JBailey

Why not just go to a business selling headstones - they often have or can acquire or can cut slabs of marble to your needs. Using a headstone supplier will allow for cutting to your required size and also they can give you the thickness you desire. One thing about thicker is that there will be less heat buildup if you are using it for hot items like peanut brittle or candies. Remember though, any stone whether it be marble or granite is most fragile in the horizontal so take care in picking it up and moving it. Storing on an edge vertically is always prefered.

I recently purchased the Emile Henry Flame-Top Risotto 4 Qt pot. I used it Thanksgiving for a butternut squash risotto following the base risotto recipe in the new Heston Blumenthal At Home cookbook. The pot worked very nicely. Yes, Blumenthal also made it an easy addition to the meal...he says either adding stock bit by bit or putting in half at the beginning and topping off result in equally good risotto. His book also offers a 'making in advance' risotto recipe.

Have you checked out the recommendations by Polyscience? My local Costco (and I might think nationally) has a great breast of turkey from Butterball that would work well for your sous vide. Also, Polyscience recommends duck fat and it may be available from certain Williams-Sonoma stores. Personally, I take off the skin and do it separately and not sous vide the skin.

Kokkari: Contemporary Greek Flavors Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professional's Guide to Butchering and Merchandising Les Petits Macarons: Colorful French Confections to Make at Home

A tool and his tools are soon making excuses...

Jennifer McLagan's recipe says to use iced, salted water for 12 to 24 hours. The bowl is placed in a refrigerator during the soaking process. She uses 2 tablespoons to a large bowl of salted water. The water is changed some 4 to 6 times, adding the same amount of course salt to each bowl of iced water. Apparently, the bones can be frozen up to 2 months after this.

I recently did veal hearts, stuffed with a corn bread and sausage dressing. I braised them slow and low for about 8 hours and added stock a couple times to keep them moist. They turned out terrific and the 'leftovers' were not bad sliced for sandwiches.

I just saw an offer from Sous Vide Supreme where they are offering one of their water ovens, their vacuum sealer, a copy of Sous Vide for the Home Cook AND Modernist Cuisine. This may be of interest to some buyers who have not bought the sous vide machine or the books.

Should you have an outdoor area or patio where you can have a Cajun Fryer, consider this unit. The way it works and how it won't scorch is ingenious. It also seems safer, in my opinion, than many of the alternatives. Bass Pro often has them on their floor, if you want to see how it is built. A friend bought one and it has given him lots of good results. He finds the oil has a good and long life with this fryer.

What's the worst thing that could happen? We either get another post from Nomina a week after the mushrooms are eaten or one from the doctor or family members confirming it was not a good decision...

You have opened a very interesting thought about the anthropology of foods and recipes. At one time, people did not venture far from their home villages so recipes, ingredients and customs were all local. As countries and areas within countries progressed, commerce began to expand and ingredients, along with cooking implements from other areas were more readily available in larger sections. When there were great migrations, especially across the oceans, we know how people brought what they knew with them. Steamed brown breads are likely also found in other areas of the British Isles and in other areas of the United States. Maybe as the Welsh and the English came to America they brought steamed brown with them. Maybe in America, Boston made the largest volume of this bread and gained the reputation and name. Then again, who knows there could have been a returnee who liked what they ate in Boston and reversed the flow of custom.

This seems akin in logic to the 'less water' when boiling for pasta to reinforce or saturate the starch.

Here is a most itneresting article about when Adria and Achatz were interviewed by the Chicago Tribune. This should be an internationally hot Next ticket!

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune wrote an interesting column today about when is a cut of beef a porterhouse and when is it a T-bone.

A recent book may be of benefit for those wishing to do more home butchering. I recommend getting a copy of "The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professional's Guide to Butchering and Merchandising" by Kari Underly. The meat cases at Costco contain the larger sections before they are trimmed to the individual trays. This book helps show how those larger cuts can be trimmed and broken down. As one review indicated, this is certainly a step further than Meat 101.

