phaelon56

I'm squarely in the not-too-crazy-about-Honeycrisp camp. To me they taste too sweet - perhaps because they lack the balance of tartness that Macoun's or even Macintosh have. I also found the texture to be a bit too light. Not borderline mealy like Red Delicious but too moist. They were recommended to me at a local orchard when I stopped for apples but was a week too early for Macouns. I tried one and gave the rest of the bag away at work. The marketing phrase "Explosively Crisp!" is trademarked but I'm not sure how long the patent on the apples itself is in effect. These were developed at the University of Minnesota but a large majority of new apple varieties are developed and named at Cornell University's Agriculture field station in Geneva NY. The science behind apple hybridization is far from scary, has been practiced for centuries and is derived from the process by which single apple varieties have been stabliized and made consistent. One of the four sections in The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan covers apples and it is indeed fascinating. According to the Honeycrisp Apples web site

I don't know that I've ever had any smoked cheese apart from industrial smoked cheddar or gouda. On rare occasions I've found them to be a good companion to some impromptu snack when traveling - like smoked baby oysters in a can. I know that in the big scheme of things it's very pedestrian food but when I'm in the mood it's great. I will nose around at Wegman's for the naturally smoked cheese and try some for comparative purposes. I've tried a few cheeses with horseradish or hot peppers added to them but tired of it after a few small pieces. On the other hand... many of those cheeses make for very interesting grilled cheese sandwiches. I did find an English cheese last summer that has veins of Guinness Stout running throughout it. Instinct tells me it could make an unusual grilled cheese sandwich if partnered with the right bread and condiments but I haven't had a chance to revisit it. I haven't tried the flavored Triscuits but perhaps I should. With flavored potato chips or tortilla chips I start out liking them but after a few small handfuls immediately tire of the flavor - unlike good conventional chips. But then there's always Chicken in a Biskit Crackers - which don't taste much like chicken or biscuits.

Technically speaking it is actually in Flushing but Spicy Mina is on the very edge of Jackson heights and is an absolute must for a meal. Mina's food is still fantastic but, unlike her previous place in Sunnyside, she has raised prices enough such that she should be able to survive financially given enough business. Tip: decide when you'll be there and call one day in advance to order some appetizers for your group. They'll give you a fax number and request that you fax a written order along with your credit card number and arrival time. This system will allow you to actually start getting the first course on the table with 10 to 15 minutes after your arrival. Everything - and I do mean everything - is cooked to order. Without advance ordering the appetizers can take 40 - 50 minutes to begin arriving at the table - even when the restaurant is nearly empty. Believe me - it's worth the wait.

I agree that it was a good list and also agree re/Kitchen Confidential. I enjoyed it and even found a few parallels to my own life (I was a crazed party animal at Vassar College for two years just prior to Bourdain's arrival there or we may even have been in residence for a year at the same time - but the memories are bit indistinct). I'd also add Kurlansky's "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed The World". It's shorter and a bit less dry than Salt but equally compelling and enlightening. Cod.... who knew?

The good news is that there is some fairly good Vietnamese food to be had in Charlotte. A few short years ago I was spending a fair amount of time in Charlotte and used to drive by the Asian Corner Mall regularly but never had any reason to go in. But I ate in a few Vietnamese restaurants on other parts of town and found the food to be fresh and decent. Not as good as what I get here in Syracuse or parts of North Jersey but close to as good as the better Vietnamese places in NYC's Chinatown.

Not sure where you're located but in my region there are two different state universities that include a Food Technology department in their course offerings. One of those (SUNY Morrisville) actually has a satellite operation that provides guidance and even services to individuals or small business with a food product they wish to develop, produce, package and market. Their service encompass the full range from optimizing recipes and prep methods for large scale production to packaging, labeling etc. That may not be exactly what you're looking for but any decent 2 year or 4 year state college in a region with some agricultural activity will have a food program that can offer advice - at a minimum.

