Dexter

Honestly, all the kits that I've played with have been overpriced and lacking. Mostly they consist of measuring spoons (which I assume you have), a couple of syringes, droppers, and sieves / strainers / slotted spoons. All of these are obviously useful, but paying for a "Molecular Gastronomy Kit" jacks the price up about 4x for a lot of things you can get at a local hobby shop or hardware store. That said, and assuming you have basic kitchen equipment, I'd suggest the following: Most importantly, a kitchen scale. A good one. I think it's likely the single most recommended piece of equipment on these forums, and for good reason. Mine has a permanent place on my counter, and is used in 80% of what I cook. No exaggeration. I even have one in my knife kit. A jewelers scale, accurate to 0.01g. I've got this one that I bought on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/American-Weigh-Scale-Bt2-201-Digital/dp/B001TZ92TK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1331417485&sr=8-5 Not the best scale, but at under $20, I can't really complain. An immersion blender. Very handy bit of kit. I've got two, one cheapo where I drilled holes in the blades to increase frothing. The assistance there may just be psychosomatic, but it's the one I go to for that specific task. An ISI cream canister. Like it much better than the seltzer one because it has a very wide mouth. Awesome for carbonating berries and fruits, cavitation infusions with largish things like leaves, whole spices, etc, and easier to clean. Bought both seltzer and creamer, gave my brother the seltzer after 3 months. (Oh, and you can use both CO2 and N2O cartridges with either). A skimmer that I picked up from some place like Sur la Table, or WS (forget where - immaterial). It's worthless as a skimmer, but it's a very fine mesh sieve that works very well for things like noodles, caviars, etc that are very fragile. (I'm typically just cooking for a couple of people at a time, so the small scale stuff is what works best for me. Scale up as necessary.) A graduated glass pipette that I picked up at a hobby shop in their science section. Ignoring my college chemistry professors relentless admonitions, yes, I pipette by mouth, and grin like an idiot at "breaking the rules" every time. A fistfull of eye droppers, plastic droppers of different sizes, syringes (with the straight tips, not the "bayonet" style, though I don't know it would make any difference), etc. I rigged a kitchen magnet with a loop tied with a slip-noose that I can attach to my hood over the stovetop where I can slide in one of these syringes without its plunger, and have it churn out caviar without me paying attention. It swings a bit, but hasn't been problematic for me yet. Acetate sheets. This was a little pricey, but has made life a lot easier with a bunch of things. I went ahead and bought a roll of it for about $50, and have gone through less than 10% of it in the last 3 years. Partly because I can reuse most of the bits that I've cut off of it. Aside from those few things, most of what I've been playing with has been fairly task specific. Most of the rest of this stuff is just ingredient differences, or temperature games. I don't have the cash to go in for things like an antigriddle or volcano vaporizer or pacojet or anything, but it hasn't slowed me down in the slightest. Hope that's at least a little helpful.

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, you allowed the fermentations to go to different lengths for the higher alcohol wines, right? I'd be particularly interested in seeing what the results would be if you'd arrested the fermentations all at the same point, and changed the SO2 and EtOH levels artificially, just to eliminate the variable of fermentation byproducts (as well as more time for blowoff, etc). Also, did you control for total sulfur, or just free?

Buffalo Trace works beautifully with the Callebaut 70% that we use. Not terribly expensive either (around $40 / L up here).

That's the thing. I don't want any of these guys to win. Each and every one of them have demonstrated some kind of behavior or basic lack of skill that makes me essentially write them off. Being a chef means being able to lead, not just to cook - and not a single one of these people has demonstrated either. Honestly, I've sorta given up on even watching the rest of this season. The Texas shtick just didn't do it for me to begin with, and the cast has been underwhelming from the start. Just can't muster giving much of a damn about the last 6.

I was actually thinking something like a partially oaked viognier, with a richer texture to try to match the barley-"risotto." Can handle the steak slightly less well, but the soy and beer sort of strike me as a "salty sweet" combo that tends to work pretty well with these wines. Shoot for something like E. Guigal, or Abacela. Gamay might be a fairly decent match too. Tempranillo might also play well - just go with a young one. Very difficult menu to match a single wine to... Lots of things would go well with one or the other, but very few that pop to mind that would work equally well with both.

