Mjx

Eeeeh?! Please point me to one of these studies. I've often heard people say this sort of thing, but the evidence (e.g. member posts on these forums) suggests that both men and women are equally diverse in their appreciation of all sorts of foods.

I used 'Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 9 Chemistry and Toxicology', by Dietrich Hoffmann and Ilse Hoffmann as a reference, when I wanted to determine a safe level of tobacco to use in some truffles. In an infusion, I'd err on the low side, since alcohol is likely to extract the tobacco compounds very effectively, and could spoil the flavour.

The box in the fridge thing? Definitely. But if you make a thin paste of it, and apply it to a cutting board, for example, it's actually pretty effective (more than just washing with dish soap).

Wheat germ is a fraction of the wheat grain, and contains oils that keep the toasted form crunchy in liquids; Weetabix is made from the entire wheat grain, and tends to go soggy in milk, so if the portion of the recipe in which you were considering using it contains a significant amount of water, you might be unhappy with the result. On the other hand, if you were thinking of using it as a coating for something that is going to be fried, for example, it might be pretty good.

Hah! All you have to do is glance through many women's magazines/beauty culture books, to find all sorts of alternate uses for kitchen ingredients. Coffee grounds combined with brown sugar do, as claimed, make a decent, cheap skin exfoliant, if you don't mind the colossal mess in the shower, and picking coffee grounds from your hairline for the next day or so. Not certain that 'messy' is analagous to 'outrageous', however. Also, according to a Japanese lab partner I once had, in Japan bathing in sake is believed to detoxify the skin, a vague claim which always makes me sceptical. However, regardless of whether or not it detoxifies, I can definitely state (scepticism being the mother of experiments, for me) that a bottle of cheap sake in a tubful of hot water will get you frighteningly smashed in no time flat (and removes soapy deposits form porcelain!). I've also heard that peanut butter can be used to remove gum from hair and clothing... does anybody know whther this works?

I am wallowing in a state of post McDonald's shame: A recent visit to NYC was so hectic that most of the plans I had for eating were blown out of the water, and I ended up in McDonald's three times, wading through obscene quantities of chicken nuggets. Thing is, I actually craved them: I was raised in a vegetarian and anti-consumerist household, so I didn't actually have anything from McDonald's until I was in my 20s, but a single Happy Meal established an odd craving for food that has no flavour I can really describe, beyond 'salty, sort of sweet'. But man, those things are loaded with MSG: I had ten for breakfast one morning, and was pretty trippy.

There's a Hooters at Frankfurt airport, now! Full of fatigued and grumpy families, who would not have noticed if they'd been served by Big Bird wearing a leather hood. I too would like some expanded parameters for 'manly'. When I think of 'manly' in conjunction with eating, I think of those men who consider anything kitchen-related to be unmanly, for some reason, or men who are convinced that cooking edible food requires some form of occult training. A 'manly' restaurant taking this as its starting point would not have enough dishes and flatware, so most food would be served on paper plates, with plastic flatware, and random sets of take-away chopsticks sourced from other establishments. Diners waiting for the busboy to return with more paper plates would while away time playing with their gadgets at the bar, which would have many, many bottles of vodka, each containing about 5cm of spirits. Daily specials would probably each persist for several days, owing to the quantity originally made. Orders would be placed by direct huddle with the chef (since only the chef would actually have a clear idea of the available ingredients), and takeaway would usually only be an option if you had a some sort of container in which to put your food. The manliness of the place would be made absolute by the complete absence of women, who prefer to not confirm the truth of the rumours they've heard, via personal experience. There probably is a restaurant like this, isn't there?

My first thought for a possible offender was corn syrup. Most things that contain it in any significant amount taste bitter/metallic (or, sometimes, soapy) to me. It's a bit of a pain to change recipes to replace corn syrup with sugar, but it is doable, and I've been really happy with the results of everything I've done this for, from chocolate sauce to fondant.

