slkinsey

Because you don't want to add cold broth to the risotto. You want all the liquid additions to be hot. Granted, if you toss in a few cubes together with a ladle full of simmering water, you're probably OK. Now that I think about it, there's no reason you couldn't just start the risotto off using simmering water and throw in a couple of reduced stock cubes with every addition of hot water until you reached the level of flavor you wanted, at which time you could go over to 100% simmering water until the rice was perfectly cooked. Until you made my mind go there, that hadn't really occurred to me. I had tended to nuke up the reduced stock and use the warm reduced stock as my first liquid addition.

Thanks. We'll see what the maestro dei risotti, Signor Camp, thinks of this method a little later on... Yep! But only if you heat up the reduced stock in the microwave. You don't want it to be cold when you put it in.

Oy, turducken! So 1998! I made this a few times (Thanksgivings 1997-1999 I think)... actually quite easy to do if you're handy boning out poultry. And since it cooks at such a low temperature for such a long time, it is almost impossible to overcook. The one problem for people with only one oven is that it makes it very difficult to bake anything else for 12 hours (the turducken takes up most of the oven and the temperature is too low to be useful anyway). The one trick I worked out is to strip out the turkey tenderloins and a fair bit of the breasts to make room. This meat can be saved for scallopine later, or used to augment some of the less-meaty areas.

Well, since you said you liked the taste at 6 quarts and reduced that down to approximately 2 quarts... I'd say you should add two parts of water to every 1 part of reduced stock to get back to the taste you like. Whether or not the "6 quart strength" represents a good concentration for sauce, soup, risotto, etc. is up to your own taste. I imagine it is probably perfect for soups with the addition of 2 parts water to make it "6 quart strength" -- although you may want to make it weaker if you have other elements in the soup that will contribute flavor to the broth If you're going to add a little bit of the chicken glace to enrich sauces, you can use it at ice cube strength. For risotto, it's more complicated. Since part of the risotto process involves a concentration of flavors as the hot broth is repeatedly boiled away, one normally uses a fairly weak broth. I have a less traditional method I use: What I like to do is determine how much broth flavor I want in the risotto and use the corresponding amount of hot reduced stock for the first few additions. Thereafter I simply use simmering water. That way I don't end up either short on broth or with extra broth once the rice is cooked perfectly. I haven't been able to taste the difference between a risotto made this way as opposed to mixing the same amount of reduced stock and simmering water to make a weak broth that is used throughout.

The dishwasher in my apartment is named Kathleen, so... um, no. Even a brief survey of Usenet will reveal that warping is a major issue with Calphalon, and indeed with all unclad aluminum cookware. The broiler, by the way, isn't likely to put all that much heat into your cookware as radiation is a fairly inefficient way to transfer heat. If you want to put some serious heat into your cookware, try leaving an empty 11" Calphalon skillet on a full-blast burner for 5 minutes or so and then dropping in a couple of large bone-in chicken breasts (skin side down, of course)... Or try taking that same skillet out of a 500F oven, removing the chicken and pouring in a cup or two of white wine to deglaze... A few months of this treatment -- which is pretty standard treatment for cookware -- and I guarantee you'll see some warping.

I have a traditional residential gas stove... kind of crappy but quite big for a Manhattan apartment. I still find that I can't get a wok hot enough on my stove to make decent use of it. This is complicated by the fact that the heat capacity of most woks is so low that theylose any stored heat if you put much of anything into them. This may not be as much of an issue with normal "cooking-for-one" amounts of food, but is problematic if you want to stir-fry a whole cut up chicken or something that size. Special wok burners make up for this by cranking out so many BTUs that the heat is replenished immediately. As for using a wok for Western style thick reductions... you would run into several problems: 1) only a very small area of the wok is heated by the most intense part of the flame as oposed to a saucepan or sauteuse evasee where there is a comparatively large area; 2) most woks are made of materials that have poor thermal conductivity, therefore the sides of the wok would not conduct much heat into the reducing liquid and almost all the heat would come from the small area at the bottom of the wok; 3) that small area at the bottom of the wok is a "hot spot" by another name, and could burn the reducing liquid.

You can definitely do it with reduced stock, although I wouldn't do it with something that is approaching a glace in concentration. This is always the question, of course. I personally don't find clarification that much trouble (I don't bother with the minced chicken breast and vegetables) as I simply whisk the egg whites into tepid stock, stir until it comes up to a simmer and let it sit for 20 minutes or so. After that, it's more or less the same as straining the stock anyway.

Anodized aluminum has many benefits, for sure. However, as I pointed out in my article, the main drawback is that it is very prone to warping at high temperatures. For certain tasks such as making roux, etc., people also find the dark coloring a difficult distraction to work with. I think Calphalon is very good stuff, although significantly overpriced at regular retail. In terms of guality, I'd put it somewhere in the middle of second-level cookware. I have owned many pieces of Calphalon over the years, but ended up getting rid of most of them because I never found the cooking surface any more non-stick than stainless steel, which is compounded by the fact that it is much more difficult to keep clean, and because every single piece I had eventually warped. At the present I have only one piece of Calphalon (a large roasting pan) and I'll try to pick up two or three of the large commercial non-stick skillets if they go back on deep discount at Amazon. All this is to say that I think Calphalon cookware can be a good addition to a well-constituted battery of quality cookware, but I don't think it makes much sense to have an all-Calphalon or mostly-Calphalon kitchen.

