Chris Amirault

Welcome, Catherine! If you click on the blue text in the intial post here, you will go to the previous five cook-offs. They should explain themselves quite well!

I like this, too:

Yee-ouch. Does this subtext make sense to those of you in the know?

Purely for principle. Because everyone should have a right to their opinion. I am not defending 'Trotter', the chef. I am defending the right to hold an opinion without being judged. As a chef, I have given some serious thoughts about the issue of foie gras. It is deeply disturbing to me. However, I cannot afford to NOT cook foie gras because of my beliefs. It is simply a matter of doing one's job without letting personal feelings interfere with the work. However, I can appreciate the freedom wealth and power can offer a person in order to put his beliefs into practice. This is rare. If I can afford to stand by my beliefs without any impact on my earnings, I'd do that same. In a way, I am not defending Trotter. I am defending myself. A future ME, perhaps? ← Thanks. I appreciate your honesty. Seeing your own professional entanglements helps me understand your posts.

This is a bit off-topic, but I'm soooo curious! I understand why people (including myself) are criticizing Trotter. But I have a sincere question for FaustianBargain: why are you seeking to defend Trotter in this situation?

www.penzeys.com. Big sale on vanilla extract right now, too.

Might also be time for chef T to delete a few web links: Turkey a la Trotter. Fun? Not fun anymore. Evil!

I agree. I have at least six different pad thai recipes in my cookbooks and each one is very different. I think that that is part of the interest here, determining what effects different ingredients have, and at what times. I also think -- and Malawry's recipe bears this out -- that we'll find versions that don't have too many ingredients that will be hard for folks without good Asian stores to find.

I was just snooping around in my past posts trying to find something, and I found this simple recipe for chicken nuggets, which I had promised to post. So here it is : Cut up a few cubes of white meat chicken. Make a spice rub with this and that (cajun, curry, Mexican, you name it*) and split it. Douse cubes with half of the spice rub and perhaps some hot sauce and let em sit for a while (hour or two max). Submerge the cubes in 1-2 beaten eggs and a little bit of milk until they are slippery moist. Dredge the cubes in flour -- half unbleached AP, half corn is my favorite -- that has the other half of the spice mix in it and a good pinch of salt. Fry the cubes in small batches in 375 oil until the chicken stops hissing. Drain and serve hot. *For parents, I find that thyme, sage, onion powder, celery salt, white pepper, and black pepper best replicates generic chicken nugget seasoning.... Sigh....

I'll add being part of a big table, hanging out for a long time for drinks, dessert, or conversation, and -- my favorite! -- a large mess left by one of my kids!

I'm counting on this. I still really want to try the fried chicken & steamed pork buns... ← Absolutely! There are many among us who will be very happy to see your results! I feel like I've finally got the hang of that one, but I might try making my own noodles this time. That would be fun, especially since I have, like, 10 lbs of rice flour taking up way too much space in my pantry. ← Excellent! Pictures, please! Good tips! Can you give us some brand recommendations?

Photo puh-leez!

The problem with this argument is that it is sort of like suggesting that since we can't end poverty we should stop giving to charities. Small steps in the right direction aren't a bad thing. ← Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Small steps matter. That's why we shouldn't lord our superior, cruelty-free morality over those of others. "Fat," "dumb" others. In newspaper articles. Particularly when we cannot guarantee that we're actually cruelty-free.

I am someone who has worked in the food business, and I can say -- ridiculously, clearly -- that I always tip at least 20%. This is how servers are paid, and in some places they are paid very poorly indeed. Tipping at least 20% is, for me, just part of the deal. By "the deal," I mean that the server gets paid to serve me. Tupac17616, unless your server didn't take your order, bring your food, and clear your plates, then she or he did in fact "provide service to the customer" and thus deserves to be paid for the service. Whether he or she did it to your satisfaction is another matter. Perhaps I'm gullible, but I have tended to find that surly servers are usually surly for particular reasons. In my experience, those reasons have included the back of the house treating them like shit, being wildly short-staffed, having to deal with a demanding and rude table, and so on. I'm glad I'm no longer in a position to have to wait tables to pay the bills. And though it may be ridiculous, I'm grateful to those people who are serving me, even if they're having a bad day, and want to compensate them for it every single time. I'm curious to hear how many other folks on this thread work or have worked front of the house. edited to fix two typos -- ca

I'm really hoping that y'all will participate in the eGullet Cook-Off VI, where we're making Pad Thai. Come on over!

