Mjx

But best practice (if it's truly best practice, and not merely esoteric/recherché practice) saves time and money, and makes cooking a pleasure. If a cookbook is being used for visual inspiration alone, that's fine, but I'd have to agree that as many as 95% of cookbooks seem less than useful, since they merely retread recipes that have been found elsewhere, and have just enough changes to avoid copyright infringement issues: To the editor, these may appear to be insignifiant alterations to an ingredient, measurement, or process, but make the difference between success (or at least 'not bad'), and 'crash and burn'. Adrià's book is not in the copied/untested category, but I'm guessing that it works best for (and is targeted at) those who are at least somewhat familiar with best practice/the science involved.

I know all that, but is there an inside joke or reference I'm missing, relating to certain kinds of beer? I mean, idiocy aside, there has to be some rationale to calling giving your beer such a ridiculous name.

Same here. In fact, I do this when slicing rolls or pieces of ciabatta, too.

Ah, got it! I haven't seen either listed in any traditional recipe, but who cares? Either one would be delicious, and sounds like a great idea (the long, slow reduction essentially braises the meat, which is ground, finely chopped, or shredded anyway, so any toughness/dryness issues would be circumvented)

... and you've never had a nice pot of meat sauce that seemed just right, then mixed it with the pasta and found the combination dry, because there wasn't enough liquid left after the noodles got their share ? Nope. But that may have as much to do with how I like my pasta sauced (i.e. lightly). I'm still curious about the wine: I can't think of any recipe other than the one in CI (mentioned upthread), and although I've used both white and red, I'd lover to hear a cogent argument for either one; I realize white is traditional, but I've had excellent results with red, too, which is arguably more often used in things that contain a high proportion of beef. Is there any indication that earlier iterations used little or no beef? I'm confused: Rabbit is 'coniglio', and hare is 'lepre', and they're both used in cooking, but I'm not getting how one would be called the other..?

A heavy bloom on a thin slab can definitely affect the way it melts, and chocolate just doesn't absorb much moisture, although it can certainly accumulate on the surface. Especially if it was stored next to an oven, heat seems a more likely culprit than moisture. Need more data!

The absorption still won't be significant enough to make a difference, all you have to do is pick up one of the last remaining pieces of pasta on your plate, cut it across and take a look at the cross-section to see how har the sauce penetrated (if you're near-sighted, like me, you won't even need a magnifying glass ) Cooking the pasta directly in the amount of bolognese sauce being used for the particular meal might care of some excessive liquidiness, but I have my doubts, and the texture of pasta cooked in sauce always seems gummy or flabby to me.

That's exactly what it is. It must have got too warm at some point or other. How thick was the block or slab, and how severe was the blooming?

. . . . I've mostly been using them in the place of pickled ginger since then. What does myoga taste like, is it as spicy as root ginger, or milder?

But in cooking, the pasta has absorbed about as much water as it can; a thin sauce is just an indicator that the the cook ran out of time/patience (or is taking a too-brief cooking time in a recipe too literally); the only way to fix this is to put it back on the stove, and keep reducing.

Shopping list: 1 kg (≅2.25 lbs) beef/veal/pork 150 g (≅5 oz) chicken livers 200 g pancetta (maybe half mortadella?) packet of gelatin (I might give this a try, can't hurt to have it on hand) Already on hand are stock, carrot, onion, celery, tomato paste, and, possibly, wine. But red wine or white? Rossetto Kasper's recipes for Bolognese use white wine, the CI one uses red; I've typically used whatever I have lying about, and have even used port (which made for a sauce that was a bit extreme).

The recipe has a medieval feel to me, so I usually toss in a bay leaf, and often a clove/a little cinnamon. Most of the recipes I've seen don't call for herbs or spices, and I'm not certain whether that is because it doesn't really need it, if done properly (the flavours are so depp and complex), or because it is something that has varied so much over time, it just seems wisest to leave it to the taste of the cooks.

Could a lot of the fat have bloomed out? This does tend to happen if it gets too warm.

