OliverB

First my crappy JennAir stove. Somebody should tell them that heat rises, so a down draft vent makes little sense with pasta pots or anything taller than 2 inches. And those coil heating elements? I thought those died with the 1950es.... Then my tiny appt size fridge please, so I have an excuse to remodel the enclosure and get the largest fridge only (with ice maker) unit I can find. I don't need or want a freezer in the kitchen, it's in the garage. And after that I'd not mind my wife's college age blender to go. It works just fine, but I want an excuse to buy one of them fancy schmancy make soup in me and turn ice to snow blenders - even if I probably only use a blender once a year. I promise, I'll use it more often! Other than that, I can't complain about my kitchen, actually, I really can't complain at all, despite the cheap cupboards the former owner put in and the horrible "we'll replace that right away" blue tile wall paper that we've been living with for some 16 or so years NOTE: if you buy a house and don't like something, rip it out before moving in a box of tissues, let alone everything else. No matter the cost, do it NOW.

oh nice! I'm looking into fire pits for fire and cooking, this is an interesting design. Only problem I can see is that it'll be hard to add a rotisserie setup to this thing, since the fire pit is so high up. But I love the European hanging on a chain grill, used that at a fire pit last summer in Germany and it works surprisingly well, you don't even have to walk around the fire to flip things, you just turn the grill thing around.

the more I read about these books, the less I think I'm insane to order this thing and I think I calmed my wallet down, at least it's no longer screaming quite as loud Can't wait for the package, Amazon better pack this thing really well, I won't accept anything less than perfect delivery!

slicing things

juice them and candy the peel. The juice you can either drink now or freeze (or thicken on the stove etc) and the peel you can either just snack on or use in baking or other dishes. Very tasty! Cut into little pieces and sprinkle on ice cream, things like that.

in tomato season, bread salad or toasted/roasted with garlic rubbed in, some olive oil s$p dribbled on. Other seasons I either wet it a bit and bake it up again - or I toss it to the birds. I hardly ever use breadcrumbs for no particular reason, and if I do I like panko. But then, stale bread is rather rare, my kids are breadaholics and I'm always wishing to turn into more of a baker than the every other year or so loaf. Or Brezeln, as in my little avatar, haven't made those in a long time. Hmmmm. Maybe this weekend?

I'm actually trying to force myself to cook from some recipes lately. For one, since I got a little Sous Vide setup, but also because some 250 cookbooks are using up a very large amount of space on my book shelf, and I feel the urge to justify that. But also, I'm getting bored with my hip shooting. Not that it's bad, not at all, but there's a tendency to go the same route (though I never really cook the exact same thing twice) and it gets too predictable. I also used to cook a lot of Thai food, haven't done that in a long time for no particular reason. I love to cook on fire and the weather here is just about getting to where that's an option every day again (sorry blizzard bound folks! NorCal just has a nice climate). Hopefully I'll be putting my 6shooters away more often now and try out new stuff, in a sense, make new bullets for the old guns to shoot in a different direction - from the hip :-)

fine, now I can blame you Mr Amirault, as you just made me click the order button! "See honey, it's not my fault that I spend an insane amount of money on some cook books, Chris made me do it!" even bought it through the eG link, might as well benefit the site that made me do this

funny, reading this thread I get a craving for something - anything - canned and ready to use I haven't opened a soup can in a long time, but you know, why not? Wait, yesterday I actually opened a glass of Trader Joe's giant white beans, used them as 'dressing' on arugula with halved mini tomatoes, makes for an excellent quick salad and the beans are quite good! And once in a while, late at night, a spy might find me sitting on the couch eating canned corn or peas straight from the can, maybe with some garlic salt added

