Syzygies

One should get handy with chamber vacuum bags and a $40 impulse sealer before considering any other options. The Cyclones, like FoodSavers and many but not all clamp machines, have a drip tray so a bit of liquid won't hurt. One hangs the bag off the counter, and hits seal when the stream reaches the top of the bag, before any significant quantity reaches the tray. Water is incompressible; the Kpa or whatever readings are totally irrelevant. Once liquid replaces air, the bag is ready to be sealed. Period. With more liquid, any vacuum machine is way overkill. Would you pull out a food processor to mince one garlic clove? No. You'd pull out a knife. It is utterly trivial to jiggle a bag of liquid over the impulse sealer seal bar, so the liquid is on one side, and the air is on the other. Perhaps there will be a 1/4 tsp air bubble if you hurry. Who cares? I put away stock, or tomatoes this way. I couldn't be bothered to involve a more sophisticated machine. This is dead simple. Anyone who hasn't tried it just doesn't know. I wanted a clamp machine for storing or freezing dry foods, and trying dry sous vide techniques. One only needs a little liquid in a pouch with an impulse sealer, if one is willing to immerse the pouch in water (like people do with ziplock bags) to get the air out. The technique is to seal once, snip a corner, tease out the air, seal again. I got this to work well because I'm stubborn. It hasn't caught on, but it does work well. The Cyclone is far easier. Chamber machines have the corresponding restriction that you can't seal hot foods. Huh. To me that was as much a deal breaker as the "liquid limitation." In short, I use this clamp machine for dry jobs, and the impulse sealer for wet jobs, hot or not.

I too have craved a chamber machine for years. I've been reluctant to spend a comma and to take up so much counter space with something so massively heavy. I know that everyone who gets a chamber machine loves it, and I do want one. I'm fed up with multiple FoodSavers I've wanted to hurl across the room. I need to stock two kitchens, one of which my wife rules. On the other hand we believe that some bags are intended to be heated to sous vide temperatures, and some are not. Part of the problem with FoodSavers is that the bags are expensive, not that good quality, and not explicitly ok for 48 hour simmers. I finally noticed that VacMaster, maker of my favorite heat-safe chamber bags (trivial to seal with an impulse sealer if one has enough liquid in the pouch, or seal once, nick the corner, immerse to force out air, seal again), now makes heat-safe "channel" vacuum bags for clamp machines: http://vacmaster.aryvacmaster.com/cgi/ary.wsc/storagebags?p-item-num=VacStrip These cost less than FoodSaver bags, and are a neat design: The outer pouch is solid and 3 mil, like their chamber bags. There's an additional strip of material down the middle of the inside, to give a route for the air to get sucked out. They work, and provide better freezer protection than a pouch with the channels engraved into the outer bag. Nevertheless, get their bone guard sheets too; a bone punctured one bag on me because what's next pulled the bag so tight: Minipack is apparently discontinuing their Cyclone series of clamp machines. I picked up one for $295 plus tax, then immediately another for $350 no tax, for two kitchens: http://www.thevakshack.com/catalog/item/8248869/8943492.htm There's nothing remarkable about this machine. It just works, as you'd expect a dime store machine to work. Except the dime store machines like FoodSaver are all junk (at least FoodSaver has excellent customer service), and the Minipack machine indeed does just work. It's metal, with a 4mm seal bar. The pump appears unremarkable and is quiet, but appears to outperform FoodSavers. There's a digital pressure display that shows it is ready to sealing at 6.5 Kpa, and often reaches 7.2 Kpa before the timer starts the seal. (Atmospheric pressure is around 100 Kpa, and a good chamber machine gets most of the way to a perfect vacuum, but this little bit of the way is more than FoodSaver, and enough to draw bags tight around food.) It has four programs to save adjustable settings; there is a simpler nonadjustable model, but length of seal time could be a deal-breaker with the wrong bags. The foam gasket looks like a beefier version of the FoodSaver gasket, only it doesn't need replacing each year (or so they say) and can't be replaced. There's a bit of a break in period where I left the machine ajar for the rubber to relax after years stuck closed. I also sometimes wet the gasket, as I would to nurse a FoodSaver along. However, after a few days, the machine just works, every time. Like breaking in a shoe, are you really breaking in your foot? Who knows, but I got the hang of this. If for any reason you decide to abort and seal now, the pump stays on while you seal. The reason I hurled my final FoodSaver across the room was that it was never finishing its cycle, and as I manually hit seal, the pump cut off letting air back into the bag. I rarely feel contempt for my fellow man but I loathe the FoodSaver engineer who thought this would do. Or the MBA who told him to do it this way, to save a dollar. So I'm limping along for another generation without a chamber machine, because I found (for now) the basic machine that I wish one could buy at Target. Except we know that if you expect to pay $100 you're buying crap made in China that just barely works. If everything cost $350 instead you'd be used to it. I'm making my peace with this truth, and buying fewer things each of quality, as my German friends do.

