Jason Perlow

3 or 4 balls, depending on how big they are.

If you are going to bother to buy them with the heads on, by all means, cook them with the heads on.

The Tex-Mex Cookbook : A History in Recipes and Photos We are pleased to again have two-time James Beard Award winner Robb Walsh for an eGullet Q & A from July 19 - 23, 2004 with a focus on his new book The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos. The book was released in June and reviewed by Elie Nassar (FoodMan) in the Daily Gullet. An excerpt from the Introduction to The Tex-Mex Cookbook also appears in the Daily Gullet. Robb has been a frequent presence on eGullet since his first appearance for a Roundtable and Q & A in February of this year. In addition, he has contributed two recipe's from the book to Recipe Gullet: Frozen Margaritas and Larry's Cheese Enchiladas. We will be taking questions starting Monday, July 19th, and Robb will respond throughout the week. Broadway Books, a division of Random House, is providing five copies of The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos for distribution to five members who participate in the Q & A. Richard Kilgore and Linda LaRose (fifi) are moderators for the Q & A. A moderator queue may be used, so your questions may not be posted until a moderator releases them. Follow-up questions and discussion are encouraged. Robb Walsh -- Biographical Notes Robb is currently the restaurant critic for the Houston Press. He has been nominated for James Beard Awards multiple times for his magazine articles, newspaper series, restaurant reviews, and radio commentary on NPR. Robb Walsh has been described as “the Indiana Jones of food writers” by NPR’s Lianne Hanson. His last book was Are You Really Going to Eat That? a far-ranging collection of his food essays -- from eating durian in Thailand, searching for the ultimate cup of coffee in Jamaica and the hottest pepper sauce in Trinidad, and doing dutiful field research on truffles in the Perigord region of France and on Bresse chickens, to southern cooking, chicken-fried steak and introducing Jeffrey Steingarten to Houston barbecue. His book Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses was nominated for a 2003 James Beard Cookbook Award in the Americana category. In additon, his Houston Press feature "Barbecue in Black and White: Carving the Racism Out of Texas Barbecue Mythology" won a Katie Award, a regional journalism prize, for feature writing in major market newspapers. For several years Robb wrote the Natural History Magazine column “A Matter of Taste”, which explored a wide range of issues in food history and science, as well as culinary anthropology. He also edited Chile Pepper Magazine and founded the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, the largest hot sauce competition in the world. In addition, Robb was food editor of the Austin Chronicle , and he has contributed to numerous other publications. Robb’s past books include A Cowboy in the Kitchen: Recipes from Reata and Texas West of the Pecos, co-authored with Grady Spears; Nuevo Tex-Mex: Festive New Recipes from Just North of the Border, co-authored with David Garrido; and Traveling Jamaica With Knife, Fork & Spoon: A Righteous Guide to Jamaican Cookery co-authored with Jay McCarthy. His work also appears in Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, as well as The Best Food Writing of 2001, 2002, and The Best Food Writing 2003. Are You Really Going to Eat That? Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses A Cowboy in the Kitchen: Recipes from Reata and Texas West of the Pecos Nuevo Tex-Mex: Festive New Recipes from Just North of the Border Traveling Jamaica With Knife, Fork & Spoon: A Righteous Guide to Jamaican Cookery Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing Best Food Writing 2003

I can already think about what that alternate universe looks like right now...

Nice oratory from Domenico Demarco in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/nyregion...ity/18pizz.html

Why are they called the Florida Parishes?

Nice, Darren. But no marinara?

Hell, a hamburger at a diner will take a while.

Raw beef thinly sliced, is the ideal way to serve Pho. The beef is supposed to get lightly cooked from the hot broth.

Palm sugar is integral to Thai curries and many other souteast asian dishes.

Unfortunately, none of the links on that page have any content on them.

