Syzygies

Is anyone else as baffled as I am that the $60 slow cooker market hasn't expanded to higher profit margin $100 units with "to the degree" PID controllers? Forty years ago you could notice something traveling in Japan, and introduce a novel product in the United States, but now information travels faster. Did slow cooker management all thaw out of a glacier?

it's intended for only home/casual use, which they define to be "used no more than 2/3 days per week"Huh, I missed that. I read "home/casual" as not capable of restaurant-sized bath volumes. They'd certainly want to scare restaurants out of buying it (like Wang not wanting to cannibalize their word processor sales by introducing a personal computer, see where that got those fools). So is there anything about the actual specs that would indicate it would be unreliable with frequent home use?

Do you mean that only 22cm heats up, when you use a larger pot? Or does it sense an error condition, and refuse to operate? The former would be fine, for stock or pasta. (I've held off on buying one because I've never seen one I could control with an outboard PID. They're all "smart".)

Wow! That looks fantastic. I have been wondering about an initial smoke outdoors over fire (meat only really absorbs smoke below some debatable cutoff temperature) followed by sous vide. You're making me really curious.

The PolyScience Creative Series circulator lists for $499, I've seen it as low as $435. The only knock I've read on it is a hard-to-see display. http://store.chefste...sion-circulator Anova is coming out with a $299 circulator. No idea what their new schedule is; they were taking pre-orders but no reviews on the web to indicate any shipped: http://www.waterbaths.com/products/sousvide_products.html If these tidy, contained units actually work, then the open construction of the Underground looks too mad scientist for me. I've gone the PID controller, hot plate route and I want to get away from that look...

I'm wondering about the $299 Anova: http://www.waterbaths.com/products/sousvide_products.html They were taking advance orders for a first run that should have shipped, but no one here has reported using one.

A different view would be to eat everything in moderation, and view processed foods as the enemy. From Japan to Italy, there's a fluctuating stigma associated to brown rice, rustic grains. "It reminds us of the war, of being poor" versus romanticizing La Cucina Povera. (My wife and I still laugh over our most ostentatious honeymoon agriturismo proudly serving the same ingredient three times as "Cucina Povera" when an actual peasant would deftly disguise her limited larder.) In any case, our two systematic modifications to Italian cooking are to never open a can of tomatoes (we skin, partially dry and freeze each year's crop, and I recoil from the taste of canned tomatoes in any restaurant), and to grind our own flour, sieving out the bran. One ends up with a product as workable as white flour, with a chestnut color and a denser consistency; we use the Wolfgang Mock Grain Mill and a drum sieve. Carbs aren't evil; white flour is evil. There's something to the glycemic index; our bodies digest less processed foods more slowly, which is good.

Thanks! I nabbed the Amazon Prime copy; I'll have it in two days. In the 1970's and 1980's one couldn't walk past a bookstore remainder table without tripping over a stack of Ada Boni's Italian Regional Cooking selling for a song; for many of us this was our first real contact with Italian cooking. (It is still available used, and I highly recommend it. The recipes are terse and many.) It had been put to me in Italy that her original Il Talismano della Felicità was the definitive regional reference. I'm genuinely curious; how would the debate now go, comparing these books?

Here is the Cook's Illustrated article (1 Jan 2013) online: http://www.cooksillu...asp?docid=41600 (Alas, a 14 day trial required to see the results.) They prefer the Fissler Vitaquick 8 1/2 Quart over the Kuhn Rikon Duromatic 8 1/2 Quart, for the Fissler's "low, wide profile" (browns, rather than scorches) and its ability to reach 250 F, and to hold temperature without constant adjustment. I'm sold. The Fagor Duo 8-Quart is their value choice. While I find their "we figured out what several centuries of brilliant chefs missed!" recipe zingers juvenile, their other equipment reviews seem worth reading. They got Shun kitchen shears right. Complaining about milky Cambros because they bought the ghetto versions that can't take heat? They make errors of omission.

"Il tipico e' anche mitico": 105 ricette della tradizione ligure (I Quaderni di Ligucibario) (Italian Edition) [Kindle Edition] ($2.99) http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B00A2UD2B2 La Cucina Regionale Italiana (Italian Edition) [Kindle Edition] ($6.40) http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B00791ZF5S They take no shelf space, and you only care about Italian food vocabulary, right? There are others like these, but I like these. Seriously, my limited polyglot skills are a constant struggle for me, but removing all the filters that come with English language Italian cookbooks is a revelation. (Google translate is your friend.)

These bag clips can seal up to 8.5" in width, and work well: http://www.sorbentsy...m/bagclips.html The usual "hardware store" puzzle: No manufacturer has anticipated your problem, but someone has made something for a different purpose (here, protecting oxygen absorbers) that works for you.

One doesn't want consistent steam, any more than one wants consistent smoke in a barbecue pit. Steam, like smoke, is most effective at the beginning.

