Fat Guy

Thank you. Those directions will be an excellent starting point. If the weather here cools down a bit and the range-hood repair guy actually shows up on Wednesday, I may experiment later next week.

Brisket in the oven is a great idea and I think it will be the centerpiece of this endeavor. I've pretty much only ever cooked brisket by braising. My mother actually uses the foil technique, though her dry rub is Lipton's onion-soup mix (which works pretty well but doesn't have much of a barbecue-type flavor). I'm wondering whether I should consider a little Liquid Smoke in this application. I've never worked with Liquid Smoke but it strikes me as a useful product for this sort of thing.

I haven't been paying much attention to all the gluten-free stuff that has been happening over the past few years. I really don't know much about the issue and the related conditions. I did just see, however, a forwarded Tasting Table email newsletter (you can read it online here) saying that none other than Thomas Keller is now selling gluten-free flour. That to me is a pretty serious trend marker. So, can someone bring me up to speed? What's the deal with so many people being gluten-intolerant?

I'm still in the early planning stages on this.

The pizza-consumption idiosyncrasies topic has been a goldmine of ideas for related topics. One thing I wanted to start getting to the bottom of is a taxonomy of non-pizza, pizza-like things. I happen to like stromboli a lot. I assumed it was a real Italian pizza variant but Wikipedia says it comes from Philadelphia in the 1950s. I also hear that "pizza rolls," which are sometimes like stromboli, I gather, and sometimes like egg rolls with sauce-cheese filling, are gaining popularity. What else is out there?

I used brioche, about 3/4" thick slices. I soaked in a shallow pool of equal parts egg and milk for about 30 seconds per side. I cooked in a pan in butter at approximately pancake temperature.

I think today was possibly the first time I've ever made French toast. I don't think it came out all that well. Eggy, soggy, not flavorful. Can I get a quick tutorial on the basic method? I've searched older topics that cover French toast but they're generally a lot more ambitious than what I'm looking to learn right now. I just want the basics on how to make French toast that isn't lousy.

Ooh. Good idea. Any thoughts on an oven recipe for a barbecue-ish brisket?

My apologies for not laying out the full set of restrictions in the original post. No pork.

Yes, making your own rice definitely allows for greater control. I also have been known to do a blend of brown jasmine and red cargo rice -- an idea I got from a neighborhood Chinese restaurant but that is not all that different from some of the Lundberg blend ideas. But, I have a question: those of you who make brown rice in a rice cooker: How long does it actually take you from start to finish? While 45 minutes is the stovetop simmering time for many types, that's from the time it comes to the boil. And I generally let rice sit for 10 minutes when it's done. I can't make brown rice in less than an hour on the stovetop and my Zojirushi "fuzzy logic" rice cooker's brown-rice cycle takes more like 90+ minutes. True, most of that is not active time, but it does mean I need to make the decision 60-90+ minutes ahead of mealtime. Which is fine for days when I'm home anyway, but not very good for days when I'm not -- or for normal days for a lot of people with jobs who need to get dinner on the table in a lot less than an hour after arriving home. For those people, frozen makes sense -- whether it's self-frozen or purchased-frozen.

Unless one tastes better than the other, in which case there is another variable in play.

The incident I reported in the original post occurred at Sally's in New Haven.

Right, sort of a picnic menu. That could work. Maybe a good sausage item rather than hot dogs. Maybe some deviled eggs, etc.

Interesting. I do have a beast of a broiler, which I haven't really put to much use yet. I wonder, though. My experience with broilers has been that they definitely contain spatter but are pretty neutral versus stovetop cooking when it comes to smoke and smoke-like vaporized grease.

Back on Memorial Day weekend, our neighbors hosted a "cookout." I use quotes because they live in the apartment across the hall (in our Manhattan apartment building) and have no outdoor space. Their strategy: fire up a grill pan, grill all the stuff you'd normally grill outside, produce a lot of smoke and vaporized grease, and clean it all up afterward. That's probably the best way to do it, but my family is not temperamentally suited to making that sort of mess. So, any thoughts on a way to reciprocate with an outdoorsy meal prepared in an apartment with minimal ventilation? I was thinking a clambake-type menu would be do-able. Any other ideas? (Let me interrupt now to say that suggestions that I find outdoor space are not going to be usable.)