I've used silpat or similar sheets in the fridge. Do you have a good source of pine nuts? I'm worried about "pine mouth" or "pine nut mouth" (http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm247099.htm) which is generally attributed to the broader species definition in response to people's unwillingness to pay $50 a pound for the genuine article. Most pine nuts are Chinese in origin, and one of dozens of nontraditional species. In taste tests (none resulting in pine mouth) I also found that the genuine article tastes much better. As in, while the risk of pine mouth may be low, we're kidding ourselves to buy the inexpensive article, we might as well draw pine nuts on the tablecloth, and serve instead some other nut.

You're reminding me of the first recipe I ever worked out for myself. After negotiations, I was allowed to cook my own dinner if an incompetent babysitter was coming over. I made a kind of "risotto" (didn't know the word) from rice and canned cream of mushroom soup. In another pan (Revere Ware, with that thin copper gesture to the cooking gods) I first fried then steamed (lid on) a cheeseburger. I had never been exposed to a hamburger cooked any way besides very well done, and this was at least juicier. Then I stacked the result as a kind of "skyscraper food" (again, didn't know the word) and I was very pleased with myself. My next recipe was more ambitious: An omelette with blueberries and Worcestershire sauce. My dad loved to remind me that I couldn't keep it down.

I was guessing this. I was once mountain biking in a park above Berkeley, and this guy had gotten his pickup truck up this impossible hill, so he could set a $10,000, six foot high contraption on a geological marker. Turns out, if two GPS devices talk to each other, and one knows exactly where it is, the other can deduce amazingly accurate readings. They were laying out some kind of factory down below, other side of the hills. He was a surveyor; the days of leaning over tripods are over. I asked him about other work he did, and he described using exactly the same skills to lay out giant newspaper printing presses. Turns out there's a speed at which the newsprint simply tears, and that speed depends on the alignment. Perfect alignment is an unobtainable ideal; one gets as close as one can. So there's no right or wrong, no "threshold for perfection" in your sheeter. Lucky for you it can be repaired. The better it is aligned and tuned, the better it will perform.

I put in a request through public library interlibrary loan, sounds interesting enough to take a look. I take it you already have Andrea Nguyen's book on Asian dumplings? Though Lin's book looks more technical, arranges by wheat, rice, bean flours.

Well, I prefer armagnac to brandy or cognac or bourbon, in any recipe that calls for a bit of brown liquor. Making a quick sauce while deglazing a pan. There's a stage in French stews. While I prefer authentic regional sources, i also grind my own flour, and the "King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking" has well-tested recipes that work. This morning's breakfast was a few crepes with smoked salmon, capers, green onions and creme fraiche (idea from Paul Bertolli's Chez Panisse cookbook) and the KA crepe batter recipe (I ground equal parts red winter wheat, farro, and buckwheat) called for some brandy. The dessert version that they intended called for more brandy with the apples. (There, I'd often use calvados, and I usually wonder if a recipe fails to call for calvados because it assumes that the reader has never heard of it.)

For $13 more, same site, is my choice for (conventional) cooking armagnac: http://www.drinkupny.com/Pellehaut_Reserve_Armagnac_p/s0441.htm I wouldn't cook with anything I wouldn't drink, and this armagnac is very, very good for the price. I know of no comparable deal.

My reference Panna Cotta was from Ristorante Belvedere in La Morra, in 1986 when the place was legendary. Though I have no doubt now that they used gelatin, it appeared at the time to only barely hold its form through technique and good (Chernobyl era) cream. Unadulterated, I still cringe in comparison at flavored Panna Cotta in the US. In any case, I have impossible standards, and I didn't start out with high hopes for a recipe from Salon, but this works: buttermilk. http://www.salon.com/2010/06/12/buttermilk_panna_cotta_how_to_use_gelatin/ It's not the same dessert, but it can be a great dessert in exactly the classic vein. Skimp on the gelatin, go very easy on the lemon rind (which works with the buttermilk, even though you'd leave it out of the original) and skip the Anisette or Pernod, which is only classy to someone who doesn't know the original. Otherwise, this recipe has great promise. Combine it with what you already know.