Nancy Silverton with Matt Molina and Carolynn Carreno have produced a terrific new cookbook based upon the Mozza restaurants! Lots of good photos, many menu and food ideas, plus a nice narrative will probably make this one of the best of the year. There is a whole section devoted to "Nancy's Pizza Dough". As one might imagine and has been written about, this is a most special dough and is Ms. Silverton's stock in trade! She is most upfront in the book: Of course, she does not want to give away her recipe so every pizza restaurant or chain in L.A. or across the nation copies the recipe. She certainly has every right and privilege to do so and did not substitute silently. I might imagine there are dozens and dozens and dozens of cookbooks with recipes where a certain ingredient is forgotten or the timing is altered or the scaling is different from the author's actual dish. I commend Ms. Silverton for her being so honest.Ms. Siverton has a book worth buying and using.

Mine came this morning. Coz is correct that it is on a more simple level than what might expect of his modernist reputation, but this is based on staff meals, not what was sent to the dining room. He outlines 31 meals each with a salad/soup/starter, then a main course followed by dessert. Some are as simple as a Waldorf salad or strawberries in vinegar, but there is a quail main and osso buco and duck with a chimichurri sauce. There are several pages of equipment and kitchen essentials followed by the recipes. Interestingly, they scale them from 2 persons to 6 to 20 to 75 people for each dish. The step by step photos cover two pages for each dish as well. With each set of dinners, they also include the front pages showing ingredients to buy, those which should be in the pantry, fridge and freezer and a back timing charts when to begin the various components. I am just briefing through so my relating of what is here may be clearer after I understand the rythm of the book.

Isn't Ruhlman doing the same thing with Open Sky? The line between self-promotion or flogging a book then morphs when someone begins generating revenue from those of us who want to know what tools someone might be using. Then again, lots of chefs are under contract to promote various products. Maybe this did in fact start with the decline of print magazines with codes of ethics for writers...at least those writers had the review of superiors before engaging in promotion.

I have had boards sanded. There is a considerable amount of dust and fine particles from the plastic so recommendations of doing it outside with proper protection is essential. Maybe they can also run through a planer.

Wood Stone offers a commercial plancha which is above and beyond what most home applications need. However, this may be intersting to reference.

Thank you for linking to the corn cob stock. The other evening, I boiled four dozen ears of corn for vacuuming and freezing after I had removed the kernels. As I looked at the bag of corn cobs, I quickly decided to freeze them as well for a future stock...now I have a copy of what looks to be a flavorful one and am most appreciative. Returning the favor, shortly before this task I was in Bed, Bath & Beyond and ran across a corn peeler made by Oxo. I believe this may be new to their product line. It is one of the niftiest gadgets I have bought in a long time and it makes stripping kernels an easy, clean and neat job!

Just looked it up...one place Bourdain went was Agriturismo Roccas, the other was Agriturismo Predas Rujas and he had high praise for the hotel/restaurant Su Gologone. The travel guide on his site gives further details and addresses.

Bourdain had his Sardinia show and they replayed it this last Monday. He gave the name of a couple agriturismos, but alas I do not recall them. A funny story of caution for you. When I was in Sardinia in June, we were in Porto Cervo. A friend and his wife wanted to take a break and get something to drink at about 10 in the morning before we departed. At the small plaza overlooking the harbor, there was a small hotel on the upper levels and a bar/restaurant on the plaza level. Not a person other than the bartender was there. We sat down and David ordered a Perrier, his wife ordered a white wine and I thought I might have coffee. The bartender protested that would be too difficult because their coffee had not been set up, so I said just bring me a Coke. The drinks were served and the bartender brought the obligatory little bowl of olives, the macadamia nuts and some pretzels. When finished about 20 minutes later, I asked for the check. Our bill was 75 euros - 30 euros for the wine, 15 euros for the Perrier and 30 euros for my Coke! Nathan, my suggestion is that even you will need to take a deep wallet with you while in Sardinia - buyer be ware!!!

A bit older but still full of good help is The Cake Bible.

Thank you for sharing this. What a beautifully simple, but effective step. Once again this site is helping expand my knowledge, technique and overall skill set.