Chris Hennes

I have a couple 24"x48" stainless steel tables I picked up at the rest. supply store. As mentioned above, they are not the sturdiest things in the world if you want to put a stand mixer on them: they simply don't weigh enough. I didn't have any trouble getting them home, they were flat-packed (I bought them new). They were really cheap, around $150 I think. That said, if you call all the marks that wood counters get "patina" and are willing to just deal with them, wood is heavy and heavy is good. I just built a new workbench for my garage and the top alone weighs 350 pounds. It does NOT move.

Curious, I wonder if there is in fact a greater difference between ray goud's "piercing" technique and the use of a Jaccard than meets the eye. The blades on a Jaccard are very thin, and I believe the notion is that you are cutting the muscle fibers (which, as dougal points out, prevents them from tightening during cooking and squeezing liquid out). Whereas, if I am understanding ray's description, his device was more like a series of pins, or fork prongs, tearing the meat fibers apart from one another without actually cutting them. Ray, is that an accurate description?

I routinely scrub my wok with hot, soapy water (and my cast iron, for that matter): the seasoning on both is plenty strong to take the punishment.

OK, I let this become a bit of an obsession recently, since I drive by a whole ton of fast-food burger places on a regular basis. So far around here I've had Whataburger (OK bacon cheeseburger), Braum's (excellent, stay away from the fries though), Burger King's new A1 steakburger (OK if you like a lot of A1), McDonalds' Angus burgers (not so great), and Carl's Jr. (bad). I keep wanting to like Carl's Jr. since they are the most convenient for me, but I just can't. I've tried them at a number of times a day, and I've tried several of their burger incarnations, and I have yet to find one that I would willingly eat again. I'd much rather have Braum's burger, which is actually really good, or a Big Mac even. C's J seems obsessed with putting so much other crap on their burger that you can't actually tell if there is any beef on there, and if you get them to leave it off it turns out you didn't actually WANT to taste the beef. I gave them their last shot at lunch today, with the same results.

After this year's eGullet Candy and Confectionery Conference/Workshop I got up the motivation to give molded chocolates another go, and finally achieved success. It seems that my issue with the temper being off was basically entirely due to latent heat of crystallization, which (after some considerable guidance from Steve and company at the workshop) I have finally gotten under control. For me, the critical missing step turned out to be putting the mold in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes once it got its final scrape-down. My guess is this is happening to me because I am working with the chocolate at the very upper end of its working range: does that make sense? If I dropped down a couple degrees from that, do you think that the issue would go away entirely? I don't have a good handle on how much heat gets released as the chocolate crystallizes.

Your timing with this piece was impeccable: I first read it as I was waiting for my brine to cool down in preparation for a roast chicken the following evening. I took your advice, however, and decided to part out the chicken instead, and only brine for a few hours. And then I smoked it over mesquite instead of roasting it. And it was good. Very good. Way better than any roast chicken that has ever come out of MY oven, at any rate.

I can confirm that my wife and I will be there. We are going to try to arrive Thursday evening, but the flight sequence may or may not actually get us there in time... If possible, I'd like to ship the charcuterie ahead of me. Tammy, can I send it to you a week ahead of the gathering? (I'm traveling the whole previous week and coming direct to AA from my other travels: I don't want to drag it around with me.) ETA: Also, sign us up for dishwashing duty again.

I had decided last week that I was not going to try to get to Bianco while I was in PHX this week, but a slow afternoon at a conference,gorgeous weather, and the fact that I am at a hotel only two blocks away made it impossible to resist, after all the rave reviews. My fellow conference-skipper and I showed up a few minutes before four on this Wednesday evening and wound up almost the last to be seated in the first wave at 5pm when they opened. Everyone else in line was friendly and the fabulous and unseasonably cool weather made the wait no issue at all. As we left a few minutes ago the wait was being quoted at 2 1/2 hours, and plenty of people were deciding to hang around. After getting seated at the bar at five it took ten minutes or so to get a round of drinks, which did not seem unreasonable considering the sudden influx of people and the limited waitstaff. In another twenty minutes we had our appetizers: the Caprese salad and the antipasto plate, both of which were very good (though I thought the mozzarella in the salad was a little firm for that salad style: it was clearly destined for topping pizzas first and foremost, and the salad was an afterthought). The antipasto was quite excellent, among the better I've ever had. Between the two of us we ordered three pizzas: of course a Margherita, and then two other house specialties, one with an excellent sopresatta and Gaeta olives and another with an Italian sausage and onions. Now bear in mind that I am no pizza afficionado, though I've eaten at a few of the highly-recommended places in NY. However, these three pizzas were EXCELLENT. It would have been hard to imagine a crust more perfectly representative of the style, with just the right amount of char to complement the rest of the flavors, and a beautifully crisp cornicione. But what really elevates these pizzas is the quality of the toppings: the mozzarella used is very low in water content so the texture of the crust stays relatively firm (no soupy center section, for example), and the charcuterie was simply top-notch. As I say, I am not an expert on these things, so I really can't tell you if this is the best pizza in the universe (or whatever the current claim is), but it is damned good pizza. Neither Bianco was in the kitchen this evening (though Marco was in earlier making the dough), but if the quality suffered for it I couldn't say. For me the upshot is this: there are places in NYC (Keste is a close comparison) where you can get in without waiting two hours, and I can't really think of a reason to go to PHX just for this pizza. But if you are in town, and ESPECIALLY if you are already downtown (say, for a conference) you should eat here. Have a beer or two, enjoy the weather and the company, and deal with the wait.