OK, in reverse order: The Bloom scale is a test of the firmness of the resulting gelatin matrix. It's a kind of arbitrary scale that runs from 30-300, where a specific weight percentage of gelatin is mixed into a buffered solution and held at temp for a set time, then they drop what is essentially a penetrating probe down onto it and see how far down it goes (may also be a viscosimeter, depending on the setup). What all that means to you as a cook is the higher the Bloom number (and it's a dudes name, so capital "B"), the firmer the gel. You will frequently see sheet gelatin sold as either "silver" or "gold", etc, where the silver is 150-160, gold around 200, and most powdered comes in at 225-250. Dimethypolysiloxane is also called E900. It's a common anti-foaming agent found in everything from over the counter drugs, to Chicken McNuggets. Because gelatin is basically a very concentrated protein solution, it's prone to foaming up something fierce - problematic during both production of the stuff you buy, and when working with it in the kitchen. Being a protein, and relatively water-attracting, it's also a great place for mold to pop up. So a little potassium sorbate is added to knock that back. If the gelatin gets wet though, it's not even close to enough to prevent mold from actually growing. Easily demonstrated my mixing up a little gelatin and leaving it on the counter for a couple of days. Fumaric acid and sodium citrate (the sodium salt of citric acid) are added to lower the pH of the gelatin. When stored gelatin has a pH from 5-7 (on the acidic side of neutral), this makes it much much more shelf stable. To the point where laboratory gelatin doesn't really ever "expire", and why the old Knox envelopes my grandmother had are still good decades later. Hope that helps a little!

What kind of foods does she like? I think that's probably the best place to start. I personally got started with Child and Pepin, but I also was very interested in French foods and technique. I've given relatives CI's Best Recipes where some of them have devoured it, loving the explanations and analysis, where others have left it on the shelf and stuck with their Rachel Ray books. Some modern books that aren't overly technical that I've enjoyed are: Pintxos by Hirigoyen Simple to Spectacular by Vongerichten Japanese Cooking (A Simple Art) by Tsuji Pretty much any of Rick Bayless' books The Les Halles Cookbook by Bourdain Any of these are definitely approachable to someone who is interested in cooking but not in spending the entire day in the kitchen. In fact, the vast majority of these recipes take 30 minutes or less of active prep time, and all have the kinds of foods that you can serve for parties etc. The Vongerichten and Bourdain books also are nice in that they provide basic instruction on the techniques that they use for the dishes.

GlorifiedRice - It depends on what part of the rice cooker "died." If it's just the thermostat or timer, then sure, you are going to be bypassing that with a PID unit anyway. If, on the other hand, it's the heating coil, then you are out of luck.

Sounds like a marketing job gone horribly over the top. As a wine professional, I have no bloody idea what that description means, and I spend every single day reading and tasting these things... While no description adequately captures the flavors and aromas of a wine, some descriptions are so punched up they are completely useless. "Athletic shape" and "energetic tannins" indeed. All that being said, it sounds to me like someone's trying to polish up a wine that the makers tried to leave on the skins to recover from under-ripe fruit, resulting in "green" tannins and a fair bit of malic acid in the bottle. Just a wild guess though. Only real way is to open a bottle and see for yourself.

(Front of house guy here, so forgive the terminology-failure) - in our bakery, they have these silicone-rubber half sized gloves. They look like orange pac-men with dozens of nub teeth. Not a traditional "oven mitt" but definitely a variation on the theme.

Thanks for getting back so quickly, Mitch. Lots of techniques seem to rely on making these concentrates, but it all begs the question: Is there any reason to make a concentrate and then dilute as opposed to making the desired final concentration in a single go? With the additional water, do you end up with an overextracted grind?

Resurrecting an old thread: I'm trying to cold brew coffee for the first time tonight, and am trying to nail down a ratio of beans to water. I've seen ranges from 50g / 800mL to 100g / 400mL. I know this is a rank newbies question, but is there a generally accepted ratio for a basic cold-brew coffee? Or does it really depend that much on the roast and bean?

I have not tried this recipe exactly, but have marinated foie in booze before, and it makes for a very nice gelee. Also used as an aspic cap on rillettes. Pork was a little more powerful than I'd have liked, but it married beautifully with duck (seems obvious as I type it, but there you go...).

If this has been going on for 2 months (since hire), then you've got an employee that doesn't give a damn about their work. Hard as it may be, I have to agree with the other posters: you've got to fire this person. First, if this person is causing comments to be made by people accepting deliveries, then you have someone out there that is doing real damage to your brand with your customer base. Second, having someone like that in the kitchen is a major blow to morale for everyone that has to work with or around them - kitchen and front of house. At some point, the staff will look at what is clearly a bad situation and begin to question the leadership of management if the situation is not resolved fairly but decisively. Yeah, it's the holiday rush, and that makes it a bad time to lose an employee. However, if that employee is slowing down the work of others (breaking equipment, making anyone repeat work, etc), and not providing a real and tangible benefit, then they are nothing but liability and added cost. (If you need someone that can make deliveries, a post on Craigslist will have 5 eager applicants waiting to meet with you by Tuesday morning.)

