mamster

To be honest, I just wanted to use the phrase "achiote-crusted phony." What I meant was "achiote-crusted jerk." I've never eaten at an Emeril or Flay establishment, but I don't like their shows and never have. They don't seem to be feeling the sting from my criticism (or Bourdain's) yet.

Sure, he's a hypocrite. I think Bobby Flay is an achiote-crusted phony too, and don't get me started on Emeril or the Naked Chef. (And admittedly there are other shows on the TVFN that I quite enjoy, such as Good Eats.) But if the Food Network came knocking on my door with accountants in suits? Of course I'd sign up. Wouldn't you?

I got good tomatoes for exactly one week from the farmer's market. I never know what to do--I try a few kinds, maybe one is good, and by the next week that one isn't good any more, or isn't there. Nancy at the Times is always reminiscing about the New Jersey tomatoes of her youth; I really wish I'd had some tomatoes of my youth worth reminiscing about. I would settle for some good ones in adulthood. I wrote a tomato screed a while back, if anyone's interested. I believe Fat Guy mentioned his CSA on a thread, maybe on the Cooking or General boards.

FYI, the restaurant I'm talking about is 727 Pine. I didn't know the name when I started the thread. Laurie and I are planning to try it for breakfast later this month; I have my eye on the duck confit and fingerling potato hash. The URL is http://www.727pine.com/ (Edited by mamster at 7:46 pm on Dec. 13, 2001)

I haven't been to Bizarro yet either. It's in Wallingford on kind of a back street. Do you know if it's kid friendly? I have some Wallingford friends with a couple of 1-year-olds and we're always looking for baby-approved places to take them. (We go to the 5-Spot a lot.)

I've mentioned Osteria La Spiga enough times. La Rustica in West Seattle is a longtime favorite, and while it's no secret, I'm surprised at how many people haven't tried it, maybe because it's all the way around the point. A while back I reviewed Ciao Bella Too, a little further up Roosevelt, and not everything was great but I enjoyed the over-the-top experience, and the pastas are rich and good.

I am a total sushi neophyte, I have to admit, but I'm sure fond of Shiki on lower Queen Anne. My favorite pieces are toro and eel.

I wasn't too impressed by Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. It seemed like he thought the most important things about being a chef were playing the dozens with his staff and making sure everyone understood that he was really badass, and this didn't leave much room for being interested in food. Boy did I have Bourdain pegged wrong. His new book, A Cook's Tour, is about the most fun I've had with a book this year. The unoriginal premise is that he's traveling the world in search of the perfect meal. Bourdain is a killer travel writer, as intrepid as Richard Sterling but with a better sense of how to describe a dish so people will understand it. He encounters wonderful and awful meals, gets sick, taunts his camera crew, and comes off as a lot more human this time around. Bourdain is enchanted by Vietnam, a place where it seems like everyone is cooking something fresh (his description reminded me of the first time I set foot in Thailand). He also makes a strong case for the virtues of haggis. If you liked KC, you probably already have this book; if you didn't, give it a try anyway.

I often use Robinson's Oxford Companion as a reference. Probably the non-beginner wine book I've enjoyed most is Gerald Asher's. If you've only ever read him in Gourmet, he actually has a lot more range than that.

I reviewed Grand Sichuan earlier this year: http://www.mamster.net/food/restaurants/nyc2001.html To sum up, I loved the auxhou chicken (which was basically fresh chicken with a thousand szechuan peppercorns) and the shrimp in szechuan sauce (related to but leagues better than the similar-named dish found on every Chinese menu), but the real standout was this simple celery salad which they called Growing Grass in Spring Must Be Like Green and Threaded Silk. Seriously.

