JerzyMade

Don't know, I try to cook younger cuts of meat

I don't know what your Cuisinart pots are made off. I have several different stainless steel pots and pans: All-Clad, Tramontina and Ikea-365 line - they all work, as does cast iron. Aluminum, ceramic and glass definitely won't work. I've heard that some brands of stainless won't work either.

I got one on Ebay for about $120. The main reason was that I'm considering kitchen remodeling, and I wanted to experiment with one before sinking about 4K into something like Diva de Provence. What I found is that it's by far the best heat source for making stock. The model I got allows you to preset a desired temperature - it measures the temperature of the bottom of the pot - and simmer for hours without having to baby sit. After a few months, I tend to use gas for quick, high heat cooking (pan searing) and induction for long and slow. However, induction is also quite capable for searing. I just don't feel like dragging the portable unit out of storage for that. The only time when induction is a problem is when you want to constantly flip the pan during sauteing - you'll lose the contact with the induction coil and the heating won't be continuous. I highly recommend getting a single hub portable unit. As for replacing gas with induction at home my main concern would be durability of the cooktop surface and the cost of replacement. When I asked the sales guy he couldn't even tell.

It's really very simple. You show your appreciation to the establishment by the size of the tip you leave. They show their appreciation to you by the quality of service and comps. Not implying that any eGulleter would do that, but there are people who order the cheapest item on the menu, occupy a table for the whole night and leave a lousy tip. I'd comp them with coupons to another restaurant in the area. I've been comped a number of times, but if I did the math it would probably turn out in the same ballpark as the amount of money I left in excess of the 15%.

If I feel that I've been tricked it will be reflected in the amount of tip I leave. And I won't come back to such restaurant. Seems like a very bad business plan for a restaurant.

How about this -- does the woman in your life do the laundry? My wife runs the washer and the dryer, but she won't fold the laundry and put it in my closet. Should I stop serving the food I cook? Greetings from Mars.

The question isn't how many salad dressings I have in my fridge, but why won't I throw them out. They haven't been used at least since Bill Clinton's first term in the office. If anybody wants to do a dissertation on the eating habits of DINKs in the late 80s or early 90s just let me know - you can come for a "dig" in my fridge.

In Greece, the souvlaki looks like it has been first skewered, and then cut into cubes. Think of making a layer of flat cuts of meet, driving the skewers all the way across, and then cutting into individual sticks. There's certain uniformity to each piece of meat on the skewer. This would help keeping the meet from drying out, too.

I just came back from vacation in Greece. I tried to order yee-ro, but they insisted on calling it gee-ro (g as in good). It's also spelled with the gamma. I'd like to know why it's called yee-ro in the US.

That is actually a pretty decent bagel shop. At least, it was the last time I checked. I lived about 2 miles from this place. I'm pretty open to some "experimental" bagels, like sun dried tomato, perhaps even curry. But blueberry? Yuck!

He he! I raised the same issue on another thread a few days ago. I agree that shows about washing hands would be awfully boring, but I'm afraid that not every home cook is knowledgeable enough to insert proper sanitation. Also, when you consider that most cooking is done on "autopilot" it's hard to imagine that celebrity chefs behave differently when they cook without the TV camera. To me, it's OK when the sanitation is obviously edited out. What's not OK is when someone handles poultry with bare hands, walks over to the fridge, grabs a veg and cuts it on the same cutting board. This, I have actually observed.

I seem to have the opposite problem. The closer it gets to plating the food the harder it is to find my wife around the kitchen.

I'm jealous. I bought the most powerful one that Home Depot had at the time. Of course when your kitchen plumbing is disconnected you don't have a lot of time for comparative shopping. Nonetheless, 3/4HP does the job.

Look under your sink and check how powerful your unit is. If it's greater than 1/2 HP you can pretty much grind anything, less than that and you should pay attention what goes in. Originally my house had 1/3HP unit. It was about 5 years old when it died, without any abuse. I replaced it with a 3/4HP unit. It will chew up half a lemon without sweat.

I like Indian (as hot as it gets) as well as Japanese (everything except tempura) and just about everything else in Asian cuisine. For some reason, the oil is too dominant in the bland tempura. I'll eat some as part of another dish, but I'd never order a dish centered around tempura.

Jacques Pepin recommends holding them wrapped in a towel and under a few pounds of weight for several hours. Check 'La Technique' if you have access.

