Fat Guy

Jan, I've been buying Cascadian Farms. Their stuff is excellent and not terribly much more expensive than standard brands -- though it never goes on sale 10 for $10 or anything like that; I think the vegetables are pretty consistently two bucks a bag and the fruits are $3.50 but I have to check. I believe the company is now owned by General Mills. The fruits I've had luck with (Dana, my frozen fruit Renaissance has definitely been helped along by a teething baby!) from Cascadian are blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and sliced peaches. Although, I recently bought some Dole frozen sliced peaches (the supply of Cascadian products, at least where I shop, is inconsistent), and I didn't find them to be all that bad. They were a notch down, though. In terms of vegetables, they make both "garden peas" and "sweet peas." The sweet peas are, well, sweeter. Also smaller. I like them better. I can also vouch for the cut green beans -- the trick there is to sautee them briefly at very high heat. All of the above are the ones in little plastic pouches, not the boxed line they also have available. I guess I should do a price check next time I shop, but unless there's a deep discount I can't imagine why anybody would pick, for example, the frozen block of peas in a box over the loose IQF peas in a bag.

Lori, he concluded that the following are much better when purchased as fresh produce: kale, collards, spinach, broccoli, potatoes, onions and carrots. He said that the following were better frozen (though he was speaking in the context of February -- he wasn't saying these would be better than local, in-season greenmarket examples): turnips, peas, corn, green beans, limas, favas, edamame and pepper strips. He also included a recipe for an omelette made with frozen rutabaga, and sang the praises of Michel Richard's frozen Brussels sprouts.

I think many frozen produce items are underrated, forgotten, and poised for comebacks. For the past three decades or so people have been thrilling to the increased availability of fresh produce year-round. But the fact that most of that produce tastes like crap is now catching up to us. Even the most expensive organic stuff is usually stored, schlepped and stored again -- so much so that it's like an artifact by the time you get to eat it. Frozen produce has a lot to recommend it: it can be picked ripe, in season, and frozen immediately to preserve its essential flavors and nutrients. And while fresh produce has been having its renaissance, frozen produce has improved dramatically due to improvements in freezing technology. The IQF (individually quick frozen) process, where produce comes loose in a plastic pouch rather than frozen in a block, makes a huge difference. I've been purchasing more and more frozen produce over the past few years, and was particularly pleased to see Mark Bittman pick up the frozen produce gauntlet in February 2005 in a New York Times "Minimalist" piece, where he wrote after concluding several months of frozen vegetable testing: My only criticism of Bittman's research is that he neglected frozen fruits. I have right now in my freezer some frozen organic strawberries that I picked up the other day, and also in my refrigerator are some fresh strawberries. I'd say the frozen ones taste several times better than the fresh. The only thing to recommend the fresh ones is their texture, but for any item where texture doesn't matter -- such as chopping up strawberries to add to oatmeal -- the frozen ones are far, far preferable. Also in my refrigerator are frozen sliced peaches -- the peaches must have been very small because the slices are only an inch or so long, but boy these must have been some damn good peaches because the frozen sliced ones are awesome. They even taste great frozen, right out of the bag -- just reach in and grab a few little slices as a snack. Bittman also tells the story of Michel Richard at Citronelle using frozen brussels sprouts in a dish: I guess there's still a stigma attached to using frozen produce, especially in the fine-dining world, but the reality is that it's a widespread practice. I know of a few top New York restaurants that even do their own freezing: they buy up lots of extra greenmarket produce when it's available and they freeze enough peas and other stuff to get them through the winter.

I think many frozen produce items are underrated, forgotten, and poised for comebacks. I'm going to start a topic on that.