All right, friends, here we go: eGullet Cook-Off VI: Pad Thai.

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 sixth Cook-Off, we're going to be making pad thai. You've surely eaten this Thai restaurant staple dozens of times, marvelling at the sweet, sour, hot, and salty marriage on your plate. There are lots of variations of pad thai floating around the internet, including one by mamster at the eGCI Thai Cooking course. While there is one ingredient -- rice noodles -- that may be hard for some to find, most ingredients or substitutes are available at your local grocer. And, if you're new to Thai cooking, isn't now a good time to get your first bottle of fish sauce or block of tamarind? In addition to the course, here are a few threads to get us started: The excellent Thai cooking at home thread discusses pad thai in several spots. A brief thread on making pad thai, and one on vegetarian pad thai. For the adventurous, here is a thread on making fresh rice noodles. Finally, a few folks mention pad thai in the "Culinary Nemesis" thread. Fifi, snowangel, and Susan in FL all mention in the fried chicken thread that pad thai is also a culinary nemesis of theirs. So, in true cook-off style, hopefully we can all share some tips, insights, recipes, and photos of the results! I'll start by asking: does anyone know any good mail-order purveyors for folks who can't purchase rice noodles at their local Asian food store?

I think CT's uses pretty well-raised meat, like, for instance, Chez P and TFL. In those restaurants, they'll tell you where they get the meat and you can look up the info yourself. Of course that also leads to menus that offer "Jackson Ranch Quail stuffed with Hamilton Farm Prunes and Sonoma Foie Gras on a Bed of Native American, hand-harvested wild rice and mushrooms collected by Jane Smith of Woodinville, WA" or something like that. I think that's an acceptable tactic; some (many) consumers may not care, but for those who do, they can look up the information for themselves. ← Good points, derricks. I appreciate your even-handedness. Maybe that soapbox is actually pretty sturdy when it comes to meat. But I would still maintain that it's hard to prove that everything in the restaurant is cruelty-free. Sam's points about fish are good ones -- and I'll bet that a quick perusal of the larder (and the leather upholstery, and...) would turn up many products that aren't so easily cleared of moral terpitude. Meanwhile: Well, given that he's insulted someone in the press (for, of all things, being fat!), yes, I think we can think of him as insulting without violating any rules of syllogistic logic!

Fascinating thread. Surely someone can get to the bottom of those bizarre comments by Trotter. What's up with that? Meanwhile, this foie gras tiff seems to miss the forest for the trees. Can anyone -- Faustian? -- respond to this paragraph by Sam? This makes sense to me: since Trotter claims to want to run a restaurant that is cruelty-free, how can he go about proving this to his clients -- and, now that he's gone ballistic in the paper, to those of us who think of him as an insulting, moralistic blowhard? It's tough to make the negative case, but if you're going to stand on a soapbox, you'd better be sure it's damned sturdy.....

Looks delicious -- recipe please? Those of us in New England are about to get our own crop of fiddleheads, and I'm always eager to find new ways to cook them for the few weeks they're available. They were a family delicacy on my mother's (Maine) side, blanched then sauteed in butter.

I didn't, that's right. Will do tonight -- I'm making it again! I think I'll wing it with the cucumber pickles and see what happens.

My inauspicious first attempt to make "Chinese food" for guests was known for years among the sufferers as chicken with corn starch.

I am pleased to report that we had a family gathering at Al Forno on Saturday night (not the kind of family gathering that you'd probably find at Capriccio), and the food showed no sign of decline whatsoever, despite George and Joanne being in Provence much of the time now. ← Ditto that. We ate there just before our daughter was born two weeks ago, and it was, as usual, fantastic.

Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook. I could not do without it; it's beaten to a pulp, not surprisingly. But I agree with andiesenji: I'd come loose from my tether if I lost my collection!

Thanks, Paula. Can I just say that, with Rancho Gordo and Caroline Tillie coming over to your house to visit, I must say that I wish we lived in wine country! :sniff: