IndyRob

That list is primed to evoke my worst sense of cynicism towards fine dining. When Top Chef: Masters' Marcus Samuelsson (winner) and Michael Chiarello (runner up) are put on the card with cooking-instructor-and-sous-chef-to-the-TV-stars Anne Burrell, and glorified Navy Cook Robert Irvine, is there really a difference between the top and the middle? Spike appears to be the only one without a show on the Food Network or the Cooking Channel.

Thanks for that. A lot recent of "Wait, Huhs?" answered there.

This is only semi-related, but for people who read plumbing threads this might be an interesting bit of trivia. I was recently responsible for maintaining a house in which I discovered had no hot water flowing. I checked the water heater and it was lit and appeared to be making the noises that water heaters should make. The pipes close to the heater were hot, so I couldn't understand why there was no hot water at the kitchen tap. I called a plumber to come out and check the water heater and he determined that a failed single valve in an upstairs bedroom had failed, so the hot and cold lines were open to each other. Since the cold water lines have a bit more pressure, they would supply any hot water demand through the cold line of the failed shower valve. Sometimes plumbing isn't simple.

I'm not an expat of anywhere (other than maybe Michigan), but I do have a Norwegian side to my family and something potentially fun idea leapt to mind when I saw this topic again. Go to the grocery, grab a cart and methodically traverse the aisles thinking "Americana, Americana, ....". Grab the blue box of Mac 'n Cheese, Tuna Helper, Brownie Mix, Brand Name Ketchup, breakfast cereal, canned soups, Charlie's tuna, etc. Everything that isn't perishable and that screams Americana. Pack it all in a box and apply a USAID seal (http://www.caadp.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/usaid1.jpg) - or maybe the American Red Cross. Sure, you might find that some items are available in Norway, but not the entire collection.

Our oven has a warming drawer, but I've only used it once or twice (it usually has a broiler pan and a couple of other things in it). I do occasionally finish seared steaks on plates on the oven, but this is strictly a special occasion/guest sort of deal.

That's getting perilously close to pizza bread on English muffins. Quite good, but a bit far afield. I think the only toasted cheese sandwich I could get behind would involve garlic bread. Welsh Rarebit was a childhood WTF moment for me. It sounded pretty exotic. Then "Really? You sauced a slice of toast?" I guess that's part of the joke. But it is that, IMHO.

He's a character, but perhaps too much of one. He seems to have the best culinary basis, but that came from Grandma. I think I agree with the Grillbilly negative assessment, but Joey is not far behind in terms of being potentially very difficult to work with. I think the Soul Daddy option is the most attractive on that score.

How timely. This evening's new No Reservations episode is in Boston. 9:00PM ET on The Travel Channel.

YeahBut (<--I think that should be a word), the thing is that the review was quite conflicted. The whole romantic idea was that Rocky could overcome the Ruskie science project by force of good ol' American will. Silly? Yes, perhaps. But do we want to make our victories our own? I think so.

Except that, to me anyway, following a set of instructions is precisely what Modernist Cuisine is not about. This is nowhere more evident than in their naming of the recipes: the recipes scattered throughout the books are all explicitly called "Example recipes." Each of them is designed to highlight a particular aspect of the chapter, but these books are emphatically not a collection of recipes, they are a collection of techniques. They are designed to enable cooks to imagine a dish and then figure out how to create it. Just because I have to look up the ratios for gelling a particular fruit puree doesn't mean that I've drained the dish I create using that component of its creativity. Modernist Cuisine has enabled creativity, not stomped on it. I'll accept that. I'm at a disadvantage, not having seen the collection. Or, at an advantage in judging the perception of the book. And I think a big perception is "Forget everything you've ever known. This is how to cook." I think that raises some hackles.

I think it's a reasonable and fair expression of a point of view and goes back to something I posted earlier. To put that in a different way, if you are simply following admirably detailed and eminently reproducible directions, are you showing your own talents? When I want some traditional brownies, I'll buy a box of Betty Crocker mix. The Betty Crocker boffins have already worked out all of the science. The result is very good and, perhaps more importantly, have pretty much defined for me what a brownie is. On the other hand, I once saw Jacques Pepin make a flourless chocolate cake with brownie-like qualities. He didn't give any measurements, but I worked it out, added my own touches, and was successful. I'm much more proud of that. Although I stole it from JP (well, OK, he gave it to us), there was a lot of me in there. It wasn't a brownie though. That's not to say that one can't adapt what's taught by MC, or grow themselves into being better cooks through it. But perhaps too much book learnin' has the effect of making you like every other MC customer. We all have recipes passed down by our mothers. Perhaps a 'one correct mother' approach isn't appropriate for all. This is not meant as anything against MC. The time is not right for me, but I will own this set of books. But, given the price alone, I think some level of dissent is to be expected.

