nickrey

Thanks for the post Chris, It's now definitely on the to-do list.

Try Salmagundi, which looks at composed salads around the world; or Mr Wilkinson's Well-Dressed Salads, which looks at seasonal salads; or Salad Samurai, which is a vegan salad cookbook.

Found this today. You draw the stem through the appropriate sized hole and the stem is left in your hand and the thyme on the other side. Should be good for rosemary and other twiggy herbs as well. This will save so much time. Very Happy. Amazon link here.

I've had no problems with the Rocky. Bear in mind that even with infinite modifications possible to a machine, if you have significant changes in humidity, you will need to be infinitely adjusting your machine. God shots are possible, but you will find that God is a moveable and capricious entity. So you can buy a machine that is less adjustable and adjust it less, with an associated lack of precision. Or you can buy a machine that is more adjustable and adjust it more to achieve perfection, which means a waste of coffee. Your call.

We've chatted about temperature elsewhere. The rule of thumb for making good coffee is to adjust your grind so that 30ml comes out in 30 seconds. You'll get a feel for it. Humidity can cause fluctuations in the grind you will need but you'll get used to it and see if it is pouring too fast or too slow and be able to adjust accordingly. The best coffee places adjust their grinds many times during the day based on feel for timing of shots. Others simply use their expensive machines like the equivalent of an automatic machine and just press the button (sort of like a nespresso with a portafilter). I often tip out or leave coffee from cafes. Many people have a favourite Barista in a cafe with others not able to create the coffee that they want. Given your obsession with cooking and getting things right (yes, we've noticed), I feel confident that with a PIDded Silvia, a decent grinder, and beans that you find suit your palate, you'll be making shots that are only bested by very few cafes. Yes it will take time to learn it properly but the investment will be worth it. If you're worried about what to do with coffee grounds, check out the Internet for uses for them in your garden,

On the basis of experience and recommendations on coffee forums, I leave it for at least 20-30 minutes. I turn mine on when waking up and it is well and truly ready to go when I'm making breakfast.

I'd reckon if you combined a number umami-rich foods, you'd get a similar mix to this at a small fraction of the cost. Think roasted tomatoes/fried tomato paste, dried porcini mushrooms, anchovies, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, miso, seaweed [(Kombu), heat in the cooking wine to just below boiling and leave to steep; remove Kombu], balsamic vinegar and some salt to catalyse the natural MSG reaction (depending on how many achovies/how much fish sauce you used). Add some sake or Chinese cooking wine to liquify it a bit and there you are. No need to add sweetness: just make sure the tomatoes are caramelised. It wouldn't need much in the bag to flavour the steaks.

It's attached to the outside of the brass boiler as per the instructions. The result with the cold cup really highlights the need to warm cups before pouring.

Of course it is was 95C -- yesterday I put it in a cold cup which cooled the water before I measured its temperature. After pouring a number of shots to warm the cup before measuring, it read 95C.

An interesting article on the effect of brewing temperatures on extraction and taste can be found here. Interesting that 95C is right in the middle of the temperatures that were trialled (92, 94, 96, 98).

Correction, it was 95C (was waiting for it to stabilise after switching it on, it hadn't apparently). That makes it 203F, which is 10C cooler than I used to have it set. Using a portafilter without coffee, the water comes out at 62C (144F).

She also told me my PID temperature was too high, it's now set at 91C (196F).

I have had an Auber instruments PID for my Silvia for years and make milk-based coffee as well as black. As far as I can remember the PID controller only works for the coffee extraction phase. Once you switch it to steam, the temperature increases to normal steaming levels. My daughter is a professional barista and she loves the steam pressure on the Silvia. For the record, if you start frothing when the temperature gauge hits 126C, the temperature is high enough and the heating lights stays on all through the frothing phase. This seems to give the best outcome.

Recently while eating out I had a steak that had been cooked sous vide where the chef had managed to get a really crispy exterior. The outside was dry and chewy while the inside was conventional sous vide texture. The texture contrast made it taste horrible. I sear mine quickly to get a bit of char flavour and, if using a grill pan, grill marks and that's it. Of course the majority of steak that we get in Australia is grass fed and consequently has a different fat profile from US grain fed beef.

