Fat Guy

A lot of professional pastry chefs -- even at the top levels -- use commercially available pasteurized egg yolks (they come in cartons, like milk) when the yolks are going to be served raw or nearly raw.

That's pretty harsh criticism based on no actual tasting. Nor is the theoretical comparison between the Chorleywood Process and the food-processor-and-microwave method accurate. The Chorleywood Process consists of: - "low-protein wheats" - "chemical improvers" - "several minutes of high-energy mixing" The food-processor-and-microwave method uses: - standard bread recipes including whatever flour those recipes call for - no chemical improvers - one minute of high-speed kneading in the food processor As for "an association between the adoption of the Chorleywood Bread Process and a parallel rise in (clinical) digestive problems," that's pretty hard to swallow, albeit not relevant. I should also add that "eGullet" has not suggested anything here. I have.

I agree with half of that: - Yes, dough needs time to develop certain flavors. (However, there are still plenty of breads that don't particularly need that sort of flavor development, e.g., cinnamon raisin bread, basic white sandwich bread, etc.) - No, I don't think you need to touch the dough to get an idea about hydration. The "cleaning the bowl" visual test is quite reliable.

There has been a tremendous amount of discussion lately, on the "Minimalist no-knead bread technique" topic and related topics, about simplified bread recipes that require little effort (and no kneading) and produce excellent results. Fundamentally, the no-knead system works because it lets the microorganisms do the work on their own schedule. All you need is patience and these little animals will do everything for you. There's one problem with these methods, though: they require a day of advance planning. It's 24 hours or so from flour to bread. Back when I started law school, stress was a constant companion. The first year of law school is pretty intense. So I took up bread baking as a means of relaxing. I never became a particularly good baker. But my study group grew accustomed to having, for example, fresh-baked raisin bread in the morning. Sometimes I made bread the old-fashioned way, but other times I had less time and needed a shortcut. That year, 1991, there was a book published titled "Bread In Half The Time," by Linda West Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts. The book outlined an ingenious method of getting from flour to bread in 90 minutes, by using the food processor and microwave (the subtitle of the book is "Use Your Microwave and Food Processor to Make Real Yeast Bread in 90 Minutes"). Specifically, you use the food processor to knead the dough, and you use gentle doses of microwave heat to accelerate rising. The method works exceptionally well. From 1991 until 1994 -- at which time my bread-baking career was brutally terminated by my employment at a law firm -- I used the method at least a hundred times. You don't get the flavors of long-risen dough that has been developing overnight, but in all other respects you get really good bread. Here's the basic approach, which works for just about any dough recipe: 1. You add your dry ingredients to a food processor bowl, pulse to combine, then run the processor and add 120 degree F liquid until the dough forms a ball that cleans the sides of the bowl. 2. Once the dough forms that ball, let the food processor run for an additional 60 seconds to knead the dough. 3. Take out the dough ball, remove the processor blade, shape the dough into a doughnut shape and put it back in the processor bowl (the processor bowl has a hole in the middle so you need to doughnut shape to accommodate that). 4. Stick the processor bowl, with the dough, in the microwave oven, along with a small glass of water in the back of the microwave. Heat on the lowest setting (after experimentation you may go up a notch, but you need a very low setting) for 3 minutes. Rest for 3 minutes. Heat on low for another 3 minutes. Rest for 6 minutes. So that's 15 minutes total. The dough should have doubled in bulk, at least. If it didn't, you needed to use a higher setting, so give it a little more time this time around and use a higher setting next time. 5. Take the dough out, punch it down and form your loaf. 6. Now you have two choices: 6a. You can use a microwave-safe vessel, such as a clay loaf pan. Put your dough in there and repeat the 3-3-3-6 deal in the microwave. Then bake. 6b. If you're going to bake on a metal sheet or in a metal loaf pan, let the dough rise in a warm place. This will take a little longer than 3-3-3-6, but it will double in bulk pretty quickly. Then bake. That's it. The book has pages and pages of more subtle detail, but you can make it work with just the instructions I've given you here. Again, I've done it a hundred times. It really works.

