Fat Guy

I don't personally feel the differences among brands of commercial yeasts are particularly significant if you're mixing them directly into the dough and going straight to rise followed by bake. Some are more rapid-rising than others, but that's the major difference I've noticed at the white-bread level. When you get into preferments, however, the character of the yeast seems to become more dominant. I'd suggest buying the cheapest yeast you can find. Fleischmann's yeast in packets is fine by me in terms of its quality and the flavor it imparts to bread, but in some stores a packet costs almost as much as a loaf of bread.

I don't have the relevant Wolfert text in my Wolfert collection. I'm sure it's the last word. I'll have to go get a copy. The Delouvrier recipe is the one I've used and I thought it produced excellent results. There's a lot of what I'd call restaurant technique in it, even though it produces a rustic outcome, so it's going to seem labor intensive if you're not accustomed to those methods, but if you go step by step it's not hard at all. Indeed, when broken down into their individual steps, many of Delouvrier's recipes are actually easier and more reliable than ones that seem simpler on the surface. It's several pages of text so it would be beyond fair use to reprint it here. I'd certainly recommend buying the book, Mastering Simplicity, because it has so much to offer. But let me try to condense a few basic elements of the bean cooking process that Delouvrier advocates: You start with beans that have been soaked overnight and drained, and you cook them with duck fat, tomato paste, pork rind and pancetta (which you'd skip for the purposes of this topic), garlic, carrots, peppercorns, cloves, bouquet garni, poultry stock and salt. As the beans are cooking, you roast duck bones in duck fat and add the bones to the beans. You also add some halved tomatoes. Once the beans are cooked, you strain and reserve the bean liquid, and you spread the beans out on a sheet pan so you can pick through and remove and discard all the bones and aromatics. Then you go about preparing all your confit and braised meat and such, reserving the cooking liquids. You mix all that together with some of the bean cooking liquid and reduce it into a sauce, which you then pour into a pot with the beans. You bring the beans up to a simmer again so they absorb this round of flavors, and then you let them cool and refrigerate overnight. A couple of hours before service you put breadcrumbs and melted butter on top of the casserole and bake it, pushing down occasionally on the top to create the signature cassoulet crust. You've also got to get all your garnishes warmed, and then at the end you assemble individual plates with the garnishes.

can you expand on this a little? thanks, chiel ← It's incredibly simple: you put your oven on its highest setting, you lay the coffee beans out in a single layer on a half-sheet pan, and you roast them until they're done. As long as you know the visual and audible cues for doneness, you're all set. Afterwards, dump everything into a colander and sift out the chaff, which will also help to cool the beans. This is the one tedious part of the process.

Cholent and cassoulet strike me as the same only if you say that all bean casseroles are the same. There are so many key differences between the dishes, however, that I'd classify them only as very distant relatives. The salient features of cassoulet, to me, are that the beans and garnishes are treated separately and combined later on, and the inimitable breadcrumb crust. Cholent, for its part, involves mixing all the ingredients early on and cooking on a low heat straight through to the service. It also tends to have potatoes or other starches in addition to the beans, and of course no breadcrumb crust. It was created for a specific purpose: so that it could be prepared before the Sabbath (which begins at sundown) and left on low heat until lunchtime the next day. The variations on cholent are organized around the long-cooking principle (it doesn't even need to contain beans), whereas the variations on cassoulet are organized primarily around different garnishes (but the dish is fundamentally based on beans). So as species they aren't really comparable. To me, cassoulet is all about the beans, and the difference between okay cassoulet and really good cassoulet is primarily in the way the beans are prepared. The garnishes are important, and they should be good too, but if you don't have good beans it's like a dish of bad pasta with good meatballs. Cooking the beans is all about infusing them with flavor, because -- let's face it -- beans alone aren't terribly flavorful. They're not flavorless, but they need help especially if they're going to appear in a dish like cassoulet. There are many approaches to creating flavorful beans, and cassoulet recipes tend to be quite long, but the basic idea is to begin by cooking the beans with fat and aromatic vegetables, and then to cook them further with a stock/sauce derived from preparing the lamb, duck, or whatever -- and you can also cook the duck bones right in with the beans if you're willing to pick them out later. Then in the final preparation, preferably after the beans have been refrigerated overnight, you cover a casserole full of beans with bread crumbs and you bake that in the oven, very occasionally pressing down on the crust so liquid covers it. Then you plate the dish up with the garnishes and you're all set.