I tend to abruptly change direction and make a wide detour around anyone offering samples, since the whole setup makes me feel incredibly awkward (and unless a sample is wrapped, I worry that I'll catch yet another of the year's fine selection of colds and seasonal diseases). I can't remember the last time I tried a sample, or whether I've ever bought an item I've sampled.

Definitely different, especially on an electric range. I don't want a full burner firing away under the mocca, but really do want the heat to be pretty even to the edge of a big stock pot.

I had some questions about stubs, and articles identified as requiring cleanup: what and who determines when their status has changed? Is it something that's simply picked up during regular sweeps of these things, or should we notify someone, if we do anything substantial to a stub or article requiring cleanup? Any general parameters for 'stub'? A few topics can be covered quite thoroughly by a few compact sentences: are they still stubs?

You're probably fully aware of this, but just in case: liquorice is naturally quite sweet, so if you don't like sweet notes in your savoury dishes, you'll want to keep that in mind.

Excactly. Add 'And let's all be polite and non-confrontational about this', and that should cover it. But things seem to have reached a point where both customers and chefs expect the worst from the other side, which makes it hard to come to this subject without feeling a bit hostile/defensive.

I'll have to try this; intuitively, it always seemed to me that the crack would be more localized/there would be les crushing if it created with a narrower surface was used, but next time, I'll try the counter (I don't have the shattering problem with US eggs, even now, just with Danish ones).

The problem may simply be in the lack of a general agreement on the meaning of terms, but in my opinion (and this aspect of the discussion is highly subjective) when you make a decision, you're actively engaged. When you consider a a variety of restaurants, look over their menus, talk to others about them, and choose a place to eat, you're actively engaged in selecting where you dine. When you order, in most places, there are decisions involved (if the place has a set menu, then that decision has been made previously). The same holds true of the wine(s) you select, whether or not you have coffee, dessert. You don't just go into a restaurant and say, 'feed me', tell the waiter to just bring you what he or she deems best. You become involved. I don't know about other people, but if there's something interesting going on behind the scenes, I'll read about that beforehand, since I find context interest; basically, when I eat out, I think. This doesn't mean I believe I have the right to tell the chef what to do, but I do ask questions about items on the the menu (e.g. 'Does this come with a creamy sauce?', or 'I'm planning on having a fairly substantial dessert, is one of the main dishes particularly light?'). The scenarios you describe are not parallel: On any given evening, a theatre shows a set selection of performances, they don't offer a menu, and, while I wouldn't argue with an expert, I certainly would ask questions, because I'm an adult, and since I am accountable for my decisions, I prefer to be familiar with the options, tho process, what lies under the surface. I do know what I enjoy eating, and choose restaurants accordingly. Dining room staff not only take my order, but provide helpful information. I simply do not see the desire to be informed as an expression of the need for control, or in the least likely to offend a chef (Seriously, who becomes disturbed by someone taking the trouble to be aware of how much effort they've put into something?). Submission is for infants, who, eyes and mouths agape, swallow whatever Mum and Dad choose to spoon in.

I'm a 'tap on edge of bowl, pry halves apart using both thumbs, shake shell-halves slightly to get most of white out' sort. It's always worked, but here, because the shells seem remarkably crumbly and fragile, there is the added step of fielding loose shell fragments and swearing (the fragility of the eggshells here bewilders me, since the water is so calcium-laden, I think it actually sounds louder hitting the bottom of the sink).

I found an excellent and reliable recipe (CI's, from Feb. 2002), and was planning on making it this weekend, for a dinner party, as a matter of fact. But it's crucial to use the shells when they're fresh (or freeze them for later use, as soon as they're cooled), assemble the profiteroles just before serving, and make certain the ice cream is properly softened before scooping. This last can be hard to enforce, when you have a bunch of people hanging about, urging you to get on with it, but a selection from the knife block (the sharpening steel is both relatively safe and quite convincing, particularly after you've jabbed someone in the ribs with it) is helpful in clearing the kitchen so you can give the ice cream the time it needs to warm from -16C. If you need to dig at the ice cream, the poor shell doesn't stand a chance. I'm not certain what the current attitude in restaurants is, towards profiteroles: is it regarded as a silly/dated dessert? It really does seem that even in places that do other desserts well, ice-cream profiteroles don't get much love, and even the quality of the ice cream leaves something to be desired.

