Katherine

Do they really call it "'nueve' nouvelle cuisine", not "'nueva' nouvelle cuisine"?

That, too.

The stuffed onions were the standout this year.

I guess we have different views of what "mainstream" means. If you consider Gramercy Tavern mainstream, then by your definition it is. For me, 'mainstream' would be for me to know it was available in local restaurants, (local to me, not to you), typical local restaurants that is, not just those as expensive as Gramercy Tavern, which is very high end in my town, and also know where I could purchase it locally, too. Anybody who could afford to eat at any of those restaurants on a regular basis is considerable richer than most of the people I know.

The only reason creme brulee is available on so many dessert menus is that there are large numbers of people who never tire of it, and are willing to endlessly fork over money for it.

Katherine, I don't see that you have any responsibility but to side with those who are working towards improving the quality of our food supply. By quality I mean both taste and healthfulness. By letting a fanatical group derail discussion of food, I think we're letting the important issues get sidetracked. Economic class postions are being drawn on the foie gras issue and the net effect will be to polarize opinion. There's also no question in my mind that meal and fowl raised without antibiotics and other chemicals are more expensive to raise. Those who don't support foie gras because they can't afford it, or are unwilling to pay the price even if they can afford it, may not pay the price for healthy chemcial-free meat and poultry either. That's why I think we all need to understand the issues and not let fanatics successfully influence the market. I do not believe I can eventually expect a group determined to ban the sale of meat, to work towards healthier meat. It works towards their position to have meat be bad for you. If there were something I could do to improve the quality of meat to myself (remember, last year at this time there was beef and pork available that were not pumped with price-enhancing chemical solutions, so we're not talking $$$ to raise better cattle on this particular issue-and who got paid off to allow this to be done?), then I would gladly do it. I would note, however, that my putting energy or effort into ensuring that foie gras remain available in this way will not affect the quality of meat I have available to purchase, nor do I expect a single foie consumer to make a corresponding effort on my behalf.

I plan to cook a whole lobe, tonight and at least once a week. We humans are omnivores. Let those who disagree eat cake! It is our destiny to be omnivores. Nenetheless, I can't see that I have any responsibility to work toward ensuring the supply of foie gras to the folks who can afford it, when I myself have no real access to meat that hasn't been adulterated with chemical solutions.

I recommend you refrigerate anything that contains garlic, as it can grow botulism. It could have grown any kind of bacteria in that mixture, which might have caused it to set up.

I clearly recall that when I was a child, we had a cat that would carefully set aside the bones of the salmon in its dish, eating the rest. I don't recall what happened to the bones in the people salmon. After I left home, I recall coming back and opening a can of salmon. After I had been picking it apart for a few minutes, my mother told me not to throw away the bones, to give them to her. I was, oops, sorry, I ate them already.

I had one in South Portland, Maine, when I was going to school there, so it must have been about 1975, when I graduated. At that point I had never heard of it before. So look in Tucson before then.

I saw a recipe where they poached apple slices in a sugar syrup with lemon juice, before drying. In the photos they were very white.

I seem to recall that in a previous issue they recommended lowering the oven temperature and using a temperature probe, rather than using a water bath. I have since used this technique for many different recipes that called for water baths.

It's just so hard to choose, there are so many ways to make coffee really badly. My mother used to buy black-roasted Yuban and brew it so it looked like coffee but tasted like lukewarm dishwater. My father always went out to buy the coffee he drank. Any convenience store you stop at in the middle of the night on a cross-country trip is probably in the running for worst coffee of all time. Sitting on the burner for hours until it has no flavor but carbon...mmm. I once ordered a cup of coffee at a takeout, and the girl brewed me a fresh pot. As soon as 8 ounces came through, she poured it into a cup and gave it to me. 90% of the flavor of a 48 ounce pot in one cup. Yikes!

Monkey makes Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish. I made this once. It was very tasty, but I was the only one who ate any. This is the same recipe that Susan Stamberg would give on All Things Considered every year.

I used to do it (when I french-pressed) because after you pour the water on the coffee, it floats like a raft at the top, with the trapped air bubbles. I found that made it impossible at times to push down the plunger, and probably wasn't giving maximum extraction either.

Nick, this is really interesting to me. Suribachis are beautiful, but how are they more useful (to you) than my granite mortar and pestle? Now I'm thinking I might have to have one. Thanks, Squeat I have two mortar and pestle sets that I use all the time, but my suribachi has been used only once, and that time unsuccessfully. I think I finished off the sesame seeds in the blender.

I recall seeing "crap quesadillas" in a glowing review reprinted on the website of a trendy restaurant. It had apparently been there a long time before the web community was alerted. The next working day it was repaired. Just a typo.

I used to have a Zojirushi 3 cup neuro fuzzy logic rice cooker that I loved. My daughter took it to college with her. It came with a handle on the top, and the cord retracted, both nice features when you want to put it on a shelf between uses. It was big enough for us, and I loved the fact that I could set the timer and wake up to porridge, or come home to hot rice after a long, hard day.

There is little or no long-term information on most diets. Long-term research is expensive. It's really hard to recruit subjects and keep them participating in your research when they also must live and work in the real world. Unfortunately, what this means is that many standard dietary recommendations are based on very short-term studies of atypical subjects, laboratory studies, or speculation with no science backing it. How else can you explain the fact that more than a decade of bombardment with the recommendation that Americans should eliminate fat from their diets has resulted in a significantly fatter and less healthy population? It is a fact that longer and larger studies are required to determine the long-term safety and efficacy of just about all recommended weight loss regimes. Think about it. If you wanted to test the long-term effectiveness of a vegan diet for, say, weight loss and general health, you would have to recruit a great many subjects who were not vegans and convince them to stay on a strict vegan diet (of your choosing) for a year or preferably longer, to see what happened to their health. To see what happened the other way around, you could also try to recruit vegans, and switch them to a meat-eating diet. Good luck finding enough volunteers to get any real data.

Try starting at this website. They have good prices, and a big selection. You might find better prices if you shop around, but you can see what's available here. I've been lusting after the mochi maker for ages.

If you're in Japan, I can't tell you where to buy your rice cooker, but I can tell you that the most convenient ones are the ones with all the bells and whistles. Nonstick coating on the bowl insert, neuro fuzzy logic temperature controls, lots of choices on the menu, a timer... It's also true that there is a significant cohort of rice lovers who despise rice cookers and all they stand for. Ignore them.

Cranberries, sugar, and a little water. Nothing else, as long as you want to call it cranberry sauce. I've also made cranberry relish, chutney, etc, but they're not cranberry sauce. Did he chill his? It should have set up when it got cold, if he didn't dilute it too much.

The most reheatable mashed potatoes are made with heavy cream as the liquid.

The way I see it, the real problem with tea in restaurants is that they always bring you a cup of water that came out of the coffeemaker, which wasn't hot enough to make tea when they put it in the cup. They bring it to the table, then go to get the pretentious box for you to select a teabag to rip open and put into your now lukewarm water. It bugs me not being able to get a decent cup of tea, because I can't drink coffee. If we can get them over this, maybe we can get them to work on your problem, too.

Sure. Bone it out, season, and roll it into two separate roasts: one white and one dark. Cook with separate thermometers to perfect doneness.