Chris Hennes

The trick is to try to find a cream that is not ultra-pasteurized, but just plain pasteurized. The high-temperature process in the ultrapasteurization destroys some of the components of the cream, so all UP creams I am aware of have added stabilizers to counteract the effect. That said, such a thing does not exist where I live, either. Unless you go direct-from-farm, ultrapasteurization is the only method available here.

Sam, what is the reasoning they give behind "pre-hydrating" the pasta? The mac & cheese in modernist doesn't have that step, they use a pasta-cooking method they adapted from McGee I think.

Just ate my first peas of the season, woo! At some point I should probably stop just eating them off the bush and actually make a meal with them...

I wouldn't say it was "delicate" per se: just sort of sticky, in terms of grabbing your slicer blade or knife. The first two slices were gorgeous, but then it started to warm up and didn't slice so nicely.

Sort of goes without saying, doesn't it?

Oh, did forget to mention that I cook mine on a wire rack set over a sheet pan, so the nice clean fat renders off, and the bacon doesn't cook in it.

Well, I appreciate y'all calling it the "Hennes method", but of course I stole it from some other guy on the internet (I think it was the "Cooking for Engineers" blog). For me, crispy bacon is the ONLY bacon, so my ultimate goal with the method is perfect crispiness. Obviously it requires substantial planning ahead, but I swear by the low-and-slow oven method. The bacon is crisp, flavorful, and flat.

I was just thinking of this this morning after I grabbed a coffee at my local place and headed to McDonalds for something edible (which the stuff at the coffee shop is not). I feel sort of guilty doing it, but a man has to eat!

The one from the burgers uses different ratios of carrageenans, if I recall. I was able to slice it for the burgers and for grilled cheese, though I do wish it had been a touch firmer when cold to make that a bit easier.

Tonight's dinner included a 72-hour 145°F brisket, as suggested by MC: I just eyeballed the seasoning on the meat before cooking it: salt, pepper, and Pimentón de la Vera. I should have measured it, I think it needed more overall. I made a "pan sauce" ("bag sauce"?) from the liquid in the bag by thickening it lightly with cornstarch and tweaking with brown sugar and red wine vinegar. That worked pretty well. In terms of texture, it's similar but not identical to the traditionally-slow-cooked method. In particular it feels a bit firmer when slicing and eating at first, but when chewing it actually breaks apart faster. I thought it was a very good, if not exactly revelatory, texture (contrast with the pork shoulder cooked in a similar fashion, which was amazing). Part of this may be due to my use of the flat part of the brisket (the point is in a pastrami brine at the moment).

To make gourmet ice you have to cook the purified water sous vide for 93 hours at 165.2°F, then shock it, let it cure for a week, and then gently decant it into your ice cube trays while stirring counterclockwise. A little xantham gum helps the texture.

That's not what I said at all: I said it was going to be hard to beat, not that all the other cookbooks were going to be crap. But I stand by my assertion that the game is pretty much up for "best cookbook of 2011."

I was just chatting with a colleague who was lamenting the "shitty ice from the ice maker in the freezer"—I hear this all the time, actually. I don't get it. I love my icemaker, I wouldn't go back to those stupid plastic molds if you paid me. What's with all the icemaker hate?

The food world is rife with examples of one food being passed off as another: so a little caution is always warranted. But I too object to the ludicrous sensationalist tone of the articles. Many people can't tell the difference between ANY cuts of meat. Slap a stick on a rump roast that says "filet mignon" and I bet you can convince people to pay $20/lb for it. There are a hell of a lot better ways of cheating your customers than mucking around with meat glue.

They are great on omelets.

(Emphasis mine) There's the rub: take one bite of that "Chateaubriand" and the illusion that it is a solid piece of meat evaporates in an instant. This is media fearmongering, pure and simple.

Folks, I strongly encourage you all to read both the actual article at cooking issues, as well as the comments on the article. The notion that one could glue together scraps of meat and that the result is "undetectable" is completely absurd. No one confuses a coarse-ground sausage with whole muscle: transglutimanase is not some magic voodoo potion that aligns muscle strands and mysteriously produces a whole-seeming muscle from various parts: it's just a particularly powerful bonding agent. If you make a piece of meat from scraps, it's going to be obvious that it's a reconstruction, just like a sausage.

In my opinion, you're going to have a hard time beating Modernist Cuisine.

Considering that Sauce Andalouse is a tomato and pepper-flavored mayonnaise from classic French cuisine, I don't think the tomato is the culprit here. Though I guess the heating from making the tomato puree in that case may destroy an enzyme, if that were the cause. So may drying for sun-dried tomatoes, though. Was it a homemade mayo, or store-bought?

Well, I can show you where I intend to keep mine, someday: Of course, the reality is, right now they live on my desk, more or less permanently: (volume one is on my wife's nightstand....)

How widespread is "jizz" for sauce? And, if I'm being pedantic here, would you spell it "jizz" or "jiz"? ...

OK, great, so then you'd say that this WikiGullet entry is more or less correct?

Aha, fantastic! I wonder if it's regional, or if I just don't move in circles that use it.

Can someone clarify for me the use of the term "all day"? Does it mean "you should have X of these cooking right now" or "we've made X of these since service started five hours ago"?

Well, again, I'm not arguing it makes sense: I'm trying to figure out if anyone still uses it. I've never heard it, nor seen it, except with reference to potatoes (that is, I've seen "french fried potatoes" used on rare occasion). I'd love to know if there has been a cookbook published in the last decade that uses the phrase as a general-purpose synonym for "deep fry." I mean, I'm all in favor of including it as a synonym for deep fry in the wiki, if anyone still uses it. If it's an anachronism, however, I'd relegate it to a "history" section at the end of the article.