slkinsey

As chance would have it, I happen to have both Diamond and Morton kosher salt at home. Morton is a little smaller in size than Diamond. Morton also includes an anticaking agent, because they still want to make sure that "when it rains, it pours" (although I am not sure this would be an issue with coarse salt). But both are substantially larger in size than table salt. I don't think there are any laws as to specific size -- e.g., must be not less than ___ in diameter -- just that it has to be "coarse" salt. Wikipedia says: "It involves mechanical evaporation, and uses an open evaporating pan and steam energy. It results in a unique, three-dimensional flake salt of extremely light bulk density."

I think this is not entirely correct. It is not called "kosher salt" to mean that the salt is kosher. Rather, it is the salt that is used in the process of koshering. It should be called "koshering salt" rather than kosher salt. Kashrus specifies coarse salt for koshering. Here is a description from the Orthodox Union: The emphasis is mine. This is all to say that if one were to take kosher salt and grind it to a fine powder, it would no longer be kosher salt (it would still be pareve, however).

Scott Campbell at @SQC used to serve warm potato chips dusted with spices and sometimes with a bit of cheese melted onto them. I loved them.

How was this re-distillation accomplished? Tony had a still with him?

If we're talking about a straight, simple tomato sauce, I swear by the Hazan recipe I learned from Joe Bavuso: One large can of San Marzano tomatoes either lightly crushed by hand or, as I prefer, through the food mill with the coarse disk; one medium peeled onion, cut in half; one big lump of butter; salt. Put all ingredients into a cold saucepan. Turn on low heat. Slowly bring up to temperature until the butter is emulsified, the sauce is gently bubbling, and the onion has softened and given up its flavor. Discard the onion and use the sauce. Add fresh herbs at the end, if you like, but I usually don't. This is my go-to tomato sauce for fresh pasta. Looks like this: I did an experiment once making this same sauce in side-by-side batches, one with butter and one with good quality extra virgin olive oil. The butter version was so far superior that there was no comparison. For a more involved sauce, I'll sometimes do s sauce that turns out to be quite similar to Mario Batali's "basic tomato sauce." Sweat a medium diced onion, one medium grated carrot and a few thinly sliced cloves of garlic in extra virgin olive oil until soft. Add one large can of San Marzano tomatoes crushed or milled. Simmer maybe 30 minutes. Add fresh thyme and maybe a pinch of red pepper at the end. The carrot is for sweetness, and I'd rather use that than sugar, because it brings other flavors along with the sweetness that I like. My personal experience is that butter brings out the sweetness of tomatoes far more than olive oil, which is why this recipe incorporates carrot and the recipe above does not. Sometimes, depending on the flavor I'm going for, I'll add celery, keep all the vegetables in large chunks and run the whole works through a food mill when it's finished cooking. Something like this:

I love grappa. But most any grappa worth drinking will be lost in a cocktail. They also tend to be quite expensive. I could see using a reasonably priced white grappa like Nardini, but even that's fairly expensive for a use where you're not getting much mileage out of the spirit.

Compared to any of the other brands available in the NYC area Ronnybrook is such a quantum leap in quality over the other stuff, it's almost another product entirely. I only wish it were easier to find.

You know what? The extra couple of bucks for a tube of tomato paste is more than worth it to me if I can avoid measuring out tablespoon-sized scoops of tomato paste, freezing them and then bagging them. ... not that I have that kind of space in my freezer anyway.