I agree. Don't focus on substitutions for key ingredients -- you'll never be satisfied if your goal is to find a substitute for bacon, because there is no substitute for bacon. Instead, focus on making a great dish on its own terms. You can make a delicious, hearty simmered bean stew without pork if you base it on duck fat, duck confit and duck cracklings. Whether or not it is officially cassoulet is a matter for the people who like to debate about language to decide, but we served such an item to 40 or so of our most exacting gourmet friends last New Year's Eve and it seemed to go over well. We knew a number of our guests wouldn't eat pork and others had various other restrictions, so we kept the dish modular. Basically, we made the beans with plenty of duck fat and, later, bread crumbs. We made a tremendous quantity of duck confit, duck cracklings, braised lamb shanks and a big pile of chopped up Aidell's chicken-and-apple sausage. When it came time to plate the dish, everybody got a bowl of beans-with-crust, and on top of it we served as few or as many of the garnishes as the various picky eaters wanted. For the real vegetarians we had a separate batch of beans made with no animal products and a small batch of mixed vegetables, whereas the fake vegetarians had the duck-fat beans topped with vegetables. If you're not familiar with cassoulet bean-making technique, I'd be happy to provide some pointers based on Christian Delouvrier's cookbook, Mastering Simplicity.

Last week I got two twelve-packs of the diet (they had the regular as well) at ShopRite of Hackensack, NJ. I'm really enjoying the product and am bummed that it won't be permanent. I'd also appreciate it in a caffeine-free diet version (and while they're at it they should make caffeine-free standard-issue diet Dr. Pepper more widely available, because it's damn hard to find).

Just to highlight a semantic difference, and maybe this would be an interesting thread, OpenTable is both a piece of "guest management" software called OpenTable that restaurants use for reservations and dining-room organization, and a web site called OpenTable.com that interfaces with the OpenTable systems at member restaurants and allows customers to make reservations over the internet. The OpenTable software on site manages 100% of available tables, but within that system a slot can be blocked out as "manager's slot" or the like, and thus, in that example, nobody but a manager will be able to authorize a reservation. There are other ways to safeguard tables as well.

The side room, with its unobstructed view of the park, is not typically used for regular sittings; it's the private events space. They open it up, though, when the place is packed and there's no event booked.

The IMPS doesn't necessarily define what is and isn't correct terminology, as an equivalent body might do in France. What it does is it establishes a certain uniform standard for the food-service industry so that in any part of the US you can order a "Number 119, Range C" and know what you'll be getting. But there's plenty of terminology in IMPS that doesn't square with what those steeped in a particular tradition -- who sometimes possess the most expertise regarding a given cut -- will call a piece of meat. For example, there are points of differentiation between the Lobel's Guide to Meat and the IMPS, especially with respect to naming the shell (Lobel's) or strip loin (IMPS), and of course virtually no steakhouse uses either term -- it's almost always "New York strip" or the like. Deckle is another of those terms that is used one way by a lot of serious brisket people and another way by IMPS. I have to look at my NAMP book to see if there's a really good diagram, but I suspect that deckle in the vernacular of brisket is short for "deckle end," in other words it's not actually the deckle but rather the piece of meat at the end of the flat, separated by the deckle -- or something like that. I'll check.

I've used this place as well, and think it's terrific. Seafood on the whole is probably the most inconsistent subset of our food supply, especially at the retail level. As several people have observed above, you can get bad seafood almost anywhere. The Chinatown fish purveyors seem to represent the extremes: they have some of the worst stuff, and some of the best stuff (especially when you take value into consideration). For example, I consistently get better shrimp in Chinatown than elsewhere, and sometimes I even come across ones that are still alive.

There are elements of pragmatism in most designs, but I think it would be an overstatement to say there was no choice in the matter. The service kitchen is only the visible kitchen. There is also an extensive production kitchen that includes areas for savory and pastry prep, walk-ins, dishwashers, etc. I'm pretty sure that, had the service kitchen been situated against the west wall of the restaurant, the flow of product could have gone through the production kitchen and into the service kitchen. There may have been a hallway to cross, but food wouldn't have needed to go through the dining room.

7:15pm. We were a party of 7 so we had been able to make a reservation. We were seated at 7:48. Ed Koch waited almost as long as we did.

