Syzygies

Following Aaron Franklin's technique to the letter (10 hours @ 275 F, butcher paper), I delivered my best-received brisket ever as one entree at a large holiday party. A 15 lb prime brisket from Golden Gate Meat Company, my favorite source in the Bay Area, and it disappeared in minutes. I see this as a new plateau with new challenges, and I'd like to look back on this brisket as the worst I've made, moving forward. That may be easy: Part of what one gets for Golden Gate's brisket prices is much more connective tissue, which dissolves more dramatically with this technique. It would be a stretch to say that I was able to slice it, though it did appear that I presented slices. One may need to moderate the use of butcher paper to match the characteristics of the meat. I want the same flavor, more tooth. The only other time I'd seen this little tooth was after have Golden Gate dry-age a brisket for me for a week. A wholly unnecessary step if one uses butcher paper after the dwell. The butcher paper also seemed to inhibit rendering; I would trim even more fat, moving forward. What was left was all consumed, but people self-selected small portions. The rub-and-fat-stained butcher paper is a fantastic visual prop. Cooking is always part drama and teasing expectations, and butcher paper is far better than foil at working up a crowd. The bark was not the same; others report maintaining integrity of their bark. My brisket did then get foiled for a rest as part of transporting it to the party. With sous vide or reverse sear, one can have it both ways with steak. Can we have it both ways here? I see two options to explore: Open back up the butcher paper toward the end, trimming all but a base underneath the brisket? Or take a "burnt ends" approach and deliberately leave parts on the fire while the main brisket rests wrapped in foil and towels in a cooler. The Importance of Wrapping Brisket Pink/Peach Butcher Paper Roll 24" X 150' BBQ Anatomy 101: Know Your Brisket

For the record, here is the refereed journal article: Probable Zoonotic Leprosy in the Southern United States I believe that if one is aware of a plausibly legitimate health question, one should flag it whether one believes the conclusion or not. You may have misread my position. As a mathematician, I recognize the form of statistical reasoning used by such a study, and I find that form of reasoning to be sound. However, studies can be wrong. My position is simply that each person who might consume armadillo meat should reach their own conclusions on the health risks. The poker player in me wonders why you lead with "There is no record..." Me thinks it's a tell, and I want to shove all my chips to the center of the table!

I remember specific stories about Vietnamese refugees settling in Texas. They spotted the armadillo as a good match for an animal they hunted and ate in Viet Nam, and ran into the problem of armadillos carrying leprosy. Without question, Armadillos carry leprosy, and the genetic similarities between their strains and human strains would not be possible without interspecies infection. The rate is low (95% of people are immune), and some of the record is putative, but I wouldn't characterize the situation as "no record". The CDC has a measured warning: http://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/exposure/armadillos.html Here is the NYTimes report on the genetic study: https://web.archive.org/web/20110501134801/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/health/28leprosy.html?_r=1

Wow. I just wandered into land of red.

I held Russell Crowe's Oscar, first night out back on set after the ceremony. None of the actors would, some baseball-like superstition that they'd be blowing their chance.

Wow, posted on my sixtieth birthday. How did you know! Looks awesome.

I have over a dozen waterstones in two locations, and several decades of practice using them for routine knife sharpening. The difference is more dramatic with Japanese knives, as German knives are a lot of work to get sharp this way, and the Japanese knives get sharper. I only use German knives when a thinner Japanese knife might get damaged. I have discarded any other sharpening system that has come my way, including at least one motorized device with celebrity chef endorsements. Anything else that doesn't require its own lab bench is a joke, compared to a waterstone. One learns the ideal angle by sound, just as one learns the ideal paella socarrat by sound. This isn't a big deal, one will get better. The Japanese revere waterstones, and one can spent a thousand dollars on stones harvested from fabled island quarries. Even affordable natural stones tend to humiliate the user, one moment of loss of control and the stone is gouged. The practical choice is a synthetic stone, and the following combo stone rules all others, a great value: Norton 24450 Japanese-Style Combination Waterstone 1000/4000 Grit, 8-Inch by 3-Inch by 1-Inch One could get a pair of combo stones for four grits, but this is overthinking the problem: Norton Waterstone Starter Kit: 220/1000 grit stone, 4000/8000 grit stone, SiC flattening stone The 220 grit might be useful in a shop but is never needed for kitchen knives. 8000 is unnecessarily fine; better to sharpen more often, with a single combo stone that isn't a daunting task to use. Hide Tools offers a popular sharpening service in Berkeley, and I asked; they don't go beyond 4000. This isn't woodworking, and like cleaning a KK there will be more ash; sharpen again sooner! Stones need to be soaked briefly; I used to place mine on a mortar in the sink, with the faucet dribbling as I worked. This holder is far easier; any variant will do: Steelex D1091 Sharpening Stone Holder Sharpening stones get out of true rather quickly. To save money, one can tape a piece of fine wet/dry sandpaper to a flat surface. However, know thyself, one will never do this often enough. Once one learns to get the stone truly flat before each session, it becomes apparent that this is critical to the best results, well worth the effort. I can't vouch for this flattener, but it isn't a budget breaker: Norton Flattening Stone for Waterstones There are many alternatives, and Atoma diamond sharpeners have a following. This is what I use: Atoma Diamond Sharpener Medium - #400 To see how far people take this, here's some insight into the differences in diamond sharpeners: DMT vs. Atoma Diamond Plates For the Edge Pro – A Microscopic Comparison I've left out some basics that one should read online. The above is more opinion, conclusions I've drawn that weren't immediately clear from reading about the basics. The above is what I actually do, not nearly often enough, decades after any precious attachments to unnecessary rituals have worn off. I'm quite restless until I find something that works (many cookers before the KK, dozens of programming languages before Haskell), and this works.