You know it's not one continuous take, right? The show is edited from multiple takes and a few angles. Just as the finished dish or even the ones shown at various stages often actually come from the kitchen behind the stage for the money shots, stuff like wiping the knife and washing hands is usually edited out. Most of these shows are only a half hour long. Of course there's a lot of cuts in what you end up watching. As long as the take ends immediately after handling meat or poultry I give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm specifically refering to uninterrupted takes where someone handles raw poultry and without missing a beat starts working on something else, touching every conceivable surface and utensil along the way. If you focus your attention on that you'll be shocked. Besides, cooking schools have sanitation in the curriculum. When FoodNet replaces the role of a culinary school for the general public it should be a little more responsible.

I don't doubt your results. If it sucks, it sucks! No two ways about it. But, tripe is tricky. It is a very popular polish dish. The preparation is very similar to mexican menudo, but the end result couldn't be more different. First time I had the chance to try menudo, I thought, oh, great, it's just tripe, I'm gonna love it. I was shocked. Menudo sucks! No, I don't want to start a war. The fact is that I'm used to a very different seasoning mix. Someone used to menudo would probably think that polish tripe sucks. To me, menudo tastes as if someone cooked the tripe with nothing else. Tripe is very gelatinous, a lot of connective tissue, and a specific, but bland flavor. It requires something else to bring out the flavor. From the technical standpoint, a good way to handle tripe is to treat it as a braise. It should be sliced (practically shredded) to about the same "geometry" as cabbage for a cole slaw. I like a 50-50 mixture of book and honeycomb tripe. With additional flavor enhancers, for example short ribs or an ox tail, and mirepoix. it should be braised for a long time. Marjoram works great as the main seasoning, both in the early stages and towards the end of the braising. Throw in some chicken or veal stock to moisten the braise. Well prepared, and well seaoned, tripe can be sublime, but it's probably one of the hardest things to get right if you've never tasted a good sample.

Another interesting aspect of timing the meals is the time it takes to wash hands in between. Next time you watch anyone on the FoodNet TV, count how many times they wash their hands after playing with poultry. Washing hands on TV doesn't make the best ratings, but these people would flunk the most basic sanition class. I shudder to think that people actually cook like that.

OK, I'll read the referenced thread out of curiosity, but I'm not betting on ME cooking it. So many good things to eat, so little time to burn the calories. Why waste my metabolic capacity on cauliflower? By the way, I do like broccoli.

Cauliflower in any form. Looks like a bleached brain. When Mom tried to puree it into a soup I'd spend ours separating the liquid from the tiniest specs of this vile plant. So finally, after many, many years of avoiding it completely I decided to give it a try. It's even worse than I thought. Tea brewed or served in a pot or kettle that came in contact with coffee. I'm about as sensitive to that as a mass spectrometer but not as polite about it as said instrument.

Obviously you don't need any more advice at this point, since the picnic is scrumptiously over (yummy picture), but you might want to keep in mind chicken sateh if you need another idea. Sateh makes an excellent finger food, and since it's usually on the spicy side, it could be served cold.

Actually, to be a stickler, they'll dissolve below 32 F. In fact, sprinkling salt on ice will lower the melting temperature. Recently, I did a little 'spearmint' for the kids, and we threw salt and ice cubes into a blender and got down to about 19F. Anyway, I'm still convinced that NaCl = NaCl. I doubt that any commercially sold salt is less than 99% NaCl and I refuse to waste my money on kosher salt for brining.

Is there any point to using anything but the cheapest table salt for brining? While the different types of salt are quite different in the crystalline form, I don't believe it makes any difference after they're dissolved. I've gone as far as to weigh a cup of the salt specified in the recipe and then substituted with the same wight of plain salt.

I've been baking for a couple of months in my electric oven, based exclusively on The Bread Baker's Apprentice and I can't bake enough sourdough for my family. At two loaves every other day we're out of bread the morning after I bake. Perhaps the result could've been better with a gas oven, but I don't have a comparison. I just use my electric one, which can be pre-heated to 550F, with a pizza stone and I spray some water. When I load the oven, I drop the temp to the recommended. Invest in a simple oven termometer that is clearly visible from the outside (most of them aren't). If you need a book on baking, this one is excellent. Ask yourself this question: is there a book that's better optimized for baking in electric oven? I doubt it. So if you want to try baking bread this is an excellent place to start, regardless of the type of oven that you have.