Fat Guy

There's certainly a noticeable flavor transfer from the vinegar to the egg. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on your tastes. But yes, a variety of acids will accomplish the same thing, including acid from citrus.

I hear you. I do this often. Sometimes I even follow through.

Thank you, Jack. Everybody else: I will be out almost all day and into the evening today. I'll probably be able to check in once or twice, but I most likely won't answer questions until after 9:30pm (NYC time) tonight. Please ask your questions throughout the day, though. I'll get to them all tonight. I'd also like to suggest, if you try poaching today and you have a digital camera, that you post some digital photos using ImageGullet: http://images.egullet.com Thanks all.

Finally made it Carl's tonight. The staff is indeed distracted and barely competent: they were far more interested in watching the WWE on Spike TV than they were in doing their work. My "steak" was served quickly but my fries (which were terrible -- skip the fries) lagged behind and, once they were ready, were forgotten. I essentially had to beg for the fries, and by the time I received them I was 3/4 through the steak. The steak was good, very similar to what is served at Jim's, but certainly not fabulous. The linguistic red herring aside, I'd say Carl's is a strong performer given that it's an imitator in a remote locale. Certainly there is no better cheesesteak in New York, and that's progress. Without a particularly educated audience, though, I can't see cheesesteaks becoming top-notch in New York. Excellence in cheesesteaks, pizza, bagels, whatever, typically requires a lot of competition, a lot of consumption, and an audience of connoisseurs. There are so many different tastes competing for the palates of New Yorkers, I just don't think people here (or anywhere outside of PA for that matter) are ever going to acquire enough of a taste for cheesesteaks for them to gain much traction.

Certainly, quite a few people think of garlic as "hot," though I don't think I get the same hit from it as from capsicum. But I think you'll find that common to most Western haute cuisine is an absence of large doses of any of the above: capsicum, black pepper, garlic, etc.

If you use the start-with-cold-water method, the initial temperature of your eggs will matter very little. I'm sure with careful scientific measurement one could detect a difference, but one of the advantages of this method is that it evens out most of the rough spots caused by temperature variations. Altitude certainly makes a difference. You will need to cook your eggs for a longer time as altitude goes up, just as with many other things in high-altitude cookery. If you live above something like 12,500 feet it gets difficult to hard-cook eggs by straight boiling. My wife who has traveled in the Himalayas quite a bit reports that in that environment they typically either use a pressure cooker or they use a regular oven to hard-cook the eggs (oven-baking is also a good way to hard-cook eggs in very large quantities).

As far as I know it does not prevent them from cracking. What it might do is aid in coagulation of the whites. If a very small crack forms in the surface of an egg, the white will start to come out -- much as your skin will bleed if you prick it. The whites, however, will coagulate in the hot water -- much as your blood coagulates when you bleed. If conditions are right, the coagulation might be so quick as to be barely noticeable and you may be able to salvage the egg. Salt and vinegar are two additives that can aid in and lower the temperature of coagulation. However, they should not be necessary if you follow the various other tips in the lesson.

In small quantities, salt raises the boiling point very little -- but there's no good reason to raise the boiling point at all. I don't believe salt adds any flavor through the shells in that time period and under those conditions. The only thing it really does, as far as I know, is aid coagulation if an egg starts to leak. But it shouldn't be necessary, and probably isn't useful.

If I understand your question correctly, ryanwilliams, a three-minute egg is a soft-cooked egg. It's similar in theory to a poached egg, but still in the shell. You cook it in simmering water for 3 minutes -- like the first three minutes of hard cooking. Typically these eggs are eaten, while held upright in an egg cup, with a spoon.

For capsicum heat, I nominate "fiery" as the best word. Would this encompass Black Pepper heat? Do you happen to know the chemistry behind the pungent flavor of black pepper? Is there any capsicum or a similar substance in there or is it a totally different thing? I'd probably distinguish between black pepper pungency and capsicum heat, but maybe there's some overlap. Certainly my brain has interpreted black pepper as fiery on occasion.

