Chris Amirault

You can get a sense of the difference over here, where I'm grinding up some nixtamal for masa. I made the decision to go with the Ultra Pride+ because I already have sufficient blending/grinding capability and was lacking the grinding action that I wanted for really smooth pastes, doughs, and batters. If you want something that'll mince things into superfine particles, this is the wrong machine. If you want something that is pounded into submission, the Ultra Pride+ is your baby.

Such an interesting question. Really sends one down memory lane.... Early 1980s: was the go-to book for me and a couple of roommates in college. Between the three of us we probably cooked everything in the book twice. Learned how to saute, what a shallot was, how to blanch, basic pan sauces.... Mid-1980s: Got all cajun with [amazon=]Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, from which I have cooked dozens, maybe hundreds, of meals over the years. Growing up in a New England Yankee household, this was my introduction to big flavors, and I didn't turn back. (I also smoked out at least three different apartments in Providence and Brooklyn making blackened something-or-other and got roux burns the size of figs on the backs of my hands.) Late 1980s: Got a book I don't see mentioned much anywhere, Cooking with the New American Chefs, and made about three quarters of the stuff in it. It was my introduction to the world of top-tier US restaurant cooking at the time, with sections on Marcel Desaulniers, Lawrence Forgione, Mark Miller, Bradley Ogden, Jean-Louis Palladin, Richard Perry, Wolfgang Puck, Michael Roberts, Lydia Shire, Jeremiah Tower, Barbara Tropp, Jonathan Waxman, Jasper White and Barry Wine, among others. I remember devoting an entire weekend to two different seafood sausages (Palladin and someone else, I think). Around that time I also got my first , the 1986 edition, which I read like a novel and cooked from now and then. 1990s: I devoted a lot of time and energy to cuisines that were neglected by the largely European/American bent of the above list, with the big three authors being Diana Kennedy ([amazon=0553057065]Art of Mexican Cooking), both of Barbara Tropp's books (China Moon Cookbook & Modern Art of Chinese Cooking), and especially Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook, which I'd have to say probably belongs at the top of my list. Its breadth and depth, its ability to capture complex cuisines in ways that were meaningful to me, its design: it all had a profound impact on my ability to experience food that I otherwise would never have known about. If you take away any other single book, I'm basically the same cook. Take that away and I'm not. 2000s: Though my collection expanded rapidly, there probably should be only two here: Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie and David Thompson's Thai Food, my obsessions with which I've blathered extensively about around here.

I'd certainly move to Italy (or France, Thailand, or Spain) if I could afford to do so, believe me! Another thing I miss: fish stores that had an extremely variable selection because it all came off the boat that morning. (RI Fish Company was my go-to back in the day....)

Are people finding books that they want to push into that "use" category?

I have two Hampstead Teas here at work, Darjeeling and Earl Grey, and I like both of them just fine. They ain't Norbu, and their notion of "leaf tea" doesn't mean "whole leaves," but they're a nice day-to-day tea. As for the organic part, well, I fill my body with all sorts of strange toxins and work in a preschool, so that's not a big issue for me. However, I wonder if high quality teas are typically organic anyway, or at least minimally fiddled with.

They're prefilled?

15-20 minutes?

There are, of course, online food destinations that are both non-profit and damned fine. Ahem.

You should use the Alinea book! I'd say at least 75% of the book is doable with standard home equipment and standard home/grocery store ingredients. I've only done two complete dishes from the book but I've used tons of techniques and components (tweaked to my own purposes) from it. Of course I should use it! I should also use Keller's Bouchon, Wolfert's Cooking of SW France, and Kennedy's Essential Cuisines of Mexico more often, and I should cook every dish in Thompson's Thai Food instead of only 20% or so, and I should do each exercise in Pepin's Complete Techniques.... As my mother likes to say, "Shoulda woulda coulda." As arbiter of the arbitrary, I say: Yes. That counts as use.

Of the 92 on my downstairs cookbook shelves, I've used 64 more than once, for a rate of 70%. A bunch of the non-used are wishful-thinking aspirations (Alinea stands out), regional entries to round out a geographical gap (Saudi Arabia), or functionally reference books.

My vanilla extract is astonishing right now. Following a drink with Avery and Janet Glasser of Bittermens bitters a while back, I started shaking all of my infusions daily. (Avery and Janet shake their amazing bitters a couple hundred times the first day, and then a few dozen each day after that.) Same clearly applies to the vanilla extract, which was useable within two weeks and is now a heady mixture.

Out of the oven (a bit too early, sad to say, due to preschooler bedtimes): Served over polenta with mirepoix and the fat/jus from the ribs:

Not rarities. Extinct.