Good find. Props to him for surviving three restaurants with Marco Pierre White, but otherwise, there's not much there there. This thread title popped into my head at the beginning of Top Chef: Masters, and I thought "Yeah, I think so."

As will butter. But I seldom see butter puveyors wearing masks.

Well, yeah. Let me put it this way.... I'm a smoker who sands drywall without a mask. I would never use TG without either a mask or at least a careful arm's length application. Drywall dust does not, by its very nature, glue tissues together, TG does.

Because I love the potential of TG, I'd love to think that it's totally safe. But C'mon. It is meat glue. Our lungs are frilly meat devices. Sawdust, my a....

In this sense it is not different than primal jaccarding, which apparently is not an entirely rare practice (I believe Nathan M has commented on this previously). Incidentally, I used to be a management consultant, and I still remember seeing a hospitality industry knowledge primer that discussed gluing tenderloins together to increase yield (e.g. make use of the tails). That was the first I ever heard of transglutaminase. I have absolutley no problems with it's use in fresh product, but I do want to know what's been done to that bargain steak that looks like it's about to go off. Aged and festering are not necessarily the same things.

Well, yes, I think. I certainly think there's a fair advertising issue, and is not necesarily something that should escape government oversight. But at the same time, it's not something that's necessarily horrible. Transglutiminase, as I understand it, already exists in all eGullet posters. It's not artificial. It binds our bodies together. There are two risks that are exposed in this video. First, that inhalation of transglutinmase is bad. Certainly, gluing parts of your lungs together is not good. Hence the masks. But once applied, it's not exactly forming a cloud. The other risk is the same one we experience with ground meats. The risk of external contamination festering on the insides of meats. And I think here is the real issue.

Cool Whip!

I don't have a dog in this hunt, but have found the thread entertaining. I had found this great popcorn-munching animated gif that, unfortunately, I couldn't post here. So I'd like to try to defuse this statement to keep the thread on track. I think the racism reference was meant in the stereotype sense - Painting all foams with a broad brush and viewing them all the same - excluding them from consideration based on superficial characteristics. Not in the militant connotation of the term. 'Prejudiced', perhaps, might have been a better word.

I wonder if polishing them with toothpaste would work. Apparently, it can be used to polish silver and scratched CDs.

Well, after freezing overnight I took it out this morning and let it thaw. I'd say it's a partial success. It had a tuna-like appearance and sliced smoothly and cleanly, but there's still a bit of crunch when bitten into, but not so much as unalterated watermelon. I think it could still be quite interesting, especially with a flavor twist. I think I need a new seal for my Food Saver, and could've gotten a better vacuum with a new one. But I think that might bode well for tying it with the $3 ziploc vacuum pumps. I also wondered about good old fashioned mechanical compression. So I put a piece in a Food Saver bag and pressed down on it with a sheet pan. If anyone ever needs to do watermelon roadkill, this is a good method.

Did you receive an incomplete order, or nothing at all? There's a difference between those that received the product as expected, versus those that haven't received it, versus those that have received it in an unsatisfactory state.

My guess is that a chain of errors in the Amazon.ca warehouse occurred. But here's the thing. Amazon doesn't normally have chains of errors. It would ruin them. Yes, this may be a unique offering for them, but we've been told that all the volumes are packaged together (I haven't seen it myself, but I assume that to be the case). But (and I've recently worked in such a company), if the robots deliver 50 lbs worth of books, and the packer selects just one, he's got to deal with 45 lb's of books that have no destination. He can't just sweep them under the rug. That's going to raise a red flag. That's why I think they come from returns. Because that's a more chaotic environment where things can't be predicted with the certainty one might expect from the 'bots.

I'm going waaayy out on a limb here, but I suspect returns. Someone gets a copy, opens the box and ships it back for whatever reason, in whatever way is most convenient. So it comes back (separated) and a warehouse picker sees 'Modernist Cuisine' and knows they are to get these out ASAP. So they do just that.

Or maybe a salad of microgreens topped with a quail egg on a crouton. Kind of an Alice in Wonderland sort of thing.