Fat Guy

Yogurt: I've never been able to make yogurt as good as Chobani or Fage, so I buy those instead of making my own. If anyone teaches me how to make yogurt better than Chobani or Fage, I'll probably go back to making my own. Hummus: Thus far, I've not been able to make hummus better than the Sabra brand available at Costco and many other stores. I only know of one restaurant that makes hummus better than store-bought Sabra. I certainly don't. Charcuterie: While I've had some excellent examples of homemade charcuterie, the best I've tasted have been commercially produced. Pizza: The pizza I can make at home is better than from the average New York City slice shop and not nearly as good as from Motorino, Keste, Co., or another top New York City pizzeria. Bread: No contest, there are hundreds of loaves available in New York City that are better than what I can make. Baked goods: Some items we make at home are better than their commercial brethren, some aren't. It depends. But it's not universal one way or the other.

We made it to the gates of Heaven but couldn't wait. Apparently this time between Christmas and New Year's is particularly busy for Pizzeria Bianco. At 9:30pm we were told the estimated wait would be 3 hours. So we went in search of Mexican, except every downtown Mexican place was closed or just about to close. Finally we stumbled across a place called La Salsita (2345 East Van Buren Street, 602-275-2729) and had an array of superb tacos on freshly made tortillas topped with lots of chopped cilantro. Three tacos for $2.99, popular with the ambulance crews. Unfortunately, on account of Pizzeria Bianco's holiday schedule, tonight was my only shot, so I won't make it there on this visit. Next time...

For a while, I've wanted to do a side-by-side tasting of the burgers, fries and shakes from In-N-Out and Fatburger. This isn't something that can be done where I live, because there are no In-N-Out locations in the East. I was able to hit the Fatburger in Atlantic City, NJ, a while back, but that didn't allow for a side-by-side tasting. I'm in Arizona at the moment and, though I hadn't anticipated it, I seem to be surrounded by both In-N-Out and Fatburger locations. So, with the help of some friends, we engineered a near-simultaneous purchase of a variety of In-N-Out and Fatburger products, from two close-by locations, and did a taste test. If the question is simply "which burger is better" then there's no question in my mind that Fatburger is the winner. The relatively thick patty used in the standard Fatburger is superior to the McDonald's-like skinny patties used by In-N-Out. And I like the Fatburger condiments and bun a bit better. This is the case over a few permutations of burgers from both places (here I'm going both by the tasting and by memory of many other burgers I've had). Even if you double up on your In-N-Out patties, it's not comparable. I doubt there's any conceivable special order that could bring an In-N-Out burger up to the Fatburger standard. If the question takes into account all aspects of the establishment, then In-N-Out shows much better: far better fries, a bit better shakes, better atmosphere, better service.... The fries at In-N-Out are cut on premises. They're not fabulous, because they're not cooked the way great fries should be cooked (twice), but they're so much better than Fatburger's frozen specimens, both thin and fat. The shakes are a closer call, but I think for a shake lover the In-N-Out shake is better, thicker, tasting less of additives. This seemed true to me of both chocolate and vanilla, with the margin being wider on the chocolate. In-N-Out also has more enthusiastic employees and a better look and feel. The efficiency is astounding. It's a high-energy place, whereas Fatburger is not. This I've seen confirmed at several locations of both. I particularly love the cult of special ordering at In-N-Out. So, Fatburger has a better burger and In-N-Out has better everything else. I'm not sure who wins. New York City would be very lucky to have either. Also, for your entertainment pleasure, here's our son PJ at In-N-Out earlier this week:

I've found bits and pieces of possibly unreliable, possibly reliable comments via Google suggesting that showing up late is a valid strategy. I'd love to hear an authoritative ruling on that. Also, assuming I attempt a late-night incursion, what might be a viable backup plan, like a good Mexican place nearby or whatever?

I confess I approached lunch at Pane Bianco today with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. For one thing, any place that gets this sort of universal acclaim has a high probability of sucking -- that has been my experience time and again. For another thing, the place was so crowded I had to wait about 45 minutes for a sandwich. And for still another thing, it just doesn't look promising, situated next to a pawn shop, a used-guitar store and a shop specializing in kilts, across from the light rail and generally downtrodden-looking. Inside, there's a wondrous oven turning out bread for the sandwiches as well as longer loaves to purchase. There was an alarming amount of activity in the kitchen, but the crowds overwhelmed the system and it took forever. It was a little bit Soviet: you order in one place, then you wait to be called to be allowed to pay, then you wait again to be called to pick up your actual food. The sandwiches were, however, incredible. The only sandwiches I've ever had of this caliber were during the golden age of Melampo in New York City, and that bread wasn't as good. Every ingredient as good as can be. We had the mozzarella and tomato with creamy and still-a-bit-warm mozzarella, the Italian tuna with locally grown greens, and the market special (bresaola today). Not a flaw in anything. We also took some bread with us, and it was some of the best bread I've had anywhere. Next, I'll attempt to crack the Pizzeria Bianco system.

