Fat Guy

New York City seems to be in the midst of a ramen trendlet. We've had a lot of discussion of Setagaya lately, but I thought that with new places opening it would probably not make sense to repeat the general discussion of ramen on a new topic for each restaurant. So, I'm starting this topic as a place to compare notes on all the local ramen offerings. A new ramen place opened in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Yes, a ramen place on the Upper East Side. I didn't even notice it -- I got the info from a mention on Eater derived from a mention on Mouthfuls. It's called Naruto Ramen, and it's located at 1596 Third Avenue, between 89th and 90th Streets. Business hours are noon until 10:30pm, seven days a week. Phone number 212-289-7803. They also deliver. There are actually quite a few Japanese-Americans living on the Upper East Side, as well as Asian-Americans in general. I especially see a lot of young mothers with a child in a stroller around on Third and Second Avenues. The crowd at Naruto Ramen at 6:30pm was exactly that: there were four young Asian (probably Japanese) mothers spaced along the long counter, each with one child, no connection to one another, having dinner. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the offerings. Naruto is certainly not as exacting about quality as Setagaya. At the same time, because I prefer this style of ramen (less fishy, more meaty), I enjoyed the meal more than I enjoyed Setagaya (I was probably the least impressed by Setagaya of all the people posting on that topic). For $8.50 you get a choice of Naruto ramen, miso ramen or curry ramen. I had the Naruto ramen, which has broth spiked with soy sauce, nicely al dente (or whatever the Japanese adjective is to describe toothsome noodles) noodles, slices of bamboo shoot, half a medium-boiled egg (still a little soft in the yolk), scallions, a big piece of nori, bean sprouts, a slice of fish cake, and a couple of pieces of roast pork. Overall, a very satisfying bowl of soup, though the pork itself was not particularly well prepared. S&B brand "la yu" chili oil and "table pepper" on the counter. I also had very good gyoza -- surprisingly good, with extremely thin skins and flavorful pork-and-herb filling -- cooked in one of those lidded contraptions that steams and sears at the same time. $4.50 for 5 dumplings. There's a bunch of other stuff on the menu: curry with pork katsu, chicken katsu or kara age; similar platters without the curry; fried rice; a few other appetizers and toppings. Haven't tried anything but the ramen and gyoza, though. No alcohol at this time. Cash only. I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of all the ramen places in town, their addresses, contact information, websites if any, plus links to any older topics where they've been discussed. Anybody want to take a stab at a few? [edited to correct the phone number -- menu font makes the 3 look like a 9]

That sounds right to me. In terms of the tests that have been done, I confess the results are really surprising to me. My anecdotal observations have been so firmly in favor of the superiority of veggie wash (or any kind of soap/detergent, I guess) over plain water that I just can't comprehend the claim that it's no better than water. In the end, double-blind studies trump my perception, but I have to wonder what the studies are studying, what they're trying to prove, whether they're double-blind, etc. In some cases, for example the NPR citation of Cook's Illustrated, the tests seem off target -- as far as I can tell from the citation Cook's Illustrated tested four ways of washing produce and produce wash was not one of them. Someone else let me know how you read it. Also, they seem to have focused only on bacteria. Here's the anecdotal theory: when I buy an apple at the supermarket, it's coated with all kinds of stuff. It has been waxed and it's dirty. When I rinse it under water, a lot of that stuff stays on. When I use a produce wash product, it really seems to come off and I get down to the actual, clean apple skin. The apple tastes better and it's cleaner. Maybe the science says otherwise, but that's what I think I'm seeing.

We simply don't know the relative concentration of the products. I'm sure there's a way to measure that, but multiplication of guesses isn't it.

