Can anyone recommend a good source for scientific info on cooking? I am especially interested in material selection (wooden vs metal spoons, cast iron vs stainless steel cookware).

you guys are incredible

We actually made Super Villains Apple Stuffed Pork Chops on Sunday they were very good but I'm pretty sure we messed up the reduction sauce it was our first attempt at making a sauce like that but the meat and stuffing was very good.

Thanks for the new recipe.

For women's day I let my woman choose a dish. She picked "surf and turf". H'okay!



Black Angus tenderloin, jumbo shrimp, roast portabellos in a pepper cream sauce. Roasted beef marrow with sea salt and toast. Butternut squash couscous.

Look for books by Harold McGee and the foodlab columns on seriouseats.com by Kenji Alt-Lopez.

WOW. You do good work. Wow.

Nootka,

Thanks!

Supa,

Holy hell that looks awesome. Feel like posting a recipe?

As nootka pointed out, Harold McGee is the go to guy for food science info. His book On Food And Cooking is the most important cooking book ever written. The book is usually referred to as simply "McGee."

You might also want to check out some books by Heston Blumenthal. His recipes are mostly very difficult to do at home, but the information, ideas, and pretty pictures in the Fat Duck cookbook is more than worth the price of the book imo.

Harold McGee also has a blog, although he usually just posts to provide a link to his NYT columns, which are excellent: http://news.curiouscook.com/

There's a few blogs I read that are focused on food science. The best of which I think is Cooking Issues. It's written by some chefs at the French Culinary Institute in NYC. This is a great blog where they do a lot of experiments on a wide range of cooking techniques and ingredients. The experiment they did on how the frequency of flipping meat during cooking affects the internal doneness of the meat was really good (cliffs: more flipping = rarer inside, minimal flipping = more well done inside). Some of the experiments they do are really out there and not applicable to anything a home cook would do, but fascinating nonetheless.

There's very few ingredients so it mostly just comes down to trying to cook each part right.

Prep: 1 heavy cast iron pan for the protein.
1 smaller cast iron pan or saute pan for the mushrooms.
1 oven, preheat to 350.
1 small baking dish for the bones.

Ingredients:
For the steak :
2 tenderloin fillets, patted dry and rested for 20 minutes with healthy s+p.
Teaspoon (t) canola oil
For the shrimp:
10 jumbos, whatever count/size you like.
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 lemon's juice
t olive oil.
s+p
For the sauce:
1 shallot, diced
1 clove minced garlic
1/4? (slightly less) cup of 35% cream
Tablespoon (T) prepared yellow mustard
t coarsely ground black pepper (to taste)
Resting juices
For the mushrooms:
2 portabello mushrooms, cut into strips
1 small onion, diced.
For the bone marrow:
Marrow bones, s+p.
For the couscous:
1 Butternut squash, cut in half lengthwise
1/2 package of couscous
Butter
Salt
__________________________

Okay. Set the oven to preheat to 350 and use a fork to poke a few holes across the squash. Microwave the squash on high for 2-4 minutes and then toss them in the oven until they're soft (20-30 minutes depending on how long you microwaved them).
When there's about 15 minutes left for the squash, put the marrow bones in the oven, too, (separate baking tray) with the holes pointing up+down.
Prepare your couscous as per the box's instructions.

With about 5-10 minutes left in the squash, start the steaks.
I put the tiniest drops of oil in the castiron pan, spread it around with a piece of paper towel, and then throw away the excess.
Preheat the pan on high for a minute, then put in your steaks. Don't touch them for 20 seconds then, with an oven mitt, rock the pan to the sides slightly to let the fats slip in to all of the cracks. In about a minute, lift up the steaks to see brown they are - they should be ready to flip, with a dry, dark crust that's about 70% of the way you want it.
Flip the steaks one by one, being sure to let a bit of the pan's fats slip underneath when you are replacing them back down.
Immediately put a tiny pat of butter in the pan with the flipped steaks, and rub a tiny bit of butter on top of each. Don't move the steaks for 20 seconds, then give the pan a vigorous shake to spread around the butter. Cook this for 1 minute.

About now your squash should be ready to take out of the oven. Put the steaks in to the oven, and take out the squash.

The steaks will need 3-5 minutes in the oven, depending on thickness.

Carefully cube the butternut squash, and stir the chunks in with your prepped couscous, and copious amounts of butter and salt. (Done).

About 2 minutes in to the steaks being in the oven, pull them out for a second, and flip the steak over two times, quickly in succession, to baste both surfaces in butter. If you're a pro, this also gives you a chance to poke-check the meat for doneness. It almost definitely will need another 2 minutes, so put it back in the oven until its ready.

When the steaks are ready, pull out the pan, remove the steaks, and let them rest, wrapped in foil.