I believe I'll have to visit there some weekend to try the mofongo. I had it here n Syracuse at a Las Delicias - Dominican restaurant - and it showed promise but didn't quite hit the mark for me. The local Dominican place that I prefer - La Casa del Te - does not offer that dish. We don't have any place around here that does whole pig unless you contract for a private pig roast during the summer months.

It's a bit of a drive to Syracuse (about 90 to 110 minutes) from Rochester but we do have one truly authentic Korean restaurant. It's not "Korean-Japanese", does not offer sushi, "Korean BBQ" or anything else targeted at a mainstream market. The clientele is predominately Korean students attending nearby Syracuse University who come for the equivalent of mom's home cooking. I haven't discussed it previously in this forum but did cover my visit to Chorong House in a recent foodblog. Once again... I can't speak to the Rochester experience but we do have a Dominican restaurant here in town that does a very respectable roast pork - it's close to what I've had in a Cuban friend's home down in West New York NJ - a huge Cuban community. Puerto Rican restaurants also tend to have good roast pork. I'm sure Rochester has a few of each - maybe even a Cuban place. If you're referring to ordering seafood in a restaurant versus buying it to cook at home... I suggest ordering seafood dishes at a good higher end restaurant that has a reputation for quality and ordering seafood on Wednesday through Saturday evenings. Foley's of Boston - not the only purveyor but one of the better ones from Boston - delivers fresh to Syracuse Tuesday through Saturday. No deliveries on Sunday or Monday and the rest is easy to figure out. You won't get fish in Syracuse or Rochester that's as fresh as you'll find closer to the ocean but you can get some that's pretty darn fresh. And if you're adventurous and cooking at home just visit a big Asian market and buy it live straight from the tank.

My payback for a $400 Mazzer Mini and a $1,000 Isomac E61 style machine was longer than your Maestro/Silvia payback but even then... with only 10 to 12 drinks per week and a bit more when guests are visiting - I think the payback period on my gear was about three years but I'm now moving on to the sixth year of using this equipment and it still functions like new. I suggest nosing around in the coffeegeek forums for Rocky doser versus doserless discussion. The doserless is not necessarily a better choice for everyone although it is for many.

I don't cook as often as I'd like to and have some dried spices I use very infrequently. I really don't know if it helps or not but I keep all of my dried spices in the freezer. When I spotted those McCormick's ads I immediately read them as saying that spices lose their capabilities after X number of years and need to be replaced. My mother definitely has cans way older than 15 years - Cream of Tartar and Alum for sure.

Here's an explanation from the archives of Straight Dope that is as good an explanation as any I've seen. Why Is There No Ketchup on a properly made Hot Dog? It's a fairly rational and common sense defense of the position but I side with those who remain puzzled by why so many people have a strong reaction to the practice - perhaps even more profound than the reaction of steak lovers who see someone slather A-1 sauce onto a well done steak. If you don't put it on my hot dog I could care less.

At any Chinese take-out place I'm trying for the first time I go with hot and sour soup and some steamed dumplings. Unfortunately - what i receive is nearly always the same stuff - soup that isn't spicy enough and generic frozen dumplings with a thick pasty skin - obviously pre-made industrial glop. Last year we were fortunate enough to get a new Chinese restaurant that was not only on my way home from work but made their own dumplings, sauces and soup from scratch with high quality ingredients. If they had opened in a cheap rent take-out only space they might have prospered but they had a high rent space with a huge dining room that stayed empty nearly all the time - and were gone in six months.

Does this mean that the cooking surface itself - the floor of the oven - is stainless steel and not brick? The two pizza shops in my city that I consider to be very good both use gas fired ovens but with a brick deck that gets cleaned periodically and replaced every once in a rare while. And the quality of the results resembles - but in most cases is superior to - what the best slice joints in NYC offered 20 or 30 years ago when they mixed and proofed their own dough from scratch, made their own sauce and used high quality whole milk mozzarella. I could get pie like that in Rutherford NJ when I lived there (and still can when I visit) and I'm told that Staten Island still has good extant examples but in Manhattan it seem that I have to jump to coal oven places to get pie I really like.