The Tex-Mex Cookbook : A History in Recipes and Photos We are pleased to again have two-time James Beard Award winner Robb Walsh for an eGullet Q&A from July 19-23, 2004 with a focus on his new book The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos. The book was released in June and reviewed by Elie Nassar (FoodMan) in the Daily Gullet. An excerpt from the Introduction to The Tex-Mex Cookbook also appears in the Daily Gullet. Robb has been a frequent presence on eGullet since his first appearance for a Roundtable and Q&A in February of this year. We will be taking questions starting Monday, July 19th, and Robb will respond throughout the week. Broadway Books, a division of Random House, is providing five copies of The Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos for distribution to five members who participate in the Q&A. The moderators for this eGullet Q&A are Richard Kilgore and Linda LaRose (fifi). A moderator queue may be used, so your questions may not be posted until a moderator releases them. Click here to go directly to the Q&A. Robb Walsh -- Biographical Notes Robb is currently the restaurant critic for the Houston Press. He has been nominated for James Beard Awards multiple times for his magazine articles, newspaper series, restaurant reviews, and radio commentary on NPR. Robb Walsh has been described as “the Indiana Jones of food writers” by NPR’s Lianne Hanson. His last book was Are You Really Going to Eat That? a far-ranging collection of his food essays -- from eating durian in Thailand, searching for the ultimate cup of coffee in Jamaica and the hottest pepper sauce in Trinidad, and doing dutiful field research on truffles in the Perigord region of France and on Bresse chickens, to southern cooking, chicken-fried steak and introducing Jeffrey Steingarten to Houston barbecue. His book Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses was nominated for a 2003 James Beard Cookbook Award in the Americana category. In additon, his Houston Press feature "Barbecue in Black and White: Carving the Racism Out of Texas Barbecue Mythology" won a Katie Award, a regional journalism prize, for feature writing in major market newspapers. For several years Robb wrote the Natural History Magazine column “A Matter of Taste”, which explored a wide range of issues in food history and science, as well as culinary anthropology. He also edited Chile Pepper Magazine and founded the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, the largest hot sauce competition in the world. In addition, Robb was food editor of the Austin Chronicle , and he has contributed to numerous other publications. Robb’s past books include A Cowboy in the Kitchen: Recipes from Reata and Texas West of the Pecos, co-authored with Grady Spears; Nuevo Tex-Mex: Festive New Recipes from Just North of the Border, co-authored with David Garrido; and Traveling Jamaica With Knife, Fork & Spoon: A Righteous Guide to Jamaican Cookery co-authored with Jay McCarthy. His work also appears in Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, as well as The Best Food Writing of 2001, 2002, and The Best Food Writing 2003. Are You Really Going to Eat That? Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses A Cowboy in the Kitchen: Recipes from Reata and Texas West of the Pecos Nuevo Tex-Mex: Festive New Recipes from Just North of the Border Traveling Jamaica With Knife, Fork & Spoon: A Righteous Guide to Jamaican Cookery Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing Best Food Writing 2003 Best Food Writing 2002 Best Food Writing 2001

Monks in the Middle Ages were among the most wealthiest -- and hated -- of all the class groups of that period. While the original concept was for them to live lives of piety and in silence, in reality towards the height of the medieval period, they amassed tremendous amounts of wealth (because busy rich people were paying them to pray so they could get into heaven) they ate lots of red meat (they got around this prohibition by allowing themselves to eat red meat in the hospital if they were ill -- so then everyone started eating in the hospital) and copious amounts of other food during their meals, had sex with prostitutes in bordellos they owned in nearby towns, drank beer to excess, and had private armies defending their monastaries. If you are more interested in this, Terry Jones of Monty Python has a show on the History Channel called "Terry Jones's Medieval Lives" that has an episode all about this.

Oh yeah, that was brilliant. It was one of the older ones. "Now Lucy, grand-mama doesn't want you to burn yourself...." So being of German descent, and not an Acadian, Ms. Lucy is NOT a Cajun, correct? Even though she can speak Acadian French?

On hand? Sure. In a mise-en-place? No. I don't even think a place like ADNY keeps 100+ ingredients in a mise-en-place on a particular night. Your average 3-star or 2-star certainly doesn't. Maybe Per Se does, but they aren't trying to mass produce everything in a 3 to 5 minute order window.

Intelligence, foresight and contingency planning doth not a Venture Capitalist make. You should be well aware of that from the entire dot bomb implosion. There are plenty of VC firms that throw wads of money at companies for no goddamned good reason at all, and you know it. VC is all about risk taking. The whole point is they have a whole portfolio of companies to throw their money at on the good chance that one of them will succeed. As to the Internet Explorer thing -- there's going to be a huge migration to Mozilla this year, and its already happening. On the server side it just doesnt make any sense to use Microsoft products for ecommerce anymore. I got tons of case studies to throw at you if you don't beleive me. I know, I consulted with a good many of the people that wrote them. All I gotta say is if it takes them more than 3 minutes to prepare my sandwich to my specifications, the place aint gonna work. If the smartcard technology ends up making the response time slower than that, they're hosed. And don't even think about what will happen the first time their fancy schmancy POS system they rely on breaks down during the height of manhattan lunch hour. Utter chaos. The customers will be resorting to cannibalism and it will be mass hysteria, they will have to call in a SWAT team.