Black (wild) rice and corn salad Black pasta (colored with squid ink, some stores carry that) and yellow cheese sauce (mac and cheese if you will) Black lentils and curried (or just with tumeric oil) chicken strips (or fried chicken fingers things, not quite yellow but pretty close) Yellow cheese with black pepper/black salt sprinkled on top

forgot about that photo, thanks! That's more or less what I got, I was more expecting the 142 or 144 degree results, but was afraid the whites would be still clear and glibbery. I will have to try again. Perfect is of course a personal preference, I'd not call my result perfect by a long shot, unless I was only after very nice waxy yolks and discarding the whites. I guess I'll have to do one more experimental run at maybe 143 degree and see if I like the results, otherwise I'll be back at crating a vortex in a large pot of water with a dash of vinegar

Hmm, so I had a box of free range farm fresh (well, bought last weekend) eggs and decided to go for the perfect egg in Baldwin's book, 148 degree for 45-60 min. And I was not impressed :-( The white was partially set, partially a wobbly glibber, and the yolks were waxy, beyond the runny kind I expected to see. Almost as if the yolks had cooked more than the whites, which makes little sense of course. The eggs were out on the counter while the machine heated the water, should they be straight from the fridge instead? The runny white was on the unappetizing side, so I dipped them into boiling water for a moment, the white was nicely set then, but they also were pretty impossible to peel. I'll give this an other try, at an other temp, but if the results aren't any better I'll probably rather use the time/eggs/effort to improve on my real poached eggs instead. Any idea why the yolk would be "overcooked" while most of the white was a runny (not clear) mess? Seems counter intuitive that the inside would cook faster than the outside. PS: Baldwin's book is a must have, though the index should be reworked in a new edition. Looking up "Salmon" and just finding about 50 page numbers listed is not all that useful IMO. A minor thing, but to me a perfect index is what makes a perfect book. What ever that may be ;-)

Will you buy it precut? That's how I got mine and I just went with the suggestions. In hindsight I'd probably try to customize, I got some odd cuts (country steak or something like that) that were really not all that useful. I'd probably even just ask for an initial breakdown into large pieces and then butcher myself. Also worth noting, all my meat was frozen at the processing plant and I got odd size packages that were either too small or too big for our dinner purposes, good idea to check into that and specify particulars if you have any. If you do get the head and feet, they are a lot of work, but worth it. Also check if you get it skin of or off, my place had no facility to take the hair off the pig, so everything was w/o skin, which I wasn't too happy about, but it seems to be pretty common. And make bacon with the belly! Easy, fun, and oh so yummy :-)

this thread reminded me of my long pepper, used some on blueberries with local honey last night, was quite delicious! It's really a nice pepper with very distinct flavor. Worth having and worth remembering having edited to add: a pet nail clipper is quite possibly the oddest utensil I've seen in kitchen use! I'd probably use my pliers (for kitchen use only). But in the grinder I have it's just the long pepper pieces. Came with the grinder, which seems to be the same as any other spice with grinder contraption, but might not be. I don't know if long pepper would go through my regular grinder.

thanks, very informative and an interesting approach with the wet rags!

they're already in the freezer, too late for a short swim in boiling water, but I'm just gonna thing that we'll be fine. But this brings to mind, is the "danger zone" longer if I put frozen meat in the hot water bath, if I thaw it over night in the fridge, or if I thaw it before bath in a sink filled with cold water? Thermodynamics were my downfall in physics class, never recovered from that

Ah, thanks Pedro, great idea! I figured I'd just try it with some, but if it's mentioned in Douglas' guide I'll just go for it with all the pieces. I tend to only add s&p to most meats anyway. I actually just received the book a week or so ago, but obviously haven't had much time to read in it yet.

for cooking I use Diamond. I've read of several chefs that use it (after I guess the sea salt craze had somewhat ebbed off) and found that I liked it. I also can find the big box of it relatively easy and now I'm just used to it. The one time I tried Morton instead - DC was sold out - it just didn't feel right, though I really could not explain that any better. I also like the red box better, the little girl in the morton rain is cute, but I really don't like rain. Well, I don't really like diamonds either and generally prefer blue over red. As you can see, for me it's just a matter of what I'm used to with some self explaining or self justification for brand loyalty thrown in I do like Diamond as finishing salt also though, it has a nice crunch and doesn't seem to dissolve too quickly. Works in a pinch I guess

