Taste and technique

[blue_dolphin]

On September 17, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Anna N said:

Sourcing even very ordinary ingredients is already somewhat of a challenge and if she is particularly heavy in luxury ingredients, as I suspect from the menu I saw,  then I may have to rethink.

@Anna N, not sure if you noticed this in reading the Eat Your Books review that @chefmd linked to but if you go to the main EYB listing for Taste & Technique, you can view a list of the recipes that includes the ingredients for each.  

Basic pantry items are often not listed but it should give you a little data for your decision process.

[Okanagancook]

Oh, yes.  Very astute BD!

[Anna N]

So I caved as you all likely guessed I would. So far I am unable to tell if I am going to learn anything new about cooking techniques but it is teaching me to slow down when I read!   It doesn't lend itself to skimming for the gist of a recipe and then rushing into the kitchen to execute it.  That is strictly an observation not necessarily a criticism. Whether it will ultimately drive me into the kitchen remains to be seen. 

Thanks for all the input.  

Edited September 26, 2016 by Anna N
Because I'm still reading too fast and there was a duplicated sentence which has now been fixed. Many thanks to the member who brought it to my attention. (log)

[Okanagancook]

It arrived today.  A very nice book.  You can tell it is good, just intuitively.  Kinda like the Keller books.

 

i started at the back.  Ingredients and equipment.  I find if I like what is put forth here it bodes well for the rest of the book.  I liked all of it.

 

also liked the acknowledgements.

 

the recipes are well organized, similar in format to the Keller books....why mess with success?

 

i really like the recipe introductions.  So important nowadays with so many heartless cookbooks.

 

she makes one want to make stock then Demi glacé .

 

the ingredients aren't in general unattainable.

 

i like her notes about how and what to buy for ingredients

 

the photography is stunning.

 

this is a well thought out book.  A nice present this would make.

 

need to start cooking from it.  I may start with that chicken liver mousse.  Looks better than the one I made from Julia's second book.

 

 

[Okanagancook]

Forgot to mention

 

 

the print is too small for my eyes

[Anna N]

 My very first WTF of the book although not the only one. She (Naomi Pomeroy) stresses the need for proper seasoning and even goes so far as to stress that she has given actual measurements for the salt rather than saying "salt to taste". Salting is so important she has a term and method - ASM -aerial salting method.  So you relax thinking you are in good hands then this: 

 

"All of the recipes in this book were tested with fine-grained, medium-moisture sea salt from Guatemala."

 

 Edited to add her name as it seemed rather rude not to.

 

Edited September 27, 2016 by Anna N (log)

[rustwood]

8 hours ago, Okanagancook said:

the print is too small for my eyes

 

I've been thinking the same thing but I thought maybe it was just me.  I am not yet wedded to using reading glasses all of the time, but I am well on my way there.

[Anna N]

2 hours ago, rustwood said:

 

I've been thinking the same thing but I thought maybe it was just me.  I am not yet wedded to using reading glasses all of the time, but I am well on my way there.

Hence Kindle. I get to adjust size of type. 

[Okanagancook]

I found the salt the same about Guatemala salt.  Sheesh.

I've never seen Guatemala salt let along 'fine-grained medium-moisture!

 

[chromedome]

10 hours ago, Anna N said:

Hence Kindle. I get to adjust size of type. 

 

I have a Kobo, which gives even better control over the typeface. Way more fonts to choose from, and I can adjust the font weight, spacing, line spacing, etc. 

 

Mind you, I have a lot more books in dead-tree format and buy "real" books more often than ebooks, so reading glasses will be my constant companion for the foreseeable future. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I finished Taste & Technique tonight.  Particularly amusing was the disclaimer on the last page:  basically, don't call us if you die.  If food safety is an issue, devote a few pages to the subject, as does @nathanm in MC.  I'm still troubled by the simplistic advice to pour boiling water over raw eggs.

 

Then there is beef.  I'm not one to talk as my most recent steak, which I finished off tonight, is perhaps the most wretched example of cookery I have to my name.  This is the rib eye I was trying to prepare to the method of @Unpopular Poet but that is not Pomeroy's fault.  But to rant a moment, about half the steak was left on the plate as masticated gristle.  And a sharp steak knife was of no help at all.

