nickrey

Salt the onions prior to cooking and you will get an increased caramelizing effect. Martin Lersh at Khymos, also recommends adding a pinch of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) to increase the onions' alkilinity as an accelerant to obtaining Maillard browning. His article is here.

It is my understanding that atomisers are used to intensify experiences in what has been termed techno-emotional cuisine. Similar to Heston Blumenthal's use of headphones playing ocean sounds for his sounds of the sea, it is a means of evoking an emotional connection that heightens the diner's experience. One could imagine a forest-themed dinner (all earthy flavours; mushrooms, truffles, with game for example), presented with some pine or oak essence in an attempt to get people to have a sense of location. Accompany this with forest sounds and you'd almost have an immersive experience. My suggestion would be to choose a theme and integrate the other senses with it. Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell could all come into play. In hypnosis you evoke strong memories and sense of place by having the person immerse themselves in a scene by evoking many of the senses. You are trying to do a similar thing (without the spinning watch). One piece of advice though: if you go too far, natural cynicism could kill the mood. Now off to try the atomiser of Noilly Prat...

If you want to clarify the cider, I'd recommend trying isinglass finings. These are used for traditionally conditioned ales and would be a worthy, but not necessarily vegetarian, substitute for the old pig's blood method.

I did a masterclass the other day with Nicolas le Bec. Wanted to let my wife try the product that evening and also to cook it while it was fresh in my mind. Prawn Ravioli with a sauce from the shells: Poached Atlantic Salmon in Cider Jus with Apple and Cucumber Tartare:

I make sauce of a very good consistency that definitely sticks to pasta without adding the extra oil (it normally has a bit of olive oil from making the soffrito but nowhere near the amounts mentioned above). I really think you are not thickening the sauce enough and it is too watery. Of course, oil and liquid can be used to make an emulsion so if you have marginally too much liquid you could correct it by liaising with butter or olive oil. Please also note that it is pasta with sauce, not sauce with pasta. You do not need much sauce to have it in traditional Italian style. One of our fellow eGulleters, Samuel Lloyd Kinsey (slkinsey), prefers to see pasta sauce as a condiment to the pasta. This may change your way of thinking about it. There is a huge discussion of pasta at this link. You can't really discuss the sauce without understanding the element that you are sticking the sauce to.

While we're on this topic, try to get "artisan made" pastas that have typically been pressed through a bronze die. You will see roughness on the surface of the uncooked pasta. When cooked, this provides an uneven surface to which the sauce can cling.

I agree with cooking the sauce down to the appropriate thickness. I do use pre-crushed Italian tomatoes. A properly thickened tomato sauce seems to say when it is ready (it starts spitting incendiary tomato, think volcanic hot mud and the way it bubbles and spits). The Italians probably have a word for this but I don't know what it is. You need to stir it to keep it from sticking but not continually as you will then miss the signs that it is ready. Try this and the sauce should not only stick to your pasta but also develop the sweet-sourness of properly cooked tomatoes.

Well who'd have thought? E. Annie Proulx, she of "The Shipping News," "Accordian Crimes," and "Brokeback Mountain" has written a book on making cider (Amazon link here)

This is more likely due to the cooking process used rather than the cut per se. Blade steak (yes it is steak) can acquire this texture if it is cooked sous vide or otherwise slow cooked for a long time. Check out this article for a description of the cut and its cooking.

For those of you that haven't caught up with this yet, Tony Bilson has set up a festival of contemporary cuisine to coincide with the 2010 Sydney Festival. The program includes masterclasses with Nicolas Le Bec of Restaurant Nicolas Le Bec, Lyon, France; Tony Bilson of Bilson's Restaurant, Sydney; Tetsuya Wakuda of Tetsuya's Restaurant, Sydney; Philippe Mouchel of The Brasserie on Crown, Melbourne; Michel Roux (Snr) of the Waterside Inn, Windsor, England; Reine Sammut of Auberge La Fenière, France; and Cheong Liew of The Grange at Hilton, Adelaide. Each chefs are also hosting a special lunch and there is a gala degustation dinner with a course from each chef. I only found out about it yesterday. The masterclasses commence next Monday 11th January. The event web site is here.

