Fat Guy

I've got pretty good access to fresh herbs as well, but convenience takes many forms. For one thing, it's rare that I can use up even the smallest package of a fresh herb before it rots. And that's if I just buy one herb. If I want to keep five herbs around, forget about it. For another thing, when you've just whipping up an omelette the last thing you want to do is start picking thyme (as in, pulling the little leaf clusters off the thyme sprigs). And for still another thing, there's the whole shopping/planning thing: sometimes I don't want to be limited by the fresh herbs I bought a week ago, but I'd rather not drop down to using dried basil or parsley.

The company that makes the tubes I've seen is called Gourmet Garden and they're, as Anna says, Australian. They seem to have pretty good distribution throughout the English-speaking world. Most of the better supermarket chains here carry the products. I'll have to try some. Apparently they make a range of ten products, though I don't think I've ever seen some of them: "Basil, Chili Pepper, Oregano, Garlic, Lemon Grass, Dill, Italian Seasoning, Parsley, Cilantro and Ginger."

While I agree with budrichard that several of the selections in the Saveur 100 are nauseating (which is nothing new), I don't agree that Saveur is going downhill. The past several issues have, in my opinion, been more readable and have had a higher percentage of interesting (to me) content than anything from last year. I also wanted to mention, for anyone who missed it, that a few months back we featured James Oseland in an eG Radio foodcast. In that eG Radio foodcast, recorded on location at Saveur magazine headquarters in New York City, we spoke to James Oseland, then the new editor-in-chief of Saveur, and Pete Wells, then the new editor of the New York Times dining section. The discussion topic for that foodcast is here

I'm not particularly proud of the creativity quotient in my household tonight, but I did manage to use about a third of a bag of peas. I made chicken with mushrooms and peas. Sauteed chicken, set aside. Sauteed mushrooms, set aside. Made a pan sauce from capers (packed in Sherry vinegar), chicken stock, a little soy sauce, a little sesame oil and a dash of oregano. Added the chicken and mushrooms, as well as frozen peas, to the sauce and heated through. One point of interest: peas and capers have kind of a similar appearance in a finished, sauced dish. I may have to explore the peas-and-capers concept a bit more someday.

Some terrific ideas, folks. Please keep them coming. Incidentally, I learned that peas, like any self-respecting food product, have their own trade organization. You can see the website at: http://www.peas.org/ There are a ton of recipe ideas on that website, including: Spicy Pea and Avocado Dip Garden Pea, Pecorino and Mint Soufflé Pea and Goat's Cheese Tart Warm Pea and Lentil Salad Grilled Halloumi with Peas, Pine Nuts, Broad Beans and Rocket Pea, Tuna and White Bean Salad with Lemon Dressing Sauté of Peas and Lettuce Pea and Roasted Garlic Soup Cheesy Pea and Bacon Fritters Japanese Miso-style Pea and Tofu Soup with Chives Warm Pea, Broccoli, Chorizo and Feta Tart

I had a friend over awhile back and we made hamburgers. He brought over his KitchenAid grinder attachment and we connected it to my KitchenAid mixer. Afterwards, we put the thing in the dishwasher. He doesn't have a dishwasher. He said it was the cleanest he had ever seen it since the day it came new in the box. I don't think there was any damage to the product. I don't buy an aluminum pot assuming I'm going to own it forever -- cast-iron or copper, yes, but everything else is disposable. If I can get ten years out of it, I'm happy. I do believe that the dishwasher will shorten the usable life and diminish the appearance of anodized aluminum. A couple of the anodized aluminum pots we got when we got engaged in 1993 are now nearing retirement. I'm sure without the dishwasher they'd have been good for another decade. But I don't care. It's just not worth washing them by hand.

I'm starting with the assumption that the traditional convenience herbs and related products, like dried basil from the supermarket shelf, and packets of chili-spice powder, are bad news for good cooking. Certainly, a higher level of these products exists: dried herbs from Penzey's (or from your own garden) will be better than what you get at the local supermarket. But overall these items are just not great. However, in recent times I've seen a few products that seem a lot more promising. These are some that I've observed: - Little frozen cubes of chopped herbs. This seems like a really good idea, given that it's what a lot of smart cooks do with their herbs anyway. The brand I've seen is Sabra, and the web page on their frozen herbs (which contains pretty much no information) is here. In addition to little frozen cubes of chopped basil, parsley, cilantro and dill, they have little frozen cubes of crushed garlic. - Jars of chopped and pureed herbs and seasonings. I've seen many brands, usually there's chopped garlic in water or oil, and also today I saw chopped shallots in water (if those are any good, they'll be a real time-saver). There are little jars of pureed basil, etc., as well. - Spice pastes. These seem to me almost always to be much better than dried spice mixes. And they're becoming more prevalent. Fresh herbs are supposed to be better than anything, and they're certainly usually better than dried, but am I the only one who things fresh herbs from the supermarket are often light on flavor? I don't think that just because something is fresh and green that it's necessarily good. It would seem to me that frozen herbs, in particular, could if done right have an edge, the same way frozen peas are often better than fresh because they can be frozen immediately after picking, in season. Have any of you been using these products, or others? Any observations, recommendations, etc.?

