Norm Matthews

Anchovy paste adds great depth to salted foods.

I have three thermometers that I use for everything but not the same things. One is a laser thermometer by Maverick, a thermapen from thermaworks and a cheap digital thermometer with a probe that goes in the meat or bread with a digital readout that sits outside the oven and sound an alarm when the target temperature is reached. The last one is not any special brand and need replacing every six months or so but I like all three and would not want to be without any of them.

A chef once told me that if you salt food early on then it tastes seasoned. If you salt it afterward, it just tastes salted.

Read the recipe all the way through before you start. Measure everything out before you start cooking. Have all the cookware and utensils out and nearby. Most common mistake I think is trying to cook something in a skillet over too high heat. Some of the best cooks in the world don't use scales to measure, but know how much is the right amount from long experience and by tasting as they go.

I mash the cloves and large grain salt on the (rubber) cutting board with the side of my knife. It takes a few seconds. I have a marble mortar and pestle but never used it to grind up garlic.

The kind of orange you use make a big difference in the taste of the juice. I have one of those big monster squeezers, a smaller one from the 1950's and used to have a Braun rotary juicer. They all make good juice but if you use navel oranges, I find the taste of them watery and the juice from Valencia oranges much much better. I find that I liked the Braun best. It was quick and easy and the juice was a little better than the big lever squeezer because it was possible to exert enough pressure from the big one to extract some of the oils from the skin. But the biggest difference maker is to use the right kind of orange and use it when it is in season. PS edit. the Braun wore out and broke so I don't have it anymore and I moved to a smaller house and don't have counter space for the big juicer so now I use the smaller Juice-Matic? I think its called. The name is worn off from age and use.

For hamburgers and meatloaf, I prefer ground. Fresh ground is better tasting. For ham salad, though, for instance, I like it better when it's minced.

One more thing about oils for frying and smoke point: Every time an oil is heated, it breaks down somewhat and the smoke point is lowered. How ever high the initial smoke point is, it isn't as high the next time it is reheated. I have noticed a fishy smell with canola oil after it has been used about 3 or 4 times and has who-know-what contaminants in it. By then it needs to be discarded and replaced with fresh oil anyway. Other people must have a better sense of taste than I do because even though I can detect that off-smell in old oil, I can't taste it transferred to food as long as they are not put in oil that has not heated up enough and so absorbs the oil in excess, or unless the oil has been used way too many times. Saturated fats will stand up to multiple uses better than unsaturated fats, FWIW.

That's true. Too much food in a saute and it will not brown properly. But Extra V. olive oil is not the best oil to use for sauteing in any case. I was talking about the difference of smoke points in pure olive oil, peanut oil, refined corn oil, soybean oil, etc, all of which are 410 and safflower oil which is only 40º higher. Not a real significant amount of heat difference. If you want to factor in extremes then there will always be exceptions to the general concepts. Avocado oil, Rice Bran oil and Almond oil are the exotic extremes that will be different and will stand the highest heat before starting to break down.

I don't know anything about Modernist Cuisine but i can't imagine cooking anything at or above smoke point of common oils. Unless they commonly use exotic oils with unusually high smoke points and the item is very small and spends a very short time in the oil, it will be burnt on the outside by the time it is cooked sufficiently on the inside. When it comes to sauteing, the bottom of the pan at the burner gets hotter than 400 degrees but the cook is not paying attention to the food if the food and the oil in the pan get that hot. Sometimes you get the pan so hot the oil smokes but then you immediately add the food and the temperature drops, otherwise the food will taste of burnt oil. I used Canola oil as an example of an oil that was neutral flavored. if you don't like it, use something else. It was just to make a point about other oils that do add flavor. PS Mario Batali uses a common grade of olive oil for frying. He said he uses olive oil for all cooking. I guess it is a matter of preference, custom and taste and picking the right oil for the right kind of use.

PS rendered bacon fat is a staple with good ol' Southern cooks like my mom. Wilted lettuce (either leaf lettuce or spinach) with hot bacon oil is the best.

When it comes to cooking and frying with oil, smoke point is kind of a moot point. Pure olive oil and peanut oil both smoke at 410 while safflower and cottonseed oil smoke at 450. Rapeseed (canola) smokes at 440 approx. all those temperatures are too high for frying anyway. It is taste that is important and heat destroys the flavor complexities in fine olive oil and its too expensive to waste in a fryer or skillet anyway. I use canola oil for most cooking because I generally want a neutral tasting oil and olive oil as a general purpose salad oil. Butter, vegetable margarine and lard all are useful in baking. Blends with butter raise the melt point when that is important. If you want the flavor of butter in your pan fried food, use a blend with peanut or calnola or use clarified butter so it isn't in danger of burning the milk solids. As for diet purposes, all fat is about equal in terms of calories. It is the saturated fats and the trans fats (hydrogenated fats) that you need to be concerned about if you are worried about cholesterol. Even then new research isn't so upset about health and some saturated fats. No one disputes the bad health issues associated with hydrogenated fats. edited to correct spelling

Please explain what you mean when you say you turn your wet starter into a firm one and I have never heard of making a levain from a yeasty starter either, much less doing it in 8 hours, but if a wet starter gets thoroughly chilled, you need to bring it back to room temperature and feed it again before using it. One feeding will do unless it has been more that a couple of weeks. You should be able to tell when its ready. If you made a dough ( firm starter?) then it will be ready to go once it has warmed up and risen. It should last at least a couple of days in the fridge.

