slkinsey

Come ha detto il tipo grasso... They are all perfectly good cookware. I own some All-Clad and some Calphalon -- and I'll be getting more Calphalon when the Commercial Nonstick fry pans go on sale at Amazon.com. I just think that they are way over-hyped. Many people have spend huge bucks putting together a kitchen full of nothing but All-Clad Stainless or Calphalon Professional or whatever because they have bought in to the marketing hype that these are the "best kind of cookware." And they are, indeed, very good. But they are far from the best and they are far from the best value. That said, when the price is right and the piece of cookware is one that lends itself to the design... I'll totally line up to buy Calphalon, All-Clad, Demeyere, whatever. And, okay, I'll admit it. I am a little biased against any product that self-promotes as much as they do. You don't see huge double page ads for Sitram or Paderno or Straub or Falk Culinair or Mauviel or F. Dick every time you open up an issue of Gourmet. I also have the philosophy that it makes the most sense to build up a battery of cookware slowly, saving up for really good pieces and waiting for the occasional sales. That way you spend maybe a couple hundred bucks a year and before you know it you have some really kick-ass stuff. Buying things one piece at a time also gives you the opportunity to ask the significant questions of 1. how do you really intend to use this piece; 2. what materials and design lend themselves best to accomplishing these tasks; and 3. do you really need it. When one is buying a zillion pieces at once, it is easy to end up with a big expensive All-Clad pot that you mostly use to boil water.

Yay! We will, of course, expect a full report!

Sometimes when I am roasting capon or duck or some other fatty bird, I will shred cabbage very finely and toss it into the hot roasting pan on the stovetop to soak up the fat and wilt down a little. Throw in a little dry riesling and a scattering of caraway seeds. Take it off the heat while it is barely wilted and still crunchy. Great contrast to the fattiness of the meat. Of course, it may be too hot for roasting... I would also think that some kind of shredded/wilted cabbage salad would be good in bibimbap.

Yea, I have never understood why you don't hear more about Sitram from home cooks. It really is some of the best cookware out there. Built for the professional kitchen but very much useful in the home kitchen (which is not always the case). The ironic thing is that I don't have all that much Sitram myself, even though my writings on usenet may make it appear as though I had Sitram pans up to my ears in the kitchen. Mostly I was championing Sitram Catering (among other brands) as truly top quality cookware among the tide of fanatics who had bought in to all the advertising from heavily hyped products like All-Clad or Calphalon or Demeyere or whoever.

You are kidding, right? I might add that it's not the only thing he's opinionated about. There are a lot of usenet vets about the place.... regards, trillium Thanks for noticing... I think... I try to not have opinions about things that interest me, but they keep on coming up anyway. Maybe I'm addicted to having opinions. Oh well... it's interesting to note that, until I got rid of that AOL account, I used to get email on a regular basis from people who had read those rec.food.equipment discussions.

Beans that are excessively oily do indeed stick in the hopper. I usually roast my own beans in a Hearthware. I've been roasting Malabar Gold just to the point where it gets shiny as per the good Dr. John's directions. It still sticks in the hopper even when nearly full. This morning I was grinding some decaf for my wife I bought at a local shop that roasts on-site. This is a light roast made for a drip coffee-maker. It stuck twice. Hmmm... Interesting. All I can say is that I have never had this problem with my Rocky. Not even once. But, obviously, YM does V.

At home by myself tonight... had a spicy bagel from Lenny's Bagels (I actually like Lenny's better than H&H -- the bagels are denser and seem more traditional to me) with St. Andre cheese, a thick slice of red onion and paper thin slices of radish. Sauteed asparagus dressed in vinegar and evoo on the side. All veggies from the Green Market at Union Square.

Must... Have... Delicious... Cheese... glglglglglglglglglglglllllllllll.......

Hmmm... The only people I know who have this problem are those who use what I would consider overly-roasted beans to make their espresso. This is to say, beans roasted to the extent that they are fully black and very oily on the surface, which makes them stick together. It is not clear to me that beans roasted to this extent will ever be free of sticking problems, no matter what the design of the grinder hopper may be. I personally like to roast my beans for espresso to what I would consider to be, and have observed to be, the typical North/Central Italian espresso roast... just a hair darker than "full city." Something like this: or this ... well, in between really. I have never once experienced any problems with beans roasted to this degree sticking together in my Rocky. In the South of Italy, they do have a darker/oiler roast, but even this is not roasted as far as the typical American "espresso roast" which is something that to my taste is only worthwhile for milk-based coffe drinks (small wonder that this accounts for >90% of American espresso consumption).

Hee... What you need is a grinder where you can hook the portafilter into a zeroed scale of some kind and set the scale for the weight of coffee grinds you want (I assume a gram scale with one significant digit would suffice, or should we bump it to two? ). Then, with the press of a button, the grinder could automatically dispense the weight of coffee grinds you specified. Too bad it doesn't exist, actually... Anyway, I think I'd like the doserless Rocky better as well. That said, the introduction of the doserless model might also be a great way for people who hesitate to spend 250 bucks on a coffee grinder to get a good deal on a used doser Rocky as people trade up. Oh yea... and I call dibs on trying any warm coffee pudding dessert you come up with.