I'm so glad others are wetting their breads. Now, all those of you who are using paper bags, foil and hands: these are a waste of your time. Once you master the faucet technique you can go from faucet to oven, no bag or foil, and your bread will come out beautifully. Try it.

It does seem impossible that the blade of a knife could carry all that much into the interior. Nonetheless, washing really does seem to make a difference. More analysis is needed.

The theory is that the knife or your fingers -- whatever you use to cut or peel the fruit -- can carry some of the exterior grime into the meat of the fruit. Also, it may be that there's an aroma issue -- for example if I cut an orange into eight peel-on pieces, even if I only eat the meat, I'm putting the peel pretty close to my nose and mouth when I eat the meat. So aromas could certainly get in there.

If you're talking about the Amazon Kindle product, the way it works is that, in order for a book to be available on the Kindle, Amazon has to release it in a Kindle edition. Most of these editions cost $9.99 each, though some are less or more. There are many cookbooks available this way, but nothing like a comprehensive selection. There is unfortunately no way to transfer an existing hard-copy print book onto the device. Also, the device has a black-and-white display, which can be a limitation with some cookbooks.

This morning I recruited a friend for a semi-blind test. I washed one orange and didn't wash another. I cut them both into sections. Then I had him hand me sections of each orange without telling me which was which. I ate the meat out of the sections and was able to identify washed and unwashed with 100% accuracy over 8 instances.

Agree on all shared data points except the peppers. Mine were limp, soggy, oily and unappetizing. The New Yorker, admittedly not a serious restaurant-review source, really reamed Barfry this week:

About a decade ago a friend demonstrated the following method for restoring day-old bread in the oven or toaster oven: - Turn on faucet - Run bread under faucet - Toast on high temperature A couple of caveats: - You have to run the bread under the faucet ever so briefly. You just want to swipe it, really. The idea is just to get the exterior of the bread a little bit damp. You don't want to soak it. For the timid, this can also be accomplished by wetting your hands and feeling up the bread -- you may have to repeat a couple of times to get the whole surface damp, though, and the faucet method is faster. - The true beauty of this method is what it does to the crust -- it gives it a fresh-baked flavor and texture. So this only works brilliantly with bread where most or all of the exposed surface is crust. So, like, a roll or a baguette or a piece thereof. It doesn't work as well with slices of bread -- though it does work. Anybody else in the bread-wetting camp?

I'd echo Nibor: take it slowly. Most of my regrettable kitchen-equipment purchases were made when I tried to buy a lot of stuff all at once.

Is it actually an infusion made from the cookies, or do they just use the same apricot-kernel extract or make the liqueur from apricot kernels?

I was just thinking about the meat issue. A few years ago a chef I respect took a hard line against rinsing meat, saying it washes off flavor. And, since meat typically gets cooked at high-enough temperatures to kill anything harmful, I've never been a meat washer. But I wonder.

I assure you I'm not one of those people who washes his hands six times an hour or is too germ-phobic to ride the subway. But I have taken to washing the outside of fruits like oranges, grapefruits, limes and even watermelons. These fruits typically come covered in disgusting waxy coatings and are filthy to boot. Now, it's true you don't actually eat the outside, but I've found that a clean outside leads to a better tasting inside. Whether you cut or peel an orange, for example, some of that residue manages to get in there and I think it affects the flavor and, potentially, the safety of what you're eating. I find that if I wash off the outside of an orange before cutting or peeling it, it just tastes (and smells) better. Am I alone here?

(Here's the link)

I should also mention a couple of products I've been buying that I've mentioned on other topics but maybe not here: 1 - Reggianato cheese from Argentina. A very respectable fake Parmigiano priced at just $4.99 a pound. Not as good when eaten straight, but virtually indistinguishable (to me) when grated and melted (mentioned on the Low-effort, low-mess pizza @ home topic). 2 - Lazzaroni Amaretti di Saronno cookies in 1 lb. tins are only $17.99 at Fairway. That's the best price I've seen. Any data points from elsewhere in town? (Mentioned on the Lazzaroni Amaretti di Saronno topic.)

