slkinsey
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Mitch might be correct that, in the long term, Under Pressure will turn out to be enormously influential. But I have to put in a plug for eG Forums here: it seems unlikely to me that Keller's book has a greater reach than our own sous-vide topic.
Keller's book has only been in print for around a year and a half. Give it time. It is the way of the world that eventually a number of codified and persuasive books will have wider reach and greater influence than any discussion thread on an internet food forum. This is the power of organization. Already I would suggest that Douglas Baldwin's internet sous vide guide has greater reach than our sous vide thread, despite the fact that the preponderance of the information contained in the two sources is the same -- again, because Douglas has it all in a single, handy and reasonably-concise format.
As for Under Pressure in specific, I have my doubts as to whether it will have all that much influence. Fundamentally, most of Keller's books are more about documenting what they do at his high-end restaurants than treating a subject in any kind of comprehensive way or providing information that is extensible to other recipes, etc. Keller's books don't even necessarily set forth or attempt to advocate on behalf of his viewpoints on food and cookery. It's more like, "we get some really good mackerel at the French Laundry and I thought it would be a good way to marry this with the wonderful prosciutto we get, so we take two mackerel fillets of 100 grams each and trim them to..." Contrast this to, for example, Mario Batali's cookbooks which, while documenting recipes from his restaurant, do much more to convey his philosophies about this style of cookery and approach to food, and also suggest more ways to extend some of these ideas and practices into other dishes (I would suggest that the Babbo Cookbook is one of the best of the decade, BTW -- it's interesting that Batali doesn't seen as au courant now as he did in 2002, but his influence was tremendous in this decade). When Douglas and Nathan publish their books (and there will be others as well) I would predict that they will have far greater influence than Under Pressure.
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I don't think there are many instances where straight gauge cookware is needed. Frypans. Reduction pans. Small saucepans for saucemaking. That's about it.
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I suppose it all depends on what method you are using to freepour. If, for example, you have a shaker with marks on the inside (even if they're simply remembered scratches) then you're not truly freepouring. You're just using a different (and less accurate) method of visual measuring.
I've been over this ad infinitum, so I won't bother rehashing the various evidences and explanations I've given as to the near impossibility of freepouring matching jiggering for reproducible accuracy over a period of time. To sum up: Yes, it is possible to freepour quite accurately, although this becomes more and more difficult as the amounts become smaller and the ingredient list becomes larger. Freepouring a good Sidecar is one thing. Freepouring a proper Tantris Sidecar is another entirely. But a fresh, well trained and practiced bartender at the beginning of a shift in a mostly empty bar pouring from full bottles with identical pourspouts that he has trained on can certainly ace a freepouring test. Whether that same bartender would be able to freepour complex multiple-ingredient drinks with some ingredients being in amounts of 1/4 ounce or less in a busy loud bar at the end of a shift? With bottles filled to different levels? And maybe different pourspouts on some of the bottles because the owner changed to a less expensive brand? And some bottles being thick syrups? And fruit juices being in an entirely different kind of bottle? And all the other things that are true in most real-world bars? Extremely improbable to the point of being virtually impossible.
Of course you raise a valid point that people using jiggers can be sloppy and measure inconsistently. It is certainly possible for a freepouring bartender to be more consistent and accurate than a sloppy jiggering bartender. But if we have two equally skilled and conscientious bartenders pouring complex multiple ingredient "fine resolution" cocktails while tired and under time pressure... there's no way the jiggering bartender doesn't win that contest. There are simply fewer perceptual elements that can shift and introduce error when all you're doing is pouring a metal cone full of liquid and dumping it in a glass. Even something as simple as getting excited and having your pulse rate increase can throw off all kinds of unmeasured judgments. Have you even noticed how live recordings of uptempo music are most often noticeably faster than the studio versions? This isn't on purpose, and it is a very well-understood phenomenon. The same thing happens to a freepouring bartender who uses the "count method." This is only one example of many errors that can creep in when you freepour.
