KennethT

Thanks.... Not yet, but stay tuned.... I don't want to start anything fast growing right now as I have a vacation coming up and won't be around to take care of it. Hydro is a bit different than growing in soil as changes in pH and nutrient concentration and reservoir levels can happen very quickly with quickly growing plants. And since I haven't had time to automate a lot of it yet, the new stuff will have to wait. But, since I'll be headed to Singapore, I think I might be able to find some really interesting seeds that might be hard to come by here. Holy basil is surely on the list.... No worries!

So here's a couple shots of the garden now... This is a shot of the same 3 basil plants as before, growing out of a 1" rockwool cube - it's become a hedge!!! The leaves range from 3-5" long and are super fragrant. (BTW, please excuse the mess!) L-R: Rosemary, tarragon (cloned from another plant, not from seed), and bok choi Pretty soon, I'll have limes!

I understand Shalmanese's point - we never wash decanters with soap - only a rinse with hot water, and use "decanter beads" (sort of like stainless steel BBs) to "scrub" any stubborn stains if not rinsed right away... The glasses, however, get washed because people's mouths are all over the rim. We frequently have about 10 people over for tastings where each person gets 3-4 glasses. That's a lot of glasses to wash on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. We used to wash them by hand, but having far too many break in the hand caused us to get a glass rack from the restaurant supply store. It holds 16 glasses and is intended to go into a commercial dish machine. Removing the bottom dish rack from our rental apartment's crappy dishwasher allows us to put in the commercial glass rack with only a slight modification to the rack, resulting in clean glasses with very little effort. The rack looks like this one:

+1. My sentiments exactly.

Looks great, Chris... but to rival Katz's, you'd need to use 3x more pastrami!

That was really interesting. I was surprised that they're actually using real food, as opposed to more camera-friendly materials. I always thought that the buns were typically made from foam and painted to look browned, and that ketchup wasn't really ketchup but some type of red gel made to look like ketchup, but is much stiffer so it can sit under the hot lights for hours and not sag.

+1

Kim - where did you get your seeds? I found this place: evergreenseeds.com - it's a Yahoo store (temporarily closed until June 20th) but I don't know if there's somewhere better out there...

Just came back from pok pok a few hours ago. Got there at 6:30 and already an hour wait. Totally worth it. Best Thai food since I was in Thailand a few years ago. Really made me miss it, and brought back many memories of that trip to Chiang Mai.

I'd say that probably the most well known self-published cookbook (especially on eGullet) is Modernist Cuisine, and coming soon, the Modernist Cuisine at Home.

I'd imagine that it's already precooked/pasteurized in the bag and that the instructions given are reheating, not cooking instructions. Also, I'd imagine their thickness in the finished product is relatively consistent, so I'd imagine 35 minutes at 145F would be plenty of time to bring to temp.

Agree with Shalmanese, teapot and Nickrey. Yes there's nothing like fresh curry paste. However, most thai's don't make their own either. Every market I saw in Thailand has at least one vendor sitting in front of huge mounds of curry paste, that's been freshly made. That being said, I don't hold Mae Ploy in too high regard. Especially being in NYC, there are much better options. Try theThai store on Mosco St. - they have fresh curry paste from Thailand in foil pouches in the refrigerator. It's the best I've used outside ofThailand. Keeps a long time in the fridge and freezes well too.

I bought a single bulb reflector with clamp-on base from the Home Depot - the kind that's normally used with a light bulb. Also from the HD is an infrared heat lamp, normally used in bathrooms, I guess, the base is the size of a normal light bulb, but the bulb flares out to about a 5-6" diameter. It works well when doing say 4-6 plates at a time - for 12, I'd use two - mounted on opposite sides.

True - but a lot of places use heat lamps over the plating stations to try to limit cooling as much as possible while doing an intricate plating. I've done this at home with moderate success - but I couldn't position my heat lamp exactly where I wanted it so it could've been a lot better.

I'm looking for a large cambro poly box in the NYC area.... Does anyone know where I can get it? If possible, I'd like to avoid online since shipping costs for such a bulky item might be really high.

Check out the most recent (pretty old though) blog post in cookingissues.com They go into a whole tasting comparison of pre/post salting. I haven't pre salted since, except for fish which cooks for 20 min.

Modernist cuisine's treatment of escargot is really good - have made a few times to many rave reviews. Bag escargot with chick broth, carrot and onion and SV 5 h @ 154F

There have been quite a few posts in the past dealing with bag juices. You can separate the liquid from fat, then bring to a boil (I usually use the microwave), then strain out the proteins that coagulate. Member Nickrey came up with an interesting method to pan fry the coagulated proteins until they become the typicaly brown bits that accumulate on teh bottom of a normal roasting pan - you can deglaze with the bag liquid and any other flavorful liquids to get your jus. Works very well.

Thanks.... When your tomato plant flowers, how do you pollinate it? Most, if not all, tomato plants do not self pollinate - they rely on the wind, bees, etc to do it. So, indoors (greenhouse or apartment) you have to do it manually. The easiest way to do this is with a electric toothbrush. It vibrates at the right frequency to shake the pollen out - it's actually similar in frequency to bees wings! Just hold the toothbrush under the truss with flowers on it and press lightly. You should see pollen dust fall out of the flowers. Best to do I the morning, or late evening. I'm not sure if the same is true for peppers. Some hot peppers are notoriously difficult to set fruit indoors. Keep me posted as to your results!

Made the foie gras torchon last Saturday morning. Went by the recipe, but didn't have white port, so I subbed a 10 yr. tawny... 2/3 were aged only a few hours then frozen and shaved... excellent! The other 1/3 has been aging in the refrigerator. My question is: the book says to age "at least 3 days" but doesn't give a maxiumum time... If I started curing Friday night, and cooked Sat. morning, do you think it'll still be good by Sunday evening?

Agar will have syneresis also - hence agar clarification...

That video is in the DVD linked to above, plus others turning the whole chicken into parts for sautee... I love that video!

I don't think they're gearing this restaurant for the foodie set... I think it's for the hordes of tourists who love GF and will go anywhere he tells them - especially if it has his name on it! So, it's good that it's in Times Square, which is perfect for their target audience - and will have 0 impact on most NYers who actually care about food...

You wouldn't use agar to make spheres with a liquid filling... For that, it's better to do reverse spherification using sodium alginate in a calcium bath of some kind. Probably best to make a sphere of pepper jus. Then using an ice cube tray or something, add the olive sphere base about halfway up the mold. Freeze... then add pepper jus sphere and more olive sphere base to top of mold. Freeze again. Drop frozen "spheres" into warm calcium bath for a few minutes? As the warm bath defrosts the sphere, it will gel the outside. Then, when you have removed and rinsed, the sphere can full defrost leaving a sphere within a sphere.

Jacques Pepin has a DVD available (I think through the PBS website) where he shows many different techniques in quite good detail. With a little practice, he can show you how to take apart a whole chicken in less than a minute... granted, with practice, I'm still at about 5 minutes, but it's much better than it used to be before watching his technique! http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=11969480&cp=&sr=1&kw=jacques+pepin&origkw=jacques+pepin&parentPage=search