David A. Goldfarb

I don't do Twitter myself, but some people set up their Twitter account to post automatically to Facebook, so that's one way of consolidating those two. I mirror my flickr account to Facebook, and if the flickr photo relates to something I've posted here or on another board or on the family blog, I'll include a link in the image description.

I think it would work as well on the stovetop.

For garlic confit I bake whole unpeeled cloves with olive oil and a little thyme usually, let it cool, then pop the cloves out of the skins.

My father used to buy the pre-peeled garlic. Once he got a huge container from Costco that lasted for months, and I can remember that any time I visited them while they were working through that enormous plastic jar, their whole apartment smelled like stale garlic, and I thought the garlic had less garlic flavor than fresh as well as some kind of aroma akin to old unwashed socks. The next time he bought the kind that contained little packets of garlic, which didn't permeate the whole apartment, and the packets definitely kept the garlic fresher than the huge plastic jar, but I thought the garlic still didn't have as much snap as fresh garlic. I think the reason that people find pre-peeled garlic acceptable is that mass produced garlic is generally so feeble, even if you buy it fresh in whole heads, so it's not such a great leap to pre-peeled garlic. I remember a friend telling me that when he lived in Rome for a couple of years, locals thought he was crazy for using four cloves of garlic in a dish where they would only use one, and he discovered that it was because their garlic was much stronger, and our garlic tasted like nothing in comparison. Find some good locally grown garlic at the Greenmarket, and pre-peeled garlic will lose all attraction. I personally like the small purple German garlic when I can find it.

Saw it tonight and enjoyed it. Streep was impressive channeling Julia without letting it tip over into parody. I think the Julia story is more compelling inherently, so it isn't surprising that some people find it unbalanced. Julie's issues seem more personal and Julia's are more world historical, taking place over a longer period of time, across continents, in contact with international and US domestic politics and major characters in the publishing world, and tracking the developing role of women outside the home before the 1960s. Julie's story is interesting, but she isn't the groundbreaking figure that Julia was. Had dinner afterward at Balthazar, and my wife couldn't help but order the braised shortribs, which was essentially boeuf bourguignon made with shortribs.

That's a very handy link. So now I know I bought a true Atlantic bonito at the Union Square Greenmarket this morning, took it home and filleted it, tossed the bloodline, but saved the bones, head, and attractive trimmings for the stock bag. The flesh was softer than I had expected, so I ended up with a little more trimming for stock than I'd planned, but I still got seven nice pieces, cutting it into four fillets, then three of them in half and trimming the fourth that I messed up a bit to the same size as the other six pieces. I'm planning to grill it indoors or maybe saute it tomorrow. Normally I'd fillet right before cooking, but the recommendations I found advise cleaning and bleeding the fish as soon as possible. I bought the fish cleaned and scaled, but I figured it was probably best to remove the bloodline sooner rather than later to avoid an excessively strong flavor permeating the rest of the flesh, but maybe that was unnecessary.

The thing I only realized a few weeks ago that I could do with my vacuum sealer is resealing almost any commercial product that comes in a plastic heat sealed bag. Like tonight I made a risotto with a cup of carnaroli and vacuum sealed the rest of the rice in its original bag. I don't know why I figured those things must need some more heavy duty heat sealer than my Rival Seal-A-Meal, but they're just plastic, and the vacuum sealer makes a much better, neater seal than a clip or a rubber band.

A friend once told me that his mother liked entering bake-offs at her county fair and won many ribbons, including "Best Cake Altered from a Mix." I think this would have been the 1970s, when convenience foods were so modern.

So after several hours at room temperature and a day in the fridge, I noticed that the 0.1% xanthan solution had a vaguely sweet aroma that I would associate with overripe fruit, so I tossed it and made a new batch in the blender that I would put straight into the fridge, instead of letting it stand out for hours, and I noticed that the fresh batch had that same faint aroma, more easily detected having just been whipped up in the blender, so the batch I tossed was probably still good. It didn't do anything like separate or coagulate, so I'm guessing the solution should be fairly long lasting. I'll report back on the new batch.

Dry age! Dry age! Dry age! This is New York! Dry age! A choice of beef options from different sources (e.g., grass fed from different regions, Wagyu, etc.) could be interesting as well, maybe with a tasting menu so that people could compare, if they can support that.

Someone gave us a tin of 50 bags of Republic of Tea Vanilla Almond tea, which is a bit excessively flavored for my taste to make a good cup of hot tea, but its not so bad as iced tea.

I went to an interesting Japanese knife sharpening demo today, featuring a knife sharpener and engraver from Kikuichi in Sakai. I wrote it up in more detail with photos on our family blog at-- http://familyoffood.blogspot.com/2009/08/o...sharpening.html --but the takeaway for me was seeing how he sharpened the first side of the knife by pushing it on the stone toward the spine of the blade (contrary to what I've always thought about knife sharpening--always push toward the cutting edge to avoid feathering the edge), and then cleaning it up on the other side by pushing toward the edge, as I've always done it on both sides. I tried it this way at home with a couple of knives that never seem sharp enough to me, and it was very effective. He also passed around the knife when he was about halfway through the first side so that everyone could feel the burr. It was much more pronounced than the burr I usually get.

I find queso fresco doesn't last too long. If you see any pink, toss it.

Interesting. My in-laws in Honolulu have been avoiding red meat lately, but maybe next time we're there we can take a few days on the North Shore. I can see some local beef and shrimp and a shave ice for dessert happening.