Some of this, however, depends on the setting and the style of mixology. If you're working in a small bar where you can work at a sedate pace and are only preparing, say, a dozen fairly simple three-ingredient classic "ratio drinks" an hour... then you are in a congenial situation for freepouring: not only are you in an environment that allows you to minimize many of the factors that lead to judgment errors in freepouring, but you're mixing a style of cocktail that is quite forgiving when it comes to absolute accuracy and you also have the time to taste and tweak if you didn't quite hit the mark.
It doesn't quite follow to taste one drink to see if you can decide whether or not it was freepoured. But I can think of some blind tests where I think it would be pretty easy to tell which bartender was the freepouring one and which was the jiggering one. I would have the bartenders using a variety of ingredients, bottles, fullness levels, pourspouts, etc.; they would be mixing around four different drinks, at least half of which would include a strong and easily-identifiable ingredient such as Green Chartreuse that needed to be added in precise and small amounts; they would be presented with the orders in a seemingly random fashion. If you wanted to go further... they would be timed; music would be playing at a loud level; people would be squeezing behind and around them at the test bar; and they would have to jump rope for 30 seconds in between each order.
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I've always been a bit put off (perhaps "mystified" is a better way of putting it) by the practice of setting the "working bottles" for a cocktail on the bar with the labels facing the customer. It always struck me as a bit too brand conscious, as though I'm supposed to be impressed by how high class the ingredients all are.
You're way too cynical Sam!
There are a lot of people out there that have a passion for drinks but don't know about the vast number of spirits that are used in cocktails.Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you go to these bars for these high-class spirits? If the bartender sets them on the bar does it REALLY make a difference to you?
It makes perfect sense to do this from a bar/bartender perspective as it means that only one trip is made to the backbar to gather all the bottles for a specific drink (unless the bar has all their bottles in a speedrail).
I can see there being some point to displaying the bottle on the bar if it's a special bottle, or if it's something the bartender has been discussing with the customer. But I don't think I need to see bottles of Tanqueray and Noilly Prat set up before me on the bar when I order a Martini. It seems affected to me, and a bit like those commercials where the housewife holds up the bottle of salad dressing next to her face so everyone can get a good look at the branding while she tells her rapt family of salad dressing enthusiasts how delicious it is.
As to your other thought, just about every bar I visit has most of their most commonly-used spirits in the speedrail (and this is likely to include things such as Green Chartreuse, etc.) or, at most, the immediate back bar within reachable/replacable arm's reach. It's pretty rare that I'll order a drink that requires the bartender to fetch more than one bottle from the "special cabinet." So, at most, there is one bottle that isn't routinely put back whence it came immediately upon being used. I would think that the first principle of good bar design is that most of the most commonly used ingredients are within an arm's reach, that the next level of ingredients is within a few short steps, and that everything else is rarely used.
Again... if it's a slower time at the bar and we're having the kind of meandering mixologial and product discussions we all like having, the bottles might stick around. But it's by no means a regular thing.
Needless to say, this isn't something that really works in a bar where speed and volume are important.Speed and volume are important to all bars, empty seats don't put cash in the till after all, however it depends on the way the bar is set-up which will determine whether or not this a practical system.
I'd suggest that speed and volume become less important if you're making up the difference with high prices. Many of these Tokyo microbars are charging a fortune for those drinks, and if you're paying that kind of money you want a bartender who is going to take his time. I don't think any bar where hand-carved ice balls is considered a regular part of service can be considered one where speed and volume have much performance.
I've worked in some pretty busy bars where I've been able to do this without affecting speed of service. One trip to the backbar, grab all the bottles, place them on my station, make the drink, take them all back...With all due respect (and I mean this sincerely), if you had time to make a trip to the back bar to fetch bottles, display them all on the bar for the customer, make the drink, serve the drink and return the bottles to the back bar for every drink and every customer during the busy times... then these are not cocktail bars I would recognize as all that busy. There is simply no way that sort of thing would be possible at places such as Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club or Pegu Club on a Friday evening from an efficiency standpoint (not to mention physical exhaustion from all that back-and-forth). Those guys have got to average around a cocktail a minute during peak hours, if not more. Which is to say that there's busy and there's busy.
