johnsmith45678

Yeah, I've known many executive chefs who didn't spend much time on the line (which probably includes GR nowadays), while they were in that position anyway. So, Virginia just comes up with the dishes and a capable crew is hired to carry them out while she hangs out in the dining room (hey, sorta like Rocco in The Restaurant!)... But Virginia is such a nut-job. Her mixed metaphors ("...a new skin on life...", "...put that gas in my tank...", etc.) in her confessionals were quease-inducing. This season makes season one seem like it was much better. I'd rather watch Michael and Ralph go at it again than these two...

The second episode was more interesting than the first - Colonel Sanders, Duncan Hines, the custard place. But I was also reminded of how much more I like No Reservations and especially A Cook's Tour. I suspect Bourdain's reaction to the brain sandwich would have been similar to this reaction to the fermented shark, or the iguana ("I wanted to gouge my eyes out, I wanted to ...!"). And, yeah, narrating while riding the motorcycle does NOT work.

Hey, there's one health food diet I'd love to subscribe to - foie gras and duck!

Cool, just picked up Baking with Julia -- looks like a solid book. Also, I've really liked the America's Test Kitchen Baking Illustrated book -- I've picked up several of their other books. And started watching the show. BTW, I was shocked to see just how much butter was in buttercream -- a whole freakin' pound (four sticks)?!? Wow. Are there very many low-sugar/fat pastry recipes that actually taste good?

Man, how could I forget Rocco Dispirito on my list of Don't Like? He definitely goes on that list.

I've never used that smoker/cooker I built from the Good Eats episode of "Scrap Iron Chef." (Just kidding - never even thought about copying that!)

I'm not aware of anything I'm allergic to.

Dayum! Do you ever use more than one or two of those whisks? I've never seen many of them -- are they all general purpose whisks, or do they have different or more specific intended uses (if you elaborated on such in your other post, somebody please point me to that!)?

You might want to watch A Cook's Tour - episodes Down Under and Mad Tony -- Bourdain visits Sydney, Melbourne and other places.

This is an interesting subject. To answer your question, I would assume they are publishing them for the home baker or cook. If a bakery was to sell them under their name, then that would open up the door for liability. A bakery could sell them under "Jacque Pepin's creme caramel" title on their menu and that would be fine, crediting the chef/author. ← That could be tricky, because if you sell a product called "Jacque Pepin's creme caramel," you might actually end up infringing on a trademark, just like if you tried to sell a beer called Sam Adams or open up a lingerie store called Victor's Secret. ← Yeah, I also think that could lead to trouble - you're not allowed to use others' likenesses without their permission. Using Jacque Pepin's name on a menu would give the impression that he might be associated somehow with the restaurant.

I found this page on which there's this: Wow, so the lower-fat beef WF, AW, and others are switching to has more of the bad fats? That page also has an interesting study using Angus and Wagyu steers. Apparently we (US beef) can make our beef have healthier fats by letting them live a bit longer and changing their diet to that used in raising Wagyu (corn early, grass later).

I think you will appreciate this video - Li through Cs added to water, enough said!

I'm kinda curious about those...

Is well-marbled beef considered less healthful because it presumably has more fat? From what I know, beef with well-marbled fat causes more of the fat to be distributed to (and retained in) the meat during cooking -- ergo the meat will contain more fat. How about Waygu? Does that have even more fat when it makes it to the table? Well-marbled beef seems to be the preferred choice by fine restaurants, but then there's also a movement now for grass-fed (in pastures as opposed to grain in feed lots) beef which contains less fat (and, I presume, less well-marbled). Here's a recent story about the increasing demand for grass-fed beef and those switching to it (notably Whole Foods and Alice Waters).

Well, yeah, experiencing the world on a bike is much more of an experience than in a car. Or on your sofa watching the show. Like I said, it's just an excuse for them to take a road trip. You also forgot to mention the other experiences of motorcycles: freezing your ass off in the rain, the fatigue, the elements (sun, bugs, etc.), the drivers who cut you off because they don't see you, the spills when there's unseen sand on pavement where you're turning, the car that pulls out in front of you causing you to hit them and fly off your bike over the car cracking your head on the pavement and wrecking your bike (hey, AB wiped out too...) -- all of which happened to me. I both loved and hated having a motorcycle. I think I know what the experience of being on a bike is, and I stand by what I said about the show - mildly interesting, unless of course I was doing the trip in which case it would be a helluva enjoyable trip.

