Honkman

Cooking is too much of chill-out/relaxing time after a long day at work that we would at home “waste” it with any highly processed/low quality food. Also dinner is every day a good time to sit and talk about the day as a family without any distractions and so good food is even more important as it is a great foundation of good discussions

I like this book https://www.amazon.com/Bowls-Plenty-Recipes-Delicious-Whole-Grain/dp/145553658X

There might be more tourists than at other Thai places but the food is much, much better compared to Chada. Now living on the east coast LOS is actually one of the restaurants I really miss from LV visits. It is one of the best Thai restaurants in the US

You should try Lotus of Siam

It would help if you could describe how you currently make your bread, e.g. hydration level etc.

Coming form Germany I am still surprised what money people in the US think characterizes German food today. Most of the people tend to think that the stuff served in most of the "German" restaurant is indeed what most Germans eat on a regular basis even though it couldn't be further from the truth. (But most Germans also still think all Americans eat only burgers, ribs and mac'n'cheese everyday.)

Jacob Wirth is (and most likely soon was) a horrible restaurant with unbelievable low quality food and had very little to do with German food. If you want German (or better Central/Eastern European) food in Boston the only good option is Bronwyn http://bronwynrestaurant.com/

This book sounds related to a German book called “Foodpairing: Harmonie und Kontraste” written by Thomas Vilgis - he is a well known professor who has written a number of cookbooks which rely heavily on chemistry and looks at key chemicals in many different ingredients and how they can be matched or oppose. He worked with some of the best known chefs in Germany for some of his books. If you can read German all of his books are highly recommended https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/3037804807/ref=mp_s_a_1_23?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅZÕÑ&qid=1521423471&sr=8-23&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=thomas+vilgis

Yes

We love to cook through many cookbooks and magazines but never repeat a recipe (but have kept record of all the ones we tried since living together)

It’s a typical German bread which tends to be very dense (but yours looks too dense). People like to eat it with soup, e.g. lentil soup but duck, pork rillette or Griebenschmalz (lard with cracklings) is also a popular combination.

KBrO3 is a potential carcinogen and thereby bromated flour can be potentially carcinogenic dependent on how somebody is using it (baking time, temperature, etc) It would be irresponsible by MB not to call it potentially carcinogenic without new, peer-reviewed data. The industry is not the problem - it is the other way around - more customer should be aware about potential risk of their food.

In my job I have to work with animal and human data regarding multiple disease indication, including oncology, on a daily basis. Based on your comments it is rather obvious that you have little idea about how any kind of (pre)clinical studies (including epidemological ones) are conducted. There is enough data in animals and humans which indicate potential renal toxicity with bromate exposure that warrants caution (and bans) in using it in material for human consumption.

I don’t really see paranoia about bromate - the scientific (animal) data indicates some possibility of carcinogenicity and based on this it is banned in many countries around the world (with US one of the few exceptions). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567851/ https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+1253

The Neapolitan pizza in two different pizzerias in Naples wouldn't be the same

It's not scientists or people of the region or Nathan who ultimate define what a product is called but ultimately whoever makes the dish. It is the same discussion as with "authentic" dishes - what you define as authentic might not be the same what I define as authentic and we are both right. Where you are fundamentally wrong (even beyond just food) is " You're mistakingly assuming that there's multiple routes to the same destination" - yes, there are always multiple routes to the same destination outside of food, within food and also Neapolitan pizza. It's quite preposterous to believe there is only one way to make Neapolitan pizza and every other approach in the future can only lead to inferior results.

As a scientist I care about the progress of science and don't ever believe that most things can't be improved with "newer" science - same with Neapolitan pizza - just because there is a "great deal of wisdom and science" in the making of this style of pizza doesn't mean you shouldn't utilize the progress of science over time to change/improve the making of Neapolitan pizza (and still call it a Neapolitan pizza).

Prager Brothers are for us by a very large margin the best bakery in SD - never really understood the love for B&C in SD.

I am surprised they let you photograph your food - they are normally known for a strict no photo policy

There are a few recipes in the book which are from J&I but yes, it is more towards the home cook. (J&I is the one restaurant we miss from San Diego now that we live in Boston. It was our weekly ritual to have dinner there and at the end we knew many of their cooks/chefs/servers quite well and had some nice surprises during our last few visits)

I have only looked at "On Vegetables" in the bookstore but there is no doubt that I will buy it soon as it is written by Fox which has shown with Ubuntu years ago (some of the best meals for us) that he is very unique in creating vegetable-based dishes using unique flavors, thoughts, ideas. It is definitely not your next "standard" vegetable book

Your list covers already some good restaurants - a more unusual one is Ma Maison from Chef Quenioux. Chef had for some time a great restaurant with Bistro LQ in LA which was sometimes too far out and too creative for many people. But after he closed it he it started to have dinners at his house now. Bistro LQ was unbelievable creative cooking on a three star level with a very small kitchen crew (2-3 people). For more than two years we drove on very regular basis from San Diego to LA to have great tasting menus at Bistro LQ. He continuous these tasting menus in his home with produce from his garden or foraged from the neighborhood incorporating influences from all over the world. Here is a link to his FB page with future dates - highly recommended https://m.facebook.com/lquenioux/

I don't know but just because you had some crap (Kraft cheese is really awful "food") as a small child doesn't mean you can't grow up and have real food/parmesan

My main issue with Kraft "Parmesan" cheese is not the cellulose but that it tasted horrible and has nothing to do with Parmesan cheese. The production of the "Parmesan cheese" at Kraft has nothing to do with the production of real Parmesan cheese and in Europe Kraft is actually not allowed to sell their green boxes of grates "cheese product" with Parmesan mentioned anywhere on the box

As someone who likes to drink cocktails in bars but haven't really dived deeply into the world of making cocktails myself at home I always read with interest thr discussions here on eG about the different cocktail books, e.g. Death & Co etc. One thing I always wondered is that obviously if you don't work in a cocktail bar you most likely won't have such a broad selection of different spirits that you can make most recipes out of a book without relying on substitutions. But how do you decide what to use for a substitution ? If for example a cocktail recipe calls for an obscure/rare gin how do you decide what to use from your home collection, assuming you don't have only one gin at home. How do you know that your substitution is at least reasonable close in terms of flavor profile to the original choice in the recipe ? Is it just experience from tasting so many over the years (but do you really keep track if those flavor profiles) or are there webpage which have good overviews or do you don't care if your substitution is close in flavor profile and just see if the final product tastes good or not regardless how close the overall flavor is to the one from the book ?