It's pretty easy to poach eggs. As the link Mr. The Cook provided uptopic indicates, a regular restaurant with nothing more than a vat of simmering water can poach hundreds of them. For basic egg-poaching, sous vide seems like using an atom bomb to swat a fly. Heather, try Safeway. They're listed on the Davidson's website as carrying the product in DC. http://www.safeeggs.com/markets/pavailability.html

Leonard I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of the history of Quilted Giraffe reviews. If we are to take the reviews at face value, and certainly the dish descriptions confirm this, Mimi Sheraton totally got the Quilted Giraffe when it opened -- it's just that the dishes were ridiculous. Look at some of the examples from that review: chunks of lobster and monkfish (they called it lotte back then) in cream sauce with canteloupe balls and raspberries; sauteed chicken breasts with blueberries, blueberry vinegar, beets and broccoli. Thanks to dishes like that, American gastronomy is still living down its reputation in Europe for embracing food that's too sweet. I think you'll find plenty of knowledge, context and authority in Sheraton's first review of the Quilted Giraffe. What you'll also find is a general resistance to nouvelle cuisine: a suspicion that it's all gee-whiz fireworks without substance. And if somebody in 1979 wanted to believe that, maybe it was a reasonable position. It's not like there was much consequence to it. But today, when pretty much every haute cuisine restaurant serves nouvelle cuisine or derivatives, the ground has shifted. Yet, Bruni seems to know less about it than Sheraton. That first Sheraton review is behind the paywall, but the second Sheraton review and the Burros review are public: here and here. Having not visited the restaurant during that time frame, I can only rely on the secondary epistemic criteria, however I think it's at least a fair assumption that the dish descriptions are factual. Taken together, those three reviews make complete sense and describe a restaurant progressing from one star to four, not just in terms of improved (and less sweet) dishes, but also in terms of general luxuriousness and maturity. The theme in Burros's first paragraph almost makes one think it's Sheraton's third review of the place, though subsequent stylistic differences do emerge.

By the way, pasteurized shell eggs are available these days and they're quite good -- I think they could easily spearhead a revival of Caesar salad made the right way. In addition, irradiation will eventually end the salmonella problem altogether. But really, the egg supply is now so safe that an egg may not be a heck of a lot more likely to transmit a foodborne illness than, say, spinach, and certainly eggs are as safe or safer than plenty of other things they serve in high-end restaurants, like oysters.

Even at US$5/dozen, eggs are a bargain. That's like 42 cents an egg. Still, I only pay $3/dozen for organic ones at my local grocery, which is a quarter an egg. Presumably high-end restaurants are paying less than that for better eggs, so as a question of food cost it's an insignificant ingredient in a $15 appetizer. Heck, it's barely significant in a $3 appetizer.

The restaurant business and dining culture have changed, not just the reviewers. The problem is that the reviewers haven't changed in such a way as to keep up with the industry or the culture. On the industry side, there are many more restaurants. This makes frequent re-reviewing an impossibility. It might argue for more reviews that cover multiple restaurants, however what cuts against that is space. Because also on the industry side, restaurants have improved. There are many more that are artful -- it's not like when a place like the Quilted Giraffe was the exception: "Wow, these people treat cuisine kind of like art, how unusual, and they have Japanese influences!" I don't think critics pre-Miller really had the opportunity to treat cuisine as art, not because they didn't have the knowledge -- they were more knowledgeable than today's reviewers by far -- but because the industry was in an early, developing craft phase. So that demands more in-depth coverage. Also, the prevailing style of haute cuisine are no longer rooted in French classics, so they require more explanation, not that we're getting that. Also demanding more in-depth coverage are today's far more knowledgeable and demanding consumers. The dining culture in the United States has moved forward by leaps and bounds in the past 30 years. It's almost unrecognizable. And this has been echoed in other aspects of the food culture. This audience has much higher expectations of restaurants, and needs serious critics who can keep up with the times.

I wish more restaurants would do it -- I won't rest until there's an egg dish or three on every menu, giving the egg its rightful place among proteins. Eggs have of course been used in haute cuisine for ages. I'm sure Jack Lang has at some point posted a list of 752 egg dishes from Escoffier. I think eggs just went out of style for awhile, and are now coming back. Some factors: Certainly the trumped-up health charges against eggs didn't help over the past couple of decades; people seem not to take that so literally anymore, though, so I'm sure that makes chefs more comfortable about working with eggs. Superior eggs are becoming more available; most good restaurants can now find a local small producer. There are a few modern egg dishes that really resonated in the haute cuisine community, especially the Arpege egg. Also, I think the scarceness of substantial sauces in contemporary haute cuisine creates a need to find ingredients with the lusciousness of the old sauces; eggs are great for that, because if you break a poached egg over anything -- say, a medley of baby seafood -- you have an instant sauce that's in keeping with the fresh, natural, minimalist approach favored by today's chefs.

