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Me, too. It looks like they were trying to spread the love a bit, trying not to have it even more dominated by the big food cities.

I'm not sure Paley's or Higgins from here in Portland deserve to be there. And I'm damn sure Higgins doesn't deserve to be that high. But then some others that catch my eye seem inappropriate, too, like Zuni.

Thanks Ronnie.

Anyone have the list of restaurants in their new edition? I think it's in October and probably only subscribers so far.

From Nutrition Data (Serving Size/Sodium): Potato Chips: 237g/1192mg = .5% Bacon: 38g/317mg = .8%

I got the same info from Diane: My TIVO still hasn't updated the listing, so I'm putting post-its up all over the TV now. The Miami Ink episode on at 10pm says nothing about Bourdain in TIVO. It's called "Garver's Ultimatum". I assume it's the right one.

I was out of town and also missed the episode because TIVO didn't pick it up. I can't find a replay date currently, so if anyone has any info, I would appreciate it.

Learned something new about making potato knishes: don't pack the potato too tightly. I was trying to make them look perfect and I thought I figured out this cool method of making a well and pushing the potato outward from the inside, then filling in the hole with extra potato. The potato expanded in the oven and often split the dough. Less handling is better. I just need to make them look right on the first try.

Ah, I think I must have just saw that you were host of Vancouver, BC, and Western Canada and assumed you were in BC. Sorry. That makes more sense, then. No matter what, it's a great recipe and class, and was a huge help. If you ever get down to Portland, OR, look me up! I'll buy you a pastrami sandwich and knish.

Well, I think I've reached a plateau. Latest pic: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?set_al...=view_photo.php A few lessons learned. Take them in the spirit of constructive criticism and an attempt to further knish making.... Pam, I think your recipe is a little too wet. I've ALWAYS had to add flour to get it to come off the bowl of the mixer. I think a 1/2 C additional flour is needed. We're both in the PNW, so it can't be the moisture around here. Maybe your flour is drier, but I've had this result with both Gold Medal AP flour and Bob's Red Mill unbleached bread flour. I've found that stretching from the ends results in lots of tears and an uneven stretch. If you pick up the dough from the middle and stretch away from the center, then picking up from progressively closer to the edges where it's still thicker, you can get a virtually untorn sheet that is much more rectangular. And it's still plenty thin. I usually go with about 4 lbs of onions that I fully caramelize for 8 lbs of potato. That comes out to about two heaping cups of caramelized onions. I also add about 1/4 C of a whole grain mustard for a little tanginess. I think leaving one end open helps them maintain their shapes and, frankly, is prettier. But I think they're less likely to crack. I usually reserve about a teaspoon of caramelized onions per knish and top them about halfway through the cooking. Letting the potato mixture fully cool to room temperature makes the process much easier. If the potato is still steaming at all then the dough will get wet and break easier and be harder to close, roll, and shape. I make big ones only because customers like something substantial and it keeps the check averages higher. Now to perfect rugelach.

btw, we're making tongue for next week, too. As far as I can tell, we essentially just make corned beef of tongue. Anyone know if there's anything special beyond that?

The bread's pretty good. It's a light sour rye by Grand Central Bakery. It's about the right darkness and has a great texture. I haven't decided if I like how sour it is or not. We started with a 40% rye from a local German bakery, but they couldn't make the loaves large enough and square enough for our sandwiches. The texture of Grand Central's true artisan loaves are better, too.

Another week of great pastrami, no cure problems whatsoever. Now that I've taken over the brining process entirely, we haven't had any problems. The injection is the key. We even had a few that went 4 days instead of 6 and they came out great. btw, Irwin, we went a little lower and a little longer and the texture was indeed improved. I would say it was about perfect this week -- at least with the pieces that weren't extra thick. We got a write-up yesterday in the Oregonian and were SLAMMED today. My f'n feet are tired! (And afterwards I headed over to the American Cheese Society Cheese Festival and ate about a hunnerd cheeses. I'm sweating butter!) Here's the writeup: http://www.oregonlive.com/dining/oregonian...7880.xml&coll=7

We've been making our own half sours and full sours for our deli brunch and just put in some green tomatoes now that we found a supplier. We started with recipes from this book, adjusting them a little for our taste, and think it's a pretty good one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158479277...3102338?ie=UTF8

Pan, the taste has been dead on every time. The only problem from the beginning was with thicker sections having a silver dollar wide uncured spot here or there (about the thickness of four silver dollars at most). But with the last two batches, that's been almost non-existant and non-existant, due to the injecting and stabbing. Also some texture issues here and there. Irwin, we've been playing with it a lot. It actually looks better in person than it does on camera (much like me, I hope). eg, it's juicier than it looks and the fat is more transluscent as it looks in the shadows above. The lighting was from directly overhead through a skylight. So there's actually a weird mix of shadows and direct sun. However, that's not to say that I wouldn't like it better. We've been trying to find the balance between the texture of the meat and the melting of the fat. We've had some batches come off that were really too tender. The texture of the meat on this batch was perfect. Each week, though, I think it's getting better and we're adjusting the balance. Maybe I can get the briskets in a few hours earlier this week. We were selling at the Hillsdale Farmers Market on Sundays, but we were selling out in an hour and a half. We were at max capacity with about 70 lbs of pastrami (uncooked), just because of space to brine. We moved to my business partner's restaurant (Ken's Place, 1852 SE Hawthorne Blvd) for Saturday brunch (9:30a-2:30p) and expanded the menu. Now, beyond sandwiches, pickles (our own full sour and half-sour), chopped liver, and salads, we have pastrami and eggs, corned beef hash, salmon hash, nova lox and bagels (we have a fantastic amateur baker making the bagels, just enough for the lox plates), knishes, and cheesecake. (Plus we can now make reubens, my favorite sandwich of all time and these are the best I've had.) It's allowed us to spread out the meat a bit more and the first and second week we had one brisket left over. About perfect really. We expect to be slammed this week, though, since we heard we might be in the Oregonian. The ultimate goal is to open a full-time deli and bagel bakery that at least wouldn't be embarrassed to compete with NY's offerings. Honestly, I think we're already doing better than a lot of the places I've tried in NY (including places that get recommended, not just the tourist joints like Carnegie). So come on down, it's a beautiful drive, and introduce yourself. I'll be splitting my time between helping wait tables and helping fill orders, probably wearing my Katz's t-shirt or my Black's BBQ t-shirt. You can go to Apizza Scholls for dinner and it'll be like you took a trip to NY without having to pay for an astronomically priced hotel.

