pbear

Unfortunately, Elaina, I don't know of a good resource. My mother is on a lifestyle low carb diet for weight reasons (she's morbidly obese with an extremely low metabolism) and I've done a lot of work helping her adjust. But the process was more like what DiggingDogFarm describes, i.e., developing a set of principles, preparing a small (easily used) database of food values, and improvising strategies to combat boredom (which is one of the biggest challenges of the lifestyle). My mother's problem is a little different from your friend's. More difficult, as she has to limit calories as well as carbs, but easier in that she can take occasional carb holidays. Sorry I can't be more help, but I will mention one issue that's pretty important. Your friend should discuss with his doctor and/or dietician (if he has one assigned) just what level of carbs he is allowed, per day and per meal. Everything else revolves around that. Meat, poultry and seafood, of course, are safe, as are eggs. And I assume his wife knows how to cook those. The question is how much (low carb) vegetable, including salads, he can tolerate to relieve monotony. From there, they work backwards from the food charts to develop a diet plan. If there's an "off the shelf" planner to guide those calculations, I haven't found it. OTOH, this isn't rocket science. It's mostly just a bit of research and common sense. If they're computer savvy, a program like MasterCook will help with the calculations. Or they can do it on paper, which is what my mother does.

How hard this is depends on the objective. Is your friend trying to lose weight, manage diabetes, deal with allergies or something else? Is s/he looking for any collection of recipes which fit those parameters or is the goal to have as close as possible to a normal (modern) diet?

Generally speaking, I agree with seabream, except a thick bechamel (e.g., for a souffle) is usually made (I think) with 4 tbsp each flour and butter.

I've not done this, but I've done something similar, to wit, gently-cooked frittatas and crustless quiches. The trick that works for me is a slow oven. As I want the filling ingredients evenly dispersed throughout the egg mixture, I add a step of pre-cooking the latter in a bain marie until thick-but-not set, but can see no reason to bother for an omelet (where presumably you'll add the filling only after the eggs have set). What I'd try is this. Beat the eggs with whatever ingredients you like (for me, that would be a little milk, salt and pepper) and pour into a nonstick pan (ceramic, i.e., non-PTFE will work). Cover, place in a slow oven (say, 250ºF) and cook until mostly set. (Can't be sure of the time, as I start with the bain marie, but at a guess half an hour.) Add filling, fold, cover again and bake another ten minutes to heat through. I'm not certain this will work, but it's where I'd start. I should mention that I always lightly oil the baking dish (very lightly), so that may be essential (though I think not). If so, it's a tiny amount, nothing like one uses for a conventional sauteed omelet.

I'll take a stab at this. It would help, though, if you posted or linked the recipe you're looking at, as there are several approaches to bolognese and similar dishes (e.g., ragu and genovese) and they're somewhat different. Broadly speakiing, this class of sauces aims for three things: (i) a balance of flavors, both meat and vegetable, (ii) Maillard reactions (also known as browning), and (iii) body from converting collagen in the meat to gelatin. Carrot contributes to both (i) and (ii), as it has an earthy flavor and browns well. The proportions are important mainly for (i) and are a matter of taste. For example, your assumption that a sauce with lots of onion probably wouldn't be good is misplaced. Typical bolognese and ragu use some but not much, whereas genovese is loaded with them (e.g., four pounds to two pounds of meat). The latter recipe works, though, because the onions are long-cooked (similar to French onion soup). So, to answer your main question, the best way to get a better understanding would be to make batch after batch of the dish you're trying to master, using one recipe for one attempt and a different one for another. With practice, you will get a sense of what each recipe is aiming to achieve and which balances you prefer. There are only two important rules. Don't scorch the veggies (including the onions) and don't boil the meat. Get those two things right and good food will follow. If you want to better understand the process, the other book I'd recommend (in additkon to those mentioned upthread) is Harold McGee's On Food & Cooking. It's a bit wonky, at times, but well written and one of the best resources on kitchen science ever written for the home cook. Hope that helps.

Tradition? And not necessarily the best technique. Mexican carntias and Filipino adobo typically are browned after braising, not before. Indeed, I've been using the sear-after-braising method for years, based on those precedents, long before I tumbled to low temp cooking.