 

What is difficult to comprehend is Pomeroy's admonition to cook rib eye to 114 to 117 deg F. -- or five degrees less for grass fed beef, like the Australian steak I had tonight.  Five degrees less is 109 to 112 deg F.  Normal bovine body temperature is 101.5 deg F.  This is not cooked.  This is a cow who died of a high fever.

 

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I finished Taste & Technique tonight.  Particularly amusing was the disclaimer on the last page:  basically, don't call us if you die.  If food safety is an issue, devote a few pages to the subject, as does @nathanm in MC.  I'm still troubled by the simplistic advice to pour boiling water over raw eggs.

 

Then there is beef.  I'm not one to talk as my most recent steak, which I finished off tonight, is perhaps the most wretched example of cookery I have to my name.  This is the rib eye I was trying to prepare to the method of @Unpopular Poet but that is not Pomeroy's fault.  But to rant a moment, about half the steak was left on the plate as masticated gristle.  And a sharp steak knife was of no help at all.

 

What is difficult to comprehend is Pomeroy's admonition to cook rib eye to 114 to 117 deg F. -- or five degrees less for grass fed beef, like the Australian steak I had tonight.  Five degrees less is 109 to 112 deg F.  Normal bovine body temperature is 101.5 deg F.  This is not cooked.  This is a cow who died of a high fever.

 

In all fairness this is the only reference I can find to pouring boiling water over raw eggs and it has to do with coddling eggs for a dressing:

 

"Place the whole unshelled egg in a small heatproof bowl and pour in boiling water to cover. Let the egg sit, submerged, for 1 minute. (Coddling the egg this way begins to set the protein in the whites, helping the emulsification process and minimizing the bacteria on the shell.)"

 

and it in no way suggests that the eggs will be pasteurized or even rendered "safe" (just safer).

 

And as for the steak, Pomeroy suggests it rest for 8-10 minutes before service which will allow for a temperature increase from carry-over cooking of 5 or more degrees F.  I agree that this still leaves the grass-fed beef questionable but I admit that I have zero experience with grass-fed beef.   As an aside, your idea of rare beef and my idea of rare beef probably will not coincide since even when temperatures are used there is a range that is described by various people as "rare/medium/well-done".  

[NWKate]

Thanks, pretty sure I won't be buying this book- what a shame.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, NWKate said:

Thanks, pretty sure I won't be buying this book- what a shame.

I think it would be a bigger shame to dismiss this book without waiting for one or more of us to make some of the recipes and and give our assessment of the results.  This minor nitpicking is just that and not really the basis on which to make a judgement as to whether you should buy it or not.  YMMV

[blue_dolphin]

2 hours ago, NWKate said:

Thanks, pretty sure I won't be buying this book- what a shame.

 

I'm still planning to try to get my hands on a copy.  The small print isn't a deal breaker for my very nearsighted eyeballs.  I thought the admonition to use a doubled towel to remove a hot pan from the broiler (in the brussels sprouts recipe that was printed in the EYB review) was a little more babysitting than I usually want but overall, I've read some good reviews, too, and am very much looking forward to the thoughts of those here, when they've had the chance to try some recipes.

 

As @rotuts posted here, the NYT has published their fall cookbook roundup.  The header for Taste & Technique is "The Best Kind of Bossy," and they go on to say, "In the spirit of Judy Rogers’s “Zuni Café Cookbook” or Paul Bertolli’s “Cooking by Hand,” the chef Naomi Pomeroy, of the restaurant Beast in Portland, Ore., doesn’t want to show off. She wants to hold your hand and take you there — “there” being a land where demi-glace and soufflés are actually cool, and where teaching is preferable to telling."

 

Full review, including recipe for fennel gratin is here:  ‘Taste & Technique' makes French Cooking Cool

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by blue_dolphin (log)

[gfweb]

On 9/25/2016 at 0:01 PM, chefmd said:

This may be interesting to @Anna N

 

https://www.eatyourbooks.com/blog/2016/9/18/taste--technique---naomi-pomeroy

 

 

What a nicely detailed recipe. Could be a useful book indeed. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

The Porcini Braised Chicken Thighs quoted by Eat Your Books was the most attractive recipe in the book, in my opinion.  And the dumplings -- though sadly I no longer have a potato ricer since my heavy aluminum potato ricer oxidized and turned black, just like my former aluminum garlic press.  Hence the rule in this kitchen:  "No aluminum as a food surface."

