Fat Guy

There are a few sets of requirements being expressed here: 1. People who want a conventional Valentine's Day date at a big-deal restaurant. The reality is that if you pick a really good restaurant you won't suffer terribly. You'll be locked in to a more expensive, less diverse menu, but you should have a good meal. You won't likely experience the place at it peak, but you'll probably get -- if such things can be quantified -- 80-90% of the experience. Presumably, to anybody who chooses this course of action, the price premium and restricted choices are worth it. 2. People who want to go out to eat on Valentine's Day without doing a Valentine's Day meal. The answer there is pretty simple: go to an Asian restaurant. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Korean, whatever. In most cases you can just walk in and have the same meal you'd have any day. Christmas, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving too -- this is the most reliable strategy. 3. People who want exactly the same meal at a big-deal restaurant that they could have on a day other than Valentine's Day. That's easy: go on the 13th or the 15th.

I'd suggest you not freeze the sable. It's quite delicate and the texture is half the appeal, so if it was hand-sliced and shipped that way you'll enjoy it most if you eat it straight. The smoked salmon can surely tolerate freezing, especially if its final disposition is in an omelette or something like that. It's not as special as the sable, though -- you can probably get decent smoked salmon in North Carolina, heck they even have some good stuff at Costco, but you're not likely to be able to find really good sable.

I can't even imagine. I mean, I've evangelized about this to maybe a dozen people, and it's exhausting. The vindication that comes later on is hardly worth the stress of being treated like a war criminal when you first present the procedure.

It really is amazing. I've not encountered anybody who really believes it until he or she gives the method a whirl. The only reported failures I've heard about, other than failures to follow directions, have had to do with too-old beans -- beans that are likely to be problematic no matter how you cook them.

Given that Nathan has dined at the bar before at that specific restaurant, it's hardly fair to say he made an error in judgment by not calling. I think it was logical and rational for him to assume that whatever menu was being served for V-day would be available at the bar. Sometimes the logical and rational prediction turns out to be wrong. Such is life.

It certainly sounds like the bartender Nathan dealt with (not "they" or "someone" but a single employee) wasn't particularly creative about finding ways to effect customer satisfaction on the evening in question. That's too bad, but it is what it is, and given the day in question -- Valentine's Day -- it's hardly a shocker. But that seems to be the only part of Nathan's complaint that holds much water. The policy itself -- no food at the bar tonight -- seems innocuous. To move this away from Nathan and make a more general point, when something like this scenario unfolds, the thing you want to do is ask to speak to a manager. Especially at a good restaurant, the managers are likely to be relatively creative about helping you get what you want. So, rule number one, asking to speak to a manager is the basic move you make if you want to try to address the issue on the spot. A follow-up letter is another approach, maybe leading to an apology, redress, or at least an explanation, but you can never truly unscramble the eggs -- it's always a second-best move.

Nathan, obviously you found the experience frustrating. But I think if you give your reaction some consideration, you might reconsider your approach. We know that it's not in your nature to say it's your birthday and you'd like to be accommodated. You've also said it's not in your nature to write a letter of complaint. Apparently, on the night of the incident, it also wasn't in your nature to speak to a manager. But it seems it is in your nature to pursue a public attack and boycott of all Danny Meyer establishments, including claims of discrimination, because one employee wasn't prepared to give you your way on a holiday. That puzzles me. It almost seems like you're choosing to complain rather than do anything then or now to give anyone a chance to address the problem. It sounds like the bartender had been told by the kitchen, "No food orders at the bar tonight." That just doesn't seem so bad. I'm sure nobody meant you any harm. To the extent there's anything to be upset about, I think you should really be trying to resolve it with the restaurant directly. I'd be interested to hear what the management has to say, and whether they're willing to do anything to accommodate you.

There's definitely a conscious effort to include a lot of food references, and having several major characters in the food business (Luke, Sookie, Jackson, various people who work at Luke's) is rare, however I'm not sure the writers know very much about food and restaurants. I get the feeling they do a lot of googling and don't care much about accuracy. Plus, the kitchen scenes are totally unrealistic, with all those baskets and piles of fruits and vegetables cluttering up the counters.

Never developed.

And that was all for a dog's funeral.

Further to the general discussion of duck eggs, any ideas on where to get them in Manhattan? I assume there's somewhere in Chinatown where one can get them. An uptown (UWS or UES) source would be even better.

Awhile back I had a dish at a restaurant in New York, Casa Mono, that was topped with a sunny side up duck egg. It was amazing. I realized then and there that duck eggs are bigger, richer and more interestingly flavored than chicken eggs. Presumably, there are a lot of ducks out there. I see duck sold in many different supermarkets and gourmet shops, not to mention Asian markets. Duck is a popular restaurant dish. So is foie gras, which in the US is duck liver. Yet, I almost never see duck eggs in restaurants, and I can't recall ever seeing them in the supermarket. Why not? They're great. I'd buy them.