Johan, I didn't include woks because they aren't standard stovetop equipment in the Western kitchen. In my own personal experience I have also found that most of them do not work very well in the home kitchen unless one has special burners. Back when I used to have a wok, I made two stir-fried dishes at the same time -- one in a nice wok and the other in my stainless lined heavy copper curved sauteuse evasee. The stir fry in the copper piece worked 100 times better. I haven't used a wok at home since. I find the curved sauteuse evasee by far the most versatile pan in the kitchen. Mileage, opinions and preferences may differ on this matter, of course. Hard to say what your wok is made of without more information. Does your wok look anything like this or like this? I have a feeling it is probably enameled cast iron, even if it isn't very thick.

If you are really interested in making this dish with >$30 industrial balsamic, you should go ahead and reduce it to a thin syrup.

Exactly the reason to get stainless steel-lined copper! There are no known functions for tin in humans. In fact, it is sometimes considered a mildly toxic mineral. The good news is that there are no known chronic or serious diseases from tin exposure or ingestion. Furthermore, tin is poorly absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract -- probably less than 5% -- the rest being excreted primarily in the feces. Since the average diet contains somewhere around 2 mg of tin/day, there is little to worry about where tin-lined cookware is concerned (provided the tin alloy does not contain lead).

Not in Chicago, but: Atlantic Retinning and Metal Refinishing Rocky Mountain Retinning Company Fante's Kitchen Wares Shop A look through the Chicago Yellow Pages brought me to: Archer Tinning & Retinning

I just made an ungodly amount of stock this weekend, because I had around 13 raw chicken skeletons in the freezer. Am I the only one who routinely clarifies his stock? I find it makes them a cleaner-tasting, better looking and, I like to think, a bit more versatile. It's easy to do: For around 3 gallons of reduced stock I just whisked in a dozen egg whites, continued to stir as the stock came up to temperature and then let the stock simmer for around 20 minutes so the "raft" forms and coagulates nicely. After that, it is simply a matter of straining the stock. I carefuly lift out the raft bit by bit with a slotted spoon and strain that separately, so for the vast majoroty of the stock it is simply a matter of pouring through cheesecloth or a fine sieve. Of course, you're left with a dozen egg yolks... But that's why they invented things like egg yolk pasta, lemon curd, pastry cream, etc...

Man... my pet chicken is going to be really glad to hear that!

I solve the turkey problem by braising the leg meat in red wine and roasting the breasts by themselves. Since I plate the servings in my multi-course Thanksgiving dinner, there is no percentage in trying to present a roasted whole bird at the table. I really think more people should just forget about roasting a whole turkey. The breasts, in particular, are getting ridiculously large, which only compounds the problem. My strong suspicion is that any perfectly cooked turkey one has had in a restaurant has had the legs and breasts cooked separately.

Forgot to read this: Went to the one on 9th Avenue as per usual. No stir-fried chicken skin to be found. Was forced to make do on pickled cabbage with red oil, dan dan noodles, spicy beef tendon, fresh-killed kung pao chicken and spicy twice-cooked pork (the fatty kind, of course). Our lips were tingling big-time until I remembered Fat Guy's tip and we went across the street for some black and white malteds at Island Burger. Still plan to check out the stir fried chicken skin over on Second Avenue and will report back if someone doesn't beat me to the punch.

I think the idea that pleasure + a little pain = more pleasure has been around for quite some time in various forms.

0.25 inches = 6.35 millimeters. This means that it is either 6 millimeters and they are rounding up to 0.25 inches, or it is 7 millimeters and they are rounding down. I am unaware of any aluminum bases thicker than 7 millimeters. So either way, it's at or near the best available -- which is what one would expect from Mauviel. At this point it becomes a matter of price, aesthetics and perhaps percentage of the base covered by the base (although I don't expect there is a big difference between the top manufacturers in this regard).

According to this article, there is a "loophole" in the NY State smoking ban that allows "cities and other municipalities across the state the right to grant waivers to bars and restaurants that have lost business because of the ban" if such businesses can prove financial hardship. The NYC ban has no such provision, and as a result the loophole in the NYS law would not apply in the City (although I suppose a business that was under a certain restriction under the NYS law that would not apply, or might have a different application under the NYC law could petition to abide by the NYC law instead of the NYS law).

Always nice to follow up dinner with a refreshing jump from the Castel Sant'Angelo, I'm sure...

Going to Grand Sichuan this evening... shall try to talk companions into ordering the chicken skin... will report back.

I assume you're talking about these? Mauviel is one of the oldest and most respected cookware manufacturers, so I am sure it is quality stuff. That said, you will want to get some data. I am a little bit wary of these lines for cooking over a flame, simply because they seem to be primarily designed to work with induction hobs. One thing go keep in mind is that Mauviel actually makes two stainless steel lines. The "Pro-Inox" line has an aluminum base while the "Induc'Inox" line is fully clad with the interior layer being magnetic steel. We have data for the Induc'Inox line (2 mm thick), but it is not particularly encouraging for traditional cooking. I would stay away from Induc'Inox. Pro-Inox could be good, but I think you would want to inquire as to the thickness of the aluminum base. You can email them at this address, and I gather that French or English is okay: v.leguern@mauviel.com Let us know about any data you collect!

I occasionally put sugar in my chicken brine. I don't think it changes the flavor of the meat all that much, but it does encourage nicely brow skin. As for aromatics (herbs and whatnot) in the brine, I have done it a few times by boiling the aromatics in the brine, which then must be cooled. It made a difference, but not so much that it was worth the pain in the ass.

I'm with you on the green beans and peas... but I can't agree that there is any better way to eat fresh fava beans than shelled and raw.

Of course, one has to be careful when one is eating a soft cooked egg and using one's laptop at the same time, lest the egg spill into the keyboard... Not that I know anyone to whom such a thing has happened...