Chris Amirault

... boutique olive oil. ... high-end rye. ... mail order special ingredients. ... pimped wine refrigerator to use as a curing chamber. You?

You are not alone, dividend. I often feel in precisely the same boat: two jobs, this volunteer gig for a big food organization (), two kids, and a lot of community work leave me feeling guilty about that time over the stove. But I'm convinced (and, gladly, I have a partner who's also convinced) that that time is what keeps me sane. I prepare about 90% of our family's meals and make nearly all of those from scratch. (In a rare departure two nights ago due to a family request, we had hot dogs; my kids were baffled by the Tater Tots I served.) If I wanted to play Quickfire Challenge every night, I could probably get food on the table within an hour, but part of the pleasure of it is taking the time to enjoy the process and not just an efficiently made product. It's funny that you mention batch cooking, which I definitely do all year round. Our basement's massive freezer is filled with proof of that. But most nights I don't think to pull out some sausage or frozen gumbo. There's something about walking into that empty kitchen and saying, "I want to make something: what?" that is part of the process for me. So I guess my answer to this question -- -- is "I'm working off stress by making that food, not manufacturing it."

I was joking, but it does beg the question about the effect of smoke from fires on dishes developed with pre-industrial stove cooking.

Since the dish was first cooked in wood-fired ovens, I figure smoke was part of the original flavor. Along with, you know, everything else cooked in a wood-fired oven.

That's a Smoky Vanilla Overkill Sour, isn't it?

Chris, did you inject brine into the ham at all, and if so with what? Forgive me if you've explained this uptopic.

Interesting. I was also screwing around with a bourbon Manhattan last night and found a surprisingly nice trio: 2 oz Wild Turkey 101 1 oz Averna 2 healthy dashes of Angostura orange bitters And, like the spartan eje, an orange twist but no cherry.

I hate to break the news, Susan, but in Hua Hin they serve their fried rice with bird chili vinegar -- and, yes, with limes: Carry on...

Where do others stand on the smoked v non-smoked question?

Roger that. My bao dough isn't remotely comparable to... well, to any of the thousands of people making infinitely better bao dough in my hometown. My dilly beans and pickled beets get wedgies from my mother-in-law's dilly beans and pickled beets. My wildly imbalanced mustard is mocked by all commercial mustards.

You know, I had real high hopes for this book, being a baking dumb-ass and all, as I know many Society members did. Cookwise is just a fantastic book for so many of the reasons that this one is lousy. It begs the question: what the heck happened??

So you're a gremolata fan? I didn't make any this time as you can see. I'm sort of split on the matter; it seems a bit like gilding the lily (and I think Hazan agrees).

I'm not sure I understand the distinction. It is, after all, a reference about cooking, and thus the cooking material should be informative and clear. The examples here indicate that it is not consistently either. The notion of a cooking reference with recipes you don't really use doesn't make much sense to me, particularly when they concern baking, which really does demand results to enable you to understand the information. You can tell me all you want about the effect of X on crumb or aroma, but until that product is in my fingers, nose, and mouth I won't really understand what you mean. I keep thinking about Larousse in this discussion. Most of the baking recipes in that tome are extremely imprecise, seeking to capture the overall conception and execution of the dish without detail. Bakewise gets measurements down to the gram (and in some cases the fraction of a gram), which is consistent with the notion that the devil is in the baking details and suggests that the recipes are themselves key sources of important information. (That's particularly true if you're not supposed to cook with them.) It seems to me that the book doesn't do a very good job of helping the reader pry loose that information. I just reread my and Lesley's criticism above and I think it stands regardless of the recipe issue. Her point about scales is an excellent one: any baking reference seeking to teach the reader key concepts would dispense with the spoon-and-level malarkey that prevents home bakers from understanding why their product isn't up to snuff, tell the reader to buy a scale, and then use only weight measurements. I also think that this is a symptom of the attempt to be all things to all people that you find throughout the book. Avoiding fundamental facts like that to make us feel more comfortable with our old, bad habits is not something a reference should do. Science isn't magic, and cutesy frames that suggest as much (see Puff the Magic Leavener) don't help. Instead, I'd have liked a lot more charts and diagrams a la McGee showing what happens when you bake.