One tip that is often missed is to dry the steaks when you take them out of the bag prior to searing. If you don't do this, the sear will not work properly. After drying I rub in oil and salt and put the steak on a searing hot pan (as hot as you can get it and preferably on a wok burner) -- don't use non-stick as the high heat will denature the surface. Edited to change run (typo) to rub.

Sometimes recipes are badly written, leave ingredients out, etc. However, in many cases success or otherwise of a recipe depends on the skill of the cook and the quality of ingredients used. I can't see the benefit of someone rating a recipe based on what they did when they were wielding it.

Besides, as you rightly point out, they state that A causes B. (Press release 240 from IARC says "The experts concluded that each 50 gram portion of processed meat eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%"). Not inferring causality? Swims like a duck, quacks like a duck. It probably is a duck.

Yes, but I wonder if the IARC understood this. This topic addresses what the IARC did. My beef is with the misuse of correlational data, including meta analysis.

They still have to get published. Also there may be other factors associated with both eating meat and cancer that gives rise to significant correlations. Correlations can never indicate causality. Ever.

Here is where we agree totally.It is still a long road from indications of trends to declaring definitively a causal relationship. I suspect this is why there were dissenters from the final opinion.

I did say published results. Read this paper on why negative results should be published from the reputable publisher Elsevier as an example of the debate in this area. Were your argument true there would be no need to write such papers. Perhaps as you say the majority of studies do not show significant results. As a consequence, they are typically not published. If they were I would venture that many meta analyses would fall flat. When meta-analysis first came out (in my field of psychology, not biomedical science) I had these concerns with it. Other prominent researchers such as Hans Eysenck said exactly the same thing. The fault is not necessarily with the statistical process but with the way that decisions are made on whether to publish results or not. Trends in bandwagon publishing of research have long been recognised, going back at least to Thomas Kuhn and his "structure of scientific revolutions." Somewhat ironically it is my understanding that the original paper presenting meta analysis was only published through intervention of the Editor of the journal. All the associate editors had previously rejected it as being too far fetched.

I do understand the statistics and noted that a key study taken into account in coming to the conclusion was a meta-analysis of published studies. The selection criteria used in that study was that "Studies were included if they reported estimates of the association of red meats, processed meats, or both with colorectal, colon, or rectal cancer risk. “Red meat” was described in most studies as the intake of beef, veal, pork, mutton and lamb." It is a well known fact that studies are typically not published if they don't show significant results. There could be hundreds of studies gathering dust out there that showed no relationship between eating red meat and cancer. Needless to say, these were not included in the meta-analysis. Therefore to interpret for the lay reader: the study looked only at publications which demonstrated a significant relationship between eating meat and development of cancer and found, unsurprisingly, that eating red meat causes cancer. It is the statistical equivalent to surrounding yourself with people who have the same view as you and then saying that everyone you asked agreed with you so you must be right. Groupthink for epidemiologists. The only way you can prove causality is to run controlled experiments, the findings of which are then replicated by others. Correlational studies can show an indication of a possible relationship but nothing more. Meta-analysis groups together correlational studies, which increases the effect size and gives the credulous researcher cause to overstate their findings.

For what it's worth, just spent a week in NYC as well as a week in Napa and San Francisco and had the best meal of the trip at Eleven Madison Park. They seem at the top of their game. Did French Laundry as well and EMP was the winner to us by a long shot. FL would have been good 10 or so years ago but now they seem at the blunt end rather than the cutting edge. Depends on what you like and what you are looking for. We also did Booker and Dax (really impressed, try their ready-made Martinis and Manhattans) and Momofuku Ssam (less so -- it didn't compare at all with Momofuku Seibo; I realise they're trying to do a neighbourhood thing rather than 5* but even the pork buns were disappointing).

I do Calamari for 3 hours at 59C. Works a treat. You may need to up the time with octopus, which can be thicker. Try five hours. This is the time and temperature used in this demonstration by Jonathan Benno from Lincoln restaurant.

The current world Barista champion (won is Seattle this year) comes from Canberra. I know the roaster for the cafe group run by the world champion and he talks about different preferences around different parts of Australia. Sydney, for example, typically prefers a darker roast. If you want dark roasted, try to get an Italian style expresso blend -- it tastes burnt to me but it may be what you are looking for.