slkinsey

Capsaicin is nonvolatile and cannot be distilled. Other "spicy hot" chemicals can, however, such as the spice chemicals in horseradish (I believe).

Some questions, observations and answers for owners of Hobart 210 models. I recently acquired two of them off of Craigslist: one in the "all metal" design, fully functional with all its parts, and the other in the "cream colored paint" design, with a working motor and carriage but missing the blade guards, sharpener housing and sharpener. So. . . First, I was interested to observe that the design of the two slicers, while very similar, was not identical. Maybe one of them is the 110 and the other is the 210? I don't know. Looking upthread, the slicer that randallrosa enameled to such nice effect is actually not supposed to be enameled like that, as it is the "all metal" model. Second, if anyone wants an original owner's manual for the Hobart 110/210 Slicer, please download this PDF. Third, the "all metal" model does seem to have some scratching through a finish of some kind (a layer of "finish metal" maybe?). Anyone know if these can be polished out, or if the metal can be re-layered. The carriage, for example, shows scratches where the spikes on the meat grip slid across it so many times. Fourth, does anyone know how to remove the blade? Do you have to pry off the cap somehow? Fifth, the stones are supposed to freely rotate as they contact the blade and entire sharpener assembly is supposed to slide back and forth in its housing. The way it works is that you start the motor and push in the little knob so that the "grinding wheel" contacts the blade. You do this until you think there has been enough sharpening. Then you pull back on the little knob until the "truing wheel" contacts the blade for one second or less. Then you go back to the grinding wheel for one second or less. Since the slicer blade is only ground on one bevel, the one-second stuff is just to remove the burr. Unfortunately, a lot of the grinder assemblies are seriously gunked up (I know mine was) so they don't slide back and forth very easily and the wheels don't turn very freely. This is not so great when you're wanting to just kiss the back of the blade for a half-second. I unscrewed mine, removed the grinding stones and spent some time soaking various parts in CLR and other solvents to remove the rust and accumulated gunky grease, then relubricated and replaced the sharpening wheels with new ones. Sixth, yes you can get new sharpening wheels http://www.onesharpstore.com/catalog/item/2529431/2788330.htm'>right here. I very much recommend it, as mine were original and not in very good shape in addition to being gunked up with God-knows-what. Not for nothing does the original manual recommend cleaning these things in gasoline! I just received my new sharpening wheels, and it's striking how much grittier they are than the ones that were in the machine when I got it. Seventh, for those of you who may be looking for Hobard 110/210 parts, the company that sells the sharpening wheels sells them. These guys have the best and largest selection, however. Although it ain't cheap. A sharpener assembly will run you a cool 180 bucks. Eighth, as for lubricating the machines, the manual recommends "slicer oil." Not sure whether that's all that different from mineral oil, but I think it might be worthwhile picking up some of this stuff. The glider bars, etc. are supposed to be lubricated with this slicer oil via some kind of reservoir-and-wick system. There's a little hole in the side of the slicer where you're supposed to put in a bit of slicer oil every so often.

Depending on how "nice looking" you want it to be, you might consider having the table re-veneered. One great advantage is that, when you have the table re-veneered you can have the refinishers layer on a strong modern polyurethane-based varnish that will be waterproof, and resist scratching/chemical degradation, etc.

There is little doubt that an electric burner will deliver more thermal energy to the bottom of a flat pan than a similar gas burner. This is because the surface-to-surface conduction of thermal energy is far more efficient. I imagine if you had a high powered induction burner it would be even faster.

Dry pecorino is also a "non-melting" cheese.