No substitutions for me, they generally really depress me. There are plenty of low fat/carb things that I appreciate, but for themselves, not as replacements for something else. My big weakness is for wheat-based things and potatoes, which I have to restrict anyway, since my body has issues with them. But when I want either of those things, I eat them (this happens less and less often, since I feel pretty run down afterwards), which keeps me from eating a whole platoon of would-be replacements, followed almost inevitably by what I was trying to not eat. I should be up front about the fact that I've never followed a specific weight loss plan in my life, but when I want to ditch some weight (as when I recently buckled down to get rid of the roughly 30 pounds I piled on when I was ill for a couple of years), I just eat dinner, and whatever I like. Not eating during the day soon has your stomach accustomed to smaller portions, so you get built-in portion control, and I find that 'dinner only' is a strategy that I can stick to indefinitely. I know there are arguments against this approach, but from a logistical standpoint, this works out best for me (and I do take nutritional supplements), particularly since I almost always eat dinner with others, but am on my own at other mealtimes.

I'm in! I use Rossetto Kasper's recipe as a base/guideline, but skip the dairy, which gives it a mouth feel that I find kind of repulsive, as well as sort of muffling other flavours. I use about a litre and a half of stock (often chicken, since it adds another dimension), instead. The November/December 2011 issue of Cook's Illustrated presents a recipe for Bolognese that has some interesting points to it, including the use of chicken livers (which I'm seriously considering) and powdered gelatin (which sounds both iffy and kind of intriguing). Any thoughts on the use of gelatin? Because of the reduction involved, it doesn't seem like making Bolognese sous vide would work out, while reducing just some of the ingredients is going give quite different results from reducing everything together. Might still make an interesting experiment, though.

Yesterday, I saw a billboard that gave me pause for thought (meaning, I stopped dead, and goggled at it in momentary disbelief). It advertised the Stronzo brewing company (possibly not safe for work, if you live in a conservative country), of Copenhagen (I'm in Denmark, at the moment). The thing is, 'stronzo' is one of the Italian words for 'shit' (but is often used like the English 'arsehole'). The guys behind it are apparently Danish, but I have no idea of whether or not they know what 'stronzo' means (or whether they care), nor what (if they do know) they are thinking. Statements like 'People with attitude' and 'Stronko.dk is in the air' are all over the site (and the billboard, which I didn't think to take a shot of), and their offerings include a 'Brown Stronzo', which does not exactly evoke a 'yum' response from me (it conjures up the liquid manure that's sprayed over fields as fertilizer), but then again, I'm not much of a beer drinker. They also describe themselves as an 'innovative microbrewery' brewing 'creative beer of the highest quality'. So, naturally, since I'm supposed to be concentrating closely on my work, I cannot stop wondering what deal is: expensive joke/social experiment? wild marketing manoeuvre? Is it any good? Heck, is this even legit? Any thoughts? or, even better, knowledge?

How assertive is the butter in that? A distinctive butter note always seems weird to me, in something lemony of this sort.

Any chance of your assigning another use to your mackerel (actually an oily fish, not a white fish), and trying the drying with cod or another white fish? Not sure how dry you're going to get a fish with such a high oil content.

The lemon bar recipe from CI is extremely good, and very balanced (I admit to tweaking it slightly, since I like lemon-flavoured things to be distinctly sour).

That's pretty bizarre, since it's something of a stretcher to make a connection between BSE and caul fat, which is more isolated from the central nervous system than many cuts of beef... but I'm guess they were counting on the public not knowing much about that. Still, since sheepish is in the UK, the FDA's decisions shouldn't have much of an effect on the purchase of caul fat where he lives..?

Precisely, which means that accurate, reliable scales are available at most price points, making them a worthwhile investment for anyone who think they might bake even just twice a year, unless they're feeling really indifferent to results. If something is unreliable, you return it. In their magazine, which is definitely not targeted at the experienced cook or baker alone, they've been using weights at least as far back as 2002.

Would it be very complicated to do what CI does, which is to give the weight beside the volume measurements? Giving the option for conversion feels less reliable to me.

Today's grey sky and perpetual spatter of rain suggested braised venison, puree of red lentils and hokkaido squash, and black lentils:

Hm. I was responding to: I didn't intend to mount an attack on what is clearly a substantial project. But the thing is, even novice bakers want consistency in results, and since they are novice bakers, they don't yet have a feel for ingredient adjustments, so they rely even more heavily on recipe accuracy than more experienced bakers; weight simply delivers better consistency than volume. Cook's Illustrated, which caters to cooks and bakers at every level does include weights for this reason. I'm not saying the inclusion of weights is a 'must', but it is my opinion that it would be exceptionally valuable... and opinions were what you asked for!

'Hunk' sounded wrong for any caul fat, so I took a quick look about online, and found beef caul fat images such as this one, where it looks pretty much like any caul fat. Could the stuff you have have been improperly stored, and melted/stuck together?