Chris Amirault

The WS outlet in Wrentham is very good if you want to load up on All-Clad and other cookware. (There's a Le Creuset outlet there, too, along with at least one other kitchenware store.) But the knives at the WS outlet generally are low-end Henckels and worse. Which is to say: I wouldn't buy them.

The Alpenz stuff is slowly trickling out of MS Walker right now. If you ask specifically for things, you should be able to get them (save the Allspice Dram, which they don't have). Ain't that J.M amazing??

Knives: Sur Le Table and Stoddards are decent shops for knives; I'd love to know more about better options, though, so share if you find some! Asian: There are a lot of small Asian and Southeast Asian stores sprinkled throughout the Boston and Providence area. The big supermarkets are Super 88s; if you google that name, you'll find some options. Chinatown also has a bunch of stores. For fresh produce, best to hunt down where in the outskirts and suburbs the locals go. (If you want Providence options for "where the locals go," let me know. ) Spices: There's a Penzey's in Arlington, and they'll have just about everything you'd need to outfit a basic spice pantry -- and more.

That happens to me all the time. I tend to interpret it as a sign that I'm very good at getting a blazing hot fire going (and not that I dilly-dallied making my Collins ). That sauce is also nice poured over the chicken skin while it's finishing on the grill.

MaxH, I don't at all mean to tease, and I agree completely that merit and not age is the issue. Your examples are perfect. What we do here in eG Forums on projects like this is create teams, determine indexing criteria, and sit around "together"/across the globe hacking away at it. Order is just a labeling problem: step one could be assigning recipes numbers. But once those are done it's simply a matter of generating data within predetermined fields for each record and quality control. I'd also bet that your web designer could create a UI on the website itself that would enable this work to be done in a uniform way -- hell, google now has forms that dump data into CSV, excel, you name it formats. S/he also might be able to create a chat room where the folks can yak as they index.

You know what would be wicked cool (says the Boston kid)? Creating an online indexing workzone that would enable me, Max, and the other seven people who treasure their copies of Ye Olde Cookery Book to index it. You'd have some potential for quality control problems, but it would be an excellent way to tap into EYB members' collective investment in getting the job done.

That's correct, though it's not really about pre-ISBN as much as currently unpopular. I have a smaller number of pre-ISBN books than you do, but enough of them that I had a similar thought. I suppose that, if enough members pushed for an index on an oldie but goodie, you could bump it up the index list. But that seems pretty remote given the idiosyncrasies of vintage collections in general and the crowd-sourced indexing priorities EYB has set. (Necessarily, I'd think: if you're running a membership-driven for-profit web service, it'd be foolish to place indexing resources on something only obsessives like us have on hand! )

For starters, Daiquiri, Hemingway Daiquiri, El Floridita, Millionaire Cocktail, Rum Old Fashioned, Mississippi Punch, Maiden's Prayer, Zombie, Doctor Cocktail.

A truly commercial range, with star-shaped hexagonal gas burners.

LH 151 isn't available here in RI. Shocked that I left off a bunch of Plantation rums, including the Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaican. I can't find St. James here to save my life....

Salamanders. Commercial fryers. Ice machines. Walk-ins. Ok, ok, I kid.

This time of year we make a lot of zucchini and summer squash by halving them, scoring the flesh half, S&P and olive oil, and grilling them. Then I finish them with some acid and an herb: lime and mint; sherry vinegar and thyme; balsamic and basil. That sort of thing. No leftovers.

Our plant came back after harsh RI winters for several years, with no care or bother at all. I love the stuff, but, then again, I'm a fan of the funky flavors. YMMV.

This is a nearly impossible task, as I've been steeping myself in the world of rum lately and realize I know much less than I thought. 1. Light: Don Q for the well; Rhum J.M white if you've got the cash. Never had La Favorite, sadly. 2. Amber is such an absurdly broad category that I don't even know what it means. But, to play along, I'd choose Smith & Cross first, followed by, in no particular order, Chairman's Reserve, Diplomatica Reserva Exclusiva, El Dorado, English Harbour, Depaz, any Mount Gay, any Barbancourt, Appleton V/X, Reserve, or 12 year, and Old Monk. Can't get enough of that funky stuff. 3. Dark: Goslings or Myers's. I've never had Coruba, I should add. 4. Aged: I have been nursing a crazygood J.M Vieux VSOP the last few days, and I can't imagine much that would be better. Zacapa 23 is pretty skippy, though. 5. And... Gotta have Lemon Hart 151 and Wray & Nephew around. I wish I could recommend Flor de Caña or Cruzan, but I feel that both have lost a lot of quality over the last few years. Oh, and can we all mourn the passing of the astonishing Inner Circle Green? I am slowly, slowly allowing myself to finish the last bottle in the state.....

For cocktails? Or for sipping? Or both?

The lack of creativity in general is striking. The carpaccio and boeuf bourguignon may have been very tasty indeed, but it's pretty sad that those two cliches were chosen at all. Think of what the brothers Voltaggio would have done with that challenge, or Richard Blais, or.... You get the idea.

I'm talking about both. I don't think that it's unreasonable for "top chefs" to know a few basics (foundational knowledge) about most of the world's cuisines, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think that they'd bone up a bit on them as they head off to the US center of international diplomacy. I mean, I would. But, hey, this season, I certainly can understand the need to set the bar a bit lower.

On Sunday August 15 6-8p at Cook & Brown Public House in lovely Providence RI, we restarted our classic cocktails workshop series. This topic is for reports from the workshop.

One thing that you can do to have a bit of both worlds is to place your braised meat (with a bit of sauce) under a very hot broiler for a minute or so. It's not going to get the meat that same crunchy coating you get when you finish your browning, but you'll get a bit more Maillard reaction on the surface close to the heat.

I'm making a slightly different point than those I emphasized in the above quotations. I don't think that contestants should be expert in "every cuisine in the world." But, c'mon: Mexico, Italy, France, Thailand, Spain, Japan, India, China, and Brazil? I daresay that most of the amateur enthusiasts here in the eGullet Society, not to mention every chef I've ever known, would have some foundational knowledge of those key world cuisines.

That was a pretty jaw-dropping episode. Is there anyone else who was generally appalled at the lack of knowledge about non-European cuisines expressed by so many of these contestants? Even if you're so parochial in your tastes or training to have never experienced a key world cuisine, wouldn't you do a little prep before going onto a nationally televised cooking contest?

Got to talking with Denis Joyal at Joyal's in West Warwick, and he recommended the Superstition. I can see why: it's a blast of caramel, smoke, peat, and who knows what. Just terrific.

That would be terrific. Thanks.

If you need folks for test marketing....

For now, we've decided to keep the Thermador ovens. Reasons: we are having a hard time parting with them; other unexpected house renovations are taking priority; they both work -- one gets up to 350ish and the other broils. "Broils" isn't quite the right word. "Burns like the fires of hell" is more like it. This broiling unit puts most salamanders to shame: it gets blistering hot within two or three minutes and cooks four or five times more rapidly than our old gas broiler. First time I used it for meal prep I nearly burned down the house.