Suzanne F

201, you're correct: the restaurant part is separate from the theater part. What I wonder is if they vet the movies beforehand, to determine that they won't, um, upset anyone's digestion.

And here in NYC there's The Screening Room, which has some decent food. I think the SF place is Foreign Cinema.

Exactly. My 12-inch still looks kind of splotchy, although it's darkening pretty well in most places. I HAVE noticed that the edge not that close to the flames takes a long, long time to heat -- have to keep moving the slices of bacon into the middle to get crisp. Funny thing is, the "raw" spots are in scattered all over the surface, not only around the edge. Oh dear, I hope Lodge hasn't changed the way they make the pans I expected more even heating.

Suvir, could you give us a little more information? Is it a fancy French mandoline, or one of those little plastic Japanese jobbies? That makes a BIG difference in how you prepare it. The Japanese ones are better served raw, as the plastic tends to melt when cooked; the French take to heat better, but you have to watch out for all those little knobs and levers when you serve them. Of course, you could always present it whole, bone it in the kitchen and then serve it already filleted.

So one dash equals half a pinch? Funny, doesn't seem very Italian (not that that's relevant). In my grandmother's version of Yiddish, a pinch was referred to as a "shit" -- from schut? or something like that in German. But it was always great fun to tell somebody a recipe: "You give a shit salz..."

Damn! I was going to suggest pistachios (skinned before grinding) -- but I see on the FoodTV listing that Emeril did one. Of course, MY version wouldn't require that hoky Essence stuff.

Whew! That actually makes be feel a lot better. I thought I was doing something wrong. I wonder what it is about the 12-inch skillets that make them a bit more difficult to season. HWOE says thanks you.

Bux -- I grew up using waxed paper (Cut-Rite), so that's what I'm used to. It's not like the old waxed milk cartons that used to shed chunks of the stuff, after all. But I'll try parchment sometime. I'm not crazy about using oil, though.

Due to an abundance of salt cod, and the need to keep seasoning a cast-iron pan: Pan-fried goujonettes of salt cod (soaked, drained, floured, fried) Crisp yuca wedges (partially boiled, then finished in the pan after the fish) "Caribbean-style" chunky tomato sauce (slightly chopped San Marzano tomatoes, onion, garlic, green and black olives, capers, pickled banana peppers, cumin, black pepper, and a hint of cinnamon) Mixed green salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Pindar "Pythagoras" Red Table Wine, North Fork, LI

Aw gee, thanks a lot, Dave! I bypassed the pre-seasoned stuff and bought a regular 12-inch -- which I am still seasoning after several weeks. Now you come along and tell me that the pre-seasoned stuff really is as good as they claim, and I needn't go through all this wiping and heating and wiping and heating. Oh well, on the upside: we're eating a lot more bacon than usual. Thanks for an excellent report. Edit-ion: after I told He Who Only Eats about the writeup, he wanted to know: does this mean you now need to have three sets of pans -- one pre-seasoned, one for the regular season, and one for playoffs and post-season?

Re: grating butter with a Microplane: How many times have you forgotten to take the butter out of the fridge ahead of time when you need it softened for a recipe? That's why G-d invented the Microplane (one reason, anyway). You grate the cold -- or even frozen -- butter, and bingo, it's usable. You didn't know???

Oh, Jaybee, you MUST go to Vintage NY! You could even have gone today because as the retail outlet of a winery (I forget which one at the moment -- it's partly owned by Susan Wine) they are allowed to open on Sundays. In any case, the staff there is extremely knowledgeable about the wines. And you can taste EVERYTHING they have in stock. We have been very pleased with Chardonnays from Paumanock (North Fork, LI); Knapp Sangiovese (Finger Lakes); and as Tommy mentioned, Dr. Konstantin Frank's Riesling -- that's one that we had with Jason and Rachel at Gage and Tollner, and found surprisingly good for the price.

Here in NYC's Chinatown, there are zillions of varieties of frozen dumplings, shui mai, etc. etc. available, mostly made locally. Not all have cooking (heating?) instructions -- although they do usually list ingredients, even though I'm not sure I trust the lists. When there are no instructions, I too just wing it -- stick them in the steamer and check every few minutes. I also usually put waxed paper on the steamer thing with the holes (sorry, lots of aperitifs and 1/2 bottle wine with dinner ) before I put any food in. Kind of the equivalent of the cabbage leaves in restaurants. Does this make sense?

I can't answer for Tommy, but I found it bizarre as well. Perhaps it was the texture -- except for the flavor I thought it might be extra-firm tofu. For one thing, the pieces we had at the big dinner didn't LOOK so much like chicken breast; small (okay, they could have been half of a half) and rather evenly square in shape. And since that is the one food that almost all cooks ruin by overcooking, its juiciness seemed, well, unusual. And who expects basil in Indian food?? It was just so much BETTER than chicken breast tends to be.

Oh yeah? That's not what I've heard.

