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Authors: Jeff Potter
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wait for remaining guests to arrive — or, in the event of a kitchen meltdown, the pizza delivery guy.
Speaking of kitchen meltdowns, don’t try out new recipes with first-time guests. When it comes to picking a recipe, choose something that you’re comfortable making. You’ll be more relaxed cooking a dish that you’re familiar with, which will translate to a more relaxed atmosphere for everyone. This isn’t to say that experimenting with dishes needs to be limited to those times when you’re cooking alone. I certainly enjoy trying out new things with friends, because their feedback helps me understand how others react to new dishes. Restaurants do the same thing, using their staff as beta testers: one cook will use leftover bits from the normal meal service to make a “family meal,” and the better experiments can end up on the menu. Just keep in mind who your guests are and their general openness to experiments. If you’re not sure, stick with the familiar.
Pick a recipe that’s in line with what’s expected by your guests. Making sushi for someone who likes his meat well done is probably too much of a stretch. Some dishes lend themselves well to a more casual, family-style meal (e.g., lasagna), while others are better suited to being plated in the kitchen, where you can spend time on the presentation.
Finally, choose recipes that leave you time to spend with the guests. After all, they’re there to see you! Depending upon the complexity of the meal and the number of people you are cooking for, try to pick recipes that have a distinct prep phase that you can do in advance of your guests arriving. I survived hosting a four-course dinner party for 40 by prepping individual servings of duck confit sugo (see Duck Confit Sugo , earlier in this chapter) and individual chocolate cakes in small ramekins. As people arrived, I snatched the appropriate number of ramekins from the fridge and tossed them into the oven. This left me time to work on the other courses and still hang out with my guests. (I used the ramekins a few weeks later for making Christmas fruitcakes that I sent off to my friends.) This attention to planning will limit the amount of attention you need to give to the preparation of food and will free you up to interact and socialize with your guests. After all, it should be fun!
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Adam Savage on Scientific Testing
PHOTO CC-BY-SA-3 0 PORKRIND ON EN WIKIPEDIA COM
Adam Savage is co-host of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, a popular science program that examines rumors, myths, and conventional wisdom, “putting them to the test” with a scientific approach.
How do you go about testing a myth?
One of the earliest things we realized on the show is that you always have to have something to compare to. We would try to come up with an answer like: is this guy dead, is this car destroyed, is this an injury? And we would be trying to compare it to an absolute value, like X number of feet fallen equals dead. The problem is the world is very spongy and nonuniform, and trying to nail down a value like that can be really difficult. So we always end up doing relative tests. We end up doing a control under regular circumstances and then we test the myth under identical circumstances, and we compare the two things. In that comparison, we get to see our results.
We did one where we were testing whether or not you could tenderize steaks with explosives. We had to figure out what tenderness is. The problem is you can give two different people each a piece of steak from the same cut compared to a piece of steak from a different cut, and they might come up with two different assessments of which one is more tender. We actually did a whole day of testing that didn’t end up on film because we realized we were using the wrong parameters for assessing steak tenderness. The USDA actually has a machine for testing the tenderness of steak that measures the pounds of force it takes to punch a hole through a steak. We
Speaking of kitchen meltdowns, don’t try out new recipes with first-time guests. When it comes to picking a recipe, choose something that you’re comfortable making. You’ll be more relaxed cooking a dish that you’re familiar with, which will translate to a more relaxed atmosphere for everyone. This isn’t to say that experimenting with dishes needs to be limited to those times when you’re cooking alone. I certainly enjoy trying out new things with friends, because their feedback helps me understand how others react to new dishes. Restaurants do the same thing, using their staff as beta testers: one cook will use leftover bits from the normal meal service to make a “family meal,” and the better experiments can end up on the menu. Just keep in mind who your guests are and their general openness to experiments. If you’re not sure, stick with the familiar.
Pick a recipe that’s in line with what’s expected by your guests. Making sushi for someone who likes his meat well done is probably too much of a stretch. Some dishes lend themselves well to a more casual, family-style meal (e.g., lasagna), while others are better suited to being plated in the kitchen, where you can spend time on the presentation.
Finally, choose recipes that leave you time to spend with the guests. After all, they’re there to see you! Depending upon the complexity of the meal and the number of people you are cooking for, try to pick recipes that have a distinct prep phase that you can do in advance of your guests arriving. I survived hosting a four-course dinner party for 40 by prepping individual servings of duck confit sugo (see Duck Confit Sugo , earlier in this chapter) and individual chocolate cakes in small ramekins. As people arrived, I snatched the appropriate number of ramekins from the fridge and tossed them into the oven. This left me time to work on the other courses and still hang out with my guests. (I used the ramekins a few weeks later for making Christmas fruitcakes that I sent off to my friends.) This attention to planning will limit the amount of attention you need to give to the preparation of food and will free you up to interact and socialize with your guests. After all, it should be fun!
----
Adam Savage on Scientific Testing
PHOTO CC-BY-SA-3 0 PORKRIND ON EN WIKIPEDIA COM
Adam Savage is co-host of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters, a popular science program that examines rumors, myths, and conventional wisdom, “putting them to the test” with a scientific approach.
How do you go about testing a myth?
One of the earliest things we realized on the show is that you always have to have something to compare to. We would try to come up with an answer like: is this guy dead, is this car destroyed, is this an injury? And we would be trying to compare it to an absolute value, like X number of feet fallen equals dead. The problem is the world is very spongy and nonuniform, and trying to nail down a value like that can be really difficult. So we always end up doing relative tests. We end up doing a control under regular circumstances and then we test the myth under identical circumstances, and we compare the two things. In that comparison, we get to see our results.
We did one where we were testing whether or not you could tenderize steaks with explosives. We had to figure out what tenderness is. The problem is you can give two different people each a piece of steak from the same cut compared to a piece of steak from a different cut, and they might come up with two different assessments of which one is more tender. We actually did a whole day of testing that didn’t end up on film because we realized we were using the wrong parameters for assessing steak tenderness. The USDA actually has a machine for testing the tenderness of steak that measures the pounds of force it takes to punch a hole through a steak. We
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