slkinsey

Cookware sets are almost always a bad idea because, while they may look like a great deal ("look how many pans I get!"), inevitably several of the pans are rarely if ever used. When you figure out the cost of the pans that are actually used, the deal suddenly doesn't look so great. Rather, I'd advise your friend to take a look at the two pans she uses the most and which she constantly finds herself wishing she had better (or bigger, or different design or whatever), spend the whole 200 bucks getting really good versions of those two pans and make do with the crapware for the other stuff. The fact is that you don't need a nice pan to boil water for pasta or steam vegetables, etc. If, a year down the road, she finds that she's still using one of the crapware pans a lot and constantly wishing for better, then that would be a good time to replace that one pan with something better. And so on, and so on, and so on.

I was just thinking about this myself! Yesterday I visited the Union Square Greenmarket and picked up a bunch of heirloom tomatoes from my regular guys (I forget the name, but they're at the end of the short dogleg in the Northeast and their other main products are herbs and potted plants). They were, as usual, mindblowingly delicious. I actually mentioned this discussion to the farmer... how heirloom tomatoes used to be 100% awesome when you could find them 10 years ago and how they're not the virtual guarantee of quality anymore now that you can get them at Whole Foods. He visibly recoiled when I mentioned that name and said: "Look... if you put crap into the tomatoes, they're not going to be good no matter what kind they are. Also, these were picked yesterday. We have to pack them in single layer stacked boxes because they're too delicate to pile on top of each other, and even then some of them break open. [He pointed to a discard bucket of burst-open tomatoes.] There's no way you can get that from a big grocery store." He also reiterated that high rains does tend to create mushy, watery fruit and excessive cracking unless you're able to take countermeasures (which I suppose might include covering the vines to shield them from too much rain, or holding back the tomatoes until the weather dries out). Anyway, I certainly didn't detect any diminution of quality. If anything, it's the case that my guys have mastered an ever-widening number of heirloom cultivars, so variety has increased greatly over the years. I got some Purple Cherokee, some Brandywine, some Amish Paste, and a medium-sized cultivar I can't quite remember that had the deepest red I've seen.

Just to add a point of data... Fairway's "high B" quality Parmigiano Reggiano was selling for less than $9 a pound the last time I bought some. For "best you can get in the US" quality Parmigiano Reggiano delle Vacche Rosse it's going to cost quite a bit more (probably around $20/lb).

Hawthorn strainer or julep strainer?

Jack, I'm not thinking in terms of what will sell in retail for a low price. I am thinking in terms of how to achieve certain goals. In specific, I am thinking about how large a convection-equalized water bath would have to be in order to hit and maintain a target temperature within a range of variation that is less than 0.5C, and also such that the water surrounding the food won't vary more than around 0.25C (e.g., I don't want the part on the bottom to be a degree warmer than the part on the top). I don't see anyont shelling out $150+ for a sous vide system that can only cook two pork chops at a time. I'd say it needs to be able to accommodate at least, say, six double cut pork chops at once or six portions of beef short ribs, etc. -- in other words, something right around the size of an American football. I doubt you could put that amount of food into a bottom-heated, convection-equalized water bath of only one gallon and not have temperature equalization problems. You'd also run into a problem that the volume and thermal mass of the food would be more than the volume and thermal mass of the water. For example, a gallon is 231 cubic inches. Six double cut pork chops would be around 128 cubic inches, leaving only 103 cubic inches for the water. I don't see that working. This size would work for a crock pot, but not for a water bath for sous vide. Not that I think the size issue is unimportant, which is one reason I favor a clip-on recirculating heater over an all-in-one convection-equalized design. The clip-on unit is small, and you can use it with equipment you already own (you can even clip it to a plastic pickle bucket or rubber bus tub, for that matter). Doc, I agree that you can use a large variety of vessel sizes when you use a recirculating heater. I'm more interested in minimum practical size requirements for a convection-equalized water bath. And for practical use, as I say above, it should be large enough to accommodate food at least as large as a pork loin, first-cut brisket, short ribs for 6-8, etc. For people who just want to do short-time sous vide cooking in small portions of foods such as two pieces of salmon, a dedicated water bath system really isn't needed. A large stock pot and a highly accurate thermometer should suffice.

