markk

Before you gang up on me, let me say that I've been going to the Carnegie Deli for more than 35 years - I've known it to have good times and bad. As far as the "nasty" waiters - well, that's always been a part of the experience, and they're not that nasty. And in recent years I've seen the food go way downhill, and then come back - frequently the pastrami is spectacular. And some nights it's not. Still, I don't know where to get better when I'm in Midtown. So last night I stopped in and took some pastrami sandwiches back to New Jersey. The pastrami was so terrible that it was inedible. Dry, and hard, and rubbery - not crumbly at all, but rather like trying to chew on leather, and about as enjoyable. And so I called them and asked for a manager, and complained, and he told me that I was crazy. "We serve the best pastrami in the world. Do you know how much of it we sell?" Of course, the real manager wasn't in, and so I called again this morning, mostly to see why they'd have pastrami so terrible for takeout, and what they'd say. He wouldn't take my call ("he's really busy") - and I guess when you don't want to hear about complaints you don't care about what you're serving your customers. But he had the woman who answered the phone run interference and ask what I had, and she kept putting me on hold. Finally she asked if they could offer me a partial credit on my sandwiches - I think the theory was that they couldn't credit the pastrami we'd already tried to eat, or the other meats that were in the combination sandwich, but they could offer me a partial credit towards a future order. I tried to explain that what I cared about was the fact that when I got my food back to New Jersey I couldn't enjoy it, and they just didn't seem to care. I'd take a crusty old waiter pretending to be nasty and serving me a moist, crumbly, delicious pastrami sandwich over this any day. Does anybody know where I can get same?

Thanks. I guess I do the same thing, but use a rich stock instead of the milk, and then thicken it with heavy cream. And I throw a few livers and giblets in with the browning meats. Does anybody remember DDL Foodshow in New York? (Maybe I should start a thread with this question.) They had Lasagne al Bolognese that was out of this world - and tasted just like being in Bologna. I asked the chef one day where he was from, and he said, "Bologna", and that explained it !! I never asked for their recipe or how they made it - I just remember that everything they had was fantastic, and I miss them !!!!!

How are YOU making/envisioning/thinking of Bolognese sauce? Are you not browning meats, with carrots and celery and bay leaves, evaporating wine over them, adding stock (or broth, I may be using the wrong word), and some tomato, simmering, and adding cream? Incidentally, I just looked in a few cookbooks, including the Ada Boni, and they do indeed call for all these things. The thing I took away from the region (that wasn't the only kitchen I was in) was that it was the stock thickened with the cream that was the sauce, with the meat pieces sort of floating around in that. If you're not using stock, what is making up the volume of your sauce (may I ask)?

Now you've piqued my curiousity. Care to share some of your discoveries? ← Well, just in the making of it, and the consistency. When it sits in the kitchens, it does 'separate', in that it's largely a soupy thing - they've got to take the ladle and stir it up a while to get it to the consistency you think of as Bolognese sauce. I've learned to concentrate on the stock, and the stewing, or fricasseing of the chicken parts - lots of necks, giblets, some liver, and the other meats, and then simmering those in the stock and eventually working my way towards adding the cream. There's some soupy stuff that floats around, and some butter or oil that floats around, and actually, this is exactly what it does in the vats of it that they make. I used to think that this is wrong, and that I had to work towards a homogenized sauce, which is clearly not the case. I also think that I'm not explaining it right and can't - it's something I can make lots better than I can explain.

Chicken livers are indeed a traditional ingredient in Bolognese ragu, and add an important dimension, although it would seem that you may have used too many. I had a friend who had spent a lot of time in the region (as I have) and who used to ask me to make the sauce - but as he used to tell me, he hated chicken livers (livers of any kind) - so he'd ask me to leave them out. Then, he noticed that the sauce "wasn't quite the same" as he had it 'over there'. One day I made a batch, and included just a few chicken livers, without telling him, and when he tasted it he said "now that tastes like the real thing" and figured out that there was a little bit of liver in it. (He's also the person who used to make me leave the anchovies out of things, and then finally realized that things like liver and anchovies add essential "background notes" and that things you leave them out of don't taste as interesting.") I learned how to make Bolognese sauce in Bologna - after hanging out for a few days at the hotel and restaurant Tre Vecchi in Bologna, the chef invited me downstairs to watch them make it, and I learned a lot of things I'd otherwise not have known. Hope this helps.

