Syzygies

Ooh! My kind of relationship! My friend who turned me on to fresh masa years ago tried a food processor and was disappointed. Think about it; why would Indians buy wet grinders if food processors did the trick? He ended up borrowing my Vita-Prep commercial blender, using too much water, and thickening back to masa with masa harina. Half and half is still better than nothing. This by the way is the way to make a Thai curry paste; just borrow some of the coconut cream you'll later fry in, and let the Vita-Prep replace an hour's work with a mortar and pestle. I used to own a Sumeet Indian food processor. It felt like India. It worked great while it lasted, but even a Sumeet isn't up to nixtamal. My first mill for grinding flour (for flour tortillas and chapatis, of course) was a Samap Manual Grain Mill. It would take me half an hour to produce enough flour for a batch of pasta, then I'd need a shower. No, I haven't tried a matate. Even Mexicans just finish on a metate, after doing the bulk of the work with a hand mill.

Oh come on, you know me, was there ever any doubt? I started a thread on making nixtamal from Masienda corn, to consolidate what I've posted on other threads such as here: Nixtamal / masa / tacos from Masienda Oaxacan corn

I own several thicknesses of Baking Steel, a Fibrament-D stone, and a KK stone from Dennis. The Baking Steel rocks as a burger griddle, but then you wreck it for anything else. I dedicate it to tortillas from house-made masa from nixtamal from corn from Masienda. For this purpose their Oaxacan corn beats Anson Mills. Fresh tacos is quite the process but entirely worth it. Masienda primarily targets high-end Mexican restaurant; there are stories of Mexican chefs in tears remembering their childhoods, when they first smell tortillas cooking from this corn. We also use the Baking Steel stovetop for sourdough English muffins, which doesn't wreck its seasoning. Fibrament-D and the Dennis KK stone are similar, but the KK stone fits better. There's PhD science behind baking stones, and Dennis has entirely mastered this physics. I remember old threads where we discussed stone characteristics. There are two primary issues: How long a stone takes to heat up, and how quickly it returns the heat to pizza. Think superball bounce. Fibrament-D used to resist selling thick stones to consumers, because unlike a pizza shop where the oven stays on all day, a thick stone takes too long to heat up. And people do worry about fuel consumption heating a thick stone in a KK. I don't; the KK does pretty well once it reaches cruising altitude, and I consider it an honor to get to supply my KK with fuel. The Dennis KK stone is thick, and I don't consider this an issue. A Baking Steel is ideal for Neopolitan pizza, nothing else. Neopolitan pizza cooks extremely fast. One can fall into the trap of believing that's the only kind of pizza, the platonic ideal to which we should all aspire. I don't, I have too many other variables in play, like grinding my own flour. I vastly prefer baking pizza or bread on stone. If you do go down the Baking Steel rabbit hole, don't congratulate yourself just yet. There are those who prefer aluminum or copper. Learn why, and be prepared to defend your choice.

The Mala Market By now I've bought nearly everything they sell. The draw was the best Sichuan bean paste obtainable outside China. Their best vinegar, best soy sauce I had only dreamed about before. I have nearly every chile they sell, multiple grades of Sichuan pepper. I'd like to think my Chinese cooking is better because of me, but I know it's sourcing.

We paid some guy who parks his sharpening van at a farmers market. He had equipment that could handle bread knives. Stunning difference. I needed to dull the tip, it was destroying our butcher block.

My current sharpening rig, $640, duplicated in two kitchens: Shapton Glass 4pc Set 500, 1k, 4k, 8k Shapton GlassStone 2000 Grit Shapton Sharpening Stone Holder Tojiro Sink Bridge Atoma Diamond Sharpener Super Fine - #1200 The belt-and-suspenders stone holding approach saves time. Some would say my diamond stone is too fine and should cost more, but I'm happy with this choice. I use it to regularly (often between knives) scrub my water stones clean. Flattening is a side effect. I also own a strop and diamond paste but I don't always bother, and I'm not sure I can tell the difference. Showering adequately daily beats showering brilliantly once a week. The main issue here is to make sharpening as easy as possible. The woodworking quickie is mine, so I can put stones away wet.

Wow, I'm on the brink. Just because I can sharpen freehand doesn't mean I should. I like precise control.