Well, their food IR shooter is tuned for food applications. The error isn't that much in practice, and one can check by pressing one's Thermapen against the surface. In any case, one adapts to an IR shooter by feedback, the actual numbers don't matter so much as one swaps out preconceptions for what appears to work in practice. And the Thermoworks shooter is so handy. I had a different brand combo unit (to economize) in one kitchen, and ended up swapping in Thermoworks separates for ease of use. These tools need to be effortless, with simple displays, and separates are.

A longtime Thermapen fan, I'm very happy with my recent purchase of their $69 infrared shooter: http://thermoworks.com/products/ir/irfs.html They also have a $49 sale infrared shooter now: http://thermoworks.com/products/ir/irgun.html

I want to love my Epicurian boards. However, with good Japanese knives kept sharp on water stones (who cuts the barber? kept flat on a diamond stone), if I mince garlic on my black Epicurian board I see bits of black in with the garlic. My favorite setup is a working butcher block counter, that one washes and scrapes down with a bench knife after each meal. One cooks better with enough room, like so many activities. I only use portable boards for individual messy steps I want to contain. The cleanup cost here pays for itself, there isn't the blizzard of prep bowls if the ingredients are laid out directly on the counter. In my tightest kitchen, I scrape the wash and rinse water directly into an open, ready to run dishwasher, saving the mild effort of catching it in a retired metal dog dish. (Ah, Dolly. She so loved cooking time.)

Yes. I can directly compare with my wife's older KitchenAid in a different kitchen, and I prefer the well-built Viking. I use it primarily for very wet bread doughs; she uses the KitchenAid all the time for desserts of all descriptions.

I just went into the kitchen to play with faking Chinkiang black vinegar. I get closest with mostly a good sherry vinegar, and some traditional balsamic vinegar. It doesn't take much balsamic to match the color, and too much brings in too much sweetness. With these ingredients, one loses the harshness that Chinkiang vinegar shares with white vinegar, but why not. I've been cooking out of the British edition. She notes that deep frying is a restaurant technique and not everyday home technique. I was taught that one originally used rendered animal fat. Certainly, the extraction process for many vegetable oils don't reward contemplation, and require the resources of a factory. I often using organic palm shortening in place of lard. Mine isn't kosher but kosher is available. Compared to vegetable oil, and more so than lard (for which lard is famous), palm shortening can have dramatic effects on texture. I learned about it from my Thai teacher, who would use it more if it didn't cost so much. It does introduce a coconut note. I make many of these substitutions not because I keep kosher but to spare myself some wretched tastes. I've never in my life found a Shaoxing wine that could compete with a good sherry; most I want to spit out. Rather than looking for exact matches, use related ingredients to discover flavor balances that please you?

The old KitchenAids are great. I read lots of reviews complaining about plastic parts failing on recent models, so I spent the extra money for a Viking. But who knows, they might have fixed their recent problems. http://www.amazon.co...duct/B0007WLJ3I

Can you confirm that you're talking about a cast iron wok, not a carbon steel wok? They handle very differently.

The same friend set up private group lessons at an SF Chinese restaurant, a few years back. 5-10 minute pre-heats weren't part of the technique. One would also imagine that it hurts more to get hit by a restaurant wok. It depends on far you drop the home wok.

I can help you with the oil smoking: The same friend that introduced me to cast iron woks also switched me to rice bran oil: http://www.sfgate.co...fry-3248043.php http://californiaric...m/orderdesk.htm The four gallon pack is quite the deal; you can easily use a gallon if you're unsure. This oil is neutral in flavor (at least compared to peanut oil) and makes anyone look like a frying genius. It has around a 500 F smoke point, and no one belongs in that range. While breaking in various carbon steel pans (a binge started by a different thread here; the Spring USA pans can cause dangerous object lust: http://www.cooksdire...-steel-fry-pans, http://springusacom....ware/blackline/), I've been deep-frying ripe plantain slices and they come out stunning in this oil. It's my go-to oil for any Chinese deep-frying. I agree also with Lisa Shock. You're overreacting to the idea that we can't get woks hot enough at home. Same with pizza, I took lessons with an engineer-turned-Calabrian-author who took her IR shooter thermometer all around Italy. People talk a big game about their pizza oven temps, but the truth where the pizza actually cooks is more moderate. I have an awesome cast iron wok, but my 14" round bottom carbon steel wok gets all the use, lately, including tonight if I can hit "post". They're more nimble, when the heat gets too hot.