About those Spiegelau glasses: don't just stock them; get them into people's homes. Have so many of them around that customers don't think twice about buying six at a time. Don't treat them as luxury objects. Heck, figure out a way to give them away for free. I guarantee you, once people have really good glasses in their homes they'll DRINK MORE WINE.

I agree with that, Nathan.

Were there to be stars assigned to operas, it seems self-evident that opera critics should not bump up an opera's star rating because the tickets are a good value. Rather, they should provide that information, maybe comment on it, but not rate an opera higher because of it. It would make no sense to do so.

I don't think it's a question of "rights." I think, yes, it's reasonable from a consumer perspective to expect more from a more expensive restaurant, just as, from a consumer perspective, you should be able to purchase better sculptures and paintings for more money. But the cost of a meal doesn't change what the meal is, just as the sculpture is the sculpture no matter what you paid for it. So from a critic's perspective, I think price should be just about the least relevant consideration to a restaurant reviewer. The price doesn't affect, in any way, the essential nature of what's supposed to be the subject of the review. When you review an opera (or insert any other arts performance or anything else except consumer electronics and cars), it doesn't matter if the tickets cost $10 or $1,000 -- the review isn't about that. There should be an information box that says how much tickets cost. Some people will care, some won't -- let them decide. A critic could even mention in a review, "The Hornblower Opera continues to be a great opera, but at $1,000 a ticket it's overpriced." Or, "The Longwharf Opera is as good as any, and at $10 it's also a bargain." But you don't say "The Longwharf Opera is better than the Hornblower Opera because it's cheaper." That would be crazy. And to obsess about price to the point where the whole system of evaluation starts to depend as much on price as on food -- that's nonsensical. "We've lowered the rating of Joe Smith's new Greatest Hits Volume IV album because it costs $5 more than comparable albums." "The new Johnson Office Tower would be a much better work of architecture if it had cost half as much." "The Weasel Queen is the best show on Broadway because it costs half as much as The Lion King and, other than the fact that you have to sit on the floor, is just as enjoyable."

He hasn't demonstrated that. What he has demonstrated is that if you ignore parts of the printed menu then you can prove that point. For example, if you ignore the part of Aureole's printed menu that says: Organic Spanish 'Beluga' Caviar $595.00 supplement per 60g with traditional garnish Or if you ignore the part of Norma's printed menu that says: The Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata Super size 10oz Sevruga Caviar 1000 Norma Dares You to Expense This And if you ignore everything printed on the wine list.

There are also two things I don't need: 1. I don't need a huge selection. It's not relevant to me. I'm just as happy -- probably happier -- for a shop to have just one example of a particular region or whatever, provided I have confidence that the shop has already selected the best example for me. I mean, you take some big-ass wine shop that has four moderately priced Cotes-du-Rhone at the exact same price, yet the salesperson tells me one of them is clearly the best -- that just makes me want to know why the shop bothers stocking the other three. Why should I pay for the shop to be four times as big as it needs to be? 2. I don't need nice premises. My favorite wine shop, K&D on Madison Avenue between 95th and 96th Streets in Manhattan, is pretty much a dump. They fixed it up a little bit a couple of years ago but it still lags far behind the nice places (Sherry-Lehmann, Morrell) in appearance. But I've got to assume that means my favorite shop is paying less for real estate -- and I'm not interested in subsidizing any more real estate costs than are needed to house the wine I'm going to drink somewhere else.

