slkinsey

Very nice to see a cocktail named after one of my favorite composers. Is this a Bellini riff? Awesome list. To pick a minor nit: It's Amaro CioCiaro, not Amaro Cio Ciaro (as explained here, and also see the producer's product page here where it is spelled without capitalizing the second C -- which I would take to be the most correct). Not a big deal, but maybe worth fixing before you print.

This is one reason it's nice to have a very thin probe. Not only will the thermocouple react more rapidly, but the thermal capacity of the probe will be lower. In terms of probes conducting thermal energy into the food, this is of course only a concern when one is using a probe that stays inside the meat while it is cooking. In these situations, a leave-in probe can function much like those aluminum potato nails, conducting heat into the surrounding food. When using a hand-held probe, the effect is just the opposite: the food conducts heat into the probe. This is what enables the thermocouple to gauge the temperature, however, so that's okay. The probe isn't in the food long enough to make a significant difference as to thermal energy in the food, and any temperature effect created by a disequlibrium of temperature will be far below the sensitivity of the thermometer.

Anodized aluminum is notorious for accumulating spots of polymerized fat, which are then incredibly difficult to remove. This doesn't make much difference for a grill pan, of course, but properly cleaned anodized aluminum is considerably less "sticky" than anodized aluminum with polymerized fat. This is most obvious when there are only a few spots of polymerized fat on an otherwise clean anodized aluminum surface -- the spots of polymerized fat are always exactly where food will stick.

Right. I suppose I should have said: the Thermapen or other similarly designed and priced options. (The Comark uses a T-type thermocouple whereas the Thermapen uses a K-type. I have no idea whether or how this might make a difference.) The "high accuracy" Thermapen has not only finer resolution, but also better accuracy. The regular Thermapen has accuracy ±1% ±1 digit; the high-accuracy Thermapen has accuracy ±0.8F/0.4C ±1 digit.

When you dry shake at room temperature, you evaporate some of the alcohol into the airspace, which expands giving the air in the shaker "positive internal pressure." This is the opposite of the "negative pressure" that is created when shaking with ice, which we all know helps to keep the pieces of the shaker together. The end result is that some of the air inside the shaker would like to escape to create equilibrium. The same thing would happen were you to dry shake with warm water. NB. There is really no such thing as "positive or negative pressure." What we mean by saying this is "greater or less than atmospheric pressure."

IMO the value of something like the Thermapen would depend greatly on a conbination of three factors: First, the extent to which something offering reasonably similar performance and convenience can be had for a significantly lower price. Second, whether you perform any cooking tasks that rely greatly upon the fast response time and accuracy offered by the Thermapen. And Third, how often you like to use a themperature probe in cooking. If, for example, you cannot get a convenient single-hand small temperature probe for significantly less than the Thermapen, and you like to use a temperature probe on a multiple-times-a-day basis, shelling out a hundred bucks for a Thermapen strikes me as money well spent. On the other hand, if you only use a temperature probe a couple of times a month, and/or you don't mind the inconvenience of taking temperature readings via a needle connected to a box with a wire, then you can find satisfiaction at a much lower price point. There is, of course, an almost infinite number of individual considerations relating to these three factors. One thing that seems somewhat clear is that, if you would like ~1 second response time, resolution to 0.1C and a convenient all-in-one-hand design, the Thermapen may be the only game in town.

In case it is not familiar to everyone, when something "precipitates" that means that it comes out of liquid solution into a solid form. Often, but not always, this is in the form of extremely fine particles. If these fine particles do not cohere into larger pieces then, as bostonapothecary says, the particles are usually too small to be effectively filtered out by passing the suspension through a fine strainer. Just looking at Erik's picture, it's not clear to me that a fine sieve would have had much effect. On the other hand, had he added the prune syrup to all the other ingredients combined, instead of first mixing it with kirschwasser (I believe Trimbach is around 90 proof?), it's possible that the percent alcohol wouldn't have been high enough to precipitate out the soluble fiber. Once it did precipitate out, however, there was no putting it back into solution. How is this different (or is it) from a damson gin? Just to clarify this a bit... prunelle is the French word for the fruit of the Blackthorn shrub, a/k/a "sloes." The French word for "plum" is pruneau. The prunelle/sloe is not the same thing as a damson. A sloe is Prunus spinosa whereas a damson is a subspecies (insititia) of Prunus domestica, which is where most domestic eating plums are found. So, I suppose the question is how prunelle is different from sloe gin rather than from damson gin. From what I have been able to read, I suppose that sloe gin might be the best substitution if one can find the real thing. It's not clear to me how these spirits differ, except that prunelle is a creme liqueur made with a neutral spirits base whereas sloe gin presumably has a gin base (although usually not) and perhaps other flavorings. Perhaps prunelle is made by a different process than sloe gin (e.g., without the pits)?