That's a beautiful kit. I'm into water stones (and their feel just after "cleaning" by flattening with a diamond stone). I'd be seriously interested if the TSPROF was compatible with keeping a water stone wet. There's a logical trap you can easily avoid, by tweaking the angle control as you work. The assumption is that knives need to be sharpened at a fixed angle, and that people are no good at keeping a fixed angle without a guide. The risk here is that the guide is too good at keeping a fixed angle. A standard question in virtually all situations is "which way do you want to miss?" I learned this as a kid: One bushwhacks towards a camp on a stream by aiming to one side, so when you reach the stream, you know which way to turn. Here, on the finer stones, you don't want to roll away from the edge of the blade, polishing the shoulder rather than refining the edge. It is however ok to roll a tiny bit forward onto the edge. For a high end wood plane like a Lie-Nielsen, one sharpens so frequently that people favor two angle steps as a matter of efficiency. The idea of a primary bevel and a secondary bevel is explained in their Sharpening Instructions PDF. Woodworking is more demanding than cooking; it's always interesting to learn from communities where the ideas really matter. When people sharpen free-hand, we do it by feel, a multi-sensory version of listening. We have no idea what's really happening to our angle control, but chasing the proper feel as one progresses through finer stones works in practice. We're all riding a bit up onto the edge, rather than polishing the shoulder. This is the real reason I like to flatten my stones so often: a ridiculously clean stone has a feel that provides better feedback. Ok, so what happens using a TSPROF, if you're not tweaking angles like a guitar player bending notes? At first, you're not riding up onto the edge at all. This is more work, but the TSPROF is so good at work that you won't notice. But over time, the coarser stones wear more quickly than the finer stones. They'll look the same thickness but they're not! Geometry question: Which way does this miss? Will you tend to ride up onto the shoulder or the edge as you move to finer stones? This becomes clear if you imagine exaggerating the effect. What happens to angle as the stone gets thicker? One can offset this by tweaking the angles as one works. There doesn't have to be a 5 degree difference in bevels, like for wood planes. A small fraction of a degree makes a big difference.

This paragraph wins the thread for me. I've seen charts but this is an opinionated but probably right analysis of what the charts are trying to say.

All forum posts on all forums are for the future benefit of others; this isn't a private help desk. I've talked before over a thousand people multiple times, and given advice to others on doing so: It isn't about you! In pre-pandemic times, people would gather together like wolves in a hole, and have someone stand in front. It's a role. It's easier to play this role if one sees it as such. The OP is the conversation starter, that's all. Thank you! Others will find this great thread, and learn what they need from it.

Wow. I'm beginning to wonder if the 196 USD I spent to have a Tojiro DP 3-Layer Chinese Cleaver 225mm delivered from Japan was chump change, and VG-10 steel is a compromise I shouldn't be making? I can imagine spending 400 USD on a cleaver (Chuka Bocho), perhaps blue or white steel, if the difference would really be apparent. Or something like Bryan Raquin's Nakira 195 if it's ever back in stock. I suspect there are some strong opinions here... Being a mathematician has trained me to hear when people fall into logical black holes. "Seasoning is polymerization, so let's use flaxseed oil" misses the other components of restaurant abuse. Getting a perfect edge on a knife? Such an obvious goal, it has to be wrong sometimes. A serrated edge is better at slicing, and serration is a matter of degree, even the edge after an 8000 water stone is irregular at sufficient magnification. I've been meaning to get a good USB microscope for knife sharpening, coffee grinding, to make these issues obvious. I certainly adjust my technique over the lifetime of a sharpening cycle, increasing my slicing motion as the edges fade. And a chip in a favorite knife? It's a feature, not a bug!