Various "bar" concepts should work well in this context: baked-potato bar, taco bar, pasta bar, chili bar, etc. My limited contacts with today's college students indicates that, yes, they're somewhat more adventurous than previous generations but they're also control freaks about what they eat. So anything you can deconstruct into a "bar" that allows for self-assembly should be a strong performer. This also allows you to accommodate vegetarians and omnivores with the same item. You can get pretty inventive with the "bar" idea. For example, awhile back some friends and I did what was essentially a cassoulet bar for 30+ people. There were two big pots of beans (one vegetarian, one not), and then everybody could choose from duck, sausage, various vegetables, etc. -- lots of choices to build the cassoulet. I also agree that a dialog with the sisters is essential. Taking feedback seriously is the best way to adapt to the clientele.

What about Chinatown?

Yeah, the Beacon website could use some renovations. In terms of the small-plates menu, it's posted farther up on this topic -- post number 9. I believe it's served only at the counter, but I'm not actually sure.

I'm not up on the latest and greatest cocktail destinations, trends and happenings. But I think Beacon has a good bar. Not like Pegu level, but way better than the average Midtown restaurant bar. The bartenders are well schooled. There are always interesting seasonal cocktails, most of which aren't too sweet. They have Brooklyn beer. The wine list is extensive. One of the cocktails we had last night -- called a gingerbread something -- was particularly tasty and the presentation was downright irreverent:

Right, what's most unusual about the kitchen counter phenomenon, to me, is that it's a rare restaurant-world example of radical late-stage evolution. Restaurants don't usually change all that much. Certainly, absent a chef change and renovation, they tend to remain within category. But here you have a relatively staid Midtown chophouse all of a sudden busting out with a totally contemporary restaurant-within-a-restaurant concept: Minibar meets Momofuku meets Malouf. Same chef, same restaurant, they just decided one day to start doing this kitchen counter thing. I don't think anybody really knows what to make of it. For what it's worth, though, the restaurant was rocking last night. When we entered the place at 6:30pm we walked into a wall of sound and energy. They had two private parties going on, one of which was about 60 and the other about 30 people (both law firms, I think). And the dining room and bar were quite full. It was a pretty amazing moment, which of course we witnessed up close while sitting at the kitchen counter, when the kitchen put out 60 plates all at once. It was the first time I'd ever seen Waldy get annoyed with the staff. And during the few minutes it took to finish and pick up those 60 plates, a ribbon of order tickets from the dining room was slowly developing out of the POS computer and reaching down to the floor. So nobody got a second to breathe: the moment plate number 60 got picked up, Waldy grabbed what must have been 20 tickets and called all the orders out rapid-fire. The entire kitchen crew just looked at him like, "You've got to be kidding." By 9pm, when we were winding down, they'd done 240 covers and were still sitting people. That's the thing about New York that, once in awhile, you get a glimpse of: there can be a whole crazy-busy scene going on somewhere that you had no idea was happening. It's just that Beacon is being populated by a non-foodie population that doesn't join the eGullet Society and post daily Momofuku updates. (Of course it's December. I've been in the place in August and it has been slow.)

This sort of thing is fascinating to me. No matter how accurate, no matter how precise, the presence of the thermometer itself throws off the reading. Talk about the observer affecting the observed!

To put it in terms of community districts, you want to be near the intersection of 2, 3, 5 and 6 so you can operate in all of them. P.S. People are exposed to their own neighborhoods the most, so they often develop an exaggerated sense (either positive or negative) of the local markets, restaurants and other services. In the wine business they call it "cellar palate." Only people who live above 59th Street -- the ones who would never nominate their own neighborhoods with a straight face -- can be considered truly reliable here!

