Chris Amirault

Whenever there's a sleepover at our house (there's one tonight), the first order of business is determining what the breakfast will be, and that leads to an inevitable debate concerning pancakes, waffles, or French toast. We have few knock-down, drag-out food battles around here, and this is one of them. I'm a fence-sitter on this issue. I haven't perfected a truly great waffle recipe yet, but have nailed a great pancake recipe that I can make quickly. If we have the time, however, I really adore a batch of well browned, long-soaked French toast using a very particular bread (the durum stick at Seven Stars here in Providence): they end up like breakfast souffles. What's your preference? If you had to pick only one -- home or away -- what would it be?

Didn't see this until this morning, but I went with the mixture of Fee's and Regan's, which worked very well indeed. Great cocktail.

Solved the glass problem: bought out every vintage cocktail glass at the local Savers stores and am bringing my own few dozen next time. I got to thinking about drink order at an event at Drink earlier this week. We walked in and John Gertsen's punch (arrack, rum, cognac, lemon rinds and ultimately juice, demerara, probably a bit more) filled the room with wonder. It got me thinking that a big bowl is the way to greet people. Like, you know, hosts and bartenders have been doing for a couple centuries or so. So, duh: the Daiquiri will be drink #2, not #1, so that they can settle in and make their own after a tipple. I'll wrap up with the tiki drink.

Thanks, brinza. I'll give that a go tonight with Bols, Marteau, and M&R. I've never used the Bitter Truth orange bitters but have Regan's, Fee's, and Angostura. Suggestions?

Very exciting, and in MKE, my old stomping grounds (UWM grad school). From the Journal Sentinel: Ira, what's the plan to get Milwaukeeans to take to your concept? The city is rather famous for sticking to its pretty staid culinary guns, and though there were about a dozen bars within a two-block radius of my Riverwest house back in the day, none had anything remotely like a "cocktail program."

From what Eric said -- and I've pinged him here to clarify -- I believe that they're hopeful it will be on the shelves in late Dec/early Jan. And, no, I didn't get a chance to try that, sadly.

I don't think that being "a class publication" has anything to do with it. All of these types of food magazines (Food & Wine, BA, Gourmet, Saveur) are swimming in the same shark-infested waters: low ad revenues, rapidly changing cultural and economic forces, the challenges of new media. This discussion makes me wonder how more mainstream publications are doing. Take Taste of Home, a magazine usually left out of these discussions but one that is, in fact, the 500-lb gorilla in the world of food publishing, or Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens.

I had the great pleasure of meeting the charming and informed Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz (and Society member eas) at an industry event at Drink in Boston yesterday. Among much good news (RI distributor MS Walker is picking up a bunch of HA offerings), I learned that Eric will be bringing the Cocchi Aperitivo Americano to these shores early 2010. I had a chance to try it out, and it's heads and tails above Lillet blanc, not only more bitter (quinine and gentian both, says Eric) but also spicier, with a complexity the Lillet lacks. Can't wait to get a bottle and start playing around.

Maybe Christopher Kimball sends you CI out of spite?

Kimball's op ed adds little to the discussion, it's true, except to testify to the fact that he, and the NY Times, seems unable to appreciate the editorial challenges for someone trying to balance both old and new media. However that history is written, Gourmet is likely to end up an object lesson in business school courses for misunderstanding the nature of the contemporary culture of food (and for taking a nearly unassailable brand down with the ship). In particular, the magazine was clearly trying to be all things for all people lately. Here in eG Forums, members can focus their attention on cocktails, NYC restaurants, Top Chef, bread dough, or any of a thousand of other interests, and easily ignore the freakish obsessives talking about cocktails, NYC restaurants, Top Chef, and bread dough. Not so easy when you pick up an issue of Gourmet (or any other magazine). Hardcore cooking readers looking for multiday recipes are annoyed if their magazine has a four-page spread featuring models eating tapas on a Napa ranch, whereas others love the Gourmet Institute/star chef/product tie-ins for the celebrity culture they promote. One wants Entertainment-Weekly-styled bits and bites, with fifteen tweets on a catch-all page; another wants long-form journalism with subtle arguments and careful research. As a result, in its final years the magazine had seemed a bit desperate editorially, trying to support this trend or that format even if one jarred with the other. But in old media, you can't read about baking principles, bake and ice one gateau and one yummy choco-monster cake, and eat 'em all, too.

We've got the Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker. It is one of the best purchases we've ever made; I haven't a single complaint.

