IndyRob

This was a case involving libel. Libel applies not only to journalists, but to bloggers and even message board posters (or anyone that shouts on a street corner). We can't justify libel by claiming that it's a new world.

I'm am not a lawyer, but I'd like to be a Supreme Court Justice (Are you kidding me? A lifetime appointment, for good money, lots of time off, and I only have to offer my opinion...?) But in these cases, I think it's important to note exactly what distinctions are being made and for what purposes. In this case, the judge threw out all of the complaints as freely expressed opinions, save one where she called the subject a 'thug' and a 'liar' based, she claimed, on an inside source. If she would have been able to produce the inside source this last claim probably would have been thrown out as well. But that's where she invoked the shield law - bringing the journalism aspect into question. I imagine that the judge's decision had to turn on weighing the damage to an allegedly libeled individual with interests the public good. He found that congress had addressed the issue and afforded protection to 'journalists'. And that's where the finding becomes relevant. I suspect that if she were able to demonstrate a plausible interest in the public good, as opposed to a track record of harassing blog posts, she might have been more successful in securing a favorable result. But whether you're a journalist or blogger, if you post something like "I have it on good authority from an inside source that the Acme Restaurant regularly serves rat meat.", well, then prepare to circle the legal wagons. And perhaps that's the true distinction. Real journalists typically work for companies that employ lawyers to keep them out of jams like this.

Well, as it turns out, after my wife got home I found out I had it backwards. The one recommended was in fact the higher rated one. My bad, but it does provide an anecdotal correlation. In this case, the reviews may have steered me to the correct choice. Having two sources that differed wouldn't have said as much (without visiting both restaurants).

I'm surprised I couldn't find this topic already. Sorry if I missed it. So, I'm sitting here trying to decide between two restaurants. They're both steakhouses but one is a little more upscale and expensive, while the other one is less so, but seems well respected. I find them both on Bing Local, look at the menus and notice the ratings. It turns out that both have about 30 reviews and on the food quality scale, the more expensive option scores just over 2 1/2 stars while the less expensive one is nearly a solid 5 stars. The thing is, we have a personal recommendation for the more expensive option by someone who is well traveled and certainly has much fine dining experience. Oh, and his son is a chef. So I have a little quandry here. Do I go with the one personal recommendation, or go with the numbers? What are your experiences with web ratings?

FWIW, the 'Heavy Whipping Cream' that I find quite reliable for whipping is 36% and contains mono and di-glycerides, polysorbate-10 and carageenan.

Those were pretty much my thoughts and then I scrolled down and saw that you'd already nailed it. I only recently learned about the dairy and meat thing. Is it okay if they're not mixed, but are on the side? Steak with Baked Potato w/ butter & sour cream? Potato Gratin? Creamed Spinach? The whole steakhouse vibe? Apparently, Transglutaminase can be kosher, but I suspect that Wylie Dufresne's shrimp pasta is out. Perhaps a fish-based version could bring some pasta. The thought of inventing a proper grainless bread is the sort of Holy Grail project (oh, wait, is that reference at all appropriate in this context? ) that's going to be bugging me for the next few days.

Uh oh, time to check our shopping lists... http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Questions_and_Answers_about_Ammonium_Hydroxide_Use_in_Food_Production

I've just noticed that they've reeled in Target. I didn't have time to try to ascertain whether they're participating in the CO2 canister exchange business, but it seems like this is the critical service that hasn't seemed to work in past ventures (Kohls, for instance) I actually like their diet cola mix as well as I like Coke or Pepsi, but when you carry out the math, the savings are borderline. But for seltzer, it seems like a clear win.

Confirmation bias Have you bought any more ground beef in the last year?

I received my first delivery of Activa RM last week and, before I read this, I used it in a slurry in my eagerness to perform my first experiment. It seemed to work fine. I can't really comment on the color of the transitional layer as I was bonding pork fat to lean porn loin. That transition is already a pretty dramatic one. But I don't recall seeing any gray layer.

I think it's possible to be a real chef in every sense of the term without having an open mind about food. Whether you've run a successful South Carolina BBQ joint for 50 years, or run a successful street booth in Singapore, I don't equate a 'chef' with being worldly, educated, or anything else. It just means you can run a kitchen and be responsible for the product delivered (preferably an excellent one). I don't find it unreasonable that an American Chef might take a dim view of some international (or currently popular foodie) trends. In fact, such a thing might be a travesty in the sense that food traditions could be lost. Regarding the basic meaning of the word 'chef', perhaps it's only my own naive view with only a beginner's knowledge of French, but it seems to me that the credits on any French movie will list any number of 'chefs' - none of which have anything to do with food. It seems to me that the best one word translation is 'Chief'.

Well, lesson #1 has been learned. Apparently, the addition of xanthan gum is desireable to achieve some gelling action in something like apple juice - so it doesn't just disperse when dropped into the bath. But adding the same amount to sriracha results in a sort of paste. Thus, my first attempts more resembled sriracha mouse droppings rather than any sort of caviar. I tried drops of unadulterated sriracha into plain water and they dispersed immediately. Clearly, this is going to be a fine balancing act. In the interim, it's time to explore the magic that is sriracha paste.

I once had a similar concern with a hot fudge sauce I had made that was dead-on in flavor, but became solid immediately on touching cold ice cream. I fretted a good deal about it as I had made a decent sized batch of the stuff for the freezer. Finally I tried just adding a touch of water to the finished product before heating and the problem was solved. It turned out that adding a bit of water to something that was already so sugary really didn't have nearly the sort of adverse affect that I expected.

