Chris Amirault

Bravo should use that as a recruitment tool to get quality chefs involved: if you're really good, we'll portray you as an asshole for narrative tension and then toss in a few dice throws at the end to give others an advantage. Apply now!

Can you say more about what you did with the arrack and pomegranate seeds? Very intriguing.

Both say "Original French Dry". The new bottle looks quite different, with the bottle itself having a twisting part, while the original is a plain bottle. ← Here's the new design. Here's the old:

Be careful: that post just made the comparison you criticized others for making! And besides, Colicchio's position in his restaurants, marketing, on Top Chef, and even in the commercial is that taste matters above everything else. Given that Diet Coke tastes horrible, your comparison to Bayless seems utterly apt. Of course, if you don't think Diet Coke tastes awful -- which you suggest here -- then it's not apt at all. YMMV.

Thanks to doctor's orders, I have become quite an expert on the uses of oats. If you like the toothy quality, oats make a great component of smoothies. Our house concoction of choice also involves another classic "week without shopping" item, the overripe banana, combined with the oats, some milk, an ice cube or two, and a T of peanut butter.

One of the little side projects this week has been using up containers of interesting stuff throughout the house. Case in point: I'm at the end of a beloved bottle of Fernet Branca, and thought a cocktail of mine using it would go well with the leftover turkey parm and the side I was planning to make: Corsa Italia Cocktail: 2 oz rye 1/2 oz Benedictine 1/4 oz Fernet Branca dash orange bitters Stir, strain, flamed orange twist. Instead of the orange twist, I went with the last three brandy-soaked cherries I had in the fridge, which gave it more depth and a sweet treat during prep (if less nose): The other items that were lurking in the back of one place or another were these pine nuts from the freezer -- -- and this jar I found on its side in the back of the fridge, which contains some onion confit, roasted garlic, and balsamic glaze: I had some broccoli crowns that were approaching the end of the edible portion of their life, so...

That looks great -- and those certainly look like banana leaves to me.

That's my sense too: out of the box the regular has a much smoother texture. I'll try to cook up the other box sometime soon to find out who's nuts.

I haven't had anything but the spaghetti, but it was a real disappointment. The flavor was there, but the pasta lacked the toothiness good dried pasta needs and DC regular usually has. It was sort of crumbly in your mouth throughout the early stages of the cooking process, and by the end it had no toothy texture at all. Having said that, I got it remaindered at a job lot store, so maybe it was the batch or something.

Peter, is the rice wine shaoxing or something else?

As we head deeper into week two, I'm interested to read what items are sitting on a shelf somewhere daring you to cook them. Any particularly weird or challenging stuff?

I don't see why not. I imagine that over many years there would be some loss of quality, but there would also be a large number of excellent martinis, fitty fittys, and so on -- something I can't make to my tastes without this liquid.

Fascinating discussion. As I read this, I started thinking about the difference between various cake pan dimensions and their effect on surface tension and moisture loss. For example, circular cake pans with identical heights but different diameters would correspond to the rules that Paul outlines above. But wouldn't things get trickier if, say, you were changing a recipe meant for an 8"x2" circular pan to be used for a 10"x3" circular pan? The increased depth provides greater structure while the increased diameter provides less.

I'm dying to know what the one thing was. This strategy -- clear out the maximum for storage and get it when you need it -- also affords you moments of insight like this. After all, if you have to get that thing three times in a week, then you know you need it in the kitchen. Makes me wonder what would happen if I applied the "when was the last time you used this?" test on my drawers....

I've been stocking up, too. This is one of the benefits to living in a town where few people drink vermouth: if they stocked NP, it probably didn't move.

Very true about the freezer leftovers -- even though I wasn't wildly crazy about the short ribs and lentils I made, having three or four servings in the freezer will still come in handy. IF I remember to use them. ← I'd amend that to say, "If I remember to use them and am forced to do so." I'm just so resistant to do this sort of thing unless peer pressure is involved....

I'm eager for the reveal on that.

Post-boning Moby, I had four pounds of turkey breast meat. The rest went into the stock pot. Frying set up, with the cut and pounded turkey, some seasoning (the Penzey's pizza seasoning, plus some S&P), three beaten eggs, and the seasoned panko: The whole batch post-saute: And the final two dishes. I made a simple, not-too-spicy sauce for my 4 year old, and had the spicy sauce with my wife -- two linguine bowls, two different turkey parm dishes. Plus I had over 1 1/2 pounds of cooked cutlets for the freezer. I'm starting to like this no-shop stuff.

An embarrassing amount of food just keeps spilling out of things. Along with the turkey, I found a few more items lurking in the fridge, freezer, and pantry: Tomato paste from who knows when, a bag of mozzarella cheese from a kids' pizza party, a mini-jar of Penzey's pizza seasoning, a long-hidden bag of panko that I bought sure I'd need it, you know, someday, and a gift bottle of Cahors from the cellar -- off the cellar floor, to be exact. Add a few quality items -- those quasi-San Marzano tomatoes, some good parmigiano reggiano, Barilla linguine -- and... well, can you guess what I'll be doing with all that turkey? Hint: I have two kids.

Sounds like it to me as well. Here are some images of it in action.

The tomato/pineapple combination is genius. Does anyone know when or how tomatoes made their way into Khmer cooking?

Ah, yes: the pork ton bor. Excellent as always.

Big okra fan here. I think that it's always worth getting twice as much as you need and preparing half as crispy bindi in the South Asian tradition: sauteing half of it cut into 1/2" slices and tossed with some seasonings. It crisps up really nicely and is great to toss on top. I'd think that textural variation would be appealing in a muscle-free gumbo.

How does kroeung differ from Thai pastes? Are the benefits of pounding out your own as noticeable with Khmer food as with Thai, or are there some reliable brands to try?

Up early thanks to the Nor'easter and, after making my wife a cappucino, I broke into the Imperial Dian Hong. (Thanks to Richard once again for setting this up and dispensing the samples.) My usual routine: 5g of tea, 400g of water just below boiling, 4 minutes in a prewarmed ingenuiTEA steeper. The color is a deep reddish brown. The aroma is intoxicating, with a woody, rich base and smoky top notes. It's a cross between (idiosyncratic comparison ahead) deep Maine woods and the Russian dry heat saunas at Brooklyn's Sandoony spa. The flavor is smooth and not at all bitter, a surprise since I'm used to that bitter edge when drinking a tea this black. I have to say that the flavor isn't as intense as the aroma for me; it's got the same elements but is more muted. It's terrific, no doubt, but I'm not used to a tea that has a bigger nose than tongue. Takes getting used to.