I'd be interested in a cost-per-serving comparison. That would better allow someone to judge whether the increased per-serving price is worth the speed advantage. I'd also be interested in a side-by-side tasting. I've had the TJ's brown rice a couple of times but my impressions have not been formed in the presence of a control sample. Preliminarily, just going from admittedly unreliable taste memory, I think the TJ's frozen brown rice is better-tasting (with, of course, more reliably standardized texture and moisture content) than generic mass-market dry brown rice (e.g., Carolina brand), and more in the category of properly prepared premium dry brown rice (e.g., Lundberg or RiceSelect). I'm not sure I eat enough of any of these products to have a firm opinion, though.

Yes, if I had to choose the inner circle or the outer ring I'd choose the outer.

Today I was at a pizzeria and a guy came in alone and got a large pepperoni pizza. He proceeded to eat only the heart of the pizza. I don't mean he just didn't eat the crust. I mean he didn't eat anything within several inches of the perimeter. Assuming it was a 16" pie, he ate maybe the interior 10". He left the rest behind as a pile of scraps and napkins on the metal pizza tray. I've seen a lot of weird pizza behavior in my day, but I think this was the oddest. Can anybody top it?

There are advocates of counter service and advocates of table service. I've been through phases of preferring each. Especially when I was younger and there were still culturally appropriate waiters, you could sometimes do better with table service: the guys at the counter had more devotion to the waiters than to the counter customers, it seemed to me. And especially if you made a connection with the waiter, and specified that you wanted fatty or whatever, that preference would be conveyed and honored. Plus, they told great jokes (at some point I may be persuaded to recount the pickle-slicer joke). These days, I prefer the counter because the old-guard waiters all seem to be gone. But I imagine it's still possible to work the table-service angle. I will say, however, that I've done some experimenting with the tipping situation and have never really noticed a difference in the end product. Socializing with the counter guys and showing an interest in the quality of your meat seems to be the big determinant of outcome.

I'm not absolutely promising they're from Yonah Schimmel, I'm just saying I've been told that. There are usually several available at Katz's in the round format: potato, sweet potato, kasha and broccoli. It may be a complete coincidence that those correspond to four of the eight types normally available at Yonah Schimmel.

At the moment I am eating Sugar Babies and really enjoying them.

Kitchen cabinets are incredibly useful. I just saw a guy's garage that he'd outfitted with kitchen cabinets and I've seen them used in home offices. But, kitchen cabinets can get expensive. I also saw, a little while back, a kitchen done up with tool cabinets that had to be a lot cheaper than equivalent-quality kitchen cabinets. I'm thinking about using some IKEA kitchen cabinets in a home-office setup. Has anyone tried this?

I've noticed at Trader Joe's and also at normal grocery stores that the market is now rich with frozen brown rice. You just put it in the microwave and a few minutes later you have rice. It does taste pretty good, at least the TJ's product. I haven't analyzed cost but the news can't possibly be good on that front. Anybody have opinions on frozen rice?

It's not entirely sensible to believe the things that people at restaurants tell you, however I should note that I have been told repeatedly by several people at Katz's that their supplier for the round knishes is Yonah Schimmel's and that for the square ones it is a commercial provider whose name I've never recognized. Everybody is aware, correct, that there are two types of knishes on offer at Katz's, and that only the round ones are worth bothering with?

I have to do some comparisons but on the rare occasion that I indulge in a mass-market, caramel-focused candy I go for Rolos. I am also in what I guess is the minority of candy eaters that can't stand the Cadbury chocolate recipe. In general I have no idea why so many connoisseurs prefer the British mass-market candies (or the ones made elsewhere under license, such as Cadbury items being made by Hershey in the US) to the American ones. I find the British mass-market chocolate to be inferior -- not that either is particularly good as chocolate goes.