Well, my friends on this thread... This MAY be deemed slightly OT, but today I had to make the trek from Hoboken to Hicksville, on Long Island. My research showed that I'd be in Ben's Deli territory (ben's deli website), and while I'd heard about it, I'd never been, so of course I went. Lunch was a combination pastrami and tongue sandwich - small, quite small, by our standards, and at first I didn't think it was great, but I got into it and enjoyed it a lot. So we took out for dinner - chopped liver, mini meatballs (they had chicken-fricassee with the meatballs, but I only got an appetizer portion of the meatballs in sauce), kashe varnishkes, stuffed cabbage, and boiled beef Flanken "in the pot" with knaidlach and kreplach. Well... oy... was it enjoyable! It was like being a kid again and eating at my Grandma Ethel's house. Perhaps none of the dishes was spectacular, but as a whole - "oy", as I say, it was a very delicious trip into the past. I wlll have the occasion to make this trip again and will bring home a similar meal, and I just wanted to report on this to this particular group. I can't quite advocate making the schlep for it, but if you ever find yourselves on Long Island, do make a note of this place and its many locations, for sure !!!

You HAVE to call them on it. Well, if it's late in the day, I understand. But the more you shop there, the more you'll discover that more things need "calling-on" than not... unfortunately. I've been shopping there since 1980, when their main focus was at another location and current store was nothing like it is today. They have much good stuff and great prices, but the amount of 'stuff' that they try to "get away" with is disgraceful - I don't know if calling them on it counts for anything that will make them stop, but it can't hurt to let them know that they're not fooling everybody. Apparently they think they are, which is offensive.

Well, I can't say this tastes "great", but I give myself great credit for being able to partake of it: I can, and regularly do, suck on a Halls mentho-lyptus drop while drinking a cup of hot coffee. It came about one terrible allergy season where I needed everything I could to get my sinuses open - the Halls wasn't enough, and I thought some hot steamy coffee would help as well - then I discovered that the hot steamy coffee makes the Halls vapors work all the better. Of course, the proper hot drink would be some kind of tea, but I drink black coffee in the morning, and so that's what I go with. I think it's sort of totally disgusting, and/but it's a taste that I'm just fine with now. (If anybody else is inspired to try it, I'd like to know just how disgusting it really is.)

Just, in the unlikely case, that nobody gets that, I should quote the joke here: A Jewish family invited their gentile neighbors for holiday dinner. The first course was set in front of them and the Jewish couple announced, "This is matzoh ball soup." On seeing the 2 large matzoh balls in the soup, the Gentile man was hesitant to taste this strange looking brew. Gently, the Jewish couple pressed the Gentile man. "Just have a taste. If you don't like it, you don't have to finish it." Finally he agreed. He digs his spoon in, first picking up a small piece of matzoh ball with some soup in the spoon, and tasting it gingerly. The usual "mmmmmmm" sound can be heard coming from somewhere deep in his chest, and he quickly finishes the soup. "That was delicious," he said. "Tell me, what other parts of the Matzoh do you eat?"

I have eaten Matzoh balls.

That's exactly what I was thinking while reading this thread. As it is, I ask for, and very nearly always receive, a menu to take home, after every enjoyable restaurant meal I have (the first time I go to a new restaurant, that is). Nobody thinks it strange and nobody asks why. Whether they're high-end or casual, nobody hesitates or thinks twice about giving me one. The other thing I do is I always ask restaurants to fax me their menus and daily specials before I go. It's not always convenient for me to bring my reading glasses to a restaurant, and sometimes between the typeface and lighting, I can't always give the menu the attention I want to. So I've learned just to have it sent in advance and study it before I go. Nobody hesitates or thinks twice about doing this, either. Even restaurants from the other side of the country and from France fax me menus all the time. Now the other thing I was thinking is that if you're going into this field, you should be able to think of comments and wordings and phrases in your mind and be able to remember them when you get home, especially if you have a menu to bring the dishes to mind. You need to discipline yourself and learn how to make "mental notes" that you will remember, and you need to pull out a pad and pen and spend a few minutes when you get home doing "mental recall" and writing everything down before you allow your mind to forget the details, and the phrases that came to mind. There are courses, and books (for writers and others), that teach you how to do this as well. Of course, there's nothing wrong, ever, with making notes wherever you are, and anybody thinking that you're automatically writing about the meal would be incorrect. People carry notebooks and make notes for themselves all the time. You could be doing a school paper on some other subject and need to jot things down as they come to you - who would know? Of course, if you're transcribing the menu, people will notice. But there are times when, even if you carry a notebook, it's not convenient or possible to use it, so working on your memory and recall is still a good idea. As far as taking photos, It's totally accepted now. To illustrate this, two incidents come to mind. I always take photos when I go to a restaurant, especially in France. There's one beautiful place I go regularly, and always take photos. After a few nights of doing this, one of the "regulars", a rather matronly Belgian woman, marched over to my table at the end of the meal as she was leaving. She assumed I was German and asked me (in German), "Are you German?" I couldn't imagine where she was going with this, and I was sure she was about to tell me off for taking flash photos in a fancy restaurant during her meal. But I answered her, "No, American", and then she broke out into a gigantic smile and said "Ah, Wunderbar. Wunderbar!" It turns out she loved it that I liked the food enough to want pictures of it. The next night, people at tables near me suggested we photograph some of their dishes as well before they ate them. And one night, when we realized the need to take a movie-clip, with sound, of the cruncy pastry on the apple tart, I actually stood up, tapped my fork to my glass to get everybody's attention, as if I was making a toast, and asked if they'd be silent for a moment while we took the video. They were all happy to. Fancy French Dinner with Apple Tarte Video The next year, I dined at the fabulous two-star restaurant "Le Cerf" in France, and had the Truffle Dinner. It was so good I had to come back a week later and have it again. I asked the chef/owner - his wife, actually - if I could bring the camera by any chance and take photos of the meal, and she smiled and said "Absolutely. But of course!" Food Photos from 2-Star "Le Cerf"

What a pleasure to be cooking in this company, really! Great stuff, everyone !! I went to my Shop-Rite during the two-day lobster sale, and the seafood lady had saved me a beautiful 6.5 pounder! It was a tall as she was. Had I thought about it in advance, I would have brought a camera to get a shot of it before she cut it up for me. And expertly, she did it, too. Here's everything set out for the giant lobster dinner, which I cooked with roasted garlic cloves, grape tomatoes, parsley, basil, and white wine, and served with fresh corn and asparagus: (I hope somebody will let me know if I post too many photos of the giant lobster adventure.) Here's a close-up of the lobster: The lobster was sauteed in a beautiful Arbequina olive oil from Spain, with all the other ingredients: I really worked my photographer hard; it's amazing what you can get people to do when you're feeding them a 6 and a half pound lobster. The lobster was flamed with some Armagnac, the wine went it, and it cooked for a while, and then got served to the table: And while that was being photographed, I quickly reduced the pan juices down before pouring them in individual serving bowls and dishing out the first round of lobster: I had never made a lobster any way but steamed before. I adore them Cantonese style, cut up and stir-fried with ginger and scallion, and was dying to try this. And I was very pleased with the results, I must say.

I have to weigh in with the people who like to shop hungry. If I shop when I'm full, I'm a little turned-off to things (as somebody said above) and I don't buy enough quantity or variety of 'stuff'. Then, when the fullness wears off of whatever I mistakenly ate before I shopped, I find that I don't have anyting at home that I need to satisfy my cravings. If I shop hungry, I buy a lot of extra stuff, but that's by far the better alternative.

