austinlinecook

As a professional, I LOVE Japanese knives. And I'm not talking about western-style Japanese knives, I'm talking about real, one-sided Japanese, high carbon knives. But one knife that I don't have and feel like I don't need is the Deba. When I break down fish, I use my sharp, stainless steel western-style gyutou, and I think it works just fine. So while a Deba's weight and thickness makes it easier to cut through fish spines and rib bones, my sharp gyutou can do it as well. Same result. One major turnoff is that Debas get chipped really easily. My coworker uses his Deba to cut fish and it's chipped all over, which is normal for regular Deba usage. Another turnoff it the size of a Deba. It's just not a very long blade, so it seems limiting. It's definitely not for cutting salmon. Anyone out there that can tell me why they love their Deba's so much?

We'll see how life changing any one book can be, especially a $500 one. I find a "definitive reference book" to be unrealistic because if you ask something like "how do I make stock" to 10 different chefs, you'll get 10 different answers. Even with Sous Vide, a method where you can attain cooking "perfection", you'll get different times and temperatures from many chefs for a single protein. But I do think this is a good time to put out such a cookbook given that cutting edge gastronomy has plateaued and people are starting to reach their culinary limits in terms of "WTF can you possibly do to your food".

What's a "glucose wash"? Are you trying to make a joke or something?

Well, I've been researching all the ways of cooking pork belly, and 80% of them call for the pork belly to either not have its skin or to remove the skin yourself. So uh... Why would you EVER want to remove the skin? Isn't it good to have that crackling skin on top of the piece of pork belly? Or is the layer of fat right under the skin simply too thick for people to generally enjoy? I think it's just really odd to take the skin off part of the part of the pig where the skin might be most appropriately left on.

OK, I'm just watching a British TV show called "Raymond Blanc Kitchen Secrets" where he does an episode devoted to chocolate. One of the cool things he does is that for one of his garnishes, he makes an "espresso foam" using simply espresso and gelatin and a whisk. No siphon. On TV, he plates a beautiful looking foam on the plate using this method. Now I'm familiar with making foams via liquid and gelatin in a siphon, but I've never heard of someone doing it with just a whisk. Can anyone back up the fact that to make a foam, you can simply whisk in some dissolved gelatin in a liquid and come out with a foam? Here's the actual recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/chocolatedelice_93624.shtml