Put the hot castiron pan back on the stove so that we can cook our shrimp. On medium heat, add the olive oil and minced garlic. Let the garlic cook for about 10 seconds, and then add your layer of shrimp. S+P heavily, and after about 30 seconds, flip each of the shrimp to cook the other side. After 10 seconds, squeeze in the lemon juice and stir any bits off the bottom. The hot pan should cook these guys in less than a minute or two. Remove the shrimp and set them aside.

Take your second, smaller pan, put it on medium-high heat and add a teaspoon of canola oil. When it's warm, add your mushrooms and the diced onion. Coat the mushrooms in the oil quickly, and then LEAVE THEM ALONE TO BROWN.

Return your large cast iron pan (now dirty with bits of steak, garlic, shrimp, lemon, nomnomnom) to the stove on med-high heat to make our sauce. Add in a tiny bit of butter, your shallots and garlic. Cook for about 30 seconds, then add in your mustard. Stir the mustard in, cook it for another few seconds, then turn down the heat to med-low. Add the 35% whipping cream and stir. You don't really want cream to boil, so keep an eye on this and stir constantly. Within about a minute it should be where you want it to be. Turn off the heat, then open up your foiled tenderloin and stir in any resting juice you may have released.

At this point the marrow should have been cooking for about 35-40 minutes, and the marrow should be slightly coming off the bone but not tooooo melted. Turn off the oven, and spread a little bit of the bone marrow on some toasted wonder bread and sprinkle on some sea salt.

Now it's all ready to plate.

Take the steaks, put them on the plate. Add three shrimp beside it. Some shrooms. Add some sauce on top and sprinkle on some chives for colour.

Phew. Wow I'm terrible at writing these up.

Am I the only one thinking "wtf is women's day"?

Regardless, A ****ing + on the meal. Looks damn good.

Thanks very much Ron - great links there. Have subscribed to the cooking issues radio podcast look very good.

Jack's bacon was delicious. It was really fresh tasting, though the maple flavor didn't come through much. I llike my bacon really crispy, so I may have cooked the maple off.

Thanks! Next time ill add more maple sugar...

Ok so Grasshopp3r got some of this bacon



in exchange for elk and homebrew

Here's the elk shoulder, marinated overnight in beer and aromatics, smoked for a few hours over alder wood, with simmered red bell, mushroom, onion, garlic, celery, and jalapeno. And homebrew porter. Braised it for a while, cut into chunks, braised longer.



Plated with arugula salad and roast potatoes



It was pretty sublime served with the porter it braised in. Good trade!

just found one more: http://foodslashscience.blogspot.com/

My wife's birthday is St. Patrick's Day and lately her dad has been making corned beef and cabbage. He gave us a big slab so i decided to make some corned beef hash.

potatoes
corned beef
onion
beef stock
salt & pepper

throw it all together and cook until potatoes are done


i like mine crispy, so i took it all out, rebuttered, and put some back on


egg on top obv


wow, really good.




Had some pizza dough left over from last night still rising on the counter so i tried something today. Don't really have a name yet, or maybe they do and I just don't know.

This dough had sat out all night, so it was basically collapsing when touched. I picked it up a couple times and gravity stretched it out. Had a slight sour yeasty smell. Sprinkled on some sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, blueberries, raspberries, and mascarpone cheese


Rolled it, sliced it, and baked at 375-400 until whenever


The bottoms were like caramelized fruit brule candy shell. Sifted some powdered sugar on top


Didn't know what to expect, but these were really good. Would add more mascarpone next time, though.

Not me, but someone made a $28 dollar sammich on Reddit today. Thought it would be appreciated here. He called it mushroom steak with horseradsishy spiciness.

Must have gotten that from this article, which is a bit more refined.

This would be great for a food truck imo.

Mother of god. That sandwich looks amazing but there is no way I could wait 6+ hours to eat it.

Last night I made spinach & ricotta cannelloni and took photos the whole way through to create a step-by-step photo blog entry that I just wrote up: Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni

For those lazy people I'll just post the last 2 (of 17) images here:





omnomnom

This looks astonishing

Does anyone have a preferred method/recipe for smoking a brisket (besides what I can find by googling)?

It would be annoying for me to eat a sammy with a whole ribeye on it. Do you just swallow the fatty parts whole or spit out every 4th or 5th bite?

any balcony/apartment dwellers have experience with electric grills? my only experience is with kitchen counter Foreman grills which I hate. I see these higher end normal looking electric grills for like $400, so I'm wondering if these are reasonable alternatives to gas grills

Cooked up some chicken thighs last night marinated in tarrgon, white wine & butter. Turned out great. I also boiled some baby carrots with honey and they turned out really good: