Dakki

Yeah, a bench grinder would take much longer to master than an EdgePro but I suspect by "electric grinder type gadget" he means the Chef's Choice or similar (which IMO isn't a very good idea either, but, hey).

Sick for the last couple of weeks (leave it to me to catch a bad cold in the middle of a summer heat wave...) so its been Campbell's chicken soup and white rice for Dakki. Thought I'd make a list of things to prepare this week now that my sense of smell is back, looked at this thread to get some inspiration. percyn, bacon jam is on the list. Near the top. dcarch, that cornish with the squash blossoms is the supermodel of poultry. RRO, the snapper is perfection, and those prawns! Panaderia Canadiense, nice burgers, and serving a variety in "slider" size is brilliant. Doing that next cookout. Parmhero, how did you get that color on the kebobs? It's lovely. Prawncrackers, pig porn was amazing, and now I want macha cake.

At last count, there are over 7 billion ways to skin a cat. The EdgePro is a good gadget, as is the Spyderco Sharpmaker. Although the Sharpmaker is less flexible, setup is almost instant and there's no mess to clean up. Benchstones of any variety take a little longer to master but none of this is rocket science. Sharpening every time you slice a lime might be going a bit overboard, but I keep the Sharpmaker set up on the kitchen counter to refresh the edge when I want it scalpel-sharp. Microbeveling (I believe you'll find an explanation in the thread linked by weinoo and Blether) helps quite a bit in making edge maintenance quick and painless.

With Lisa. I'd just eat whatever thawed right away.

It can't be over.

Business opportunity?! Herbie's looks nice. My brother and I have been talking about opening a spice shop here. You should see the dumps we shop at. 3 AM and I want pastries. I need to stop looking at your thread at this hour.

I loved all the pottery. The Mao-era yoghurt pot really caught my fancy, for historical reasons.

All recipes are sets of instructions; some sets of instructions are more open to interpretation than others. If the dichotomy were true people who want to "learn how to cook" instead of "learning to follow rules" would be told to discard recipes. If, on the other hand, the dichotomy were false and knowing how to follow recipes was part of knowing how to cook then asking what a "julienne" is would be a perfectly valid question. And the sort of question this thread used to be about. EDIT: Do you want to learn to play chess, or do you want to learn the rules?

It's 4 AM here and I'm craving ice cream. Thanks RRO >_<

This discussion reminds me of my sainted great-aunt, who left behind several notebooks full of recipes that were simply lists of ingredients with perhaps a note or two along the lines of "better with small onions" or "liver should be very fresh." Fine if you've made the dish a hundred times, useless if you've never made it before, inviting disaster if you've never tasted it. That's an extreme case, but I think the principles apply across the board. Obviously some degree of latitude is necessary because of ingredient variation but a recipe should at least put you in the ballpark, and most cookbook recipes do this by using specialized meanings of words that an experienced cook will immediately understand - this is what the OP is talking about, the range of sizes that make a "small" saucepan, the difference between a "fine" and a "coarse" chop and so on. I don't think there's anything wrong with specifying one medium onion, and I don't think there's anything wrong with asking what a medium onion weights, either.

Saludos, Pedroinspain. I think it's a seasonal thing. Lately you can't suggest washing your hands before handling food is a good idea without someone jumping down your throat. I think the differences of opinion so vigorously expressed in this thread come down to a fundamental difference in how people perceive tipping. Some people see tipping as a voluntary gift from the patron to the waiter rewarding good service, while others see it as a tacked-on, implicit fee (like the sales tax in most of the US) that the patron is obliged to pay regardless of the quality of service. I was taught 15% was the expected for adequate service in a restaurant, which could then be adjusted up or down depending on how satisfactory the service was. I can see other people (for example bad waiters ) might think this is unfair but so far nobody has even tried to explain why it's wrong. As an aside, when did the baseline go to 20% and who decided that?

Calamari is Italian for squid.

I think fried oysters are pretty special. What's the other fried stuff on the plate? Beautiful presentation as always.

Well, of course you didn't. It would be pretty hard to measure out 1/12" (much less 1/16") using a ruler. Anyway, the point was about the length. I think "matchstick cut" should be closer to 2" than to 1", unless -I've- been doing it wrong. And there's no need to get touchy about any of this. We're just trying to pin down what all those vague instructions really mean.

Subjective measures like "small" and "large" also drive me nuts but we have to accept that in most cases there's going to be little difference between using a 250g onion and one that weights 275g. I generally agree with deepfryerdan's sizes except for the matchsticks. I actually grabbed a vernier and a (wooden) match and it comes out to 58mm x 2.2 mm sq., or roughly 2.3" x 1/12" sq. EDIT: And then there's the huge "kitchen" matches, waxpaper matches, matches from matchbooks, etc.

I won't hazard a guess as to the variety (there's something like 500 varieties) but if they're anything like the oversized varieties we get in Mexico it'll be flavorless and watery compared to Hass or (my favorite) Criollo. The stones on these big ones are also oversized so you get surprisingly little avocado out of each one.

Those are nice.

Will never look at a low-flying duck the same way again. Would like to hear the R-rated ones.

Really looking forward to seeing what you cook up this week. Intensely jealous of all the beautiful seafood. Just one question: You live in Not Safe for Work?

I'm not with you on that one. I know a person who owns a small restaurant. She has a cook and one server working at any given time. During one of those shifts, her daughter is the server. She does the same work as the other servers, gets the same pay as the other servers and has the same living expenses as the other servers. Why is she less deserving of a tip based entirely on her being the owners daughter? I think he means those are the cases when customers usually won't leave a tip, not that they're justified in not leaving a tip.

Never heard of a recall in China, but then again I don't read Chinese news, so I wouldn't expect to. I did hear they executed their food safety chief for dereliction of duty. You don't hear of the US or European countries doing that.

The literal answer to that question is, of course, that it is always permissible not to tip. They won't stop you at the door to take it from you. I think I remember a thread about some people getting arrested because they refused to pay a service charge? And, I think this is a perfectly legitimate topic, and some people need to switch to decaf, immediately. If a topic about bad waiters makes you this mad how do you deal with people who disagree with your politics, religion, sports team, computer of choice or favorite band?

We've been hitting 45 C (~110 F) pretty regularly since mid-April and my tomatoes sit on top of the fridge for a week plus with no signs of spoilage. My kitchen is probably several C above the outside temp at any given moment, too.

I'm also a relative beginner to cheesecakes, having made my first one about a year ago. My first few failed in more ways than I thought a dessert -could- fail, but eventually I got it right. I bought a springform thinking they were necessary, but they are not, at least for the recipes I've been following. Here's a bit of advice that doesn't come up in the recipes I've tried: the smoothness of the mix is essential, so run the mix batter through a sieve before pouring into the pan. No comment on the granola cheeses, since I've never tried them.

C. Sapidus: Thanks. I'm glad you like the tacos because that's all I ever post here. I can make other food, I swear! Kim Shook: Thank you. I hate to "waste" good meat drippings so I heat up my tortillas in them so they pick up some of the taste. Kinda like the Ducasse flavor reinforcement thing. They come out semi-fried; they're soft and bendable but there's a certain crunchy mouthfeel, if that makes any sense? BTW, I really like that duck breast. Shelby: Everything looks delicious (the prawns in particular make me wish we got decent seafood here, not for the first time) but I really want that pie, and I don't even know how a no bake pie works!