Fascinating little tidbit in the comments on Monday's Elements of Cooking post on beurre manié that points out that there are stach-digesting enzymes in human saliva and that you can, in fact, wreck a sauce by double-dipping with your tasting spoon while you're cooking.
Good news, everybody! Or at least everybody in the NYC-area. Second Avenue Deli reopens. Sure, it's not on Second Ave. anymore but that'll just be another way to sort out the tourists from the natives. Sarah and I had a wonderful lunch with Womzilla a few years ago on a cold, rainy December afternoon. Tongue sandwich, chopped liver, mushroom barley soup... Too bad we won't have a chance to go back this Xmas. Next time, for sure.
Hooray!!!
Truly excellent news. I have many fond memories of eating there with my parents as a child, and one or two as an adult. Now perhaps I can take my kids there.
I've got this feeling that the amylase in human saliva denatures at well below the temperatures mentioned in the comment. Any starch amylase in the flour is more likely to be temperature tolerant than the human enzyme, as the plant enzymes have to work in a wider range of temperatures. Suffice it to say that I doubt double-dipping would ruin a sauce; any sauce that close to breaking was probably going to break on its own.
I was going to mention that the saliva comment came from Bob Del Grosso and refer you to his blog but I see that you've already joined the comments over at Elements of Cooking on this thread so that's all fairly moot at this point.