Yea, SV technology can be a great time-saver. I've already written in these forums about how I make my own "lunch meat" by cooking a chuck roast or turkey breast or pork loin (etc.) SV, then chilling and slicing to order. But it also works great for lots of other things as a time-saver. For example, I have a bunch of hangar steaks I trimmed up, browned with a blowtorch, bagged with a little fat and seasoning and chucked into the deep freezer. Whenever I want a steak (like tonight!) I simply have to fire up the circulator and chuck one of these in for a couple of hours. Or, taking the opposite approach, I bought a dozen 3.5 pound chickens which I spatchcocked, removed the breast and thigh bones, bagged with seasonings and cooked to 60C in the circulator. These were then chilled and stacked up in the deep freezer. Now if I want chicken for dinner, all I have to do is toss one of these bags into a sink full of warm water for 30 minutes or so and run it under the broiler long enough to crisp the skin. I've done similar things with "confit style" chicken thighs, etc. Poultry seems to do especially well being cooked first, then frozen, then reheated and crisped. And an added bonus is that I pull out the bones before bagging and add that to my supply of poultry bones and scraps for making stock.

Does the book discuss finding the sweet spot under a broiler in a typical gas oven?

I'll be interested to read this section when my copy arrives. Until then, I can't really comment much other than to say that I have great faith in the methods of this team. It's hard to have much to say about what this section may say without actually reading it, or at least getting a much more detailed explanation of what they say in the book. It's worthy of note, however, that there are any number of things in the book that convincingly contradict not only conventional wisdom but modern "accepted wisdom" we have thought was based on an understanding of the underlying science (a good example would be the fact that the "barbecue temperature stall" is due to a wet bulb/dry bulb effect and not the conversion of collagen into gelatin). Modern and Modernist are not the same thing. Just because this is what Oscar Mayer does in making bacon doesn't make it a "modernist technique."

I think you rinse it just in order to get any of the starchy water off of it. But, because the starch isn't cooked, the soaked pasta isn't cohesive. If you're going to par-"cook" pasta, this is definitely better than cooking and shocking. I also like the possibility of soaking the pasta in a flavored liquid. It would be interesting to see how much and what kinds of flavors actually infuse into the pasta this way. For example, suppose you were to soak spaghetti in water that had been infused with smoked paprika and then used that spaghetti to make caccio e pepe. Would the pasta taste smoky? Would it be red? How far would the redness go inside the pasta?

I think it's absolutely easy to understand that burner diameter and area are far more important than thickness or materials in providing for evenness of heat. If you have the right diameter of burner and the flame is evenly distributed throughout that area, then there is little need for any thermal material to spread around the thermal energy because the burner is already doing it for you. If you have a really nice restaurant stove, your need for fancy cookware to provide evenness of heat is less than it is for someone who has a crappy stove with smaller diameter (and less powerful) burners.

It seems clear, and to give them all credit due (and plenty is due), they do mention that different pasta shapes take different soaking times. It probably bears mentioning (and perhaps they do, but I don't recall) that different pasta brands of the same shape may take radically different soaking times. The Ronzoni elbow macaroni was practically mush after soaking for 60 minutes. Given the vast differences in both brands and shapes of dry pasta, it might have been a good idea in describing the technique to describe what characteristics one should look for in properly pre-hydrated pasta. This way, readers would have some basis for employing this technique on their own without having to go through the laborious trial and error process that I'm sure Alex and Aki used initially in coming up with their timings. Also, for people who just want to plow through the recipe, it probably would have made sense to formulate it for some easy-to-source brand and to specify the brand. I imagine that the elbow macaroni I used was simply a lot thinner and less robust than the kind they were using. I picked Ronzoni because (well, because there was no better brand at the store where I happened to think of it) I thought it would be a good middle-of-the-road representative macaroni. But every brand line has its quirks, and maybe this is Ronzoni's.

