Fat Guy

Right. The idea is that most people take a small amount of plastic wrap off a small roll, then lay it over the top of a container and press around the edges. In professional kitchens, you work with a big roll of food film, and you start by pulling enough off the roll (but not tearing it off) to go under whatever you're wrapping. Then you go all the way around, sometimes twice, pulling more film off the roll as you go, and finally tearing, then often wrapping once or twice in the other direction -- it really depends on what you're wrapping.

I'm sure there's a wide range of oven temperatures that will work. Fundamentally, the beans aren't being cooked by the heat of the oven as much as by the water in the pot. So the issue is what oven temperature you need in order to keep the water at a nice simmer. My old oven needed a 325 setting to maintain a braise, whereas my current oven does just fine on 250. I think this is related to more than just the calibration of the controls. My current oven just seems to be really good at transferring energy. I have no idea why. Perhaps the pot one uses makes a difference too, though I don't really know why it would. People ultimately need to find the right temperature for their ovens. If your beans are just sitting there in water that's not hot enough, not much is going to happen. Meanwhile, you don't want to go to like 400 because then you'll boil the crap out of your beans. I'd suggest maybe starting with 275 and working up or down from there. The idea is you want some surface bubbles, like on a pot of simmering stock. It's nice to have a bean pot with a glass lid in order to make this determination.

Robyn, we do that all the time. At least once a week, we take our son (now about a year and a half old) to a restaurant, and often it's the Bar Room at the Modern, or the Bread Bar at Tabla. They have high chairs at those restaurants for a reason. We see other kids at these places all the time. I'm with Mr. Tommy -- I have no idea what you're confused about. I think it's unequivocally great that it's possible to get great food without dedicating a whole evening to it. Why would anybody oppose that or even question it?

Some of those people like to eat a bit better than Ruby Tuesday's allows.

I would definitely recommend, not just for these purposes but for all purposes and all cooks, getting an oven thermometer and ascertaining the actual temperature of your oven. The variations are amazing. If you set the oven to 250 but it's actually at 220, that's going to be a problem.

Whether he's for it or against it, he's certainly correct about the trend. Even the fanciest restaurants in town are now casual by historical standards. I thought the review was good, if not terribly insightful. Most of these comments were old news when, say, Cafe Boulud opened. But I think he gets it right, mostly.

Do you use the formal dining room enough to justify keeping it as a totally separate formal dining room? If not, you may want to consider eliminating the strict boundary between the two rooms and making a hybrid kitchen/dining space. That would open up a world of possibilities.

My family married into a maple-syrup-producing family in Vermont. They are the epitome of the artisanal, small-scale, sustainable producer. Every year, we get a few quarts of their syrup. I've done quite a bit of tasting in various arrangements. I would say (and this is the opinion of our relatives too, at least the one I've spoken to the most about this issue) that 90+ percent of the maple syrup produced at the artisan level tastes just like the maple syrup from Costco. The most popular maple syrup, like vodka, is highly refined and has little subtlety or complexity. The lower grades of dark amber syrup can have greatly enhanced flavor. But it's not as simple as just doing that. Maple syrup also varies in flavor from tree to tree and from batch to batch throughout the season. Most dark doesn't taste all that special. So only some batches are particularly suitable for consumption this way (the rest get sold off, often for blending). These are usually given to friends and family, and ideed only to the inner circle: for the first few years of the relationship, the syrup we got was generic; only later on did we start getting the hardcore stuff. I think there's simply not enough of it for sale in any serious quantity. The examples rmillman cites sound delicious, however they probably do not derive their unique flavors from the actual maple syrup. One is smoked, the other is aged in wood.

"A restaurant is as good as whatever dish you happen to be eating."

I think the best Noodle Bar items are a little more rustic, a little less elegant and sophisticated, than the best Ssam Bar items. Delicious, but not quite at the same level. Maybe that's by design, or maybe it has more to do with the constraints of the tiny kitchen (certainly when you watch the two kitchens, the Ssam Bar kitchen seems to be able to do more heavy lifting). The guy who was handling most of the cooking at Noodle -- I didn't get his name -- said he splits his time between the two kitchens, so I doubt there's a disparity in skills. Discussion with the people seated to the left and to the right yielded differing opinions about whether Noodle or Ssam is better, but while both are great for me it's no contest: Ssam operates on a different, higher, more refined level.

An neither Momofuku Noodle Bar nor Momofuku Ssam Bar is the headline dish the star of the show. Yes, the noodles at Noodle Bar are good. Yes, the ssam at Ssam Bar are good. But the best dishes are elsewhere on both menus. Once you get that sorted out, it becomes a lot easier to order well at both places. We were at Noodle Bar tonight and avoided noodles entirely, unless you count the rice cakes as noodles (and they were the only not-excellent dish we tried -- sauce way to sticky, sweet, ketchupy). The seasonal pickles are a wonder -- it's the kind of dish you'll never connect with unless you take the leap of faith and order it. The colors, the variety, the different pickling styles -- there's a lot going on in that bowl. The steamed buns are also terrific, and it's not insane to order the shiitake or chicken instead of the pork. The shiitakes are deeply flavorful, and the smoked-and-griddled chicken is one of the best ingredients on the menu (it also appears in the terrific "chicken and egg" dish over rice). The seafood dishes are great. The shrimp and grits, with a coddled (cooked in a water bath in shell) egg and big chunks of Momofuku's inimitable bacon, deserves the great PR it has received. Seared mackerel with spicy kimchi strikes the right balance between mackerel's distinctive flavor and the heat of the kimchi. The first-rate hamachi, served raw, with little roasted citrus slices and shredded nori, is something you want to sequence early in your meal, because once you blow out your palate with the spicy stuff it's hard to dial it down. Cuttlefish braised in a vinegar-spiked broth is a great compromise: not too chewy, not too mushy.

Right, I don't think anything is going to qualify as easier than ready-made. But easy is an attainable goal.

Well, just to keep it out of this topic, let's assume that Momofuku Ssam Bar is serving food that's as good or better than the four-star restaurants, in surroundings and with a style of service that don't deserve a star at all. Assuming all that for the purposes of argument, what are the choices? You can go with four stars, you can go with no stars, or you can go with some number of stars that loosely represents one of those "four stars for food minus one each for service and surroundings" computations even though the critic doesn't actually accept that sort of reasoning. Or you can evaluate the restaurant on a different scale altogether, or no scale. I think the compromise approach -- give a star rating that reflects fewer stars than the food alone deserves -- is what the Times uses and will continue to use, albeit inconsistently and without much awareness.

I actually like the surroundings. I like everything about the restaurant, save for the fact that the stools are the width of the average Korean ass. It just isn't a traditional fine-dining restaurant, is all. As far as I'm concerned, the appropriate star rating is zero. Perhaps that should be a wake-up call for the places carrying lots of stars and serving food that isn't as good. But we have another topic for endless speculation about stars.

It really helps to be un- . . . I mean self-employed.

Oops.

I've been thinking about it, and have come to the following conclusion: Momofuku Ssam Bar is the best restaurant in New York City right now. I don't mean that in terms of value proposition, as in "Gray's Papaya is the best restaurant in New York because you can get a great meal for $3." I mean, rather, that Momofuku Ssam Bar is serving the best food in New York at any price. Yes, I'm disregarding comfort and the trappings of fine dining (though I hasten to add that the service at Momofuku Ssam Bar is excellent: friendly, knowledgeable and attentive). I'm just talking about food. I think the best dishes at Momofuku Ssam Bar are better than anything I've had at Per Se, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin and so on down the line. I can't name a dish at any of the top fine-dining restaurants that I think is better than Momofuku Ssam Bar's uni with tapioca and whipped tofu (I'll put it up against "oysters and pearls" any day), Chawan mushi with escargots (I'd choose it over Gray Kunz's risotto), or even the humble fried Brussels sprouts (far tastier, to me, than Jean Georges scallops with cauliflower). Not since the early days of Lespinasse have I experienced so many flavor revelations at one restaurant.

We've had a few topics over time where we've discussed making various food products ourselves. I was hoping to assemble a list of make-it-yourself projects that meet the following criteria: - Easy. This isn't about baking your own bread or putting up preserves. If you consider those things to be easy, please recalibrate to more normal expectations. We're talking about things that require a minimum of practice, time and skill. - Better. The product you make yourself has to taste better than the equivalent commercially available product. - Cheaper. We're talking only about things that cost less to make yourself than to buy. Okay, so, that being said, here are some candidates. We have separate topics for discussing how to make these things -- go ahead and add to those topics if you have anything to add. This topic here is about establishing the master list of cheaper and better (and easy). - Vanilla extract (see The make-your-own vanilla extract experiment) - Wine vinegar (see making your own wine vinegar, red or white) - Yogurt (see Yogurt-making @ home) - Coffee beans, as in roasting your own (see Home Coffee Roasting) What else?