I'm interested as to what we think would be the minimum practical volume for a home water bath for sous vide, and I suppose we should divide it into two categories depending on whether the temperature will be equalized throughout the water actively, with a recirculator, or passively via convection. To my thinking, you'd want to have a fair amount of space around the food, and in particularly between the food and the heat source, when using water bath that is equalized by convection. With a recirculating water bath, should be less of an issue (especially if the heating element is in the recirculator).

I've had an idea, which I mention in another thread, of shaking a drink as usual but including a marble-sized piece of dry ice together with the water ice. This should allow for approximately the same dilution, but should make the drink extra-cold and would hopefully result in a smoking and perhaps lightly carbonated drink. You would need to have a shaker that locked together, though, otherwise I think it would blow apart as the CO2 was liberated.

Do sous-vide cooks (I'm not one) routinely use the circulating type?Yea. As far as I know, most everyone who uses a water bath for sous vide cooking uses a recirculating type. Otherwise, how can you insure uniform temperature rthroughout the water bath? I do mine in a 5 gallon vessel, and assume there would be significant challenges to hitting/maintaining a target temperature with +/- 0.5C (mine is good to <0.1C) unless the water were circulating. On the other hand, someone like nathanm would have a better answer on this than I. Seems like you can find recirculating units for around $400 bucks or less on eBay if you're lucky. I got my Lauda, thoroughly cleaned and reconditioned, for something like $500. Brand new units go for significantly more. Sam and also jackal10, that may or may not be relevant (do you have data?) I'm just thinking in terms of practicalities. As you say, almost every feedback-regulated temperature controller in daily life employs an on-off heating element. My Lauda does not appear to be different in that respect. Once the Lauda reaches the target temperature, the heater appears to pulse on and off as the unit determines necessary to maintain the target temperature. The entire water bath is the same temperature, because the water is constantly recirculated. Consider now, a crock pot. First of all, it would have to be a gigantic crock pot in order to hold enough water for anything bigger than a few pork chops at a time. So, you've got a temperature probe in the middle of the water bath. The heat element comes on full blast and heats up the Crock Pot's ceramic insert. Eventually, the water around the probe reaches the target temperature and the heating element shuts off. But, of course, it doesn't suddenly go to zero heat. How long does it take for the heating element to cool down? How long does it take for the ceramic insert to cool down? Presumably, the ceramic insert and the water near the ceramic insert are already warmer than the target temperature once the water next to the probe reaches the target temperature. So, what happens is that the residual heat in the heating element and the ceramic insert conduct into the water and the water overshoots the target temperature. I suppose that you could theoretically hit a point where the heating element was pulsing on and off just the right amount (assuming the heating element is amenable to that sort of thing) to maintain the target temperature at +/- 0.5C. Maybe. Or it could just continue to swing back and forth too much to be useful for the full range of sous vide techniques, some of which are more temperature-sensitive than others. But I still have to believe that there will be temperature stability, uniformity and accuracy problems when the temperature probe is in a reasonably large volume of non-circulating water, and the heating element is on the bottom and/or sides of the vessel. Of course, there's no way of knowing unless someone tries it. It might be worth Robert Wright's/Lab-Pro Incorporated's time to do some testing and see if they can come up with a system large enough to do real-world amounts of food that has temperature stability and accuracy within, say, 0.5 - 0.25 degrees C. If they could either produce a system for around $200 or sell a unit with instructions for under $100, I bet people would buy it.

The question is whether a PID controller/crock pot is sufficently low priced to make it worth choosing over just picking up a recirculating water bath heater on eBay. And, needless to say, whether you can use the crock pot setup without having to know electronics (a recirculating water bath heater is more or less "plug and play").

