Fat Guy

I brought eggs home from England AND France. We were at Harrod's (London) and they had an incredible selection of farm eggs. Each type of egg had a little photo album chained to the shelf under it, where you could look at photos of the happy chickens on Mrs. so-and-so's farm. I also purchased French eggs. I bought the minimum quantity of several kinds, discarded a bunch of eggs, and packed a mixed carton deep within my suitcase in layers of plastic, foil and socks. All eggs arrived intact in Newark. I fried them up with some NY supermarket eggs and eggs from Ronnybrook. The color differences were remarkable. The flavor differences were ambiguous. It's not that they all tasted exactly the same. It's that, tasted blind, it wasn't possible for me to say one was notably better than another. Maybe some of the fancy Euro-eggs had a little more flavor than the US supermarket eggs, but probably not. I'd have to repeat the experiment under better conditions with more samples and tasters. But everything I've read about other people's blind-tasting results confirms that there's no major flavor difference. What I'd really like to do is replace the eggs at Momofuku Ko, Arpege, et al. -- places where they have internationally acclaimed egg dishes -- with US supermarket eggs. Kind of like the old Folgers commercial.

I guess it depends on what is meant by local, but the eggs I see around NYC are usually from NY, NJ or PA, which seems similar to the radius of the Greenmarket.

I can't see why they'd be held for much longer than the time it takes to transport them. Refrigerated storage is expensive. But you can tell the date on which your eggs were packed by looking at the Julian date on the carton. Here's a guide to making that determination: http://www.goodegg.com/eggdating.html

The employees at the one we went to recently, in Hickory, NC, were incredibly courteous and helpful.

We're spending the week in North Carolina divided pretty much evenly between Hickory, Gastonia and Charlotte. Looking for interesting stuff to eat, at all levels, in any or all of those places.

I'm confident you'll find very little overlap between Modernist Cuisine and any other cookbooks in your collection. Most cookbooks provide you with some increment of knowledge over what's already out there, if you're lucky. Modernist Cuisine goes in many new directions. So whatever you do spend on it is almost all allocable to the new-information category.

I'm so there. I wonder what the business arrangement is down at NYU.

There are definitely variations in color, but when I brought deep-orange/yellow eggs back from England -- organic, farm-raised, etc. -- several years back they didn't taste any different blind. I've noticed flavor variations around the US, though. Right now I'm in North Carolina and the supermarket eggs are better-tasting, I think, than what I'm accustomed to up north. I'd have to do a blind tasting to be sure, though.

Can we pause for a moment to admire the cuisine of Chick-Fil-A, not to mention their "eat more chicken" advertising (if not the recent anti-gay-marriage controversy)? I just visited a Chick-Fil-A and was reminded that it is a fast-food chain of which we can all be proud. The chicken sandwiches are excellent, as are the waffle fries and everything else I've tried -- I hear the breakfast items are good too -- and customer service is stellar. I wish we had it in New York City, but I imagine the closed-on-Sunday issue might make the economics of operating in Manhattan untenable.

I know it's wrong to love them, but I think the eggs sold in American supermarkets are nothing short of a minor miracle. They tend to be produced locally, they get to the supermarket within a couple of days of being laid, they're uniform and predictable, and they taste very good. The conditions under which they keep the hens are terrible, but that doesn't seem to have a negative impact on quality. On the whole, I get better results from supermarket eggs than from farmers-market eggs when it comes to poaching, baking and other applications where consistency is a virtue.

I still always do a double take when I go out west in the US and the sticks of butter are a different shape: shorter, fatter. (Although now with the popularity of Trader Joe's you can get the western shape everywhere.) It's an unexpected surprise in an era of standardization. It even requires different butter-serving dishes. Are there any other good examples of US regional differences in food packaging?