I have both propane and super butane but use a cast-iron grill pan heated over a domestic wok burner because my wife complains of off-tastes on the meat when I use either of the torches. Plus the pan allows you to put grill marks on the meat like it has been traditionally cooked.

As this thread has been reopened, can I reask the question about stirring or not? In my experience you can achieve an adequate texture making a pilaf-type rice through absorption with no stirring. When the rice is stirred continually, however, the starch seems to release and create a rich texture and mouth feel similar to what is found when fat is added to dishes. To stir or not to stir?

See Margaret McArthur's post Eggs Enough and Time for a discussion of hard-boiled eggs. As for your perfect poached egg, a sous vide process tends to give white and yolk set to the same custardy consistency. If you want a runny yolk, which is also my personal preference, you will most likely need to use a more conventional method. Try this link for some good advice.

With regard to the browning issue, for steaks I first heat my LeCrueset cast iron grill pan to high heat over a domestic wok burner. You then sear the steaks until a char pattern appears, turn 90 degrees and then char again. This leaves an attractive criss-cross pattern on the steak while also producing the maillard effect. [edited to add eGullet friendly Amazon link]

Sous vide confit herb and spice encrusted ocean trout. Served on lemon infused wilted baby spinach with parsley oil and smoked ocean trout.

All this talk of Cider being pasteurised and filtered and it being non-alcoholic seems strange given the history of the drop. English Cider (Scrumpy, made from Scrumps, wind-fallen apples) was rustic and heavily alcoholic and served in "Cider Houses;" establishments which were frowned upon by people who frequented Inns and Taverns. An inn-keeper in Bath in the past decade actually said to me "you don't want to go there: It's a cider house." I've heard of people drinking the nice "sparkling apple juice" and tolerating it quite well until they got off their stool and their legs collapsed underneath them. The original English cider used pig's blood as finings to clarify the brew. Wonder what the FDA would make of that one?

Mixologist Grant Collins who has topped British and Australian Bar competitions and fronts promotions for Moet Hennessy's vodka brand Belvedere said that this was the way to go. The ice that he used certainly looked and felt more solid and clear than conventional ice. It reminded me of glacial ice that I had in a Scotch on the way back from Antarctica. I suppose the question is Internet links with interesting experiments aside, why would he use it see this link if there was no difference? Note he said that he used "pure water," which may fit in with what some of you are saying.

You feeeze ice, take it out and let it thaw, freeze it again, take it out and let it thaw, then refreeze it. Because triple frozen ice is the ants pants for making cocktails. It is crystal clear and takes a long time to thaw. Now how many of you are going to try this?????

I tried Heston Blumenthal's method for roast potoatoes today for our Christmas dinner. Used duck fat to cook them in. They were the best I've ever had. Did I say "Yum"?

Thinking about a sour flavour in powder form, you could try the Indian ingredient Amchur (Amchoor) powder. It is a sour-tasting powder derived from dried and powdered unripe green mangos. It's not traditional Thai but could give the flavour profile you are seeking.

No real need to worry about the bitter. Thai cooking is typically a balance of sweet, sour, salty, and hot (at least that's what David Thompson and his proteges always say in cooking classes).

Wasabi mashed potatoes.

Check the web for meat presses. This link shows an antique style press.

I've never had a problem with it either.

This is a very interesting experiment. Thank you for conducting it. But does it definitively answer the question? Probably not. You stated in your description that the potatos lost 14g and that you don't care where this went. This may be something you do need to care about. There is likely to be a weight gain in the potatos from the water and the salt. The weight loss is likely to have represented a transfer of potato starch to the water. If you were to evaporate the water, this would show up as a deposit similar to potato starch you can purchase. This throws a problem in the way of brix measurement as there are a number of scientific papers from the food technology literature that talk about the interaction between salt and potato starch and its effect on specific gravity (and therefore brix measurements). It is possible therefore that the result is an artefact of the procedure. You did a taste test on the potatos and determined that they were salty; how about a taste test on the water itself? Would it taste less salty than a solution that had an equivalent amount of potato starch added to it? (you need to do this to counter the interaction between the potato starch and the salt on taste) For completeness, these tests should be conducted as a double blind (neither the person giving the taster the sample nor the taster knows which sample is which). This is an important question that deserves research such as that which you have undertaken. It also needs a few clarifying tests to make sure that the conclusions are correct.