You've created a number of artificial distinctions to support a narrow proof. Wine doesn't count, caviar doesn't count, truffles don't count, private dining doesn't count -- the only thing that would satisfy your test would be an on-menu $2,000 per person dinner offering that requires no advance arrangement and includes no caviar or truffles; all other examples are exceptions. No, that exact menu feature doesn't exist, and the fact that it doesn't exist is neither interesting nor proof of anything. Because you can easily spend $2,000 per person for dinner. It's not the slightest bit challenging to do so. People do it every day. They just don't do it according to the model you've invented to prove whatever point you're trying to prove.

I'd just as soon have my salmon not taste like juniper. Salt and sugar are, to me, more along the lines of flavor enhancers, and the curing effect mostly concentrates flavors, whereas herbs and spices strike me more as masking. You take something like "pastrami salmon" and, while tasty, it would seem an unfortunate fate for a really fabulous piece of salmon. You made the analogy to turbinado sugar above. I think that's a good one. Vodka, for its part, is the granulated white sugar of the spirits world. Yes, I think everybody with a decent palate would agree that turbinado sugar tastes better than white sugar. However, you wouldn't throw out all your white sugar and try to make all your recipes with turbinado, would you? No, because sometimes you only want the sweetening property of sugar -- you don't want it to have much in the way of independent flavor, aromatics or whatever you want to call it. I guess I could easily imagine a foodie micro-trend where everybody turns against white sugar -- white sugar is so boring! -- and starts bending over backwards to cook everything with biodynamic honey and single-producer hand-crafted artisanal Vermont maple syrup, and maybe that would create a lot of interesting new desserts but it would also ruin many others.

The salmon situation is like the caviar situation: if you want to taste the product, vodka is the way to go. Not exactly the same context, but in Wine Spectator awhile back Sam Gugino, speaking about pairing beverages with smoked salmon, wrote: The same reasoning should apply to the choice of vodka or gin as a curing agent, though I've only ever tried vodka-cured salmon never gin-cured (both are out there -- I've also seen and not tried rum-cured, sake-cured and even mojito-cured salmon). Still, I imagine the better the salmon the more likely I'd choose vodka over gin as a curing agent. Or maybe I'd just eat it.

We have a Cambodian restaurant in Brooklyn, and while it doesn't print the menu in Khmer it does have a great sales pitch across the top of the menu: " ** No Pork - Less Fat - Better Than Chinese Food! ** "

Let us also not forget the many fine uses of vodka in cooking: penne alla vodka, vodka-cured salmon, vodka-lime vinaigrette. And, of course, vodka as a drink to accompany traditional Russian and European Jewish foods.

If you miss Jonathan Reynolds's food column, which used to run every other week in the New York Times Magazine, you'll probably want to get hold of his newly released memoir: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062748?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400062748">Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=egulletsociety-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400062748" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />. And if you've never read his column, you'll definitely want to get hold of a copy of this book. Reynolds (who is a Society member) is a seriously good writer, and that's the reason to read the book: because it's a great read (not because you're likely to learn much about food). Those who are familiar with the column will recognize the approach and some of the themes: Reynolds get an idea in his head or tells a story, and it involves food in some way, and you just sort of follow along and enjoy. There's an excerpt on the Random House website, but it's not a well-chosen one. It doesn't mention food at all. Then again, the book isn't about food so much as it is built around food. An excerpt from the excerpt, just to show some of his writing: More here. Has anybody had a look at Reynolds's book? I'm about a third of the way through and really enjoying it. Using this link to purchase a copy will help support the eGullet Society: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062748?ie=UTF8&tag=egulletsociety-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400062748">Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=egulletsociety-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400062748" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />

It seems to me that Norma's and Serendipity are pretty normal restaurants, and while you need to order the Serendipity item in advance you can definitely walk into Norma's tomorrow morning and order that frittata. I also don't quite understand why you're counting out things like wine, caviar and truffles. Those are the things rich people add to the base meal to make it the equivalent of the more expensive seats at the opera. I've been to Aureole and spent like $250 on dinner for two when I was paying, and I've been to Aureole with a really rich guy who started us with caviar and ended with Yquem, and I believe it was about $6,000 for six people.

Frozen peas.

Julia Child's crepe recipe calls for Wondra. Works great. Haven't made crepes in years, though.