I peel beginning at the arctic circle and proceeding in more or less one spiral down to the anarctic circle. Then I cut off the bottom to make a level base. Then, balancing it on the base, cut down across the center once, turn the entire apple one quarter-turn (keeping the two halves together) and cut down across the center once again. Then I cut off the pointy axis of each quarter to remove the core in a straight cut (which also gets the stem and any residual arctic peel). "Cutting around the center" only saves two knife-strokes on that method (unless you decide to forego making a flat base, which you could always do with my method as well so long as you don't mind maybe losing a finger) and, as Steven observes, results in unevenly sized pieces of apple -- fine for applesauce, but not so much for tarte tatin.

For people who subscribe to a topping-centric view of pizza appreciation, for whom the crust is mostly a vehicle for plentiful toppings, and who prefer pizza in what I might call the "pizza parlor" style, Di Fara is justly considered the pinnacle of the craft --largely for the high quality of toppings used. I think of it, with absolutely no offense intended, as the top end of a style of pizza that has Domino's down at the other end of the quality scale. This is the style of pizza with which most Americans are most familiar, so it's no surprise that Di Fara is so popular. Like yourself, that style doesn't excite me enough to go all the way out to BFE for a slice. But I'd probably go there every so often if I found myself in the neighborhood with any frequency.

Steven: Do you want the apples whole after peeling and coring? If pieces are okay for your use, I find that peeling around in a spiral (a good, sharp peeler is very important) and then quartering the apple and cutting out the inner point of each wedge (removing the core as well as the stem end and any tiny bits of peel remaining at the top and bottom of the apple all in one cut) is easy and efficient. I assume this is similar to your technique?

Is it possible to sufficiently soften dried beans significantly below the simmer? This would be the major limiting factor.

I'm wondering what would be the advantages of cooking beans sous vide? This doesn't seem like a food that would benefit from LT/LT cooking, so at the most you'd be sealing in aromatics.

Erik, are you sure it "gelatinized"? It sounds a bit more like "precipitated" to me. Or are you saying that the entire volume of prune syrup reacted with the alcohol, clumped up and refused to mix? Anyway, I have seen some things precipitate when added to alcohol. Once I wanted to make an Old Fashioned with Red Hook rye (at around 136 proof) and gomme syrup instead of regular simple syrup. As soon as I added the booze to the glass, the gomme (which usually mixed in completely transparently) threw off a cloud of white particulates that never re-dissolved into the drink, even after the proof had been diluted significantly by the melting ice. This is similar to the louching that happens when water is added to absinthe, except that it's the water-soluble substances that precipitate when the proof is raised rather than the alcohol-soluble ones when the proof is lowered. So... since prune juice is very high in soluble fiber, and considering that this generally means "water soluble" -- it's possible that the addition of high proof kirschwasser caused the soluble fiber to precipitate out of solution.

Also... if you get the high accuracy Thermopen that takes Type K thermocouple probes you can not only have superfast temperature results and 0.1C resolution with spot checking, but you can also buy a variety of oven probes with cable attachments. The one thing you don't get is an alarm.

WRT switching between degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit, I find that once you get used to one scale, switching doesn't really matter too much. Rare beef is rare beef, no matter what temperature scale is used. Since I've been using a Lauda circulating water bath heater for several years that measures in degrees Celsius, I have become accustomed to thinking in that scale. If I happen to have a cookbook that specifies some Fahrenheit temperature with which I am not familiar (I am quite familiar with meat cooking temperatures for various levels of "doneness" but not so familiar with, say the temperature at which egg yolks curdle) I simply visit the convert-me.com temperature conversion page, do a one-time conversion and write the temperature into the book in degrees Celsius.

"Overheating" the liquid is a technique that is familiar to most all-grain homebrewers, where this is called the "strike temperature." When you're using relatively known elements (water and cracked malt in the case of homebrewing) it's easy to predict how high you need to heat a certain amount of liquid in order to arrive in the ballpark of another temperature after mixing in a certain amount of room temperature grain. To really figure out how much to overshoot you need to know how much oil you have, how much food you want to fry, the temperature of that food, and to a certain extent the nature of that food (a pound of french fries will have a different effect than a pound of chicken thighs). Of, of course, you can just do it by the seat of your pants. One way would be to put in a small amount of food and keep on adding food in small amounts until the thermometer drops down to your target temperature.

I like the looks of the plug-mount Thermapen where you can use different probes.

Huh. It's that loud? My Lauda is quiet as a mouse.