I got mine from cheesemaking.com, but I've read that citric acid is available in pharmacies. I decided to try a search on CVS.com. No obvious hits, but there was one intriguing result. It appears that Alka Seltzer is Citric Acid + Baking Soda + Aspirin. I don't think I'd recommend it, but I find the idea humorous. You might ask your local pharmacist if they have any just plain citric acid. Kmart.com also has citric acid listed under their crafts section.

Okay, I've received my initial components. As a matter of principle, I've decided to first attempt regular sperification before I try to reverse it, or attempt parallel techniques. So I have some sodium alginate and xanthan gum for the base, and calcium chloride for the bath. This leads me to another question.... The base formulation offered by Mondernist Pantry involves starting with 500g of base. That's roughly a whole bottle of sriracha. I'll need to reduce that, but it occurs to me that if I keep the base and bath separate, there's nothing to suggest that these won't stay stable in the refrigerator. It that true? I could take both out of the refrigeration and spherify on the fly?

That's quite a tight grouping of countries.

When I want to do ribs without all the fussiness, I take a piece of aluminum foil slightly longer than the rack and lay it on a sheet pan. I squirt some Sweet Baby Ray's lengthwise down the middle of the nearest half. I put the rack on top of this and squirt more sauce on the top. Then I fold the far half of the foil over the top, leaving the rib tips exposed. Then into a 250 degree oven for about 2 hours. Optionally, broil or grill at the end. Again, not barbecue, but it's good, easy, and virtually foolproof.

Some sort of Mozzarella/Brie alloy? ETA: Or perhaps start at the fondue end of the spectrum and find a formulation that firms up nicely when chilled?

Not to start this whole thing again, but that test was fatally flawed. This sounds like a fair comparison was found. But then... So the comparison was between $6/lb meat and $3/lb meat. The pink slime alone wouldn't make up for that price difference even if it were free. A scientific approach would've taken some of the $6 beef and found some pink slime to add in. Anyway, count me among the ground pork demographic. But I suspect you were on target in your initial assessment and there was a new source of water in the bamboo shoots - along with wilted shoots.

Ha! I was thinking that tofu (although I have never eaten any) seems to have similar texture to cooked egg. So if I were to try to tackle this, I would probably start with some sort of tofu slurry and add flour (forgot about the gluten-free part) and some liquid and seasonings. Then I thought "Well, if I've thought of this, perhaps someone else has...." And searched for "Tofu Crepes". Bingo! The pictures look quite good. Still not gluten free, but that should be a bridgeable divide.

You are correct, sir. And was on Julia's.

This timely article is currently featured on Bing's News home page. The author actually tracks down ground beef with and without and does a side by side test. The plain old ground beef is the winner, but the distinctions are pretty slight. This didn't really surprise me, but the author mentions some grittiness from bone shards. Now that, I have a big problem with. But I do find myself wondering whether that came from the slime (how would bone fragments get past the centrifuge?), or a lower quality ground beef - before the slime was added. I've had a similar experience with WalMart frozen pork breakfast sausages. ETA: Correction: He complained of gristle, not bone. I had read this earlier in the day and re-read it after I posted. Upon reflection, I have a big problem with his methodology.

In looking for a link for my previous post I found a lot of lazy reporting. Including the one I finally linked. Ligaments and connective tissues? Really? Won't 80% of eG members immediatley think "Well, that calls for braising.", rather than "Aiieeee! Ligaments! Tendons!"? But I sincerely doubt that ligaments and tendons are included (beyond incidental quantities). They're not even pink. That's quite a vague term to use. The "expert" could have used calories, sodium, vitamin A, B , C, etc. It obviously would be useful to know in what way the product was founf to be nutritionally defficient. I have to be careful here, but do we not have a food culture in the U.S. that has benefited greatly from lesser cuts of meat that were left for the folks in a state of servitude? Well, that borders on deceit. But the labeling requirements are there. Sirimi is fake. It;s a fish sold as imitation crab. But cutting little bits of crab up is cutting little bits of crab up. Making a crab cake out of that is not fraud, it's frugal. You could have been grinding contaminated beef regardless. A little ammonium hydroxide could have kept you safer.

Apparently, Jacques Pepin (according to him) and Julia Child had a disagreement about whether butter should go into crepe batter. He said it should, and she said it shouldn't. They had a cook-off and he had to admit hers were better. I still put melted butter in mine. I like it (but it is a tablespoon or two, versus three eggs). Look on the last page here. (Oh, wait, it has one egg, but I bet it has a shot at success without it). The upshot is to start with a poolish or sourdough starter and add a good quantity of cornstarch (probably around 3TB, although I was probably measuring by weight) to provide crispiness.

We must be using very different definitions for the phrase "nothing like", since dosa are pretty widely defined as "a crepe" by people who make and sell them. Sure, they're crispy and made of rice and lentils... but they're still a thin batter-based crepe. To me, a crispy crepe would be akin to a crunchy omelette. It doesn't make sense. A vegan crepe seems an an oxymoron. Crepes are mostly egg. Still, I'm intrigued, because I have developed a good Belgian Waffle recipe that happens to be vegan compliant (but not gluten-free). So, the problem solver in me is wondering what the standard vegan substitutes for eggs are.