I've been playing around with ideas from this for a while. The one dish I've made from start to finish was the macaroni and cheese, which I am disappointed to say wasn't quite to my taste. After soaking the macaroni for an hour per their instructions the pasta was already far softer than I would ever want it to be. The recipe said to cook the hydrated pasta in the cheese sauce for something like 6 or 8 minutes (which was right around the total recommended cooking time for the un-hydrated pasta!) so I didn't bother with this step and simply mixed the pasta with the cheese sauce, turned it out into broiling ramekins and ran it under the broiler. Overall, I found the lack of tooth in the pasta to be a significant flaw to my taste, as I feel that some chew is necessary as a foil to the richness (it is an extremely rich macaroni and cheese). This, of course, may simply be the brand of pasta that I used -- although Ronzoni is pretty middle-of-the-road as pasta goes. Anyway, it seems likely that a different brand would provide a firmer texture, and of course the technique can be modified to use a shorter soaking time for a firmer texture as well. One of the things that's good about the book is that after a technique is explained, it's usually pretty clear how you can modify it to your taste. I have my eye on several other recipes I'm anxious to try.

I was introduced to cooking bacon in a sheet pan in the oven by Steven Shaw around 8 years ago, some time before I'd ever heard of Alton Brown.

Sorry for the late replies. Some thoughts in response to the following: No, not really. But it's worthy of note that it's not always important to bring heat into the sides of the pot. In fact, usually it isn't. Yes, the bottom would be hotter than the sides. But that would be the case anyway. Even with stainless lined heavy copper, the bottom is hotter than the sides. Regardless, when you have most of the heat coming from the bottom of the pot, and perhaps a lesser amount of heat coming from the sides of the pot, you are going to have "uneven cooking" with some parts of the tomato sauce (or whatever) getting more heat than other parts. Your solution with respect to stovetop cooking is a famous technique that has stood the test of time, known as stirring. This is absolutely correct, with a few caveats. The most important one is that your pan has to be absolutely flat to have 100% contact with the aluminum block. This is because the intervening aluminum block creates a situation in which all meaningful conduction of thermal energy comes from physical contact between the aluminum block and the bottom of the pan. So, if your pan (and the aluminum block, for that matter) is not 100% flat and touching the aluminum across 100% of its surface, the two surfaces will only touch in a few places and that is where most of the meaningful transfer of thermal energy will happen. If you have perfectly flat pans, this is a pretty great technique to use (and one that I use when I need perfectly even heat for long simmering, gentle heating, etc.). You're essentially making a small "French top" for your burner. That said, pans that stay perfectly flat on the bottom tend already to be relatively expensive, and often already have a thermal layer (a thermal layer provides added structural stability against warping, etc.). It could be possible to get a cheap stainless pan that is flat on the bottom, and to use that pan very gently and always on the aluminum block so that it always stays flat. But it strikes me as a bit of a waste to have a pan that you can never crank up to blazing hot temperature, chuck in some cold protein and not worry that you're going to warp the bottom. No. What limits the responsiveness of an electric coil cooktop is the electric coil. When you have a gas burner and you turn it down from full on to barely on, you are making an immediate change in the heat source. Now it is up to the pan to respond to that change in the heat source. When you have an electric coil burner and you turn it down from full on to barely on, it takes some amount of time for the burner itself to cool down to the new heat setting. The most responsive pan in the world can only cool down as fast as the heat source cools down, which compared to the gas burner just isn't very fast. This is one reason why it doesn't make much sense to me to shop for "responsiveness" if you have an electric coil cooktop.

What kind of "hand squisher" juicer are you talking about? A citrus reamer/juicer like this? A citrus hand press like this? Or a lever-action citrus press like the Ra Chand or Orange-X? There's a big difference.

My crack, anyway.... Hmm. Not so sure about that first one. Do cocktails like the Negroni and Last Word and Corpse Reviver No. 2 "enhance the base spirit"? Can we even think of these drinks as having a base spirit? Also, what does that mean, exactly, "enhance the base spirit"? This seems to imply a certain aesthetic where the base ingredient is clearly discernible and is merely "enhanced" by the other ingredients -- like a "booze with a dash of this and a drop of that" technique. But I would argue that plenty of classic cocktails don't follow this aesthetic at all. Even something like a 2:1:1 Sidecar strikes me as not necessarily being "enhanced cognac."