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I've always been a bit put off (perhaps "mystified" is a better way of putting it) by the practice of setting the "working bottles" for a cocktail on the bar with the labels facing the customer. It always struck me as a bit too brand conscious, as though I'm supposed to be impressed by how high class the ingredients all are.
Needless to say, this isn't something that really works in a bar where speed and volume are important.
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Well put, Dave. I would never discount someone's subjective experience. I am, however, trying to point out that most of the judgments and evaluations we make which we presume to be objective are in fact nothing of the sort. I would argue that it is impossible for a person to make a truly objective evaluation. More to the point, it takes quite a bit of doing to minimize external influences to the extent needed to make even a reasonably objective evaluation.
This is why I am routinely skeptical of absolute pronouncements based upon the premise that one has made objective observations and evaluations -- especially when it seems as though the perceived phenomena or magnitude of differences would not be possible on a physical basis.
I would actually argue that an individual's subjective experience of sitting in Uyeda's bar and having the best cocktails of his life is the most important and valid of all. To that person. Where things become difficult is the temptation to generalize an individual subjective experience and extend it outward to all conditions.
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Just out of curiosity, what size stockpot meets your needs? We do a lot of pasta dishes as well. I've been waffling about using a 6-8 qt vessel for pasta (hidden use for a rondeau?) and getting a big stockpot for stock/corn later, or getting something 8-12 qt that might be useful if not ideal for all of the above.
I can't offhand say what size the stockpot is that I use for pasta. It's a heavy Paderno stockpot with a fitted pasta strainer large enough so that when I put in a package of dry pasta it is completely submerged (meaning that the pasta insert part has to hold at least 12 inches depth of water). This is large enough to be a smallish pot for stock by my standards. When I am making volumes of stock, I am more likely to use my 5 gallon stockpot. My smaller stock/pasta pot I am more likely to use for smaller amounts of stock rather than intensive stock production for storage (e.g., if I want to make some stock from the bones of two chickens that I just happen to have lying around).
Either one of the sizes you mention (6-8 quarts or 8-12 quarts) strikes me as being too small. Stock pots have roughly the same height as they do diameter. A 6 quart stockpot is likely to have a diameter and height of somewhat less than 8 inches, and a 12 quart stockpot is likely to clock in at somewhat less than 10 inches. Add the fact that a pasta insert shortens the height of the stockpot by a couple of inches, and you're not even going to get half of a strand of pasta submerged in the water.
But... as with all things, you have to make your own evaluations and decisions. For me. being able to toss in spaghetti and have it completely sumberge was an important factor in choosing. For others it might not be.
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With all due respect, I think it is quite impossible that you could consistently correctly identify a Uyeda example over examples from other bartenders using the exact same ingredients and amounts and a reasonably similar technique. Again, the psychology of perception and how they are influenced by expectation (not to mention the show you just witnessed and the atmosphere created, and the ways these and other factors influence your perception) are well understood.
1. We're not talking about a controlled environment where two bartenders use "the exact same ingredients and amounts and a reasonably similar technique." Why would we be? We're talking about ordering a drink from two different bartenders and seeing who makes it better.
The point is to parse out the effect of the shake, which is the subject of this thread, and in addition to parse our the effect of the bartender's skill. The only way to do that is to control the other variables.
If, for example, Uyeda is using XO cognac or a special bottling of Wild Turkey, whereas other guys are using VS cognac and regular Wild Turkey (not to mention different ice made with different water and held at a different temperature, etc.), then the majority of the observed difference might come down to ingredients rather than technique and it might be that "just about any reasonably skilled bartender" could walk into Uyeda's bar, use his ingredients and equipment and serve up an indistinguishable Sidecar.
This is not to say that careful curation of ingredients isn't an important talent and skill. But it takes away some of the perceived aura of "mystical zen master of mixology" when you understand that the main reason your cocktail tastes so great is because the bartender used zillion dollar super-luxe ingredients and/or had spent several days methodically experimenting to arrive at a great proportional combination. So if you order a Sidecar from one bartender who uses $20 worth of ingredients and his Sidecar tastes better than the one you order from another bartender who uses $4 worth of ingredients, does that make the first bartender "better" than the second one? Does that mean that the distinctive shaking style the first bartender uses is the reason his drink tastes better? Maybe. But there's no way of knowing unless you eliminate all the other variables. These are just examples, of course, but they illustrate the reasons why we would like to eliminate these variables (among others).
