russ parsons

for a while, i was afraid that my tombstone would read "did not soak beans". here's what i believe about beans: 1) you do not NEED to soak them. soaking does speed up the cooking process and, i think, result in slightly more uniform cooking among the beans. not soaking, of course, means you don't need to plan the night before about what you're going to fix for dinner. also, and maybe more important, not soaking the beans results in a very, very flavorful broth. this is much more like mexican-style beans than, perhaps, french. 2) salt them right away. try them unsalted and salted side-by-side and you won't believe the difference. salted beans are seasoned all the way through. salting at the end you just get a very salty broth and bland beans. 3) acid is somewhat problematic. it does delay cooking. add tomatoes, etc., only after the beans have begun to soften. 4) alkaline substances are VERY problematic. they'll stop cooking cold. this is why boston baked beans you add the molasses at the very end. it's also why in certain cities at certain times of year, beans will never soften (alkaline salts in the water). 5) i do believe that beans need to be started slowly and cooked slowly. the starches soften and dissolve in order rather than all at once. cook them too quickly and you'll find that more beans break up. 6) there is almost nothing you can do about the "digestive unpleasantness" issue. certainly, soaking has absolutely no effect. i talked to a scientist who had measured the sugars left in beans after soaking. cold soaking removed only a very negligible amount (the sugars are the stored energy the beans will need in their role as seeds--growing new plants; soaking is the first stage of germination, it would make no sense to purge sugars at that point). hot soaking removed about 10-15%, if i remember correctly. and, he said, if you repeated the hot soaking three times, you actually reached a decent level. of course, beans that were hot-soaked three times in a row lacked something gustatorily. beano, the product, is an enzyme that dissolves the specific sugars that beans contain. it does work. on the other hand, part of the musical nature of beans is that they are very high in fiber, which the american diet is very low in. beano does nothing for this. the only thing that works is eating beans frequently; your system will adjust. note that in mexico and central america, where beans have always been eaten in abundance, 1) they never soak beans and 2) rarely experience digestive distress. cook more beans.

he's a helluva writer, that's for sure. the piece he did on mario batali for the new yorker was really wonderful. and i'd heard he'd spun it out into a book deal. it will be interesting to see how they finesse that conflict, if true.

i remember when the matanzas creek first came out. that was a great merlot. the one i like best these days (i'm repeating myself) is sinskey's carneros merlot. really lean and elegant.

what's highlands inn like these days? that used to be a great place, back when brian whitmer and then cal stamenov were cooking. i haven't been to bernardus, but i do have a lot of respect for both cal and mark jensen, who runs the wine program there.

one good tip i learned (from doing a story on last year's champion barrista, heather perry), is that when you're stretching the milk, hold the pitcher at an angle. this exaggerates the "turning over" of the milk and really does a great job of turning any big bubbles into little bubbles.

it's not on your list, but i'm trying to learn to bake and the new baking book by sherry yard is really wonderful.

we visited the waterfalls at nardis, which was a pretty drive and a nice little trip to the mountains.

i spent a week in trento a couple of years ago and heartily recommend it. the town is beautiful. to me, though, the area is not "typical italian", in the same way that friuli isn't. to me there is a strong austrian influence, though certainly not when compared to alto adige! one of the things i loved best about trento was the place we stayed, the villa madruzzo. i can't say enough about this hotel. it is one of the best places i've ever visited. the rooms were a great blend of old and modern (it's in an old monastery, as i recall, which was redone into a retirement home and now into a luxury hotel). but it's fully modernized, with a/c, nice showers, and everything. there's a michelin-starred restaurant downstairs. it's on the hill outside of trento (technically, cognola di trento) and it's surrounded by private gardens. Villa Madruzzo best of all, it was downright cheap when we stayed there. In the late '90s, i believe it was around $85 a night for the best room. looking at the price list, it doesn't seem to have gone up hardly at all (adjusting for exchange disasters). not far away is maso cantanghel, a very Slow restaurant where they cook (extremely well) mostly from their own farm. Great local wine list, too. I've actually been thinking of going back, just to stay at the hotel, though.

i know he's been working on one for years. the first one is such a monumental work, i can't imagine facing updating it.

Once again, evidence that restaurants are more than places that dispense "cuisine". Almost everyone loves Zuni unreservedly, almost no one would claim that it serves the best food in town. Here's to the intangibles that make a great place work.