I maintain two kitchens (one I haven't seen in two years because of the pandemic). What do I consider essential? The acid test is whether I buy a tool for both kitchens. I have long relied on three sizes of Fujitake Japanese chef knives for nearly all knife work. There are similar brands; the key features for me are an ergonomic (not an eccentric, traditional) handle, and the use of the popular VG10 steel, which I don't manage to wreck and I've figured out how to sharpen. (Steel is a continuum; debating whether a particular composition is stainless or carbon is like debating the difference between triple cream cheeses and cultured butter. Yes, the question is obvious if one has only seen extremes, but there are also choices in the middle.) After a pre-pandemic trip to Japan I started finding Japanese sources for Chinese tools. For example, I've bought many woks over the years, but this flat or round bottom wok from GlobalKitchen Japan is the first wok I've loved. So I considered their offerings when researching cleavers, and ended up buying a Tojiro DP 3-Layer Chinese Cleaver 225mm. Same construction as my other favorite knives, I know how to sharpen this. Anthony Bourdain famously recommends using a single chef's knife. Somewhere he said about his restaurant days "They can't steal the knife in your hand". (This wasn't Kitchen Confidential; I looked.) I've barely used any other knife since the cleaver arrived. To be clear, I've left behind a comet's tail of abandoned cleavers as long as my abandoned woks. Like the new woks, this is the first cleaver I've loved, indeed that I haven't actively despised. There's something about its heft and the exact shape of its cutting edge that allows me to get more done, more quickly. If I managed to burn down my prejudices, I feel comfortable suggesting that others should burn down their prejudices. I do cringe when I see cooking videos where a famous author politely suffers the green germs in her host's garlic, as they both wield cleavers for everything. If I think of it, I might switch to one of my Japanese chef's knives for a head of garlic. I'm however just as fast with the cleaver, including using the tip to remove germs. I can see how relying on a cleaver might discourage this, but it doesn't have to. I have butcher block counters for active cutting. My French cooking teacher had a trough more than an inch deep in his. We're not there, but I can tell that mine has seen an order of magnitude more abuse since I switched to the cleaver. My Festool shop vac works well enough to use indoors, so I can easily restore a mirror finish to my butcher block with Mirka Abranet sanding fabric and a Festool finishing sander. My sharpening setup (Shapton Glass stones and various gear to suspend over the sink) cost more than most knife sets, and I've seen simpler systems that look appealing. Whatever one does, one needs to ask the "Who cuts the barber?" question. I don't sharpen enough to actually go through a stone, and the first few passes after flattening a stone with a diamond stone feel like waterskiing a lake at dawn, so I flatten between knives.

Expanded response below in thread.

I met Jiarby in person at a POSK cooking competition in Sacramento. His chili and my gumbo tied for some silly non-prize. I was most impressed by his Rambo-style charcoal lighting technique. We're not talking weed burner, this flame thrower wouldn't have been out of place in the US-Vietnam war. And Glenn's a big guy, it all made a picture. We stayed in touch. Great guy.

Some are rounded. Some aren't. It's not just one brand. I bought a vintage Stanley wrench off eBay, with the idea of embedding it into a hardwood handle. Didn't cost much at all. You don't need new, and vintage is cool. An advantage of eBay is there's usually a picture. Confirm that the wrench is rounded before purchase. I also own a Grill Floss. For what it's worth, I loved the Grill Floss. Any reasonably well-adjusted soul should be happy with good life choices. I nevertheless prefer the wrench. One can apply more force from closer in. For really getting anything clean, such as KK grates after a low & slow (or misuse of my molcajete mortar, or the grates from our indoor gas range), nothing beats minimizing the setup time to using an electric pressure washer. Yeah, a little pricier than a box wrench, but ... We bought our pressure washer for cleaning our ipe deck before annual oiling. I use it whenever I can. It makes me feel like Jiarby starting a fire (there's an obscure reference for old-timers). I gave away my rotisserie because I hated cleaning it. With the pressure washer, I'd consider one again. Get a water heater drip pan to hold the grate you're cleaning. No need to plug the hole, this is just to protect one's yard from the pressure washer. The woodworking project is still pending (as are so many!).

Look to other traditions? The Chinese have tea-smoked duck, for example.

Making Laurie some Rogan Josh, for our 15th wedding anniversary.

I have the ingredients on hand for a Jamaican curry powder, and I don't have an easy source for Portland Mills Jamaican Curry Powder. I like making spice blends from scratch. The one unusual ingredient that jumps out at me is allspice, and as you say, lots of turmeric. I loved my visit to Jamaica, and the smoke that got into everything (either Pimento wood, or cannabis, or both!). I wonder what the best way would be to introduce smoke into this recipe. Does anyone have good sources for Pimento wood? I've heard of throwing in allspice berries. I tried growing Pimento wood back when California still had winter frosts (remember butterflies? remember winter? remember those famous coastal cities from the twentieth century?). The frost killed my tree.

One "approximately" doesn't need one, as many will tell you. The Devil is in that "approximately". I like to sleep through the night if I can, or run errands during the day. With practice the KK doesn't drift much, though with a BBQ Guru it doesn't drift at all. I'm a multitasker, I like that. I used to have their simplest unit with an actual oven dial. Rotary, mechanical. I wore it into the ground. I now have two Digi Q's. One's a spare, I'll cook for 80 where it would be embarrassing not to show up. It's all I need, I just want to set a temperature. I have both the Pit Viper and a Pit Bull for a 23" KK. The Pit Viper is plenty for low & slow, and the Pit Pull risks letting too much air through with the fan not running. (Guru 101 is to realize these things can't stop passive flow, it's up to you to step down their opening and nearly close the KK top hat damper.) Nevertheless, I can run my pit probe outside into the hole for the TelTru thermometer, and read the KK pit temp without exposing any wiring to fire. Then I can actually control a 450 F fire for bread. Not that I do this often, I'm around more for bread, shorter cook, and paradoxically it's easier to stick 450 F than 225 F. Cut back the air; plenty of folks here have trouble even reaching 450 F. The Pit Bull works fine at 225 F, and has no trouble supplying enough air for 450 F. So yes, you don't need one, but a Guru sure is handy!