2. I can assure you I am in no way dazzled by either Uyeda or Tender. Tender looks like an airport bar and Uyeda is far less of a "performer" than many Japanese bartenders (none of whom can make a drink half as good as Uyeda's). If anything, New York's bars win in terms of atmosphere and show, but apparently those influences weren't strong enough.And yet, you clearly had already bought into the mystique. This is an influence. And decades of research in perceptual pschology tells is that these sorts of things can exert a huge influence on the perceived result. It is a simple matter of chemistry and physics, not to mention physiology and psychology of perception, for example, that a stirred admixture of reasonably equivalent volumes of Wild Turkey rye and Cinzano sweet vermouth diluted and chilled to reasonably equivalent levels cannot possibly be radically different, and would not be perceived as radically different in a double-blind test. However, we also know that in a unblinded tests, two absolutely identical cocktails can be perceived as radically different. It is quite easy to construct a "test" so that a taster will perceive one glass of wine as being far superior to the other, even though both glasses of wine were poured from the same bottle.
So, for example, it's likely that if you went into Uyeda's bar and watched him make you a Gimlet, and then at the last second it was possible to switch out his Gimlet for one prepared by someone else using a reasonably similar shaking motion (i.e., with reasonably similar aeration and ice crystal production) without you noticing, you would perceive the drink as having all of the elements of Uyeda brilliance you had come there expecting.
Again, I know that it can be difficult to discount your own personal subjective experience when it seems so clear. And we all like to believe that we're smart enough and our experience and palates are good enough that we won't be influenced by those things. Hey, I've been there myself. But these are important things to keep in mind.
3. A wine expert might be fooled by dyeing white wine red, but he wouldn't be fooled by cherry Kool-Aid. There was an enormous difference between Uyeda's drinks and any other drink I've had.If you examine the literature on these sorts of things, you will see that huge perceptual tricks are not uncommon. The idea that the difference between a Uyeda Gimlet and any other Gimlet prepared by a top-level bartender is equivalent to the difference between red wine and cherry Kool-Aid is simply not credible.
How would you really know enough to tell me I didn't taste what I think I tasted?I don't for a minute discount your subjective experience. I am simply pointing out that there are many, many factors that influence subjective perceptions -- and what is inside the glass is only one among them. The literature is full to bursting with examples where "experts" were influenced by external factors into giving high ratings to inferior products. This is the whole reason the double blind test was devised.
There are, for example, legions of people who will swear that they can hear the difference between the sound produced by speakers wired with $1,000 per foot speaker cable versus $0.50 copper cable, despite the fact that scientific measurements indicate that this is impossible. And, indeed, there are audiophiles who have offered a substantial cash prize for anyone who can distinguish between the two in a controlled, blinded, ABX test. No one has claimed the prize. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no one disputes that in a non-blinded environment, the listeners often perceive large differences between speakers using the different wires. No one disputes that these listeners are experiencing these subjective differences. What is in dispute is whether and to what extent these subjective perceived differences reflect real differences.
But it would also be naive to suppose that he hasn't helped to make a name for himself by proposing some mystical ideas about his "hard shake" that are shaky at best to anyone with an understanding of the underlying physical and perceptual science.Perhaps. But what specific "mysticism" are you referring to? What do you really know about the Hard Shake? Can you find anything other than a bad internet translation or some Eben Freemen video? You are criticizing things that I doubt you have taken much time to learn about.
A large amount of the skepcicism I have is grounded in my understanding of the underlying science involved. And some claims I have read as to the effects and physical characteristics of this shaking style simply do not accord with what I understand about the laws of chemistry, physics, etc. Do shaking styles and bartending equipment have an influence on the finished product? Absolutely. This has been confirmed in blinded comparisons (it would be interesting to compare the blinded and unblinded evaluations and preferences of cocktails produced by different bartenders/shaking techniqies). But the idea that Uyeda has somehow arrived at some kind of magical flick of the wrists that makes his drinks twice as good as drinks made by anyone else? There is no way that a shaking style can have that much influence. It's like suggesting that a chef has a special way of stirring the sauce that makes it twice as good as anyone else's.