When I'm out with friends or family at an Italian restaurant, I'm often elected to choose a bottle of wine. Nine times out of ten I'll order a barbera from Piedmont; it's hard to pick a bad bottle, and they tend to be high acid and low tannin without being weak-kneed like a lot of Chiantis and the like. Barbera is probably my favorite all-around wine, and I'd be happy to drink some daily Unfortunately, prices seems to have skyrocketed on this fairly ordinary wine. Just a couple of years ago, I seem to remember, I could get an entirely satisfactory bottle for ผ and sometimes less. Now that's closer to ม, with a lot of the bottles by "name" producers coming in at ฤ and some over ฮ. Who's driving the price up on barbera? Am I just shopping in the wrong places? Most of the wine drinkers I know never heard of it before I mentioned it. And does anyone know of a bargain label, a really good barbera still in the ผ range? (Last year in Seattle, the grocery stores were blowing out a past-its-prime barbera for ű or so, but that doesn't count.) (Edited by mamster at 3:19 pm on Dec. 5, 2001)

This is going to sound elitist, but those who drink box wine "for their health" as if wine were castor oil, choked down for the constitution, deserve whatever ill (or no) effects befall them.

I'm surprised no one poking around on the grub shack site discovered Rage Against the Coffee Machine, which is a little thing I did a few years ago to get over some writer's block. I tell you, the hate mail I used to get from Rage Against the Machine fans made life worth living. Nowadays I play guitar, bass, ukelele, keyboards, and sing in a band called Fluffy Kittens, consisting of me and a couple of friends. Depending on our mood, we do either weird electronic pop or Magnetic Fields-influenced acoustic folk-rock stuff with three-part harmonies. We usually practice Sunday afternoons (we all have jobs or school and the band member with the recording equipment has twin babies) and make lunch; we all like to cook. It's a great arrangement, much better than back when I thought I was going to be a rock star. For lunch we've made potstickers, falafel, burritos, and plenty of other stuff. Sometimes we give up and order pizza if the music is going especially well. We want to start playing out quite soon. Ah, food related story. The day I made potstickers, the band member who usually makes his potstickers with peas and basil (his wife's a vegetarian) said, "Hey, your potstickers are better than mine. What's your secret?" Me: "Pork." girl chow, I'd love to hear some of your stuff sometime. If anyone is interested in hearing some Fluffy Kittens, email me (mamster@grubshack.com) and I'll give you a URL with some MP3s; I don't want to post it here. [self-promotion mode off]

This thread has gone far adrift, but I am one of those hands-off (i.e., lazy) moderators. girl chow, you drum? Are you in a band? If so, what kind of band? When I'm not cooking or doing homework, I'm usually making music, so you've piqued my (other) interest.

January would be good for me, too, since it won't be smack in the middle of finals or holiday preparations. Is Le Pichet open Mondays? Papachef's place is closed then. Let's check in after xmas and nail down a plan. Sounds like a great birthday, girl chow.

I'm suspicious of any claim in a cookbook that something is easy. Of course some things are easier than others, but few things in cooking are easy the first time you try them, and too many cookbooks speak with the voice of the expert who can't remember what it was like to be a novice. I've long had trouble with soup. Everyone says soup is easy; probably most of these people make one or two soups and have been doing so for years and refining their technique each time. As I see it (and I realize it's silly to talk about all soups as if they were the same), with soup there are an unusual number of things that can go wrong, and one of them often does. These days I mostly make Thai soups, since anything with that much lime juice, chiles, and fish sauce has to be at least pretty good. And don't get me started on beef stew.

I still haven't been. Would anyone else be up for a Seattle egullet get-together at Le Pichet?

Since I'm having a murderous university quarter of senior biology requirements, I'm cooking much less right now. As of the new year things should be back to normal, which is typically five to six meals a week, dinners and a weekend lunch or two. I start to get cranky if I'm not cooking enough.

