Fat Guy

Most people looking for non-cookbook books to read about food instinctively gravitate towards the cookbook section, where they will find, alphabetized separately on their own shelf, the books they're looking for. The section, which in most Barnes & Noble stores is called professional cooking and food writing/essays (not professional cookbooks) is a section within the food books section that houses Ruhlman and such -- all the narrative nonfiction books about restaurants, chefs, etc.

I wish you'd written it too. Then it would have been more factually correct and less out-of-touch and star-struck.

In a few other discussions here, John Whiting and I have commented that haute cuisine in general is baby-food-like. I remember a meal at Arpege where the first several courses all had the consistency of baby food, and haute cuisine has traditionally favored soft foods like filet mignon over totally superior-tasting but more-difficult-to-masticate foods like brisket. This probably traces back, at least in part, to the pre-modern era of non-dental-care, wherein you were lucky to have teeth (or even be alive) after age thirty and therefore soft foods were a luxury: the infancy of old age reasserted itself much earlier. But you also see it in traits like the national French aversion to spicy foods.

Will, any thoughts on trans-fats?

Kit Kat is made by Hershey's in the United States, but in Europe it's made by Nestle. Isn't that strange?

Don't worry. You understand as much as everyone else.

Kit Kat is just crispy wafers and chocolate, and has a rather crisp texture overall. Twix is cookie, caramel and chocolate, and has a soft, luscious texture and feel.

I believe "stromboli" is Italian for "an enigma wrapped inside a Pandora's box. Synonyms: quagmire, Catch-22, conundrum, Twix."

Before, then.

Think you should have both, but hold the cheese on the bacon-and-egg sandwich (salt, pepper, butter, toasted roll, bacon well done, eggs fried break the yolk). And a Twix for dessert.

Yes, it seems Amazon shipped copies over the weekend. Several people have mentioned this to me. I guess the idea is that they're supposed to ship so as to arrive approximately on the on-sale date?

There's some more information today in the New York Times regarding Keller's plan for Per Se, which indicates that he is moving much closer to a true wage system than I had previously imagined. To wit: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/nyregion/15tips.html

Thanks for clarifying. Since this topic was originally posted in the California forum, I think a lot of people assumed the inquiry was regional in nature. We'll move it to Food Media & News now.

Which is really part of a larger issue: marinating does a lot less than people think. Where I do think sous vide methods amplify flavor is when you cook with flavorings in the bag. This is just my personal experience -- I've not studied it scientifically. Still, it does seem that a tablespoon of liquid and some very small quantities of herbs and such can give you a lot of bang for your buck. That's a bit harder to accomplish with "one-bar" home sous vide, I mean FoodSaver, machines because they have a tendency to suck liquid out of the bag and into their mechanisms (which is why they offer canisters for marinating). But you can make it work with the bag, especially if you make your stock into ice cubes first.

Does attempted murder count? I was working at my kitchen counter and caught a shadowy movement out of the corner of my eye at the other end of the counter. It turned out to be a mouse, but when I turned to go after him he scurried into one of the burners on the stove. So I figured, hey, if I turn on the burner I can kill the mouse! (No, I did not give much thought to what the cleanup task would be like in the event of success). So I turned it on, the mouse ran out of the burner and down the side of the cabinet, and away. He was fine.

The Times piece is also being discussed in the Food Media & News forum, at a more general level: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=72594

It was due to nothing more than a pure, unbridled, lifelong hatred of cooked green peppers. Mind you, he liked raw green peppers just fine.