I have an old desk in my university office. A monumental hunk of solid wood, marred by disintegrating varnish of unknown type. Using the top has felt for years like a day at the beach. The last thing I want in that difficult-to-clean space is messy solvents and/or a power sander. A heat gun might help... Before sandpaper, people used "cabinet scrapers". The Japanese hand methods have survived better in our imaginations: One spent as long preparing tools as using them. Here, a cabinet scraper can only be used so long before it needs a new edge preparation. There's a three step metal-working process that I've never witnessed in person, that leads to the perfect microscopic lip on the metal that does the scraping. On one hand, mastering this would be an advanced school in metal care, I'd have to be better at sharpening knives afterward, even if it's not really the same process. On the other hand, the first $5 scraper did more than half the job, and life is short, I'm thinking of just buying a couple more. Embarrassing, like buying a new flashlight when the batteries fail, but practical. I'll ship the spent scrapers to California, and see if I ever play with them in my shop.

Keep a water stone flat with a diamond stone (who cuts the barber?)

I'm reading an old spreadsheet in NYC; I can't go out to the garage to double-check. My notes say that the lip on a 50cm paella pan is 19.8" in diameter. I believe that this is my go-to pan for more than four people. It fits in my KK, and once I sawed the handles off I could even close the lid. A 42cm fits easily, handles and all, and is also a size one wants around. Sawing the handles off a 50cm is not for the faint of heart. I suppose there are people here with lab lasers or welding equipment who could make short work of this, but it would be a multi-day project with a Swiss army knife. My tool set is somewhere in the middle, and it took me twenty minutes. Forget enamel unless you want to feel like the seventh occupant of a trailer park home. Carbon steel is next least expensive, and can actually be seasoned. One could well be happier going with stainless steel and cleaning completely each time. Paella is an aggressive cooking process, and I have my doubts that many people can season a pan well enough to survive paella cooking. I have books that actually praise the flavor from a carbon steel pan, alluding in flowery terms to the seasoning coming off into the food, which suggests that no one is managing to actually season their pans. Forget the recent web craze involving flaxseed oil; they got hung up on the single concept of polymerization, at the expense of all else. Flaxseed oil works on rough cast iron, but peels off smooth metal. True seasoning is many, many cycles of fat such as lard, cooking starches, and high heats. Think very thin coats of lard at 600 F till the smoking stops. The goal is the black crud on a fifty year old cake pan that won't come off for love or money. An after dinner KK fire is ideal for seasoning; go hot enough without reaching the self-cleaning oven stage, which also strips the seasoning. As I said, one can also go stainless steel. I ordered four bags of Fideo Pasta for Traditional Fideua yesterday, from La Tienda to take advantage of a sale. I prefer pasta to rice, for both risotto and paella. So do the Catalans.

Creole Gumbo

Yes. If one wants uniformly sized burgers, use a digital scale. I set out a number of Corelle saucers, smeared with olive oil. Divide up the meat, and form into patties with the lightest finger touch, using the saucers as guides to obtain uniform diameters. Using a burger press to form burgers is like using a rolling pin to punch down bread dough. There are many purposes to punching down bread dough, but none of them read "collapse all those little air bubbles". There is a duality to a great burger, a floating tender lightness, and at the same time so meaty it surprises you every time. Think love and sex. Here is my go-to meat grinder; also order other sizes of plates. If you have time, nearly freeze the chunks of meat before grinding. The issue is to avoid smearing the fat, which a food processor is prone to do. Even if one never aspires to be a master sausage maker, one can look to this group for best practices. This is like visiting Hida Tools for Japanese knives; the critical activity is woodworking, and cooking is by comparison play. Here, making burgers is the kindergarten version of making sausages, but the sausage makers are the only ones who can truly teach us how to handle meat. http://www.sausagemaker.com/10-Stainless-Steel-Meat-Grinder-p/15-1010.htm

Gesundheit!

Olive oil, butter, ghee, lard, duck fat. Replacement for these? Buy more!

One imagines that a $30 impulse sealer would work far quicker than setting up an iron. Even though I have a chamber vacuum sealer, I use an impulse sealer all the time with the same chamber vacuum bags. If I want to seal without removing the air. If the contents are basically liquid, it is faster to just burp out the air and seal with an impulse sealer. I have tried everything over the years, for freezing stock. Nothing beats a chamber vacuum bag, for saving space, ease of thawing/heating, and shelf life. In a chest freezer (very cold, no defrost cycle) a forgotten bag of stock can last for years.