I find myself near Phoenix and had lunch today at Pane Bianco (excellent) and was hoping to mount an incursion into Pizzeria Bianco tomorrow night. The 4:30 arrival strategy won't work for us, so I'm wondering what happens if you show up late, like 9pm or even 9:30pm. Any experiences with that approach?

My point here is simply:

When Vince Staten wrote the excellent book "Can You Trust a Tomato in January?" you couldn't trust a tomato in January. Now, I think you can. Not that every tomato in January is good, but the grape tomatoes I get in New York City in winter, grown in Mexico, are pretty good. Good enough that I don't think it any longer makes sense to take the position that "I don't eat tomatoes except for six weeks in summer." Sure, the peak-of-season heirloom tomatoes are better than grape tomatoes in January. But grape tomatoes in January are better than nothing. They're pretty enjoyable, actually. Yesterday a friend proposed grilling (we're in the US southwest at the moment, where the weather is conducive to that). I asked if we could supply anything and he asked me to pick up some corn. Corn in December? But I wasn't going to argue with our host, especially when I'd just offered to help. So, I went to a local supermarket called Fry's (nice place) and bought some shrink-wrapped, partially shucked corn from Mexico. I figured it would be awful, but this purchase was about etiquette not gastronomy. When the corn was ready, I decided I owed it to the world to taste it. Surprisingly, it was pretty good. It was the corn equivalent of a grape tomato. Not as good as the best local corn in season, but quite palatable. I ate two ears, with no butter or anything. I grew up being taught by my father that out-of-season produce didn't taste good. While there are certainly other valid objections to out-of-season produce, the doesn't-taste-good rationale is no longer universally true. In the past few years I've enjoyed everything from grapes to tomatoes to corn, shipped in from far away, with good flavor. I think there was a time when all the emphasis was on engineering visually pleasing produce that was sturdy enough to ship, but it seems that in the late 1990s there arose an emphasis on also making shippable produce taste good. It seems to be getting a lot better.

Like Milt, over the past couple of weeks I've shifted from no shopping to supplemental shopping only: buying small quantities of tactically needed ingredients that, for the most part, allow me to use up inventory. This was all in furtherance of the goal of getting the fridge empty by today, prior to heading off to Arizona for a week. The good news: the fridge is the closest to empty it has been in the 19 years we've lived in this apartment. The bad news: today's flight was canceled due to weather and we really had to scramble to create dinner. (I managed to produce a pasta dish of dubious merit.) Other bad news: the freezer is still jam packed, as are the cabinets.

Anybody know of any? Researching for a gift for a friend.

5200 sounds right. It's not even in my kitchen yet. My family gave it to me as a present at a party at my mother's apartment and we left it across town that night. It's whatever model they were demonstrating at Costco the day they went shopping.

Whichever one they were demoing at Costco. Maybe it's the Vitamix 5200? I haven't opened it yet.

I got a Vitamix.

I had a friend over today who's in sales and, not on the subject of food, he was explaining how much of consumer purchasing behavior is dictated by habit and many other factors that have nothing to do with anything related to need. And it made me think of this experiment.

Just getting caught up on the inventory of photos I didn't have a chance to post during last week's convalescence. I mentioned the loaf of raisin challah I found in the freezer, which turned out to be a goldmine for peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. I have no idea where the challah came from. I don't think the French Culinary Institute baking program produced it. I didn't buy it. How does a raising challah magically appear in one's freezer? Parallels to the miracle of the oil on Hanukkah suggest themselves. I have had in the refrigerator for several months the last bits of a jar of almond butter. Not enough to make a whole sandwich. Not enough to throw out. So for this sandwich I did a blend of peanut butter and almond butter. Worked out great. In fact I may do it on purpose at some point. I did a little supplemental grocery shopping this morning so in future photos you may see some fresh products (lettuce!) creeping in, but I really kept it to a minimum. We're talking 30 or 40 bucks for a month.

