Mjx

I know; still, if he's keen on smoking venison, it's worth being aware of various options.

Depends on how you smoke it: I've had cold-smoked venison, and one taste makes it clear that it's worth the trouble; it has a very supple, silky texture. Should be properly inspected and approved, to ensure that it's clear of parasites.

Definitely more like duck than turkey, and very, very good: I roasted one a couple of years back (I used The Perfect Recipe's roast goose recipe, and it went without a single hitch, and the goose was not at all tough), and my boyfriend and his brother – both fairly picky and often conservative eaters – had to be practically restrained, so that the rest of us could have a go at it. During the early phase of roasting it does have an odd odour, but that's gone by the time it's done. Another nice thing about it is that it is quite tolerant of overcooking (at least domestic goose is), so you're unlikely to dry it out if your oven runs hot. To put it another way: Hell, yeah!

You'd have to check: It varies and most of the studies describe a range (the links to the articles are in some of the posts upthread).

This is pretty much what I've heard from quite a few people; since the holidays are approaching, maybe add one or both Chartreuses to your wish list?

Well... to be fair, if it's a first-time experience (which is my impression, based on the mention of 'sheer volume'), and his only idea about it is that created by Bourdain, who evidently went out of his way to create the impression that tasting menus approximate the sorts of banquets that supposedly preceded Roman orgies, he's going in without having any idea of how much food is going to be involved, and I can understand not wanting to find himself rolled off to the sidelines, halfway through. By now everyone has pretty much set the record straight on the amount of food actually likely to be involved (didn't someone post their images of a dinner at Alinea? All I found was this review without images, but I know it isn't likely to exceed, say, the amount that Steven and co. had, at elBulli, and that was manageable).

Aren't these sometimes treated with protective coatings/chemicals (marble is actually a rather vulnerable material, and can even burn) that may make them unsuitable for using with food?

If it's being sold to a US market, they may have been concerned that metric measurements would be intimidating. I haven't seen the book, but frankly, if they're giving weight measurements (of any sort) for dry ingredients, it would still put the book leagues ahead of a lot of other cook books out there.

Agreed, tasting menus are never that overwhelming to the stomach (and I fill up fast). I do find a glass of wine with each course kind of unmanageable (read: I get drunk so fast it's ludicrous), however, but many places offer you various options for the wine/beverage selection (e.g. options of 3, 5, or 8 wines, or a juice menu instead); Alinea may be one.

Got my boyfriend a Mahlkönig Vario model for his birthday last spring, and it works like a dream, and is also remarkably quiet (it makes less noise than the Silvia I got him at the same time): I definitely recommend it (it was one of the models that was most frequently recommended, when I was researching burr grinders).

Soot was used loosely to mean the grounds the seep through the mesh screen. Your Polish article kind of supports my point... in Warsaw they drink Espresso which has very little grounds and little to no correlation in increased cancer risk, in Sweden they boil the grounds & drink unfiltered and have high correlation. I did not cherry pick an article... I merely found one that pertained to an article I read a year ago. When launching a would-be scientific discussion, precision is important, and 'soot' is finely powdered carbon. My comment about not cherry-picking the article referred to what I hadn't done, not to whether or not you had Regardless, the connection between drinking moderate amounts of coffee and cancer don't seem supported; there's no discussion of Swedish coffee preparation in that article, either.

It might be easier to find a recipe for roasting whole ostrich. I could swear that I came across one at least once, along with a discussion of it's popularity, owing to a passion for exotica during the late 1800s. I'll take a look and see whther I can dig it up again. Wouldn't the general principals for roasting any whole animal apply?

Not reliably enough to deal with the concentration and array of pathogens in this setting. This may sound harsh, but... more fools they. I mean, these are things you're taught to not do when you're still a small child (smacking away of hands much involved, as I recollect)! Not by much. I say give them a running start, and offer to fire at them while they're moving fast. Grrrr.... One of the things that is most infuriating is that people never seem to take it seriously when I comment on this. They ignore me, start yelling at me about their right, or, bizarrely, even ruffle my hair. Does everybody get this sort of reaction, or have some of you actually managed to make some sort of impression on the people you speak to about this/get them to even listen? Lucky you... I seem to catch every damn thing going around, anytime I eat in public.

Any chance the thermometer needs calibration? Could be the humidity, too, but I'm sure you've thought of that.

Wont swear to the concentration, but yes, dilute acetic acid has been tested and shown it is an effective bacteriocide. However, its still disgusting to sample that way, digging into the main stock w hands. If you are interested in germs, swab the little spoon/tong handles, eh? Most people use them, so they get the most germy. Acetic acid is an effective antimicrobial at a concentration of about 25%; strong vinegar has a concentration of about 18%, which is further diluted by any other liquids present in the dressing, and that is exuded by the food. The spoon handles aren't a huge deal, since they're not what people put in their mouths, and nobody who cares about their health runs their hands over their face if the can help it, if their hands aren't washed.