And Gordon Ramsey will be screaming four-letter words at his "Hell's Kitchen" charges, as they try to feed the lunch rush with their own personal twist on the American hot dog, with a visit to the corn field's of Iowa as the the "reward." "Awww. Sara, ya' dumb cow. He asked for relish! Not f*cking onions!" ← Heh, as I was watching GE: BtE I thought to myself, "I can't imagine Alton running a restaurant - he's WAY too nice."

A recipe, in the sense of a set of ingredients and procedures for producing a certain food product, I don't think is or can be protected under any intellectual property laws in the US. The specific literary expression of a recipe is of course protected -- you can't simply copy and republish a published recipe. ← Yep, the ingredient list of recipes can't be copyrighted. So if the bakery already has chefpeon's recipes, they can probably continue to use them (but not, say, publish them in their own cookbook - or if they did, it'd be a matter of who could prove authorship). But if they don't have them, and chefpeon doesn't want to give the recipes to them, well they're probably SOL. As they say, it pays to get stuff in writing - but I've never seen any such legal IP contracts in any restaurants I've worked in. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't (for example) somebody open up a pastry shop and just use recipes verbatim from the latest top cookbooks, without having to worry about any legal ramifications? As I understand it - yes. ← I do that all the time. No one knows I use Jacque Pepin's creme caramel, or Payard's lemon tart, or Cook's Illustrated panna cotta and chocolate pudding. Why the heck are they publishing them, if not to use? ← Yeah, every place I worked at that created their own dishes in house heavily relied on published cookbooks as well. And from what I hear, recon and stealing of recipes from other local hot restaurants goes on as well.

A recipe, in the sense of a set of ingredients and procedures for producing a certain food product, I don't think is or can be protected under any intellectual property laws in the US. The specific literary expression of a recipe is of course protected -- you can't simply copy and republish a published recipe. ← Yep, the ingredient list of recipes can't be copyrighted. So if the bakery already has chefpeon's recipes, they can probably continue to use them (but not, say, publish them in their own cookbook - or if they did, it'd be a matter of who could prove authorship). But if they don't have them, and chefpeon doesn't want to give the recipes to them, well they're probably SOL. As they say, it pays to get stuff in writing - but I've never seen any such legal IP contracts in any restaurants I've worked in. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't (for example) somebody open up a pastry shop and just use recipes verbatim from the latest top cookbooks, without having to worry about any legal ramifications? As I understand it - yes. edit - oh yeah, I'd love to see that macaroon recipe too .

Huh, I was under the impression it was your own bakery (perhaps you should start your own ). But, yeah, I've also worked with people to whom cooking was just a "job." Working at such places was so unfun. I'm curious about this as well. I've wondered what happens when a chef leaves -- whose recipes are they? In a lot of other professions when you are employed by somebody, they usually own the work you produce for them. There recently was a head chef change at a well-known local restaurant (Mel's), and the place kept a lot of the old dishes, but also added a lot of new items created by the new chef (many of which I think he brought from the last place he was a chef).

Or I worked with some people every now an then that would let the pan's handle sit over an open flame. Either way YEOW! As a result of this and other burns, I would usually very briefly touch anything I thought MIGHT be hot, rather than fully commiting on the first grab. The vast majority of serious burns and cuts (where the person needed a trip to the hospital and/or had lasting scars/disfiguration) I've witnessed or heard about were a result of somebody goofing off or not paying attention (usually teenagers). But accidents where the injured isn't at fault DO happen... One other source of burns was at one place I worked where they kept the plates in an oven cranked up rather high. People were always burning their hands because they'd picked up a hot plate thinking it was cold. But the seasoned, calloused cooks prided themselves on their ability to grab plates straight from the oven with their bare hands!

All my burns have healed, and none of them ever looked worse than reddened skin, but the worst I can remember was accidentally splashing deep fryer oil on the top of my hand, then having to use the same hand to work on the really hot grill station for the rest of my shift (which lasted for several more hours). Heat really intensifies the pain of burns.