My feeling is that just dumping the pages of the book into a .pdf or e-reader file, like they did for the reviewer preview, is bound to be quite inferior to the printed volumes. However, an e-book edition designed with that application in mind could be great. It could eliminate the need to open multiple volumes at once, and there are many things you can do with an e-book (hyperlinks, video, etc.) that you can't do with paper. It would require significant programming resources to make an e-book worthy of Modernist Cuisine, and the technology to do it really well wasn't even out there when they started working on the book, but today I think it could be done.

The buns at the Five Guys in Hickory, NC, did time on the griddle before being topped with patties.

I'm on the road in North Carolina and across the road from my hotel is a Five Guys. Tonight I walked over and ordered a small (single) burger and regular fries. The place was immaculate and full of people. They were selling burgers and fries hand over fist. They were calling order number 30 for pickup when I arrived. I was number 46. They got to me in about 5 minutes. Impressions: The burger, despite being overcooked, is plenty juicy with pretty good beef flavor. The bun is appropriately soft and innocuous. Toppings are plentiful and included in the price. Superb for a chain burger. The fries, made on premises from fresh potatoes, have great flavor. I prefer more crispy/crunchy texture, but these are the best fast-food fries I've had. The portion is ridiculously generous: they fill the serving cup with fries, then dump almost as many on top once the cup is in the paper bag. Other thoughts, wit and wisdom regarding Five Guys?

There are some kitchen devices that used to be better, such as toasters and waffle irons. Then there are the ones that are better now. I'd say blenders today are superior to the blenders of the past. Dishwashers have, I think, improved. Shall we expand upon these lists?

Maybe this is too easy a target, but can we please discuss the serving sizes on US "Nutrition Facts" labels. They really seem to be all over the map, in most cases unrealistically small, and not particularly useful.

About 10 years ago I had the pleasure of meeting the man and having a few conversations with him over a period of days in, of all places, Singapore. His raw brilliance was evident, and a parmentier he made remains one of the best things I've ever eaten. I disagree strongly with his recent broadsides against modernism, but there's no question he was a great man. This is very sad news.

Alas, that domain name is taken.

I recently acquired a Leifheit 1-liter measuring cup, like so. It is a beautifully designed product, with a triangular shape that makes pouring neat and convenient, a beefy handle, a non-skid bottom and very readable markings. It got me thinking I may want to upgrade my measuring collection, and got me wondering: what are the best measuring cups? (I am gravitating more and more towards weighing ingredients, but I still find myself using measuring cups often.)

The economics of Modernist Cuisine are fascinating on many levels. It's a total outlier in terms of price, quality and quantity. I don't think anybody knew whether anybody would buy it, and now it looks like sales will be in the thousand of copies right away. It's remarkable that its Amazon sales rank is higher than 400,000, which is what I'd have anticipated. Even if you discount for a release at a slow time of year for books overall, and for the fact that you can only buy it on Amazon so 100% of sales go to supporting the Amazon stats, it's amazing that it broke top 100.

Absolutely first-rate reporting by Dan Bilefsky in the New York Times about Kennedy (not Kentucky) Fried Chicken and its Afghan ownership community. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/nyregion/14chicken.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y When I read this story it made me think, well, okay, there is still a place for newspapers in this world.

It seems to me that in-the-know cocktailian types have a few go-to labels when the mission is to find a high-quality liquor at a low price relative to the field. I thought it would be useful to assemble such a list. A good example, I think, is Evan Williams black-label bourbon. At the liquor store near me it's $15.49 for a 1-liter bottle. It is surprisingly good, fully competitive with several $40-range bourbons I've tried. What are your secret weapons in this regard?

When you remove the top rack what happens to the rotating sprayer? Does it come out with the rack?

It never occurred to me to remove the top rack.

This is it. Time to collect the community's wisdom on the very important subject of loading the dishwasher. A couple of thoughts to get us started: - We load forks and spoons with tines and heads up (so stuff doesn't get stuck at the bottom of the flatware basket), knives with blades down (for safety). - Any bowl, mug, etc., with an indentation on the bottom gets loaded on an angle so as not to collect water.