Definitely not. But you really do need to look at the labels on everything these days in supermarkets. And I do mean everything. I happen to like onion dip with chips on occasion. I know I should just make my own but I've been buying the Heluva Good brand in my local supermarket for years and it's the same price as buying sour cream alone. Last week I was in Target - where they now stock some food items. I spotted Dean's brand onion dip and bought one. I nearly hurled after tasting one chip with dip and quickly checked the label. Sure enough - there's no sour cream in it! The ingredients included corn syrup, non-fat milk solids, whey, guar gum etc. - but no "real" dairy. Totally disgusting. Into the trash it went. I once bought a rotisserie chicken at the local Sam's Club after hearing my brother rave about the large size and how they were such a great value. Yuck. They were big - sure enough. And the meat had that weird spongy quality that can only come from injected water. Never again. I am. I do it with my wallet.

The new England style split bun with the crust only on the thin edges is the predominant hot dog vehicle in the majority of hot dog places in central NY state - but it's not buttered.

The Vietnamese restaurant I frequent has a wonton noodle soup on the menu that uses pork broth. It's highly reduced and has some of the fragrant herbs that are used in the beef broth based pho soups. Very tasty.

In the Wikipedia section on Hot Dog Variations they mention this fact in the coney discussion: (bold italics added for emphasis)This was actually true for many years - probably up until the 1980's. if you wanted ketchup on your hot dog or coney you had to bring your own because the owners believed it was wrong to serve them with ketchup. I don't recall whether the addition of ketchup to the menu occurred when new owners took over or if it coincided with them beginning to offer French fries (which really do benefit from ketchup in my opinion). But they do have ketchup now.

I fly with some regularity - probably about 10 - 12 times per year. I always pull my empty water bottle out of my carry-on bag or computer case and stick it in my shoe to go through the X-ray machine. Non one has ever batted an eye including my trip through Sea-Tac a few weeks ago. But that's not to say that it couldn't happen. I think taking an empty 16 oz or 24 oz spring water bottle is better than bringing that expensive Nalgene bottle - just in case. Not to mention that if you're a regualr water drinker like me you'll have the bottle out next to you while you're waiting for the plane. On more than one occasion I have jumped up to catch a boarding flight and inadvertently left my water bottle on the floor or on the seat next to me. No big deal if it was an empty bottle that was destined for the recycling bin sooner than later anyway.

I fly regularly and have brought a variety of food from home with no issues but it was not in liquid form. Like others I bring an empty water bottle through security and fill it from the first available fountain. Some of the times I have been known to bring: - banana or two - dried fruit and dried - granola bars - cold fried chicken (if I anticipate consuming it in the first few hours of the trip) - apples - pretzels - small pieces of prepackaged sharp cheddar and some crackers to go with it (Cabot sells little prepackaged wedges of cheese in multipacks) - small snack size applesauce - rice cakes (I get the caramel sweetened type because I do have a sweet tooth)

They have started popping up in Buffalo NY and then moving east towards Rochester with some Interstate 90 rest stop locations. Rumor has it that they have their eye on the Syracuse market as well. I was on the road back late in the evening from a Buffalo trip and tried a baked good of some sort - a cinnamon roll or apple fritter if I recall correctly. It wasn't wretched but it wasn't memorable either. The coffee sucked. It has a different flavor profile than Dunkin Donuts coffee - tastes more robust but also more bitter. It was perhaps better than the swill McDonald's served for years as their standard coffee but not quite as good as McDonald's new "premium" coffee (which isn't very good either). I can't figure out why people rave about it but there's no accounting for taste. A friend in Buffalo told me she never liked cappuccino's until she tried one at Tim Horton's and raved about how fantastic theirs is. It comes from a pushbutton machine at uses a preblended and presweetened mix - just like those wonderful machines in gas station convenience stores. Even Dunkin Donuts makes a better cappuccino than that and theirs isn't very good.