I wanted to add that today's cooks have a lot of ingredient options that weren't necessarily available to the French chefs of a century ago. In particular, there are many Asian ingredients, such as various soy sauces, fish sauces, oyster sauce, curry pastes, sesame oils, rice vinegar, Shaoxing cooking wine, coconut milk and chili sauces. Used judiciously, these are terrific ingredients in pan sauces. Tonight for late-afternoon supper I made chicken with mushrooms and peas. The pan sauce was capers (packed in Sherry vinegar), chicken stock, a little soy sauce, a little sesame oil and a dash of oregano. You just wouldn't have seen that sauce back in the day. There are also a number of thickeners available now that didn't exist way back.

One chef is pretty much always in charge of both the savory and pastry programs. In just about every chef-driven restaurant I can think of (as opposed to, say, a steakhouse), the executive chef sets the culinary agenda. If the pastry chef can't get with that agenda, the pastry chef is out. So it's more a question of level of involvement. The standard arrangement is that the executive chef and pastry chef consult often, the pastry chef comes up with various ideas, accepts input from the executive chef, prepares items for tasting, and the executive chef ultimately approves or vetoes desserts. That's the system by which desserts evolve stylistically to mesh with the savory cuisine. Most executive chefs, however, do not have the expertise or time to play pastry chef at a top restaurant. There are a few out there in the Western world, especially in France where it's common for chefs to cross-train early in their careers and where you have a lot of restaurants that are open five days a week for dinner only, but it's uncommon. Even if Humm has the talent, Eleven Madison Park is a seven-day, lunch-and-dinner operation. There's no way a single human being can handle the whole thing, which is of course why they're searching for a new pastry chef. I would have to taste Humm's desserts to comment, but my guess is that they're better than what was being served before (the bar was low, though) and not as good as what a great pastry chef would do.

I thought we were out of frozen peas, so I bought two bags today. When I went to put them in the freezer, I found two full bags and a mostly full third bag. So, with nearly five bags of peas, I really need to cook some peas. Of course, I can figure out to eat them just heated up and served as peas. I also occasionally snack on them right out of the bag, like little green frozen M&Ms. But let's say I want more from the relationship? I'm trying to think outside the box, bag, whatever here. I know a few pasta and rice dishes to which peas can be added. What I'm really trying to figure out is something unexpected.

You buy a jar of mustard and it has a price sticker on the lid that says $2.99. Are you a person who removes the sticker, or do you put the jar on the table with the price tag on?

A comment on the slicing cheese for sandwiches topic got me thinking about the phenomenon of the hot sandwich. I'm not talking about hot sandwiches like grilled cheese or a sloppy Joe, where hot is part of the definition of the sandwich. Rather, I'm talking about sandwiches that have, since the days of Rabbi Hillel and the Earl of Sandwich, been served at room temperature but have, in the modern era, started being warmed by various processes. For example, I know a few people who have purchased panini presses or related sandwich presses, and no matter what sandwich they make they put it on that thing. In the commercial arena, Quizno's puts sandwiches through a conveyer oven before serving. I'm not sure I think heat is always a positive thing for a sandwich, though. Toast is not always better than bread, melted cheese is not always better than cheese. Some ingredients are kind of gross when you heat them up, like really good salume just gets greasy, lettuce is just better cold and warm mayonnaise sometimes makes me nauseated. I just wanted to speak out against the undiscriminating use of heat in sandwich-making. As with most things, sometimes less is more.

Okay, here's the deal with Becco and crowds. Because it's in the theater district, it is absolutely mobbed for dinner from 5:30pm until just before 8pm. But after that I've found it to be just fine. Don't go right at 8pm -- the staff will still be shell shocked -- but at 8:30pm Becco is usually not a madhouse. Also, table selection matters. There are some very cozy areas of the restaurant upstairs and in the way back. You need to get away from the bar area and the big open room to the left. One other Becco tip: don't go assuming it's only good for pasta. The other dishes can be quite good.

I'm still having trouble navigating your reasoning here. You refer to "Their modern definition." By that I think you mean the latter part of the OED's definition, "The parts which are cut off in dressing the carcase of an animal killed for food; in earlier use applied mainly to the entrails; now, as a trade term, including the head and tail, as well as the kidneys, heart, tongue, liver and other parts." From there, I don't get how you derive, "hard to get greasy little bit or otherwise challenging small pieces of muscle meat associated with lots of connective tissue."

I meet plenty of chefs who are parents, and I'm always amazed that it's possible. Setting aside the question of how a chef is even going to meet a person with whom to procreate, how in the world do chefs manage to handle the responsibilities of parenting. I used to work at a big law firm, so I know from long hours. But I know how it's possible to be a big-firm lawyer and a parent: first, you have a ton of money so you can hire all sorts of caregivers and have your kids participate in every after-school program, travel program and summer camp in the universe; second, the whole structure of school, weekends, holidays, etc., is designed around the normal professional work-week; third, nobody expects you to last more than three or four years at a big law firm, and if you do last until partnership you gain a lot more flexibility. Chefs, on the other hand, rarely make enough money to do much more than pay the rent, work at the exact times kids are most likely to be home (evenings, weekends, holidays), and even many of the most successful chefs are still in the kitchen all the time, at all the worst times. I experience the same amazement with respect to just about anybody in the restaurant business. I'd be very interested to hear how you handle partenting, chefs, cooks, pastry chefs, not to mention servers, restaurant managers, etc.

