Fat Guy

I really like your strategy. I've got a terrible towel strategy in place right now, which consists of two blue towels always hanging over the oven-door bar. I need to find a place for a couple of stacks of towels, yes I do. The top of the fridge is already taken up by three plastic bins in which I keep potatoes, onions and such. But I'll find a place. I also need some basic education on towel types. I'm ashamed to admit that I went most of my life never internalizing the fact that there are different types of towels. I was dimly aware that some towels didn't work for some things, but didn't really consider the issue. Now I have a slightly better idea of the differences, but I still dry my wine glasses with paper towels because I'm too stupid to figure out which towels will work well for that.

Amazing. Maybe my brain just hasn't processed the information, but I really think that every kitchen I've been in -- and that's a few dozen at this point -- has used the blue towels. I just did a quick search online and I can't even find them for sale anywhere -- they probably have a technical name of which I'm unaware. Oh, we totally need a side-towel topic.

Professional restaurant equipment isn't made with stay-cool plastic handles, because they probably wouldn't survive three hours of heavy use. So, in every professional kitchen I've been in, every cook has one of these on hand at all times: They're usually referred to as "side towels" or "blue towels" -- I don't suppose there's any reason they have to be blue, but I've never seen them in another color. This one is property of Gramercy Tavern in New York City -- I really do plan to return it (and its five brethren) one day. They seem to be the universal pot holder of professional cooks in the Western world -- I don't know about the rest of the world. They give excellent control, and once you become accustomed to working always with a side towel it becomes second nature to do so. And you never burn your hand.

We were at Gramercy Tavern this past Monday night, in the main dining room for dinner. They were kind enough to put together a tasting menu consisting of dishes from various parts of the menu. The most memorable dish was a simple, lightly smoked piece of brook trout. I believe the chef said it was from Max Creek Hatchery in East Meredith, NY. They have a stand at the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays, if I'm not mistaken. He stressed that he uses the brook trout, not one of the various other types of trout, because it has the "cleanest" taste. He also mentioned that, though these trout are hatched by man, they're raised in large, clean ponds and that this particular supplier is good about catching, cleaning, chilling and getting the fish to market quickly. An extraordinary product, demonstrating how good trout can be but rarely is. Another terrific seafood dish was the calamari salad, which I believe comes from the lunch menu. The calamari is marinated and served in long, thin strips about the size of bean sprouts. It's dressed with Meyer lemon vinaigrette. Like the trout, an amazing product shown at its best with a minimally invasive but sophisticated preparation. I won't list every dish we had, however I loved all but one (the sweetbreads). Having now been in front and back a couple of times each, I can't for the life of me comprehend Richman's aversion to the place. I think Gramercy Tavern, better than almost any other restaurant, captures the right balance of professionalism and informality in service that reflects the best of the New American service tradition. I have not found Mike Anthony's dishes to be strained or showy in any way -- he believes in great ingredients and in preparations that show those ingredients at their best. I love what he has done with the place, and Gramercy is now back up on my favorite-restaurants list. I'd love to hear some more reports from folks who have tried it out. I think Gramercy lost a lot of its foodie street cred over the past few years, but right now I think it's one of the most exciting food destinations in town. Not showy, not avant garde, but exciting. At least to me it is.

By the way, to get back somewhat to the Lodge Signature Series, my suggestion for anybody who wants the properties of cast-iron but with a long and relatively stay-cool handle is to buy a black steel skillet. These are priced similarly to cast iron skillets, and are widely used in restaurants. In my copious spare time, I might pick up a two-pack of these and post about my experience.