In that case, you might want to look for wines from certain producers/sellers: try Louis Jadot or Georges DuBoeuf. They sell many of the kinds of wines others have mentioned, are very reputable, and sell a fairly consistent product. Just avoid anything labelled "Nouveau Beaujolais" especially if it lists a year earlier than 2002; for that stuff, older is definitely NOT better. And welcome! You are about to embark on a journey that will only lead to a good time (both drinking wine AND participating on eGullet)!

Robert S: You could do that, but it's more difficult to remove the extra fat that way. And what concerned me is that Bittman never mentioned the possibility. Maybe he used very, very lean legs. Although for that relatively short cooking time, one would probably want a bird that starts out less "toothsome." Yes, D'Artagnan carries moulards and muscovies, as well as pekin. But some are only special order, according to the website.

Kikujiro: The threat with rice is Bacillus Cereus Gastroenteritis, caused by Bacillus cereus, which can result in both infection, in which the bacteria themselves disrupt the functions of the human system and intoxication in which they toxins they produce cause the trouble. This bacterium is present in soil, so contamination is likely to be at the initial processing. Does this stop me from eating in Asian restaurants that leave their rice sitting around? Hell, no. But I just thought I'd mention the potential problem (I just LOVED my sanitation training ).

I've heard you can make "panini" by wrapping sandwiches in foil and ironing them. Might that work for heating other foods, too?

In restaurant-supply catalogues, I've seen heavy-duty food-grade plastic bottles that you fill with water and freeze. Then you stick them in the pot of stuff to cool. Same idea -- but reusable.

There was something about it a few weeks ago in Nation's Restaurant News -- an issue which I probably have already chucked. And the previous week, there was another article about an independent restaurant in Colorado named "Montana's Grill" that does NOT serve bison, but gets confused with Ted's. By now, though, you have to pay to see that article. To go back to Tommy's question: the one and only time we ate at Michael Jordan's The Steakhouse in Grand Central Terminal, we had a bison roast for 2. It was pretty good -- moist and flavorful -- definitely better than the other stuff we tried there. But that was a couple of years ago.

The basic rule is that high-risk foods (proteins, potatoes, rice, dairy) should not be in The Danger Zone between 40ºF and 140ºF for more than 4 hours. But that time is cumulative -- so out of the fridge, into the fridge, out of the fridge, etc. has to be considered (just the time out, but add ALL the times it was out). Another basic rule is that you don't want to raise the temperature inside the refrigerator, or cause it to "work too hard" to stabilize back where it should be. So no, you don't want to put a couple of gallons of boiling hot soup directly into the fridge. You DO need to cool it down before you put it away. What professional kitchens do is chill down the container of food as rapidly as possible -- buckets of stock, for example, are placed in deep sinks full of ice and water, and stirred frequently, until they are cool enough to refrigerate. Pans of solid food are placed on top of ice. If the food is covered with plastic wrap, you poke holes in it to let the heat out -- otherwise it takes a lot longer to cool down. Hope this helps.

In theory, it looks good. BUT: if one uses the standard American duckling, I question whether the time it takes to "nicely brown" the legs over medium heat is sufficient to render all the excess fat out of them. So I fear one would end up with an awful lot of fat floating on top of the reduced "braising" liquid. And Bittman doesn't say anything about skimming off whatever fat collects. Back on 1/21/98, he printed a recipe for Pan-Fried Duckling, which he credited to Paula Peck from 1961. In it, he says to cook a cut-up duck for 45 minutes. When I tried it, I thought it needed more time to render all the fat, cook all the meat, and crisp the skin. But then I've been using another, similar NY Times recipe from 1993 that is basically the same, but with longer cooking times. Anyway -- if you try it, please let us know how it comes out. (edited to complete message inadvertently sent before complete)

Well, the only savory we had that he mentions was the octopus -- and ours was dense, yes, but very tender. So I disagree with him there. But he is 100% right about Steve K's semolina cake. Fireworks, indeed! I only wish when we ate there that we had room for more; everything was excellent.

Thought I'd give an update on some of the recipes I tested: Both batches of mayonnaise are holding up nicely after 10 days; neither has broken. The difference between the two is very clear, though: the blender version, to which I had to add water, is softer in texture, noticeably whiter and (to me) less appetizing in appearance. The food processor one is more golden, and much stiffer. Seems like it would make a better base for a flavored mayo. I used some of each in a tuna salad (canned albacore [in water], chopped celery, sweet pickle relish, and a few drops of key lime juice), which definitely lacks that sourish tang one gets from commercial mayo. This is a good thing, I think. Have not yet had He Who Only Eats taste it; he's not much fond of tuna salad anyway. I used the carcass of the roast chicken to make stock, which I mixed with some brown chix stock I had in the freezer. (So the flavor of the resulting stock owed little to the roasting method.) Steamed some of the breast meat, shredded, over the stock, and served the 2 together with some (bought) chicken-and-herb tortellini. The important thing is that the breast meat was not overcooked by the steaming, since it was just à point from the roasting.