For capsicum heat, I nominate "fiery" as the best word. so would you say that sichuan cuisine could never be haute? I don't know enough about Sichuan cuisine to even begin to answer that. Are there high and low versions of Sichuan cuisine? Are all Sichuan dishes spicy? I'd need a lot of information I don't have. My hypothesis -- which I'd like to test -- is that a lot of capsicum makes it hard to distinguish between levels of quality in ingredients. If so, high heat would be antithetical to the haute nouvelle cuisine philosophy that is currently in play in most of the better Western restaurant kitchens.

Unfortunately I don't have Russ's book in front of me right now because I lent it to my brother-in-law, so I'm not able to comment specifically on his analysis at this time. The reason I recommend the method I recommend, however, is because I find it to be relatively quick and also because the cold-water "shock" does seem to facilitate peeling. I've never tested this under rigorous double-blind scientific conditions, but it has always worked well for me and a number of reliable-seeming sources have stated that the quick drop in temperature helps contract the egg away from the shell a bit.

For capsicum heat, I nominate "fiery" as the best word.

I think the problem there is that the textural differences will always remain. What we need, I think, are two products with identical mouthfeel/texture but different flavor.

It's possible to assume we'll see one of two outcomes: the typical experienced diner either can or can't taste subtle differences in ingredients "through" the heat. I'd also be interested in trying the same thing with the other types of situations you mention. I think much of nouvelle cuisine's theory is driven by a similar concern: that the sauces and techniques of old haute cuisine were often masking the flavors of fine ingredients.

Delightful meal at 'Cesca tonight. Having tried and failed to get reservations on about a million occasions, we decided to try an extremely early walk in. They gave the four of us the best table in the restaurant: the big-ass table for eight right across from the pass. They had a party booked at that table a couple of hours later, but 'Cesca isn't the type of place where you spend 2+ hours dining anyway so we didn't mind the time constraint. Spicy parmigiano fritters were piping hot comfort food of the highest order -- this is exactly what I'd expect from Valenti. The unannounced-on-the-menu presence of ham chunks in the fritters was, however, disappointing to the non-pork-eater at the table. Marinated baby artichokes with fresh ricotta offered a sterling specimen of ricotta, in a completely different league from Polly-O ricotta -- similar to the great stuff at Calandra on Arthur Ave. Best appetizer: roasted mushrooms with polenta and fresh sheep's cheese. All the entrees were terrific: hearty, warming, pure expressions of Valenti-ism. Pancetta-wrapped calves' liver was cooked beautifully medium-rare with the pancetta very crisp and served with polenta, spinach, pisachios, and tiny onions. Pasta "al forno" had the second best pasta sauce -- a meat ragu -- I've had in a long time. The best pasta sauce I've had in a long time was the daily special "Sunday sauce," which had big chunks of sausage, pork, and various other things. The Sunday sauce comes in a separate dish from the rigatoni and if you finish the rigatoni before the sauce they offer you more. They bring it out from the kitchen in a pot and serve the new hot pasta right into your bowl -- a great hospitality touch at a food cost of about three cents to the restaurant. The one seafood dish on the table was very good, tuna with cannelini puree and porcini broth: a good piece of tuna prepared rare as requested. Desserts were totally lame, as was the espresso. I loved being able to watch the open kitchen. Valenti was very involved, moving about the kitchen and dining room and even running plates. The crew was really cranking out the food, but with obvious care. Am I a bad person, though, for wanting to buy the guy a haircut?

I'd like to propose a test of the basic physical argument I put forward earlier. What ingredient could we choose where a minor difference in quality is generally noticeable? I'm having trouble coming up with something off the top of my head, but the basic experiment would require finding a food product where two levels of quality -- close in quality but different -- are easily obtained. Then we establish a baseline by tasting them against one another blind and making sure we really can tell the difference with a high degree of accuracy. The we hit the two samples with a high degree of capsicum heat and we try the test again and see how well we do.

