IndyRob
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Posts posted by IndyRob
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@ IndyRob -- I would think that with the ability of the internet to present data, all the data is out there. Just needs to be organized (no Julia Child editing down needed, I think).
You're right, but my thinking was more along the lines of not making it intimidating.
I rummaged around my noggin for an ingredient to use as a challenging example of how it might be organized. Eggs. Common, cheap, versatile, sometimes surprising....Perfect.
Okay, we need to talk about egg grading, sizing and aging. Organic eggs, white vs. brown. Oh, wait...what about duck eggs, quail eggs, ostrich eggs. Turtle eggs? Oh man, all the fish eggs....
Preparations of a whole egg itself - hard boiled (including all of the water temp strategies, and well as oven methods), soft boiled, fried (sunny side up, over easy/medium/hard, etc), baked, poached, scrambled, ommelettized, frittata'd, etc. Plus hybrids such as deviled eggs.
Then there are the egg components, the yolk and the two whites. Oh, and even the shells have culinary applications by themselves. Emulsifying, whipping, tempering... Hollandaise, Mayonnaise, Souffles, Meringue,...
Better talk about food safety too.
Baking... Now there's another whole subject. Creaming, leavening, etc.
Of course, we've got to get into the chemistry. There's another whole section.
Then there are affinities. What ingredients go well with eggs?
People that actually have a culinary education could probably take all of this even farther. But while I've sought to provoke feelings of intimidation, I also know that I've probably chosen the most multi-faceted of all ingredients.
If eggs could be dealt with properly, anything could.
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I was looking to play with combining chocolate with something crunchy and salty when I found these. They're good by themselves, but pipe some chocolate into them let it cool and they're over the top. I think I'm going to get pressed into service the next time my wife needs to take food to the office for a birthday or something.
But I also found out that there's a chocolate and peanut butter version. I just tried these. Replace the little dab of caramel with a little dab of peanut butter, and the sugar coating with a very thinly sprayed chocolate coating. Pretty good, but not as successful, IMHO. The sprayed on chocolate coating gives them a mouth feel that's, well, dusty. Plus, it creates a barrier between the tongue and the salt.
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And you remove the wish bone how, exactly?
Here's Thomas Keller doing it for a whole roasted chicken.
This one with Zimmern shows it closer, although his hand is in the way...
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Yes, it looks like it does not really exist online (or offline indeed). Surprising!
I wonder if there are people in the community that might be willing to create it? The USDA database is a good start, but much more needs to be included.
It would be an interesting thing to explore, but it would have to be defined further and have a focus (or a limited number of foci). Julia Child had to do a lot of painful editings down.
I think this book, if in name only, seems to be close to what you want. But it looks like the reader reviews are not so great. I may have even seen this book in a store, but put it back on the shelf after browsing.
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I think the procedure and recipe would be met with general approval with the pizza maniacs over at pizzamaking.com. I think almost everyone there swears by cold fermentation.
The amount of sugar might raise some eyebrows, but it can work both ways. Yeasties like sugar, but the point of the cold ferment is to slow them down. But it also improves browning so it's not unreasonable to start here and adjust if you feel you should.
The one part I may personally quibble with is the stone placement. They are correct in that it can make a very big difference, but different ovens vary considerably. For me the bottom is best. But when I took my show on the road once, I nearly burnt the bottom even though that oven could only go to 500 - whereas I usually bake at 550 at home.
The top surface of the 'road oven' got extremely hot while the oven was on. Upon reflection I realized that the bottom heating element was working a lot harder to maintain a 500 degree temp than my better insulated oven was while maintaining 550.
So I wouldn't say I'd recommend one or the other, but just be prepared to adjust accordingly.
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Here's another video that shows him doing one chicken all the way through... Still hard to follow, but it's all there
By his look at the end, I suspect he's tired of "Break down a chicken for us Hung!"
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I don't think this s what you're looking for, but it looks interesting nonetheless...
For the ingredient side, I just found the USDA National Nutrient Database. No descriptions, but as a list it looks pretty comprehensive and includes nutritional and weight data. It can be downloaded in ASCII or MS Access formats.
It's possible that other resources could use the NDB_No ID to identify ingredients.
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Yes, I think you'd want to let it rest properly and then bag it and plunge it into an ice bath. Then get it sliced and bring it back up to temp gently.
But I don't think I've seen this thread before so I'd like to play the devil's advocate. Yes, clearly this works. But is it best? I have my doubts.
ChefCrash took some nice pictures showing the sliced frozen roast but not the sliced traditional version. We lack a control. The pics of the slices clearly show some grey/brown overcooked sections on the outside (acceptable as they may be in proportion). But doing the same cut sous vide, I know that I got none of this.
This makes me wonder about the traditional preparation. Certainly, as the heat moves inward, we're less concerned with transferring heat via air as moisture. And perhaps a colder center mediates this. It's an interesting question.
But I still think I would do it sous vide and then heavily season the outside and blast the outside with heat before slicing thinly - folding the slices over each other to get some crust with every bite.
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Something just occurred to me. While Alton Brown occasionally likes to mirthfully seem to end run the lawyers, he really has not ventured into sous vide or, oh, say, heating an indoor oven with charcoal to 900 degrees. Is Richard on a bullet train to barrister town?
And what kind of charcoal was that anyway?
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Tom C said, in her defense, that she had never had to have stitches before. So when they said "You're going to need stitches" she probably just accepted that as meaning "now".
But now I know how I can get to the finals if I can ever get on. As soon as they start the timer, I'll grab a knife and give myself a whack. By the end I'll be bandaged up like a mummy, but I can challenge for the title with my fried bologna sandwich.