I'm not sure that I buy the "spatially uniform" bit. The reason lab heaters circulate the water is to maintain all the water at the same temperature. For something like a crock pot, I have my doubts as to whether it could maintain the temperature with any precision and uniformity. For one, I think the very nature of the way the heating element works would likely cause the temperature to overshoot with some frequency, and the temperature would likely swing with a range of several degrees. Now, your friend may not think that temperature accuracy of +/- 5C is a big deal, but it can make a really big deal on what you're cooking when you're trying to take advantage of the technology's full power. I'd also be curious if you could ask your friend what features, exactly, a recirculating water bath heater would have that would not be used in sous-vide cooking. My Lauda has settings for temperature and fail-safe cutoff temperature, and it recirculates the water (mine is a stand-alone heater that I can clip on to any water vessel, rather than an all-in-one water bath). That's pretty much all it does, and it's accurate to 0.1 degrees C. All of these features I'd say are used in sous-vide cooking.

Al, did you sear the short ribs right out of the bag? If I'm going to be pan-searing (as opposed to using a blowtorch) I usually wait for the meat to cool down a while. Otherwise, the pan searing will probably take the temperature of the meat too high. You'll still have the pink interior because the LT/LT cooking "fixed" the color, but you might end up with a dryer texture that you don't want.

As you can see, I've been a Franny's supporter from the beginning, so I'm very happy to see that they are getting the recognition they deserve. Also very happy to see that they are bringing back pasta items to the menu. I think it says a lot about the kind of people they are that they took pasta off the menu for a number of years because they didn't think they had the equipment and staffing to do it right.

http://qtonic.com/availability.html

They say: Pour your wine into this decanter because it will "aerate" the wine. Okay, so far so good. It is generally accepted that aeration has certain beneficial effects on wine. Another word for "aerate" is "oxygenate." Then they say: You can use our special vacuum cork to suck all the air out of the decanter, thus preserving your wine. Okay. Well, it is also generally accepted that vacuuming out an opened bottle helps to minimize spoilage to the tune of a day or two. Here is what is ridiculous and stupid about this product: Once you pour the wine out of the wine bottle and into the decanter, it is already oxygenated to a certain extent. No amount of vacuuming out the airspace in the decanter is going to "un-oxygenate" the wine. And oxygenation is what makes the wine go stale after a few days. In effect, they are saying: "Oxygenate your wine by pouring it into our decanter. If you have any left over wine in the decanter, protect it from the effects of oxygenation by vacuuming out the remaining air in the decanter." Personally, I'm holding out for a V1 Vacuum Decanter with built-in Wine Clip. I'm totally going for the crystal pyramid wine cabinet to store it in, too.

I should add to this that some drinks you won't be able to get just anywhere. For example, looking at your examples, the Oaxaca Old Fashioned from D&C is made with very specific spirits, in particular, Los Amantes Joven Mescal. This spirit, or indeed any mescal whatsoever, is not exactly standard bar stock, and if you don't have it you can't make an Oaxaca Old Fashioned. This would be equally true of drinks made with custom infusions. etc. In general, most cocktails people I know are not so big on the "secret recipe" thing. They would rather have their drinks made with the correct recipe and attribution, and of course having some popular cocktails out there with your name attached to them is a pretty good way to grow your reputation and influence.

The main question is whether the new bar is going to know how to make the drink. I wouldn't order a French Pearl at a random bar in, say, Milwaukee. But one has a reasonable expectation that the bartenders at PDT are familiar with the drink. Consider this: all cocktail recipes were once "house drinks" at a bar somewhere.

Not to mention the Blinker: 2 oz : rye whiskey 1 oz : fresh grapefruit juioce 1 tsp : raspberry syrup Two important notes: First, I find that Old Overholt is by far the best rye for this cocktail. Second, depending on the tartness of your grapefruit and the sweetness of your raspberry syrup, you will need to adjust for balance.

The "measured drink"? What does this mean, exactly? Using a jigger instead of free pouring? This is something the best bars in NYC have been doing for years.

I don't think you'd have an easy time getting ice cubes into the top of an ISI Thermo Whip.