After a trip to CostCo I usually end up with loads of meat to cook in the coming weeks. I usually vacseal portions, then thaw them, spice them, pack them again for SV. I'm wondering if I'm wasting bags? Should I add s&p or other spices (rubs, marinades etc) right away and have things ready to cook once thawed, or would that negatively affect the meat? Would the salt pull out liquid while thawing? I have a tray of some 10 pork chops and some steaks, as well as a pack of (sadly boneless) short ribs waiting for the freezer right now. How do you go about it?

I found oxtails at Costco to my surprise! Now, aside of braising them or making a soup/stew, I'm wondering if these things could not be used SV, maybe cooked really long like 48 hr short ribs? Searching here and there, I come across lots of braises and the like, in beer, wine, etc, which is fine, but if somebody has an idea for doing these things SV, I'd be all ears! I'm not a big fan of five spice, so those preps are out for me, but maybe there are other interesting ways to cook these in my demi? Thanks for any ideas!

about 250 in total, and no more space on the shelf, I have to prune before I can get any others, but I also slowed down quite a bit, as I have just about anything covered I might ever want to make. And then some. But if I pile any more on top of books, I'll get into trouble at home

The original Big Fat Duck book, it won't ever even get close to the kitchen or anything else that might splash on it. Luckily there's a much cheaper and usable version, though I have yet to cook from it. There are some whiskey (I think?) gummy things in there that look delicious :-) Alinea - never even planned to cook from it, I bought this straight as a picture book. Way too much work for way too little food in the end. Not to speak of all the equipment needed. I'd love to eat there some day! French Laundry on the other hand, I find most of the recipes quite doable. And you can adjust things, you don't have to strain things 200 times and go all out on all the fancification (not a word I guess?) but you'll still get fantastic food. Even though it's more about the process of playing with food all day long :-) Haven't looked at the book in quite a while, might just have to get it down again :-) Sushi and Japanese cooking. Sushi simply makes no sense on a small scale, I can't just buy a tiny bit of this fish and a small cut of that one over there. Oh, and dim sum and some other Chinese things, I'll never have the patience to make all those little balls and pockets and rolls.

Thomas Keller's cauliflower soup from Ad Hoc at home is delicious and easy to make. The French Laundry chilled carrot soup is a carrot explosion in your mouth, recipe can be found here It's like eating a whole carrot with each spoon. You need a juicer or at least access to really good fresh made carrot juice, though it would probably also work with what ever carrot juice you can find. And some of the best soups I've made where created from left overs like roasted potatoes, mushrooms, (beef/chicken) stock, heavy cream, butter, the works. A bit of nutmeg sprinkled on top, served steaming hot. I love making soup inventions from left over things

I guess I better look at this book first, thanks for the review! As for canceling an order with amazon, you can do that any time before it enters the packing/shipping process, just go to your account and cancel it. You can also call them, the number is somewhere in the contact info or just call 18005551212 and ask for amazon customer service, that should still work. Seems like a very odd selection of topics, I'd not expect to find info on the flavor of herbs and such. Totaly useless filler IMO. Maybe they left the slow and dry aged ones out as it's a book for culinary school, where they probably don't have time to wait a month or 6 for something to ripen? But then the title is misleading.

I just have to have this, simple as that. I might never ever cook from it, I might just page through and look at the stunning photos, read a bit here and there, but this is going to be a spectacular mini library of food porn awesomeness with a ton of hard to otherwise collect information and the above mentioned incredible photos. I'll have to get rid of some other books to even make room for this, but there are some candidates catching dust on my shelf, so that should not be too much of a problem. I'm actually glad it got delayed until 2011, more time to save up for it