Dipping Chocolate Without Losing Your Temper!

Mark Bittman is here to help with any chocolate tempering you may have to do over the holidays . . .

I had no idea temperature was that critical in melting chocolate: First, bring it to 115 F, then seed it down to 91 F. At 88 F, it's too cool and needs to be heated again.

What surprises me is the tiny tolerance of the temperature measurements that is implied by this procedure. If 91 F is correct and 88 F is too cool, the tolerance must be in the vicinity of +/- 1 F or better. In other words, 91 F means 91.0 F! I have no hope of reading that on my conventional analog thermometer, and I'm a little skeptical that even the digital thermometers made for the kitchen are that good. (I would have guessed the temperature gradient in the double boiler would be at least a few degrees.) No wonder I've had so much trouble in the past.

Bittman and Oliver with a Chicken Breast

In this special episode of The Minimalist, Mark Bittman invites Jamie Oliver to apply his culinary vision to the ordinary chicken breast.  

By far, my favorite part of cooking is the knife work.  It’s an art, or at least a fine craft, and there is a great deal of satisfaction to be had in rapidly and efficiently working food into beautiful form - a satisfaction not made less by the fact that a momentary lapse in concentration can turn carrots julienne into finger chiffonade.

But close behind that on my list of favorites is getting to beat the snot out of a piece of protein, a testosterone-driven technique that is necessary when making beef carpaccio, for instance.  In this video, Oliver flattens a seasoned chicken breast with a frying pan using his considerable skillets... I mean, skills.

I like the little snippet of wisdom imparted by Oliver at the end: “If you’re going to eat three times a day to the day that you die, why not be good at it?”  Exactly so.