Jose Nieves

OOoOoOo No, no, no, no.. You are very very very wrong Nathan. So wrong I don't even know where to start.. Soooo wrong.. Ruhlman never received a degree from The Culinary Institute of America Just saying...

Have you thought about calling Cinco Lagos and asking Chef Polcyn?

Nathan's exact words in the article are "Suppose you're cooking a steak that's 1 inch thick and now I tell you to cook a steak that's 2 inches thick. Most people would agree that cooking the 2-inch steak will take longer, but how much longer? Intuition tells you it should be double the time. But heat conduction in things with similar geometry scales roughly as the square of the thickness. So it will take roughly four times as long. That's a simple rule, but I've never found a cookbook that says that.. it is a common cooking technique to plunge something into ice water to stop the cooking. But it turns out it doesn't stop the cooking any quicker than if you leave it out on the counter.." As someone with years of experience in the culinary arts AND an advanced scientific degree/background, I would agree with both of these statements. Maintaining all other variables equal, a piece of steak that is twice as thick will take between three to four times longer to cook hence the reason that in situations where time becomes a constant (two different cuts of meat that need to come to the pass at the same time), a cook gets "creative" by manipulating the temperature(crank the heat or reduce the distance between the product and heat source) or the thickness (slice it in half or press down on the meat to "reduce" the thickness, flip it constantly, put a hot pan on top of the meat to double the amount of heat sources, etc). As for the use of ice baths, I believe Nathan is not talking about product “crispness” and just addresses carryover cooking. When you pull your al dente noodles out of the hot water, should you chill them quickly by rinsing them in cold water or just leave them in the counter? I would not say that you are “stupid” (your words, not mine..) but telling someone to “stick to computers and let those with years of experiance in the culinary arts do the cooking” is probably not the best comment to make, specially to a forum of people with different culinary backgrounds who have an interest in the science of cooking and who feel that the information in Nathan’s book is long overdue.

Chris’ lawyer has just issued the following statement: “When my client used the term “cocaine”, he was referring to the myriad of legally acquired white-powder products used by those interested in this type of cooking not the other stuff.. that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.” I do think that you should share with the group a picture of said spoon..

They might work better for you but for me they have a very small opening making it difficult to spoon out the contents! For just that reason, I went with the wide mouth version of the Specialty Bottle jars Chris Hennes linked to up above. They're great. These are good for their price but I would order the amber ones just to be on the safe side. A good "local" place to find these are craft stores. You’d be surprised how many “small item” storage solutions you can come up with when going through the scrapbooking area of a craft store. Several years ago I purchased a something resembling a small knife roll that I use to store spices that I need to transport. I then asked my friendly neighborhood pharmacist for some unused empty plastic pill bottles which I’ve labeled on the top so I can quickly access the required spice. I added a fancy schmancy espresso spoon to the kit and voila. I’ll be sure to put together a modernist ingredient roll kit this coming weekend.

I completely agree with this, up to a certain point.. I think that those of us reading this thread are "slightly" biased towards the book and Nathan's passion in this area (I was starting to find repetitive the comments regarding Nathan’s economic status until I read the remark about spending more than one and less than ten million on the project). I also look at it from the perspective of my former culinary instructors and wonder what they would say about this or any other book being compared to Le Guide (flaming pitchforks and angry culinary mob anyone?). To me, Ruhlman's review is positive but somewhat cautious which is apt from a book review written by a critic and not a perky MC cheerleader (“gimme an M, gimme a C!!”) I do appreciate the fact that Ruhlman mentions the jacket price ALONG with the online price since a lot of other reviews I've seen just throw the $625 price tag and the $200 difference is something to consider.

Any idea where in the Pacific Ocean? I'm not saying that I'm planning a James-Bond-meets-Mission-Impossible type of "retrieval" but.. you know.. I just want to make sure that the boat is safe.. wherever it is.. which is where again? "Captain!! Captain!! We've received a communiqué from a ship of hmm.. "geeky pirates"??” Give us the books and no one gets hurt stop if you happen to have a centrifuge on board we will take that too stop or a rotovap stop or really anything else that we can use stop will send burgers over when we have finished them stop have a great day stop

I think we should let Alton be Alton and go back to commenting on Ms Waters. A fellow chef begged me to go with him to Chez Panisse after a very very very disappointing first visit and I should have heeded the words of our former president.. “Fool me once, shame on.. shame on you. Fool me.. you can't get fooled again” The food was barely good and the wine pairing they made for us was so utterly atrocious that not even the wonderful dessert was able to rescue it. Did I mention the first visit was also very disappointing? If you’re going to talk about other people’s culinary teaching/endeavors knowing that some poor misguided souls take what you say to heart, then you best be on your “A” game and Ms. Waters dining establishment is not even playing their “B” game. I’ve already warned my wife that as soon as the book shows up, I will disappear to the basement and resurface sometime in June or July. Seeing as how it’s my Birthday/Christmas/Father’s Day/Cinco de Mayo/Chinese New Year/Boxing Day Present, she has conceded to restrict my access with the outside world.

Any idea where in the Pacific Ocean? I'm not saying that I'm planning a James-Bond-meets-Mission-Impossible type of "retrieval" but.. you know.. I just want to make sure that the boat is safe.. wherever it is.. which is where again?

I was getting more and more depressed as I went down the line and didn't see any and then I found my three. Chez Panisse (#27; Spectacular food, bad wine choices from our server), Cal Pep (#30) and Bomba Bar Cova Fumada (#41).

The Food Arts article was very nice indeed. I also loved the article by David Arnold And Nils Noren right after.