Well, you and I will just have to part ways on that interpretation. It sounds like you're saying that someone cannot mention that certain behaviors can predictably lead to on-the-job problems without hypocritically invoking the moral high ground. As it so happens, there are mayn "good" behaviors that can also lead to a decrease in job performance, depending on the business. For example, in my business, aspiring opera singers who are committed to starting a big family most often find themselves in a place where the requirement to earn money to support that family (which means a 9-5 day job in today's arts economy), the desire to spend time with that family and things like missing out on sleep to care for colicky babies lead to a decrease in the kind of maintenance work, travel and physical condition that are necessary to attain and maintain a high level of performing. So, here we have off-work behaviors that are certainly "good" in anyone's book (starting, supporting and spending time with a family) but which still predictably lead to certain on-the-job problems. Oh, of course. In a perfect world we'd all have good managers who were capable of handling these circumstances humanely and with skill. Anyway, I'll have to go back and read my previous posts, but I don't think I was calling for any legislation.

What I do is this: 1. open the doser chamber. 2. start the grinder. 3. when the first cavity is filled to "heaping," advance one click. 4. fill second chamber to "heaping" and turn off grinder. 5. Click the doser lever until all the coffee in the doser chamber has been swept into my portafilter. This is the amount of coffee that I have determined will fill my filterbasket all the way to the top, with a little bit extra above the rim. Sometimes a little extra spills over the portafilter onto the base. I do not consider this a major inconvenience. I have calibrated mine to do do slightly less than 2 ounces (I prefer ristretto) in 23 seconds when I do a double shot. With my home-roasted coffee, this results in something akin to "warm coffee pudding" -- the crema is that thick. I do more or less the same thing: sweep/level, tamp, knock, re-tamp. To be honest, I am not terribly concerned about the possibility of .1% stale grinds that may come from what remains in my grinder. I have not been able to detect any difference in the espresso made from 100% "new" grinds or with this miniscule precentage of "old" grinds included. I think you misconstrued my earlier post. If anything I push the upper limit on the amount of coffee I use for each shot. I constantly have to resist the temptation to overfill the filter basket. Also, because I am a home roaster, I have even that much more control over the flow rate. I have found that different brands/ages of coffee will extract at different rates for the same grind calibration. Even for my home roasted coffee, I find that I like to adjust the grind one click finer when the coffee gets to be about a week old. Something like that, yes. See above. I have also been known to simply run the grinder and go into "continuous click mode" keeping my eye on the portafilter and stopping the grinder when it becomes full. I don't know, but it strikes me that making a big deal out of having to click the doser lever a few extra times and the potential for <1% "old" grinds in each shot is making a mountain out of a molehill. I mean, if I were to buy a new Rocky today I'd buy the doserless model. But I certainly don't consider the doser model to be seriously flawed as a result of having a doser. It's still a great product and a great value.

No, there aren't any. And yes, it is necessary. IMO. This is especially true if you are asking about the cost of a machine and a grinder. A high quality grinder is absolutely essential to getting your money's worth in performance from the machine. Espresso is a machine-based food, and the quality of the machine does directly influence the quality of the product. This makes espresso fundamentally different from most other kinds of food, where a talented cook can produce great quality even with crappy pots and pans.

Hmmm... When I am using my Rocky, I always take the lid off of the empty doser chamber so I can look into it as I am grinding. Then I grind only enough coffee for the shot I am about to run. I have learned that this equals around two "heaping" doser slots for my double basket. YMMV, but that amount works fine for me. I like to have just a little more than I need so I can sweep the excess off the portafilter with my finger and make everything level before tamping. Anyway, after grinding into the doser, I simply pull the lever multiple times to sweep all the grinds out of the doser chamber and into the portafilter. You only get a "preset amount of coffee from the doser if you fill the doser chamber.

slkinsey - the only reason you are able to, at best, continue this argument, is beacuse drugs are illegal, thus masquerading its harm in a ficticious moral highground. I was not taking any moral high ground whatsoever. I was raising a hypothetical point of discussion. And, I would like to point out that, if someone who is using a drug off-hours does so in such a way that they are totally in control in the workplace, the employer will never know. I was speaking more to the hypothetical situation where the chef notices that an employee has been doing a lot of speed. It's not necessarily impacting the cook's work right now, but the chef has seen the road down which most people who become addicted to this substance travel and can reasonably predict that the cook may become dangerous or dangerously impaired -- perhaps with little warning -- in what is already a fairly dangerous workplace. Or, to make another example, the chef notices that one of his/her staff has started shooting heroin. It's not impacting the cook's work right now, but the chef can reasonably predict that it will become a problem later. Or whatever. Etc. Etc. Etc. So, what I'm asking is what do we do when we have a situation where an employer/supervisor becomes aware of a situation where an employee/supervisee is engaging in certain kinds of off-hours behavior. It follows that the employee is engaging in this behavior to an extent that the fact of the off-hours behavior has become noticable to the employer in the workplace. This could include anything from being hung over to track marks on the arms to facial bruises from fight club to muscles from spending time in the gym -- whatever. At this point we are assuming that the employee's work product is acceptable. So, the employer has to ask him/herself, "is this off-hours behavior I have noticed something that is likely to impact that employee's work performance in the future?" Some of the off-hours behavior will probably have no predictable impact whatsoever. Some might be good. In the case of the habitual abuse of certain drugs, the answer is inevitably yes. So, the next question the employer has to ask if he/she determines that the off-hours behavior will predictably have a negative impact on future work performance is, "do I do something about it now, or wait until the work performance starts to fall off and then try to do something about it, or do I wait until there is some big fuckup and fire the guy?" And that's really the question, isn't it? I mean, no one here seems to be arguing that it isn't okay for the chef to shitcan a staff member the very first day he shows up late due to a hangover or fucks up an order due to being wired on speed. So the question is what kinds of rights and responsibilities should an employer have in stepping in before something like that hapens?

