Suzanne F

How about using Mexican or Spanish chocolate, such as Ibarra or Abuelita's (sp?). Available from Nestle, iirc, and really, really good. In any case, real chocolate melted into milk is better than a powdered mix, no matter where it comes from.

Just curious: when did Bill Peet take over the kitchen? The last I heard, the chef was Ari Niemenen (ex-Firebird, River Cafe, and a couple of places in between). And do you know what happened to Ari?

Snowangel: I throw the duck heads into the stock, so why not chicken in theirs? Just a warning, though: they have a tendency to float to the top and stare out of the pot. Maybe it's the air in the sinus cavity or something.

Last night, back after several days out of town: Sausage and pepper sandwiches on baguette, with a light salad (only had 2 lettuces at the Greenmarket) and beer. Tonight, inspired by Laurie Colwin: Whole chicken legs baked with lemon juice and coarsely ground black pepper. Polenta with creamy horseradish cheese mixed through. Broccoli rabe blanched, then sauteed with garlic. Mixed salad (leaves, red and yellow peppers) with olive oil and oregano vinegar. Paumanok Barrel Fermented Chardonnay.

What? Surely I'm not the only one who saves the water from steamed veg, to reuse for the next few batches of steamed veg and eventually to be added to soups or sauces or stocks. Don't forget those last little dribs and drabs of sauces -- eventually they will enhance another sauce or soup. Cheese rinds, check. Going to use my "cheese stock" tomorrow to make risotto. And I was aghast at the farmers' market recently when someone buying a bunch of beets said she didn't know you could cook the leaves. Okay, I could see not knowing that the stems by themselves make a great pickle (see E. Schneider, Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, but to not know about beet greens? Well, you can be sure I set her straight! Right now I've got a collection of leafy-vegetable stems just waiting to become . . . um . . . something or other. But they mostly will, I promise.

Ooops. Just want to make it clear that somewhere along the way, some coding and text for quotes got wiped out in Ted's post. What's quoted is what Leslie wrote in her now-thankfully-unavailable-unless-you-want-to-pay-for-it-which-I-sure-as-hell-don't review. I might be that nasty, but not about Tony. That said, I just read the recipe, and it IS kind of bizarre. It's a bit off in the order of steps (much easier to make the clarified butter BEFORE the reduction, especially if you use the alternate method the day before). The first method for clarifying should probably explain that you gently pour or ladle off the fat and discard the milk solids. And that alternate method seems to contain a line picked up from instructions for making stock or defatting a braise: "The next day, scrape the solidified fat off the top, peeling it away carefully and discarding it." DISCARDING IT!?!?!?!?!? THAT'S THE STUFF YOU WANT TO KEEP!!!!! Also, there really should be some mention of straining the tarragon reduction before adding it to the eggs. Otherwise you'll have a swampy mess of tarragon leaves along with little peppercorn bullets in your sauce. THOSE are the errors she should have called, because they are serious errors for the unpracticed. Sounds like she simply got her eggs too hot too fast -- it's not that the recipe is wrong about that. (Oh, and the index is off by a page in the reference to clarifying butter. Tony, once again, you should have forced your editor to use me at least to proofread, if not copyedit or index! Next cookbook, okay? ) But Ted, in answer to your question, no, you want to add it to the raw eggs, because it will help the emulsion of the butter with the eggs. Think of the reduction as the moral equivalent of the lemon juice when you make mayonnaise. Molecules that the air and then the fat can grab onto to make the emulsion and keep it together.

You can still order direct from D'Artagnan. You may have to be registered.

One of the books I worked on recently is now out: Cocktails in New York by Anthony Giglio (who is, in fact, an eG member, which I didn't know when I worked on it). It's sort of a companion to The New York Restaurant Cookbook, also brought out by Rizzoli. It's all recipes from some of the top bars and lounges in the city -- including the famously difficult-to-enter Milk and Honey -- with some other very good information. Unfortunately, it does not include the recipe for Beacon's ab fab Flaming Orange Gully but as someone who knows very little about the craft of the cocktail, I learned a whole lot from it. I'd be interested to find out the reactions of those here who DO know about this stuff. I can definitely say that it made me thirsty for something more interesting than my usual fino sherry aperitif. You can purchase it here on Amazon.

Oops: Salt 1 doesn't work. But you might also try Adrianna's Caravan, at Grand Central Market (in Grand Central Terminal).

Lettuce leaf?!?!?!? Dry, I presume.

Mmmm, a ravioli version of Brik. If you want to keep them small, use quail eggs. Otherwise, get peewees, the smallest commercial grade (I believe) of hens' eggs. With even medium eggs, they'll end up pretty large. Cool idea, in any case.

Uhhhhhhhhhh . . . how could you leave out the most important question of all: WHICH BACON???????

Stewed with lamb and artichokes, the broth turned into avgolemono

Oh dear! As long as nobody was under the cabinet when it went down. You don't want to end up like Charles Valentin Alkan.

All right then, how about IACP? They love you.

More, please. Pretty please? With a cherry on top???

Re: software -- check this thread and this other one about software for cookbooks.

Still an interesting debate. Any new ideas?

You have to have the oysters; otherwise what do you eat while your cooking? Oh and Champagne to wash them down with. ← I agree wholeheartedly. That's what I meant about NEVER burying the oysters in the stuffing. There are only 3 ways to eat oysters, as far as I'm concerned: raw first and foremost; in a stew or pan-roast; and maybe fried in a po-boy. But in stuffing/dressing? Naw.

Wow! Best thing I've learned today, the cheesecloth trick. Thanks!!! And yes, it's stuffing inside, dressing outside. I've always got to have it both ways. The thing about it, though, is some of us -- like me -- never make it the same way twice. Yeah, I'll always start with the packaged Pepperidge Farm or Arnold stuff, and add sauteed onions and celery and the chopped giblets, and use turkey giblet-enriched chicken stock, but from there on it's purely on a whim. Sometimes mushrooms (well, almost always ); maybe a little garlic; water chestnuts; chopped fennel; lemon zest or chopped preserved lemon; cooked crumbled sausage of some type; carrots; bell pepper; cranberries (fresh or dried); and I can't even get started on the herbs. The only thing I'll never, ever add is oysters; seems like a desecration of the bivalve to me. This is one of those items for which there is no ULTIMATE recipe; just have lots of fun finding what you like!

We're going tonight for HWOE's birthday; he's a Luger virgin, I've been once, and our companions are old hands (one even has a Luger charge card! ) I'm figuring on bacon, steak for 2, lamb chops, spinach . . . beyond that, dunno. Too late for tomatoes . HWOE is really looking forward to the lamb; when I went with the same 2 friends, we too shared an order as an app, and they were great (we ordered them more rare than med-rare, and they were perfect). Reporting back the next morning: maybe we should have gotten the tomato/onion salad, it actually looked pretty good. But HWOE was satisfied, as were the rest of us, with bacon and an order of lamb chops as apps, then the aforementioned steak-for-2 and ANOTHER order of lamb chops for mains plus spinach and a small order of french fries. And a bottle of Jordan 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon ($80), 4 beers, and one piece of apple strudel and one of pecan pie (mit schlag, of course ). We specified that we wanted all the meat RARE, and so it arrived. Perfect, just perfect. How come nobody ever talks about the desserts? We really enjoyed them -- the pecan pie had a good ratio of nuts to goo, and the goo wasn't even all that gooey. The strudel was unusual, with a very thin layer of genoise between the fruit and the flaky dough. A bit too sweet overall for my taste, but interesting. HWOE was oohing and aahing over the lamb chops, as expected, but he also LOVED the steak. What a relief!

Welcome, indeed! When I was in culinary school, one of my classmates had, shall we say, a difficult time reading the English language (well, probably more than one ). He misread "Broiled Beefsteak" as "Boiled Beefsteak", with understandably disastrous results. Actually, it's not so bad if you: 1. don't actually boil it, but rather simmer; and 2. use beef stock, not water, as the cooking liquid. But enough about you I made Cream of Artichoke Soup (artichoke stock from the freezer, a package of frozen artichoke hearts, some crema di carciofi, roast garlic puree, leftover mashed potatoes, and a touch of cream), and um, ham and Muenster sandwiches on rye (all out of supermarket packages, )

Oh, there's at least one, but she just started a new job recently. I hope to get together with her on Friday afternoon/evening; if you're around, want to join us? By any chance, are you going for the WCR conference? If so, whether or not we get together on Friday, we'll have to meet (especially since you said elsewhere that you worked at Bayard's, right?)

Definitely leave the car and use the T if you can! Not sure if it's every day, but you have to check out Haymarket -- the big open-air market not far from Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall (the other side under the highway, iirc) and also near the North End (Little Italy). All definitely walking distance, especially to a NYer.

Hey, I'm here, too. Even though you might lose some flavor, I'd cook the rice with the vegetables all together, and the meats/tofu separately, only adding them just before serving, or maybe even keeping them entirely separate, so that you don't run into a problem with having the right proportions of each. As for baking: a recipe I have for 50 portions (4 ounces each) of pilaf that uses 1 cup of olive oil, 2 cups minced onion, 3 cups slivered almonds, 3.5 pounds of converted rice, and a gallon of stock. Cook the onions and almonds in the oil until tender; add the rice and stir to coat. Transfer rice mixture to a 12 by 20 by 4-inch pan. Add the stock; bring to a boil on the stove top, cover. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25 minutes, "or until liquid is absorbed." Fluff before serving. Then you could serve it from several smaller casseroles with the meats and/or tofu. How does that sound?