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Another duck man here
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Truffled duck breast with truffled red wine jus, plus potatoes and carrots baked in truffled duck fat, and a side salad with truffled balsamic vinegar and truffled olive oil, finished with truffled salt. I think there was a theme here… :)
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This is one of the best-tasting five or so dishes I made in the last ten years. This was one of those rare moments where things came together "just so" to create perfection. Flavours, textures, aroma; everything just right.

In my opinion, what makes great chefs isn't so much the ability to create a perfect dish, but to do it repeatably, session after a session, despite variations in season, quality of produce, timing constraints, and so on.

If I cook that same dish next week, the result might be "meh", "OK", or (rarely) "great".

That's why I'm not a chef.
 
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Michi said:
I’ve never tried to do this. Do you have tips and/or recipe to share?
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M1k3 said:
I'm curious also.
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I make ramen noodles with some frequency. As @Stx00lax, says, it's not any harder than italian pasta. I think I originally got my recipe from Lucky Peach.... can't find a link now, but for 3 bowls of ramen you can use:

2 cups white flour (I usually use bread flour, but tipo 00 or even AP would probably work alright too.)
2/3 cups water
around 1 tsp of something alkaline (might want to use less, even, but try it out)

I usually use a combination of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate for the alkaline ingredient. Sodium carbonate you can make by putting baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in the oven at 250-300 F for an hour or so. Potassium carbonate I bought on amazon, fulfilled from a marijuana supply store. I think they use it in growing? I prefer the taste using both potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate, but just sodium carbonate is fine too.

Anyway, to make the noodles, just dissolve the alkaline stuff in the water, knead it with the flour till smooth, let it rest a while (couple hours is good imo), then run it through a pasta machine a couple times, then cut as desired, either with the machine or by hand, then boil for a minute or two in salted water, then rinse in warm water, then add to ramen broth. I usually dust the sheets liberally with corn starch before cutting to prevent sticking. This also prevents the water from boiling over when you add the noodles... for some reason before I started doing that the alkaline ingredient made a ton of foam that would boil over all the time. My favorite way to cut them is to roll them sort of medium thick (level 3 on most pasta machines?), and then cut them by hand with a knife so that they have a more or less square cross section. (To do this, make sure they're dusted with cornstarch, fold each sheet over itself a few times, then cut.)
 
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Michi said:
Thanks for the very detailed instructions, I much appreciate it! Added to my “must try” list :)
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ians lucky peach recommendation is a legit recipe. To make it a bit simpler, forget about potassium carbonate and just use the baked baking soda as your only alkaline ingredient. To make this, simply bake baking soda on a sheet tray for one hour at 250 degrees and that’s it. Don’t touch it with your skin, it burns. Here’s a link to the lucky peach recipe, I’ve used it and it makes great noodles. https://craftlog.com/us/cooking/homemade-ramen-noodles-from-scratch-35bbM
I recommend like ian to roll them out on a pasta roller to a #3 thickness and then cut by hand or used the spaghetti cutter attachment on a kitchen aid. I dust with AP and have no problems. They will boil up high in that pot however. To prevent a boil over, I like a pretty tall Bain Marie with the standard noodle dunker.
 
Michi said:
This is one of the best-tasting five or so dishes I made in the last ten years. This was one of those rare moments where things came together "just so" to create perfection. Flavours, textures, aroma; everything just right.

In my opinion, what makes great chefs isn't so much the ability to create a perfect dish, but to do it repeatably, session after a session, despite variations in season, quality of produce, timing constraints, and so on.

If I cook that same dish next week, the result might be "meh", "OK", or (rarely) "great".

That's why I'm not a chef.
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I feel the same way. The best dish I ever made was a Thomas Keller air cooled, brined, air dried roasted chicken. I’ve been doing roasted chicken of all types for 20 years, but this one was just special. The only flavors other than the brine was salt. I thought I understood what simple deliciousness was until I had this chicken. The flavor, texture, all the simple little things were just perfect. I’ve tried remaking this on 4 other occasions and though family and friends think it’s the best chicken they’ve had and will request it, they haven’t experience anything near how the first one came out. I was previously a lab scientist and take very good notes on recipes I’m working on, but this still evades me. Not giving up. I’m chasing that chicken fix lol
 
There is almost always something that could have been better when I cook.
Still, I just love to cook and have no delusions about being anything other than an eager home cook.

For example, this confit duck leg could have spend another five minutes in the oven to crisp up, but then my veg would have gone cold.
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Lars said:
There is almost always something that could have been better when I cook.
Still, I just love to cook and have no delusions about being anything other than an eager home cook.
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I get that, but man... in my circumstance, when I somehow made something that completely changed what I thought was possible with food and can't even get 90% close again, it's rough because I may only get 1-2 of these in my life that I can potentially make at home. It's a bummer, but it's not demotivating, it's actually the opposite. Perhaps only those in a forum like this can understand what I mean by a life changing dish, or recipe. This was certainly mine.
 
Thanks. The inside was nice and tender but I wanted more browning on the outside so I think next time I will try grilling them whole or maybe cutting them up and pan searing.
 
DamageInc said:
Thanks. The inside was nice and tender but I wanted more browning on the outside so I think next time I will try grilling them whole or maybe cutting them up and pan searing.
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Have you tried a blow torch? I use one of these, with MAP gas.

https://www.amazon.com/BernzOmatic-361472-BZ4500HS-Shrink-Torch/dp/B00834RCLU

It really works well. The flame is much wider than that of the TS8000, which works well for searing. Nowhere near the risk of having a hot spot where protein instantly turns in to charcoal.
 
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