Dave the Cook

Or no index at all, though a bad one can worse than none.

It's surprising that the author of the article spent a year looking for the right book and didn't manage to stumble across Cookwise, I'm Just Here for the Food, Think Like a Chef, Techniques, Elements of Taste, or Cooking, just to name the few that come immediately to mind. Or maybe he did, and decided to use Bittman, Parsons and Alt-Lopez as straw men to make a pitch for Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Which is fine. I've come to the conclusion that there's no reliable way to predict what sort of book/website/class will resonate with any particular person, At the same time, I'm in favor of anything that gets folks to cook. Having looked at the pages available in the Amazon preview, I can say that I don't find SFAH compelling (though the illustrations are pretty good), but if Anna does, that's great. Likewise, I really don't understand all the love for Ruhlman, but if he gets people to cook, I'll choke back my assessment that he's been trying to write the same book for seven years and falling short every time, and say "Awesome! Apply your new knowledge and go cook something!"

It is. If the designation "Brut," the shape of the bottle and the shape of the cork weren't enough, the word "sekt" is. It's the German term used for sparkling wine. If you're looking for Riesling specifically, most come from Germany, but there are a couple of US producers, too.

My first impulse was to ask CanadianSportsman a possibly embarrassing question, but he seems to have sorted things out. However, for those reading along, the instructions in Bouchon for making the reduction are potentially confusing, as they call for a pot with a lid (because later on you'll need it, though it doesn't say so at that point). If you'd never made a reduction before, you might think that you were supposed to put all the stuff in the pot, lid it (why else woould you need a lid?), and let it simmer for 45 to 50 minutes. This would lead to a lot of confusion, since the liquid would hardly have reduced at all. I mention this because we once had a student who was taking one of our classes for the second time, mostly because she wanted to master the red wine reduction we made as one of our sauces. She'd taken the class, then, with recipe in hand, tried to make the sauce, and failed. Repeatedly. After much back-and-forth, I finally realized that in trying to minimize after-cooking clean-up, she was attempting to reduce the sauce with the lid on. Sort of the cooking equivalent of the IT help desk asking "Is your computer plugged in?"

+1 on the thermometer, if you can get that pointy thing past TSA. A trick I learned in my trade-show days was that you can ship stuff ahead of you, marked "Hold for arrival." As long as you use a customs-savvy shipper and don't send food or explosives, this ought to work for the UK.

Thermoworks Thermapen Classic for $59. They're also having a Spring sale on several ThermaQ kits.

If you still want to deep fry, you could make something like Tater Tots.

Because that's what a margarita is. You can add other stuff, or change the proportions radically, but then you're not making a margarita. You have, I think, two choices: Freeze it: compose your cocktail and put ice in the tin in an amount that would suit it for shaking. Then pour it all into a blender and whiz until frosty. I would not call this a margarita, but in this I am opposed by approximately one villion restaurants and bars. Figure out what you like about the margarita, then find a long drink that comes close to the profile. For example, try a Paloma or an El Diablo.

Why not? Significant portions of the state are in USDA temperature zones 4a - 6b, plenty cool enough for riesling.

I admit to having no idea. I've never made jelly of any kind. It just struck me that context matters: something that's too sweet for drinking (I share your general dislike of sweet wines) might be just right for spreading on a scone or muffin.

My first thought is to turn it into jelly.

One of mine, too.

Seems like I once saw an episode of Justin Wilson's show where he made potato salad out of leftover fries; I assume some sort of recipe was involved. I was a JW fan (not the least because his schtick amused me), but it looked pretty awful.

I'd say you can use whatever you want -- variations on this recipe abound. But I'm sure what's specifically called for is what's also known as "red pepper flakes."

