Chris Hennes

Hey man, have a little faith! Do you have any cabinet space to spare, or can you arrange some? They sell drawer inserts for cabinets (or you can build one if you are handy), and if you also label the tops of your spice jars you can squeeze quit a few in a full-depth bottom cabinet.

If you happen to know which ship it's on... http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shiplocations.phtml

Yes, water is traditional, I believe. It is a good use for a solid blender, I find that getting the chocolate to properly dissolve takes more effort than I am willing to give by hand...

They've gone one better than just using metric weights for everything: they include scaling percentages too. It's wonderful. I expect for the second edition they'll embed calculation circuitry in the paper itself.

Is it intended as an eating chocolate, or as a drinking chocolate, do you know?

Certainly in the classical French sense I think Chef Jonny is right: Escoffier had a completely separate category for integral meat sauces (as opposed to stock-based sauces like velouté). So with this kind of gravy what you really have is a thickened natural jus, which traditionally would have been thickened with arrowroot, but the "roux" is serving the same purpose.

Ooh, an opportunity to show off the spice rack I built last weekend! Here they are in context: And a close-up comparison:

Actually, by looking at that photo you can see basically exactly how they compare: each one of those jars has 50g in it (except the agar and the iota carrageenan, which are filled to the top because I had another package of each, not just what was in the kit). I suspect I'm going to want more sodium citrate before too long, but everything else is very reasonable and is typically used in very small amounts (at least, for the recipes I am making).

Layered Tortilla "Lasagna" with greens and cheese (p. 80) Salsa: Chipotle-Cascabel Salsa (p. 36) I have to admit I found this dish to be a little disappointing, though I really can't pinpoint why. I mean, it sounds awesome on paper. But it just didn't come together for me. It felt a bit disjointed, like if you took all your favorite ingredients and put them into a single dish and hoped for the best. Which is not to say it was bad, per se: it was just sort of... uninteresting. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

We don't have any idea what Brown's motives are, but if all he knows about the book is what he's seen in the mainstream media, he's got a good basis for thinking the book is just about "culinary wizardry" and isn't that important. You can't read a single review of the book without the author contemplating "all the recipes that require a centrifuge" etc. But the fact is, the book simply treats all of these various cooking methods as relative equals in terms of the depth of coverage. Yes, it covers centrifuges. And sauté pans. And woks. And rotor-stator homogenizers. And broilers. It doesn't omit centrifuges just because they are expensive, or woks just because they are cheap. It is the most comprehensive, scientifically-grounded look at cooking that anyone has ever published. OK, many of the recipes highlight the newer tools and ingredients, but the recipes are only a fraction of the book, and in most cases reasonable substitutes abound and are discussed in the chapters.

Do any of you have photos of the velouté? Better yet, photos of it used as a sauce? This article could use one if you are willing.

lol, maybe true. Nevertheless, dismissing the book sight unseen was crazy, and I'll bet you that Brown gets himself a copy of this book within the next few months regardless. It's really an obvious purchase for someone interested in seeking the truth behind all the food myths out there: volume one should be required reading for anyone with a serious interest in food and cooking. ETA: My wife and I were discussing what sort of libraries would be acquiring this tome, and my bet is that Universities with food science programs are going to be your best bet. I think it's unlikely that any but the most well-funded public libraries will have a copy anytime soon, unfortunately.

I guess it's from Bayless's book, though I admit I have made it so many times I don't look it up anymore, so I'm sure I am not hitting the exact quantities he calls for anymore.

Tomatillo-baked Chicken Breasts (p. 85) Salsa: Roasted Tomatillo Salsa (p. 28) That was certainly easy: add cream to salsa verde, pour over chicken, bake until done. I used crema rather than cream since that's what I had on hand: it worked well. The dish isn't much to look at, but it tasted great. I love salsa verde.

I was writing the WikiGullet Project article on Sauce Velouté this afternoon and reading through Peterson's Sauces, which got me thinking that I cannot recall the last time I was served a Velouté or Velouté-derivative in any form at a restaurant. I make it occasionally at home, but never out. I know the notion of "heavy French sauces" fell out of favor, but it must still be out there someplace, right? Do any of you still make it? Have you seen it "in the wild" anywhere?

The greens are just spinach sautéed with onion and jalapeño and finished with crema. I am sure you could do the same thing with any flavorful greens you come across, I'm just a sucker for spinach.

I'm with janeer: if I need tomatoes out of season, I use canned. A good-quality canned tomato is going to whip the pants off any of the garbage you buy at the supermarket at any time of year, and even my local farmers' market is mostly bland, mealy, oversized Big Boys.

ChristieO - I've had very good results cooking inexpensive tenderloin sous vide, but that doesn't mean that you can't get something even better using higher-quality ingredients. In particular, in this case I hear that the pork tastes quite different from your standard-issue Hormel, and has a different texture. Just because we can make a choice top round taste good doesn't stop us from eating dry-aged prime ribeye when we've got it, after all!

Red Chile Pasta (p. 71) Salsa: Mellow Red Chile Salsa (p. 30) Looks, Italian, tastes Mexican. That's not parmesan on top, either: it's queso añejo. This was a pretty successful dish: I think I'd like just a bit more chile in the salsa, but overall it's very good. The recipe pretty much says you can do this with any of the salsas in the book, so I think it might be fun to try with a salsa verde.

I must say, the electronic review copy, gorgeous as it was, really did not do this stunning photography justice. While of course the authors deserve incredible credit for their work, let me take this opportunity to applaud Ryan Matthew Smith's and Nathan's superb photography, and the team's decision to print the book using the advanced printing process. I wonder if we'll find any art collectors buying the book on the basis of its stunning visuals and never even looking at the text!

Here's a clearer view of how large it is...

I suggested to my wife that we install a glass case in the middle of the house...

My copy just arrived. The packaging is insane, and "big" just doesn't do the set justice....

I'm thinking it was the cooling: I think that's the really critical step, to make the starch behave correctly. I don't recall what the magic temperature is that you have to get the potatoes down to, but both MC and McGee emphasize that you have to cool them "all the way."

It's tough to be a regular in a college town: the wait staff turn over too fast to learn to recognize you. I think I'm only a regular in the "someone who is recognized" sense at the coffee shop I go to on Tuesday mornings.