Rozin Abbas

What is "really good brown sugar?" Interesting comment about maillard reaction. Something to look into. Thanks! Sorry for the vagueness. The "light" and "dark" brown sugars your typically see in grocery stores are simply granulated sugar with molasses put back in. I've seen some suggest using Muscovado or molasses sugar. I've never made those myself, but a friend of mine made them shortly before Christmas. Amazingly good cookie. They're on my to-do list. They're great! Give them a try soon. To this day, though, the ones I made from Gourmet is the one I get asked about most. I don't make them really anymore because I prefer the TK but I may have to revisit them.

I just saw this and it looks amazing. Any chance I could get a recipe, please?

Tollhouse cookies might be my least favourite chocolate chip cooke I've made out of all the ones I've made. I've pretty much made the "best of the best." The NYTimes' CCC is by far the best one. The CI cookies are pretty good but the NYT one is just monumental. Keller's vanilla extract-free cookie is my go-to quick cookie. Use really good brown sugar for them because that's where the flavour is. Regarding brown sugar: It's hygroscopic, as Alton mentions, but it also contains more glucose and fructose because of the molasses. This has implications of the maillard reaction. Also, maltose is produced when glucose caramelizes, which you'll get more of with brown sugar due to the presence of molasses. Note, though, that for maltose to caramelize it requires a minimum temperature of 356F. The NYT cookie doesn't go this high and I've always wondered whether this makes a significant difference in flavour.

The best decision I ever made was cooking the turkey in parts. I cook it at a low temp and that way I can control what temperature each piece is cooked then I remove it and I can have it out for 2-3 hours and then all it needs is 15-20 minutes in a super hot oven to crisp up. It also frees up my oven to make other things and I also get the carcass to make my own stock and gravy. I literally will never cook a whole turkey again. You can dry or injection brine it still.

I need to take a trip to the south to taste some cornbread because now my curiosity is piqued. I normally use this recipe and I've always liked it: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Buttery-Cornbread-236502 It's similar to the cornbread at the local BBQ joints here. I've always liked it and I use it to make stuffing for Thanksgivings and Christmas. The recipe also bears resemblance to a lot of the more popular cornbreads on the internet. Though, the idea of using bacon fat is incredibly appealing. Sounds flippin' amazing! This recipe in particular seems intriguing. I'll have to make it sometime in the near future: http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/chef-frank-stitts-perfect-southern-corn-bread/

This is particularly good for sauces that rely on water like cacio e pepe. I have seen Dale Talde doing this on Serious Eats.

If you're talking to me then my cheesecake: http://thesocraticcook.com/2013/09/27/turtle-cheesecake/ I noticed some grammatical errors (ugh!), so excuse those. If you weren't talking to me ... well, shameless plug.

@Baselerd, do you have a blog? If not, start one and you have one dedicated follower in me. I haven't started digging my heels into plated desserts yet but your stuff is wicked good. I've been looking for a bowl like that everywhere. Where did you get yours from? Didn't like the turtle cheesecake recipes on the net (oreo crust? What?), so I ran with my own: Pecan-Graham Crust, Chocolate Swirled Cheesecake, Ganache, Salted Caramel, Roasted Pecans, and Chantilly Cream.

My brother's girlfriend received a bag of bird's eye chilies, so I decided to make spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino:

Kerry, those cakes are stunners! Oatmeal chocolate chip are my favourite cookies, so I gave Deb's recipe from Smitten Kitchen a go and it was pretty darn good. I appreciate that she uses twice as many oats as flour. Mind the poor ribbon job haha. I was trying to make it cute for a lady friend

I'm amassing a few authoritative texts on pasta right now and these two came up on my search on eGullet. If I purchase the original Silver Spoon, would it be worth still getting the pasta version? I'm unable to get my hands on Silver Spoon Pasta, so I'm unsure of its contents. Or would it be preferable to own both? As a side note, recipes aren't entirely important to me whereas the quality of information is. If there's some serious overlapping and I can omit some of the books, I'd be happy with that. For those wondering, the other books in my cart at Abe Books: - Bugialli on Pasta - Classical Book of Pasta (Vincenzo Buonassisi) - The Geometry of Pasta Ones I own: - Encyclopedia of Pasta (Oretta Zanini De Vita) - Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Making Artisan Pasta - Glorious Pasta of Italy

A cheesecake and a cake aren't really comparable. The former is eggs, sugar, and cream cheese while the latter contains flour and a plethora of other things and that changes everything considering their structure and creates their own specific problems. This further lends issues to your facetiousness ("waffles") considering that waffles contain flour. Why else do some people add flour or cornstarch to something like a ricotta cheesecake? Flour helps absorb moisture and, specifically for ricotta, it prevents curdling. Flour is special in of itself. Further, did you not say that drying is an issue? Alton simply is stating that the over-coagulation causes the cheesecake to dry ("wring moisture"). I'm not sure why scrambling must exist for you. Over-coagulation is merely the eggs becoming too firm. I feel that this satisfies the "drying" issue. Harold McGee classifies a cheesecake as a "rich custard" in Keys to Good Cooking and also recommends a water bath as well (for more "even heating"). Does a water bath not serve to cause more "even heating" in other custards?