 

I returned my copy of Taste & Technique to the library today.  Normally when I return any brand new cookbook there are a multitude of holds.  This time there were none.  It went back on the shelf.  Make of this what you will.

 

 

Edit:  does it seem odd she weighs her chicken thighs but not the Guatemalan salt?

 

Edited September 29, 2016 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[MelissaH]

I'm intrigued by what I saw in the Eat Your Books sample, but I am soooooo turned off by the pretention of Guatemalan sea salt.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, MelissaH said:

I'm intrigued by what I saw in the Eat Your Books sample, but I am soooooo turned off by the pretention of Guatemalan sea salt.

I can't defend that. 

[robirdstx]

Does she just say that that is the salt that she used or does she advocate that it is the only salt to use?

[FauxPas]

It's smart of her to be precise about salt amounts though, because she seems to use a lot of salt and if you want to replicate her recipes, it takes more salt than some of us would normally use. The Guatemalan salt sounds a bit pretentious but it's beneficial that she specifies it's a fine-grained salt, since many of us tend to prefer a coarser salt these days and we would end up using about one-third less salt using a coarse sea salt or a kosher salt with large crystals. 

 

She uses 2 to 3 Tbsp of salt in that braised chicken dish, which is really a lot of salt in my view. 

[Anna N]

49 minutes ago, robirdstx said:

Does she just say that that is the salt that she used or does she advocate that it is the only salt to use?

Does she explicitly advocate it as the only salt?  No.  But after making salt in the correct proportions such an issue....  She frequently lists 1/4 tsp salt as an ingredient so one is left to wonder how important it is that you use Guatemalan salt. I think the bigger issue is that she states that all the recipes in the book were tested using that particular salt which could be taken as an unspoken warning that if you don't use that salt and the recipes don't work then ....   I'm just saying. The whole thing could've been so easily avoided by using a more readily available salt to test the recipes.  You can't even ask that she could have included the weight since the moisture content of this salt is also specified.  It is almost bizarre.

[Anna N]

33 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

It's smart of her to be precise about salt amounts though, because she seems to use a lot of salt and if you want to replicate her recipes, it takes more salt than some of us would normally use. The Guatemalan salt sounds a bit pretentious but it's beneficial that she specifies it's a fine-grained salt, since many of us tend to prefer a coarser salt these days and we would end up using about one-third less salt using a coarse sea salt or a kosher salt with large crystals. 

 

She uses 2 to 3 Tbsp of salt in that braised chicken dish, which is really a lot of salt in my view. 

Not just fine-grained but fine-grained, medium-moisture sea salt!  Now I do not know about you but I keep my salt in the salt pig so it is readily available and I know many others to keep their salt in an open container near their prep area. So I ask you how long will that medium-moisture  remain? The more I think about it the more amusing/annoying it appears.

 

I, too, did a double take on to the 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt in the chicken dish.   However, this is one occasion when apparently precise salting is not necessary. If you read the recipe that 2 to 3 tablespoons is used in the proportions of 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt for each of 12 thighs depending where their weight falls between six and 10 ounces. So much for precision.  

 

 This would not even raise an eyebrow with me had it not been for the damned Guatemalan salt thing.  

[blue_dolphin]

15 minutes ago, Anna N said:

54 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

Not just fine-grained but fine-grained, medium-moisture sea salt!  Now I do not know about you but I keep my salt in the salt pig so it is readily available and I know many others to keep their salt in an open container near their prep area. So I ask you how long will that medium-moisture  remain? The more I think about it the more amusing/annoying it appears

 

I was thinking the same thing.  After a week of triple-digit temperatures with single-digit humidity, I don't think there was medium-moisture anything in all of Southern California!

[Anna N]

1 minute ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I was thinking the same thing.  After a week of triple-digit temperatures with single-digit humidity, I don't think there was medium-moisture anything in all of Southern California!

But in Portland, Oregon you might be pouring salt water from your pig, yes?