I'm pretty sure the "dish liquid"/"dish soap" products like Palmolive and Dawn are not typically referred to as "detergent." Not a full survey, but the two brands I have here (Palmolive and Ivory) don't say "detergent" on the bottle, whereas Cascade (for dishwashers) does. There may be a scientific basis for saying some of the ingredients qualify as detergents, but I'm thinking that's not what Mitch's quote ("For consumers, use of detergent or laundry bleach for cleansing fruits and vegetables is highly risky"), to which I was replying, meant. I don't know how one would determine relative concentration. I don't think the 2-ounce recommendation is much of an indicator, since we don't know the recommendation for an equivalent dish liquid from the same manufacturer and manufacturers of such products notoriously over-prescribe them -- for all we know they recommend an entire bottle of dish soap to clean a plate. I certainly have never used anything near 2 ounces at a time -- these products come in spray bottles and I use a couple of sprays; it takes months to go through a bottle. I'm guessing dish soap is more concentrated, but perhaps not "a thousand times more."

I have no first-hand knowledge, however the statement I quoted above said: You can find dozens of variants of this statement with a simple search online. Whether it's true or not is another story. Not that I care. Pesticides are not really my main concern here. I've eaten enough pesticide-treated produce in my life to establish that pesticides are either harmless or I'll be dead soon. My concern is with flavor, and with filth. It seems to me that produce washed with the aid of produce wash simply tastes better, and it's surely cleaner. Mitch, I don't think "detergent or laundry bleach" includes dish soap. I think detergent means dishwasher detergent, as opposed to the stuff you use to hand-wash dishes. If you look on a bottle of dish soap, there's no warning except to keep it out of your eyes and away from children -- the same warning that appears on the produce wash bottle. Sam, I used a large mixing bowl full of lukewarm water, and a quick, tiny squirt of Palmolive. I'm sure the solution of using an unscented, flavorless, eco-friendly dish soap is a valid one, however such products aren't really any cheaper than produce wash. So the only advantage is that you can do everything with one produce -- if you want to use $6.99 bottles of dish soap to do your dishes. It seems to me that the salient physical property of dishes is that they're for all intents and purposes non-porous. Even ones with rough textures tend to have a glaze on them. So as long as you're not washing them with glue, you should be able to rinse all the soap residue off them quite well. The same should go for an apple or a lemon -- those surfaces are relatively impenetrable and slick. If, however, you're dealing with something rough, soft and porous like a peach or a raspberry, it seems to me you're going to be stuck with some residue. That's the point at which I'd probably prefer not to eat too much Palmolive. Not that I think it will harm me in such small amounts. It's just that it tastes like soap.

Because a gas burner doesn't work without pots and other equipment, and packing a whole portable kitchen setup isn't part of the hypothetical plan, nor is cleaning up after cooking. Because sometimes days don't go as planned: you hit traffic, you hit weather, you get a flat, you change your mind, you make great time and you decide you're going to press on to the next state, the place you wanted to go for dinner is closed, you're too tired, someone gets sick, bad things happen. So you don't always know, you don't always have the opportunity to plan ahead, and you don't always want to be limited by your plan. Because I don't want to carry a portable refrigerator in and out of motel rooms, and because sometimes we use campgrounds with no electricity, and because those portable refrigerators don't work if you leave your car parked in a lot at a national park for the day. I've done a number of cross-country and cross-continent road trips as well, sometimes lasting a couple of months. Like I said, we eat most of our meals out, we do utilize grocery stores, etc., but sometimes we get caught short. That has been, time and again, the reality for us.

Just to add to the vocabulary list, the most recently pictured roll is uramaki (inside-out roll). Here in the US, and I think pretty much everyplace outside of Asia, uramaki are by far the most popular maki. And to my way of thinking, they should be. The only way I like to eat hosomaki, futomaki or temaki is at the sushi bar, before the nori gets wet. Once you get into kaitenzushi or sushi from the refrigerator case at a supermarket, uramaki have the advantage of having the nori inside, so you get its flavor but its wet texture isn't unpleasant.

I don't have much confidence in those. They only get the temperature down a modest amount below ambient, their interiors are tiny, and they don't run unless the car is on. Were I to attempt long-term in-car refrigeration, I'd use an insulated cooler with ice, and buy a bag of ice every day when I stopped for gas. Those coolers work quite well. My preference, however, would be to do this without the inconvenience of refrigeration. Because if you use refrigeration, whether it's an electric unit or an insulated cooler, you're stuck carrying that stuff in and out of motel rooms, packing and unpacking it to replenish the ice, etc.