Fine. Torment those of us who are enjoined to eat elasticated boiled pork on a regular basis, see if I care. That all looks fantastic, by the way, and it's nice to hear that Italy is stil up to scratch. Did you have any of the seasonal cavolo nero and borlotti soup while you were in Rome?

'Soot'? What soot? Are we talking about the powdery part of the coffee grounds? Unless your coffee has been roasted to the point of carbonizing, it would not contain soot. Also, ash in food does not refer to soot (carbon), but to a variety of oxides and salts. A quick peek in your uni. chemistry books will elaborate on this. You can, of course, burn coffee down to ashes (e.g. if you're doing an assay), but this isn't happening in the human digestive tract. With coffee beans, molds are probably a more serious concern than ash. Neither Risk of stomach cancer in relation to consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, tea and coffee in Warsaw, Poland (Chow et al. 1999) nor Coffee and Health: A Review of Recent Human Research (Higdon & Frei 2007), among many, many others, supports the hypothesis that coffee consumption has a significant impact on the likelihood of developing stomach cancer (these articles weren't cherry-picked/mined to support what I'm stating: I used the search terms [health risks coffee]).

No and no. I grew up in Italy, where you don't touch the merchandise.

I'll add my vote for a press unit, even though my most common go-to is espresso. If you're using good beans and your water is decent, it will give you a great cup of strong black coffee (several cups, in fact). I'm lazy as hell, but don't find cleaning it that big of a nuisance, and nothing catastrophic will happen, even if you leave cleanup of the machine for the evening, when you get home from work. If you want to brew another pot straightaway, there's no real need to dismantle the whole damn thing, either: dump, scrape, rinse, and you're good to go for another round.

No experience with Pavoni, so I can't speak for that, but the Gaggia items I've used were on the shoddy side, and gave a poorer return for what they cost than the Silvia, or, say, Mahlkönig. After all, 'entry level' implies inexperience, not indifference to results/low standards, so starting off with equipment that actually responds to your learning curve has distinct advantages. I know the cash outlay on can be heavy but (and I'm speaking as someone with a really small income, by any standard), but not having much cash is not a great reason to spend the little you have on something unsatisfactory. But it all depends on your standards and expectations, when you come down to it.

I'm extremely happy with the Jennings model I have (http://www.jscales.com/images/cj4000.jpg). Apart from the accuracy, I like the fact that it has a cord (in case the battery dies, you have no replacements at hand, and it's Sunday, so all the shops are closed), and a great warranty. I definitely recommend it.

If it contains sugar, I'll try it. Which is the reason I'm sitting here with the weird aftertaste of a Yankie Lakrids bar in my mouth. For those who are not familiar with it, 'Yankie' is a Danish candy bar of the Milky Way sort, milk chocolate around a sort of spongy-chewy interior, innocuous in an insipid sort of way, and tasting primarily of glucose syrup. The 'Lakrids' version ups the ante, with – you (might not have) guessed it – liquorice. Salmiak (salty) liquorice, to be precise. I like chocolate (admittedly, milk chocolate, not so much), and I like liquorice. Their combination, however, has never struck me as, well, wise, even though it is not unpopular in Nordic countries. I only had a bite of this thing (I generously passed the rest of it along to my boyfriend, who, in the midst of a computer game does not really notice what he's shoving into his face), but ten minutes later, my mouth still tastes as though I brushed my teeth with one of the more agressive anise-flavoured toothpastes. Or maybe artichoke? God, I don't know... What the hell was I thinking?

That sounds really familiar. With a lot of recipes, I've run a line along the margin of entire paragraphs, and noted that the indicated procedure won't work with the ingredients/equipment in Italy or Denmark, and another must used instead.

Your question sounds like one that an industry (restaurant supply, that is) insider would know, even if they didn't supply the item in question themselves. An online search for [business + temporary + vestibule + interior] only yielded places like this: http://www.signexpo.com/vestibules.html, which don't seem to make what you want, but are very likely to be able to either make you some sort of custom structure, or tell you who does make these, if they don't do that sort of thing themselves. Incidentally, you may want to look into the wheelchair access regulations related to this sort of structure, since (at least in NYC, don't know how this goes in Montreal) this issue does seem to crop up, from what I see.

In general (I'm sure there must be exceptions), as an animal ages, the flavour goes up, and tenderness goes down. I have friends who kept chickens and slaughtered them according to need, rather than because they (the chickens, that is) were a certain age, so most of the time, only extended, low-temperature cooking methods yielded an end result that was chewable with standard-issue molars. The flavour was incredible, however. On one occasion, before I understood what I was dealing with, I pan fried a couple of breasts: The only way to make them edible was to shred them and use them in a chili; that was one athletic old animal. My friends also kept sheep and geese, and the same things held true for these; they made a lot of braises, and I've never had better (they were also fantastic in pasties).