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eternal

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Everything posted by eternal

  1. I ended up buying the lower end Bluestar without convection. In the end, it was down to the American 5 burner, the BS and a Viking they had marked down to the same price. They were all just a touch more than the Berta Pro. I decided to go with the BS because it is very simple, takes a full-sized sheet pan (so does the American) and had the open burners, all rated at 15k (and there's a way to upgrade them to 18 or even 22k in the future, i believe). It would have been nice to have the fifth burner and the convection but it was just sort of an emotional decision at that point. The lady thinks the BS is a bit ugly as well but I think she'll be appreciative of how easy it is to clean. I didn't like the different burner sizes of the AR either, but they are all pretty powerful so I imagine that wouldn't actually bother me in real-life. The Berta and the AR (at this price) are sealed burners. AR now makes an open burner range as well but it costs more. Now, I guess I need to buy a timer.
  2. Thanks for the info. I'm off to buy a range today. Still don't know what I'm going to get. I also noticed the different settings for burners and would agree with you. WOuld a decent-sized turkey fit in the oven?
  3. I'm back to this topic. Reviews online for all high-end ranges seems to range quite a bit. everybody claims everyone else is unreliable. I'm only worried now about the oven size. Seems awfully small. Fat Guy - Did you end up buying one? what do you think?
  4. I tend to always overcook the marrow and it ends up as a grease puddle.
  5. eternal

    Short Ribs

    Yesterday I diced up a couple short ribs along with some year-old steaks from the freezer to make chili. The end result was delicious. The chili simmered for 2 hours or so and the meat was tender and juicy.
  6. eternal

    Lamb Shank

    I love a good lamb shank. The lady thinks it is too much meat. Did you buy or make the lamb stock?
  7. And you must be a man as we all know the hands of a woman are too warm to make sushi
  8. Your comment seems to be contradictory. You say it lacks stickiness but coheres with the sauce better. Wouldn't those two things go hand in hand?
  9. Bittman presents a different take from Waters, but he's still presenting it in the NYT. He's preaching to the choir. Anyway, I think what an earlier post is the most true. It is the convenience. It isn't that it takes a little longer to roast a chicken but that it takes longer and for a lot of home cooks, there's a significant chance that they will destroy the chicken in the process. I know it is pretty easy to roast a chicken but I also remember cooking ten years ago and having many failed attempts. It was incredibly frustrating to spend a bunch of time and money and then end up with a terrible meal because I didn't know what I was doing or trying too hard to rush it but not taking the time to prepare. Until people know HOW to cook, the decision will be hard for them to pass up fast food.
  10. I tend to start the same but then pan fry both sides until crisp and then bake until cooked. After removing the fish from the oven and then the pan, I make a sauce with shallots, butter and olive oil, white wine and lots of drained capers. finish with more butter. Pour on fish. One of the wife's fav dishes. I'm still working on not getting the skin to stick to the pan during the pan frying stage. I use a non-stick, I shake the pan a lot. I've tried a dusting of flour on the skin first. Most of the time it still sticks.
  11. I've never had a problem walking into noodle bar and getting a seat within 5-10 minutes.
  12. Somehow I missed the last page of this thread. I spent the weekend gathering ingredients for cooking out of Land of Plenty and making mapo tofu a couple times. There's a lot of talk of the facing heaven chili, which I tried to find at 4 different places around Seattle without success. I also looked online and couldn't find a supplier. I ended up using a chili a local Asian supermarket calls "Japonese" which looks a lot like a chili de arbol and it worked out pretty well. I'm still going to continue the search for the facing heaven variety though. I put my Chinese in-laws on the case as well. Luckily, I just snuck in about 3 cups worth of whole Sichuan peppercorns from a trip to China a couple weeks back. Anyway, the recipe at the beginning of this thread is a nice companion to Dunlop's, which I find is a little too simple. My second attempt came out great though I'd still love to be able to dig into the condiments part. Not being able to make the chili bean paste and the fermented black beans is discouraging. Are there other ways to strengthen this dish? I've been thinking about that a lot over the last few days but I've come up empty. It crossed my mind to use this sauce for something else, like a white fish fillet or whole roasted fish. Other ideas I had were to make my own "sausage" for the dish instead of just using pre-ground pork or beef. Or top with fried leek rings. Maybe next time.
  13. On my trip to Hong Kong, we stopped at Tim's Kitchen and I have to say it was totally boring and perhaps bland. It was like a european kitchen preparing Cantonese food. Everything was cooked right but it was totally boring. I wouldn't go back. It has two michelin stars but I think this is because it is rated by Euros and it probably gets one for just having a nice, euro style dining room with euro-style service.
  14. eternal