I like my bananas firm, with just a little green still showing on the peel. Everybody else I know seems to like them much riper than that. To my palate, though, when they're that ripe, they have a decayed taste that doesn't agree with me. Am I a bad person for preferring underripe bananas?

Hypothetical. I was thinking, "Now that we're older and have a kid, how would we provision ourselves for an extended road trip?" But we have no present plans for such a trip.

So I tried some dish detergent on a few pieces of fruit. Since the results of this experiment mostly confirmed what I thought would happen, I assign them a low level of credibility. However, what I did was this: I took two each of apples, peaches, small bunches of grapes and handfuls of raspberries. I used Ecos Fruit & Veggie Wash on half and Palmolive on half. For the apples, there was no difference that I could discern, and no residual taste from either product. For everything else, there were differences. The raspberries were basically ruined by the Palmolive -- they had a distinct soapy taste no matter how much I rinsed them. The raspberries washed with the Fruit & Veggie Wash were also affected, but the taste was just a hint of generic citrus. I went back to the box and rinsed one just with water, and the citrus taste was not there. I would not recommend either product for raspberries if you want to preserve their taste. For the grapes and peaches, I didn't notice any citrus taste from the Fruit & Veggie Wash, but I did notice a little soapy taste from the Palmolive. I think with the peach it was probably due to the rough surface. I was a little surprised by the grapes, because I assumed the smooth surface would easily rid itself of the soap. Maybe it's because there are little holes at the stem end? No idea.

Sure, bottled water would be in plentiful supply. Also, this wouldn't have to be provisions for an entire month. The idea is more like this: you're on a road trip, you're going to eat out a couple of meals a day on most days, and you're going to have access to supermarkets and sources of prepared food. However, in the course of a month of travel, you're going to hit on times when you're in the middle of nowhere without an easy meal solution. Furthermore, let's say you're not 22 years old, so it's not as easy on your system to skip a meal or just eat candy bars and potato chips, and let's say you're traveling with a young child in the car. So, if the need arises, you want to be ready to pull together a meal from your stash in the back of the vehicle. UHT milk is great, if it's safe, because it provides a great breakfast solution: if you have dry cereal and UHT milk, you have breakfast. That's great for when you're at the Motel 6 on some highway and you want to get an early start on your drive without having to eat at McDonald's or the bad diner across the parking lot.

Interesting. I wonder what the actual temperature exposure would be on my hypothetical road trip. Let's say, for example, you drove from New York City to Los Angeles and back, with various stops along the way, and you did that drive in May and June. There are a bunch of times when major heat is not an issue: nighttime on most of the route should be in the 70s F or lower, any time the vehicle is in motion (because the air conditioning is on), colder days, cloudier days, days when you're parked in a covered or indoor lot. The big temperature shocks are going to be when you park during the day in direct sunlight. The car can easily exceed 50 C (122 F) in that situation. But it's not going to be all day every day for a month. It's more likely to be a few hours at a time, on some percentage of the days. There's also the fact that it takes the milk time to heat up. So if you started the day out at 65 F, and you parked in a lot where the car went up to 122 F and stayed at that temperature for 3 hours, at least some of that 3-hour interval would be taken up by the liquid rising from 65 F to 122 F. I haven't got a clue how the totals would work out.

In response to a couple of the suggestions above, please see post number 1: "no cooking equipment."

Not to sound too much like grandpa, but I went to university once. It's cool to do the vegan thing when you're in a university environment. It's not like the other food is all that great either. But 20 years from now, I assure you nearly every one of your vegan grad-student friends will be eating meat -- or at least fish. The people who stay vegan through careers, parenthood, the degradation of the body and all the other realities of adult life are, in my experience, overwhelmingly the hardcore, righteous vegans: the ones for whom "rich, fulfilling food" is low on the list of concerns, and may even be antithetical to the mindset.

