Chris Hennes

It honestly has never occurred to me to try the pre-peeled garlic because I simply assumed that, like its pre-chopped brethren, it would be utter shit. I'm intrigued to learn that is not the case, especially because, for whatever reason, nine months out of the year the fresh garlic I have access to is, in fact, utter shit. In retrospect, I frequently use canned tomatoes in place of fresh when I don't have access to good tomatoes: why should garlic be any different?

I was considerably less ambitious than the rest of you, but this evening I made "Filets de Poisson Pochés au Vin Blanc" sauced with "Beurre au Citron," from Mastering the Art of French Cooking volume 1. In the spirit of that tome, I present it to you in all its glorious detail: Filets de Poisson Pochés au Vin Blanc The main attraction: Technically filleting, but perhaps "butchering" is a better word: Making the stock (I used vermouth, and no parsley): Chilling the stock: The fillets before adding the liquid: no one should be surprised by the quantity of butter in this recipe... And with the stock added: Into the oven to poach: Out of the oven, poached: The sauce, "Buerre au Citron," is 4:1:1 butter:lemon juice:fish stock: Emulsifying the butter into the lemon juice: And finally, the plated dish (snap peas on the side):

Having eaten there just last week, I can't say I was surprised by the review, exactly, but maybe a little disappointed. To me four stars implies near perfection, and while Bruni may have indeed received that in his visits, mine was well shy of that mark. Not a bad meal by any means, and I will certainly go back, but four stars? At any rate, congratulations to Chef Humm and company, I suspect the party this evening will be pretty exuberant, and well-deserved.

I just got done making tortillas for tonight's dinner: I usually make them an hour or so ahead and reheat them by wrapping them in a tea towel and placing in a 200 degree oven for around 10 minutes. They aren't quite as perfect as fresh, but close.

Do you happen to know the capacity (mL or oz) of the 2005 mug? It sounds like just the ticket for my morning coffee, but only if it's big enough!

It is (I believe) possible to sterilize the sauce via pressure canning, but as soon as you open the jar it would have to be refrigerated. You would also want to make sure the flavors don't change unacceptably through the very high temperatures involved in that process.

What kind of chocolate sauce? I think the water activity level is what is going to get you in trouble, if sauce works like a ganache for filled chocolates. Is this something you want to store on the shelf and use occasionally, or can you vacuum seal it?

That makes sense: and absolutely I agree that if the recipe was developed with and calls for Pecorino Romano, substituting Parmesan is completely inappropriate. My impression may be colored somewhat by the bad Pecorino Romano pizza I had a few days ago...

Absolutely: I'm sometimes amazed to see recipes that state that one may be a suitable replacement for the other. The flavor profiles are completely different.

ambra, it's interesting to me that you only use it for cooking: I'm the opposite. I don't care for the flavor or the saltiness when it's been heated, but plain as an accompaniment to a bowl of olives and a cocktail (or two!) I love it. Really, I think you need a salty, robust cheese to hold its own against the olives, so while I would prefer a soft, stinky cheese if that's all I'm eating, something like Pecorino Romano is great on a tray with other salty foods.

For reference, on my shelf are Whitley Neil (84 proof), Hendricks (88 proof), Brokers (94 proof) and Beefeater (94 proof). So the proof is pretty much all over the map. If the alcohol burn bothers you I think you would either have to adjust proportions, or let the drink dilute more or less from the ice before serving it. But either of these solutions of course changes not just the alcohol content, but the flavor balance.

Yes, that definitely seems to be the case, though it's unclear whether it's even necessary (or particularly beneficial) to do so at the first sign of any mold. It seems based on what I've read so far that as long as you wipe it off before eating the salume, you're fine. Some producers seem to wipe it off regularly, while others just let it go and wipe at the end. I saw the guy at the counter peeling the casing off something at Calabria, and when combined with wiping first that is probably the safest way to go. The answer to all of these is about the same, it seems: there are a few hundred species of mold that commonly occur on charcuterie products: of these, a few (most notably Aspergillus ochraceus, Penicillium nordicum, and Penicillium verrucosum) produce toxins under the right conditions. I don't know for sure, but it is possible that none of the problem molds is white, or at least, they are not white when producing the toxin, hence the recommendations seen everywhere to get rid of sausages that have non-white mold. But these toxins seem to remain on the exterior of the salume and can be simply washed off carefully before eating.

The money quote from the abstract of the Iacumin article:

Ah, brilliant! There does actually seem to be a very substantial amount of research being conducted in this area, so I guess it's time to start digging into it. I've got access to most of these journals, I think, but it will take a bit of time to assemble a clear picture of what's going on. I agree that the best course of action right now seems to be to simply wash the mold off, and to watch the relative humidity (though I thought that even 79% was quite high for sausage curing... it was nothing like that high in Calabria).