I am hoping to have someone either design for me or adapt from available equipment a special shaker. It would need to be insulated and capable of withstanding a fair amount of internal pressure, and will need some kind of pressure release valve to let off gas before the shaker is opened and the drink is poured. My idea is that one would build a cocktail as usual, including putting the usual amount of water ice into the shaker, but would then add an approximately marble-sized piece of dry ice into the shaker. Seal, shake (this is why the shaker would need to be pressure-tight), release the pressure valve, open the shaker, strain. I think this would result in a cocktail that is not only extremely cold, but also hopefully smoking and lightly carbonated.

Yea, I think it was the case that in the early days of the "heirloom tomato phenomenon" not that many people were growing them, and those that were growing them were doing so with care. So, in those days, pretty much any time you got your hands on an heirloom tomato variety, it was going to be delicious. Now that bigger businesses have figured out that there is money to be made selling these varieties, you find more and more heirloom tomatoes in places where you previously wouldn't expect them... places like Whole Foods and middlebrow restaurants not known for using slocal produce. The result is that an heirloom tomato is no longer the virtual guarantee of quality it used to be. I don't expect a Brandywine from Whole Foods to be particularly good. On the other hand, the heirloom tomatoes I get from my guys down in the Union Square Greenmarket, the same guys I bought from back when heirloom tomatoes were a relative rarity, are still just as good as they always were.

Honestly, I don't understand this at all. If Bruni had been writing an article about NYC pizza or a NYC pizzeria, or even about a style of pizza made elsewhere that is comparable to or within the frame of reference of classic NYC pizza, then I would agree with you. But not only was the article about a pizzeria on the other side of the country, but the correct frame of reference for that pizzeria is nationwide rather than local. Indeed, Bruni makes a point of this by writing "it reflects the spread of a certain kind of haute pizza culture across the country." Had Bruni devoted significant column space to comparisons between Mozza and NYC pizza or NYC pizzerie, that would have demonstrated a fundamental lack of knowledge -- not to mention that he would have had to shoehorn it into an article where it really doesn't belong. Instead, he mentions that the aesthetic at Mozza is part of a nationwide trend and names examples of pizzerie that share this aesthetic in three cities (NYC, Chicago and Phoenix). Other than passing mentions of the more robust pizza served in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome (an appropriate reference because it reflects an influence of Silverton's) and Spago (again, appropriate because Spago was a "gourmet pizza" pioneer in the US, and was also in Los Angeles) he doesn't talk about any other pizza or any other pizzerie. And why should he? It's not a comparison piece. I don't really see that it is incumbent upon him to relate the article closely to NYC and NYC pizza simply because he is writing for the New York Times where he has a gig as a food critic. If he were writing an article about a pizzeria in Napoli, would he have to give three paragraphs to Patsy's and Franny's?

Not to flog this too much, but my opinion of pizza has been considered highly enough to be featured in several newspaper articles... What Bruni wrote was: I don't have any quibble with that. If there are people who made the argument that he should have been more conversant with the likes of Di Fara, Patsy's and Grimaldi's, they're wrong. Those pizzerie are in an entirely different category and not relevant to an article on Mozza or the point he was making. I, personally, might have suggested Franny's or Fornino as better NYC places to put up for comparison, but Una Pizza Napoletana is reasonably-enouth relevant in the context in which it was used in the article. The people who emailed Bruni or posted in blogs things like "You obviously don't get around to all of Manhattan. You want real Napoletana pizza, go to Patsy's on First Avenue between 117th and 118th streets on the west side of the street" -- well, they simply do not understand what Neapolitan pizza is, and as a result are talking out their asses.

Sigh. If only Lillet would come out with an "antica formula" kind of deal.

Although this horse has already been flogged, NYC does have pizza roughly in the style category and aesthetic as Mozza. They have it at Franny's, Una Pizza Napoletana, Fornino, Otto, etc. But those places aren't serving "NYC pizza." They are, by and large, serving what one might call "nuova pizza Napoletana."