I think there's at least one logic problem with the question. "Prepared by" simply means the person cooked the meal. It doesn't mean he or she designed the recipes. I think the answer to the question "If two examples of the same dish were placed before you, could you tell which was cooked by a woman?" is surely no. Now, when you get into the realm of invention, maybe there's more to look at in terms of personality, temperament, culture, etc. I suppose you might, at that level, be able to identify traits that lean male or female, just as you might be able to identify traits that lean young or old, French or American, etc. But I'm not sure what that proves -- I guess it proves that some women cook in an identifiably feminine style and some don't. The same is true for writing, as George Eliot pretty well demonstrated 150 years ago.

Here's the hypothetical scenario: you have to pack food in the cargo area of a van for a month-long road trip. The vehicle will be subject to extremes of temperature: anything in it could freeze overnight or reach 100+ degrees F during the day. This isn't a backpacking scenario, so weight isn't relevant. However, you have no cooking equipment: we're talking about food you can just open up and eat. So, what are the best products in that category? I'll start by suggesting various crunchy foods like pretzels and crackers. Also dry cereal. How durable is UHT milk? I know it's sold unrefrigerated, but would it survive the back-of-the-van conditions I'm talking about? What else?

I know several people, myself included, who started cooking when a parent was hospitalized. In my case it was my father. My older sister had gone off to college just a week or so earlier, so I guess I was 11 years old. My mother spent all her time either teaching or looking after my father. So I was pushed into the role of kitchen self-provider. I think at first I reveled in the privilege of having takeout food every night, but eventually I wanted to prepare my own food. I started with sandwiches and moved my way up to heat-and-serve items and then to cooking things like pasta. Even though my father was in pretty good shape after that initial hospitalization, the family dynamic had changed and my mother never really returned to the role of mother who puts dinner on the table every night. So I kept making many of my own meals, and even occasionally prepared dinner or breakfast for the family. A year or so into this process, my parents bought me a book, "The Teenage Chef," by Jonathan Jackson. I have no idea what happened to the guy -- he doesn't seem to have any other books. Anyway, I distinctly remember that the first actual recipe from a cookbook that I ever followed was the "Texas chili" recipe, which was really just a generic American ground beef, canned beans and chili powder recipe. Still, it was tasty, and I made it many times.

To be clear, I have no stake in whether or not Italy has a thriving contemporary cuisine scene. What I do know is that people posting on this topic, like fortedei, are saying things like "I’m talking about the high end of Italian society in terms of financial resources, the only Italians who would even think of going to expensive cutting edge restaurants… and they don’t do it and have no interest in doing it. They might do it when they go to New York or London or Spain, but they are not frequenting those types of restaurants in Italy and never will." And now, a couple of hundred posts into the topic, some folks are saying, oh, sure, there's tons of cutting-edge cuisine in Italy -- if I walk out my door I trip over so many cutting-edge restaurants I don't know what to do with myself. If the latter is true, I think that's fantastic.

A few years ago, I got sick and tired of not having enough prep bowls. I would use up my 4 Anchor-Hocking custard cups (which I believe are technically called "6oz dessert bowls," product number H434U), then have to move on to a variety of inappropriately sized and poorly constructed receptacles -- everything from mixing bowls to red plastic party cups. So one day I went out and stocked up on Arcoroc stackable, break- and chip-resistant, microwave- and dishwasher-safe tempered-glass bowls. I bought 24 of them: 12 in the 5.5oz size and 4 each in 3 smaller sizes. I also bought 8 more Anchor-Hocking custard cups (I like the Anchor-Hocking ones better than the Pyrex ones because I prefer the heavier, thicker, sturdier lip of the Anchor-Hocking ones). So now when it comes time to prep I'm loaded for bear, even if I cook breakfast, lunch and dinner and don't run the dishwasher until after dinner. The Arcoroc bowls nest very efficiently. All my Arcoroc bowls can be accommodated in two stacks in the cabinet, though I usually keep them in three stacks for easier access to a variety of sizes. Also the 5.5oz ones have plastic lids, so if you have excess of an herb or some such you can easily hold it over until a future meal without having to deal with plastic wrap or a transfer to another receptacle. They also, unexpectedly, turn out to be the ideal size for use as a child's bowl -- our son eats many of his meals out of them. While I don't watch many cooking shows, pretty much whenever I do watch one it seems they're using Arcoroc bowls. There are a few things I do that require larger prep bowls. For example, a 5.5oz Arcoroc or 6oz Anchor-Hocking is not quite large enough to comfortably hold an egg or two for beating with a fork. It's also not quite wide enough to catch Parmesan cheese from the Microplane grater. And unless you fill it way up to the top it doesn't hold enough tomato sauce to cover a half-sheet-size pizza. For those ingredients, and others like them, I use Williams-Sonoma chili bowls. These 20oz bowls are some of the greatest items ever sold by Williams-Sonoma. You can still get them online ("Porcelain Chili Bowls, Set of 6"). They are extremely sturdy: in 14 or so years I've never managed to break one. Anything larger than that I wouldn't really call a prep bowl, so I'll end the inventory there.