Thanks, that's excellent. For those without access: the authors deliberately inoculated summer sausages with Aspergillus flavus, a mold that is known to produce aflatoxins, then stored it for six weeks at two relative humidities and two temperatures. They then took a series of measurements of the aflatoxin production. A few choice quotes from that article (Alvarez-Barrea, et al., "Some Factors Influencing Aflatoxin Production in Fermented Sausages." Journal of Food Science 47(6), pp. 1773 - 1775): So, from this article it seems that it's all about the environmental conditions: after six weeks at 10°C and low relative humidity (79% was the "low" humidity level) there was no aflatoxin production, even when inoculated with mold known to produce the toxin. At high temperature (30°C, but "low" humidities) after six weeks there was production in the inoculated sausages, but not the uninoculated (both were covered with mold). After only three weeks, however, only the high-temp/high-humidity combination produced aflatoxins on the inoculated sausages.

Perhaps we're taking a backwards approach here. It is certain that there is a non-zero probability that your next sausage will kill you, mold or no, white or green, etc. We introduce nitrates and acidifying bacteria to reduce to the risk of, for example, botulism, to acceptable levels. It seems clear that either there is a massive world-wide conspiracy to allow places like this to remain open despite the rampant danger of killing all of their customers, or that the dangers of unknown mold spores killing you is being dramatically overstated in the literature. As Charcuteriers, what (if anything) do we need to do to reduce the risk of mycotoxin-producing molds to acceptable levels? Has anyone with a mold growth problem considered having the end product tested for toxins?

My wife and I had lunch at Keste yesterday, so here's your out-of-town Oklahoma-country-hick perspective: we had the Regina Margherita (grape tomatoes and Buffalo mozzarella), and the Mast'nicola (percorino and lardo). The Margherita was terrific, the Pecorino was not. If allowed to sit for a while the Margherita was pretty wet and the crust started to get soaked, but fresh from the oven it was revelatory: really, really excellent. The Pec and Lardo, on the other hand, may as well have been a salt lick. And who cooks lardo? Maybe I'm missing something here, but this pizza seemed really bad to me.

My wife and I had dinner at EMP last night, and had the Gourmand menu (without the wine pairing, we stuck to cocktails). Overall I thought the food was very good, with several things that were really excellent, and a few clunkers. But holy crap is that a lot of food (when ordering eleven courses you actually end up with more like fifteen!). By the end it was definitely just one or two bites of each course for evaluation purposes. I think I've got the order right below, but I may have a few transposed. Sterling Royal Caviar Served in a caviar tin with the generous serving of caviar covering the whole top layer, this was a nice dish to start out with (if you like caviar). Bread & Butter Two very large circles of butter were brought out, from two different farms. One was a goat's milk butter, and one a cow's milk butter. The bread was so-so, but the butters were both very good, in particular the goat's milk butter, which was excellent. Heirloom Tomatoes Of course, not a plate of tomatoes, but rather three separate preparations. This course was quite large considering the number of courses it would be followed by. Two of the tomato preparations were very good, and one was not (Cooking Heirlooms at this time of year seems a waste to me, but if it had tasted good I would forgive it. Alas, it did not.) The other two were essentially raw preparations and showcased the tomatoes extremely well. Santa Barbara Sea Urchin Served in a white ceramic sea urchin-shaped bowl, this was good but not great. Foie Gras The little card here in front of me says "Mille-Feuille with greenmarket plums, umeboshi and bitter almonds." I'm glad I have the cheat-sheet they provided, because my memory of this dish is that it was forgettable, which makes me a little sad because I love foie. Atlantic Halibut A very well-cooked piece of fish: excellent. Nova Scotia Lobster Very tasty, with an excellent flavor profile and sequence, but I felt that the lobster was slightly overcooked. Not terribly so, and it could also be a species difference that I am unaware of. Everglades Frogs Legs Served in a (chicken) egg shell, I enjoyed this one, but my wife didn't care for the funky flavor profile. Smoked Pork Belly This one isn't on the cheat sheet as it's a new dish they are playing with: pork belly served under a glass hood filled with what I think was Applewood smoke. I am a huge sucker for both pork belly and smoke, so I thought this was very good. Unfortunately, I can also comment from experience that the smell of the smoke most likely interfered with other diners' meals. We were eating another course when a table about ten feet from us received this course and the smell from the smoke drifted over and clearly changed the course we were eating at the time. Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Absolutely terrific lamb course, and gigantic serving considering where it was in the meal. Perfectly cooked, excellent flavors, really magnificent. Warm Towel OK, you don't eat this, but I thought it was an interesting presentation: a small towel, rolled up on the plate and covered with fresh herbs, over which warm water was poured. Smelled great, and quite refreshing. Cheese Selection I love cheese, but am not a connoisseur so can't really judge the selection or the quality. I ate some and it was good. Strawberries & Champagne An excellent dessert of strawberries covered with what appears at first to be whipped cream, but is in fact a champagne emulsion. Probably the most successful foam I have ever run across, it not only tasted like champagne, but managed to capture the texture as well. Macarons OK, but not great, a little flawed in the execution from a technical standpoint (as compared to the macarons served at Table 8 on Monday, for example). Jivara Chocolate OMG why are they serving a chocolate mousse after all that?! The taste was fine but not amazing, and the raspberry gel was too firm. Maybe this is the very, very full stomach talking, but this course seemed like a wholly inappropriate way to end the meal. Cognac Just in case we had not had enough to drink (nursing various cocktails the whole evening), they brought a bottle of Cognac whose name escapes me and kindly left it at the table for us to "enjoy as much as we wanted." An empty threat at that point, since I suspect we looked like we wanted to curl up under the table and take a nap, but it was a nice cognac. Snacks! And, for the subway ride home since we must have appeared hungry, a small box of pate de fruit. I left them for the housekeeping staff at the hotel. Is this an NYT four-star restaurant? The service was excellent, the space is beautiful, and the majority of the food ranged from very good to excellent, but there is clear room for improvement, I think. Some of the sequencing seemed odd to me, the bread was mediocre, 1/3 of the tomato course was actively bad, and a few other things only rung up "OK" on the scale. From my understanding of the rating system, that's not describing four stars, it's describing three, or maybe even two. Which of course means four is virtually guaranteed! We'll find out soon enough...