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FWIW, It seems completely reasonable to me that free pouring can be accurate. Dale DeGroff mentions practicing "free pouring" in his books, using the same equipment and repeatedly remeasuring to confirm accuracy; as a result, it's not really free pouring in the beer-and-a-shot sense. Given the uncanny precision of Uyeda's technique, it seems reasonable to assume that he's spent some of the last 40 years getting that skill down.
So I'm willing to believe that a sufficiently disciplined bartender can pour accurately in desirable ratios. The thing is, we all can also pour accurately using measuring glasses and jiggers, so we don't need to improve that aspect of our technique. What are the aspects of the technique demonstrated by Uyeda and Iguchi that you have brought back with you as valued components of your practice?
I'm going to disagree on this point. Yes, I suppose that it's possible to pour in reasonably consistent ratios when you are fresh, making three-ingredient classics in a serene bar setting where you are able to give each drink your undivided attention for three minutes. But if you remove any one of these variables, the ability to pour with reproducible accuracy becomes significantly compromised. I don't care if it's Uyeda or the second coming of Jerry Thomas himself, there is no accurately free-pouring a dozen Tantris Sidecars with high speed at the end of a busy shift. There are well understood psychological and perceptual factors at work that let us know this is not possible.
On the other hand, in a tiny Tokyo bar that offers simple classic cocktails, has a primary focus on technique and allows the bartenders plenty of time for each drink, it's more possible to hit the mark more consistently. On the other hand, this doesn't necessarily mean that that Sidecar is always 2:1:1, but rather that the sour and sweet are in balance and the cocktail comes out tasting good.
I can totally understand skepticism because I was skeptical too, initially. However, I feel 100% confident that I would be able to pick Uyeda's drinks in a blind taste test because I've never tasted anything like them. It was almost like they would taste in a really good dream. They were so vivid, evocative, polished, balanced, lush... I can't really describe them except in abstract terms. Which, unfortunately, does not help the illusion of mysticism.
With all due respect, I think it is quite impossible that you could consistently correctly identify a Uyeda example over examples from other bartenders using the exact same ingredients and amounts and a reasonably similar technique. Again, the psychology of perception and how they are influenced by expectation (not to mention the show you just witnessed and the atmosphere created, and the ways these and other factors influence your perception) are well understood. I know it's hard to accept the evidence of your own experiences that seem to indicate exactly the opposite, but there are plenty of things that real psychological testing show to be entirely contrary to expectation (for example, even self-described "wine experts" can consistently be fooled with white wine that has been colored red).
In addition to DeGroff, as you mentioned, Chris, David Embury vouches for freepouring. I have seen astonishing feats of discipline in Tokyo, and not just in Ginza. A bartender in a (busy!) Roppongi dive club blew my mind by freepouring (no spouts, mind you) into a single shaker, shaking, and serving three gimlets perfectly level with the rims of the glasses, not a drop to spare. And this was just some guy getting paid about $9 an hour to sling cassis-oranges to drunk clubbers.
All this "proves" is that the freepouring bartender was reasonably good at hitting a remembered volume mark in the shaker -- or, more to the point, that the freepouring bartender has a reasonably good "feel" for what the shaker feels like when the appropriate volume of liquid is sloshing around in there at the end of the shake. It doesn't prove that the next three Gimlets he freepours will be anything like the last three. And, of course, the Gimlet is an extremely forgiving drink. I'd like to see them do that with consistency for a drink that requires precisely one teaspoon of Green Chartreuse such that less than a teaspoon is too faint to make an effect and as much as a quarter-ounce takes over the drink. But, again, this is not the sort of cocktail that is made in Japan for the most part. If you're not doing anything more complicated than Sidecars, Manhattans, Gimlets and highballs, it's a lot easier to get by with freepouring.