Not a very good picture today but dinner was gluten free. Notes on dinner at site listed below. http://normmatthews.blogspot.com/

I got some garden fresh tomatoes and dried them in the oven @ 250 for about 4 hours ( drizzled with olive oil and salt first) then the next day-today-used them on some pizza that did not have any sauce or meat. It just had a drizzle of olive oil, mushrooms, dried tomatoes, fresh chopped basil, and mozzarella cheese. Tomatoes dried like this taste almost like candy. Son's GF is on a gluten free diet so I for hers- the small ones- I used a gluten free pizza crust that was in the frozen section at a health food store. I wondered why I didn't have enough tomatoes when I went to make the pizzas and discovered later that Cassie had eaten some the night before. LOL. The large pizza was made with water, yeast. oil, egg, salt and sugar plus enough bread flour to make a soft dough.

Well this is eGullet in a nutshell. Every point of view from the sublime to the ridiculous. The only thing missing so far is someone wanting to sous vide a pizza.

I decided to make pizzas tonight. Charlie wanted all the toppings kept separate so everyone could add what they wanted to their own. Then he got called to work so everything was rushed. Cassie is on a gluten free diet to see if that is the cause of her stomach problems. I got a King Arthur gluten free flour mix and made a dough for her with it. There was a comedian on TV a while back that said he got some gluten free bread at a health food store... He said he didn't know what gluten was but apparently it's delicious. LOL. No truer words were ever spoken. It worked like play dough and didn't taste much better. It wasn't too bad with the sauce and toppings though. Because I made two different doughs and Charlie had to leave as quickly as possible, I was rushed and didn't have time to take pictures today. The topping choices were ground lamb, Italian sausage, black olives, and pepperoni. The sauce was Newman's marinara sauce and the cheeses were 'fresh' mozzarella and fresh grated romano. I still have some regular dough left over and plan to go to the farmers market tomorrow and get some tomatoes to dry in the oven with some salt and oil. I will make some pizza by drizzling the crust with olive oil, dried tomatoes ( they taste almost like candy) a basil chiffonade from the garden, mozzarella, ricotta cheese, salt and pepper and mushrooms. No sauce. It is surprising how good a meatless and sauceless and simple pizza like that can be.

If a Canadian whose grandfather was born in Italy but himself has never been there uses his grandmothers recipe for pizza but used flour that was milled in Kansas, cheese made in Wisconson and tomatoes from his neighbors back yard ( a person whose grandfather was born in Sweden) and bakes his pizza in Toronto, is it Italian food? If it's good, does anyone really care?

There is always going to be discussions about how far native peoples have to go to prepare ethnic food when they no longer live where indigenous ingredients are plentiful, but it seems to me that if one thinks pizza has to be made from flour, tomatoes and cheese from certain regions and species of plants and animals, only available in Italy, they shouldn’t complain about how much it is going to cost.

One of the reasons is that there is the rule that the chili must be cooked entirely on-site, in the open and "from scratch." Chili powders (but not "chili mixes") are allowed. This would generally militate against any complicated contributing preparation such as a homemade stock, because the stock would have to be produced on-site entirely from scratch. Bringing a container of homemade stock from home is against the rules. Similarly, it may simply be too much work to start with dry chilies, hydrate them, and then run them through a food mill all on-site to obtain a high quality chili paste in the amounts required for a competition such as this. This seems like a rule that probably has some weird effects. For example, clearly you can use a pre-made stock so long as someone else has made it commercially, because canned stock and bouillon cubes are considered "ingredients." And while you would not be allowed to make a chili paste at home, you could probably bring a commercial ancho chili paste and use that. I'm not quite sure why they would use garlic powder and onion powder, except that I would point out that these have a distinctive flavor that is actually what you really want to use in certain dishes and styles of cuisine. I think you probably make the best point with respect to things like toasting cumin seeds. Except, how are they going to grind them on-site? Allowing only commercially produced stock may be driven by local and state health laws which prohibit "home" made ingredients in any food served at a public event. I know from personal experience as a former restaurant owner that is the case here in Kansas in any event. By home, I mean anything produced outside of the event itself that isn't made under the supervision and regulations of local health dept. and Dept. of Agriculture guidelines.

Of course it's a different animal... and it should be. When I go to the trouble of making a pizza here in this small town in Kansas, I want to use the freshest local ingredients and do not care whether an Italian commune puts a stamp of approval on it. If I wanted it to taste like a commercial pizza, I'd save myself some sweat and just go buy one.

W are takkin pizza in the middle of August when garden fresh tomatoes are everywhere for goodness sake. Who buys or even cares about canned tomatoes this time of year.... for a pizza no less???

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2353/1800188960_281b4245bd_b.jpg http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4632/major-wheat-growing-regions-us-reference-maps

OO flour is not a high gluten producing flour. It isn't too hard to get in many areas but if you can't find it you can replicate it . One recipe uses 3 parts all-purpose flour to 1 part cake flour, another 6 parts all-purpose flour to one part white pastry flour. Julia Childs has a recipe that uses 2 parts all-purpose flour to 1 part white pastry flour.

The amount isn't critical. Generally I do as HungryC does and add a cup of water and a cup of flour to feed the starter.