I spent a bit of yesterday grinding nixtamal and making torillas -- one of the most satisfying cooking experiences of my life. After an overnight soak, I rinsed the nixtamal thoroughly: In my first crack at using the UltraPride, I put whole pieces of corn into the central bin, but they were a bit too large to get the machine grinding away. So I did a bit of basic prep: A little pre-UP prep did the trick: I pulled the masa out a bit early, but it was still well ground and ready for making tortillas: Well, honestly, more like gorditas: I think that the more coarse grind makes for thicker, toothier breads -- hence the gordita comment -- but, man, these are amazing. With some tweaking, I can imagine making world-class tortillas. Already, these are so good I'm tossing the bag of Maseca out.

Pretty impressive! But: Now that's the group I want tallied!

I had decided not to get the bolster ground down because the last guy who did it to my chef's knives "sharpened 'em all for free." Erp. And, no, no car doors, loose screws, or otherwise inappropriate deeds.

Pray-tell what do they buy them for then ? To put in their $50K kitchens with Wolf ranges and Sub-Zero refrigerators; to give to friends "who like to cook"; to look at for a few weeks before shelving them; to impress friends and relatives; to read for ideas, inspiration, and entertainment. Don't believe me? Well, if you'd like to participate in an utterly invalid demographic experiment, click here for the cookbook use throwdown.

Over in a discussion about weight-based cookbooks, I wrote: One member agreed; one expressed doubt. So I propose this throwdown: 1. Walk over to your cookbook pile/shelf/collection. Right now. No fair choosing today as "clean out the unused cookbooks" day. (Don't dig around the attic either.) And if you are a pro, count the ones at home, not the ones in the basement that you steal from for your "original" dishes. Count the total number of books there all handy and ready to go. 2. If you have fewer than ten cookbooks and are out of high school, you're done. We're looking for people who buy cookbooks, after all, not people who got "Joy of Cooking" from their mom, got "Enchanted Broccoli Forest" from some one-week relationship with a vegan, and then called it quits. Sorry. 3. If you're still playing, count the number of books in your collection that you've used to cook more than one dish. (In this throwdown's arbitrary rules, cooking a single dish is an aberration; cooking two or more is defined as "use.") 4. Divide the tally in #3 by the tally in #1. That is your use percentage. Post it here, along with whatever lame excuses you have for the use percentage being so low ("I study Robuchon & Adria; I don't try to imitate them"; "I get reviewer's copies that I keep around to impress dates!"). My guess is that few of us here in the eGullet Society will post numbers higher than 80% -- and if we're honest, we'll get many posting halvsies or less. (I've done my calculation -- my tally 1 is 92 -- and will post the use percentage after a few others have taken the dive.) I'll also stipulate that this crowd is atypically user-friendly, and that we'll skew high on this calculation. But we'll just have to see about that, won't we? Grab your abacus, get to the cookbook shelf, and start adding.

Not sure they sold it, though.... And no receipt, that's for sure.

I have two prized Wusthof knives, the first two major purchases I made as a budding home cook over 20 years ago. One, the chef's knife, is still alive, well, and hacking up poultry. Here's the other, a paring knife: This thing has gotten a lot of hard work over the years, as well as a lot of love. It's never seen a dishwasher or a sink bottom, and it's been hand-washed within the hour 99% of the time. When it went missing two years ago (it was on a high shelf in the foyer for a few weeks) I panicked and bought a MAC paring knife. I love that MAC knife, don't get me wrong, but when this little guy turned back up, I nearly cried out of relief and happiness. Then, yesterday, my wife picked it off of the magnetic strip and, well, this happened: Wiping tears away, I ask you: 1. What the heck happened? It was spontaneous and utterly unprovoked. Ideas? 2. What should I do about it? I think I got it at William Sonoma in NYC back in 1988, but honestly I'm not sure. Has anyone ever returned a knife to Wusthof? Adobe isn't liking my work computer right now so I can't download the lifetime warranty pdf.

Methinks that people who actually buy cookbooks to cook or bake are a tiny, negligible fraction of the cookbook-buying public.

Why not distinguish your product as best you can? You are trying to take business away from her, after all.

As someone who has bought, afaik, the entire existing supply of IC green in the state, I was deeply relieved to taste the S&B and know it was on the way. Similar styles, excellent for mixing -- though I haven't had the pleasure of a side-by-side.

Yes, I believe that's correct. Perhaps Dave or Eric can weigh in.

I tasted this thanks to Eric Seed (Society member eas) and the gang at Drink in Boston last week, and it's fantastic. The website description is spot-on.