Fat Guy

Yes, that would be an interesting computation. I wonder if a top-of-the-line waffle baker purchased in 1950 cost the equivalent in today's dollars of what the KitchenAid Pro-Line waffle baker or Waring WW150 costs today (around $300 each), or even a high-volume restaurant model like the Wells WB-2 (around $750). I also wonder how those compare to the old Sunbeams -- it would be pretty funny if even the $750 model sucked by comparison.

The thing that's so befuddling is that, in a rational world, every manufactured product would improve over time or, at worst, stay the same. It's just amazing that things can get worse. Older products should be curiosities. They shouldn't actually make better waffles. But they do. Crazy.

While we're on the subject of cooking with wine . . . I know there are some dishes where a specific style of wine is desirable. For example, you wouldn't make coq au vin with chardonnay. There's a morel dish Jean-Georges makes where if you don't do it with Vin Jaune it doesn't taste right -- I've tried, it's true. However, when I'm cooking with wine I'm almost always using it for one of two purposes: 1- to deglaze a skillet for a quick pan sauce after cooking, for example, chicken, or 2- as part of a braising liquid. In both cases I'm likely to be using the wine as one of a few ingredients. There will almost always also be some stock, maybe aromatic vegetables in a braise, or some sort of fat in a pan sauce, some seasonings, etc. I've found that in those applications there's an incredible range of possibilities for what wine you use, and that range encompasses red and white, still and sparkling, dry and dessert wines. Indeed, I use them all at once. You will usually find, in my freezer, a Zip-Lock bag labeled "wine." Into that bag I pour the leftover bits of whatever bottles I don't finish. This results in a versatile blend that seems to work in any recipe that doesn't require a specialized wine. If you're going to cook with wine, freezing it does no damage (it barely does any damage if you're going to drink it straight). And it's incredibly convenient, because wine doesn't really freeze into a solid mass. With a little leverage you can just scoop out what you need.

To be continued on another topic, perhaps, but brief pasteurization doesn't necessarily ruin wine. The red wines of Louis Latour, for example, have long been pasteurized and many of them are excellent. Louis Latour is routinely criticized for this practice, but I think one has to do a vertical tasting of Corton Grancey before saying that there's any problem with pasteurizing wine.

I have the pleasure of a home broiler that can reproduce steakhouse-like conditions (DCS infrared in-oven gas broiler). It's not as versatile as a steakhouse broiler, and it covers only enough surface area to do a couple of steaks, but the option to hit a steak with an alarmingly powerful blast of infrared is there. I never use it for steaks, though. The pan-sear-and-roast method is just better.

I agree with half of that. Or maybe a third. Restaurant reviews suck, with that I agree. And for more than just the reasons cited. I disagree, however, that the Michelin one-sentence-plus-symbols approach is any good. Even Michelin disagrees, and is bulking up its verbiage in the newer guides. Then there's the question: do restaurant reviews have to suck? Maybe not.

John, I'm not sure there's much support for your hunch. Moskin interviewed wine-shop owners who told her customers are reluctant to cook with cheap wine. She pointed to a situation where people are wasting expensive Barolo in cooking. I hardly think she's tearing down a straw man. She's commenting on one of cooking's most persistent contemporary myths. As for derivation, I don't know that there's any evidence to support the claim that the myth mistakenly evolved from the rejection of "cooking wine." The quote from Julia Child certainly doesn't support that claim: "If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one."

But this is exactly the situation with risotto al Barolo, as the article observes.

There are various places online, ranging from eBay to Toaster Central where one can buy vintage small kitchen appliances from the 1920s through the 1960s. We've already heard a bit on some other topics about the superiority of old Sunbeam waffle irons. I was wondering if there are any other old appliances that are better than their contemporary counterparts. And I was wondering why. I can think of three reasons that an older appliance might be superior: First, aesthetics. Some of the appliances from 50 years ago are so beautiful they're almost art objects. This doesn't necessarily affect performance, but it's an advantage. Few manufacturers today are bothering to bring this kind of artistry to small appliance design, though there are exceptions like some of the Michael Graves-designed items available at Target. Second, construction. As with cars and most everything else, older appliances are really heavy. They have thick metal housings and hardware. This has got to be good. Third, safety features. Or, rather, lack thereof. I imagine there was no concern, back in the day, about putting massive heating elements into appliances with little insulation, or anything like that. So, lots of raw power is probably available. So, what are some of the great applliances of yore, and why?

