Chris Hennes

Mine didn't last long enough to test: I used some on the second day and the rest on the third, both times with identical results to day 1. So it does hold for a little while anyway. It has a higher water content than just cheese, but I am not sure of the preservative effects of the salts.

They only speak to restaurant use, and suggest a machine with a three liter capacity that can spin at 30,000 RPM. One gets the sense that they are well aware that centrifuges will likely remain unobtainable resources for nearly everyone, but that they had fun with theirs and wanted to talk about it.

Yes, I'm sure that having some standby dishes that you can whip together quickly is a big part of the key. I am making every dish you see here for the first time: it takes easily twice as long the first time as the tenth, in my experience, so there are a lot of gains to be made by making the same dish many times. Of course, that's not how I cook, so I never achieve that level of proficiency with any one dish! So, two dishes plus rice is it for me.

I haven't decided whether to cold smoke or hot smoke: I'd like to go cold, but my rig is no longer set up for it so I'll have to improvise. Might pick up a soldering iron and go that route.

Dry-Fried Beef Slivers (gan bian niu rou si) (pp. 228–230) I was a little nervous about just how long the beef was getting cooked here: "dry-fried" indeed! That said, the dish was actually very good, and I enjoyed the texture of the beef. I've cropped the photo close to disguise the fact that I only made two dishes

Belly might work: based on the photo it looks like the pork cheek they mean is just the nugget of meat in the jowl, though, not the whole thing, so I guess I'd have to trim the belly up to get something similar.

It says "Angelica Root, sliced" which I was assuming meant fresh, but I don't know that for certain. It's a bit player in a brine, so it may work fine with dried. I'm rethinking this plan: I had intended to basically "part out" the pork tenderloin section of the Choucroute Royale recipe, but on reading the whole thing every component sounds fantastic. I'm thinking I might start some sauerkraut tomorrow (takes two weeks to make by the recipe in the book). I started the "Aromatic Alsatian Mustard" today, that takes a week but can be held longer. The other components are quicker, though I'm not going to be able to get my hands on pork cheek either, I'll have to sub in something else. Any suggestions there?

I just parcooked a batch of risotto to go along with that pork tenderloin. I'm not sure I can source the Angelica root or bitter orange zest the brine for the pork calls for. Anyone have any thoughts on subs, or just leave them out?

For years professional chefs with solid foundations kept telling us that "searing the meat seals in the juices." The FDA continues to tell us that we should cook poultry to 165°F, and the American Heart Association insists that eating cholesterol will kill you. All respected individuals with tons of experience. But experience is no replacement for knowledge, and that knowledge tends to come from books like this one. I should add that later this week I will be using Activa RM to glue leeks to a sous vide pork tenderloin. In the name of science.

Naturally, the only way to convince yourself is to try it: the Mac and Cheese is a good place to start because it is something so familiar. And this mac and cheese isn't just a little bit better, it is head and shoulders superior in all ways I can enumerate. It's also very easy and relatively inexpensive to make: I spent far more on the cheese than on the "chemicals"!

A couple questions about this: first, does it hold true in the limit? That is, what if I drop all the stock ingredients in the blender? Also, do you have any problems clarifying a stock made this way due to what I presume will be an increased amount of little bits sloughed off from your dice?

The thought of making three (or more!) dishes every night for dinner is disheartening. I feel fortunate when I have the time and energy to cook two! The cultural divide may simply be too much for me.

Stir-Fried Pork Slivers with Sweet Fermented Paste (jing jiang rou si) (pp. 215–216) I love the taste of sweet bean paste, so this dish was totally successful for me. I served it with "Tiger Skin Green Peppers (fu pi qing jiao)" (page 288), but my green peppers turned out to be flavorless crap, so that dish was a wash, though obviously no fault of the recipe's. I'll try it again when my garden starts producing peppers later this year.

(Incidentally, I started a WikiGullet Project article on Sichuan cuisine this evening... it's just an outline now, and I could sure use some help from someone who can type Chinese characters better than me!)

You people are bad for my budget. eG-friendly link to Frida's Fiestas.

That's a $20 meal? Time to book some tickets to New Orleans...

No idea, there wasn't any English on the bag except "Chile". Little red ones (real specific, I know).

I think I may just have the wrong kind of chiles: I know it's supposed to be a bit spicy, but that writeup sure sounds to me like it should be bearable, and probably less spicy than many of the other things I've made so far. I wouldn't really say the dish was a failure: as I mentioned, the taste is fantastic, Bruce I can understand why it would be a favorite. It was just that the spice got to be overwhelming. So tonight, a totally different meal... Sweet and Sour Pork (tan cu li ji) (pp. 210–211) Not a chile in sight. I've made a number of "non-Westernized" versions of sweet-and-sour X, and I think this is my favorite so far. Too much sauce, but that's mostly because I foolishly dumped it all on there instead of adding a bit at a time. A really nice flavor combination, in my opinion. I served it with white rice (obviously) and a stir-fried cabbage based on her recipe for "Stir-fried potato slivers with chiles and sichuan pepper (qiang to dou si)" on page 297: the textural contrast was just right in this case, a good combination if you ask me.

Knives: modern materials science is incredible. Even without going to the exotics, a simple low-end knife today is far superior to those of the past.

Maybe the wiki just likes waffles. I mean really, who could blame it?

Lucky rug rat! I had it for lunch today too: used up the leftover cheese.

323, as of this moment. And the random page returned is pretty random, by computer randomness standards. The distribution is a little skewed but not enough to cause it to rotate amongst such a small percentage of the pages. I'd guess what you are seeing is just an artifact of that randomness: if you click the button 20 times, since there are only 323 entries, the odds that you will see some repeats is very high (about 45% that there will be at least one repeat, in fact).

Chicken with Chiles (la zi ji) (pp. 240-241) From the recipe: Lies! Lies, I say! Holy crap this was spicy. When you throw 2 oz (over 50 grams!) of dried chiles and a tablespoon of sichuan peppercorns into a hot wok it's like getting hit with pepper spray. And that heat does NOT stay in the chiles, contrary to Dunlop's assertion in the writeup. No, this dish was insanely spicy, no two ways about it. The taste was fabulous, but this is definitely not designed for the western palate. I can't make it with this level of chiles again: maybe a quarter as many would be more reasonable.

Ditto that, as well as the basic sanity check that the stuff I cook turns out well, even when very small amounts are called for. My scale only resolves in .1g increments, though, not the .01g mentioned above. As an undergrad we built wheatstone bridges using relatively cheap parts and were able to get very accurate strain gauge measurements: presumably on an industrial scale it can be done quite easily.

Kerry, I'd be more concerned about the consistency when heated than at fridge temps: does it melt to an appropriately gooey texture?