Tomato paste is something that's been around for quite a while as a homemade product, albeit in somewhat different form than the industrial product with which we are familiar today. These days tomato paste is made by evaporating tomato pulp puree under vacuum, usually under a four- or five-stage evaporation process. As far as I know there is no meaningful "cooking" of the tomato product other than what is required for sterilization, and this likely means a quick ramp up to sterilization temperature, minimum time at temperature, and a quick ramp back down to room temperature. The essential "uncooked-ness" of industrial tomato paste is readily apparent in its flavor. The "double concentrated" thing is a translation of the Italian way of classifying reduced tomato products. Going in order with dry weight ("residuo secco") in parentheses, there is semi-concentrato di pomodoro (12%); concentrato di pomdodo (18%); doppio concentrato di pomodoro (28%); triplo concentrato di pomdoro (36%); and sestuplo concentrato di pomodoro (55%). Semi-concentrato and concentrato would be considered tomato puree in the US. The United States Standards for Grades of Canned Tomato Paste §52.5041(a) says: "Tomato Paste is the clean sound, wholesome product as defined in the Standard of Identity for Tomato Paste (21 CFR 155.191) issued pursuant to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and contains not less than 24.0 percent of natural tomato soluble solids." As far as I know, the tomato paste available for consumer purchase in American supermarkets is generally in the area of this minimum concentration requirement, which would make it right around the same thing as doppio concentrato (aka "double concentrated"). As you can see from the Italian classifications, however, there are tomato pastes that are much more concentrated than usual American supermarket tomato paste. I have some artisinal tomato paste from Sicily that is so concentrated it will not freeze solid. I like to have both canned and tubed tomato paste on hand -- but I'm not really using them for the same things. I'm not likely to use a half-tube of Amore or Mutti (which I've seen sold in lots of six for as little as ten bucks) all in one go. Sometimes I really only want to use a teaspoon of tomato paste, and for this the tube comes in handy. I'm willing to pay the price increase for the convenience and reduction in waste. If I want to use as much as a third of a can, I'm likely to break out the can opener. I've experimented with freezing the rest of the can, but have found this to be an unsatisfactory solution because it's a huge pain in the butt when all you want is just another tablespoon of tomato paste. If I could get ahold of sextuple concentrated tomato paste in cans, which would most likely not freeze solid, I'd stick with that and just scoop spoonfulls out of a container in the freezer whenever I wanted some. In my experience, quality of tomato paste can be very noticable and can make a huge difference, but it's not something one is likely to experience in every context and every recipe. If you're painting it on beef bones prior to roasting for a brown stock, or if you're using it in an Italian-American red sauce with tons of garlic and dried oregano, you're unlikely to taste a difference. If, on the other hand, you're making a sauce with nothing more than tomato paste, quality pork sausage and a little fresh parsley, the added depth of flavor the good stuff brings to the game can be noticable in my opinion.

I think the Oxo Seal & Store Rotary Grater looks pretty good for that kind of home use.

There's some question in my mind as to whether there is a great deal of demand for a really well made stainless rotary cheese grater for professional use. I can't say that I recall seeing a lot of the rotary type in use in restaurants. The kitchen, of course, is likely to bulk grate for their use (perhaps on a daily basis). I'd guess that the vast majority of restaurants in the States offering "would you like some parmesan cheese on that?" are spooning from a bowl of pre-grated cheese, and most of the others are using a regular plane-style grater. I've had cheese grated for me at the table out of a rotary grater probably less than 5 times. There's also the fact that the vast majority of restaurants aren't spending more money for equipment that's made better and made to last. As you know, the most common pan to be found in restaurants is the battered, warped, blackened raw aluminum frypan. . . . All of which is to say that a "really well made, professional quality, stainless rotary grater" simply may not exist. What do you like using this style of grater for? Just hard "grating cheeses," or do you also like to use it for things like cheddar and mozzarella?

Is this what you're looking for? http://bridgekitchenware.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=2335

It has pretty wide availability at all the good liquor stores, for example: Astor has Asyla, Hedonism, Spice Tree, Peat Monster and Oak Cross. Sherry-Lehmann has Hedinism, Peat Monster and Eleuthera. Park Avenue Liquor has Hedonism, Asyla, Peat Monster, Eleuthera, Oak Cross, Spice Tree and Orangerie.

