial tail of old kitchen thinking. It doesn't offer anything. There are many substitutes for eggs as emulsifiers. I haven't heard of people using pure lecithin, although it should work. The preferred non-egg emulsifier is usually a mix of mono-and diglycerides, probably because it's effective in minute quantities. Lecithin probably requires a bigger dose. Some people just use partially denatured milk proteins. This is what they do at Haagen Dazs and at Jeni's Splendid. It usually means having a higher than normal percentage of milk solids (you can just add nonfat dry milk, but the industrial people use reverse osmosis to drive water off of raw milk). Then while cooking / pasteurizing, they keep the temperature at 75°C or a bit lower and cook for a much longer than usual time. I've experimented with this and haven't observed any textural changes, although it's possible that I'm not using as much milk solid content as they are. Most of the ice cream I make uses 2 yolks per quart, which works well for getting the emulsifying benefits of egg without any intrusive egg flavor.

Those look nice, Mitch! Baking this style of pizza (the ONLY style, dammit) is tough, because you've got to manage the heat at the bottom of the pie and at the top of the pie separately. Mitch is hitting the bottom with a very conductive, high-heat-retaining slab of steel, and the top with radiant heat from the broiler. Getting the exact results you want requires a dance between the preheat temperature of steel, the distance from the broiler, and the timing. Fortunately it's a lot easier to get it right in home oven with an oven-broiler and moveable racks than in a wood oven. I believe a wood oven ultimately can give the best results, but getting a wood oven to work at all can take endless trial and error. I lived a few blocks from Roberta's when it opened in Brooklyn, and witnessed their pizzas rise from ok-but-inconsistent to consistently-the-best-I've had. It took about 2 years!

Me too. A lot of comments (fewer here than elsewhere) look at restaurants like this as some exclusive thing for rich people, and so: who cares. Which is understandable, but I think the other side of the story is that this kind of cooking is an art form, which for reasons no one knows how to fix, is expensive. Like giant sculptures. Like opera. Some of the people who buy expensive art are just rich douchebags. Some of them are true lovers and patrons, using their money to support something they value. Others are regular Joes who happen to love it and are willing to save up and indulge once in a blue moon. But if no one patronized these restaurants, this kind of cooking would die out, or at least become diminished. This should be of concern to anyone who cares about cooking, whether you eat at high end restaurants or not. We're in an unprecedented age of information sharing, in which chefs publish their ideas rather than hoarding them. We're all in a position to learn from Thomas Keller. Or to learn from other chefs who have learned from him. I'm willing to bet that everyone here has benefited from his work already, whether knowing it or not. Keller is a titan in this world. And by the accounts of people I know who have worked for him, he's one of the hardest working visionaries in a world practically defined by hard working visionaries. For his restaurant to have slipped like this, something bad has happened with him, either personally or professionally. I don't see this as a cause for schadenfreude, just because I can't afford his tasting menu. I'm wishing Keller and his team the best, and for fair treatment from the press and peanut gallery. I'd like to put Per Se back on my list of restaurants to maybe possibly someday indulge in.

In the comment thread there's some interesting speculation by a former Keller bar manager.