It's an interesting thought, but I think that many of the problems we've raised here would still be an issue read either way.

Kevin, did you see any advantage to dredging the shanks with flour? I left that out intentionally; it seems like with such a long braise of shanks you'll thicken up the sauce without it, and it's unneeded for browning.

Oregon truffles. Nuff said.

I've been following this topic with great interest. My wife is the baker in the family, and I bought her this book for Christmas on pre-order many months ago. She's only just started cooking from it -- I can attest that the Cracked-Surface Cruncy Gingersnaps on 394 are outstanding -- but I have to say that I share a lot of the confusion Lesley cites in her post above. Things all just seem... off. I think that the book wants to have it both ways in many different respects. A true novice baker, for example, benefits from the "butter is rich" information, whereas many of the tips would be over-the-top for that same baker. Take the popovers (260), a favorite in our house because you can make them quickly on a weekend morning. If you tell a novice that he needs to let the batter stand for over an hour, preheat a baking stone to 475F, and heat cream to add just prior to pouring the batter into the pans... well, he's not going to use that recipe for a quick morning treat. The attempt to be all things to all people comes off forced and sometimes weird as a result. There are other odd things. Why make specific product requests (especially for items that have limited distribution, like Pillsbury bread or White Lily self-rising flour) without acceptable substitutes and indicating protein content and/or wheat type? Why not use important cooking terms when they're called for (say "macerate" when you're giving a tip about "tossing the peaches with sugar and allowing them to stand for 3 hours" [312])? Why stick "Best" or "Great" or "Super" in front of half of the recipes? Can't we just assume that you chose the best recipe you could find and leave it at that? And why oh why the super-cutesyfied style? I know she's supposed to be a bubbly person, but calling a chapter on steam "Puff the Magic Leavener" and naming your cornbread "All-Time Favorite E-Z, Dee-licious Sour Cream Cornbread" misses the balance between charming and dumbed-down for me. This is especially true given that her predecessors (Beranbaum, Greenspan, heck, herself in Cookwise) find a warm tone that nudges the baker toward greater understanding without making them feel like they're in a 1960s kindergarten. Yeesh.

Found another, right under my nose, the Widow's Kiss from George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks of 1895, which I make following Ted Haigh's suggestions: 1 1/2 oz apple brandy (Laird's BIB) 3/4 oz yellow Chartreuse 3/4 oz Benedictine 2 dashes Angostura I do mean nose: I used my two thirty-plus-year-old bottles of Chartreuse and Benedictine, which truly evoked the scene Dr. Cocktail describes in Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails:

Hmm.... I never do that with food, even though I do it all the time with cocktails. Trays are the only good way to serve drinks without spilling them, as far as I can tell.

... children's relatives taught them how to cook in home kitchens with food you could smell and taste?

... food was tall?

Had a fantastic time at a hopping Zaytinya last night. We arrived a bit early so we started with a pitcher of Pom-Fili, a wine, vodka, and pomegranate drink that was tasty enough. When we sat down we dove into the menu and ordered a ton of stuff: the Greek olives marinated in oregano and kalamata oil; tabouleh; felafel; the Cretan snails; the fried mussels; lamb tartare and behar; patates tiganites; and the shisk taouk, all washed down with arak. For dessert we had the Turkish delight and the ice cream trio with cherry, pistachio, and olive oil. My favorites were the perfect tartare, that incredible olive oil ice cream, and the shisk taouk, which has something in it I can't identify that's really really good. The sauce for the snails was far too salty, and the Turkish delight was dull. But everything else was excellent. The four of us ate and drank until we were stuffed and left paying less than $40 pp (not including tip). It's hard to imagine such outstanding cuisine in such an informal, fun environment, for that amount of money.

Can you give us a sense of who's missing that you'd like to see?

Wash them, dry them, and then apply this Haynes spray liberally, then wrap in paper towels and store in a ziplock bag. Haven't had any problems since I started doing that.

What else have you done with it? Just put up another few pounds of those mustard pickles with the tweaked recipe, btw.