The 1828 Webster's dictionary defines offal as: "Waste meat; the parts of an animal butchered which are unfit for use or rejected." The current (10th) edition of Webster's has it as: "1 : the waste or by-product of a process: as a : trimmings of a hide b : the by-products of milling used especially for stock feeds c : the viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal removed in dressing : VARIETY MEAT" The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the word origins as: "1398, "waste parts, refuse," from off + fall; the notion being that which "falls off" the butcher's block; perhaps a translation of M.Du. afval." Edited to remove bizzare quote that somehow got into the original.

I've had the sandwich at La Foccacceria. It's awesome. Since there has been a little in-thread discussion of what constitutes offal, I'd say that the easiest definition would be the "fifth quarter" -- which is to say, all the stuff that's left over after the animal is separated into the four primary quarters of muscle meat. This would include the organs and glands, of course, but would also include things like tendons, blood, feed, head, ears, nervous tissue, etc. -- and, of course, the products made from them, like scrapple, blood sausage, haggis, head cheese, pölsa, etc.

IMO the Fee's lemon bitters doesn't really have the complexity you'd like to have in a straight bitters. I see it as more of an "accent bitters" -- which is to say, something I might use in single dashes to accompany another bitters I'm already using in the drink. Edit to add a note that this is my 7,000th post.

I've spent considerable time in Le Marche, in both the mountains (Urbino) and on the coast (Pesaro) -- although both are in the North of the zone. I'll see if I can contribute any information. The one dish that comes to mind when I think of the mountains is pollo in friccò. This more or less consists of chicken which is browned in olive oil, then braised in white wine with fresh rosemary, garlic and juniper berries. The way I was taught to make it, you keep only a shallow layer of white wine boiling furiously over high heat, and replenish as necessary. When a bottle of wine is boiled away, the chicken is ready. Grocery stores would package cut-up chickens together with fresh rosemary, garlic and juniper berries "ready for friccò." The cooking by the coast, as you may imagine, is quite different. I had a lot of fritto misto out there. One thing that I thought was interesting and unusual is that, in the locals' seafood restaurants I frequented where one price got you everything, they typically served many different small dishes as the antipasto. There is also a tradition there of serving seafood with fresh pasta, which is not the common practice throughout Italy.

What he said. The best thing to serve with risotto is a nice glass of wine.

Baggy, what vacuum sealer are you using? My FoodSaver Professional III doesn't do well with liquids, but I always just use the trick of freezing he liquid (this works just fine with olive oil) and vacuuming the bag while the liquid is still frozen. Anyway, 400 ml doesn't sound like a small amount of oilve oil to me (that's around 1.7 cups), and I'd also worry that stacking fillets one on top of the other would mean that some surfaces wouldn't be covered by the oil. But I can see your point regarding your cost when using the cheap oil. I tend to use a significantly higher quality extra virgin olive oil for this.

The Gumps on Wikipedia.

Makes sense with respect to water. For me, however, it doesn't make sense to do it this way when using oil. If I want fish slow poached in extra virgin olive oil it takes (at least) a cup of oil to completely submerge the piece of fish. And then, when you're done cooking the fish, you have a cup of fish-infused oil you have to throw away. On the other hand, I can seal as little as a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil in a bag with a piece of fish, and the fish will be completely surrounded by the oil on every side. The great thing is that the fish doesn't know the difference.

I see some gum arabic right here at around 22 bucks for a pound. Considering the amounts one is likely to use, that doesn't strike me as prohibitively expensive. Isn't the classic gomme syrup also supersaturated? Here is Dave's recipe from the (currently offline) Esquire pages: I assume one could make an even more concentrated syrup, if desired.

What's the theory behind the 52C pre-treatments for the broccoli and cabbage? What is is supposed to do? Is this something you read about, or something you came up with on your own? Also, when you say "direct contact in a gastronorm pan," does this mean you have the vegetables in the same water as the circulator? Or that you have the vegetables in a water-filled gastronorm pan that is sitting in/heated by the water bath?

I don't see it on their web site, but I believe Kalustyan's sells gum arabic. There are also other places where you can buy it. So, no reason to make a fake gomme syrup.

Very cool. What temp do you do? 65C or so?