A side discussion on a recent cast-iron cookware topic led me to start this one. I know a lot of folks are extremely fond of "stay-cool" handles on cookware. These handles need to be divided into two categories: First, there are the metal stay-cool handles that have various design features to help dissipate or reduce conduction of heat so that you can hold them while cooking on the stovetop. (Here I'm not talking about cast-iron handles on copper cookware -- you could call that a form of stay-cool design, but what I mean are the consumer-level stay-cool designs where the steel handle narrows at its base as a way of limiting conduction.) Second, there are the plastic, resin, wood and other non-metallic handles that stay cool because they're poor conductors of heat. I believe both are at best worthless and at worst counterproductive, and that people should just get in the habit of using towels and pot holders. After all, unless every handle on every piece of cookware you ever use is a stay-cool handle, you will eventually screw up and burn yourself by grabbing a hot handle. Not to mention, stay-cool handles only stay cool under limited circumstances. The metal ones don't work very well at all once you really get cooking, and of course they fail totally in the oven. The plastic ones stay cool on the stovetop, but they limit your ability to use the pot in the oven above about 350 degrees.

This is a page from the Lipper website: http://lipperinternational.com/catalog/cas...p?CategoryID=30 However, I can't seem to find any online retailers actually selling the stuff. So who knows what's up with that.

I've not seen any new Wagner stuff in years. I did not long ago buy a cast-iron skillet at Target branded Benjamin & Medwin. I don't know whether that line is still manufactured, I believe by Lipper.

This is a terrible photo, however I'm posting it anyway for informational purposes. I grabbed this snapshot because tonight I was steaming some Brussels sprouts and watching them and I thought about this topic. I had three pots going on the stove, and this pot was steaming on a high flame. You can't see it in the photo, but when I took this there was steam escaping from the edges around the lid. Yet, even in this stovetop application, visibility is plenty sufficient to see what's going on.

I'm really, really bad at using pastry bags and tips. I don't aspire to create beautifully decorated cakes. I'd just like to be able to do basic stuff like write "Happy Birthday Joe!" on a cake or make deviled eggs that don't look like crap. Can the serious pastry people please walk me through the basics here. I mean, really, the basics.

I would hate to be a manufacturer of cast-iron cookware. You make a product that costs $15 and lasts forever -- as in, it will still be just fine in the year 7,000. People hand these things down to their great grandchildren. Short of a massive population explosion in the industrialized world (which is the opposite of what's happening), there are only so many more cast-iron skillets that can be sold in the 21st through 25th centuries. Meanwhile, were I a cast-iron cookware manufacturer, I'd be looking at the incredible stupidity of cookware consumers. Not only are cast-iron skillets $15, but also the middle class has rejected them because they don't cost $100. So I would devote lots of resources to figuring out how to make $100 cast-iron skillets that would appeal to the Williams-Sonoma set. You bet I would. Go for it, Lodge. Just please keep making $15 cast-iron skillets for me. Not that I'll ever need another one.

What's a prawn tub?

Not long ago, I was a first-time visitor. I went in with a frame of reference dictated by incredible hype. And at the end of my first meal I felt that, despite all the hype, the place was actually quite underrated -- that people were letting the old paradigm prejudice their conclusions about the food, when in my opinion the food was unparalleled.

We know that: - The Four Seasons is a beautiful, elegant restaurant -- one of the world's great dining rooms - The food is mostly fancy-hotel-banquet level, with flashes of real-restaurant excellence mostly reserved for VIPs, folks who crack the code, and the occasional person with dumb luck - The restaurant has historic significance, and has been and is loved by many people around the world Deriving a star rating from the above could be a simple question of applying a rule or rules to a set of facts. But we have no idea what the rules are. The stars are now a totally impressionistic venture. We can speculate all we want, and try to create rules after the fact to explain the various decisions, but the reality is that Bruni just gives however many stars he feels like giving.

There's a Four Seasons topic that's a couple of pages long. I think the issue is that there's just not much to say about the Four Seasons. That should be apparent from Bruni's review, which said just about nothing. That's the challenge when you review one of the dinosaurs. The Four Seasons has its audience. That audience seems either not to care that the food is bad, or has identified the few reliable dishes, or is accorded the level of VIP treatment necessary for a meal there not to suck. I go there at least twice a year for business meetings and am always underwhelmed, but how many times can I post that? I can't imagine what I'd say in 1,300 words. Well, a long time ago I did manage to write something on the Four Seasons, but it was probably just as lame as Bruni's review.