There are two goals here: Not destroying one's oven, and producing a commercial-grade crust. Anecdotes concerning the first goal would be more useful if they also comparatively addressed the second goal. While Cook's Illustrated irks me because of their agenda (they're never happy till they've discovered their private "special sauce" that shows up everyone before them as idiots) they do base their work on comparisons. And so do the Modernist Cuisine books, with close ties to eGullet. I used to not use any water, and I never cracked a window, but my bread was mediocre. After reading the Tartine Bread book, my bread got much better. I also tried small amounts of water for steam, and the effects were nearly indistinguishable from doing nothing at all. In such moments, I taunt myself with memories of 1960's RevereWare pots with that copper film on the bottom. They reassure the cook, with no effect on the food. Let's give Thomas Keller some credit. He makes his recommendation based on the sincerely held belief that any simpler measure would be far less effective. Tartine Bread makes the same point; it is nearly impossible to reproduce at home the steam in a commercial bread oven, and with far less steam, we're kidding ourselves. The cast iron combo pot is an amazing exception, though it can't be used for everything.

I'm a mathematician, and we have a pretty harsh standard for proof. Not being able to imagine an alternative does not rule out the alternative. So, not to pick on your sentence but it sent me involuntarily reeling. In BBQ circles anything galvanized is a no-no, because it off-gases zinc which is a poison. I don't know what "plate steel" is. Surely, aluminum, copper or cast iron it's not. But all steel is iron plus other stuff, there are many, many different recipes for steel and "plating" in use, and many, many choices for what constitutes the "other stuff." Isn't amateur hour metal work the biggest danger, drinking moonshine? I see many ways to poison oneself here without seeing it coming. (For comparison, the theory that lead poisoning partly caused the fall of Rome is controversial. And some people will use any plastic for sous vide. I just like to err on the side of caution.) I've always used FibraMent-D baking stones. I know they've tuned the thermal transfer rate, as others have for similar products. In their view, even soapstone has the wrong thermal transfer rate; I didn't ask about metals. Is it the underlying assumption of this discussion that pizza professionals have chosen the wrong value? We always grind our own flour for everything, but we sieve out the bran. Still, our dough is denser than dough made with white flour, making pizza more challenging. We just don't like the taste of white flour. I took a pizza class with Rosetta Costantino, the author of My Calabria. (http://cookingwithro....com/index.html) Her first career was as an engineer. She traveled around Italy with an infrared "shooter" thermometer, listening to people describing the extraordinary temperatures at which they baked pizza. Then she'd shoot the cooking surface. It never read over 650 F.

Last winter I made sourdough bread a few dozen times, trying to get the hang of it. I tried many variations on this "steam in oven" approach, and the Lodge cast iron combi cooker favored by the Tartine cookbook: http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/B0009JKG9M That's not my favorite shape loaf, but baking inside a Lodge combi cooker worked far better for me than any "steam in oven" approach. Even close cousins, such as Le Creuset pots used by "no knead" sources, or Sassafras Superstone domes, didn't work as well. So at least skim the Tartine approach in a bookstore, to be able to use it for breads where it would be an option?

I learned to cook from Michal Field's Cooking School, still available used. A chapter per dish, I needed that. More recently, Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef and Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand were the first "conceptual" cookbooks I worked through, making me prefer this style of exposition. Colicchio was the first to admit that rather than skimming stock, one should change the water. Even Keller didn't say he did this in his first books, though he says so later. Bertolli explains computing brines more clearly than I'd ever seen before, changing barbecue forever for me; I now always salt by weight. He also inspired us to start grinding our own flour for everything, and we've been doing so ever since the book came out. Though we sieve out the bran, which makes whole wheat products taste like a roll of unbleached paper towels fell in, and we don't follow his recipes. I seriously doubt that they actually ground flour at the restaurant; me thinks it was delivered. And for the antithesis of the reasons why, everyone I know of a certain age learned to cook Italian from remaindered copies of Ada Boni's Regional Italian Cooking, Sometimes one needs a comprehensive set of examples, not explanation.

I see a logistical conflict here: In the BBQ world, one always smokes cold raw meat, getting a beautiful red smoke ring as the meat absorbs smoke, until this process stops somewhere before 145 F. Any smoke after that is a surface effect, only there to reassure the cook and guests that they're really cooking with smoke. In the sous vide world, one typically moves hot procedures to after sous vide that in classical technique would precede a braise. I'd smoke the moose first, then chill it as your vacuum chamber requires, or use an alternative method (I use an impulse sealer and snip a corner to expel air under water, allowing me to work hot). Recall also the advice of Thomas Keller (and others) that flavors are stronger sous vide, one has to be very careful with any spice. Pine smoke is such a spice...