I've done two variations on this method, both for ice cream. One is in Jeni Britton Bauer's recipe for "Black Coffee Ice Cream" from her book Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. She specifies "coarsely ground coffee," which isn't a very helpful direction. I cranked up the grind size on our grinder to get something akin to what you get in a jar of cracked black pepper from the spice rack at the grocery store. Since she has you strain though a fine sieve plus cheesecloth, I decided the coffee particles had to be big enough for that strining arrangement to capture most, if not all of the grounds. The grounds steep in dairy just off the boil -- pretty close to paulraphael's 93°C.Five minutes, then strain.Good coffee flavor, and the color one traditionally associates with coffee ice cream. The second method is laid out in the recipe for White Coffee Chip Ice Cream at cooksscience.com. There, you steep whole beans in not-quite-boiling dairy for an hour, then strain. The interesting thing about this method is that it imbues the dairy with decent coffee flavor minus the color. It's a cute trick to serve ice cream that looks like vanilla (or, in this case, chocolate chip) but tastes like coffee. I'm not sure that either of these will capture the acids that paulraphael says the closed-container infusion does. On the other hand, I'm not sure that they'd be worth much in the context of ice cream. On the third hand, I'm not great at nuances like that.

EMP is a very good -- based on the one time we dined there, I'd say excellent -- restaurant. Whether it's the best in the world this year, is not something I'll be able to decide, given the fact that I am neither independently wealthy nor on an extravagant expense account. (As an aside, I'd venture to say that many of the participants in creating this list haven't actually been to many of the places they voted for.) In any case, there are no objective criteria for this award. But that's not really what this list is about. It's about a certain tier (the very uppermost) of the restaurant business supporting two of their peers, who are widely respected in the industry, and who made it their express goal to be at the top of this list. It's also about recognizing a new-ish trend in fine dining, with a gracious neoclassical approach taking a turn after a few years of the foraging aesthetic (Noma), which followed a few years of modernism represented by elBulli.

Ooh! Ooh! I know! I think Toliver is confused, and as I attended and cooked at both Pig Pickin's, I can confirm that it was indeed Brunswick Stew. I can also confirm that, while squirrel was discussed, we ended up using rabbit, along with chicken and pork. Dean (aka Varmint) and I did quite a bit of research, but we could never nail down an "official" list of ingredients; we couldn't even determine which Brunswick (of the 15 Brunswicks in the US) the dish was named after. Having said all that, Brunswick Stew seems like a good candidate for the Instant Pot.

They say it's in honor of St. Patrick's Day (or maybe they're just overstocked in this particular color): ThermoWorks has green versions of their ThermoPop, TimeStick Trio, ChefAlarm and Dot on sale until -- I'm guessing here -- St.Pat's Day. They don't actually say. They have a few other things on sale, too: here.

Nice piece, Fred. Thanks for the link.

According to the USDA, cauliflower is 92 - 94% water, depending on how it's prepared. That's a little misleading, because most food is mostly water; however, 92% is comparatively high. Snap beans, for example, are 89% and corn is about 70%; potatoes about 75%. We only buy vodka for cooking, so we don't care about flavor (or any other) nuances. I amuse myself by stepping up to the sales counter and saying, as loudly as my nerve will permit, "A pint of your cheapest vodka, my good man!" Last time, I ended up with McCormick. Works fine.

One thing that can help with batters is to remove some of the water from the batter by substituting alcohol. We usually employ 80-proof vodka because of its neutral flavor, but you can use whatever spirits you like, as long as the alcohol content is substantial. While it's just as good a solvent as water at room temperature, at frying temps the alcohol evaporates more readily, leaving the cooked batter drier; it also (along with gluten-free rice flour) restricts gluten formation somewhat, which might (I don't know for sure) prevent the cooked batter from retaining moisture. More information in McGee's article and recipe in the NY Times. (Note that while McGee uses beer, you can substitute any carbonated liquid; we often just use club soda.)

This totally works, pit or no pit. A half an avocado would never last two weeks around here, but we've gotten five days, easily.

Seems like a good occasion for punch.

Instant Pot

You can call Husk traditionalist, but that doesn't necessarily mean Brock is. His recipes show up throughout Modernist Cuisine, and before many of us had even heard of sous vide, he was known among the vanguard of modernist chefs (Dufresne, Blais, et al) as "the methocel guy."