Anonymous Modernist 2030

Hi! As many of you are probably aware by the number of forums crammed with razor-sharp-knife-addicts, japanese knives are quite trendy among chefs... from the 3-star chef to the not-so-money-conscious home cook (precisely the kind of cook that will afford MC^^). The point of my post is not to start a philosophical debate on whether or not there are good european- or american-style knives, nor to say all knives with a "japan style" label are excellent. Yet I must confess that from the day I cut my first veggie with a quality japanese knife, it changed both my food prep experience AND my appreciation of the final product. What I would be very interested in is knowing from MC's arsenal of analysis techniques how big a difference a knife can make: - on the effort required to cut - on the surface of the cut - on the qualities of the end-product (water loss, visual aspect, taste, ...) - ... For instance, the hardest japanese knives are non-stainless, and they easily impart an iron oxide taste to the food, especially when acidic, when they are not carefully wiped every 20 seconds. So in my opinion the advantage -other than sheer cutting power- of an aoko honyaki usuba over a ginsako or swedish stainless usuba is debatable... Any thoughts ? Nick.

Wow, that's right on target! Interesting to see all the creative debate and how we can put state-of-the-art analysis techniques to use in our basic kitchen activities! Thanks... Nick. PS: Probably this post would be better off in "Modernist Techniques", thanks!

Hello, I didn't realize that maybe the reason there was no answer to my posts on the blog may be that I should probably post them here instead... Here is my problem: It seems to me that there is more to torching food that the oxidizing flame. One aspect, which I haven‚’t seen mentioned in MC or MCAH -but I may be mistaken- is the coating of the surface. I recently purchased a MAPP torch, which on the same night did extremely well on the instant swiss meringue, and gave my barely-medium-rare salmon the taste of burnt hair. And videos I have seen on the net of chefs torching nigirizushi, for instance, give me the impression that their searing was not much different from mine. Hence my questions: -does searing with a blowtorch always work as well as hot-as-hell-pan-searing ? -should we coat some meats/fishes (with oil ? yakitori sauce ?) before torchearing them ? -light touches with a back-and-forth movement to raise the temperature slowly but evenly in several passes, or constant medium speed to reach the desires level of crustiness in one pass ? Let‚’s imagine a piece of pork skin, with hair on it. It seems to me that, no matter how hot the torch, how skilled you are at searing, it WILL taste off because of the burnt hair. Now although I don‚’t see why people would want to sear hairy pork skin, it also looks like some surfaces may have the equivalent at the microscopic level, such as cellular membranes that will produce off tastes when heated with a flame. These tastes would not be of fuel, obviously… That‚’s the only explanation I see to the difference between meringue and salmon which I mentioned above. So if anyone had either an explanation or a way of preparing the surface of the food to avoid these problems, I‚’d be delighted.