If anywhere near U Giancu in Rapallo (http://www.ugiancu.it), stop in for pesto, the best I've ever had. Chef Fausto also gives lessons, and is a wonderful character. Their version is with pasta, potato and green beans, a classic combination in Liguria. With a reference version in mind, one has to go by taste. Pesto comes from both Nice and Genova, from when they were one region predating either France or Italy. The classic Ligurian recipe tends to be lightened with some fresh cheese, for which one can improvise liberally. Fausto has various booklets available from Europe; Ogni Volta Che Cucina calls for "4 bunches of basil; 2 cloves of garlic; 1 tablespoon of pine nuts; a handful of grated parmesan cheese; 5 tablespoons of olive oil; 100 grams of curd cheese; a little coarse salt." Affordable pine nuts invariably come from China, with a liberal species definition leading to mild poisonings where everything tastes like metal for two weeks. (Google "pine mouth.") Use Italian pine nuts, which taste better, or substitute. I vividly recall friends in Genova clutching bunches of basil from the market, for pesto. These were infant plants by U.S. standards. They delicately put it to me that pesto from my country tastes like lawn clippings, because of the enormous plants we use. One is supposed to grow the basil from seed, thinning for pesto until the thicket gets too large to use. In the California summer I ring half wine barrel planters with spray misting hose (as used to cool off outside) programmed through our garden irrigation system, to grow pesto basil from seed. We don't eat pesto out of season, though we do freeze basil in oil to make pesto for soupe au pistou. Ligurians are also pretty adamant about using a mortar and pestle, which has a fundamentally different effect than a food processor. A Thai mortar and pestle (as popularized by Jamie Oliver, for example) is perfect.

Here's a picture to go with the words. The horizontal seal is 4mm, made by the impulse sealer. One can also seal an ordinary drinking straw into a top corner of the pouch; align the bag so that the impulse sealer just nicks the straw without closing it. This can be made to work, but it's fiddly. A snipped corner and the water displacement method is easier and does a better job of removing all air. I don't recommend the small impulse sealer shown, which only works with 6" pouches. The nominal width should be strictly greater than the widest pouch you'll ever want to seal; the same nominal width will just miss. This purchase was a mistake, to take up less space in my wife's kitchen; my 12" impulse sealer is much more versatile.

Have you used pine smoke before? I have a ceramic cooker and I'm active on the Komodo Kamado forum (http://www.komodokamado.com/forum). There, I've long advocated putting wood chips or chunks in a cast iron dutch oven with a few small holes drilled in the bottom, and the lid sealed on with flour paste. (This is to place on a charcoal fire, temperature controlled like sous vide by a PID controller.) The idea is to "distill" the most pleasant part of the smoke, making it one more flavor in balance. Even then, I prefer apple to stronger wood smokes for most purposes. I'm having trouble imagining that pine smoke would contribute a desirable flavor.

My favorite piece of sous vide related equipment (so far) would have to be my impulse sealer. Plain vacuum chamber pouches are far more satisfying than any textured pouch or zip lock bag I've ever seen, and less expensive. I own whatever FoodSaver they last claimed was best, and frequently want to hurl it across the room. I covet a chamber vacuum machine such as the VacMaster VP215C, but one can't use hot liquids with it, and I like conventional hot starts for braises. And impulse sealers make great seals. With enough liquid and a bit of dexterity, one can seal liquids with no air bubble, faster and with less mess than either an external clamp or chamber vacuum machine. It helps to prop up the sealer at a slight angle, and let gravity pull down on the bag while draping it over the sealer. Now squeeze the bag till the air bubble finds the high way out, smooth the seal area till only the faintest liquid remains, and seal on a fairly high setting. Test the seal. I can't imagine an easier or more space-efficient system for anyone serious about freezing stock, no matter what other equipment they own. Stock in my mind justifies owning the vacuum chamber pouches and an impulse sealer, even if one envisions no other uses. We also freeze our tomato crop this way for the year, after skinning and partially drying. Lurking here before joining, I was intrigued by pounce's 2008 check valve: http://forums.egulle...60#entry1517660 With sufficient liquid (braise or confit), one can prepare anything for sous vide using just an impulse sealer. The issue is getting by with as little liquid as possible, without feeling like a total klutz. I had been using water displacement (Archimedes) and bag clamps originally designed for oxygen absorbers, with mixed success. At the same time, I've always been struck by how clingy the vacuum chamber pouches themselves are, when wet. Perhaps one could fabricate a check valve into the bag itself, with the correct seal pattern? Hey, people etch circuit boards in their garage, how hard can a check valve "circuit" be? Fast forward past several ill-conceived, overwrought experiments. The dumbest possible idea works best: Fill your bag, seal (air and all) across the very top of the bag, and snip off a top corner exposing a 1mm (or so) leak. Now immerse the bag in water with that corner high (I like acrylic Cambros) and let the air pocket bubble its way out. Leave a tiny bubble at the corner (that's your check valve) while you tease the contents to work all remaining bubbles to the top. Smooth the top portion of the bag against the flat of the Cambro, working out all the air. Now gently remove, supporting the contents; the top portion of the bag stays sealed by the thin film of liquid between the two layers. Move over to the impulse sealer, put in a permanent seal, trim and you're done. Pictured on the left are two rangpur limes with 4 TB of wine, and on the right two Bearss limes with 3 TB of wine. 4 TB was trivial, while 3 TB was a struggle. So there are limits without owning a chamber machine. Nevertheless, I've tried the alternatives and this combination is my strong preference on a budget.