sigma

Same. Very good.

Chef is a job title, and its pretty self explanatory. Lots of masturbating around the topic, but a chef is somebody who has run a brigade, large or small. It has nothing to do with certification, training, skill, whatever. Hope this clears up a not very difficult question for you all.

Ack. The lobster looks like it is coated in unmentionables. Never seen it look that way at Per Se.

Thanks for the reply. Marginal, or above average, compared with? Other Michelin starred places or where? Have you been to more than the London branch? Yes, I've been to a half dozen of them. They are one of the best places for dining alone, which I do occasionally on travel. London is not the worst, not the best. Compared to most starred restaurants I find the food to be lacking something. I'm not a restaurant reviewer, nor do I aspire to be one, so I will not wax poetic about this and that, but I am always left feeling a bit cold after dining at an Atelier.

I find them to range from above average to marginal, with the London one toward the bottom. The dishes seem to always sound better than they taste.

Are you bringing food to show off, or are you bringing food you think people should eat, or are you bringing food that you think people will like. The first two are among the reasons that foodies have such a bad reputation. They are disconnected from other people and only thinking about themselves.

Going to bump this again. What is the best way to heat spheres? I know MC says they can be heated to 85 C, but they start to erode on me once I start warming them.

Wow. Happy you find my food appealing. Here I can point at a lot of people which food is more appealing to me It's obviously made with love for people you care about. That is why it is compelling.

Franci, nobody in here makes more appealing food than you.

Use mycryo.

It is a very hard dish to make correctly. Not sure I have ever seen it done as well as Point, but Achatz dumbed it down for his restaurant, not for the home cook. His torchon, as well as MC's, seems to always be done with a puree. Form over flavour.

Meaning what? Piping in foie gras mousse rather than making a true torchon and cooking it in the brioche. I've noticed that a lot of these modern restaurants prefer to make their torchons out of puree, heck Modernist Cuisine does too. Sadly it is the lowest form of preparation, losing both texture and flavor for the sake of a "perfect" appearance and higher margins. To do it in the foie gras en brioche is particularly galling, and low, since the dish is, or was, a technical exercise in centering the foie in the brioche both before and after cooking. Only the best could do it correctly. Achatz just made a hole and piped in his shortcut foie. More of a foie gras twinkie than anything else, but heck, it looks faaaaabulous dahling, and that is what modern cuisine is all about.

Sad to see them take the cheap and dirty way with the foie gras.

Fair enough. I suppose it depends on your standards. What you see, or don't see, depends on the level of what you expect. It looks a little hacky and chewed to me, but if it is good enough for you it may be that I am too used to a different level of execution.

What exactly are you referring to? I always buy fish whole and fillet them myself. My monger usually guts and scales them. Don't be offended. It just looks like you could use more practice fileting your fish. It isn't clean. Maybe your knife is dull or something, I don't know, but as you have more experience I am sure the fillets will look a lot better. I am so happy to hear that home cooks are filleting their own fish. Hats off to you.

It's always a pleasure to see somebody just learning to cook. You have made a nice start, but be sure to take a class or two on cleaning your fish, or ask the monger to be a little more careful.

Papers are hardly disinterested parties when they are criticizing online restaurant rating services. They are in a constant battle to keep themselves relevant, a battle they seem to be losing, so take whatever they say on such a subject with a large grain of salt. Not that I use Yelp! for anything other than addresses, I just don't trust competitors to grade each other.

In the early 90s in fine dining roux was no longer used. In fact, it is probably used more now than then.

Yup. I agree. Would be great if they could clarify this.

Just to clarify visually, by my reading the modernist table says that B should take 26 minutes longer than A to cook!

I can try, though it really isn't my strongsuit... So, here is the cylinder chart from Modernist which assumes a 15 cm diameter. Choosing a thickness of 3 cm, the diameter is 5x the thickness. Choosing a delta T of 55, we get 1hr 21m. Here is the slab chart from modernist. It assumes a length and width at least 5x the thickness, so once again we choose 3 cm thickness, and we have a slab that is no smaller than 15x15x3, given the book description. Once again we choose a delta T of 55, and the time, according to the book is 49 min 45 sec. Since we have chosen the smallest possible size for the slab (it must be at least 5x length and width) the logic here should hold no for all possibilities. Now, since the cylinder from chart one can be inscribed in the slab from chart two, it is clearly smaller in some way. However, the time suggested is longer. In fact, the book suggests that by increasing the size of the cylinder to make it a slab, in other words by filling in the area left by the inscription, we can lower our cooking time by 26 minutes. This seems absurd, so either I am reading the charts incorrectly, or there is something very wrong with their model. Given that nathanm et al are clearly brighter than I am, I would assume the former, but Baldwin's chart, which you can see on his site, conforms to my theory. I'd love an explanation from the Modernist people, or from anybody else, or a critique of my argument. Also, sorry if there is a copyright issue, I couldn't figure another way to do this.

Trying one more time. Any info here?

One of the nice things about the new nonstick pans is that you can use metal utensils in them. Of course, Michelin starred restaurants, full of bad cooks, have been using metal spatulas in teflon for, well, ever. To me bad cooks make bland food. I'm not going to call somebody bad for doing something I wouldn't do, as long as the results are tasty. In the end, the results are what matter.

No ideas? Really interested in this.

Tables 1 and 4. Table one assumes a diameter of 15 cm. Table two assumes of 15 cm but infinite diameters. It isn't operative for this question, though, since slab and fixed diameter both deal with increasing thicknesses.