Alton Brown would disagree in regards to the water bath: "Let's say for a minute that this sponge represents all the ingredients in our cheesecake except egg proteins which we'll say are represented by this net. Why a net? Because egg proteins when they cook or denature form a molecular mesh and that mesh is what makes a solid cheesecake possible. The problem is if they get too hot or if they heat too quickly, these proteins over-coagulate. That is they tighten up and they can literally wring all the moisture out of the cheesecake. And that's definitely not good eats. So the key here is that we've got to: one, insulate the cheesecake from high heat and, two, we've got to control the rate at which that heat moves into the cheesecake. And that is where the water comes in." Though, a very low temp does tend to take care of those things (Hermes and Ducasse both use 195F, I believe) but Bertha over at Gourmet Baking religiously uses a water bath and she makes some of the best looking cheesecakes I have seen.

I'm at work but Laiskonis uses "ice cream stabilizer" in the PDF files that contains many of his recipes. He doesn't specifically state which kind but in one of his experiments within the file he mentions cremodan, which leads me to believe that he uses it. If you can acquire it, you'll see how he uses it in his ice creams.

Could I also get this, please?

Interesting. I suppose, maybe, the American pastry scene eventually classified it as a "buttercream" I think you're right. After you posted this, I went ahead and used my access to the Oxford English Dictionary (yay for being a University alum) and typed in mousseline. Their definition: "A small mousse, or one with a soft or light texture." Though, a CREME mousseline may be in line with what Alleguede posted.

Part of the fun I have been having is discovering all the kinds of buttercream that exist and that have been officially labelled in some form or another. Through my google search, I saw what Gisslen in Professional Baking calls "Pastry cream-type buttercream" come to be known as German buttercream (Brave Tart does this, for example) while others called it creme mousseline or mousseline buttercream. The German part didn't really baffle me so much as the mousseline. In both Friberg's text (mousseline sauce) and Gisslen's (he calls it pastry cream mousseline), mousseline is essentially pastry cream with whipped cream added (Martha Stewart is the same). Yet multiple blogs (especially french ones) refer to a "traditional creme mousseline" as pastry cream with butter added (this is Gisslen's Pastry cream-type buttercream or what Brave Tart calls German Buttercream). I just like to know this kind of stuff for the sake of knowing. Is creme mousseline just really another type of buttercream and another name for german buttercream or pastry cream-type buttercream or is it pastry cream lightened with whipped cream? Or is the former creme mousseline and the latter merely mousseline? Funny enough, Rose Levy calls an Italian Meringue Buttercream a Mousseline in Heavenly Cakes, which explains why some blogs think an IMBC = Mousseline.

I own the book, so I went back and read it and you're right. That's incredibly strange that he would recommend using a "mix" when this is a textbook for some pastry programs. I own The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg as well, so I went ahead and checked that and he doesn't even mention a depositor at all or a cake doughnut recipe. Luckily, Joe Pastry has covered cake doughnuts using a depositor quite well plus a "troubleshooting" guide and more: http://www.joepastry.com/category/pastry/doughnuts/cake-doughnuts/ The posts are in reverse chronological order, so start from the bottom to find the depositor doughnut recipe and work your way up. If your issue is scaling, what I would do is just set flour at 100% then figure out the rest of the percentages then compare the large-scale doughnut to Joe's original.

When you say authentic biryani, which are you referring to? I don't mean to be flippant. There are so many kinds from so many regions, especially within India itself. It's a truly, legitimate, honest-to-goodness question. I remember when I visited Sulaymaniyah, Iraq (I'm Kurdish and only lived there for 4 years) and how different their biryani was in comparison to my mom's--who has put a twist on all the traditional, authentic recipes--and the various Indian biryanis I had consumed. Next time she makes it I'll have to snag a picture. I really like your take on biryani, though. Once I learned what I had grown up with was not entirely traditional or authentic Kurdish food, it really changed how I viewed and cooked food.

I had assumed you would know that I meant potentially tasty (and assume you're in a "modernist" [for the lack of a better word, I suppose] restaurant). Regardless, I find it slightly funny that you wouldn't at least try it because you have this perconceived notion that it is somehow "soulless."

So even if it tastes good, great, or any other positive adjective, it should be sent back because you perceive it as soulless? You don't think that's close minded?

Fake is a strong word to use but, really, who cares? Tortilla Espanola can vary within Spain depending on the household, their family's tradition, etc. While there is a common, classical preparation (like there are many things), there are also variations that suit one's palate and also account for evolution and regional differences. If all we ever did was prepare things "classically" then cooking would be very stale.

Are you talking about Professional Baking by Gisslen? Maybe I've misunderstood but he discusses using the depositors with his cake-type doughnut.

That's a lot like the "original" Alfredo sauce. Ever since I read the Saveur article and tried it out, I find the Italian-American version lacklustre, especially when quality ingredients are used. Your first picture came out fantastic. It's like a beam of light focusing on Excalibur.

I feel like prime ground beef sounds almost like a gimmick. What essentially separates a prime cut from a choice cut is merely the marbling. If you grind it then you're just getting a fattier ground beef, which is easily achieved by adding your own fat to whatever you're grinding.