Something Uyeda pointed out to me is that even when using jiggers, we still rely on feel. If I have a 1.5/.75 oz. jigger and I want to measure a perfect ounce, I am going to have to eyeball the level of the liquid in the 1.5 oz. cup and estimate when it's 2/3 full. Even an even shot can be poured a little scant or brimming a little too full.This is the reason to have more than one jigger. The best bartenders I know typically have a 2 oz/1 oz jigger, a 0.75 oz/0.5 oz jigger and an adjustable teaspoon (or a 1/4 ounce barspoon) for smaller quantities. Meanwhile, I can pretty much guarantee that the range of measuring error between a scant jigger and a "surface tension overpour" jigger is far less than any freepouring bartender can hope for over the course of a shift.
This has, of course, migrated away from discussion about the hard shake. What seems clear to me is that shaking technique can make a difference. Preliminary experimental results bear this out. Where several bartenders prepared a cocktail from the same batched cocktail, the resultant cocktails were different. This does not, however, point to the absolute supremacy of one shaking technique over the other. I have on doubt that Mr. Uyeda is an extremely skilled bartender, and clearly part of his skill is the shaking style he developed. But it would also be naive to suppose that he hasn't helped to make a name for himself by proposing some mystical ideas about his "hard shake" that are shaky at best to anyone with an understanding of the underlying physical and perceptual science. It's a cool shake. And that's about what you can say about it.
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I think it's just another inappropriate use of a "working title" that has come to the fore recently only because celebrity chefs and food media have exploded into the public consciousness over the last decade.
I've seen this sort of thing my entire life. My parents both hold PhDs and have been for most of their careers professors at universities. And my parents have occasionally laughed at letters (usually from Germany, curiously) addressed to "Doctor Professor and Mrs. Doctor Professor Kinsey." But in reality neither of them goes by "Doctor Kinsey" or "Professor Kinsey" in their personal lives, or even most of their professional lives. I think it's appropriate to call someone "Professor So-and-so" when that person is instructing you in an academic setting, but otherwise not.
I see similar abuses of the term maestro, which means "master" in Italian. It is quite similar to the term "chef" (the boss of the kitchen), in that it applies to the person who is the boss of the orchestra and the performance: the conductor. Less often it may apply to a teacher when addressed by a student. If I am in a rehearsal or in the context of a professional engagement I will often address the conductor as "maestro" as a short-form courtesy -- but not when we're having drinks at the cafe afterwards. Nevertheless, the practice of calling acclaimed classical performers "Maestro Domingo" and "Maestro Pearlman" persists in popular usage as though it is some kind of title one earns for being a great performer rather than a job description. If, for example, Placido Domingo were in a performance led by a relatively unknown and unacclaimed conductor, the conductor would still be the "maestro" and Domingo would not.
All of which is to say that "chef" is the title of the person who is the boss of the kitchen, and addressing that person as "chef" is more or less a kitchen-tradition way of calling him "boss." Understood as such, it strikes me as something that is appropriate to use when addressing that person as your boss at the time, and not otherwise (including during off hours). In this way, it is different than calling a military officer "Captain" even after retirement. This is because "Captain" is not only a job description, but also an earned honorific that stays with you forever. (Although I should add that it's a bit silly to address a retired Naval Captain as "Captain" unless you are military yourself, and most appropriately unless you worked with that person in the military.)
In the end, however, this is all water under the bridge. People will continue to use these kinds of designations as though they were permanent earned ranks rather than job descriptions. Personally, I don't like to call someone "boss" unless they are my boss at the time. So for me it will be "Thomas Keller" and never "Chef Keller."
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The reason the roasted garlic didn't impart much garlic flavor is because roasted garlic has a very mild flavor to begin with because all the pungent chemicals have been neutralized. If you want to impart more of a traditional strong garlic flavor to your SV preparations, there are a few things you can do: The easiest is just to use a high quality granulated or powdered garlic. Or, if this isn't to your aesthetic liking, you could cook some minced garlic until just beginning to turn golden in a little bit of fat, cool that down and add it to the bag.
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There should be no safety issue. After all, the best water pipes are made of copper.
As for a recipe, there doesn't seem to be much need to deviate from the original: 1.5 ounces of vodka and half a lime (plus shell) in an ice-filled 10 ounce copper mug topped with ginger beer. The main variable is going to be the brand of ginger beer (or you could do it with ginger syrup and seltzer or ginger juice , simple syrup and seltzer).