Or if the 8 track doesnt suit your fancy... how about your standard rectangular cake with a picture of THIS guy on it: http://www.backwardglances.com/images/Satu...ever%20suit.jpg This logo also pretty much screams disco period to me: http://www.dancenetradio.com/assets/images/studio54.gif Simple, classy, and makes a dramatic statement if you put it on a cake. Everyone would immediately recognize it. Instead of a black icing you could just use dark chocolate ganache and use white chocolate for the lettering of the logo. It would really be slick.

How about an 8-track tape player? Most of them are pretty boxy in shape so most of the work will be in the decoration, and you could have some 8 track tapes made out of cake or chocolate. You could make it look like the faceplate of one of these things: http://homepage.mac.com/stokester/.cv/stok...ck.JPG-link.jpg Here is another popular design: http://www.hiandlomodern.com/IMAGES/MOD/pa...nic8track34.jpg or the front faceplace of the classic Weltron, which was the iconic 8 track player used in a lot of movies: http://www.tvhistory.tv/1972-Weltron-AM-FM-8T.JPG

Could be cool and the next big thing. Could be a colossal failure. I suspect the smart card thing will be the first to go as will a mega simplification of the menu the second its evident that normal human beings are too stupid to grok the concept, much like what happened with the original Craft. Smart cards suck. Force people to use them as part of your business model and you are asking for trouble. I've never seen a smart card implementation work yet. The technology isn't ready for prime time yet. Just ask the people at VISA, they've wasted an obscene amount of money researching it and they've deep sixed every attempt to integrate them as part of their product line. 130 ingredients to individually choose from is just too damnned much. It isnt going to work in the back of the house during a busy lunch hour in the middle of manhattan, especially if people are indecisive -- do you know a single one of these working girls that know what the hell they want to eat when they get to the counter? I sure don't. You expect them to read a handout on line so they can figure out the 6 things they want on their sandwich? 'Cause they sure as hell aren't going to be able to read from a list of 130 choices listed above the counter area. The ingredients need to be grouped in pre-set combos which can then be matched, otherwise you are going to have complete chaos. Technology is supposed to facilitate the business process or the customer experience, its not supposed to make things more complicated for the purposes of being gee whiz. Good examples of technology in restaurants -- POS systems and wireless PDA's being used by waitstaff to streamline and speed up the ordering process. Computer-driven beverage dispensers in bar areas that automatically compute the proper serving size and allow for consistent pours so that cocktails come out exactly the same each time. Requiring customers to program and create debit smartcards so they can order a sandwich? Thats just dopey. Oh, and obviously Starwich is so technologically advanced they don't realize that having a 100 percent flash site with stupid menus all over the place is tantamount to expecting people to spend about 5 seconds on your web site and then clicking the browser off with frustration and disgust. It's exactly what I did. Oh and another thing, their online ordering system requires Internet Explorer. Any company that bets their business on the Microsoft software development ideology with ASP, Windows 2003 Server, IE, ActiveX, .Net, all that crap, is already pretty much admitting they don't have a clue considering all the recent security advisories relating to Microsoft products and the current trend toward Open Source being the preferred development platform for server side computing. But I knew this the second I saw an all-Flash site. Anyone who does a site in 100 percent flash and doesnt offer an HTML option is a nitwit. Other than that, if the sandwiches are decent, I'll try them.

I used to watch this show, when our local PBS picked it up for a couple of seasons. It's hard for me to imagine a lower budget! It looks like in earlier seasons, she had a much nicer kitchen and they were using much better TV cameras (broadcast quality versus some fuzzy-quality camcorder-type thing) as well as multiple camera angles. The promotional spots from the seafood board were more sophisticated as well.

Do you have to be of Acadian descent to call yourself "Cajun" ? Or does anyone that lives in Cajun Country have the right to call themselves that?

Jason Perlow, on the subject of Ms. Lucy ... circa January 2004 Actually, Ms. Lucy is pretty easy for me to understand now, and its a soothing program to watch. I don't even need the stiff drink or a joint now. Now, Johnny Nix on Campfire Cafe on the other hand...

Is it just me, or was this program much higher budget in previous seasons?

I like the one by Ms. Lucy Zaunbrecher: "All good cooks are messy cooks!" She never fails to say it at least once or twice per episode. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=34415

I think Zilla369, NeroW and Malawry all should try out for this show. I think any of the three of them could hold their own against Ramsay.