That route takes you right past Lowell, MA, which has the unusual distinction of being the capital of Cambodian culture in the United States. About a quarter of Lowell's population is Cambodian-American. Lowell has quite a few Cambodian, Vietnamese and other Asian restaurants.

A couple of weeks ago, Still River Cafe received an "Extraordinary" rating from Stephanie Lyness, who reviews Connecticut restaurants for the New York Times. This is the highest rating available to restaurants reviewed in the Connecticut section of the paper. The scale is "Extraordinary, Excellent, Very Good, Good," so "Extraordinary" is the Connecticut equivalent of the four-star rating in New York City. The review concludes, "The food is as lovely as the dining experience is pleasurable. But what gives palpable purpose to this excellence is the realization of the Brooks family’s risky dream of living a Connecticut life defined by the largesse and the limitations of the land." This prompted my mother-in-law, who lives in New Haven, Connecticut, to drive out to Eastford this weekend. I just got her off the phone -- she couldn't stop talking about how great the meal was. I noticed in the review that the restaurant is now open only Friday-Saturday-Sunday, which I think makes sense as a temporary move. But with the raves the place has been eliciting, I think we can look for an expanded schedule down the road. I hope the first eGullet Society member to dine at Still River Cafe will start a new "reports and discussion" topic. Looking forward to hearing about it, and to making it out there when I can.

Tonight I used store-bought frozen pizza dough and didn't tell anybody. You?

I don't think it's possible to find a culinary culture on the planet that's, as a whole, dedicated to the cutting edge. That's one reason why the cutting edge poses no threat to traditional cuisine: Ferran Adria may be an international culinary celebrity, but the average Spanish cook isn't producing cuisine in the style of El Bulli, and Spain's traditional food culture is at least as vibrant as it would be without the existence of the avant garde. I think it's safe to say, however, that France is a whole heck of a lot more contemporary than Italy when it comes to restaurants. Contemporary is the norm at the high end of French dining, as it is in the more celebrated bistros. It's not just chefs like Pierre Gagnaire -- it's everyone. It's rare to find a serious French restaurant today that prepares faithful renditions of Escoffier's recipes. Whereas, based on every piece of information I have, and despite a few exceptions like Davide Scabin (I haven't been to his restaurant), "faithful renditions of old recipes" pretty much sums up the restaurant scene in Italy, and is indeed Italy's culinary selling proposition to the world right now. This is certainly not "my" position, but rather the one that has been taken by many people with better knowledge than I possess.

There are excellent ingredients available in a lot of European countries. France and Spain may not achieve quite the level of overall produce excellence as Italy, but they excel in plenty of areas, and it's no big deal to drive ingredients around Europe. Yet, in Spain and France you have thriving contemporary cuisine scenes, and you have several of the foremost practitioners of the culinary avant garde. Contemporary cuisine and molecular gastronomy don't come from the United States. They simply are not a result of bad produce. They come from Europe, where the produce is great. I think one has to look elsewhere for an explanation. It more likely derives from culture, not ingredients.