To my mind there are several different interrelated uses of "classic" that make sense. The first would be that any pre-prohibition cocktail is "a classic-era" cocktail. Cocktails coming from this era, as well as the relatively few that come from the years immediately thereafter and can be viewed as an outgrowth and continuation of this aesthetic, which have endured the test of time to be regarded as foundational and great cocktails are "classic" cocktails. Modern-era cocktails which are so immersed in the classic-era aesthetic and ingredients as to seem as though they came from this time are "neo-classic" cocktails. Modern-era cocktails which seem to have joined the pantheon of "standard drinks" that everyone knows and acknowledges as being foundational and great are "modern classics." "Craft" doesn't mean much to me in the context of cocktails. All cocktails are "craft" unless they're somehow being mass-produced.

Cut in half, squeezed out, mixed with rye whiskey and raspberry syrup, shaken until very cold and strained into a glass?

Since they built a Whole Foods on Columbus and 97th or so, I guess that's my local now. I still mostly prefer Fairway, though. Maybe I'm spoiled that I'm used to buying fish and seafood at Fairway and Citarella, but the WF product is distinctly inferior.

I also think that asking for the "ten best [spirit category]" is unlikely to result in very useful information. If you stay below the "superpremium" price point (let's say $35/liter at retail) the choices are still quite limited and everyone is likely to agree for the most part. For example, a list of the "top ten rye whiskies under $35" will surely include Rittenhouse Bonded, Old Overholt, Baby Sazerac, Wild Turkey, Bulleit Rye and possibly Jim Beam Rye... and that's about all there is for $35 or less. For gin, every list is likely to include the standards: Tanqueray, Beefeater, and Plymouth. After that, some likely "most popular" suspects include Junipero, Boodles, Bombay and possibly Gordon's. But beyond those, there aren't many options below $35, there are likely to be a significant differences in opinion, and much of what is available will be "esoteric, conceptual gin" and won't fit the classic profile of a gin. Bourbon is one category where there is quite a lot to choose from under $35 a bottle. I'd encourage anyone to look at the old brands like Old Grand Dad, and always to look for 100 proof or higher.

That is correct, the recipe should only call for 1/4 ounce of 1:1 simple. Sweetness, of course, is a matter of personal taste and preference. We should also keep in mind that the perception of sweetness diminishes as temperature goes down.

What ratios was the bartender using. The Intro to Aperol has simple in it, but barely any. It would be hard to "back off" the amount it calls for.

Yea, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Kalustyan's and Penzey's.

Are there any home pressure cookers that go up to 21 PSI?

The reality is that you can't really make extruded pasta at home that will be anything like the dry pasta you buy in the store. This is because the stuff you buy in the store has not only been extruded but then it has been dried under very controlled conditions to a very specific moisture content. I've had extruded-but-not-dried pasta made with these machines (including some of Alex and Aki's pasta at the concluding dinner to a series on aroma at Astor Center) and, while it was pretty good stuff, it was nothing like actual dry pasta and I'm not sure I found it texturally interesting enough to want an expensive machine around to make it at home. So, that's the first thing: give up on the dream of making your own dry pasta at home with a pasta extruder. Ain't gonna happen. The rigatoni you get out of one of these machines will not be the same as the rigatoni you get out of a De Cecco box and, in my experience, won't be as good regardless of how expensive the machine may be. What you can get is extruded fresh pasta that is different from the rolled fresh pasta you're used to in terms of shape and texture (much the same way that spaghetti alla chitarra has a different texture). If you want to know what you can expect, try out some of the "fresh rigatoni" at your local gourmet shop. If, on the other hand, you want to make fresh extruded pasta like bigoli and gargati, then I recommend a bigolaro, which is a hand-cranked pasta extruder from Venice where there is a tradition for that kind of thing. As far as the electric machines go, it's serious money to get one that will put out the kind of pressure you need and that will allow you the flexibility of doing a zillion different shapes and flavorings like Alex and Aki do with theirs.