Finally made it up to Dinosaur. The place was happening. Ed Koch was at the next table, every seat seemed to have two people in it and I couldn't hear myself think. Those who are sensitive to noise, crowding and other imperfections should steer clear. If you can handle the trauma or time your visit during off hours, however, it's well worth a pilgrimage. Dinosaur is an extremely welcome addition to the evolving New York City barbecue scene. I had the "tres hombres" platter, consisting of brisket, pulled pork and pork ribs. All were really good, tender and juicy with pronounced smoky flavor. I wouldn't attempt to generalize from such a limited sample, but stylistically I think I most enjoyed the ribs, which had a very crusty exterior yet were beautifully moist inside. The brisket had better and worse pieces (the better ones being delicious and the worse ones being too dry), and the only flaw in the pulled pork (more of a Memphis style pulled pork with a sweet sticky sauce added for service, as opposed to North Carolina style chopped pork served with just a minimalist vinegar sauce) was that there wasn't enough of it.

I'm probably not going to retrofit my hood because, as I mentioned, I don't think the problem is the quality of the hood. When we installed it, I read all the stuff you're supposed to read, took all the relevant measurements, and got the right hood for my kitchen, which has a dropped ceiling 8' high and is approximately 120 square feet. If there is a problem with my hood, it's that the ductwork takes too many turns before getting to the main vent, and that even with a 3,000 CFM motor there's only so much it could do other than make a lot of noise. The i-Roast actually comes with an adapter that hooks right into a standard piece of duct tubing. I might try that, but I'm not sure I'm enough of a die-hard to start hooking up a life-support system to the roaster every time I roast. More likely, I'll just haul the thing into the "office" (sort of an alcove in my apartment, which has a window) and do it in there by the window.

A meal at the hands of a great sushi chef is above all a personal experience. In that regard, the observer affects the observed and measurements are as uncertain as Schroedinger's cat. Who but God and Yasuda really knows what is in all of Yasuda's little drawers? The "science" of restaurant reviewing is predicated on generalization and the belief that the cassoulet will be the same tomorrow as it was today. The figurative cassoulet is not only different every day at a great sushi restaurant; it may not even be on the menu, or it may not be on the menu but it may be available, or it may be available but you may not be allowed to have it, or it may be available but the sushi chef may not choose it for you. As Yasuda's literature suggests, "Yasuda creates individual relationships tailoring his work to each person's needs." Moreover, the first meal is only the beginning. It is the relationship with the sushi chef -- as meaningful to some as the relationship with one's psychoanalyst, lover or priest, and possibly more expensive than all three combined -- that gives shape and direction to a succession of experiences in context. JJ is at a certain point on a continuum in his relationship with Yasuda, a reality with which Yasuda is conversant. As JJ acquires experience, maturity and wealth, Yasuda will bring him along a certain arc appropriate only to JJ. You can eat lunch at Yasuda or Kuruma for $20, and at either you can have a tasting of rarefied cuts of imported fish for $500. So what? More expensive fish is not necessarily better; it is often just rarer. This is true not only as between species, and not only as between specimens, but also as between pieces of the same fish: the fattiest toro is, to me, often less delicious than a less fatty piece. All is not relative. Some things in sushi simply must be done right. Getting those things right is an accomplishment in itself. But once that standard is met -- and very few restaurants do meet it -- everything else is in flux. I like Sushi Yasuda better than Kuruma Zushi. I've simply had a better connection with Yasuda, and I think most (though not all) Americans are likely to on account of his gregariousness. So what? It doesn't make Yasuda better. Indeed, while I recommend Yasuda nine times out of ten to those wishing to have "the ultimate sushi experience" there is also that one time out of ten when my inner voice says, you know what, this person is going to like Kuruma better. I expect, after I make it to Masa, I might add it to the roster, if not for me then as a place I'd recommend to certain people who are likely to be compatible. And neither Yasuda nor Kuruma is my favorite, because my sushi chef works elsewhere. He happens to be Shin Tsujimura, one of the Nobu chefs, who incidentally was one of Yasuda's influences when they, as well as several other of the top American sushi chefs, worked at Hatsuhana. When Shin and I are in our world together, everything else in life fades into the background and it's all about the moment. In that moment, the right $3.50 piece of sushi is far more valuable than the wrong $35 piece. Don't worry about which is better. Find your sushi chef, your guide, and take the journey together.

The next installment in the "Seven Weeks in Tibet" series is now online.

I have a Broan Microtek System III hood with 300 CFM motor, hooked into the building's main ventilation shaft. I don't think it was a very good installation, though, in terms of the twists and turns the ductwork makes to get to the main vent. It was, indeed, installed by someone not very competent: me, with the assistance of the aforementioned Juan, and also Pablo and Ken. That I am even still alive to tell about it is a miracle.