The thing to understand about tipping in America is that it's not really driven by servers. It's driven by customers. Most of them (not all) like acting as beneficent feudal lords, dispensing a boon to their hapless servers. They'd like tipping cooks too, if they interacted with them, but the don't, so they don't. Whatever you may think of the system in principle, if you're visiting the country, tips for servers are part of the compensation structure. If you opt out (and you can), you're freeloading. Bear in mind that, if tipping were eliminated, wages would rise to cover the difference and so would prices. IMHO, this perennial topic is mostly a debate about form rather than substance. FWIW, I last worked front of the house over thirty years ago, back of the house about ten (both pretty far from fine dining). I don't have an axe to grind either way. Mostly I'm just reflecting on this as a consumer.

This is all a bit off-topic, but since we're discussing the french fry case, an important thing to know is that, at the time, the ingredients list on McDonald's website listed only "natural flavoring" without disclosing the source. (I know this of my own knowledge, as I went to the site after reading one of the early news articles on the controversy.) Identifying it as "natural beef flavor" came later, presumably because of the lawsuits.

Sounds like it would be faster to pass through an OXO 8" strainer rather than a colander. I imagine certain types of soups would clog the gold mesh filter very easily without a decent prefilter step. Fair point. No doubt the liquid should be relatively clear before passing through a gold-mesh filter. In this case, though, I think a colander would be sufficient, as we're talking about chunks of vegetables.It's trickier if doing something with proteins - for me, this mostly comes up with sous vide braises - but there I generally don't bother with a gold-mesh filter, as I'm usually preparing a sauce where absolute clarity isn't necessary or even noticiable. What I do want, though, is to remove and discard the coagulated proteins. If I used a sieve only, those would stay in the dish. If I'm okay with that, I still use a colander and puree the proteins smooth with an immersion blender. Whereas, if for some reason I want a very clear stock, I do three passes, a colander for chunks, a siieve for coagulated proteins (which I discard), then the filter. In fact, I generally do only the first two steps.

FWIW, I hardly ever use cheesecloth for straining any more. Instead, I use a gold-mesh coffee filter. (Which, of course, doesn't get used for coffee.) Less fiddly and doesn't absorb any of the liquid being strained (better yields). For something like this, I'd drain in a regular colander to remove the solids, then pass the liquid through the filter.

FYI, it won't be with the other cooking oils. It's be with supplements, in a refrigerator case. Probably simplest to ask.

No recipe, but I've had some pretty good cookies (from others) made with chopped dates.

Psst, that was supposed to have been 40 minutes at pressure. Twenty minutes is the estimated prep time.Anyhoo, I tried them. They came out fine (though watery, as mentioned in the recipe). Frankly, I get better results by conventional methods, so this one isn't going in the toolbox.

If baking bread in a covered pot, you should use a spritzer. It's a small room and easy to generate enough steam with a few spritzes (plus the dough adds moisture). Whereas the ice method depends on direct contact with a skillet or grill pan, It's intended for steaming the whole oven.

FWIW, my reason for adding salt after the water comes to a boil is different. Depending on the pot, the water can become saturated with water vapor, which quickly comes out of solution when nucleation sites are added. If that's the pasta, you can get a rush of bubbles and a blast of hot steam. If you add the salt just before the pasta, it strips out the steam and the pasta goes in more quietly. If you never have a problem with pasta water foaming up like that, your pot isn't producing steam-saturated water and this rationale doesn't apply.

Can you get Bubbies down your way? (It's a Stockton based company.) That's the brand I like. Only medium heat, but has a nice clean flavor.

Just thinking aloud, but I would think that if you want to go this route agar would be a better gelling agent than gelatin. Agar has the advantage of gelling at room temperature, whereas gelatin will only work if you chill the pie (which I wouldn't consider desirable). Not sure how to do it, as I've never made a pecan pie this way. (I'm content with the conventional, shallower pie.) What probably would work is to warm the dissolved agar with the corn syrup, then add the remaining ingredients and bake. FWIW, 1 tbsp agar is roughly equivalent to 1 envl unflavored gelatin, i.e., will gel about 2 cup of available water. Which, at a rough guess, will be enough to achieve the texture for which you're aiming. Obviously, whatever gelling agent you choose, you're looking at some experimentation to get it right.