Thanks to a generous contribution from the Viking Range Corporation, we've substantially increased the ImageGullet and Personal Messenger storage allocations for all eGullet Society members. Participating members now have 51,200 kb (50 megabytes) of ImageGullet storage -- this is more than double the storage they had before -- and storage for Society donors has increased to 256,000 kb (250 megabytes). Personal Messenger storage has been doubled to 1,000 messages for participating members and 5,000 messages for Society donors. With Viking as a premier corporate sponsor, the Society will have additional resources to deploy in furtherance of its mission to increase awareness and knowledge of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, as well as the literature of food and drink. We're particularly looking forward to an online technology upgrade later this year. You'll now see, added to our normal rotation, a series of banners acknowledging Viking Range. We hope you'll support our new sponsor, and we hope you'll enjoy your enhanced member benefits. The Society is deeply grateful to Viking for its support. With relish,

Indeed, it's called "whipped tofu" on the menu. I'm with you. I think it's one of the very best dishes in town right now. I don't agree with the characterization of Momo-Ssam as "overhyped." It has certainly received a ton of attention, but there's a strong underlying theme to that attention: that it's well deserved.

The problem with informal meals is that once you allow people to wander with their food you're committing to a much more elaborate cleanup process. If we have a bunch of people over and they eat all over the apartment, there will be crumbs between the sofa cushions, under the magazine rack, in the bathroom, in the dog's ears -- everywhere. Plus the free-range thing guarantees at least one spill or breakage incident per event. Whereas, if you corral everybody at the dining table and you bring the food to them, you minimize your circular error probable of destruction.

We've found it pretty difficult to impose a shoes-off policy. A small percentage of guests just offer to take their shoes off. About two thirds will do it when asked. But there are always a few people who make it difficult. They almost seem insulted, like it's rude to ask them to take their shoes off. I guess they haven't traveled much. And it's not like I'm going to trigger a showdown over the issue. It really irks me, though. The only time I successfully got everybody to do the no-shoes thing with no protests, dirty looks or passive-aggressive responses was when there was a big snowstorm. Somehow it's easier to get people to take boots off. If we had floors that were easy to mop up and deal with, I guess shoes wouldn't bother me so much. But our tiger maple parquet floors date to 1890, and while they're in really good shape they're just not tile or Pergo or even new wood with a thick coat of poly. It's a real pain to clean these floors when they get dirty, and shoes really grind the dirt in. In addition, we have downstairs neighbors, and in a building like ours it's just inconsiderate to walk around in shoes in your apartment at night. I know because our inconsiderate upstairs neighbors do it, and seem to be totally ineducable on the point. I feel better just sharing this. Am I being totally neurotic about this? Somebody please tell me I'm not crazy, at least not on this issue. Thanks.

As much as I like the idea of entertaining, and as much as I like to cook, I often find that the reality of entertaining is stressful. I'm not talking here about the cooking part. We're able to prepare a decent meal without too much trouble, we've got the whole make-ahead thing down, it's relatively easy for us to put out a meal that most people will like -- that's really not the problem. The problem is everything else: not being able to get answers out of people regarding whether they'll attend, people arriving late, bringing awkwardly large gifts or flowers that require attendance, walking around the apartment in their shoes, getting crumbs on the floor, etc. And then there's all the cleanup afterwards. It's exhausting, at 10 or 11pm, to have to start a cleaning process that can easily take a couple of hours. What do you all do to make entertaining less stressful, so you can focus on the good parts?

Most walk-in restaurants can be gamed such that you don't have to wait. You just need to figure out the ebb and flow of the place. Needless to say, immediately upon opening is usually a good bet -- I've probably dined at Nobu Next Door in New York a dozen times this way and not waited for a minute. There's also usually a point later in the evening when most places slow down. I wouldn't want every restaurant to have a walk-in-only policy, but I think the world of dining is richer when a few really good places offer the option.