Yes, I'm keeping it in the fridge. I'm not making that much at a time that I think I need to worry about adding a preservative, but yeah, I use so little citric acid in the darkroom (a tiny amount to keep my amidol solution going) that I do find uses for it in the kitchen, like descaling the espresso machine. It's a lot cheaper by the pound than it is in those little packets they sell for espresso machines.

Haven't made it in a while, but it's a good thought for this time of year. I never use celery or carrots--mainly eggplant, onion, red bell pepper, and a few plum tomatoes, all sauteed in olive oil with garlic, some oregano and basil, salt and pepper, a little red wine vinegar, and usually olives, sometimes capers at the end. Pine nuts as a garnish are a good idea. Haven't done that before.

Okay, just tried another banana smoothie, this time without yogurt (we ran out), and I think that may have been the problem. I really don't like commercial yogurts that have stabilizers and thickeners, so maybe the combination of my own plain yogurt and xanthan gum was creating a texture I associate with processed commercial yogurt. I also was able to measure 0.02g xanthan much more accurately and easily using a 0.1% solution (0.1g xanthan to 100g filtered water, so 10ml of solution contains 0.01g xanthan). Unless the solution goes bad too quickly, I'll probably stick with this approach for dealing with these tiny amounts. The proportions I used were--one cup of whole milk, one uncooked frozen banana, about a tablespoon of ground flax, a little honey--less than 1/2 tsp, four ice cubes, and 20 ml 0.1% xanthan solution (0.02g). I know, I have a strange 2-1/2 year old who asks for flax in his smoothies, on his yogurt, his oatmeal...

I haven't tried arrowroot in ice cream, but just in sauces, usually at the end if I've used another thickener like roux and want it to be a little thicker, so even then the arrowroot isn't the dominant thickener. Overnight, my 0.1% xanthan solution still seems okay. Also half a glass of leftover banana smoothie with xanthan in the fridge only separated a little bit and could easily be stirred back to its previous state.

I sympathize with that. Julia Child's version of the classic recipe for madeleines has this procedure for melting and then cooling the butter so that it is cool but still liquid. It seems fiddly, and I could have ignored it, but it actually works nicely to keep the buttery flavor, and I've since used it in other things. Or Anthony Bourdain in his simplified recipe for demi-glace in the _Les Halles Cookbook_ says something like "no one makes espagnole anymore," which meant I had to go back to Escoffier and make a demi-glace from espagnole and veal stock, and I learned a lot about demi-glace and other ingredients that have become commonplace or have substituted for demi-glace along the way.

I agree with SobaAddict70 about trimming the asparagus beforehand, so you don't have to strain out the woody part at the end. There's no point in sauteeing the woody ends of asparagus. As for putting the soup through a sieve at the end, no matter what the recipe says, it depends on how smooth a soup you want. Super-smooth isn't necessarily better--it's just one option among several others.

You got it. I mixed up a 0.1% solution, let it sit out for several hours to be sure it all dissolved, and put it in the fridge. I'll let you know how long it lasts. Thanks, everyone for the suggestions. I looked around some more and realized that there was a banana shake recipe by Martin Lersch in his Hydrocolloids compilation on khymos.org, and his uses a larger proportion of xanthan than I did, but no yogurt, so maybe there's something about the combination of uncooked frozen banana, yogurt, and xanthan. The yogurt was homemade, so it didn't have any stabilizers in it that could have interacted with the xanthan. I'm using a fraction of what mgaretz is using, so even if it turns out to be too much for my taste, I seem to be using less than others are using, and it still seems a little too slippery. It didn't seem immediately slimy when I drank it, but it left a feeling of sliminess afterward, like an aftertaste, but it was more of an "aftertexture."

Interesting. I prefer roux to cornstarch, but I like arrowroot in some contexts. I think the only controlled way to use less xanthan than I'm using would be to make, say, a 0.1% or maybe even 0.05% solution and add it by drops as needed. Is there any reason not to do it this way? Most descriptions I've read have people measuring minuscule amounts of the dry powder.

Maybe. My immediate association with it was that this is one of the things I don't like about processed foods. Maybe there are contexts where it doesn't have that effect, like baked goods or in combination with other ingredients that cut through the slime (acids? alcohol?). I haven't experimented enough with it yet myself.

Glad to see this isn't just my imagination and that it's not my allergies acting up. I attended a hydrocolloid workshop yesterday and we got some samples of various materials used in the class to take home. So this morning I tried a tiny paring knife tip of xanthan--less than .05g, probably more like .02g, but not enough to register on my scale that reads to .01g--in my toddler's banana smoothie, which he helps me make most mornings. Today's had plain whole milk yogurt, whole milk, a little honey, a frozen banana, and a few ice cubes--about 300ml total volume. He liked it. It was smoother than without the xanthan gum, more like a fast food milk shake (which I don't think he's ever tried--maybe with the babysitter), and it was much more stable. Normally they start to separate after a half hour or so, and with the xanthan gum there is very little separation. It seems great for holding an emulsion together. But I only had a sip, and an hour later I still have the slimy mouthfeel.

In Hawai'i, particularly among native Hawai'ians living on Homestead land or land that has been in their family for a long time, subsistence agriculture, hunting, and fishing aren't so unusual, and a few people are reviving or adapting ancient aquaculture practices. There are remnants of hundreds of fishponds that would have been sufficient to feed a huge native population at one time.