Julia Moskin did a piece in today's New York Times dining section wherein she explodes the myth of "Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink." A combination of taste tests and interviews, the article establishes quite clearly that cooking with el-cheapo wine is just fine. A "Two-Buck Chuck" selection from Trader Joe's bested a $70 Barolo in one test, with every member of the seven-person tasting panel ranking it higher. Among her conclusions: Like almost everybody writing on the subject of cooking with wine, Moskin forgets to mention (or maybe doesn't know) that it's a simple matter to freeze leftover wine in a zipper bag for use later in cooking. But that's not really the focus of the piece, so no big deal.

I had an idea. I have three problems with Le Creuset's wonderful French ovens (called Dutch ovens everywhere else, unless in Holland they're just called ovens). First, they're really heavy. This isn't such a problem for me, because with great fatness comes great strength, but the weight is a problem for everyone else in my family and for lots of people. I don't think there's much that can be done about this, though. The mass of the product seems essential to its excellent properties as a braising vessel. Second, the handles on the lids, made of phenolic resin, are total crap. Not only do they come loose but also they break if they sustain any sort of impact. In theory they have the advantage of staying cool to the touch, but I wouldn't bare-hand them right out of the oven anyway. They're easy enough to replace, but it's annoying. Third, the lids are opaque. Needless to say, nobody has yet figured out how to make transparent cast-iron (though in one of the Star Trek films they figured out transparent aluminum). This means that if you want to see what's going on in your pot you have to remove the lid. I like to be able to see into the pot, however, because this lets you see how rapidly your liquid is bubbling. As a result of the above, I do most of my braising in an anodized aluminum pot with a tempered-glass lid (with a metal-loop handle). But I was thinking, what's to stop one from putting a tempered-glass lid (with metal-loop handle) on a Le Creuset French oven? To me, this would be the ideal braising vessel. It would just be a question of someone manufacturing lids that fit the Le Creuset sizes and shapes. These guys seem to be able to make a lid for anything. Or maybe such lids are out there already, either because the Le Creuset dimensions coordinate with some other manufacturer's standard sizes, or because I'm not the first person to have this idea.

I imagine the sous-vide approach would yield slightly different, and possibly better, results. If the idea is that the whole steak gets brought up to 130 degrees or whatever, you're going to have uniform color and texture throughout, save for the bit of the surface that you pan-sear (or broil, or torch) at the end. Whereas, when you sear then roast, you get more gradations of doneness from center to exterior. The reason the sous-vide approach may be better is that, in my experience at least, most other methods of cooking steak result in an overcooked, dried-out layer just under the exterior char. Also, if you use the water bath or steam oven to hold the meat at temperature for several hours, it may change its texture. I wonder if this would be particularly beneficial for lower-quality steaks.

There was a safety recall and CPSC fine in the late 1990s involving the under-cabinet Black & Decker toaster ovens. I don't believe it involved every model, but I wouldn't be surprised if after that Black & Decker lost interest in that product line.

Judy occupies the same building as Il Fornaio pizza, which is a well-preserved New York neighborhood slice shop, at 1505 Lexington Avenue. It's between 97th and 98th, on the East side of the street, nearer to 97th.

Broilers are superior to grills for the reasons cited above: fewer flareups, better temperature control, and you get to keep the juices. Certainly, a gas or electric broiler is superior to a gas or electric grill. If we're talking about grills fueled by wood or wood coals, however, those are sort of in a different category. But in the time it takes to cook a steak you're not going to get very much wood-smoke penetration. I should add, if you're talking about restaurant equipment, gas grills (which, technically, are broilers too -- that's what you'll see them called in restaurant-equipment catalogs) are much cheaper than professional upright broilers. Like, for good quality you're talking $2,000 for a grill-style broiler versus $8,000 for an upright steakhouse-style overhead broiler. I remain utterly unconvinced that either of these tools is best for cooking a steak, however. Pan-searing followed by oven-roasting is the way to go. This is how a lot of the most accomplished chefs, from Alain Ducasse to Tom Colicchio, prefer to cook steaks.