Today I was feeling pretty desperate for fresh fruit, and look what arrived courtesy of dear friends in Vermont: Between all that fruit, and the excellent stock of frozen berries I haven't yet dipped into, I think I'm set for at least a week of fresh fruit and frozen-fruit-based smoothies. Nonetheless, I think tomorrow I'm going to go to the supermarket and get a few things. Not my regular shopping, but I'll acquire the various pieces of the puzzle that I need in order to utilize some of my stockpiles efficiently. Back to today, for breakfast we made scrambled eggs and home fries. So excited were PJ and I that we ate most of them before I remembered to take a photo. But here are some remnants: We didn't have a real lunch today, just some pretzels, nuts, raisins and whatever else was around. It was a grazing lunch. At dinnertime (I had both breakfast and dinner shifts alone with PJ) I suggested spaghetti and PJ asked if we had meatballs. No. Meat sauce? No. Then I realized: we had 3 quarts of chili in the freezer. I told PJ about how once, before he was born, his mother and I visited a city called Cincinnati where the local custom is to eat spaghetti with chili. I reminisced about Skyline Chili, told him about the vernacular of the 3-way, 4-way, 5-way, etc. He bought it and agreed to try spaghetti with chili. Now, my experience at Skyline Chili has been that it's not very good. But I thought maybe the concept could still be sound, assuming spaghetti that's not overcooked served with chili that isn't watery and bland. I like my chili, and I know how not to overcook spaghetti, so I got the chili from the freezer and went to work. The final product was surprisingly tasty. It turns out, if you use good spaghetti and good chili you get a credible dish.

I mentioned earlier that my review copy of the book came with a Thomas Keller fried-chicken kit. I finally had the opportunity to make the fried chicken, and there's an extensively photographed post with comments on the Don't Shop Now topic for anyone who's interested.

I have a lot of catching up to do after a week that involved a lot of recuperation. Let me start with the fried-chicken report. To refresh your memory, a few weeks back I received in the mail from the Workman/Artisan PR department a copy of Thomas Keller's new cookbook, Ad Hoc At Home. Included with the book in the promotional package was a Thomas Keller fried-chicken kit. This kit, I have since learned, is available at Williams-Sonoma stores for $14.95. The fried-chicken kit sat on my kitchen counter, taunting me, for some time until I fell into an opportunity to use it: we were to visit our friends in Connecticut. He had chicken. I had the Thomas Keller fried-chicken kit. Between us we had all the other necessary ingredients (like buttermilk and frying oil). So we combined forces. I packed up the fried-chicken kit as well as some other equipment (sheet pans, knives) and headed to Danbury. The fried-chicken kit contains enough seasoning and breading to make two batches. We were making one. We combined a seasoning packet with water, brought to a boil, let it cool outdoors (the outdoor temperature in Connecticut that weekend was basically refrigerator temperature) butchered the chicken (one small chicken and an extra breast) and put it in the brine in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning we took the chicken from the brine, patted it dry on towels and put it in a zipper bag in the fridge for a few hours. We then let it come up to room temperature for two hours before starting the actual fried-chicken process. We set up an assembly line: a bowl of the chicken-kit coating, a bowl of buttermilk and a wax-paper-lined sheet pan. The instructions called to dip in coating, buttermilk and coating again. We fried in peanut oil, outdoors, on the side burner of Sean's outdoor grill, figuring that doing it outdoors would make less of a mess. The first batch, the dark meat, went brilliantly. We let the oil temperature get a bit higher than specified before adding the meat, which caused it to drop right into the recommended zone and stay at about 325 the whole time. The next two batches must have had more mass, or something, because they caused bigger temperature drops and took longer to recover. This definitely made them less excellent, though they were still good. Meanwhile we made some potatoes for mashed potatoes. The final feast: So, was the Thomas Keller fried-chicken kit a success? It certainly made good fried chicken. I don't think, however, that it's a particularly useful item. The kit doesn't accomplish any of the hard parts for you: you still need to butcher the chicken, brine it, bread it and deep fry it. The kit only saves you from measuring out your own salt and spices for the brine, and from adding your own seasonings to the breading. So you have this two-day, labor-intensive process that involves all these steps and maybe the fried-chicken kit saves you 10 minutes. And it's not like the pre-mixed seasonings are off-the-charts brilliant. The recipe is in the book, you can find it online, you can intuit it from the ingredients list on the packaging, or you can just use some other recipe because this one, while good, doesn't particularly elevate the art of fried-chicken making. One's success with the fryer, for example, is a lot more important to the outcome than the particulars of the seasoning in one's brine. And look what it did to Sean's beautiful All-Clad pot, though we got it cleaned up fine after some soaking:

A recent New York Times "City Room" piece by Jennifer 8. Lee pits Montreal bagels against New York bagels. Hardly a new debate, but the piece has the distinction of quoting me in favor of Montreal bagels. This is also to be the subject of a radio interview today on CBC Montreal at about 5:45pm, I'm told.