    Corny Broth

    I heard a great meal at Gramercy Tavern on Tuesday night so when I returned back to Seattle on Wednesday, I wanted to reproduce my favorite part of the meal (aside from a great conversation I had with a sommelier that stopped by to have drinks). The first course was a corn and ricotta cheese ravioli. The best part of the dish was the sauce it was served in. An intensely corn-y flavored broth that was both sweet and light. To try and make this at home, I roasted a bunch of corn in the husk and then cut the kernels from the cob. I sweated some shallots in butter with a little thyme and basil. Then added more butter, chicken stock (2 cups?) and the corn. (10 ears worth) and cooked for awhile until it had reduced a bit. I through it all in the Blendtec and pureed. I figured I could use most of this for a corn soup to finish later (if you're going to roast corn, might as well roast a lot). To finish the sauce, I sweated a shallot in some butter and then deglazed with white wine, reduced and then added some stock, reduced and then added some of my corn puree. I then went back and forth with stock and puree to try and get the texture I wanted. I thought I had a good balance but when I sauced the raviolis, the sauce turned up way to thick and had a very mustard yellow color to it, not unlike the corn puree. The color of the pasta and the sauce were one. You couldn't see the difference. It tasted pretty good, but the sauce at Gramercy was lighter, brighter and more airy. Any ideas on how to get to something so intensely corn flavored without taking on the thickness or color? Should I have cooked the corn in the broth and then strained it out instead of making a puree? Should I have my friend rotovap me some corn essence to use in the sauce? Did I just get the broth to puree ratio wrong? I should probably have added some lemon juice at the end to brighten the sauce and I'm sure they used some tool to foam up the broth a little (but it wasn't a pure foam). Anyway, I have tons of puree left and I'd like to try this again. Any thoughts would be helpful, even if they involve me roasting more corn,.
  15. I liked his writing as well but man, he got Bar Basque completely wrong. That place is a mess.
  16. So do HIV positive moms not breast feed their children? I didn't realize that was the case (but I didn't do any research). Either way, I think transferring of the virus via breast milk into custard cooked and ingested by another person would have to be damn close to zero if not zero. It is funny this topic came up because I know a new mom and she was wondering what to do with the leftover milk and drinking it crossed her mind. Not everybody thinks it is taboo.
  17. I can't imagine you can get HIV from breat milk. Even if it is in breast milk (which I don't think it is) it needs to get into the blood. Just getting on your skin on ingesting it wouldn't be enough. Also, I would imagine homogenizing or cooking the milk would kill anything bad.
  18. This is basically what we have today. it's garbage. Takes forever and is super loud. I'm looking for a better solution.
  19. I've been using the Orange-X for a number of years - maybe 10? In fact, I have two of them. The best damned citrus juicer I've ever used. I tried several, including the Metrokane, a Williams-Sonoma model, plus electric juicers. If you can get one of the Orange-X models you'll be in juice for the rest of your life. Built like a tank, simple, strong, well-designed, and produces great tasting juice. But where do you put this monster? I have a big kitchen but I already have enough appliances on the counter and this thing doesn't exactly fit into a cabinet as it is tall. My wife especially loves fresh OJ, buying giant bags of oranges every weekend, so I want to get her a nice juicer to replace the piece of junk she bought for $40, take 20 minutes of loud grinding to make a cup of OJ and has already half broke, but I can't get past the size of this thing. Are there other options?
  20. So i happen to be in lhasa tibet right now and there is a decent sized food market with spices and lots of huajiao. I picked up a couple cups of the peppers because i want to work on sichuan cooking when i return. This thread makes me think i should pick up even more. Hw long does this dried pepper keep and how much is typical to use? One stall had two different varieties that seemed to smell the same. Oe was slightly more pink. Any major difference there?
  21. I've used miso a number of times as an ingredient and it has normally turned out very well. I don't buy anything expensive though the local japanese supermart has about 100 different kinds. I get a lighter one and have used that to marinate a turkey as well, and normally for, black cod miso - the old nobu recipe that everyone copied. Once the marinade/sauce is made, it lasts for months in the fridge.
  22. We have one night in Hong Kong. Arriving at 5:20pm with only carry-ons (hopefully) and have to leave the next day on a 2pm flight. I was thinking of staying in Kowloon because I remember there being a lot of places to eat there but this topic makes me want to stay further south so I can go to West Villa. It's going to be a short stay so I don't want to be traveling all over the city on this friday night. Would love recommendations. So far West Villa and Wing Lai Yuen seem the most interesting to me. Love Sichuan food and after two weeks in tibet, we're really going to be craving some flavor and spice! Should we just book a place near West Villa and then search for sichuan the next morning for lunch before heading to the airport?
  23. Anybody making anything to celebrate Bastille Day tomorrow? We're going to have a little gathering at the house and planned on making Steak au poivre, frites, fish in caper sauce, some sort of gratin (fennel?) and drink too much french wine.
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