Carrot salad. Use either whole carrots peeled and sliced, or those "baby" carrots cut in quarters lengthwise. Put the carrots in boiling water for about 5 minutes -- you want them cooked al dente -- then drain. Mix together lemon juice, olive oil, finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper -- drizzle in the oil while mixing so it gets emulsified. Pour the dressing over the carrots and toss. Store in large zipper bags with the extra dressing, so you can easily mix in the bag before serving in bowls. You can make this a day or more ahead, and it's great at room temperature.

I don't have a ton of experience doing cooking demos on live TV -- I've done exactly one -- but I've done many segments on morning shows, including GMA and the various local-market equivalents in places like DC and Baltimore. My main piece of advice for you is to expect the unexpected, and to not let yourself get flustered when the unexpected happens. There's certainly a chance that everything will happen the way you've been told it will happen. But it's just as possible that at the last second you'll be told your time has been cut to two minutes. On GMA you won't likely get more time than you were told you'd have, but on other shows that's also something you have to be prepared for. Really, focus on not getting flustered. So many things come up on live TV, and when they do it's so easy to get pissed. Don't. If the host says something incredibly stupid, just smile and roll with it. Take your PR opportunity, work it for all it's worth and get the heck out of there with as much of your sanity intact as possible.

Maybe a good slogan would be "98% unethical for now, but aiming to be only 80% unethical."

The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is very pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s eG Scholarship awards. Four scholarships, with a total value of $20,000, have been awarded. Jessica Battilana of San Francisco, California, USA, will receive the Day/eGullet Society Staff Culinary Journalist Independent Study Scholarship, a $5,000 cash scholarship for a career journalist to conduct independent study and research designed to further the writing of an original and innovative culinary topic. Primary funding for this scholarship was provided by Jonathan Day and Melissa Taylor, who matched donations from the eGullet Society volunteer staff as well as the eGullet Society general fund. Claudia Alarcon of Austin, Texas, USA, will receive the eGullet Society Culinary Journalist Independent Study Scholarship, a $5,000 cash scholarship for a career journalist to conduct independent study and research designed to further the writing of an original and innovative culinary topic. Yubirzon Blanco of Mexico City, Mexico, will receive the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Matthew X. Hassett Memorial Culinary Study Scholarship, a $5,000 cash scholarship for a pre-enrolled student, currently enrolled student or career professional toward any culinary degree or certificate program at any accredited culinary school in the world. Tessa Liebman of New York, New York, USA, will receive the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Professional Chef Independent Study Scholarship, a $5,000 cash scholarship for a professional chef (culinary or pastry) to conduct independent study worldwide. This year’s eG Scholarships awards were made possible by the generous support of the eGullet Society’s donors and sponsors. The overwhelming majority of the funding for this year’s eG Scholarships program came from individual Society donor member and staff contributions of $50, $100 and $250. The eGullet Society is now raising funds for next year’s eG Scholarships program. Maintaining and expanding the eG Scholarships program will only be possible, however, if those who gave last year give again and if many new donors give as well. To support the eGullet Society at the $50, $100 or $250 per year level, please sign up for a Society donor membership (note: you must already be an eGullet Society member in order to upgrade to a Society donor membership; if you are not a member please join). Society donor members receive, depending on which package they select, increased personal messenger storage allotments; increased ImageGullet storage; additional features, including personal messenger with carbon copy and attachments, unlimited searching without flood control, and priority access to new features upon release; exclusive gift items; and most importantly the knowledge that they are supporting the eG Scholarships and other program services of the eGullet Society. For higher levels of support, please contact the eGullet Society fundraising team: giving@eGullet.org or 212.828.0133 The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is a 501c3 not-for-profit public charity, dedicated to increasing awareness and knowledge of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, as well as the literature of food and drink. To administer the eG Scholarships program, the eGullet Society has partnered with the Culinary Trust, also a culinary nonprofit. The Culinary Trust processes all eG Scholarships applications, assembles a panel of independent judges (no eGullet Society staff participate in the judging, nor are they eligible for eG Scholarships awards) and handles payment of the awards. eG Scholarships. Learn. Chew. Discuss.