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I wonder what a Ransom Julep would be like. . .
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What about duck with some other strongly flavored fat? For example, if one were to compare a duck leg (1) traditionally confited in strong-flavored bacon fat versus (2) SV confited with strong-flavored bacon fat versus (3) steamed and brushed with strong-flavored bacon fat -- would we expect them to taste any different? To what extent would the transfer of bacon aromatics transfer from the fat to the duck? Or are they at this point bound in the fat somehow and won't transfer out of the bacon fat except into a stronger solvent, and otherwise only go where the bacon fat molecules can go?
We didn't try this, but I expect that what would happen is that fat soluable flavors might transfer from the cooking fat to the fat in the meat. But probably not very much.
So if you cook duck legs in bacon fat, there will be some flavor transfer. However, if you steam duck legs and then toss them in bacon fat, you'll get some flavor that way too. If the taste is strong enough (which bacon usually is) I think this they would taste pretty similar.
Since you don't have to use much fat to do SV confit, I will probably try this with bacon fat to see what happens. I would assume that doing it SV might also amplify any flavor fransfer from the bacon fat to the duck as it does with herbs, etc.
I was thinking that, if I wanted to see how mucl flavor actually transferred to the duck from the confiting fat, the way to test for that would be to remove the duck leg from the pouch and run hot water over it until all the external fat melted away. At this point, presumably there would be no bacon fat remaining on the duck leg and any difference in flavor would have had to be the result of flavor transfer from the fat. Does that make sense? If so, it should be easy to do some experiments using different aromatic fats (bacon, lamb, etc.), melting off the external fat and tasting for differences.
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What do you see as the advantage of doing them that way over simple "big pot blanching"? Can you taste or see a difference?
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Er... not that I am minimizing the dangers of botulism. Certainly you should throw away anything you think might be contaminated. I'm just pointing out things you can do to be 100% sure.
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Paula Wolfert, who knows a thing or two about confit, says that SV confit does not appear to evolve in flavor from aging. I've had SV confit in my refrigerator for as long as 6 months (my refrigerator hovers just above, and sometimes just below freezing) and could detect no differences between the aged SV confit and unaged SV confit. Apparently, some exposure to air is necessary -- although I should hasten to point out that I don't have any aged traditional confit to compare, so I'm taking it on faith that there is a noticable and beneficial evolution of flavor in aged traditional confit. As Nathan points out, one is extremely unlikely to get aged confit in a restaurant.
As for botulism... while I agree this isn't something one would like to grow, I believe it's true that so long as you cook the meat sufficiently prior to consumption, the toxin is neutralized. Again, an SV pouch would seem like an easy way to do this. Simply toss the unopened bag of aged confit back into a waterbath long enough to neutralize the toxin.
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What's the gin punch recipe you recommend for Ransom?
Yesterday I was in the mood for something different and made a Twentieth Century using Ransom, (perhaps a "Mid-19th Century?) that was quite nice.
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This all makes sense to me.
One question, and it's more to the underlying chemistry than the experimental results, so it doesn't speak directly to your experiments: I understand that fat molecules are too large to penetrate the meat. What about aromatic molecules? One of the things about your tests is that you were comparing things that all fundamentally would taste like duck with duck fat, and of course duck legs already taste like duck fat to a certain extent. What about duck with some other strongly flavored fat? For example, if one were to compare a duck leg (1) traditionally confited in strong-flavored bacon fat versus (2) SV confited with strong-flavored bacon fat versus (3) steamed and brushed with strong-flavored bacon fat -- would we expect them to taste any different? To what extent would the transfer of bacon aromatics transfer from the fat to the duck? Or are they at this point bound in the fat somehow and won't transfer out of the bacon fat except into a stronger solvent, and otherwise only go where the bacon fat molecules can go?
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One would expect there to be some effect on a half-full bottle of bitters that had sat mostly open or insufficently closed on a dusty shelf for 10 years. But a tightly closed bottle kept out of the sunlight should stay pretty lively for quite some time.