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If the CO2 did anything, it didn't seem to be noticed. I think I like the cheese spheres, but would have to work out a different geometry. There was a lot of cheeseless surface area.
The show seems to suffer for only being 30 minutes.
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My kneejerk reaction is that if you want to follow a specific recipe, but don't have the ingredients required, it's time to rethink your approach.
But, while I haven't barded a bird, I am skeptical of barding. Brining seems to me to be far better for a variety of reasons. Or, if introducing fat is the desired thing, lardons, rather than barding, seem more appropriate (but then you're back to the original problem). Barding seems like it could be equalled with a good amount of basting. That's basically all that's happening there, right? Well, besides the bacon flavor.
What about sausage? Can you get sausage? This might be crazy, and I wouldn't recommend it except as an experiment, but what if you cut a V into each breast and stuffed it with sausage (extra points if you can get this done while keeping the skin intact)?
Meh, I think you'd have to cut the breast across the grain to get the fat to flow where it should.
If sausage is available, and you have some butcher's twine, you could form some strips wrapped around twine that could be draped around the bird. Mash a bacon strip sized bit of sausage on a piece of wax paper, lay a couple strands of twine on top, and top that with more sausage. Press together and drape on bird.
When roasted, strip the sausage off the twine and add to gravy.
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I don't know about duck eggs, but a tip that helped me is to peel the eggs under running water. Once the water runs between the egg and the membrane it will help to separate them.
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I don't get the science channel and to date there is no placeholder in the on demand section for it.
comcast!I have comcast and the science channel. You might check hulu.com. They do have a sneak peek clip up. Perhaps they'll have the full episodes.
http://science.discovery.com/videos/blais-off-blais-off-sneak-peek.html
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In his blog, Tom Collichio has clarified that the undercooked frittatas were not raw. They were safe to eat, but undercooked.
On to this week, I just noticed that Rick Moonen is doing videos each week recreating the winning recipe. Dale's simply presented dish turns out to be suprisingly complex.
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Scroll to the third video to see/hear the food reasons why "Jenny" would still be there if Chef Ripert was at JT.
He makes a strong argument, but I'm not sure that I agree. Sure, the frittatas had a consistancy problem. Some may have even been inedible. But presumably some (if not most, or even possibly nearly all) were good. There were some scenes with enthusiastic conversations about which of the three varieties were the best.
On the other hand, Casey didn't seem to like the braised bacon before it went out - even without the much criticized eggs. To me, it didn't seem to work on any level.
I'm very glad that neither Ripert or Bourdain were judges for that one. Too many connections there.
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I just went back and reviewed the dishes. I don't think either team did very good job of considering their options and working together. I think the problem was time. If they got to think about it overnight, I think it would've been much better.
After thinking for a while about the T-Rex challenges I think that, yes, you are very limited, but having meat, eggs and dairy is huge. The eggs alone can do many things.
I think if I were doing this I'd do...
An omelette or other straight up egg dish
A steak with a hollandaise* and bits of cooked seasoned egg whites
A flourless cheese souffle
Some chicharrones in some form to get some crunch
* No citrus for the hollandaise, but perhaps some acid could come by making butter and using the buttermilk.
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For experimentation purposes, I'd certainly give coconut oil a go.
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“I don’t think it was an award-winning dish but all right for Top Chef. But maybe not.”
Well, there we have it.
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Oh, I think I would have definitely been on the stroll. It could lead to ideas that might get me hyped. Hyped would be better than semi-rested.
I think the carnivore menu was tougher than originally thought. I don't buy into Tiffany's reaction that she thought she could use anything, but no pantry items? That's a severe limitation.
In retrospect I can think of some killer options (egg omelettes/crepes is a good one, KTO), but could I think of these upon entering the coolers? Maybe not so much.
My favorite bit about this episode was seeing Marcel, Richard and Angelo work together (even if there was some minor quibbling in the commentary).
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One of the few truly OMG! inducing things I've ever made was Julia Child's Cream of Scallop Soup from Mastering the Art....
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I think the emotional stakes have been raised in All Stars. Originally I imagined that the first chefs to be eliminated would be especially crushed. Everyone has a history of going far in the series. But additionally, Colicchio has blogged that it's tougher even on the judges who now have personal relationships with the contestants. And this probably makes the contestants more willing to speak out.
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We have two. One at home and one in the office. I use it everyday. And the price is wrong above. It works out to a quarter a litter once you get into refills, not 1.24 per 2. I never use the flavorings, but I don't like sweet stuff.
I was comparing the cost to soda.
Carbonator: $29.99/130 liters = $0.23
Flavoring: $4.99/12 liters = $0.41
Name Brand Cola: $0.99-$1.89 for 2 liters
Sodastream Cola: $1.28 for 2 liters (plus initial investment and shipping where applicable)
Cheaper CO2 sources have been mentioned, but on the flavoring side there's also Open Cola.
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I really like mine as well. It does a great job. Anyone experimented with carbonating things other than water like Cranberry juice etc? The warranty says not to but i'm tempted still.
You need to carbonate just the water and then add flavorings. I once absentmindedly added the cola flavoring to a bottle I had not yet carbonated. Faced with throwing it out, I decided to ignore the admonitions and carbonate it. Not a good idea. There was soda everywhere.
I Forgot How Good Bugles Were!
in Ready to Eat
Posted
Which leads me to a question I forgot to ask. Does anyone know how Bugles are made? I'm sort of curious about how they get the shape, but more interested in the creation of airy, crunchy corn-based things along these lines. It doesn't seem very different from Cap'n Crunch cereal (if you replace sugar with salt).
Although I can buy Bugles in the US, I'm paying $2.50 for a small 6 oz package (on sale).