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sigma

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Everything posted by sigma

  1. Pink salt is hip these days. Not sure why. Confit doesn't need it, shouldn't have it. In the home of confit they would laugh at it, but a lot of shiny books on our shelves like pink salt.
  2. These have been around for years on the commercial side. Turbo Pot, I think is the name. No idea if anybody uses them, though. They wouldn't work well on my range.
  3. sigma

    Sous Vide Duck Confit

    Curing salts are not traditional in confit.
  4. I find that a well cultivated cocaine fingernail is excellent for dosing salt at the table.
  5. A lot of people don't realize the contribution made by high quality ingredients. They think a recipe should turn out a good result simply because it is followed, so her admonition isn't dumb at all. Focusing on organic rather than quality is.
  6. I'd never be in the position to read a recipe like this, but if I were I'd probably get annoyed as all hell. Buy the best tasting ingredients you can. Simple as that, for me.
  7. The Nose who Knows and I like our sandwiches cut differently. I am a straight across guy and the Nose is a diagonal girl. Problems only come up when one of us has our eye on a particular sandwich and then it is cut the other way. Ooh boy.
  8. That's called a saute pan with a loop handle.
  9. There is a reason people prefer vodka or champagne with caviar. Iranian caviar is generally superb, bring some nice champagne.
  10. sigma

    Dinner! 2013 (Part 5)

    Are you still thinking lentils, then?
  11. The wife, aka the nose who knows, is getting frustrated with my flatulence after eating my beloved beans. Is there a rule as to how to prepare them so I don't get the toots after dinner and into the next day? I've read McGee, Bittman etc, but haven't found anything that will satisfy the nose.
  12. sigma

    Dinner! 2013 (Part 5)

    I'm pretty sure they use kitchen string.
  13. sigma

    Dinner! 2013 (Part 5)

    Actually, it's pretty common to do with pigeon, which are a good bit smaller. I can think of Pigeon Andre Malraux at Laserre, Pigeon Ranier III at Grand Vefour and the stuffed pigeon with foie gras and olives from Piege, though I don't know that he makes it now that he has moved on from the Ritz. It is a nice technique, here is a picture with quite a rich stuffing.
  14. I find that the internal temp of sous vide beef needs to be a bit higher than conventionally cooked beef to be successful. I think it (sous vide beef) is still less successful than grilled or pan cooked steak, even at its best, but that is a personal judgment.
  15. sigma

    Dinner! 2013 (Part 5)

    So what is it? I'm thinking puy lentils on salmon "cannelloni" with cream cheese filling, shaped lime, basil and tomato flower with dill. No, that's not it.
  16. sigma

    Resting fish

    If fish is very hot, or really hot at all, it is, by definition, overcooked.
  17. sigma

    Sous Vide Duck Confit

    The best solution is to make sous vide confit using fat you have been recycling for traditional confit over the years. That way you get the ease of the use and the light rancidity.
  18. It's an interesting choice to use aluminum for saucepans and copper for skillets. By interesting, I mean it is pretty much the opposite of historical, or modern, convention.
  19. First you need to learn how to cut fish in the Japanese style. It isn't similar to European cutting, and it is an important first skill. Of course, you can buy blocked fish at a japanese store, but you are starting way behind if you do. From there, sashimi cutting, as opposed to making sushi, is not particularly difficult. You just need to know how to sharpen your knife and what strokes to make. A book can be useful, but it is hard to see motion in pictures. I learned from two bosses of mine who were trained in Japan, and I can tell you that a good eye on your technique and a firm reprimand and correction is the fast path to good cutting.
  20. It's not a theory. I have no theory about chicken or salmonella. I can, however, diagram his argument and see what it forces me to accept in order to get to his conclusion. His forces me to accept that there is some heat resistant salmonella causing these illnesses because, as he says: In the first sentence he has us assume that Costco is pretty rigorous, and thus asks us to discount the ideas that it wasn't cooked properly or that there was cross contamination. How do we know this? Because his conclusion from this point out is that it is on Foster Farms, so we are forced, in order to follow his argument, to discard them as well. That leaves either a whole darn lot of salmonella which just can't be all killed off, which he assures us can happen but there is no evidence anywhere that it can, and that we are dealing with a new strain of salmonella that isn't killed at 165 C, or even, apparently 180 C. Germs certainly evolve, but they rarely evolve in great leaps forward like this. So no, I don't have a theory, I have his theory, and it is an irresponsible one to print.
  21. I think it is irresponsible to present a new scientific theory with evidence only from the corroboration of a political hack who got her undergraduate microbiology degree no later than 1953. Furthermore, he is asking us to "assume," we must, he says, that Costco, with whom he has collaborated before, has a rigorous food safety program and that this somehow lays on Foster Farms' door, but with proper handling, all known science says that salmonella will be destroyed at a certain temperature, so we must leap with him to the belief that there is a super temperature resistant strain, and that we should boycott Foster Farms. Occam's razor, and science, tell us otherwise. So yeah, on many levels he is extremely irresponsible here.
  22. That is heat treating at a much lower temperature then we are talking about here and the only issue was time at temperature, not whether is was able to be killed at the indicated temperature, at least as far as I read that, but I too took my last microbiology course in college .
  23. The argument Bittman is making is deeply irresponsible, as is the decision to print it. He is proposing, with no scientific background or research, that there is a new, heat resistant, variety of salmonella and for expert testimony he is relying on an ideologically allied congress person who has an undergraduate degree in microbiology. That isn't to say that there are no problems with factory farming, but junk "science" is hardly the best way to deal with a serious issue, and this is not Bittman's first foray into it. The most reasonable explanation, of course, is undercooking and cross contamination, and not a new strain of salmonella that cannot be killed with heat.
  24. Enjoy your forum, Gresham's law remains in full effect.
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