As I understand it, the arguments in favor are these: 1) Money--always compelling. 2) Chances to eat places you might not otherwise--I'd say arguable: In the first place, really good places aren't going to be paying for advertorial reviews. Do you really want more chances to eat at mediocre restaurants? 3) "Contacts in the culinary world" which "this guy" could tap for charities he's involved in -- Very problematic: If you're really going to do this restaurant reviewing thing, you're going to have to get used to the idea that you can't owe favors to the people you're covering--whether those favors are done under your byline or not. It's not pretty, but I think it was in the Godfather that they said: "This is the business we've chosen." Very wise.

beware blanket statements. they'll always come back to bite you on the ass (this one included). have you had rob sinskey's carneros merlot? incredibly elegant wine. how about Melville's Inox chardonnay from the santa rita hills? all stainless steel and crisp fruit. maybe it's better to say "i tend not to like", in which case, i'd agree about both merlot and chardonnay.

I've got a Reg, too, but I have to confess that I can't tell the difference in effect between that and the little plastic tamper that came with the Silvia. It sure looks nicer, though, and it feels good and heavy, like a real tool rather than a playtoy. But the coffee tastes the same.

as it happens, i'm working on a piece for next week on "knock-off" truffles, both white and black, that we're getting in la. the whites are from oregon. i find them very sharp, almost petroleum-y (but quite acceptable at the $15 an ounce they're going for down here). the blacks are chinese and at least the ones i bought were very convincing ($4 an ounce). i mistook them for lesser perigord truffles until i found out where they were from. by the way "risotto con fonduta e tartuffo bianco"?

my technique, which is indisputably the best ever, is close to Jaymes'. the only difference is that i use a couple of tablespoons of cold butter rather than the cream. the trick is catching it just as the eggs are starting to set. the butter lowers the temperature enough that you get that silky quality you get with long-cooked scrambled eggs, but you can do it in less than 10 minutes. as for beating eggs, you should do it as little as possible, just enough to incorporate the yolks and whites. of course, all of that said, i think there are two schools of egg scrambling: the soft, moist, kind (mine), that is closer to a broken hollandaise, and then the fluffy, dryer kind that you find at most restaurants. not to place any value judgements, of course ....

i've got a gaggia mdf that i bought on sale at zabars about 20 years ago. and it's still going. i replaced the grinders on it three or four years ago and it works perfectly. if you're serious about espresso machinery, this is a very good site: whole latte love

I don't recall the details, but someone who was shopping for pans recently pointed out that he thought the all-clad pans seemed lighter, and when he checked the bottom, he found that they were stamped with a place of manufacture someplace other than "canonsburg, pa" (sp?). i wasn't clear whether this was a special discount line that was made for sale to department stores, or what.

Just fyi: i got a copy of vol II yesterday. haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but it is out there (in spanish).

I agree, Paula. I think one thing that happens when we (speaking for all food writers, here) write those "ultimate" types of stories is that we leave the impression with our readers that a) there's no point in doing anything other than this, and b) that cooking well is so hard and exacting that it can only be done by lunatics like us who will go through a dozen tests. so, in a way, we are actually distancing people from cooking rather than involving them in it. the answer, of course, is that it's hard to make a very enticing headline (or headnote) out of "a really good beef stew" as opposed to "the very best beef stew".

2-gallon ziplocks rock. i use them to brine whole 8-pound pork shoulders. and to stuff with undies, socks, t-shirts, turtlenecks, etc., when packing.

One thing it seems writers rarely talk about to writers is how they actually go about their business. Maybe it's too personal. But since we are now engaged over the impersonal internet, rather than face to face where I may have to confront a look of scorn, there's something I've always been curious about. The thing that impresses me the most about your pieces (not that there is only one, of course, but one that is predominant in my mind right now), is the balance of research and humor (the "Jeffrey factor"). The pieces read so easily, the kind of flow that can only come with repeated and painstaking rewriting. So what I want to know is: Which comes first? Obviously this is not cut-and-dried, but when you are working a story, do you find the first draft is devoted mainly to getting the structure of the facts, to which you then add personality in rewrite, or to establishing a personality which you augment with facts later on? Do you even think about this? Would you? And, of course I knew that was a chalkstripe, not a pinstripe and I kicked myself as soon as I posted it. But that really is some fine wool. I wish I was an ex-lawyer and not an ex-sportswriter.

what a lovely answer.

I read the pasta book last year as part of my research for a story. It was fairly interesting, though there is something about a certain kind of academic writing that tends to be both dry and seemingly unreliable. I found no errors, or differences from other texts, it just seemed shakier than necessary. I do believe Clifford Wright has some material on the origins of pasta in his Mediterranean Feast.

and what about that cashmere chalkstripe suit?

BOB'S DOUGHNUTS!!!!! littlejohn's: the candy maker in the center, killer toffee. gumbo pot. the little ice cream place around the corner. get their lime-ade with carbonated water. the pork butcher right across the alley. as you can see, i once spent way too much time at the farmers market, but it was too long ago. it really is one of los angeles' treasures.