Chris Amirault

Not me -- Zaytinya is one of my favorite restaurants in the country. I wish he'd talk to his publicist, turn down the "character," and focus on cranking out quality food. That shrimp Greek salad thing was only slightly less bizarre than the pasta salad.

My understanding is that there are two kinds of pour spouts. One is to prevent explosions from high proof spirits; Everclear, Wray & Nephew overproof rum, and a few others I've seen have these flameproof spouts. The other kind of pour spouts are intended to provide flood control, so to speak. But they all seem really dumb to me.

So, yeah, we know that Hung can blaze through four hundred onions in ten minutes, and that Ruhlman's discovery of efficiency in Making of a Chef is a big epiphany. But aren't there kitchen tasks that you embrace precisely because they require slow, steady attention? I was peeling eggs yesterday and realized that I really enjoyed the deliberateness the task required. Ditto produce shopping: I want to linger over that lemon and see if it's really what I want. Surely there are such tasks for you. What are they?

Broke out the Luxardo cherries, the Fee's 2007 Whiskey Barrel Aged bitters, and some Bulleit bourbon for an Old Fashioned. More to follow, I'm sure. Cheers, all.

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After tossing too many things from back-of-the-freezer death and buying doubles of too many other things bc I didn't realize I had them on hand already, I've gone against form and become extremely anal about freezer organization lately. We'll see how it goes: best laid plans of mice and men... all that.

Made Jeff Morgenthaler's Norwegian Wood using the Boker's and a bottle of 30+ year old yellow Chartreuse -- most excellent.

Funny this topic should pop up now, as I just started a massive freezer inventory project to prepare for a year of frugality while my wife is in grad school. I created an online google doc that I'm keeping accurate; I've added dates on prepared items bc I want to use them earlier than others. Here's the current status downstairs: Fresh Meats & Fat 2 # seasoned ground beef 3 # cubed sirloin 10 # boneless pork shoulder 4 # boneless lamb shoulder 2 boneless legs of lamb 6 # pork back fat 1 # pork lard 1 # leaf lard 13 oz rendered duck fat Homemade Prepared Meats 4/08 1.5# andouille 9/08 2# Mergez 9/08 1.5 # hunter sausage 12/08 duck ham 5/09 1 # tasso 5/09 1.5 # kielbasa 8 Chinese sausage (lap cheung) 2# Chinese bacon (lap yuk) 8 oz bacon 5 oz rosemary bacon 2 # pancetta 5 # Cured fresh bacon to smoke (this weekend's project) Stocks 3 x 4 c bags asian chicken stock 7 x 4 c bags roasted chicken stock 5 x 4 c bags basic chicken stock 2 c veal stock Homemade Prepared Dishes 8/09 1 # puttanesca sauce 8/09 2 # pasta puttanesca 7/09 Mac and Cheese 8/09 Bean soup 8/09 4 packs lamb stuffed cabbage 1/09 1 serving cassoulet Purchased Prepared Items 4 # hot dogs (Nathan's) 3 bags dumplings Grains, Rice, Beans, Pasta, Flour 2 x 2# light brown sugar 1 x 2# dark brown sugar 3 x 2# powdered sugar 4 Kg 00 pasta flour 9 x 2# bags rolled oats 1.5# steel cut oats 2 Kg maseca 6 x 2# bags masa corn 1.5# dark rye flour 1.5 # graham flour 1.5 # whole wheat graham flour 7 # self rising flour 1 # coucous 1.5 # bulgur wheat 2 x 1.5 coarse cornmeal 1.5# corn flour 2 # carnaroli rice 1.5 # posole 1 # beans - pinquitos .5 # beans - black calypso 2 # soldier beans 1 # garbanzo beans .5 # mung beans Butter, Cheeses 12 # unsalted butter 3 x 1# blocks parmesan 3 # milk chocolate 5 # dark chocolate 1 # white chocolate Nuts 1 # sunflower seeds 8 oz pine nut 10 oz boiled peanuts (for curry sauce) 8 oz sliced almonds 6 oz pecan halves 6 oz pumpkin seeds 1 # apricot kernels 8 oz pistachios 1 # hazelnuts 3 # walnuts Misc 4 tart dough rounds 2 x bag uncooked coconut 2 lb dried apricots 12 oz frozen cranberries 3 # dextrose 8 oz guar gum 8 oz xantham gum 1 pkg Bactoferm M-EK-4 (mold culture) 1 pkg Bactoferm F-RM-52 (fermenting culture) 1/2 # pink salt some salmon cure & generic cure mix ETA I also have about 50 different spices, herbs, and chile peppers in the downstairs freezer -- keep track of them on another list. Upstairs is pretty much limited to current use items and to cocktail ingredients (Tovolo ice cube trays, lots of glasses, etc.) CA

Why in the world are they serving cocktails in thin wine glasses? Cocktails are supposed to be kept cold, not quickly relegated to room temp. I don't get it -- am I missing something?

It's a great tactic. There's another introductory game you can play involving having people raise their hands in response to simple questions ("I have made a cocktail in my house in the last month," "Honestly, I've never had a gin cocktail I enjoyed," etc.). I was thinking also of having people hand in index cards with "Stupid Questions Asked Anonymously," which is usually a very successful activity. Of course, the point ends up being that most people wanted the answer to the question.

I'm on an old-skool listserv called Tomorrow's Professor that focuses on pedagogy in college teaching, and I thought that the most recent piece, "The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes" by Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent, had some relevant points to this discussion. I quoted two that seemed especially apt: I've been thinking a lot about the last mistake. I met some very nice people at a cocktail event a couple of weeks ago, and they clearly knew nuh-huh-uthin' about making drinks. Instead of focusing on their ignorance, I want to do my level best to focus on their desire to learn and the commitment they're demonstrating by ponying up the cash to do so.

Where would one be forced to shake that Bourbon Sour in a Nalgene bottle and strain it through an antique tea strainer? Why, a bed and breakfast in Montpelier VT, of course! Cheers!!

In my experience (I've been an adjunct professor at Brown U for over a decade) I've found that the Fulbright folks want to make sure that you're not doing armchair anthropology, but that you're grounding any project in real scholarship. This may be obvious to you -- forgive me if so -- but that means in this case digging a lot deeper than the latest issue of "Gastronomica," and instead researching the various histories, diasporas, and meanings of foodways, linking what sounds like a fascinating project to specific scholarly conversations in cultural anthropology, food studies, and so on. And, since you asked, I'll share a tip that advisees have told me is invaluable. Look for unexplained, evaluative abstractions in your writing: here, the big one is "interested/ing." That's where you have a lot of work to do. What does "interesting" mean exactly? What exactly about this food interests you? What exactly would interest the Fulbright committees? In short, the Fulbright committees (both at your local uni and at national) need to be convinced that you're the last thing from a rube.

Michel Richard has a great recipe for pasta carbonara in Happy in the Kitchen using onions as the pasta. Yes, you read that right.

To wit, the technique on those short ribs and that mole were clearly superior to any that the judges had experienced before -- and I dare say those three people have eaten their share of short ribs and mole.

While I'm not so bothered by the "this bachelor/ette party challenge sucks" whining, I'm shocked and dismayed that there were so few complaints about the obviously idiotic challenge. Pairing food with wine or cocktails is one thing. Pairing food with shots? Everyone should have been outraged at the immorality of that. IIRC, the list was an unnamed tequila (no product placement opportunities, strangely enough), a "Moscow Mule" with grapefruit (?), and a "Golden Delicious," which is apparently Goldschlager and sparkling cider. (Two of those sound like highballs to me, but what do I know.) How does one eat food with shots? Bite of food and shot to wash it down in a hurry? Shot then food to temper the shot? After the high quality of the challenges and food in the TCM season, it looks like we're settling back into standard-issue buffoonery in TC6 -- or, rather, cheap, Las Vegas style buffoonery, including full-body pans of bikini-clad bachelorettes, undrinkable beverages, and, as Nina Garcia might say, lots of challenges that raise "the question of taste," in every sense of the phrase.

Hrm. I still haven't received mine...

I made the drink in those proportions, and while it's very tasty it seemed out of balance; the molasses dominated in particular. I found this version referenced in an article by Grimes in the Times: 4 large mint leaves 1/2 ounce simple syrup 1 1/2 ounces Junipero, or other gin 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/4 ounce pomegranate syrup Gonna give it a try next time.

Giving a tweak of Andy's version a shot. 1 1/2 c Myers's dark rum 1 1/2 c Wray & Nephew overproof rum 1/2 c allspice berries, crushed 6 black pepper berries, crushed a few bits of mace 10 cloves, crushed 2 cinnamon sticks, broken 1 1/2 nutmegs, crushed Strain. Add: simple made with 12 oz of turbinado sugar & 1 1/2 c water edited to reflect a few on the fly tweaks -- ca

I don't know how to answer those questions about the actual work of these chefs in their own kitchens, but in this competition you'd be a fool to fiddle too much with that stuff given the spankings that foam, sous vide proteins, and so on have all been lambasted on this show.

I'm no chef, but I've read that Eric Ripert adds a pinch of cayenne just before plating to many of his sauces, and not just spicy ones. He claims that it heightens all of the flavors but is undetectable when added in minute quantities.

Yeah, as I commented at the bottom, they all look to be about 25% dilution, which is the standard. No one seems to be freezing their booze.... Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli has an interesting question in there too: why no fine straining?

Society member John T. Edge has a great piece in the NYT about Mexican hot dogs: I couldn't agree more: the dogs at El Guero Canelo, which has a special place in my heart, are featured prominently in the article.

No pressure cooker (on my shopping list now) and no kitchen A/C here, unless I steal a unit from one of the kids. I looked up "bad parenting" in the dictionary, however, and there's a picture of a father eating ropa vieja at the stove while his children die of heat exhaustion, so.... So am I now! I refreshed my lu shui the other day -- brought it to the boil, tossed in a bit of this and that to bump it up a bit, and cooled it off to go back in the fridge. That was an exercise in temptation, let me tell you.