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"80c for 8-12 hours" can translate just as easily to "light simmer in the oven for 6-8 hours." It's not the long cooking that makes confit a PITA.
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I recently picked up a bottle of Ransom Old Tom Gin. Like KD1191, I have a bit of trouble classifying it. It is quite different from Hayman's, being overall richer, maltier, sweeter and more emphatically flavored. I guess I'd say that Ransom is a lot closer to genever than London dry gin, and if I had to pick one spirit with which it shares the closest kinship it would probably be Genevieve -- although Ransom is an altogether smoother product, and doesn't have any of the "hot bite" that Genevieve has.
Given these characteristics, I can see using it in a lot of cocktails where I might use genever or whatever-it-is we want to call Genevieve. But it's hard to think of contexts in which to conceptualize it more as a precursor to dry gin -- which is how I normally think of Old Tom. Perhaps this represents an earlier stage than Hayman's occupies in a hypothetical evolution from genever to dry?
I did have a pretty good Martinez with Ransom, Carpano Antica Formula, Luxardo La Perla Dry and a few dashes of Adam's Boker's replica.
Any Ransom-specifics and discussion would be appreciated. Dave, I understand you were involved in the development of Ransom? Anything you can tell us about it?
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The other issue with this idea is that confit isn't strictly speaking a "cook to temperature"
food where all you have to do is get it to equilibrate at the target temperature and then you're done. It is a "time at temperarture" food. Meaning that you want to cook confit at, say, 80C for 8 to 12 hours to get the traditional texture, etc. If you are not planning on storing it in the bag and are planning on storing it traditionally under fat, there is no reason to use SV at all.
It is also relevant what you mean by "traditional confit characteristics." The vast majority of duck leg confit served around the world is not aged under fat, but is simply simmered under fat and stored for at best a brief period of time. I am no expert, but have to believe that less than, say, 10% of confit consumed, even in France, is of the "long aged" variety.
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There is somewhat lengthy discussion elsewhere in these forums about the differences between aged SV confit and aged traditional confit. The general concensus was that SV confit does not particularly "age" -- or at least not the same way that traditional confit does. I think it was Paula Wolfert who said that she thought the distinctive flavor of aged traditional confit came from a minor amount of controlled rancidity.
Rancidity, by the way, is something that happens to fat. So the presence of jelly in the bag should not lead to increased chances of rancidity. The fact that SV confit is cooked and stored in a bag with almost all of the gas removed makes oxidative rancidity unlikely, and the fact that the food is cooked well past the time/temperature for Pasteurization and is stored at low temperature makes microbial rancidity also unlikely. Hydrolytic rancidity (the third cause of rancidity) does involve water, but mostly happens in dairy products and typically requires enzymes and/or bacteria that are killed or unactivated by the extended cooking.
This is not to say that spoilage is not a potential variable -- just that rancidity isn't likely to be the kind of spoilage.
Cookbooks of the decade
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
I have to stand with others who don't consider "On Food and Cooking" a book of the aughts.
Yes, the reworked and expanded second edition achieved much more attention at the time of publication than the first edition, but this is because the first edition published in 1984. Think about how different cooking was back in the 80s in this country. Twenty years is a pretty long time to grow an audience. Suggesting that "On Food and Cooking" is a book of this decade is a bit like suggesting that Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" is a book of the 1990s (it is in fact a combination of two books that had been published in the 1970s). Yes, "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" generated more excitement in 1992 than did "The Classic Italian Cook Book" in 1973 and "More Classic Italian Cooking" in 1978. But this was an excitement that was made possible by the influence of the previous two books.
Most intensely food-focused people (and let's be honest, the people who are buying and reading the vast majority of cookbooks and food-focused books are not buying On Food and Cooking) were well aware of "On Food and Cooking" before the turn of the 21st century. I think I got my copy sometime around 1992 after having read his interesting follow-up book "The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore" (this is the book that first interested me in the possiblities of LT/LT sous-vide-like cooking techniques, as it has a chapter on the benefits of "cooking below the simmer"). The extent to which the second edition was received with excitement really does reflect the influence of the 1984 publication more than anything.