Huh, I know what you mean, though I kept mine in a plastic bag and toasted it as needed. A Finnish relative's family used to bring it back in suitcases from Finland, and he never got any as a kid, it was considered too precious. They clearly kept it a month, and he wants some now! In California it clearly won't be the same day. These judgements are relative, the bread of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily was made monthly because of fuel shortages. Think cracker, and that's roughly how they used it, crumbled into various dishes. In any case, I'm going to experiment with making Ruis. I'm guessing 100% rye, sourdough starter, and accept how it comes out flat, there you are.

I worked a dozen cookbooks while practicing whole wheat sourdough nearly daily last Spring. The Tartine Bread book (http://www.tartinebread.com/) followed to the letter, down to cooking vessel (http://www.amazon.co.../dp/B0009JKG9M/) gave me by far the best results. There is a continuum of kneading, just as there is a continuum of massage (from Rolfing to a Shaman's touch), and the Tartine method is nearly no-knead but superior. One might need to practice no-knead for a while to rid oneself of poor kneading habits, but then learn the Tartine approach and compare for yourself. Except, I substitute as much whole wheat as practical. (This is a subjective call.) I grind flour using the Wolfgang Mock grain mill (http://www.amazon.co.../dp/B001DZ6TGA/) and sieve out the bran using a drum sieve. The Mock mill is expensive. I don't regret the expense (even if only for fresh pasta) but rather the wasted money on inferior solutions before biting the bullet. The bran makes whole wheat flour taste like a roll of unbleached paper towels fell in; after sieving the flour handles like a sturdier white. Something (germ?) remains, for this flour oxidizes and goes bad in a matter of days once ground, which store bought whole wheat doesn't. It also has a substantially better flavor. Ditto for sourdough. It isn't that hard. Heresy to "cheat"? Many artisan bakers do as insurance; when we declare any idea "heresy" we're being religious fanatics, substituting a preconceived notion for direct observation. I struggled with breads that went too flat, when I pushed the whole wheat or rye too close to 100%. Then I discovered Finnish Ruis bread at a farmers market (http://www.nordicbreads.com/). Their bread goes flat, and they embrace this shape. They don't care. What a healthy attitude! I struggled with alternatives to the combo cooker because I didn't like the dome shape as well as longer loaves. Huh. People love baguettes for the crust. A flat Ruis loaf, split and toasted, is all "end piece" crust. Wonderful. Or use some white flour for more conventional loaves better than one can buy.

I saw this thread around the same time that Harlem Shambles had very fresh lamb heart and liver. Uses a Sichuan recipe for the liver, and followed Keller's 175F 24 hours for the heart. Then pan seared, reduction sauce. Would have thought this was too high a temp, but the texture and flavor was very nice.

I shop at Harbor Freight; anything at half price is worth considering, but do you really want an item bought at Harbor Freight within 50 feet of food? Wheels for moving an outdoor table twice a year, that can off-gas in a back shed? Fine. Ratchet straps for repairing compost frames? Fine. Disposable gloves? Don't kid yourself. I have the impression that anything that plugs in is going to smell like 9/11. The "no implied suitability" software warranties come to mind here, although I have successfully made returns when there was an obvious and immediate failure. Most of what they sell is suitable for a movie prop. ... if you're shooting Super8. Harbor Freight is a resource to use with caution. I admire my European friends who buy fewer things but never buy junk.

Nomiku hasn't changed its target date of March 2013. Anova's page now announces "(Coming March 2013)". The year is a nice touch, as SWID's site FAQ offers the hope that a 110V version will be available at "the end of the year." I have to wonder what year that was.

Wok: Flat or Round Bottom? http://www.thaifooda...es/woktype.html (Grace Young's book "Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge" takes the opposite view, but my best wok is round.) Nevertheless, wok rings are too unstable for my tastes. These wok grates are $7 many places in any Chinatown, and replace your existing gas burner grate. I had to rasp two corners a bit to match the rounding of my existing 8.5" by 8.5" grate, then it fit like a charm.

Hawaii, season two.