There have been some changes to the Diner's Journal format. Other members of the Times dining section team are now going to be contributing to it, and they seem to be doing some experiments with format. Frank Bruni explains the changed here.

I've heard tell that you should never go to the grocery store hungry. The theory is that if you're hungry you'll be impulsive in your purchasing. I'm apparently not affected by this problem. I buy what's on my list, and my impulse purchases are curiosity- and quality-driven not hunger-driven. I do have a related problem, though. When I get home from the supermarket (we almost always shop on Sunday morning early for the big weekly shop, though there are various supplemental purchases that occur throughout most weeks) and start unpacking, everything looks so delicious. Bagels! Mozzarella! Pineapple! Rotisserie chicken! Salami! Hummus! Olives! Shrimp cocktail! All fresh that day, looking and smelling wonderful. I eat a lot on Sundays. How about you?

While the burdens of proof are different in the UK than they are in the US, is there any substantive difference in the law of defamation? Isn't it the case in the UK, as in the US, that (as Nathan mentioned) opinions are protected speech and cannot be the subject of a defamation claim? If so, and if the journalist in question made false factual claims about the restaurant, it would constitute defamation in either country. Might be harder to win in the US. Is there really no way to get hold of the text of the original story? Isn't it part of the public record from the trial?

I'm pretty sure I'm not getting old rice. I've bought rice in high-turnover Asian markets, and in other places where I'm pretty confident that the product isn't terribly old. It seems that part of the issue is that my rice cooker has a very long cycle -- it has a pre-warming phase, a long cooking phase, and a resting phase. I think a lot of steam escapes during these combined phases. Also, for everyday eating, I use long-grain basmati rice -- however I find that short-grain rice also requires more water than the package directions anticipate. I also think my personal tastes run towards having my rice absorb as much water as possible -- the fluffier the better, so long as there's no loose water remaining in the vessel.

How do you all decide how much water to add to rice for cooking? I've found, consistently over the past several years, that in my rice cooker I need more water than the rice cooker directions and rice package directions call for. If I use the recommended amounts, the grains of rice don't fluff up enough and are noticeably dry. I need about 2.25 cups of water per cup of white rice, for example -- the package calls for 1.75 cups of water per cup of rice, and on account of its subtractive measuring system (fill to this line for X cups, cups which aren't 8 ounces) I don't even know what the rice cooker calls for, but I always need to use more. This is the case no matter how carefully I shop for the freshest possible rice.

My cookbooks are mostly pristine. I almost never even bring them into the kitchen. I rarely cook from recipes -- I use cookbooks more for ideas than for exact recipes. When I do cook from recipes, I most often work from modified versions of recipes, so I type them with the modifications and work from a sheet of paper that I can reprint anytime. For the few recipes I use verbatim (almost all of which are baking recipes, e.g., cornbread from the New Professional Chef), I just photocopy them -- I have one of those printer/copier/scanner multifunction machines so it's a simple matter to do this. I have too many cookbooks to go looking for a specific recipe when I need it -- the frequently used recipes are all in one place this way. None of that is to take away anything from people whose cookbooks are a mess. I respect that lifestyle very much. It's just not how I cook or use cookbooks.

As far as I know the NLEA regulations apply only to goods sold in interstate commerce. Essentially, anything shipped across state lines. Local products prepared and sold within a state are governed by that state's laws, which can vary. At least around here, in New York State, it seems there is no labeling requirement for prepared foods. I've noticed that some markets list ingredients on these foods anyway, but that appears to be voluntary -- they tend not to include proper federal Nutrition Facts labels but, rather, just list ingredients informally. Although, it's getting easier and easier to create full labels with widely available computer software -- you just type in all the ingredients and their weights, and the software pulls information from a database of thousands of ingredients and generates everything.

That price sounds incredibly reasonable for all that hardware. So that's 26.9" x 25.3" x 70.7" -- not sure which is the depth and which is the width, but I'm pretty sure the last number is the height. A small-ish American refrigerator -- like the Whirlpool unit you'll see in a zillion New York City apartments -- is 32.5" (W) x 31.4" (D) x 66.3" (H).

It really seems that the Asians are way ahead of the Westerners when it comes to refrigerator design. I've notices some really interesting refrigerator configurations in the big Korean shopping center near us in New Jersey, with integrated storage tubs kept at temperatures calculated precisely for vegetables et al. Kris, may I ask, what would be the equivalent dollar cost of a refrigerator like that, and what are its dimensions?