I do think there's a danger, with this sort of technology, of getting into habits that let you forget about using your senses. Using the internet for restaurant research is that way too: people print out their Mapquest maps and slavishly follow itineraries that only include restaurants that come highly recommended. However, you can also leverage the technology in exactly the opposite way. Especially when you consider that modern roads can be anti-senses -- interstates bypass small towns; some of the better independent restaurants aren't even located on the main drag -- it helps to have tools to enhance your senses. For example, with a GPS unit to guide me, I always feel confident getting off the main road and driving on local roads through smaller towns for awhile. I know the GPS can get me back to the interstate no matter what, so that gives me freedom to explore. You've really got to see a well-utilized GPS system in action to get a feel for the possibilities. I also think, unfortunately, that advice from locals and full parking lots have come to be worth relatively little. Because, as memesuze says, the fullest parking lot is surely at the Olive Garden. It may be possible to ferret out the locals who possess a higher level of advice, but it's not a simple question of asking the first gas-station attendant you see.

And there will always be those who give generous tips for lousy service. So yes, the hope is that it will even out. You can also force averaging by using a tip pool. That way the only number that really matters is the whole staff's total for the shift, and no one table can blow out a single server's evening. Likewise, included service charges for parties of six or more help minimize risk. Personally, I have no problem with printing tip computations on the check either. A lot of POS systems will do this and compute 15%, 20%, etc. This helps preempt customer error. I think confrontation is unacceptable, though. That's the point at which you risk having a customer call the cops, or start a shouting match in view of other customers -- the restaurant can't win in that situation no matter who was wrong. And as long as tipping is voluntary, no, nobody has a "right" to a tip. A person can eat at a restaurant and tip nothing. It's totally legal and that's that, and some people take advantage of it -- I can assure you that nearly 100% of international tourists who don't tip know full well that they're supposed to; they've read the guidebooks, and they're simply pretending to be ignorant in order to save a few bucks. If restaurants don't like that, they can switch to a mandatory service charge and the problem goes away. PLangfordJr, seriously, though, how often does this really happen to your staff? Is it often enough to matter? If it's just happening once in awhile, it's not worth changing your approach.

Is it possible that Andre is now at Les Halles? He's listed as the Les Halles sommelier on the website of the American Sommelier Association:

I think it has become something of a foodie axiom that soft, squishy bread -- especially white bread with a Wonder-bread-like texture and near-complete lack of crust -- is the enemy of good bread. Good bread, the axiom runs, is hearth-baked, crusty, chewy, weighty. I have some sympathy for this view. When traveling in the American South, for example, I find that it can be difficult to find any bread with meaningful crust. This is changing a little bit, especially in any town large enough to support a Costco, but still whenever I return from a road trip to the South one of the first things I need to eat is bread with real crust. However, to me, the cult of crust goes too far. Because there are some situations in which soft, squishy bread is the right bread for the job. For example, hamburger and hot dog buns. Try as I might, I can't convince myself that a hamburger is better on "good" bread -- unless it's the kind of good bread that's soft and squishy, like brioche or an English muffin. Hamburgers are great on the soft, squishy white rolls they sell in American supermarkets -- they just are. Martin's potato rolls are good too, and squishier still. Another example is the Parker House roll. For pure eating pleasure, served hot with butter, Parker House rolls give even the best artisanal hearth breads a run for their money. The soft, squishy onion roll, served at old-style kosher dairy restaurants like Rattner's, are amazingly good. You can often find a reasonable facsimile coming out of the baked-on-premises department of a good supermarket. As an accompaniment to barbecue, of course, soft bread is a must.

I tend not to like the oily, "fishy" flavor of canned sardines, mackerel, anchovies, kippers, etc. I like those fish fresh, when they're really good, though fresh specimens that aren't very good tend to start tasting like their canned brethren. What's strange is that I like canned tuna just fine. I guess I acclimated to it so early, through such repeated exposure, that I somehow make an exception for it, even though it's very similar in aroma and oiliness to things like canned sardines and mackerel. I also like anchovies fine when they're incorporated into other things, like Caesar salad dressing -- again, at some point I accepted that flavor in that format, even though I can't stand whole canned anchovies.

The great vanilla pod giveaway has ended. All the packets are in the mail.

Tonight I took a little foam tray of these eye round steaks (two small pieces) out of the freezer. After the meat defrosted on the countertop for a bit, but was still mostly frozen, I sliced it into very thin strips (this is easier to do when meat is partially frozen). I marinated the strips in soy, sesame oil and a little apricot jam, in a zipper bag, while I made rice and did some other stuff. Then I got a copper skillet as hot as I could and sauteed the marinated strips of beef for maybe a minute. I served them over rice, with a side of steamed Brussels sprouts. The flavor was great. But, as everybody has said, the meat was pretty leathery. I thought my plan would give me a good chance of getting non-tough meat, between the thin slicing, marinating (for whatever that's worth) and quick, high-temperature cooking, I thought I'd chosen a good recipe. But this stuff is tough. Next time I think I'll try pounding, dredging in flour and doing country-fried steak.