I use a sharpening stone (cost me all of ษ minus an employee discount when I worked at a kitchen store) and am fairly proficient at keeping my knives sharp. I can only remember giving myself two bad kitchen cuts: one with a tin can lid, and one with a dull Chinese cleaver. My biggest gripe about cooking in someone else's kitchen, something I otherwise enjoy, is using dull knives. It's bad enough when they have some lightweight serrated Ginsu equivalents, but worse when they have what was a decent knife that has been dulled beyond the point of being unsafe and back to the point of being safe because it won't cut a #### thing. I'll gladly cook with a cheap nonstick skillet or a dented Revere stockpot, but I've been using sharp knives so long I don't even know what to do with a dull one. My own personal #### would be a room full of onions and a dull knife. Okay, the other pet peeve is when they have twelve knives and not one of them is a chef's knife. There, I am an official knife snob.

Wait, which are the Henckels with the rubbery handles? Mine is from the four-star series, with the molded plastic handles. They're not nearly as slippery as metal, but they're not rubber, either. As far as knife length goes, have you ever seen that Seinfeld episode with the woman with "man hands"? I'm the opposite: a tall man with little hands. The 10" knife feels unwieldy. If I were in the Army I'd be the guy saying, "This M-16 is too big. Do you have an M-15-and-a-half or something?"

Or Egyptian tickets and dinner at La Spiga, which can definitely be done for ำ for two. Giggles is still open, but boy do I find that place depressing.

OK, to go with the pots and pans thread, here's the knife thread. Which knives do you really use and who makes them? I only use three knives regularly in the kitchen, and only one every day: an 8" Henckels chef's knife. The other two are a 4.5" Wusthof utility knife (I find this more versatile than the typical 3" parer) and a long, curved Messermeister bread knife. My friends often ask if they have to spend ๠ for a knife. I tell them I've heard good things about the Victorinox and Tramontina brands but haven't tried them myself. Have you?

As I mentioned on the Williams-Sonoma thread, I'd like to know more about the Sitram Cybernox line. I don't know if Sitram has a website, but there are plenty of PR pages about the product, such as http://www.inductionsystems.com/cookware/cybernox.htm. Supposedly it has a metal alloy coating that is moderately stick-resistant, impossible to destroy, and gets very hot. They're expensive, though, and I'm not going to drop 贄 on one just out of curiosity. Has anyone tried it?

I think the pieces Yvonne mentioned are a stockpot with a perforated pasta insert, and I'm guessing the 12x4 inch pan is an oval casserole. As for me, I'd have to go for (not in any order): All-Clad 12" nonstick skillet (typically eggs, fish, and hash browns). All-Clad 10" non-nonstick skillet Lodge 8" cast iron pan (used exclusively for cornbread, but eat a lot of cornbread) All-Clad 3.5 qt saucepan (just big enough for two servings of short pasta, soup, or short ribs, plus a million other things. I also have a 2.5 qt All-Clad pot that I absolutely never use.) Mauviel professional weight copper saute pan, 9" or so. I'm ambivalent about this piece. It's brutally heavy and has to be polished, and I don't use it as much as I expected to. Still, when I need it, I need it. Cheap Costco 10" nonstick skillet. This thing has somehow lasted six years without flaking. I use it all the time, but right now I can only think of a couple of uses: eggs for two, and sauteeing breadcrumbs for a potato cake dish. Maybe I'll swing by Williams-Sonoma today and get a Calphalon for when this one dies. 1 qt Revere Ware saucepan. For oatmeal and Malt-o-Meal. That's almost my complete collection and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Next we'll have to do knives, unless we already did that.

I use the recipe from Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's The Dim Sum Dumpling Book, which was recently reprinted in John Thorne's Pot on the Fire. Off the top of my head, I believe it contains pork, bok choy, sesame oil, oyster sauce, soy sauce, scallions, and ginger. You can make the filling ahead, bring it over to someone's house with the wrappers, and make your friends and family help stuff them. Bring more than you think you'll need. I was going to do it again this year, but they were out of wrappers at my local store. I do keep threatening to teach my dad how to make tom yam....