Dakki

And, could you get around that by shooting a wider pic and then cropping the edges?

Aha! What's a good length to start at? Does it vary by lens? Would you expect to see this spherical aberration in a lens installed on a pocket camera or are we talking about specialized lenses for DSLR's here?

Pretend you're talking to a Martian who's never seen a camera before. What do you get with the longer focal length? Can you get a longer focal length using optical zoom? Will that have other effects (such as, exaggerating camera shake)?

Dammit Prawn your stuff makes my best efforts look like something a 6yo with a Fisher-Price camera would take. What is your opinion on the Nikon P300, if you've tried one? Do you have any particular tricks you can share for getting good food pics with a handheld camera, in less than ideal light (as you'd find in a snapping pics in a restaurant environment)?

Your photos are always nice, Soba. I think Prawncrackers also uses an older pocket camera, with impressive results. Those of us without the "magic touch" are cursed to take mediocre photos no matter what kind of gear we use, alas.

"The stuck-up individual writing the previously linked and discussed review at The Guardian is only interested in finishing her column so she can get paid. Also, she probably does not cook, so we who do can safely ignore her opinion on these matters. Heston's show was followed in the programming by The Fabulous Baker Brothers 101, which is in a similar vein but oriented more toward entertaining the audience, as opposed to Heston's educational slant. Perhaps the reviewer at The Guardian found this show more satifying? The rabbit pie made in this show looked interesting." Better?

Ended up with the Nikon P300, if anyone cares. From what I gathered from online research, it has a smaller sensor than the competition (meaning, apparently, less control over DOF) but is better in low light situations. Also the price was pretty hard to beat in the category. We'll see how this goes.

Neat! Unfortunately I already blew my kitchen stuff budget for the near future.

I thought the general tenor of the review was that she wanted more entertainment and less education. As one of the "misguided complainants who crawled out of their joyless pits after some of his previous shows to mewl and puke that ordinary people could not be expected to make lifesize birdcages from spun sugar and fill them with talking parrots made of foie gras, seaweed feathers and working potato larynxes" and want to learn things from a cookery show instead of watching reaction shots of some dude who guest starred in a Dr Who episode once, I say, you lot have the whole damn Food Network. You can let us have one show.

Understood, but I still want to know what you use it on.

So... what do you do with bacon powder? Use it instead of bacon bits? Do you dislike the texture of bacon bits?

I just caught ep 1. Loved it. The guests (local rugby team?) added to the entertainment value of the show, unlike the obnoxious D-list slebs from Feasts, and the format, props and demonstrations made Heston's advice easy to digest and remember, a bit like a BBC-fied Good Eats. I don't think Heston would mind the comparison; the use of the cow prop looked like a shout-out to Alton's steak show, also ep 1 IIRC. Really looking forward to seeing more of this show; as much as I liked Perfection, it wasn't really something one could follow at home without serious commitment in time, effort and money. My one objection as a former adopted Texan is BEANS IN THE CHILI ARGH.

Yes! I love it! LOL certainly not as exciting as gutting a deer! Ask two Gulleteers and get three opinions. Hey, arguing is fun too.

I've heard about the health benefits of black vinegar, supposedly an old Japanese health tonic. I'd be interested in hearing more about apple cider health folklore if you have a link. For me, I'm going to try to master terrines and pates. And take better food pics.

FWIW I think Edward J is technically right - only a harder material will cut a given material - but he's ignoring fracturing (chipping and breaking), which will occur against any material if you hit it hard enough. One of the first things you learn about steel is that the harder it is the less tough it is likely to be, and a thin, hard edge like we want on a good knife is going to be fragile indeed. The manila rope and cardboard thing is due to abrasive particles in the material, IIRC. It's a bit like having the abrasive from sandpaper suspended in jell-o - the material is very soft, but it wears things down very fast.

I think fructose from fruit and fructose from HFCS should be chemically identical. Of course fructose from sodas and highly processed foods is probably the textbook example of too much of a good thing.