Following in my stream of fish dinners (posted upthread), Halibut baked with poached cremini mushrooms, leeks, and white wine: My Shop Rite has jumbo any-size lobsters on sale for $5.99 a pound this weekend, and I'm going to make a 5-pounder tonight, and hopefully have something to post. The last time they did this, I got a couple of almost-3-pounders and served them steamed with truffle-mayonnaise:

I haven't posted to this thread in a while because I haven't been cooking for a while, but I'm back to it, so here goes... Duck confit over a roasted-garlic-oil crouton, with French lentils and white beans cooked with roasted garlic and tomatoes, and oven roasted beets (to be described below): Roasted beets with a sherry vinegar-walnut oil dressing with orange peel, pecans, and cherries: Then, since I'm trying to atone for some bad things I've been eating like the 4-pound pastrami sandwich I posted elsewhere, a lot of fish... Grouper fillet with shrimp, yellow tomatoes, and corn: Tilefish fillet roasted with shrimp, thyme and lemon zest: Halibut poached with mussels, cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil and parsley: and finally Grilled Tuna and shrimp with grape-tomatoes and a roasted-garlic broth:

I know the word you mean, Jason, and although I can probably best you one with a story about my paternal grandmother, (and horrify you all the more) I get the feeling that I shouldn't tell it here. I do know about "depression-era" mentality, for sure, and it's not something that I meant to make fun of. But my mother didn't have it, actually. She loved to enjoy her money, and loved to go out and order gigantic lobsters and steaks, and since she hated to cook, my parents both loved to invite our friends out to restaurants and treat them on a regular basis. As far as the dinner for one less person in the Chinese restaurant, in her case I honestly think that she thought that she had discovered this trick and was just so proud of it, becuase she always pointed out to people that she was doing it. And if they actually made you order for as many people as you were, and we did have leftovers to take home, I could have discovered cold Chinese food for breakfast so many years earlier!

My mother under-ordered Chinese food as well (which is strange on two counts at least - one, they always took out deli, as in tounge, pastrami, and corned beef to have at home), and second because we were very well to do, and certainly did not have to order dinner for one less person than we were, and regularly went out for very expensive dinners. But no matter if we were 4 she'd order dinner for 3, and when we were 8 with company she'd order dinner for 7 - of course, some from Column A and some from Column B. I never had a-la-carte Chinese food my whole growing up. But she'd also do something that got my father furious. She'd do some quick math, and make a production out of cutting up and apportioning the eggrolls, since you only got as many as you ordered dinner for. So while the dinner for 3 amounts of food in the bowls and dishes was probably enough for 4 (I could have eaten more), you still only got 3 egg rolls (I say this for those people not familiar with this style of ordering Chinese-American food). So everybody would get 3/4 of an egg roll, including the person who got the three 1/4 egg roll pieces. And honest to God, she would even do the 7/8 eggroll. My father got spitting mad, and with language I can't use here, would scream at her "for crying out loud, why don't you just order another effing eggroll !!! We can afford it !" I really enjoyed hearing that other people did the dinner for 4 for 5 bit too.

This may be somewhat O.T. (am I allowed to do that in a thread I started?) but sometime in the 60's, I remember vividly that my father came home from work, all excited, acting like a man who had met an alien. He was having lunch at the "luncheonette" local to where he worked, where the owner was a friend, when a salesman came in to demonstrate a brand-new appliance: the Radar Range. Oh, I remember his eyes wide and excited as he told how they placed a mug of cold coffee in there, and 30 seconds later it was piping hot! I'll never forget that description. Of course, it was then another 20 years or so before kids started giving microwave ovens to their parents for them not to use and give every excuse imaginable why.

Why do you say that??? Does marijuana have anything to do with standing at the refrigerator with the door open at 4 in the morning and shoveling cold Chinese food and pizza into your mouth as fast as you can, eating some things cold while others are nuking-up? I wouldn't know anything about that.