That larb was absolutely fantastic. The rest of the dishes were very good, but wow. The larb. Nice.

The above reviews basically cover the whole deal, though I should point out that I may have been the only one at the table who didn't care for the corn (too sweet for my tastes). I'd also like to heap some more praise on the pastry chef (whose name escapes me, I'm afraid): in particular, the macarons were about as perfectly executed as I have ever seen, in addition to having very good flavors. All told there were several VERY nice desserts brought to the table. I don't think it's too much to hope that a few decent cocktails make it into the program: certainly the food we were eating was probably every bit as beyond that sort of crowd as the cocktails would be, and that doesn't seem to stop Chef Loughhead from doing it. Hey, we can dream, can't we?

One thing was clear from our visit to Calabria: the blanket statement given in all of the books I have read that green mold and fuzzy mold are categorically bad is false. As far as I can tell, right now we are all at the point of pure guesswork. The guy at the counter had literally no clue what we were talking about when we suggested that maybe there was something wrong with that mold, and clearly the NYC health department feels the same way (it's not like they hide the Sopressata when the health inspector visits). I certainly cannot tell the difference between a good mold and a bad mold on sight, and I am loath to throw away any charcuterie on the basis of the mold's color at this point (I'm not sure how clear it is in those pictures, but the green mold was certainly not uniform, there was a whole range of greens/blues going on in there). The store is obviously not a carefully controlled environment, considering the large amount of foot traffic through there introducing who knows what kind of mold spores into the place. All that said, there are all these published books with the same basic advice in them. Where is it coming from? How real is the danger? How can you tell if you've got any bad mold?

For most pancake-like items I am familiar with the batter is unfermented, except yeasted ones. Did you try it unfermented? Can you describe the way it changes overnight? Is it souring?

I don't think that's a given, considering the complexity of taste perception. Cocoa butter has very little flavor, whereas butter has quite a bit. I think it's entirely possible that by replacing some of the cocoa butter with dairy butter, the taste imparted by the dairy would enhance the perception of the chocolate. (I'm not stating that this happens, only that it is possible—someone send me some brownies to test and I'll let you know!). Perception is a screwy thing sometimes...

We did (though I admit we ate several courses standing in the kitchen—we were the world's worst table companions, very bad about holding up our end of the conversation! Sorry mamagotcha!). I think at that moment I was probably actually praying to the plating gods that we would have enough of that smoked Salmon .

The combination with bitter orange ice cream sounds great, I'll have to give it a go when blueberry season rolls around again here. I broke down the differences between your recipe and RLB's in this post, but it boils down to a higher proportion of fresh berries and less sugar and cornstarch in RLB's.