I'm leaving shortly to visit Washington for the weekend. We have a slap up barbecue tomorrow with family, for which I'm going to make crumble, probably peach.
Also, I realize I haven't yet posted about this, but we are going to France for much of August, with Paris and somewhere obscure on the Riviera on the agenda. Great mounds of food will be consumed. The tricky bit will be to balance restaurant eating (Gagnaire, for sure, L'Astrance maybe, but how about flying to Barcelona on a budget airline and sitting desperately outside El Bulli? Or to London and then "training" out to the countryside for the Fat Duck? Or trying to get into Mugaritz? And how extraordinary is it exactly that I'm thinking of punctuating a visit to France with trips to Spain or England (England?!?) to eat?) with cooking at home. I am, of course, renting apartments rather than staying at hotels, as I mean to cuisiner up a storm. I don't know if poulets de Bresse have a season, but they had better be around - I'm still haunted by a leg I had six years ago. And rillettes. And cheese. Cheese! Bread. Pastries. Arghflagh.
7/03/2008
6/30/2008
Chef's Ripert's "focus" on seasoning
Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin has been faithfully continuing his excellent series on cooking with a toaster oven. Though I recommend watching, I'm really interested by what is clearly something of a bugbear for Ripert - being properly "focused" when seasoning. The snippets below, from each of his episodes other than the one involving a mango dessert, illustrate the point. The questions they raise are clear - is focused salting that important to food of the quality that Ripert produces in his restaurant? And second, is it as significant a question for the home cook as Ripert suggests?
My experience is that salting enough is extremely important, but that patchiness in salting across a piece of fish or meat is less so. In the pantheon of home cooking problems, I would put inconsistent salting across surfaces somewhere below inadequate seasoning, failure to brown, and cooking to just done (and not overdone) as the most significant cook's "craft" problems faced by the home cook. But I wonder if people disagree. (I'll see if I can get the Chef himself to address this through a comment, but barring that, I'll ask the question here).
Broiled Red Snapper Fillet: 1:12 "You can see the way I'm seasoning. I'm not too far, I'm not too close to the fish. I'm maybe five inches on top of the fish, and I'm very focused on it."
Salt and Pepper: (a written post only): To season, hold your hands six to eight inches above the food and sprinkle a fine coating of salt and pepper all over the surface before cooking. Be methodical about seasoning evenly–if you have uneven fillets, use more salt and pepper on the thicker portions.
Parmesan Zucchini with Balsamic: 1:38 Then some fine sea salt, and I make sure I'm very focused when I'm doing the seasoning, because the zucchini is so thin, if you are not concentrated in putting the salt and pepper, you may have something extremely spicy or extremely salty.
Herb Roasted Chicken Tenders: 1:00 Making sure at all times to have your fingers very dry, so that way you can season very precisely.
My experience is that salting enough is extremely important, but that patchiness in salting across a piece of fish or meat is less so. In the pantheon of home cooking problems, I would put inconsistent salting across surfaces somewhere below inadequate seasoning, failure to brown, and cooking to just done (and not overdone) as the most significant cook's "craft" problems faced by the home cook. But I wonder if people disagree. (I'll see if I can get the Chef himself to address this through a comment, but barring that, I'll ask the question here).
Broiled Red Snapper Fillet: 1:12 "You can see the way I'm seasoning. I'm not too far, I'm not too close to the fish. I'm maybe five inches on top of the fish, and I'm very focused on it."
Salt and Pepper: (a written post only): To season, hold your hands six to eight inches above the food and sprinkle a fine coating of salt and pepper all over the surface before cooking. Be methodical about seasoning evenly–if you have uneven fillets, use more salt and pepper on the thicker portions.
Parmesan Zucchini with Balsamic: 1:38 Then some fine sea salt, and I make sure I'm very focused when I'm doing the seasoning, because the zucchini is so thin, if you are not concentrated in putting the salt and pepper, you may have something extremely spicy or extremely salty.
Herb Roasted Chicken Tenders: 1:00 Making sure at all times to have your fingers very dry, so that way you can season very precisely.
The sugar buy-out
I recently read that Florida was going to purchase all the assets of Florida's largest sugarcane producer. The decision was haled as a major environmental victory, returning near 200,000 acres to the Everglades. I have no reason to doubt this justification for the deal, but I have to wonder whether this has something to do with the sugar lobby in Florida, which explains the lack of sugar in American Coca-Cola, for example.
Ko Auction
An auction for a reservation at Momofuku Ko has closed at $2,870. Over at eGullet, there has been some suggestion following the recent price hike from $85 for the tasting menu (when we had our meal) to $100, how high the ceiling of Ko pricing might be. My guess is that the auction is, in some ways, an extremely clever way to figure that out. I suspect, of course, that there's a little fluff in the price, because people are motivated to give to charity, but I'd also guess that pricing near the astronomical level of Masa (1200-1600 for a full meal for two with wine) would fill the 12 seats.
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