Agreed. And if it is offered it's not as though I expect the dish to be the same in every place - I'd be disappointed if it were and would be looking for empty Sysco entree cartons behind the building if that were the case. I'm not trying to compare a broad range of restaurants. I'm looking at a basic reference dish for a specific type of restaurant in a given geographic area and specific general price range. It will vary from area to area and individual to individual - if that person even believe there is such a thing as a culinary reference point. I was simply stating the reference points that works for me in the community that I happen to live in at present. There are undoubtedly some significant regional differences. But here in Syracuse and in North Jersey NYC metro area where I lived for several years nearly all Italian red sauce joints have Veal Saltimbocca on the menu. There's a fundamental difference between your area and mine. But I have visited many many Vietnamese restaurants in the US in upstate NY (Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany), Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, North Jersey, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Orange County CA and Seattle and even a few in San Francisco and the Walnut Creek area (but just a few in those areas). Every single one I visited had pho, fresh spring rolls and cafe sua da. So for me those are good reference points. I don't question that such is the case in your area. But 75% of the moderate to mid range "contemporary" places in my area and all French influenced places - from bistros up to haute wannabe's - have creme brulee on the menu. The fact that such items may not be in style or even offered in many places in your area doesn't invalidate them as reference points for me in my area. I have a specific and limited budget for dining out and like to establish who the contenders are and aren't - in my typical price range - with a simple litmus test. So - what is your litmus test (if you have one) for the types of food or cuisine that you favor most, prefer or go out for most often in your area?

Unfortunately I live in an area where good lemon tarts are rare in bakeries and nearly non-existent in restaurants. But many places do have creme brulee. And I've given up trying on baguettes. But you're on to something there - if I think about my one trip to Paris (which I pray to repeat sooner than later) - we had both baguettes and lemon tarts on multiple days at a number of bakeries and patisseries - and the quality differences were revelatory.

This thread in the Spirits & Cocktails Forum got me thinking.... A Drink to Test a Bartender, What is a cocktail of minimum competence? What is your reference point - as a diner or as a person screening a prospective employee? Living in a small city with a seeming abundance of Italian restaurants - with places closing and new ones opening on a regular basis - has caused me to choose Veal Saltimbocca as my reference dish. If I visit a new Italian restaurant in my town I'll always order that dish with a side of pasta and red sauce on my first visit. If they screw that up there's almost no chance I'll ever return there to explore the rest of their menu. If you have an Italian restaurant with a traditional Italian-American menu you'd better get veal, red sauce and pasta right on your first try. If it's a Vietnamese restaurant I'll order the fresh spring rolls (uncooked style), a bowl of pho with rare beef and an iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk on my first visit. My reference dessert is creme brulee for similar reasons - it's not that tough to make but it's not easy to make one that is stellar and is served at the right temperature with proper consistency. Do you have similar reference dishes for the cuisines you either eat most often or enjoy the most and why are they your reference points?

What Melkor said. I have oval 11" platters, white round 6" and 10" plates and white soup bowls - all purchased at a restaurant china factory store (a real outlet store - no one of the ubiquitous make believe outlet stores). And I have only two types of glasses in the house - 16 oz Libby "pint glasses" (the heavy duty ones like those used to serve pints in many brewpubs) and 10 oz Arcoroc bar style rocks glasses. I suppose some would take issue with the somewhat spartan aesthetic of my choices but my plates and glasses are far more likely to wear out from excessive scratches due to years of use before they ever break. And I've inadvertently dropped these things on my hardwood kitchen floors more than a few times - the Arcocroc rocks glasses are the only ones that break.

A smokeless home coffee roaster that has programmable roast profiles, does batch sizes ranging from 1/4 lb up to 1 lb and sells for less than $500. Must be smokeless and that is a huge gotcha.