Oh man, look at that one. It looks deliiiiiiiiiiiiiicious! Sorry... couldn't help it.

oooooookaaaaaaay... So, you're saying what exactly? That you are going to act the way you want to act at a dinner party, hosts' hard work and feelings be damned, and no one is going to tell you differently? Or that you don't care for that kind of writing, in which case I would point out that no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read it. The evidence indicates, by the way, that a lot of people could benefit from this kind of advice... eGulleteers excepted, of course. Do any of you find it interesting that people just don't seem to entertain all that often any more? We entertain all the time, and I gather that the same is true for many of the readers here, but very few of my friends and associates do. This is not to say that I expect reciprocation, but I find it extremely interesting that many people who clearly enjoy and apreciate this kind of activity nevertheless can't be stirred to do it themselves. Speaking of dinner party behavior... we throw a very lavish and multi-course Thanksgiving dinner every year, for which we send out formal invitations which are RSVP-ed. One year, a couple we had invited and who had just days earlier expressed to us how much they were looking forward to joining us never showed up and never even called to apologize. Apparently they had tired themselves out apartment hunting during the day and decided to rest at home instead of having dinner with us and our other guests. Needless to say, we have never invited them to anything at our home ever again.

Maybe we're looking at this wrong and it's a small shoes thing...

At long last I think we have a definitive answer here: it's the silly-looking hat! Put one on, and you're a chef. I believe it's the shoes. As I've heard it expressed, "If he had the balls to fill a chef's shoes, he'd be a muff magnet." I believe anyone with balls big enough to fill a pair of shoes has an entirely different career waiting for him...

At long last I think we have a definitive answer here: it's the silly-looking hat! Put one on, and you're a chef.

Ooooh! Me too! Me too!

IMO, all the things I said make a difference. Because words have meanings, and it makes sense to use them appropriately. This is the same reason I would not call Andrea Bocelli an "opera singer" even though he does sing some operatic pieces. Well, certainly there won't be a plague of locusts or a rain of frogs, but I think it comes down to what I said before about words having meanings -- and I can certainly understand why people who pursue professional restaurant cooking would not want the title to which they aspire co-opted by weekend charcoal briquette grillers who like their steaks medium-well with KC Masterpiece burnt on the outside. I also think it is important to distinguish between professionals and amateurs. Chef, in my understanding of the word as it applies to cooking, is a professional term. Now, you might have someone who directs the volunteer "staff" every Sunday in turning out meals at the local church... and that guy might be an amateur chef, but he's not a chef. It is interesting that the professional titles from some professions have been co-opted by amateurs while others have not.

No. A chef is someone who works in a professional kitchen in which he/she manages the kitchen staff, over which he/she has some creative control and for which he/she is primarily responsibility for the quality and qualities of the output.

Hey Electrolux, even I lump Keller and Flay together. Come on bro. They're both quality chefs. Maybe Keller could cook Flay into ash but that's a question of metier...Compare Keller to, oh I don't know, Keith Famie and I'll sit on your jury bench with a load of tnt. Again, the mistake you make is that people aren't lumping these people together in terms of talent, just in terms of their job description. You want to make the title "chef" into some kind of metaphysical/spiritual/philosophical badge of honor earned only through the paying of dues and the attainment of talent and expertise -- both up to some nebulous, personally defined level. That's just not the way things work. I think we can all agree that a vast disparity of talent, expertise and artistry (among other things) exists bewteen Yitzhak Perlman and the guy scratching on the violin for spare change in the Times Square subway station. Nevertheless, they are both violinists.

Yep. Rancilio Silvia Rancilio Rocky Grinder (although I covet the new Doserless Rocky Grinder) La Marzocco Filter Baskets Separate Single and Double Spout Portafilters I am soon to get the 1st-Line modified Three Hole Steam Tip for the steam wand Hearthware Precision Home Roaster Just can't stand American drip-style coffee... totally can't stand the drek sold as "espresso" most everywhere in America (perhaps they should call it "expresso" to distinguich it from the real thing).