I think that's an important question: A lot of people don't warm to the gadgetry, measuring, and chemistry of MC, and, like anything else, an interest in it is something you cannot fake--fake definitely has no soul--but I think that in the hands of anyone who is legitimately drawn to it (as opposed to those who are 'doing MS' because it's the thing of the moment), it has as much soul as the dishes that come from the hands of those who prefer to work intuitively, in pinches and handfuls, improvising as they go. If I become deeply absorbed in the math/chemistry of a recipe, prep. a leg of lamb with a scalpel (or decide that I'd prefer to present it as cubes of diced meat and thyme held together with transglutaminase, for that matter), or mix citric acid into my truffles along with the lime zest, I think that ultimately, what gives it soul is the fact that, to a large extent, the pleasure of those who eat the things matters as much as my own pleasure in creating it. Incidentally, wonderful as Nathan Myhrvold's work may be, don't let's forget that Harold McGee, among others, began bringing hard science into the kitchen several decades ago.

I hear this argument a lot, and without actually finding myself favouring either side of it, I do have to say that if I haven't seen any instances of government agencies doing specific jobs better than the private sector, I haven't noticed the reverse to hold true either, although, competiveness notwithstanding the cost generally goes up. I honestly have no idea how this would play out in this particular instance, but having spent time in a country in which part of the postal service has been privatized, I have to say that, if nothing else, the results of privatizing can be underwhelming in some unpleasantly surprising ways: Unless the entity in question enters a situation that is genuinely competitive, there's little incentive to deliver more than 'just what it was'.

If it's just a question of 'no harm', I'm fairly certain you're good: I've never come across anything indicating that cellulose is harmful (you ingest it in certain amounts in the tougher vegetables). The effect on quality/are they being cheap bastards... that's another story.

As far as I've noticed (among the cohort of academics and geeks that I run with), in the EU countries in which I've been, vodka is only drunk cold if it's cheap, or if people want to get drunk fast... I sort of associate frozen vodka with the likelihood that those consuming much of it will be doing 'body sild' by 1.00 am. Before anyone starts screaming, I'm not passing judgement, it's just observation; I prefer frozen vodka myself, because freezing mitigates the appalling burning vodka causes. Then again, I think 'sugary' is an attractive description of drink, so I'm aware of the, erm... limitations of my views on alcohol. But the idea that vodka should be tested at whatever temperature it will be drunk makes excellent sense.

How about swapping in a reduction of court bouillon for the vegetable broth in the potato leek soup base? Some of the seasonings used in bouillabaisse, such as saffron (possibly the smoked kind) or coriander could add something, too. Also, one of the Asian fish sauces could deepen the flavour, as could a tiny (nearly subliminal) amount of ground anchovy.

You're dead right, and that was horribly sloppy of me, my apologies (I meant 'disease of the immune system', and truly, I do actually know its more of transmission).

'Typo's'... clever touch!

??? Ooookay... I admit my first thought was 'WHAT?! Don't they have special clubs for that? I don't mean dinner, clubs, either...' I'm not seeing this statement in its original context, and have no way of knowing precisely how the word 'submission' was intended, but although I'm perfectly willing to do my homework on the restaurant beforehand, repect the efforts of the kitchen and dining-room staff, and be politepolitepolite if it kills me, submission seems out of place. If you aren't actively engaged in the dining experience, but instead submit to it, I think you lose out on part of what the chef has done, you miss the elements of dialogue, of exploration. Even if you go to a restaurant that offers a single, set menu on any given night, the decision to eat there is an active one. My mind boggles a bit at the idea that I might have to consider and consent to a tacit power dynamic between diner and food/chef, which, to be honest, goes a bit beyond my idea of 'dining experience', but I imagine everyone feels differently about this, and I suppose that's entering a whole philosophical area related to how one approaches food, which might be considered a bit off-topic.