Baselerd

Technically the a portion of the rate of heat transfer between the air in the oven and the surface of the steak is proportional to the temperature gradient between the two, so a hotter oven will cook a steak faster. With that said, the difference in common cooking temperatures is probably a relatively small net difference. Obviously nobody is going to be cooking a steak at super low temperatures in the oven so practically speaking I believe dcarch is giving good advice.

I've gotten a lot of inspiration from some of the high-end restaurant cookbooks (Eleven Madison Park, Momofuku, Uchi Cookbook, Noma, etc...). After reading through a lot of these books it's become very apparent that there is an optimal way of putting things on the plate to where they can "hold up" (for lack of better words). I.e. place your ice cream scoop on top of a crumble to prevent it from melting quickly, etc. But I think a lot of the plating concepts (speaking as a non-professional) come from a more fundamental idea of visual design (symmetry / color / odd numbers / etc). There used to be this awesome series of features on Gilt taste called the art of plating where some very avant garde chefs described their mental process in detail, but I think it's been taken down since. The videos (link) are still up on Vimeo though.

Well, with that much I would be worried about their storage lifetime. My favorite way to prepare chantrelles is simply sauteed in brown butter with some thyme, salt, and pepper - maybe deglazed with a bit of sherry vinegar and chicken stock. However, I would pickle and dry the majority of them so they didn't waste. Dry mushrooms are great for making soups and stocks.

dcarch - I do need another slave flash. I actually do use a reflector sometimes, but slaves sound better Having good meals with your partner and taking "pretty pictures" is not mutually exclusive. I do both all the time. Usually I just leave my camera setup assembled - I cook the food and then take a few pics and eat. Done. I suppose it does take an extra minute or two, but I obviously don't take photos of every meal I cook. Clearly photography is not your hobby, but I don't see the reason to hate on it so much...

I've had (what I believe is) good luck with a relatively simple setup: I generally take all my photos with my SLR with the Canon 60mm EFS macro lens - it's super sharp, pretty fast (f/3.2), and provides a good field of view/working distance that is very well suited for food photography. Natural daylight lighting is great, but I do most of my photographs at night so I use a flash unit (Canon EX420), generally bounced either off the ceiling or a wall next to the subject (always higher than the food though, to prevent casting dark shadows on the plate). Then I'll take photos at all angles, although the ones that I find work best are straight from the top or a sort of 35-45 angle, depending on how the food is plated. I'm usually too lazy to bust out the tripod for every occasion, so I usually work with a larger aperture/shallower depth of field, which CAN make the photos seem more dramatic (or ugly and blurred). I can't recommend Adobe Lightroom enough if you want to make your photos look great. I pretty much always perform post processing on photos (cropping, white balance correction, noise reduction/sharpness enhancing).

Nice looking cookies! I recently made little plated dessert: smoked buttermilk sorbet, blackberry cremeux, dulce de leche fluid gel, and cocoa nib crumble:

I have this stuff too (a different brand but same design). Works reasonably well enough for me, although I did end up having to use some double stick tape to anchor it in place, otherwise it would get crumpled when sliding heavy objects into the cabinet.

A very cheap and small "vacuum" pump I would reccomend is the ziploc hand pump. You won't be able to do any fancy compression or anything, but it will be enough to get most of the air out of the bag with liquid or solid foods.

I made this salad recipe. Pretty interesting, I had never cooked with hearts of palm before either. This included: marinated hearts of palm, pickled yellow beets, roasted beets, hibiscus-grapefruit jam, garlic aoili (left out the horseradish), fried kale, and herb salad.

Thanks - although all I did was follow the recipe - which by the way is amazing and I can't recommend it enough. The recipe has you make some standard Nappa cabbage kimchi and puree it after 2 weeks of fermentation. This is then gently simmered with tonkotsu ramen broth (I had some that I had frozen from a while back), ground pork, onions, and egg whites (for clarification). I can definitely see this going into more of my cooking - it was a very great way of subtly bringing the kimchi flavor to a dish.

Momofuku cookbook describes a technique he calls "quick pickles." Essentially you cut up a veggie (cucumbers and radishes work really well) to 1/4-1/2 inch pieces and toss them in a 1:1 mixture of sugar and salt. Let them sit for 20-30 minutes, gently rinse, and they're ready to go. This gives them a nice crunchy texture and a bit more flavor.

So I recently made a few dishes from the Momofuku cookbook, along with a dessert from the Momofuku Milk Bar: Diver Scallops, Buttermilk Dressing, White Soy-Yuzu Vinaigrette Kimchi consomme, sous vide pork belly, Malpeque oyster, nappa cabbage. Thai tea parfait, lemon mascarpone curd, thai tea crunch.

Nice work pjm!

Mac'n'cheese. I still make it though, but should not for the reasons you mentioned above.

mm84321 the squabs look amazing, as does the tomato and crab dish. Great work.

I've never been one to really hold on to tradition - seems like an excuse for not adapting our habits to meet new challenges. While I do actually like a nice golden brown baguette, it makes sense that if less people prefer it that way then the technique would be less used. Food preferences are such a subjective thing - I think it makes Mr. Debieu seem fairly pretentious to suggest that only one way is "correct", and that it is clearly superior to any other method.

I think this has a lot to do with people's nostalgia towards whichever foods they ate when they grew up. I don't think most people have the luxury of eating the best ingredients throughout their childhood, so they find comfort in the familiarity of some things, even if they aren't as rich, flavorful, refined, etc as other versions of the dish.

Nice plating cookalong - sounds delicious too. Care to share more details on the poached pear?

Technically speaking, the Maillard reaction is separate from caramelization, but they usually happen at the same time (high heat). With that said, baking soda will encourage browning as the reaction is faster at a higher pH. I use this technique sometimes to make pralines or the popular pressure-cooked caramelized soups from the Modernist Cuisine. As gfweb said, cooking almost anything in brown butter is a sure way to make it delicious

They're excellent thinly sliced on a mandoline. Toss them into a salad or a crudo. Or brush the slices with simple syrup and dehydrated them overnight for crunchy fennel chips.

Apparently elderberries grow around my area (central Texas), but I don't trust myself to forage correctly. Add that to the fact that the inedible parts of the plant are poisonous...

Yeah I'm really enjoying this one too. Didn't realize until just now that it was from some of the Modernist Cuisine talent.

Wagyu is great, but like all super-high end stuff the price does not scale linearly at the top end. If I spend top dollar on fancy ingredients / meals, I usually opt for nice sashimi or foie gras.

Very nice dessert mm84321!

I recently made this recipe from Food Arts, with some minor changes. Escolar crudo with yuzu vinaigrette, lemongrass oil, peppers, avocado, radish, thai basil, and shiso powder.