The bathroom at Sun Lok Kee (on Mott St. in New York's Chinatown, before it moved to Flushing) - surely one of the most beloved restaurants in New York - was probably the most disgusting restaurant bathroom on earth. Filthy, dirty, disgusting. I'm sure that the lady upthread who made her family leave a Chinatown restaurant after seeing the bathroom would have found that one immculate compared to SLK's. Although that didn't keep me, or most people away, obviously. Yet strangely enough, their kitchens and back-of-the-house, which I got to see twice, were immaculately clean. After I had achieved "regular" status there, I commented on how strange it was for a place that specialized in such good seafood not to have tanks in the window as most places in Chinatown do. That prompted an invitation to come and see the tanks "downstairs" in what turned out to be a subterranean warren of rooms reached by a staircase at the back of the kitchen. And having seen their bathrooms, I was sure I didn't want to do this, truly afraid and anticipating just the worst sanitary nightmare imaginable. But the kitchen and downstairs storage and tank areas were spotlessly clean. There was just nothing scary about the cleanliness of the kitchen, and in particular the various basement rooms with the fish tanks were as clean as could be - and in the many tanks, the glass was sparkling, and the water crystal clear! There were tank after tank of the various fish being offered, and some really gigantic lobster tanks. All as clean as you could ever hope to see! It made us think that perhaps they kept the bathroom a pigsty for effect, honest.

But don't you think it strange that my parents, for example, who were obviously major Chinese food lovers, never knew the joys of cold fried rice for breakfast? Why did they never think of this or crave it, is what I'm puzzled over.

When I was a kid (we're talking the early 1950's to 60's) we ate Chinese food out at least once a week. We had the traditional Chinese-American dinner of wonton soup, egg rolls, spare ribs, shrimp and lobster sauce, and pork fried rice (as so brilliantly capture some time ago in a photo-essay on eGullet by Jason Perlow at the King Yum restaurant, in Queens, NY, which is indicentally the same restaurant my family used to go to all those years ago)... But we never, ever, had leftovers to take home. And we never took-out Chinese food, and we never had delivery (although I don't think that even existed then). And so I never knew what it was like to have Chinese food leftovers in the regrigerator, or of course the joys of having them cold for a late night snack, or breakfast. It wasn't till I was out of college and on my own that I discovered this. Did anybody grow up with a similar experience? Did you have Chinese food takeout, or leftovers in your fridge as a kid?

fiftydollars is correct, I always specify to my butcher that I want ribs 10-12, otherwise known as the loin end or small end. I could not disagree stronglier. The loin-end ribs are way too lean. The glory of a rib roast is what happens when the fatty parts of the ribs near rib #6 (the first official "rib" cut south of the 'chuck') are slow roasted. Here's a photo of such a cut raw, and one such roast that I cooked. The fatty meat not only crisps beautifully, but the fat that's there drips through all the muscle as it melts, and tenderizes and flavors all the meat. (The cooked roast is two-ribs, and will pretty much feed three people, by the way, although you could stretch it to four. But it would pay, greatly, to get a bigger cut with a third rib, because it's easier to get a crusty exterior and rare inside with a bigger piece of meat. I always start the roast at 550, or as hot as the oven will go, and then turn the oven down to 325 and use a probe or a thermometer, and take it out when the center reaches about 122. When I cook a small roast (2-ribs) such as this, I start by rendering some fat in a pan and crisping the outsides of the meat before I put it in the oven, because at the amount of time that a small roast takes to cook, the outsides won't get crisp enough. And, the crispy factor has a lot to do with the fattiness of the lower-numbered ribs. The loin roasts won't crisp as much.)

SYD's HOT DOGS - what's the second best way to cook them? I don't have an outdoor grill (not permitted on my paprment terrace), and I see that that's the preferred method. What would be the backup plan? I do have a convection broiler that gets very hot, or I could use a flat griddle on the stove. I took my life in my hands and drove to Bests the other day to get some (thanks to all the advice here on eG) , and want to prepare them to maximum effect, since I've never cooked 'em at home. Thanks.

Well, I had seriously considered ordering some Matzoh Ball soup as well. (For variety, you know.)