Further to my point about international haute cuisine not being particularly French, I'd like to make a few examples: Carpaccio of blue fin tuna, eggplant caviar and mozzarella underneath, osetra caviar on top French or Italian? Chatham cod with braised fennel, raw fennel and fennel essence French or Italian or American? duck liver terrine with mission figs French or Italian? I would argue that the only dish that seems connected to France and French cooking is the last one. The first two could easily have come from fancy restaurants with an Italian name. But they're sort of not Italian either. Which is to say that they don't seem like they are "from" anywhere except being out of the kitchen of a very expensive high-end fine dining restaurant. For some reason, however (probably because they more or less invented it) we don't have any difficulty calling dishes like these "French" when they come out of a restaurant with a French name on the door, but many people would have some difficulty calling the same dishes "Italian" -- despite the fact that I don't see either of those two dishes as being any more connected to France than they might be to Italy. It's this sort of thing, I think, that can bias people against the idea of Italian restaurant cuisine that moves as far away from Italian cooking as these dishes do from French cooking. For some reason we're more protective of Italian cooking in our minds -- or less protective of French cooking, take your pick.

I'm not Toby, but I think I can answer that one. For a while now* if a cocktail is going to be served above a certain size for whatever reason, many better cocktail bars have been decanting part of the drink into a separate "miniature carafe" or beaker on the side, which is then nestled into a small bowl of crushed ice. This way the customer can have a larger pour, but the drink remains cold and is not diluted by staying on the ice. * I first became aware of Audrey Saunders doing it at Bemelman's, but don't believe they were first.

The main source of my argument is what I have been told by people living in Italy , both Italian and non-Italian, during the pre- and post-WW2 years. Not that I think it's particularly relevant to this discussion, but I also don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that cooks looking for work due to the beheading of their former employers lead to French restaurant culture around the time of the Revolution (i.e., the last decade of the 18th Century). This is why I said "and other factors" -- those other factors being things like the rise of a large bourgeoise class (which was not present to this extent in countried such as Italy, which remained more or less feudal for a much longer period). Regardless, it seems incontrovertible that France had a well-developed restaurant culture, and especially a high-end restaurant culture, more than 100 years before Italy did.

Those are retail prices for plug-and-play units. Surely the parts and packaging cost considerably less than that. That's why I'm making estimates based on retail prices. For example, an immersion blender (representing the stick around which the unit would be built, the circulator and the motor for the circulator) can be had for 20 dollars retail. How much can a heating coil to wind around the stick possibly cost at retail? Another 20 bucks? So now we have, at retail prices, a $60 Auber PID with thermistor, a $20 immersion blender and a $20 heating coil -- or let us rather assume that we're getting the parts that more or less comprise these three elements, and that they would extend out to similar retail prices. That's 100 bucks. I can't believe that putting all these parts together in some kind of housing, slapping on a clamp and doing the appropriate soldering and programming of the PID could possibly add more than 50 dollars per unit to the retail price. Now... this unit may not last as long as a Lauda. But it should certainly last as long as a $150 microwave. Now... whether or not companies have liability, volume and other concerns that are keeping them from pursuing this kind of project is another story (although, of course, it's just as easy to poison or burn yourself with a crock pot if you don't follow the instructions). But I don't see price as a reasonable excuse. I have to believe that restaurant purchases of brand-new Brinkmann/Lauda or PolyScience circulating water bath heaters are not significant to the bottom line of these companies. It should also be possible to create a culinary version of these products that has decent enough accuracy for culinary applications, but not for lab work. Again, it's likely that labs aren't using brand new top-of-the-line super-accurate circulating heaters for noncritical applications anyway.

My "specs" would include a circulator (have you ever looked at the hardware that does the circulating in one of these things? it's nothing special). I also don't see any reason why a home kit would need to include the container for the water bath -- just make something that can clamp on to the side of a stockpot. To my mind, it should be relatively simple and inexpensive to put something like this together. PID kits retail for something like 60 bucks with a decent enough thermistor. Throw in a heating coil, something cheap to squirt water through a directional port (more or less the guts of an immersion stick blender), a clamp and a plastic enclosure for the whole thing. On an industrial level, that shouldn't bring the price up by more than, say, another 90 bucks retail. Seems like this would be good enough.

This is interesting. I wonder what the target price point was. Seems like it shouldn't be too terribly difficult on an industrial basis to wrap some heating coils around a stick with a little boat motor on the end to stir the water around, then slap a PID on top, snake a thermistor down the stick, add a clamp on the back and wrap the whole works in plastic. This would offer good accuracy for home use, and circulating the water would keep the water bath uniform. Shouldn't it be possible to do something like this for $100 - $150? Of course, if their target price point is 50 bucks, no wonder they can't do it.

Yea, that's an interesting point, Max. Personally, I am excited to see that true absinthe is available for legal purchase mostly because (1) it allows me to better recreate preban cocktails; (2) because they are, in general, better in quality and more interesting than the substitutes we have been using; and (3) because we now have several products to choose from where previously we had none. Most likely (and hopefully) there will be enough frat boy drinking of absinthe for it's supposed "extra" properties (much like they drink Jagermeister and God knows what else) to make it economically viable forquality absinthe makers to continue selling in the US.