russ parsons

they are a very trendy restaurant ingredient down here as well. so much so that farmers market farmers are going into the hills around their fields to forage them and bring them home. one recipe actually called for "double-gloving" before cleaning.

i like your explanation dave, but is the difference detectable when you're dealing with 8 quarts of water? my assumption was that a) since there was nothing to scorch with a thin bottom, and b) that volume of water would ensure even heating through the column. but it sounds like you know a heckuva lot more about it than i do.

i was amazed recently when i had to replace my small stockpot. the one i'd had was a real cheapy (thin stainless) but it had served me well for more than 10 years. then one day .... well, let's just say it's a bad idea to steam potatoes and play chess at the same time. when i started looking for a replacement, it was almost impossible to spend less than $50 and there were an amazing number for more than $100. this is a stockpot for god's sake, you use it to boil water. conductivity has nothing to do with it! i finally found an offbrand online that i'm pretty happy with, but it was still around $50.

by the way, everyone should check out this month's vogue for jeff steingarten's piece on roasting beans. truly, this way madness lies ... and no one does that more entertainingly than jeff.

i too would braise it. but if you're going to grill it, do it over indirect heat. and then slice it thin before serving it. it'll be chewy, but good flavor. i'm not sure about all those seasonings. i'm a salt-and-pepper man myself.

too bad. i've had my polder for more than 10 years and love it. i don't think it's a dual-use, though. just the normal one with the temperature probe. ah, the adventures that baby and i have had in my roasting experiments!

2 questions: i have miss silvia, of whom i've written previously. i've got an ancient gaggia mdf that i'm very pleased with. what are the benefits of a doserless grinder? and what are the top choices for mail-order roasted whole beans? i used to get malabar gold from josuma, but it was just such a pain in the ass i stopped. they only roast one day a week and you have to know by 11 a.m. friday that you're going to run out of coffee by noon wednesday. just not that organized. but it is killer coffee. right now i'm on torrefazione "palermo", which is very good. though not killer.

i'm not sure what fatguy means. are you talking wine list prices? at retail terre alte can usually be found at $35 to $40 (in socal), which makes it a great bargain as far as i'm concerned. quality wise i'd compare it to some of the dageneaus, which sell for a bit more.

i was lucky enough a couple of years ago to be visiting a friend in friuli when he was participating in the regional tre bicchieri tasting. i cadged an invitation and was really impressed by the whites. even "minor" grapes (ribolla gialla anyone?) had really crisp acidity and very nice minerality. compare, for example, felluga's pinot grigio to any from the rest of the veneto. there was a lot of good juice (and incredible prosciutti and affettati as well), but the wines that made the biggest impression on me were Jermann's Vintage Tunina and Felluga's Terre Alte. (i buy a half-case of terre alte every vintage and a full case of his pinot grigio, which is quite simply one of hte best food whites i've found). let me also put in a plug for friuli as a place to visit. well off the beaten track (though only about 2 1/2 hours north of venice), it's really affordable with very friendly folks. historically it's in a bit of a strange place and it really seems more austrian than italian, if your image of italy is florence and rome. the food tends to be very rich with a distinctive sweet-sour pull.

i've tried these several times and i have to say that i prefer my standby trader joe's roasted and salted, which i warm in a skillet before serving with a bit of olive oil. could be the one's i've been getting have been rancid--though not overly obviously.

when i first started getting into wine ... uh, never mind how long ago ... their riesling was one of my tasting group's default party whites. and once when i was a judge at the la county fair wine competition ... (see above) ... their gamay was voted best wine ... i think it's now called valdigue. i haven't tasted any of their more "serious" reds in quite a while, but these others offer really remarkable value.

tanks. i'm a little amazed that this thread, the point of which is really academic, has lived so long (of course, i have contributed to that in no small way). As a chef, you have a perfect right to refuse to alter your cuisine in any way. And as a customer, you have a perfect right to ask for any adjustments you like. And then to refuse to patronize anyplace that doesn't accomodate you. i guess the part that hit the hot button with me is the strain i detected of "how dare someone ask such a great artist--nearly a god!--to in any way do something he doesn't want to do?" when in the real world, all of us are asked to do this all the time. it's called being a grownup.

they are expensive. that's the least expensive finish (same one i got ... hell it sits in the storage room). some of those furniture finish units will go up to $5,000 and higher. i'm assuming it's the refrigeration unit, which has to be specially mounted to avoid vibration (the reason a refrigerator with a new thermostat won't work)

that looks like the same unit i got only mine's a little bigger (i think it was 450 bottles). and the best advice i ignored was from a friend who said "buy more than you think you'll ever need, because you'll fill it up." i took me about 3 months to get it to capacity. i've had it for 2 years with absolutely no problems. runs about an extra $15 a month in electricity and that's in sunny southern california. if you're thinking about buying, one thing you might try is something i did: there are a lot of folks selling these types of units, so do the research to find out what specs you want,then fax a spec sheet and askfor a bid. i saved a couple hundred bucks that way (which promptly went into wine to fill it).

