runwestierun

I think they are filling all the American orders and then they will ship books to Canada. Must. Be. Patient.

We use a Sawzall too because it's cordless and easy to take into the field.

I was thinking about my grandmother. She would always make caramels and give them for Christmas, but then about 50 years ago she quit because my auntie Annie made better caramels and grandma was embarrassed of hers. Auntie Annie had a secret recipe. I don't like secret recipes. I don't like an unwillingness to share knowledge. Think about the state of BBQ in the USA, competetive and secretive with a few really notable exceptions. If it took someone years of trial and error to find something out, why wish that journey on anyone else? Why not share that knowledge and be happy when it becomes common knowledge and no one else has to suffer through that journey? Then they can begin where you left off, not where you began. I don't like the argument that this book takes the mystery out of cooking. I read: secrecy. I have been thinking of this book as the be-all and end-all but that's not true. Imagine the ideas that will be born out of it.

The fish look like red snapper. That'd be gulf of Mexico, Florida. I caught one off of Texas once. Anyone here a commercial fisherman? That looks like a shrimp boat. I think it's a trawler with a purse seine, anyway. Oysters?

Re: the soup. I think the herbs are a good idea. Bacon might be a pain because you have so many vegetarians. I just wanted to say that a spiral of sour cream/creme fraiche+cream from a sqirt bottle does wonders for presentation and takes one second. Even a dollop looks better than nothing. Also, if you wanted to make 2 soups that had some body (not brothy), you can serve them in the same bowl by pouring them both at the same time from pitchers from opposite sides of the bowl. Then a spiral or dollop of cream in the middle. Pretty and easy. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2521/4178840579_abfac7c388.jpg You can also put one soup in the bowl, then pour the other in the middle, kind of looks like a bullseye.

Oh the last couple days have been so interesting! The release of Modernist Cuisine has ruffled some feathers. First Alton Brown. Why was he so dismissive? Was he worried that he'd be toppled from his food science throne? Or was it something else? We have all encountered people with a very narrow point of view. They are distainful of people with less skill/education/wealth than them and fiercly suspicious of people with more skill/education/wealth than them. I usually think of them as late majority, but I would never think of Alton Brown or Michael Ruhlman as late majority. Here is an explanation of the diffusion of innovations in a society, explaining that term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations America definitely has a cult of mediocrity. And this book (best book ever) and it's author (wealthiest/most educated/most skilled man ever) are certainly superlatively exceptional. Maybe Alton Brown and Michael Ruhlman are a little afraid of being associated with the book, of being perceived as geeks, not "regular", and they are willing to feign ignorance (MR) or poverty (AB) to maintain that perception. If that's true, how infinitely disappointing, in them and our culture in general. I was completely taken by surprise that a book about cooking could be so threatening to so many people. There is so much pressure in our culture not to stand out. You see school children make fun of dumb kids AND smart kids. There is so much pressure to be regular and Modernist Cuisine is not regular! Having said all that, I must say that I am still peeing-in-my-pants excited about getting my copy, which tragically has been delayed until all my modernist chemicals expire. I think of this book like I do my new husband's impending back surgery. We can pay some guy a few thousand dollars and he will go to school for about 20 years, train for maybe 8, buy millions of dollars worth of equipment and fix my new husband's spine. The return on the investment so so so outweighs the individual cost. For $500 I can get THIS BOOK! I am the luckiest girl alive.

Chris, I don't have my book yet. Is the stock cooked at a specific temp or is there a range of temps and times for it? I am asking because I am wondering if you could keep vacuum packs of it ready to throw in the SVS to cook while you cook something else?

Nikkib, Those all sound so good, I wanted to ask you have you made anything with pear?

I think it is late and I am a little bit cranky, but that strikes me as a lazy review.

I am bumping this thread up to see if anyone has any new ideas for good adult non-alcoholic drinks since this thread was last fresh. I've read that the French Laundry has a non-alcoholic pairing of beverages with food, and I wonder if any of you can shed any insight into that. There is so much knowledge about pairing alcoholic drinks with food, I would love to do the same with non-alcoholic drinks. So much of it is so sweet. I am wondering if any of you have encountered anything delicious lately, something that would appeal to the older-than-12 crowd.

My answer is really a combination of Shelby's and abadoozy's. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and like Shelby, we hunt for the majority of our proteins. In the spring it's salmon and sturgeon, in the summer clams, in the fall elk, in the winter dungeness crab. It's important to me to eliminate waste, like abadoozy, out of respect for the animals we take. This applies to all food in general too, out of respect for what it takes to grow vegetables and grains and what it takes to manufacture the things we use that are manufactured. I learned this from my grandmother who wouldn't even let tap water go down the drain, she captured it all in basins and put it on her garden. I do equate eliminating waste with frugality, although I understand that that isn't always true. I know that if I use up all my caviar, I still am not being frugal. Having said that, the thing that has helped me most reduce waste lately while maintaining enough variety that everyone at the table doesn't start stabbing themselves in the eye with forks once they see elk AGAIN, is EatYourBooks.com. I am a cookbook junkie, and it is so nice to be able to look in the fridge or garden, see what is either bountiful or going south, punch it into their search engine and come up with many recipes in my cookbook collection. By limiting the ingredients to what I have onhand, it's really made menu planning and frugality easy. So, my cheapest dishes use the things we catch and grow ourselves. Plate Cooked Sturgeon I use large ceramic ramekins, almost the size of tart pans, for this because they are ceramic, flat and rimmed. Make a broth out of fish or vegetable stock, lots of fresh garlic and ginger (twice as much as you think), and scallions. Simmer. Put ceramic plates in oven at 350F to preheat. Carefully pound pieces of sturgeon into paillards between pieces of plastic wrap, about 1/4" thick. Put a bunch of chopped tomatoes in the broth and bring it to a low boil. Pull the plates out of the oven and butter each with more than the minimum amount of butter. Put enough fish on the plate to cover the bottom. Just cover with hot broth. By the time you get it to the table it will be cooked. Garnish with cilantro.