I seized a rare lull in our California "spare the air" days, before the onset tomorrow of a new heat wave brings new fires. Pork belly strips, salt, pepper, pimenton over apple smoke from a smoke pot. I'll parse out the meat for either Hunan Harvest Pork or Sichuan Twice-cooked Pork. I'll make some lard from the fat in my Vermicular Musui-Kamado, to have smoke goodness in other stir fries. Yamada Hammered Iron Round Bottom Wok (1.6mm Thickness) I've lost track of how many woks I've owned over my life. These Japanese woks (round or flat bottom) are by far the best woks I've ever seen. Thickness matters. I made a wooden handle to go in the arm. I own a 33cm flat bottom, which I now realize is a bit small. Our new range will be round-bottom ready, with more BTUs, so I have a 36cm round wok on order.

As a kid I worked a summer at Schaller's burger restaurant on the Lake Ontario shore near Rochester, NY. They really did serve great classic burgers. There were nights I was the only one working who wasn't tripping on psilocybin. We'd draw straws for who got to turn on the machine that chopped 50 onions at once. Everyone else stood by to carry the unlucky one into a walk-in freezer, where staring up at the fan for twenty seconds restored some sight to one's eyes. Man did that sting! Impressive machine, though... Our hot sauce was legendary. To first approximation it was just grease. The secret recipe was actually to take every mistake burger that week, and cook it down. In a pot of grease, of course. You'd swear your napkin was the best burger you'd ever had, with this sauce on it.

Indoors, we've got this gas range. It has insides and a top. We use the top more often, but the insides are very important. Outdoors, those roles are assumed by our KK and a couple of Solo Stoves. Many nights, the meal is not centered around outdoor fire, but outdoor fire is critical to ingredient prep. For that, I can pour a bit of isopropyl alcohol over a wood/charcoal mix in a Solo Stove, light it, and be back in the house in thirty seconds. Real fire, as quick as lighting a gas grill. Some nights we want pizza or focaccia di recco, or roast or tandoor chicken, or salmon. That's work for the KK. Tonight's dinner was bean tacos. The tacos were from masa I ground yesterday for chicken tacos (grilled of course). Tonight's salsa was from garden tomatillos and garden chiles. A comal is traditional for blackening these ingredients, but I prefer a real fire. I'll light the smaller Solo Stove to roast a single pepper. The Weber kettle has gone untouched for years. Anything the Solo Stove can't do, the KK can. I need both.

From what little I can remember of sixties/seventies counterculture (if you can remember you weren't there), the vernacular stripped apparent gender from phrases like this. I'd hear women use "Hey man" with each other. It wasn't a political statement; the complete lack of concern about gender was the triumph here. This must have stayed with me. I understood all the genders, and read "man" here with nary a ripple that anything was out of place. "Good god man..." is a precious exclamation. As we understood half a century ago, what we took, we took for all.

We have many sizes of 4mil chamber vacuum pouches. The price is right compared to any alternative, and we have a chamber machine. One can use an oversized bag, then simply clip the bag over the side of the Cambro. Then the bag needn't be sealed, and is reusable.

After summers on the Aeolian Islands and Pantelleria, I've developed a lifelong love of capers. We're cooking for ourselves and our foodie neighbors (while they remodel their kitchen) and I used the last of our capers in the stellar swordfish recipe from My Calabria. Crisis. Worse, one of our two favorite sources (Les Moulins Mahjoub) had become impossible to find in 500g jars. I found exactly one US source, Four Star Seafood in San Francisco. They'll deliver out to us $100 minimum for $5 flat fee. So I added a box of frozen shrimp as part of my order. CAPERS IN SALT #4/7 – 2.2 LBS - Buon Italia Wild Mountain Capers - (100g.)/ (500g.) - Four Star Seafood Gulf Shrimp U10 - Head On - 4 lb box - Four Star Seafood I've been asking everywhere after shrimp heads for stock. They apparently just throw them overboard or something. A four pound box, at half the price I'd pay for similar shrimp at Berkeley Bowl, is half shrimp, half heads. The heads fit nicely in the Vermicular with a liter of chicken stock, half a liter of water to cover. Cook 200 F for 45 minutes; any fish stock can over-extract. Then compost the heads; your worms will love you. This will either go into a Catalan Fideua or a gumbo.