Sorry to disappear on you. I had to go off the grid for a couple of days for a medical thing and am just getting back in the swing of things. I've got a whole mess of photos to share and stuff to tell and will try to get my act together today. Quick video preview of the fried chicken:

At least according to this article, consumers are responsible for 60% of food waste.

Here's one of the many articles covering that 40%-wasted estimate: "Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food" http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/27-1 I'm not sure what the real number is. Over the past year, researching this issue, I've been reading anything from 25% to 40% depending on methodology. Whatever the actual number is, it's pretty alarming. Imagine the economic and ecological benefits from being able to produce 40% less food for the domestic market, import 40% less food, etc. Not to mention, it means the average person can save 40% on the food budget. And here we are doing something about it. A small thing, to be sure, but we're trying to prove a point and we're proving it: it's not only possible but, for a lot of people, easy to go a week or two or more without acquiring new foodstuffs. I'm glad we're doing our part to move the ball forward on this issue, and I thank everybody who has been participating and hope a whole bunch of you will now come out of the woodwork and do this for a week. We'll keep the topic open until the mission is accomplished. And happy Thanksgiving. Surely an appropriate time to be reflecting on these issues.

Yesterday at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade the Procter & Gamble people were out giving away free cans of Pringles. The full-size cans. We walked past a few times. So now we have four cans of Pringles added to our inventory. From my mother's house we took home about four pounds of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, sweet potatoes and cornbread -- enough to make several meals out of. Not that we're eating at home today. We're having Thanksgiving II in Connecticut. I'm glad I've been clearing out the fridge these past couple of weeks so we have space to put all this stuff.

I'm in sort of a weird break period at the moment. Last night I had to have dinner at L'Ecole, the restaurant at the French Culinary Institute. Not only was this a meal I didn't have to cook out of my pantry, but also it was all I could do not to take on more free bread supplies. I restrained myself. Today is Thanksgiving so we'll be going to my mother's house here in the city. Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving reenactment at my wife's mother's house in Connecticut. Saturday is a Thanksgiving reenactment at our cousins' house in New Jersey. I imagine we'll acquire a lot of leftovers along the way. Then I'm off the grid Monday-Tuesday. So I probably won't get back into the true spirit of the challenge until Wednesday and beyond. This morning I made eight peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for us to have at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I finally polished off the raisin challah and started in on a really nice raisin-nut loaf that was sitting behind the raisin challah. I think I have enough bread in the freezer to make another 20 or so sandwiches, and I intend to use it all. I may be able to use up all our peanut butter in that process too, if I lay it on thick as I have been doing. Unfortunately, I'd need to make more like 100 sandwiches to use up all our accumulated jams, jellies and preserves. We also have all these peanut-butter alternatives around -- almond butter, sunflower-seed butter -- that are going to require creativity and willpower to use up. I got my camera back from Sean only to have it usurped by my wife. I promise as soon as I can pull it off I'll post photos of the Thomas Keller fried chicken experiment.

For those who have done a week and found it easy, do another. I'm in my second week now and the challenge is just starting to get fun. For those who haven't participated, it's not too late to start. Start the day after Thanksgiving if you like -- commit to those leftovers. As to my day, we have a tradition that once a week PJ gets sushi for lunch. Usually an avocado roll. I get it from the Chinese restaurant near my mother's house that, as is the current fashion, also serves Japanese, Southeast Asian, etc. food (it used to be called Empire Szechuan and is now called Empire Szechuan Kyoto Sushi). But buying sushi for PJ's lunch wouldn't have been in the spirit of the no-shopping challenge, so this morning I got up at 6am, fired up the rice cooker and got set up to make sushi. I made PJ an avocado roll and a cucumber roll. They weren't the prettiest rolls ever, but he sure did enjoy watching me make sushi first thing in the morning. Also, good news, my friend Sean came into the city today and returned my camera. So I'll be able to report on Sunday's fried-chicken experiment soon.