It seems that in the past few years there have been a few monumental revelations of the "everything you thought you knew about cooking was wrong" variety. Most recently, the no-knead bread discussion, triggered by Mark Bittman's article in the New York Times, shattered the myth of kneading. For me, however, the most significant revelation came in 2004 when we had a lengthy discussion regarding dried beans, where it was revealed that soaking beans is a waste of time. For this the world owes Russ Parsons a debt of gratitude. I fear the 2004 topic was so long and covered so much ground, however, that the no-soak, in-oven method of cooking beans may have gotten buried. So, I would like to propose for 2007 a topic singularly devoted to the method of cooking beans in the oven without soaking. This is that topic. I'm going to kick it off by giving a rundown of the method, derived from the Parsons method, that has been working very well for me. And remember, you don't soak the beans. You just cook them. It really works. I know, most of us were told all our lives that beans have to be soaked. It's not true. You can decide a couple of hours before dinner that you want beans, and you can have them. And if you cook them this way, they actually come out better: - Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. - You'll need a pot with a tight-fitting lid. The one I use is a 5-quart saucier similar in appearance to this one, though the one I have is different (mine has a glass lid, which is great for this purpose because you don't have to open the lid to see what's going on). - The beans I've been buying come from Bob's Red Mill and come in strangely sized packages. For example, the Great Northern Beans come in a package of 1 pound 11 ounces. Other beans they sell come in different configurations. So I've never come up with a reliable formula for water. I just go with the plan of emptying the beans into the pot, and covering with cold water to about an inch and a half above the beans. Sometimes I need to add a little water later. Usually not. - I don't rinse, sort or do anything like that with the beans. I just do a quick visual inspection. I've found that beans from modern packers are clean and don't have any rocks. When I add the water, sometimes a couple of unfortunate, misshapen or broken beans float to the top. I throw those out. - I don't pour boiling water over the beans. It's an extra pot or kettle that I don't need to deal with. I just add cold water to the beans, cover and bring everything to a boil on the stovetop. - I add about a tablespoon of salt to a 1.75 pound batch of beans before cooking. Yes, another myth shattered: the salt doesn't harm the beans, and in fact makes them taste much better. - Once the beans reach a boil, put the whole pot, covered, into the pre-heated 250-degree oven. Set your timer for 75 minutes (1 hour 15 minutes). That's right. This will in most cases take only about 1 hour 15 minutes for beautifully cooked, slightly al dente beans. When you add in the boiling time on the stovetop, it's about 90 minutes for the whole process start to finish. - After about 40 minutes, inspect the beans. They may at this point be absorbing more water than you thought they would, in which case you should add some boiling water (thus, you will need a kettle if that happens). While you're in there, give them a stir. (The first time you use this method, you'll want to inspect more often, until you get the hang of the water ratio.) - Seriously, after about 75 minutes your beans will be done. Once in awhile you get a freak batch of beans and they need to go longer, however I've done this many times and only had one such incident, with a bag of beans that had been languishing in the back of the cabinet and was probably 4-5 years old. That's it. Russ Parsons's gift to humanity. Go forth and soak no more.

It's good to hear some corroboration here. I guess the next logical question, then, is where can stuff at this level of quality be found retail? Perhaps there's some mail-order source, at some price point -- even if it's outrageously high -- that can provide herbs as good as my friend's family's oregano from Sicily or your girlfriend's mother's from Capri.

Recent discussion about a favorite (of many people) New York restaurant raises a question about how we evaluate restaurants. Not to pick on that one place, let's take some hypothetical restaurants: Restaurant X has 40 dishes on its menu. Approximately 30 of them are poor. The other 10 are amazingly good. Restaurant Y has 12 dishes on its menu, and 11 of them are terrible. But there's a single dish that's one of the best dishes in town. Restaurant Z has 10 dishes on its menu, all of which are excellent on some days and poor on other days. How do we judge such places? Do we take the glass-half-full approach, and say any restaurant with a single great dish is something to celebrate? Or do we take a glass-half-empty approach, and say that there's no excuse for having any poor dishes on the menu? Of course, if you know the good and bad dishes (at least in examples X and Y), you know how to order a good meal. But what level of concern should we have for the innocent bystander who just wanders in and has no way to know which dishes are good or bad, and therefore is likely to get a majority of bad dishes? Just a starting point for a discussion.

Too lazy to overcome the inertia working against exchanging the Cuisinart, and faced with a need for the tool, I opened the box and used the Cuisinart immersion blender. I like it very much. It's more powerful and a lot quieter than our former unit. It seems as powerful as I need it to be. The shaft detaches. It's an attractive stainless color. For thirty bucks I'm going to keep it. I think if I ever purchase a price-is-no-object immersion blender maybe I'll graduate to one of the professional models from Dynamic. That would be fun. Example here.