Chris Amirault

Two things I recently did that I think are useful: When you have a spill of some thick liquid (mine was chocolate sauce, but molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, thick soup... anything like that), you can slide a piece of wax paper underneath the spill, using a spatula to nudge any stray stuff onto it, and then just pour the stuff into a bowl. When I cook artichokes, I put three toothpicks into the base of each one so that the buds sit up straight to be steamed. That way, you don't have to worry about cutting the bottom stem end perfectly flat, or use a fancy artichoke steamer. I really think that this thread could become the repository of lots of good tips and techniques -- that is, if you click "Reply" and add your own!

Depends! What's korokke?

Cook-Off XVI: Potato Pancakes.

Every now and then since December 2004, a good number of us have been getting together at the eGullet Recipe Cook-Off. Click here for the Cook-Off index. For our sweet sixteenth Cook-Off, we're making potato pancakes. Sure, many of you make potato pancakes now and then, and you may be thinking that this is not a very special dish. Allow me to disagree! First, let's admit that we haven't had any Jewish cooking here in the cook-off before, and as Chanukah approaches (Dec. 25, 2005 to Jan. 2, 2006 this year) we have a natural opportunity to share latke recipes for that holiday staple. In addition, many folks get out the grater for holiday brunches and New Years Eve parties, since the potato pancake is a great party food as well. Finally, there are many versions of the potato pancake to be found throughout the spud-eating world, including Belarusian draniki, Boxti Irish pancakes, Swedish potato lefse, Polish kartoflane placki... the list goes on and on! Finally and as always, the eGullet Society has some folks ready to share ideas and recipes for this dish. Start by clicking here for a titanic latke thread, started by our own Steven Shaw, who has in fact been crowned as a latke king. You can also click here for a controversial discussion about whether latkes require potatoes. Truth be told, I'm not finding much on the others -- so we've got some work to do! Get your graters, skillets, and fats out, people!

Looks great! I'm very eager to read about the goat roast. What sorts of produce do you produce, meanwhile?

Ruth, I join many people when I say that you've written outstanding food-related memoirs. (I admit to being particularly appreciative of Tender at the Bone, and look forward to my holiday copy of Garlic and Sapphires arriving soon.) I will join even more people when I say that many food-related memoirs suffer from a lack of ideas, writing talent, and a knack for telling a good story -- precisely the qualities that your work, I believe, possesses in bushels. What do you make of the state of food-related memoirs? When do they work, and when don't they? Do you have any favorites to share?

That sounds fantastic, jo-mel! Just the sort of thing I was looking for. Thanks! Any more, folks?

Why, exactly, Squid brand?

Thanks, Karen! That sounds great. Sorry, Ah Leung, to be unclear: definitely looking for recipes. I mentioned the seasoning method only bc it's one of the few times I've seen gow choi mentioned in a cookbook. Do you use different kinds of chives? Or just the flat, non-flowering one?

Our favorite vegetable at our local Hong Kong restaurant is "gow choi fan," which I believe is known in English as flowering chives. However, I'm having a hard time finding information about gow choi in general and the different varieties in particular. Grace Young's Breath of the Wok refers to a method for seasoning a wok with the flat, non-budding chives that uses pork fat, but I can't seem to find any recipes. I believe that the chef at our local place woks the chives in a bit of fatty chicken stock and adds just a touch of sugar and salt; my attempts to replicate this at home have varied depending, I think, on the age of the chives. What are some traditional recipes for these great chives? What are the varieties? Thanks in advance for what will be, as always, a lot of useful information here in the China forum.

Now that you mention it, Jason, the wine list at Legal was unbelievably good.

menton1 (and others), where would you send someone reading this thread looking for good seafood in greater Boston? I'd say moderately expensive, except that fisherman's platter I had was over $20.

OK, here's a prompt. I used to review movies for a short while, and once I was on the appropriate lists, I got stacks of promotional material, from which I could write "reviews" without seeing the film, "interviews" with the stars, and other related feature pieces. I never did -- but boy was it interesting to see paragraphs lifted verbatim from that press material in the copy of well-known national critics! When I read a lot of local newspaper food sections, I get a similar sense. How often do you think local food sections are primarily (or merely) collections of press material, with the odd wire service feature thrown in?

Katie and Daniel, you seem to disagree utterly about whether or not to boil the wine. What gives? My worlds are colliding....

Here's the Amazon link to Hungry Planet.

Oh, I'm so glad you brought this up! Along with the Ruhlman piece on Keller and the piece on debunking Reidel (sorry -- don't know the author), my recent favorites from the magazine would certainly include the one to which you refer here: I agree that it was a great piece of writing, but also a challenging one, sure to bring out some real anger (which, of course, it did). Finally, it seems to me that it was a decisive declaration by you that "This is Not Your Auntie's Gourmet, Friend." Can you talk about the in-house conversations that attended the decision to publish that piece and those that followed its publication? If there were some real wing-dinger letters to the editor that you didn't publish, of course we'd love to hear about those!

So glad to have you at eGullet! I've so many questions, but I'll stick to one that you begin to address in your interview with JJ. Can you tell us a little bit about how the restaurant reviewer experiences you detail in Garlic and Sapphires have affected your approach to overseeing Gourmet's reviews and food writing? What did you bring from those experiences -- and what were you glad to leave behind?

Kris, is there any way you can ask this woman why she did what she did? That might be more interesting than our speculations!

They look fantastic! What is in the filling besides the char siu?

Update: we ate at Legal in the Prudential Center yesterday. Great clam chowder, perfect oysters (Wellfleets and Kumamotos), and a variable fisherman's platter: great fish and scallops, good shrimp (though too heavy on the celery salt, oddly), and mediocre-to-bad clams. Given my jones for good fried clams, that was a major disappointment. We also had a very bad server, who didn't know what oysters they had, whether the duck soup could be served in a cup ("Dinner portion only," he finally told us. "But it's listed in the appetizer section." "Um... yeah... that's confusing."), etc. etc. etc.

Utterly fantastic.

Diana Kennedy's books are the tops in Mexican.

I love my electric kettle at work: I wouldn't want it to clutter up the counter at home, but it's perfect in a place where there are no burners handy. It also boils a lot of water very, very quickly.

It's free, too, for the week, or at least the commercials I've seen would suggest so.

This seems very smart to me, Ben (and Ah Leung, who made the same point). The recipes in the newest Yin-Fei Lo cookbook (The Chinese Kitchen) seem to me to be overseasoned, and in the version I prepared, the taste of the individual ingredients in the "liu" (if I understand correctly) were muddled a bit by the oyster sauce. In particular, I thought that the interplay between the lowly celery, of all things, and the other ingredients was muted, which really detracted from the entire dish. I feel as if I'm being reminded here of something important in the constitution of these dishes. Next time, I'll try it as Russell suggests -- and I like the addition of the beans for a different texture, Ben.