Fat Guy

Off the Broiler = broil it to order, don't get it from the warming drawer Crunchy fried bits = "bits" The White Castle incident had to do with an illegal border crossing

I think part of the differential may be accounted for by the opportunities that a large table presents. For example, you need a certain critical mass of people at a table before you can do a whole roast. That's just not likely to happen for a party of two, three or even four. Also, don't underestimate the appeal of an enthusiastic party. I've trailed in many kitchens, and have often heard managers come in and say things to the chef like, "The party on table 33, they seem really nice, really into food, and they're really happy to be here." And the chef will put out an extra special meal for that table. Happens all the time.

Helen, my guess is that an enameled cast-iron lid would be more likely to cause chips through impact than a stainless-steel lip on a glass lid. The most analogous situation I can think of involves sinks: if you compare an enameled cast-iron sink to a stainless-steel sink, you'll find that you have significantly more breakage of dishes in the enameled sink. Blondelle, I'm not sure how the weight of the lid affects the system. Certainly, tempered-glass lids are not exactly light in weight. If they fit well, they make a good seal. Since we're talking about relatively low temperature braising as the primary use for this sort of vessel, it's not like the lid has to contain steam under high pressure. There are a lot of things going on in an oven -- radiation, conduction, convection, etc. -- so I'm not certain of all the phenomena in play. Some tests would be in order. I do, however, braise with glass lids all the time and seem to get decent results.

You know you have junk-food street cred when: - When placing your Popeye's order, you make four separate trips to the counter so you get a separate "You got a deal!" offer each time. - You order your Whopper "with cheese, light mayo, off the broiler, cut in half, on the bread from the Rick Bayless sandwich." - You know what time your local McDonald's switches from breakfast to lunch and you time your visit so you can get a Big Mac with hash browns. - You actually know the name of the little bits of fried stuff that act as infrastructure for the dishes at Long John Silver's. - You walk through the KFC drive-thru in order to beat the inside lines. - You're greeted by name at the local Taco Bell. - You've been banned from the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. - You've been arrested at White Castle.

I'm pretty sure Adam Platt at New York Magazine coined the phrase. I think it's infantile, demeaning and misleading. But that's just me. It does seem to enjoy widespread use now.

My mother-in-law makes a wonderful Sephardic meat pie that's layered with matzoh. Not sure if it's the type of thing you could sell, but it's quite delicious. You make a meat pie filling from ground beef or lamb (or veal, or turkey, or a mix) sauteed with onions and garlic, and from there you can improvise a bit (cilantro, cumin and raisins make for a nice combination). You take a large casserole and line the bottom with squares of matzoh. Spoon some of the mixture over, then create a matzoh layer, then more of the mixture, etc. -- two or three layers depending on the depth of your pan. For the top layer, cover with matzoh and brush with egg. Bake at 350 F for about an hour.

I really like that use of various presentation platters, boards, elongated plates, slabs, racks, etc. for quasi-family-style service. Very few restaurants take that kind of advantage of the opportunity that a tasting menu for a large group presents. Has there been discussion of the phrase "haute barnyard"? Does that come from the New York Magazine people? It's not a designation I'd necessarily embrace.

And if you kept PJ's receiving blankets you should be good for a few more decades. My daughter recycled hers into kitchen towels and they work well. ← I think we gave away the receiving blankets -- of which we had amassed many -- as hand-me-downs. But man, we have a lot of these cloth diapers. We had grand plans for them, but idealism gave way to expediency and we went with wasteful, toxic, disposable diapers. We're not proud. I'm even less proud of just how many I pilfered. At least now they'll get used for something.

Yup, I've got both kinds: the flat and the ones with the extra strip down the middle. Lots and lots of them, never used. Continue to talk amongst yourselves. I won't need any kitchen towels for a decade or so.

I'm slowly accumulating more data on side towels. I spoke to a chef this morning who says that a lot of the restaurants around here (New York City) get their blue side towels from a laundry service in Queens. He says that in restaurants in other cities where he has worked they usually use terry-cloth bar-mop towels as side towels, but that the blue side towels in widespread use here are not terry. Rather, they're thick but flat, and are not particularly absorbent. So at the restaurants that use them, they issue the blue towels for use as pot holders and they issue white bar mop towels for cleaning up the station. This color scheme also helps prevent mistakes. I'm trying to find out the name of the actual supplier -- maybe I can get some samples.

OMG I never considered that. When our baby was in the NICU, it was a bonanza of free stuff. I must have walked out of there with ten cloth diapers a day for almost a week. We never used them for anything. They're just taking up space in a closet. I must investigate this at once.

I was thinking about aesthetics. (The shirt thing was kind of a thought tangent.) I know it's possible to buy a zillion shop-towels for three cents, but I was thinking about nice towels like Williams-Sonoma sells for $20 for a small set. I figured it might be easy to reproduce that sort of thing much cheaper from purchased fabric.

It seems to be towel week in the eG Forums, so I was wondering: if I just go out and buy some fabric by the yard -- you can usually get the last few yards of the roll cheap -- what's to stop me from just cutting it up in order to create kitchen towels? I mean, kitchen towels seem to be ridiculously overpriced. I'm sure the raw materials are a zillion times cheaper than the towels. Would I have to buy specific kinds of fabric? I assume 100% cotton would be a basic requirement. Would there be any sewing involved? Or is it possible to do it without hemming the edges? What about using old tee-shirts, like so many of us I'm sure use as a source of rags? Has anybody actually done this? Tell all.

I don't take issue with using serious mitts for hauling around big stockpots and roasting pans. What I think is counterproductive is using oven mitts for cooking on the stovetop, or for handling a pan under the broiler, or for pulling cookie sheets from the oven, or any of several other tasks home cooks (who rarely need to lift hot stockpots) use them to perform.

My most masochistic occasional indulgence is White Castle. I can't help going there a few times a year, because there's simply no other way to capture that particular flavor -- and I need that flavor.

If I have any credibility left after ruining the squash last year, I'm also casting my vote for the latter approach.

I picked up dinner at Saigon Grill on the UWS today. One piece of information I picked up is that they've shut down the sushi service. There was no explicit acknowledgment of a connection to the labor issue, however it seems like a logical conclusion that they're scaling back on account of decreased revenues. There's a new handout on the counter. It's a letter to the customers signed by all the "inside workers." The page is teeming with signatures, some in English and some in Asian alphabets. Whether signing this paper was a matter of choice, I cannot say, but the writing style is reminiscent of the previous memo, which came from management. Anyway, the letter says: As seems to be the case always in the evening, there were no protesters anywhere to be seen.

Chick-fil-A and Starbuck's operate at a pretty high level of quality. I'd characterize them as fast food but not junk food. There are a few other fast-food chains that I think do relatively high quality: Baja Fresh, Quizno's, In-n-Out, Long John Silver's, Popeye's, Nathan's. Wendy's is borderline. It's an order of magnitude higher quality than McDonald's and Burger King, which in turn are not at the lowest rung of the ladder (that's reserved for Taco Bell). Which is to say, I don't think you earn junk-food street cred unless you go in for the hardcore crap like Burger King and Taco Bell.

I've found that no matter which type of protection you use -- pot holder, oven mitt, towel -- there's some risk that it will catch fire if you've got multiple burners cranking and you're reaching around in the inferno. I have not, however, found that a towel is any more likely to catch fire than, say, a pot holder. Towels can be folded down quite small and because they're not sewn in padded layers you get a lot of tactile feedback and you have a lot of control over the towel and the pot, whereas pot holders have a tendency to flop around, especially that little loop that many have in the corner.

Those fitted handle covers are popular with the cooks who make omelettes at buffets. If all you do is make omelettes all day, they're probably useful tools. I personally have not found them useful, though. I had one a few years ago, put the pan under the broiler with it on (totally forgot), and a minute later started to smell burning plastic.

This is an example of a side towel: Typically, in restaurant kitchens side towels are used by cooks to grab the handles of hot pots. They're also sometimes used to keep a cook's area neat. In many restaurant kitchens, each cook works with two side towels or stacks of side towels: some for dry work (as a pot holder) and others for wet work (wiping up the station). Wet towels conduct heat quickly, so you don't want to cross over and use a wet towel as a pot holder. Anthony Bourdain briefly discusses side towels in "Kitchen Confidential." On page 59 of my copy (there are various editions), he writes in part: Every professional cook I know, every restaurant kitchen I've seen, they all use side towels. And they should: the side towel is versatile, practical and cost-effective. It is one of those rare things that's just great at what it does. Yet, home cooks almost never take advantage of side towels. Instead, they use oven mitts, pot holders and other specialized items that cost more and don't work as well as side towels. With a side towel, you get excellent control over whatever you're grabbing. Mitts and pot holders are clumsy by comparison. I was hoping we could accomplish a few things on this topic. First, I'd love to hear from restaurant veterans about your side towel stories. Kick in a photograph of your side towel if you have one around. What color is it (I see mostly blue around here, but apparently white is common and I've heard reports of purple), what are its dimensions? (The side towel above is one I wore out the door one night when I was trailing at Gramercy Tavern in New York City; if I stretch it to what are probably its original dimensions, it's 18"x24".) Second, to home cooks I issue a challenge and a call to arms: let's all get rid of our stupid pot holders and mitts and switch to side towels. And let's use this topic to express and revel in our newfound side-towel solidarity. Third and finally, let's discuss where to get good side towels cheap. Let the side-towel discussion begin!

I think we should put that to the test vis-a-vis carbon steel. I think you may find that the difference in thermal capacity between a two-pound pan and a four-pound pan is not as relevant to cooking as you're assuming. In some specific applications, like leaving a pan on a burner for 10 minutes to get it super-hot for searing, maybe. But in most other cooking, it may not be all that important. In my limited experience using them, heavy-duty black-steel pans are plenty thick to distribute heat evenly and perform pretty much like cast iron does. If I buy a two-pack, I'll gladly give you one to play with.

Thermal capacity will be a matter of mass, since the materials are similar, however all other aspects of performance should be functionally the same.

Hmm. The problem with black towels is that you can't tell whether they're clean. I like white or light blue towels, because if they get gross you know to wash them. Interesting that 6ppc mentioned shop towels. I see boxes of these at Costco all the time. I've occasionally wondered if they'd make good kitchen towels. They're so cheap as to be nearly disposable.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but if you want a pan with the properties of cast iron but lighter, get a . . . black steel skillet.