I've now been back twice to the kitchen counter: once for the lunchtime burger bar menu and once for the non-Thursday-night small-plates menu. I confess in both cases I didn't have particularly high expectations. The Thursday-night kitchen counter dinner struck me as an obvious triumph the moment I encountered it, but I thought the other two concepts would basically just be ways to keep the space utilized between Thursdays. But Waldy wanted me to check out the burger bar and small-plates menus, and he was paying, and I figured it was worth a shot on the strength of the Thursday-night menu. And, since there seems to be an old-media blackout on the kitchen table, I felt I had to complete the kitchen-counter investigation for the benefit my fellow eGullet Society members. The burger bar, which I tried a few weeks ago, turns out to be a good thing. If you're in the area at lunchtime it's a no-brainer. You get a first-rate hamburger made from Niman Ranch beef, or equally good mini-burgers (there's also a tuna burger that I didn't sample). The kitchen-counter format lends itself well to a quick burger stop, and prices are reasonable: $12.95 for the big burger (which comes with fries; add-ons like bacon and cheese are extra, and there are plenty of choices -- you can even get foie gras or caviar as a topping) and only $8.95 for the mini burgers. The burgers come with a nice selection of condiments too: house-made pickles, fennel coleslaw, Waldy's ketchup, spiced honey-dijon mustard, tomato mayo. The burger bar has, not surprisingly, found an audience: they fill most of the seats most of the time. The surprise, for me, was the small-plates menu. Available every night other than Thursday night, the small-plates menu doesn't exactly jump out and proclaim its greatness. Indeed, I think the way it presents itself is flawed. It's just a big long list of dishes, there's no indication of portion size, and prices are all over the map (and don't really correspond to portion size). So it's hard to sit down with the menu and put together a coherent meal unless you already have a lot of Beacon experience under your belt or you're able to spend the day emailing with the chef about what you're going to have for dinner. I think they need to reconsider the presentation, perhaps offer some 3- and 5-course tasting flights that are balanced as meals. For me at least, it just doesn't communicate well as a straight tapas menu. That being said, the food is excellent. Many of the dishes we chose were every bit as delicious as the Thursday-night offerings. The meal didn't represent the same overall level of experience, but it came close. And now that I have a grasp of the dishes I can steer you towards what I think would be an ideal -- and very economical -- dinner at the Beacon kitchen counter on a non-Thursday night. So, what I did was I picked 10 dishes and asked for them to be brought in 5 courses. We shared everything. So right away you can see that's an advantage over Thursday. On Thursday everybody gets the same 12 courses. On the other nights, though, two people can go and order 6 courses but have different things for each course -- so you can still taste 12 dishes if that's what you want to do. Plus you get to pick them all, which is great for non-omnivores. In addition to the 10 dishes I specified Waldy sent out 2 others plus some desserts. It wound up being a surprising quantity of food. We started with little snacks of wonderful-as-usual wood-oven-baked mushroom pizza: Then, for the first course, we had Beacon's signature wood-oven-roasted oysters with shallots, verjus and herbs. I've got to say, on a list of the best restaurant dishes in New York City, this is a strong candidate. And for the other dish in that course, lobster soup with fennel and cognac. The soup has no cream. It's thickened with a rice puree. Cream is great but it does have the unfortunate property of dulling flavors. The rice trick allows the high notes of the lobster, fennel and cognac to come through. The lobster is roasted in the wood oven before being added to the soup. Second course was crabcake with spicy slaw and citrus remoulade. Tasty but not legendary: And I'm sorry this dish doesn't photograph well because I thought it was arguably the dish of the evening. No, it's not asparagus season in this hemisphere. Presumably this stuff came from Peru or somewhere. But it was damn good, and was improved by being topped with a fried egg. In addition, while many of the small-plate prices are very low, this dish had the most shockingly low price of any dish I've seen anywhere in awhile. The price tag is just $5. Third course, wild mushroom ravioli, quite good: And bourbon-brushed