I no longer have a regular oven (long story), but when I did my solution to the steam issue was to place an enameled cast iron grill on the bottom rack of the oven in its lowest position, freeze a thin square sheet of ice (about 1 cm thick) just smaller than the grill and put that on the grill right after I had placed the loaves on a pizza stone on a rack in the second lowest position. (I would preheat both the stone and the grill at the same time.) The ridges hold up the ice as it melts, so the melting water falls to the wells between the ridges and vaporizes quickly. The advantage of this method is that the thin sheet of ice is easy to place quickly and safely. YMMV, but it worked for me.

Yeah, the comment in Home about ziplocs being unsafe for long cooks had me scratching my head. I assume there are some set of facts under which it's true - perhaps the floater scenario - but it would have been nice for them to explain. Does MC?

You're welcome.

Would love to see it! Thanks! I came up with this years ago because all the commercial brands are too sweet and fake tasting for me. Basically, it’s a thin crème anglaise (stirred custard). The lightly-whipped cream finish is what makes it work. eggs, 4 lg sugar, 3/4 c (divided) nutmeg, 1-1/2 tsp (divided) salt, 1/4 tsp milk, 5 c (divided) vanilla extract, 1 tsp bourbon, 2 tbsp (or dark rum, southern comfort, amaretto, etc.) heavy cream, 1 c (divided)Beat eggs; blend in sugar (reserving 2 tbsp for Step 3), salt, 1 tsp nutmeg and 2 c milk. Measure out another 1 c milk. Cook egg mixture over a heat diffuser or double boiler, stirring constantly, until lightly thickened, 170 to 175 degrees. Remove from heat and stir in third cup of milk. Pour into a two-quart bottle. Add vanilla, liquor, 1/2 c cream and remaining 2 c milk. Chill overnight, stirring occasionally for the first few hours. When ready to serve, whip remaining 1/2 c heavy cream with remaining 2 tbsp sugar until thick and frothy but not stiff; stir into eggnog. Sprinkle servings with a dash of nutmeg. Makes about 1‑3/4 qt. Spiked Eggnog: Chill a bottle of bourbon, rum or other spirit and pass separately. Each person may then add as much (or little) as he or she desires, a pony shot (2 tbsp) being typical. Extra Rich: For an even richer eggnog, increase eggs to six. Reduce milk to 4 c and increase cream to 1-1/2 c. (I reserve this version for Christmas eve.)

If you're interested, I have a cooked eggnog recipe that's generally well received. Otherwise, as I live in San Francisco, I'm afraid I can't be much help.

IMHO, the equilibrium cure in MCAH is too strong. Bear in mind that a kilo of turkey legs is only about 75% meat, so the cure is actually about 5.3%. I'd say half that is probably right. You would never cook 750 g meat with 40 g salt (or, at least, I wouldn't). That's 4 tbsp Diamond kosher salt or 2 tbsp table salt. No wonder you found the confit too salty.I suggest you try your next round taking up Johnny's suggestion of using 20 g salt, even for conventional poultry. And that's still a cured product. IME, for an equilibrium brine without curing, you need to go down to 1.6% (or less), i.e., 12 g salt for 750 g meat (net weight). Also, at these lower concentrations, I find it works best to leave the product on the cure for two days before cooking, flipping every 12 hours to even out the salt distribution. YMMV.

A raclette grill?

Bob: Thanks for the clarification. I was afraid newbies might have gotten an unfairly negative view of the Supreme from the OP. Which isn't to say it's the right solution for everyone. As you mention, Douglas Baldwin does a good job of explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the main options in his online guide. And I take your point about all cooking being complicated. Also, I agree sous vide is no worse. jorach: Yeah, I'd say that counts as an inherent design flaw in the Demi. Bummer. FWIW, as you suspect, no, this isn't a problem with the Supreme, where the bath and racks are all stainless steel. I've had mine for three years with no signs of corrosion. And it usually sits full of water, even when I'm not using it (albeit San Francisco water, which is particularly mild).