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[Dave the Cook]

Russ:

In my opinion, the series you did with Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman was (and is, if it's still available on line) not just a terrific resource, but one of the best things I've ever seen a newspaper food section do.

- How did you convince these guys to participate?

- How did they take to being edited for a newspaper?

- Were the recipes developed and/or tested at the Times, and what sort of difficulties did you encounter in knocking restaurant recipes and techniques down to domestic size?

Thanks for your participation. This is a great Q&A.

[russ parsons]

Thanks Dave, I agree.

That series came about in a funny way. I turned it down at first. I had done a long profile of Thomas right before I became food editor (and before, Michael R's in Gourmet). After the book came out, Michael called and said Thomas wanted to do a regular column for the Times. I told him that as much as I respected Thomas, I wasn't really in the market for a chef series. I didn't want to be in the business of "renting" a famous name to deliver unworkable recipes. Michael was very much the gentleman and said something along the lines of "maybe you'd like to see what we propose before you reject it."

When the story ideas came in (and they were stories, not just recipes with a headnote attached), I was blown away. It was exactly the kind of thing I was interested in -- really detailed, food-geeky stuff like how and when you salt, how to get crisp skin on salmon, etc.

Working with them was a breeze. Michael is a pro and he was a very good edit: he'd listen to what I said, accept what he agreed with, argue his case with what he didn't. All of the recipes were tested in the kitchen (every recipe in hte paper is, and all of the photos are shot in our studio). We had no problem with the recipes, probably because Michael and Thomas had worked out most of the kinks in the process with Susie Heller in doing the book. (And just for the record, the column was not taken from the book, though some of the anecdotal material was and though the recipes were adapted versions. The only rule I had made with them was that the recipes could have no more than one sub-recipe. I'm still bitching at Thomas that he needs to make that a book. Maybe after he gets New York out of the way (watch out for an interesting announcement tomorrow).