Last issue is November. This plan to continue the brand seems odd to me. Short-term, I get. Today's NYT contains an article on the whole mess that has Reichl city-hopping to promote the new cookbook, Gourmet Today: As an aside, I can't imagine a more awful way to spend the fall than spending it making money for the folks who just axed your magazine. Makes sense to me that "she and her staff gathered bottles of wine and liquor from the office and held a wake at her apartment" (and how nice that they have such a cache, unlike, say, my office). So, ok, they promote the cookbook. And then what? Take the Gourmet brand, which made its mark on high-quality, long-form magazine food writing, dump the rest of the recipe database onto epicurious.com, and try to sell "Gourmet" as quality new media? As a fan of the magazine dating way back (and as someone deeply involved in new media right here in eG Forums), the irony is perplexing.

Started using the Zojirushi Classic bento box this week. Mornings are our most harried time, so I haven't gotten any good snaps, but tonight I'll try to get some pix up. The bento box itself has been a revelation: well made, tightly sealing lids, retains cold/heat. Andrea reports that it's a bit big to be carrying on the train, subway, around campus, and so on, but that's a minor quibble. I've been working the appropriate dinner prep and leftover planning for a few weeks now, and I've had to adjust some of the basics of my leftover thinking. For example, I often toss small portions of a given item thinking that we won't serve it on the table at a four-person dinner. Of course, those small portions are perfect for the bento. In addition, I usually have little sauces, toppings, and accompaniments that linger for a while in the fridge and then get used in bulk. Now, that chili sauce, onion confit, beet pickle, and so on are nice little surprises.

Looks great, Mitch! What did you serve it with? This weekend, I made the Lamb with Apples recipe in Society member Paula Wolfert's Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean up through the addition of the apples; when I have photos of service I'll add the post here. However, I do want to say that the Aleppo pepper that she recommends (and which I hadn't used before) has a remarkable affinity for lamb stew.

My trusty Chicago Cutlery shears are one of the most frequently used tools in my kitchen. I don't just use them for snipping herbs, either. I also use them to trim the roots off of scallions before I roast or grill them clipping the wing tips of chickens and other poultry snip chili peppers into bits before grinding or crushing cut off the woody ends of dried, soaked mushrooms I'm sure that there are dozens of other uses that I haven't considered. What do you use your shears for?

LA Times is reporting that Reichl was "stunned": Nothing yet over at Bon Appetit, where they must be listening to old Joy Division records and feeling a strange combination of elation and dread.

Also, I tend to forget that, for 2-4 hours each day most weekends, I am cooking to prepare for the week -- and right there I've got 1h daily when averaged out.

I'm sad. Though I'm tired of the photos of pyts, I think that a lot of good things have happened under Reichl's watch, including a lot of good writing (David Foster Wallace's piece on lobsters stands out to me). I also am pretty surprised that the food writing warhorse is getting docked, or, perhaps, moved into cyberspace. I'm also a subscriber, so I'm wondering what's going to happen with us. Are we all going to be switched to Bon Appetit?

Was there any discussion about, you know, food and cooking? Or was it just a celebrity lovefest? When I covered a Food TV event last year and talked to eager fans of Giada, they all pretty much followed the pattern that the article describes here: Gotta love the journalist who tries to track down whether Alton Brown did, indeed, remember her or not.

I have a big haul of apples and a father who loves McDonald's hot apple pies, so I'm bumping this up in hopes of having them for a meal shortly. Does anyone have a dough that uses leaf lard that works here? Or is that just a dumb idea? I'm trying to get a sense of how sturdy it has to be to survive the frying and then to be a viable container for the molten insides.

Why not share the recipe with us here so that we can try it out and give you feedback? Looks like it has some kind of dal flour in it to me.... Chana dal?

mattsea, I don't think anyone ignores things because of provenance; if we did, this topic would have far fewer hits. However, I think that we're ignorant of things because of provenance, so thanks for the contributions. I'm increasingly eager to find Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, though many of her other books also look interesting.

No disrespect taken -- and, in this case, the topic can be as long as we want. I started it because I know dozens of people who can converse intelligently about cookbooks without mentioning most of this vast swath out of ignorance. It's also interesting to see who is and isn't mentioned on different lists. For example, from this paragraph: I'm quite familiar with Elizabeth David, Nigel Slater, Anna Thomas, and Claudia Roden; Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook is one of the most well-worn books in my house. However, I've never heard of many of these other authors, and I'm eager to learn more about them. For example, Dorothy Hartley's Food in England seems like an essential text for anyone interested in English-language cookbooks and English cuisine (a recipe for sloe gin!), and it's been mentioned on this forum exactly three times in almost a decade. That wrong must be righted!

Rachel Maddow judged a scotch competition held by The Gothamist that has an array of interesting drinks. One, by Richard Boccato of Dutch Kills, intrigues me in particular: Scotch Zoom 3/4 oz. honey 3/4 oz. cream 2 oz. Scotch whisky Shake & strain into a chilled coupe. Anyone know what scotch that is?

When you're titrating for your small batch recipe, how much do you add? A few drops? A ml or two?