Miss Silvia, all the way. though it does take some fine-tuning your technique to get it working just right. it hasn't been pointed out on this thread yet, but equally important is getting a good grinder. i recommend a gaggia mdf or a rancilio rocky.

proof that there is a god, that he does have a sense of humor and that he reads e-gullet: waiter story registration required. rp

now THAT'S an artist!

i think that's a really interesting point. my guess is that no matter how much we may bleat about writing/cooking/acting/singing for ourselves, all of those activities are really based on pleasing someone else. and when, for whatever reason, we fail to do that for either all of the audience or even the smallest part (sometimes it's that one bad call in the midst of 100 good ones), it really eats us up. blaming the idiots is a lot easier than re-examining what we're doing. of course, sometimes, they really are just idiots.

yeah, but the great thing about writing is, even if the topic isn't the greatest, the writing of it--the actual manipulation of the words--is always interesting. i hate to get all norma desmond on your ass, but sometimes it's not the stories that have gotten smaller...

exactly. if you want things to go your way all the time, become a writer, not a cook. oh, wait, i've got to get back to my rewrite.

oh, i hope nobody misunderstood: i never meant to imply that stupid requests shouldn't BUG you. all i meant was it's part of doing business. it's why they call it work. and that as workplace violations go, it's pretty minor. you serve it, you charge them, and you hope they come again with a more open mind.

i loved that line. without getting all deconstructionist, it reminds me of how sometimes i'll be looking at an old story of mine, and what comes to mind isn't anything about the story itself, but something that happened during the researching or writing of it. and then there are all those times i get calls or letters about a story that someone read in their local paper that i can't even remember writing. the miracles of computer databases, where things you said two years ago, people think you just said today.

i finally realized in the shower this morning what was bugging me the most about this thread: the lack of generosity in the "artiste" attitude. it seems to me that those people are cooking with the primary intent of showing the world how brilliant they are, the hell with their customers' experience. one of the great things about cooking is the ability to make somebody else happy--after all, your patrons have a much more intimate relationship with your product than in any other art form. and mark, i was with michel during a lot of those meals and i know how much he hated them (every lunch seemed to begin with him pulling the tape and telling me what percentage of his clientele ordered a green salad ... an astonishing number considering the quality of the cuisine). but i also remember vividly a time when an employee came by the table to brag about how he'd dressed down a customer who had had the temerity to ask if they had any white zinfandel on the wine list. michel turned white as a sheet. "but they are customers!" he said.

wow, that hit with a whopping thud. sorry i'm late to get this started, but the real world (rewrites) intervened. we'll see if anyone else picks up on this. i do two basic kinds of stories: some that are story-driven (informational) and some that are recipe-driven (here's something I really like to cook). i'm lucky in that most of my stories come from my own ideas, as opposed to being assigned. that's not to say i'm a free agent. i work very closely with a very good editor, michalene busico, once i have the germ of an idea in order to refine it. and refine it. and refine it. at least that's the way it sometimes seems. sometimes the final story is a couple of degrees removed from the initial idea. but, i've found the final copy is almost always better than the rough draft, and as far as i'm concerned, no writer can ask for more than that. recipes are another matter. though they are always tested in our kitchen, they are rarely changed much. partly this is because of my built-in editing crew: my wife and daughter and our friends. i have trained them to be very tough critics. if something needs salt, they tell me. if no amount of anything is going to fix a dish, they tell me that, too. for information-driven stories, i think of the recipes as sidebars that serve to explicate and deepen the main piece. with recipe-driven stories (these tend to be columns), the process is reversed: the story is essentially giving background information, more complete instruction and explanation of the recipe. A good example of the differences are my last two stories: one on boutique marketing of beef, which didn't even have recipes, and this week's on softshell crabs, which was recipe-driven entirely. where do the recipes come from? who knows? a lot of them come from going to markets and looking at what's available. sometimes they come from restaurant dishes, though not usually. a lot of them are sparked by looking at old cookbooks, something i do a lot. when i'm really stumped for an idea, i can usually get something going by reading a few favorites: olney's "simple french food," anything by de Pomiane, Patience Gray's "honey from a weed", helen brown's "west coast cookbook" or any of the chez panisse books. also, when i want to be reminded of how i want to be able to write a recipe someday, i look to judy rogers' "zuni cafe cookbook". my criteria for recipes are pretty simple: first, they must be in fitting with the season (i do live in soutehrn california, where there are at least 5 farmers markets every day, so there's no excuse for otherwise). they must also fit with what i think of as my general aesthetic, which is basically looking for the most flavor for the least effort. that's not to say everything is a five-ingredient pasta dish, but that if a lot of effort or technique is called for there has to be a commensurate payoff. anybody else?

i couldn't help but think of this thread just now when i was asked to rewrite the end of my story.