I can't figure out where you're getting that from, in terms of any of the definitions above. The way I read it, OED seems to be saying pretty much what Larousse is saying.

I love cheese on my sandwiches. And when I make sandwiches at home, I like to use meats and cheeses that I'd never be able to get at a deli. The cheeses I use on sandwiches at home are delicious, but the slices themselves are rarely satisfactory. Usually I have to pile up many small slices, or the slices crumble, or they're sticky/gloppy, depending on the cheese. It seems there's an inverse relationship between the quality of a cheese and the quality of slices you get out of it. Crummy deli cheese comes in big blocks a cross-section of which covers a sandwich-size slice of bread, and its texture is such that it slices thin without crumbling or clumping. A great cheese, on the other hand, may be impossible to acquire in a large piece, and its texture is unlikely to be sandwich-slicing appropriate -- certainly it's hard to find a great cheese that meets all the criteria. How to cope?

I think it's similar to the distinction between a cheese-maker and a chef. A great cheese-maker (or wine-maker, or mustard-maker, or soy-sauce-maker) is certainly a great culinary artist. Cheese is an amazing and wonderful product eaten alone. But it's also an ingredient. As much as I love Fourme d'Ambert, I'm likely to choose Alain Passard's tarte a la Fourme d'Ambert, poires fraiches over a plain piece of Fourme d'Ambert. No insult to the cheese-maker, but Passard takes that ingredient to another level.

One possible difficulty with the meat/non-meat distinction is that there doesn't appear to be a formal definition anywhere that supports it in a logical manner. The dictionary definitions all seem to indicate that the issue is waste. (As an aside, that would seem to be in opposition to the idea that offal can be a luxury product.) The culinary definitions seem to focus on butchering. One possibly authoritative culinary definition would be the one in Larousse Gastronomique. In Larousse, the definition begins, "The edible internal parts and some extremities of an animal, which are removed before the carcass is cut up. It therefore includes the head, feet and tail, and all the main internal organs." That would seem to argue for Sam's earlier "fifth quarter" leanings, in that the definition is dictated not by culture, and not by muscle meat versus not muscle meat, but rather by butchering. Incidentally, at least according to Larousse, foie gras would not be offal because, "The offal from poultry is called the giblets." In an older edition of Larousse, there's also a discourse on "white offal" versus "red offal."

The incident I recall was mentioned in Danny Meyer's book, "Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business." I don't have my copy handy, but I believe he said that Eric Asimov's one-star review of Blue Smoke (this was when Asimov was holding down the lead reviewer job during Grimes's leave of absence) was based on two visits, according to a phone conversation he had with Asimov. I'm sure there are instances in which Bruni makes six visits. However, looking at the overall picture, he is dining out on average ten times a week when he's in New York. From that he has to derive one main review each week, plus all sorts of stuff for diner's journal, plus he has to visit places he's never going to write about because, until he visits them, he doesn't know if they're worth writing about. He also travels. So it makes much more sense to assume that the average is in the neighborhood of four or five visits, with highs of six and perhaps the occasional three.

I don't have any way to determine the average, but I would think that six is the maximum rather than the average. And of course it is in the critic's interest to emphasize and highlight the instances in which he made a high number of visits, and to avoid mention of numbers when he makes three or four visits. Mathematically, it's hard to believe that six is the average. I do, however, know of at least one review, pre-Bruni, that was based on two visits.

According to New York Magazine's Grub Street blog today, Eleven Madison Park has removed pastry chef Richard Bies, who was apparently there on a trial basis. Daniel Humm is said to be the chief pastry executive for now, while they search for a replacement. This is a good move. While a lot of the hard-core foodie types are willing to overlook bad desserts, to the general fine-dining public a bad dessert means an unmemorable ending. The weakness of its dessert program has been a real albatross for Eleven Madison Park ever since Nicole Kaplan left -- not that her haute-homestyle desserts would have been a good fit for Humm's cuisine anyway. Glad to see EMP taking this step.

For discussion of the meaning of the term "offal," please see this new topic.

A discussion tangent on another topic raised the following question: what the heck is offal anyway? Two views seem to exist. One says that there is a list of stuff that is considered offal. The list includes heart, kidneys, whatever. The point being, the list is the list, offal is offal. The other says that offal is defined as by-product, trimmings, waste. Therefore, one generation's by-product is not necessarily another generation's waste. According to this view, when sweetbreads cost more per pound than filet mignon, and are mainstream menu items in the finest restaurants, they are no longer rightly called offal. Those who already posted research should of course feel free to carry it over here.

Okay, this definitely needs its own topic. Starting one now.