I'm with Beebs: I like to add bitters to mine (though I'm partial to the Fee Bros lemon over the various orange incarnations).

Yeah, she's got several sections in the book on non-stir-frying uses of the wok: deep frying, "braising", steaming, etc. But I don't really see a reason to do any of that in my wok, I have other tools that I think are more suited to the task, and don't require me to fire up a 64k BTU propane burner.

Stir-Fried Pork with Scallions (p. 81) I'm starting to develop more of an appreciation for this understated flavor profile (white pepper, soy sauce, and rice wine): the real key seems to be really letting the wok get hot, and getting a top-notch sear on the protein. So, with the propane turned up to 11, this dish was really pretty good. It needs a vegetable side dish, but otherwise I'd definitely make it again.

I don't know anything about that site, but this statement is simply absurd. It's not magic, it's oxidation: a chemical reaction. It can be slowed to a crawl by decreasing the temperature and/or removing the available oxygen.

And, why do the vents have to be replaced? Isn't it just a one-way valve?

Jean Yueh's Beef with Onions and Peppers (p. 94) Here's my attempt at making this dish appear more interesting that it actually is, by photographing it from a different angle (hey, all the others were starting to look the same to me!). Not good, not bad, just sort of "eh". Would not have been out of place served in flour tortillas, though it would have wanted some hot sauce. It tasted basically like onions, peppers and beef, fried together. I guess I was hoping for something more than that... the sherry and soy sauce get lost in the onions and peppers. And, like basically all the other recipes, it's thickened with cornstarch, a texture that's wearing a little thin now.

In this recipe the chicken is not battered and deep-fried at all, it's just wokked as normal. Thanks for the info about the sprouts, maybe someday when I'm feeling particularly ambitious I'll head and tail mine.

Sweet and Sour Chicken (p. 76) Ah, Sweet and Sour Chicken... that staple of strip mall not-quite-Chinese take out. Red-dyed corn syrup mixed with the barest hint of vinegar, slathered atop soggy deep-fried nuggets of a meat that might once have been described as "chicken." Is there any hope here? Even well prepared, this is as white bread as it comes... and therein lies the appeal. You see, the wok burner was a gift from my mother, who is coming to visit next month. Mom doesn't like spicy food. She has so little tolerance for capsaicin, in fact, that foods I can't even tell are spicy are sometimes rejected after one bite. That eliminates about 75% of this cookbook. I've tried omitting the heat from the recipes, but never to good effect: it's there because it's needed, and it's good. I needed an alternate plan. Ah, S&SC to the rescue: there is no hint of spice, no questionable ingredients, and the taste is, well, completely inoffensive. It will surely be met by loud proclamations of approval, not least because it involves a lot of tossing of ingredients in the wok with impressive-looking bursts of flame here and there (if the wind is calm). Don't make this for your "foodie" friends, but for mom this might be just the ticket.

My Galliano is in the 375mL size, which is no taller than any of the other normal bottles. And it doesn't see a whole hell of a lot of use, so tucked away in the back someplace is just fine.

No, trimming a pound of sprouts did not sound like my idea of a good time, I (obviously) skipped that step. What are the benefits, besides just looking neater?

I was excited to see today on the Cooking Issues blog that Dave and Nils will be applying their full genius to french fries: a most important endeavor, if you ask me. This opening post just touches on the main issues, but it looks like they will be going whole-hog on this one, testing a whole bunch of different variations and naturally applying a great deal of real live published scientific research to their process.

Walter Kei's Shanghai-Style Pork and Bean Sprouts (p. 87) Tonight for dinner we had this pork and bean sprout dish... or should I say, bean sprout and pork dish? It has a pound of sprouts to a half pound of pork. The predominant flavor is of white pepper, with a little soy and a little Shao Hsing (plus the requisite garlic and sesame oil, of course!). Overall it was a touch bland at first, but grew on me as I ate it. And I found the ratio of sprouts to pork to actually be about right, I don't think I'd change it. Next time I will fresh-grind the white pepper, I think. Mine is pretty fresh, but that being the principal flavor I think I should take a little more care with it.

Putting on my "Manager" hat for a moment: let's wrap up the reporting on the Conference itself by Friday, April 30, then take the discussions to more specific topics (so that a search will find them later). If you have more photos to post, now's the time to do it. Thanks!

My "slow cooker" is a dutch oven in the oven, so most of the stews suggested above are basically done that way.

Yeah, that's a good point. Hate to be pouring ANY Marteau down the drain!

Right, I do the same thing with bitters (just ordered another batch of droppers yesterday, in fact), but I had never thought to do it with "normal" stuff as a way of addressing a space constraint. I don't think I could do it, but the idea is quite clever, if you ask me.

Y'all are brilliant, there are some great suggestions here. djyee100, the backstory here is that on days when I need the car I have to pick up my wife at the end of the day. As this can be pretty late sometimes, I would prefer to have dinner ready and waiting when we get home (it's about 45 minutes round trip, depending on traffic). I've played around with things like leaving a pizza dough circle to rise and just topping and baking when I get home, but considering how slowly my oven preheats to a pizza-appropriate temperature, it's not quite what I'm looking for. So a few things done last-minute is fine, but I'd love for the main part of the meal to be ready and waiting (and preferably smelling good!) when we get home.