acorn squash, which was about as good as acorn squash gets: Fourth course: Beacon's excellent roasted marrow bones. One of the best items this kitchen produces. Split lengthwise, served with toast. And foie gras on toast. Good but not unique -- not the best use of your Beacon stomach-space allotment. Fifth course: sliced New York strip. And a single grilled lamb chop: Both meat items were based on first-rate product. There was disagreement at the table over which was better. However, I felt that neither worked all that well in the small-plates format. There was plenty of meat in the New York strip portion, but at $19 it's sort of a half-a-steak entree. It didn't strike me as a good solution. The single lamb chop, on the other hand, felt like too little, and at $13 also doesn't quite fit the format comfortably. Part of the problem, I think, is that Waldy is trying to populate the small-plates menu with a lot of stuff that doesn't require extra prep over what the restaurant does on any given day. So, they always have steak and they always have lamb. But not everything works in the small-plates format. Not for me at least. There may be someone out there for whom that $19 half-steak portion is the ideal dinner. This got me thinking a bit about the impact of the small-plates format on the enjoyment of food. There's a lot of overlap between the small-plates menu and the regular Beacon menu, and I've had several of the dishes in both formats. There are also dishes that are reconfigured, such as the asparagus with egg: you can get asparagus as a vegetable side on the regular menu, but the with-fried-egg preparation (which takes the dish to a whole 'nother level) is only on the small-plates menu. Anyway, the point being, some dishes are -- for me at least -- enhanced by being served as tasting portions. For example, when you just get that little cup of lobster soup or those three oysters the dishes really sing. Whereas, a full portion of lobster soup is not as exciting and enjoyable. A steak, however, is something I enjoy more in its whole format. It's something you work on. It's diminished by being served in the small-plates format. You get the idea. Waldy also sent out some garlic fries: And, the surprise hit of the evening, roast suckling pig. Top and side view: The suckling pig is very powerful stuff. It's rubbed with mole, cumin and coriander, stuffed with citrus, wrapped up and cured for about a week. They roast a small pig -- about 18 pounds -- every day. It's only $8 for the tasting portion of suckling pig, by the way. I'm not sure if what's pictured here is a tasting portion or a double portion -- I forgot to ask. The dessert sampler changes every month. Today's was "candy-cane ice cream," which really tasted like candy canes and was delicious; an excellent ginger-bread bread pudding; and some other thing that was unmemorable. Beacon's pastry program is competent but not outstanding. The desserts get the job done but aren't the restaurant's main draw. This photo was taken after some melting had occurred, sorry: So, like I said, prices are all over the map and the menu is challenging. So until Waldy comes up with something, here's the five-course tasting menu I'd recommend for maximum flavor and value: 1. Roasted oysters ($6) 2. Roasted asparagus with fried egg ($5) 3. Mini burgers ($7) 4. Bone marrow ($7) 5. Roast suckling pig ($8) All those plates would total up to just $33 -- the price of an entree at a lot of not-particularly-great restaurants. I think you'd find yourself quite satisfied after eating those five items. And I can't really think of anyplace else you could eat dinner at this level for $33. If you're there with two or more people you may want to branch out and try some other things. (I haven't tried them in the small format but can predict with some confidence that the roasted mussels-and-clams, and the seared filet mignon "tartare" will be great -- maybe throw the mushroom ravioli into that progression and you're on your way to something.) You can also get the whole regular Beacon menu at the kitchen counter, so if you go as a group of three or four it's also worthwhile to share a whole mushroom pizza at $16. I imagine talking everything through with Waldy or Mike, if they're available, could yield additional ideas. Here's a look at the oven that makes so many of the dishes taste as they do: It's a Wood Stone oven made in Washington. It uses a hybrid of gas and wood. Underneath the oven floor are infrared burners that keep the floor at a constant 600 degrees F (well, 601 when I looked). The burning wood in the actual oven cavity raises the dome temperature into the mid-700s. It was 772 when I was there.