I have something similar to these: http://www.amazon.com/Piece-Magnetic-Spice-Rack-Decanters/dp/B001QSALF4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299607474&sr=8-1 ---literally 135 of them stuck on the side of my refrigerator. They are magnetic on the back. The edge of the lid screws around to expose a slot for pouring or some holes for sprinkling. Or you can of course take the lid off for measuring. The whole lot is alphabetized, I find that's easier than dividing spices up into categories. I've used a labelmaker to label each one across the front. The capacity of each can is 4 ounces, so I try to only buy what will fit in the can so I don't have bags everywhere. Then I have some of the MC chemicals in the fridge and freezer. I have lots of frozen herbs in the freezer. I also have a box in the pantry full of the loose bags of spices that I do have. Lastly I have a rack on the wall of the pantry that holds big bottles of mostly spice mixes. The magnetic cans have cut down significantly on the amount of shelf and drawer space that is occupied by spices. In my first house, these were on the side of the fridge. Second house, on 2 stainless steel plates screwed to the kitchen wall. Third house, front of the fridge. Fourth house, steel plates on inside door of pantry. This house, side of the fridge again.

Elsie, I do have a recipe that I really like, but it doesn't have any oat bran or wheat germ. It also has a crumble top. Blueberry Banana Crumble Muffins Ingredients Muffins: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 3 elderly bananas, mashed 3/4 cup white sugar 1 egg, beaten 1/3 cup butter, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla 2-3 handfuls fresh blueberries, or thawed frozen berries without juice. Sorry, I never measured the berries. Crumble: 1/3 cup packed brown sugar 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon butter Directions: Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers. In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg, melted butter and vanilla. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Add blueberries. Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups, they should be about half full. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon cold butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

I've read that they whack the fin off and throw the shark back to slowly die. I don't need that to happen for me to have a bowl of soup.

Lizz, I am not a baking expert and I don't have an answer for you. I hope I am not annoying with my question, could you please explain to me why the lip is preferred to the non-lip?

In the US Amazon has changed the book's status back to unrealeased with a new release date of April 14th. Amazon Canada's release date is still April 8th. Barnes and Noble still has a release date of March 14th.

Karri's post "Tales from the Crypt" about gross things witnessed in kitchens got me thinking back to a job I had 25 years ago. I worked in a Chinese restaurant that was particularly violent. The thing that sticks most in my brain was an evening service that was especially stressful because I was one of only two people in the kitchen who wasn't thrown in jail. Or in the hospital. Lots of slack to pick up. It started when the dishwasher slapped a stack of washed saute pans up on the line. They weren't perfectly dry and a drop of water splashed a line cook in the face. He flashed back to Nam, went ballistic, ran out from behind the line, grabbed a cleaver off the prep table and started hacking on the dishwasher's arm. Seriously, I will never forget what I saw before I, um, ran. It looked like gills on a fish. I've worked in other kitchens where the chef was borderline sadistic, but this kitchen was full on violent. Any of you have similar experiences you'd like to share?

Maybe he thought you were calling him and his wfe these names!

I'm hoping we get an extra episode out of it! Double elimination at this point would be harsh.

Actually, I think you'll find the Artful Dodger is from Oliver Twist. Moreover, my dictionary gives "skilful, clever" as the first definition for "artful," and "crafty, deceitful" as sense 2. <----I am totally pretending that this is the "blushing" emoticon. I mixed up the Artful Dodger and the Mad Hatter. Wasn't that artful of me?? I don't have any dictionaries here, I only have the web, and we all know you can't believe everything that's written on the web, especially apparently what I write. <----blushing again. I thought that even when artful meant skillful or clever, it meant it in the negative sense, skillful as in a skillfully executed con, clever as in deceitful. And the word has ties to the old timey definition of artist, which is closer to con-artist than the meaning of the word today. But it seems I am wrong, and that's what I get for hollering online.

If you look at Amazon.com, it says that inventory for this title is limited and orders will be filled in the order they were received. It doesn't say anything like that at Amazon.ca. I wonder if all the books stayed in the USA. That would explain my delivery date of April 18-May 4th.

This is a great idea for a thread, and I like the drama in this first post It's a field I know little about. I'll be reading along avidly. Ah, but you must have at least one little story...

My complaints are mostly semantic. Don't tell me something is artfully prepared. THE WORD "ARTFUL" DOES NOT MEAN "FULL OF ART"! It means "deceptive". Remember the Artful Dodger in Alice and Wonderland? I will not eat something that is deceptively prepared. Sorry for yelling. Also, I don't like when words are used so far away from their original definition as to render everything meaningless. Example: carpaccio of watermelon. Really? Because I was thinking of having the tenderloin of yam with some leaves of veal. And I'll have a stalk of San Pellegrino.

Thanks. I ordered mine in October and Amazon says it will be here in a month and a half to 2 months. That's too long. I am going to have to go buy one at a bookstore. Has anyone heard of a bookstore that will shelve it?

Kim, When did you order yours?