What I'm saying is that spices aren't necessarily hot (as in piquant due to capsicum) at all: coriander, cumin, cinnamon, etc. Spicy food can be spicy food without any capsicum at all. And what I'm saying, further, is that the examples of spices (not capsicum, but spices) being used in haute cuisine are legion. You even see some of it in France, and here in the US you see it at most every contemporary haute restaurant -- you'll even see spice-rubbed lobster at Gramercy Tavern, etc. What you won't see in most any haute restaurant is use of capsicum beyond a very low level of application. Because in my opinion it does -- and here I disagree fundamentally with Pan -- mask the subtle flavors of the best ingredients. There's simply no point in acquiring the top grade of shrimp from the Gulf and then blowing them out with capsicum. And I think that opinion is shared by pretty much every haute cuisine chef, so even if it's wrong it's still the explanation!

Heat and spice are really two different things, and French haute cuisine has been behind the curve with respect to both. There are a couple of practitioners, like Roellinger and Gagnaire, who have done a lot of work with a broad array of spices, but for the most part French cuisine -- both haute and popular -- is based on herbs and not spices, and certainly not capsicum peppers. Elsewhere, however, there's no shortage of spice in haute cuisine. The fusion trend is so well established in the US that it's not even a trend -- it's old news. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Gray Kunz, Nobu Matsuhisa . . . plenty of spice. Still not a lot of heat, however -- except in the case of some Nobu dishes. I think the reasons you don't see many spices or any heat in traditional haute cuisine are mosty historical, but I think the reason you don't see heavy heat in any haute cuisine is that it's too overwhelming. A little heat as part of an overal complex blend of seasonings is one thing -- at that point it can be a flavor enhancer and can add balance to a dish -- but mouth-numbing heat makes fine ingredients pretty much a waste of time. Since so much of modern haute cuisine is focused on excellent ingredients and subtlety of flavor, it's hard to imagine high heat ever fitting into that matrix.

There is an Asiate page on the Mandarin Oriental site: http://www.mandarinoriental.com/hotelsite/...ionId=674055625 It's fairly useless, though. I'm not sure the above link will stay ripe, so you may have to navigate to it from the home page. Speaking of useless, has anybody ever been able to dial the restaurant directly? No matter what I do, I get bounced to the front desk.

The braised short ribs (which don't sound like much but the technique is fairly advanced) and the herbed risotto with wild mushroom fricassee were two of his signatures at Lespinasse. I've never heard of the mushroom fricassee served as a dish per se (sorry), though.

Having been to a ton of these events, Ellensk, I'm sure your analysis is correct. Nonetheless, it never ceases to amaze me how cognitively nonsensical people can be about this sort of thing: Who gives a crap what canapes are served at a media or opening party? It has precious little to do with what the restaurant will be serving.

I think you've finally found your signature line, Jack.

And Olivier Roellinger, one of the world's greatest chefs, still has two stars? This is getting ridiculous. I've dined at La Cote St. Jacques something like 6 times and I've also attended Jean-Michel Lorain's cooking classes. I would categorize it as clearly a three-star restaurant -- the only reasons it got temporarily dropped to two are, I think, that the overdue renovation caused a lot of upheaval and the final stages of the intergenerational transfer of power were a bit confused. This was Michelin's way of saying: "We're not going to tell people to fly from New York and Tokyo to dine at your place in Burgundy until you get your shit together." But the new dining room is totally up to three-star standards and a lot of the lingering dinosaur cuisine has been banished in favor of Jean-Michel's better contemporary stuff.

After all the smoke clears, Kunz's restaurant may turn out to be the most interesting of all. I personally believe he is the most talented chef in America, something people are likely to start remembering once he's again producing food instead of books. By the way, I don't recall suckling pig ever being served by Gray Kunz at Lespinasse. Not that I or any other living person except Kunz has sampled every one of his dishes, but I associate the suckling pig dish (with Tarbais bean cassoulet) with Christian Delouvrier's regime at Lespinasse.