Owen, when this all went down, Ellen said "Maybe you should do that near a window?" Normally the range hood, which theoretically (though I am not convinced) vents to the outdoors, is up to the task, but I think I'm going to need to reevaluate.

Today I tried to go a little darker on the roast and sent the smoke alarm into hysterics. I had completely forgotten that, a few weeks ago, Juan (the assistant superintendent) installed a new smoke and carbon monoxide detector. Well, not only did this thing issue forth with an incredibly loud beep (it's hard to believe three AA batteries can produce such a racket) but also it talked! It would beep, and then it would say "Fire!" in a very authoritative sounding though not at all panicky voice. The problem was, Juan had mounted the thing on the ceiling, and my ceilings are like 12 feet high. My tallest ladder being 6' (and of course you can't really stand on the top step without killing yourself) and me being less than 6', there seemed to be no way to get at the damn thing. Finally, I summoned all my will and extended my body in a glorious move worthy of Industrial Light & Magic, plucked the thing off the ceiling and wrestled it to the ground. As for getting it back up there, that's Juan's problem.

I assure you that Cafe Gray's designer, Diego Gronda of the Rockwell Group, is quite sane (for a designer, at least). I would characterize him as visionary. I think the decision that he and Kunz made to put the kitchen between the diners and the windows can be derived from what he said (reported in the Daily Gullet) at the Time Warner Center architecture symposium that was held in the early days of the project: "Design needs to mutate ahead of its own time. Design should always surprise, provide unexpected emotions as an antidote to everyday life's monotonous rhythm. A design constant, therefore, must be to seek and find new ways to sensually engage people in an environment. I can think of no better word than "monotonous" to describe the design theory that requires taking a restaurant's view and building the dining room around it. And at V and Per Se, one of the first things I noticed at dinner time was that there isn't all that much of a view because, at night, Central Park is a black mass. I also found that the view is interesting for a few minutes, but isn't particularly animated. I like it -- who wouldn't? -- but it lacks motion. Placing the "action" (that's the design term for this sort of thing) of the kitchen between the diners and the windows is, to me, one of the most attractive and dramatic design features of Cafe Gray. This will, I think, emerge over time as a good decision, especially as people start using Cafe Gray as the "abstraction of brasserie" it is intended to be -- stopping in for breakfast, grabbing a quick bite at lunch and enjoying dinner from time to time -- and not as an attempt to capture a Lespinasse-like experience. If Cafe Gray succeeds, it will be because people have learned to love a new kind of restaurant. In that, I am reminded of the opening of Jean Georges, when Ruth Reichl, then the Times critic and the last visionary dining critic the Times had, declared, "This is an entirely new kind of four-star restaurant." She recognized and explained that, "Mr. Vongerichten has examined all the details that make dining luxurious and refined them for an American audience. The changes are so subtle that they are easy to miss, but nothing, from the look of the dining room to the composition of the staff to the pacing of the meal, follows a classic model." And, she added, "Most important, Mr. Vongerichten has returned the focus to the food." Cafe Gray strikes many of the same notes with me: it is a reinvention of three-star dining. I think the Cafe Gray layout represents a bold statement that the restaurant isn't about the view, but is, rather, about the food. As Hal Rubenstein wrote in New York Magazine, "If you came only for the view, head up to the bar on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental for a cocktail before your reservation. When you’re ready to have more of your senses activated, come to Café Gray."

3.7 ounces (weight). I'm not sure if that varies by brand. Mine is the store brand from ShopRite.