The health department seems to be losing touch with reality, and is now closing more restaurants than I can keep track of. Foodie favorites ranging from Grand Sichuan to DiFara's have been shuttered, and the Post just reported that LCB Brasserie Rachou is the most recent casualty of the DOH's massive publicity stunt. This is insane. Nobody is being harmed by these restaurants. They're doing nothing this month that they haven't been doing for years. And the cooks and servers who are going without income, well, I guess they're not a consideration because anything done in the name of health triggers complete disregard for any other issue.

I think you need to try blogging, Russ.

On one level that's surely the case -- you love what you do, and think it's fun -- but on another level I've got to question the absoluteness of the statement. As an analogy, a porn star might say "there is no separation between what i do for a living and what i do for fun," but there's still a difference between recreational sex (where you choose your partner, and maybe even like the person) and sex for hire (on camera, on demand, with whomever they tell you to do it, in whatever position they say, even if you don't feel like it at that moment). As someone who has done it both ways -- writing, that is -- I can say that recreational writing offers many rewards, not least of which is near-complete freedom and independence. And that's not the same as, "My editor gives me tons of freedom." When you're blogging, nobody has to give you anything -- you just take it.

The New York Post reports that LCB is the latest casualty of the health department's sanitation crackdown: http://www.nypost.com/seven/03202007/gossi...six/pagesix.htm

Two questions on the above lists: 1 - The Huy Fong Sriracha and other products seem to get widespread endorsement here, however in Asian restaurants and markets several people have told me that they're the lowest rung on the ladder for these types of sauces. Is that incorrect, or is there another brand of Sriracha that's better? 2 - There seems to be some disagreement about the virtues of Tabasco. I think Tabasco has a unique flavor, and wouldn't necessarily consider, for example, Texas Pete to be a substitute. Am I hopelessly uneducated, or is Tabasco more in its own category?

Yes, I'd probably want three of them.

As a corollary to the Reichl theory, often the people with the greatest number of interesting stories to tell don't have time to tell them. One of the issues we discussed around here a lot, back when food blogs were becoming prevalent (around 2003 it was), was how best to incorporate blog-type content here. We figured -- and we turned out to be right about this -- that some of the most interesting cooks and diners out there simply don't have any interest in blogging forever. But, we thought, maybe they'd like to blog for a week or two. We institutionalized the eG Foodblogs in the hopes that we'd bring out interesting people, and by keeping it short term we were sure we'd be able to keep everybody interested. The eG Foodblogs are now a feature that a lot of our members really love. Those who want to give it a try will find all the info here.

I just noticed tonight that I'm almost out of hot sauce. A few years ago, I probably had 20 bottles, mostly acquired in various Caribbean countries while on vacations, back when I could afford such vacations. Now I think I have about a quarter of one bottle. So, it's time to replenish the hot sauce collection. Ideally, I'd like to go to one website, probably http://peppers.com/ and just order five bottles. I don't want four or six bottles. I want five different bottles that will serve a variety of uses. So, who can propose the list of five, with extensive annotation?

No idea, but I'd love to know. When we started the eGullet (then .com) website in 2001, there were several existing websites that would now be called food blogs. Our original team of hosts consisted of several of these pre-bloggers. The thing is, I think they've all gone pro. So, for example, Mamster's Grubshack was around, but now Mamster (Matthew Amster-Burton) writes about food professionally. He has changed his website name to Roots & Grubs, and now lots of the blog entries are "Here's my latest newspaper article on X." Andy Lynes, who had a site called The Food Store when we started out, started writing professionally and changed his website to UK Gourmet and later just andylynes.com. Holly Moore and Rosie Saferstein had web presence as well, though I believe they were doing professional work before then. My website, shaw-review.com, started in 1997 and became fat-guy.com later on. After we started the eGullet venture, it was unsustainable (and, I felt, inappropriate) for me to divide my online time, so I shut down fat-guy.com and redirected everybody here.

There are a very few places here in New York City, mostly Mario Batali's restaurants, that sell wine by the quartino, a 250-ml mini-carafe, which is approximately 8 ounces (closer to 8.5). It makes for one nice big pour and a couple of top-offs. I like it. But it doesn't seem to have gained much popularity.