I'd say the answer is . . . millions! For example, in the article, we have the claim that "The atmospheric pressure created during the vacuum-packing process also promotes osmosis among the contents of the bag, so sous vide has become an important tool for marinating and curing foods and infusing oils with spices and herbs." How is that, aside from use of words like "osmosis," "atmospheric pressure" and "sous vide" any different from (exact quote from FoodSaver) "Plus, order now and receive our special bonus package, including our best-selling FoodSaver Marinating Canister so you can marinate meats in just minutes instead of overnight"? That's simply not a case of "it will probably trickle down to the home kitchen someday." It's already in the home kitchen; the New York Times is just too out-of-touch to realize it. If you go to the FoodSaver site, you can even find recipes for FoodSaver marinating from the Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen team, including language like: "Use your FoodSaver Quick Marinator or Rectangular Canister and marinate the lamb in 15-20 minutes." And why else would FoodSaver bags be "approved for microwave, freezer, and boil-in-bag"? Certainly, professional chefs are doing more with vacuum sealing than home cooks, just as professional chefs are doing more with knives than home cooks. And yes, they have better machines. But a FoodSaver is a home sous vide machine, period -- just as an iSi cream whipper is a home foamer canister, and just as a Braun hand-held blender is a home immersion blender -- and millions of consumers have them and use them all the time for marinating, freezing, boil-in-bag, pickling and more.

What Per Se says on its website is: "Beginning September 1st, in lieu of gratuity, per se will be adding a 20% service charge to all guest checks." Customers may still be allowed to leave more -- I don't know -- but if they do it will be much more akin to a real gratuity, as opposed to wages disguised as a gratuity.

As I commented on the main sous vide topic, the Goussault material is the interesting part of the article -- a good use of Times resources and access. But saying about sous vide that "it will probably trickle down to the home kitchen someday" is worse than old news; it's out-of-touch. I just hope it's not deliberately out-of-touch, because a simple Google search leads quickly to a wealth of information that would have demanded acknowledgment of the consumer side and of the online contribution to the exchange of sous vide cooking information.

Greg, are you trying to assemble a list of California food magazines, or of all food magazines?

Several million American consumers have vacuum sealing machines in their homes, such as the FoodSaver brand. These machines are routinely used in vegetable and fruit preservation, marinating and cooking. I too enjoyed the story, but the Times is way behind the curve here. While consumers are obviously not using vacuum machines with the same level of sophistication as David Bouley and $2,000-a-day professional consultants, you can find FoodSaver discussion all over the web -- including here. You can also find amateur cooks discussing sous vide techniques at an advanced level in eG Forums topics -- indeed, you will learn nothing about how to accomplish sous vide techniques from the New York Times today, whereas you can learn plenty here. I'm sure there are plenty of out-of-the-loop folks who will read today's Times Magazine piece and say, "Wow, did you read about this revolutionary new cooking technique in the New York Times today?" Little do they know that the Times has limped along on this one, writing about it years after this technology joined the ranks of "As seen on TV." (On another topic, Paula Wolfert cites examples of consumer-level sous vide media coverage dating back to 1983).

Sous vide eG Forums topic

There's a story in today's New York Times magazine about sous vide techniques. It contains, among other things, some interesting material from interviews with Bruno Goussault and his chef-disciples, an unusual spelling ("Cryovacked") and very little actual information on the process. It also contains the statement, about sous vide, that "it will probably trickle down to the home kitchen someday." Hello? What's the Food Saver then? What's this topic here about?

Geoff, the one thing I would add is that every piece of Corian I've ever worked on has had the same plasticky, flimsy, bouncy feel to it. I have pretty high quality, solid, well-leveled and professionally installed KraftMaid base cabinets and bullnose "Mediterranean blue" (now just called Mediterranean, it seems) Corian countertops set on a heavy wood substrate, installed by three guys who all they do is install Corian countertops. Even if you installed Corian over diamond, there would only be so much you could do to make plastic feel as solid as granite. The most solid-feeling piece of Corian I've worked on was in the subterranean pastry kitchen at the St. Regis hotel. It was a big black piece of Corian installed on a refrigerated stainless base unit. It was a bit more substantial feeling than the Corian in my home kitchen, but it wasn't granite that's for sure. My neighbor Ken has granite countertops. If you have a chance to do a side-by-side with granite and Corian, try taking a heavy mallet and banging the heck out of a veal chop on each. It's such a pleasure to perform this exercise on a heavy piece of granite. On Corian, I just don't even bother. And I don't like surfaces that dictate or limit the way I cook -- I like surfaces that support it.