So this last weekend was the first pastrami where I had done all the brining and stabbing and injecting and there wasn't even the smallest uncured spot. So if you're having problems, I highly recommend getting an injector. I inject the brine into the fattest parts of the meat and put enough that the brisket begins to puff up and sometimes the brine squirts out of stab holes. Here are a couple pics, btw:

You realize the Israelis aren't going after Hezbollah, they're getting back at you for all the pounds of pork you've put away in your shows. Indonesia and Puerto Rico would be enough to send 10 clean-living men to hell, and we all know you haven't done much clean living. Truly, I'm getting an image in my mind of Diane running around trying to clean up falling debris in your hotel room while everyone else tries to get through the day with enough alcohol to forget the day before. May it be strong and pure, and may you all come back in one piece. Literally.

That's what we've started doing: injecting the meats. We first started stabbing the meat all over and that seems to help, but the injecting looks like it has helped enormously. We're not doing 10% of its weight, but injecting in all the thicker parts a decent amount. I'll know for sure tomorrow, but the brisket we pulled out for corned beef hashes tomorrow looks good. Smoked the pastrami today, so cross your fingers.

Ronnie, if you ever get a chance, I'd love to see a cross-section.

No, I think that would price us out of the market. We use Cascade Natural Beef, which is pretty nice stuff, but not that marbled. Maybe I should make one for myself, though... I just checked the local wholesale supplier's site for Wagyu brisket: http://nickyusa.com/pdfs/PriceList.pdf They've got it for 4.19/lb, but we have to buy a minimum of a case, which is about 24 lbs. That's not really a problem, though, and it's not that much higher than the prices we currently pay, so I'll check into it.

That was my plan. I'm actually going to skip cabbage and cheese, though, and just do pototo, mushroom, and kasha knishes. I made a double batch of the recipe and 10 lbs of potatoes. I'll bake and finish them in the morning. I should have pictures tomorrow. Thanks again for this recipe. It's definitely better than most of what's in cookbooks. I'm sure come fall I'll be looking up your soup course.

Oh, hey, I found this photo of a kasha knish from Yonah Shimmel's on Eggbeater. You can see how thin the pastry is around the filling, which appears to be a mix of kasha and potato. http://eggbeater.typepad.com/.shared/image..._june_05_99.jpg I'm going to do a big batch of knishes and probably give them out or sell them with pastrami tomorrow. I want to do some other flavors, but I don't like the idea of just mushrooms or just cabbage inside the pastry. Is it lame or heretical to make pretty much everything a mix of potato and mushroom, kasha, cabbage, or cheese?

A couple other problems we've been having: though Charcuterie says a three day cure, we have had pieces, especially thicker pieces such as the point of the brisket, not curing all the way through after a six day cure. Even when we've stabbed the hell out of the meat and rotated it like crazy it still happens. We're using an injector now to try to help get the cure to the center. It happens much less with the flat and we've switched to all flat now. I don't remember reading if anyone else had this problem. I've been a little disappointed after switching to the brisket. The plate could be so luscious at times. It's much more difficult to keep the brisket juicy, though the lack of fat makes the rest of the process easier, plus the slicing much easier. Placebo, I've got a media pass to the cheese conference, so maybe I'll see you there. We're switching to doing the pastrami as part of a Saturday brunch/lunch out of my business partner's restaurant, Ken's Place, so that we can maybe keep from selling out in an hour and a half. (We're maxed out on walk-in space for brining.) Email or PM me or come over to PortlandFood.org to set up a meal, if you're so inclined.

I made some potato knishes last night using your pastry recipe. (I made up my own potato filling to my tastes, but it's similar using russetts, caramelized onions, salt, pepper, and mustard.) I closed the tops of some and left the tops open on others. I prefer them with the tops open. Here's a picture: I liked the pastry. It was more delicate than some. I think I would like it better with a different fat, though. I'm a little sensitive to the chemically flavors of most vegetable oils. (I used canola.) I think I would like it better with schmaltz or a light olive oil, maybe. Not sure how that would affect texture. I don't know that Shimmel's pastry is flaky at all, but it is VERY thin and delicate. I don't know that it's better than yours, just a little different. It'd be more similar if I stretched your dough really thin and made fewer wraps. I do think it could benefit from an eggwash just to add a little color. I'm going to play with the recipe and compare to some others. I haven't tried the one from Roden's book yet, which she claims is exactly like the pastry in NY delis. I was pissed that the 2nd Avenue Deli cookbook doesn't even have a pastry. They just make potato balls and coat them in breadcrumbs for the home cook. How lame is that? That book has been a big disappointment.

They don't seem that much different from the typical round knish in NY -- at least superficially. I think most in NY I've seen appear to have an eggwash and are open topped. The knishes at most places aren't as flaky, while the knishes at Yonah Schimmel's have a very light, delicate pastry shell. Honestly, I think that makes them rather terrific. I'm interested to try this recipe. The square knishes are just hockey pucks in my limited experience. Interested to hear if NYers think my assessment is correct.