Jim Quinn, the Philadelphia-based restaurant critic, has a great line that -- I hope I'm getting this right -- "As long as restaurants are willing to charge by the meal, they need to be willing to be reviewed by the meal." And that's entirely correct. There are no excuses. Reality, however, is not an excuse. It's just reality. It is what it is. And reality teaches that all restaurants open on a quality curve of one kind or another. To that extent, when you go to a restaurant in its first few months of operation, you are paying a premium in order to be one of the first. Any experienced diner -- indeed anybody who even thinks about it for five seconds -- knows that you go to a restaurant in its first couple of months for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is never "because it's not going to get any better." It is not a restaurant critic's job to make or accept excuses. It is, however, a restaurant critic's job to try to provide a valuable review. Sure, one could review a restaurant after four visits on its first four days in operation. But that would be publishing a review wholly for the sake of the principle that "there are no excuses" and not at all for the sake of the principle that the review should make sense. In Cafe Gray we have one of the world's greatest chefs, some positively outstanding cuisine and a service situation that clearly needs work. Given the high likelihood that the service situation will be resolved and the long lag between reviews, waiting another couple of months is just the most sensible thing to do. Because if in three months Cafe Gray is truly a three-star restaurant, there will still be a two-star review out there for ages. There is no cost involved in waiting. In a couple of months, if there has not been improvement, a two-star review makes sense no matter who the chef is and no matter where the restaurant should be going. The Times is often the last local news source to ring in with a review, so it's not like there's an institutional rush to press -- and it makes for a better review. It has nothing to do with making excuses for Cafe Gray, and everything to do with making the review better. Of course, this is all academic if the two-star review really came -- as I think it might have -- from Frank Bruni's attempt at architecture and design criticism, or his commentary on mission and identity, or a combination. Let me also mention that holding off on a review under appropriate circumstances is hardly abnormal or shocking. Critics say "I'm going to give this place a little while longer" all the time. I think the waiting issue is a bit of a red herring, so I'll make this my last post on the subject, because I think there are a lot of other points with respect to Cafe Gray that deserve more attention, like some of the best individual dishes in town at any restaurant with any number of stars, like one of the best pastry departments out there, like the breakfast, lunch and bar offerings, and like the chef's table and banquet space. I also think, as I've said before, that there's a big issue of defining and accepting Cafe Gray for what it is: it's not Lespinasse reborn -- a reality that may disappoint some and anger others. Rather, Cafe Gray is an attempt to create a type of restaurant that doesn't have a clear precedent. Nothing Gray Kunz does is simple.

Today I tripped a circuit breaker because I forgot that the dishwasher was running -- you can't run much more than an i-Roast on a standard circuit. Unfortunately, I have no idea how much time was remaining in the roast, so there was no way to save the batch. Live and learn. Owen, once I establish a bit more confidence with the i-Roast, I'll send you some roasted beans for an objective tasting, and you can let us know what you think.

This particular carton of packets -- and I think this is pretty much standard -- indicated that each packet would yield one quart. So four packets to the gallon would, I suppose, represent a normal ratio of solids-to-water.

Just as a reference point for the discussion that follows, Godiva chocolates -- which most hard-core chocolate lovers think are weak -- purchased at a Godiva store by the individual piece are $37 per pound. Several years ago I worked on an article about the best chocolates in New York, and before it got published my editor moved on and the publication went into decline so the piece was never published. I did, however, have the opportunity to do extensive comparative tastings of the products from all the major contenders. At the time I might have said Leonidas provides the best value at a reasonable upper middle class price point ($28/pound today), but I do think Leonidas -- while a heck of a lot better than Godiva -- does have some of the same issues as Godiva, namely pandering to the white bread palate with too much sugar and not enough bitterness. I would also have said (and still would say) that La Maison du Chocolat is the best but quite expensive ($60/pound today), although I would rather receive a gift of half a pound of La Maison du Chocolat's chocolates than a pound of Leonidas chocolates. So value is not always so clear cut. Today there are two options, however, that were not available then. The first is Jacques Torres. At $43 per pound you get what I would characterize as world class chocolates, 50 pieces in a one-pound box. That's not cheap, but the question was value and I think that's a good value. The other is not in New York City but, if you have a car and you plan to buy enough chocolates to make a drive out to the suburbs worthwhile, I think this is the way to go: Wegmans Chocolates by Pierre Herme. These chocolates, which Steve Klc has been discussing on the eG Forums since summer of 2002, are made to very high standards with Valrhona chocolate by a couple of people who were trained by Herme. I think they are excellent. And at $33 per pound (a 47-piece assortment), I think they may be the best retail chocolate value out there -- and are also available online. I say retail because the reality is that retail chocolate prices, across the board, tend towards the outrageous. If you want to exercise a little bit of self-help, then, you also might want to follow up on a lead I got when Chris Broberg (now the pastry chef at Cafe Gray) was working at Petrossian. I was in there one day and they had received a bunch of chocolates manufactured by Valrhona. Not chocolate bars but, rather, actual chocolate candies that were dead ringers for the ones sold by the various high-end chocolate shops. I would not be surprised, if you were able to track down a Valrhona wholesaler and ask about Valrhona's "confectionary collection," to learn that these chocolates -- which are I think primarily sold to hotels and restaurants for use as mignardises -- cost about as much per kilogram as these others cost per pound. That's just a guess.