I think industrial farming would not be considered modernist in the same way that the twinkie is not considered modernist cuisine, even though it uses a lot of the same techniques and chemicals. I see modernist farming as borrowing a lot from the techniques of industrial farming but adapting them towards optimizing flavor rather than yield. OK. I think new technologies in farming are going to come from big agro-industrial outfits and university/gov't farms, simply because those are the people who have the money, expertise and interest in doing this stuff. Operations making small amounts of high quality ingredients for a relatively tiny (if affluent) market segment will continue focusing on traditional ingredients and farming techniques, simply because heirloom tomatoes (or whatever) are a lot less expensive and risky than tomato/salmon hybrids. So if you automatically disqualify industrial farming methods from the term "modernist," you're stuck with 19th C methods of food production. This doesn't sit right with me; a lot of the ingredients and techniques used in modernist cooking were originally developed for Twinkie production, so to speak. That said, I think there's going to be some really interesting stuff happening in the near future with ingredients and farming technologies. Vat-grown meats, vertical hydroponics, farming of fish and seafood that are currently only available wild-caught are all in the works already. Here's my modernist idea: Some kind of tabletop automatic climate-controlled hydroponic farm so apartment dwellers who hate gardening can have really fresh herbs year-round. If any of you want it, you can have the idea in exchange for a working model.

dcarch takes nicer photos of that crispy duck and the latkes with a cellphone than I can get with a nice digital camera

For a complete novice, I think you could do worse than books such as Cooking for Dummies, Essential Cook, etc. I started cooking out of Joy as a teen (and I still use it for desserts) but there was a great deal of handholding from my great-aunt, God bless her sainted soul. And make sure they have access to decent equipment, too. It makes all the difference in success ratios.

I'm a fan of both Prawncracker's and Dcarch's food, but I wouldn't say that either of them represents the "best" food on this thread. Everybody here cooks food that is wonderful in some way. What contest? One of the best things about this thread is the huge variety of cooking styles here. I think some people's food photos are art in and of themselves (Prawn, dcarch and Keith_W immediately come to mind), others post good photos of some damn fine cookin' (RRO, Blether, Rico, Scotty and a whole bunch of other people), and another group post mediocre snaps of whatever food they drunkenly mangled last night. I love this thread because there's space for everyone here; that said, I think it's just natural for some posters to get more attention than others. (btw, I belong in the third category. ) Anyway, New Year's Eve dinner was grilled beef, a bit of a tradition in our little circle. Here's some photos. Searing some ribs (seared ones are on the upper grill) along with bacon-wrapped, cream cheese-stuffed chiles and salsa ingredients. There's small potatoes with butter and herbs in those foil packages in the firebox. Salsa ended up getting made in the blender, as our host does not own a molcajete. Guess what he's getting on his birthday. Medium rare and just salted is how I like my beef, but the ladies in our group think that's barbaric. Here's some ribs wrapped in foil with rosemary. Our host won't even tolerate the smell of garlic and one of the girls can't stand onions so... Anyway, these were cooked to barely pink in the foil pouch. Waste of good beef if you ask me, but they smelled pretty nice. Tri-tip/picanha is my second-favorite cut, after rib steak. Here I'm trying out a sort of Ducasse method modified for the grill, flipping often to get a good sear while keeping the inside nice and pink. One of the tri-tips got the foil pouch and rosemary treatment as well. Overall, the meal was pretty decent, enough that the guests managed to destroy the meat before I could get photos of the finished products.

Many (most?) knives have the scales epoxied on, and heat plus humidity will play hell with epoxy. The dishwasher in my house is named "Dakki."

I think industrial farming is pretty modernist in itself. YMMV. That said, I think we're going to see more "vat-grown" stuff and/or highly processed "imitation" foods (thinking surimi) in markets as technology advances and demand for luxury-type foodstuffs increases with the standard of living in places like China, India, etc. Although the focus of GMO's and breeding programs appears to be on more productive, disease-, predator-, frost- and drought- resistant varieties that are otherwise similar to conventional foodstuffs, I do remember reading about someone (Japanese?) developing a pig that has marbling. So there might be some interesting new ingredients in the future for us to play with.

Thanks, annabelle. Unfortunately Amazon doesn't do free shipping to here, and charges something like $5 extra per item on top of the weight-and-speed-based shipping charge to deliver stuff to Mexico. I could have it sent to my PO box on the border, but then it'll just sit there until I can visit USA again.

Nice. Wish I'd heard about this last week, when I was in USA. Now to source it in Mexico.

How do you break it down into primal cuts? Do you get the same primals as when breaking down a steer? Thanks for sharing these photos.