Making fresh pasta. Sharpening my knives. Making stock (any kind, really).

Has this person been problematic since hiring them, or is this a newer development? If it's something recent, then pulling them aside and talking to them might, if not fix, then at least shine some light on the nature and severity of the problem. If they've always been a lousy employee, then moving them to a position where they can't do this kind of damage while you look for a replacement is probably the best course of action (dish washer, veg prep, or just have them deep-clean vents, fridges, etc). 15 years in any industry is more than ample time to know what basic behavior is expected. What you did not say is that they had 15 years of stable employment. (Sometimes a jackass is just a jackass...) I'd also talk to your other kitchen staff - if the individual is causing you this much grief, I'm positive the others in there are ready to flense them, and will be *happy* to share their feelings.

Old Overholt for parties, fresh bottles of sweet and dry Dolin, and a bottle of St. Elisabeth Allspice Dram. Wines were some 2003 Brunello Terrasole, and 2009 Rios Mages Rully rouge. Wine cellar is feeling a little neglected as of late, so need to start putting a bit more emphasis on replenishing what's been drunk over the last several months...

Mjx, which model do you have? I'm looking at the CJ-600 as a pretty good fit for my needs. (Single person, cooks for groups relatively infrequently). 20 year warranty is a very nice touch, I gotta' say, though their description doesn't say anything about being able to plug it in. Thanks for the reply!

Resurrecting this thread: Any opinions on the best digital scales? Just managed to break mine in a move, and looking to replace it. Have several recommendations but all are several years old now. I've already got a nice jewelers scale for the properly small measurements, so am really looking for something that will work for more general duty.

Ordered it on Amazon, but they are saying that it's now out of stock and won't be back in until the new year... Glad to hear you are enjoying it though. I've heard good things about it from people I trust on the beverage front.

Two quick notes, and I hope they are helpful: 1. All wines (and beers, and sakes, etc) contain sulfites. As pointed out above, they are a naturally occurring result of fermentation. Most wines have sulfites added to them to prevent rapid oxidation. Biodynamic and Organic wines do not have this addition, however, and may be worth experimenting with. 2. Again, as pointed out above, but with a little more depth: many people that believe they are sulfite sensitive are actually responding to a class of compound called "biogenic amines" - amino acids that have been converted. Histamine is the classic example, but there are literally about a dozen others that cause similar responses in sensitive individuals. These are a consequence of fermentation as well, but there are yeast strains that do not produce these amines in as high a quantity as others. The trick here is to avoid two groups - "wild" fermenters, and particular winemakers/brands that you have had difficulties with. The problem with the winemaker/brand approach is that it's entirely experimental, and may even vary with vintage, to some degree. Wild ferments should be avoided simply because there are multiple strains of saccharomyces working at the same time, and there's just no way to tell what's being made until well after the fact. Particular winemakers are worth noting because many of them have particular strains of yeast that they like to use, or are partial to wild fermentations when they can get away with them. Yeah, it means doing a bit of homework, but with a competent sommelier or bottle shop attendant, you should be off to a good start.

Sakes, generally speaking, don't age particularly well. That being said, I know a number of sake snobs that truly adore the flavor of aged sake, and will deliberately hold onto bottles for several years to get those sherry-like oxidized notes in them. Shelf like is typically around 6 months, somewhat less for the unfiltered or unpasteurized versions (you'd know - they go funky in a really unpleasant way). Wish I could help you with the specific bottle, but it's not one that I'm familiar with. I'll ask around at work tonight and see if anyone's ever seen it.

Fergus Henderson's marrow recipes are peg simple, and I've enjoyed the results: 450F (about 232C) until the marrow comes just loose in the bone (roughly 20 minutes, frequently a little longer, depending on the size, thickness, etc). Careful not to overcook it, as the marrow will just melt right out and you'll have lost the best part. Hope that helps a bit.

Moldy / expired foods (and I mean WAY expired - verging on developing sapience) in the refrigerator. Dirty kitchen. I've known people with hand-me-down nonsticks and POS knives that were as dull along the edge as they were along the spine who could still knock your socks off. Being broke doesn't equate to skills in the kitchen. But how you work in the kitchen directly impacts the food you put on a plate (paper or otherwise).

Glacial acetic acid refers to the stuff that freezes at 17C - still hydrous though. The anhydrous stuff is called acetic anhydride (very nasty if you aren't using proper chemical safety equipment). Much past 15% acetic acid can cause blistering and chemical burns, so if you are looking for something "stronger," it's almost certainly not a problem of the strength of the acid. You might want to try working with other flavorings or spices that will increase the "prickly" sensation of vinegar, like szechuan peppercorns, citrates, or even playing with the salt concentration in the mix.