There's a style of shop dust mask that's soft fabric, held on with velcro straps. Very comfortable. I wouldn't use it at a Superfund site, but I always grab the mask along with a 4" painting brush, to work the ash top-down off every surface. To continue the painters theme, I then brush the ash out the front ash door into a waiting plastic painters tray liner. I dump the ashes into an empty charcoal bag, where I also store the tray. When I open a new bag, the tray migrates and the oldest bag is discarded. Ritual makes arbitrarily complex chores seem easy. I deliberately stop myself at 98% clean or so, considering what the future has in store.

The best chicken pot pie I've ever had was one I made from Tasmin Day-Lewis, Tarts with Tops On. The actor Daniel's sister. The book was an excuse for bringing this one recipe to print, and it's a masterpiece that takes twice as long as one would expect. In the same spirit, I've started working through Slow Fires, just released. He's a kindred spirit, another anchovies and capers guy who can show me a few things. Nothing radical but the ensemble effect of everything he says to do is extraordinary. The pappardelle with rabbit sugo surprised me; I knew I wouldn't be eating it on day one, but if I had read through the recipe before starting I would have realized I needed other plans for day two, also. A 24 dry rub, then rinse and 12 hours air dry in fridge, then braise, pull meat and chill for later assembly. I was crushed to see the pot come out of the oven bubbling away, I just knew I should have substituted sous vide. Then I tasted it, his preparation totally offset the ill effects of conventional braising. This was the best rabbit I've tasted in my life. A challenging meat many people give a pass, because it's so hard to get it to come out wonderful.

A middle ground is to add the stock in batches as one cooks risotto stovetop, and not worry about it so much. I had romanticized the constant stirring as one dribbled in stock, till I took some cooking lessons with Giuliano Bugialli. He's a perfectionist and a traditionalist, but pragmatic enough to debunk my various illusions. One can add stock every several minutes, and still be making risotto. The poster child here is pour-over coffee. One can pay $200 for a pouring kettle that (presumably) dribbles the faintest continuous stream, if one really needs this play time to wake up. Or my $30 kettle, the stream aims easier than a measuring cup, and I pour over the water in batches. Sometimes I get distracted, and the scale shuts off, I have to go by how full the mug is. Perhaps a better example is Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. Spreading out the addition of stock over time has an effect on the texture of the rice, just as spreading out the addition of hops has an effect on the quality of the IPA. One can call it IPA either way, so I suppose one can call it risotto either way. It takes me 20 minutes to clean up, with irregular attention to the risotto. Then it's ready! And I believe that it's healthy to drink all the wine I want as long as I'm standing up. (This used to be self-regulating.)

New York City's 6 Best Poutines I look at their pictures, uh ok. I look at your pictures. Mind. Blown.

If they allow proper subsets to hold a place in line, the relationship shouldn't matter. I'd have two lines, one for complete parties.

This experiment reminds me of Heston Blumenthal's "In Search of Perfection" series, so I went looking: How to make Heston Blumenthal’s Triple Cooked Chips recipe: A definitive step-by-step guide His first cook is simmering in a pot of water; this is the step where I'd swap in sous vide. Otherwise, follow his method to the letter, to see what he knows?

You have a problem with the number seven? Some old work of mine: In Shuffling Cards, 7 Is Winning Number

My version of this was Schaller's Drive-In on Lake Ontario. I remember best drawing straws to push the "on" button for the onion mincing machine. There would be a "The Martian" rescue afterwards, two guys carrying me into the walk-in freezer and tilting my head at the overhead fan, till I recovered. Perhaps that's why I thought the scuba mask for cutting onions in Diva (1981) was so funny.

Oh I know. This forum is such a nice place, I feared that you wouldn't realize your wish to be flamed unless I took one for the team!

I much prefer potatoes pan-fried in ghee to deep-fried in vegetable oil. (Lard is a different story. Then there's the elusive horse fat.) You'll note that I advocate sous vide as a first step for pan-frying. I haven't tried it for french fries. My prejudice is that one deep-fries french fries twice at different temperatures deliberately, and that sous vide is not a substitute for the first deep-fry step. Nevertheless, these are fascinating experiments. You needlessly suited up, hoping for flames? What I often think but rarely say: Lack of imagination is not an acceptable form of reason. It isn't accepted as a form of proof in mathematics, and we mathematicians watch helplessly as it is routinely accepted as a form of proof outside mathematics. More to the point, a sous vide water bath is far more manageable than a hot oil deep fryer. Ask anyone who has sharpened using both an oil stone and a water stone. Or painted with both oil paint and latex. Oil is messy, and water rocks! Of course, if one is going to fire up a deep fryer for pass two, it is available with little additional effort for pass one. If one has equipment for a water bath, it is also available with little additional effort for pass one. So this is an empirical question, not meant to upset people who resist change.