Steve Klc

By that logic, Lesley, should we expect crisp-skinned roast chicken with potato and carrots on every high end restaurant menu? Clearly not. The keys are the words Patrice used to describe the food at J-G--surprising, tasty, fun. That's what's missing in your defense of the staid chocolate cake/vanilla ice cream combo. It's been passed by and the same cake concepts--be they attributed to Bras or J-G--have been surpassed in the hands of others. Why defend a chef or pastry chef willing to rest on past laurels? And even more importantly--it doesn't match the cuisine in thought, effort, playfulness or execution. That's the standard I believe Patrice expected of an elite restaurant in NYC and just perhaps this ties into the other thread ongoing at the moment which is considering whether the supposed elite restaurants in NYC are so special anymore. (I don't want to give too much away, but Patrice had some very impressive desserts by Bill Yosses at Citarella and Jean-Francois Bonnet at Atelier so at least the dessert aspect of that question isn't a foregone conclusion.) Back to J-G--he could easily serve his chocolate moelleux more creatively or more inventively--look what Philippe Conticini is doing with his mini-moelleux up in a wine glass as but one example. That way the dessert would be more in line with the food which preceded it. A big lump of cake with a lump of vanilla ice cream--no matter how good--is still boring when seen in the context of the J-G meal which preceded it. Perhaps the cake could/should have been varied in time--with different flavors or ingredients--say mashed caramelized bananas--folded into the batter or contained in the center of the cake--one example which might be appropriate for J-G is that when you cut into it a liquid center of coconut comes spilling out? I'm sorry Lesley--Patrice's expectation that J-G should do something more original with this seems valid to me. Unless you expect a dinner there to be a collection of museum pieces--come and dust off J-G's Greatest Hits.

The Ritz in Vegas?

Now you are beginning to understand some of the inherent problems of dining in a union hotel. Cooking with a mostly union staff can be even more problematic than service issues.

Georgetown has really changed over the years, Jayask. Ethnic or regional American? Fat chance. Rochelle's right about Georgetown, I'm afraid, though we may have different reasons for our mutual dislike. I've worked, lived, eaten and hung out there for 20+ years. In short, there are no places I'd recommend at the low to middle end anymore or food that isn't being done much better elsewhere, and it is uneven, inconsistent and underwhelming at the higher end. Post reviewer Tom Sietsema recently wrote that he feels Michel Richard (of Citronelle in Georgetown) is the best chef in DC by miles, though based on recent experiences (admittedly subjective) I'm not as captivated by the effort, value or consistency of the Citronelle experience. Instead, if I found myself forcibly adrift in Georgetown I'd recommend a lunch or tea at the Four Seasons. Their talented new chef, Doug Anderson by way of Vancouver, and a new wine director have swept in with fresh ideas and concepts--well, as fresh and interesting as they can be given the historically conservative nature of the clientele and city. Not at the level of Citronelle. I'd do a fixed price lunch or tea there--snuggle into a comfy sofa in the lounge with my iBook and type away the afternoon or watch a DVD while sipping wine--but I realize that isn't what you're looking for. Last time I was there Douglas and his pastry chef, David Rexford, were bringing in some very fine handmade chocolates from Thomas Haas, nee of Daniel in NYC. Georgetown once had legitimate options for high quality Vietnamese, Indian and Ethiopian food but no longer. D&D prepared food seems more perfunctory than special. Tahoga has changed over too many times; Senses has since closed, but was once a gem of a little French restaurant when Xavier Deshayes was cooking there--in fact, Xavier might have been doing the best French cooking in the city beside Michel Richard. He's since moved on to run the Ronald Reagan Building. The serene little Chinese tea and dumpling shop just off Wisconsin & M had promise but was never special for the food even in its best day. For all I know it has closed. Chi Ching something or other. You'd really have to catch an even 30's bus or walk 20 minutes farther up Wisconsin to get halfway decent options that would fit your budget--Rocklands, Faccia Luna, Bistrot Lepic, Heritage India--but that is getting into Glover Park and not technically Georgetown and even further up just past the National Cathedral is Two Amy's--all of which I'd recommend over anything in Georgetown.

I can't say I've ever understood the champagne and chocolate thing either--my palate doesn't react well to the combination in any form. It seems more strategic partnering and brand positioning as a luxury combination than anything else, again, at least to my palate. I think one thing that emerges from reading this thread is that chocolate can be like a religious cult, with very loud, but localized advocates as we see with barbecue or bread, meaning different things to different people and depending on one's frame of reference, it may be hard to find common ground or reach a consensus with such passionately held beliefs. One thing we shouldn't forget is that chocolate makers have to sell their product--and if your customer base wants a slightly sweeter chocolate you'd be a foolish businessman not to address what your customers are telling you. We have decades of shitty American chocolate behind us which prove alot of very bad, very sweet chocolate has been sold to American consumers with little palate awareness that chocolate doesn't have to be sweet--that in fact chocolate without so much sugar can be enjoyed on a more complex and interesting level. We're seeing it with espresso, with wine, with desserts--slowly, very slowly Americans are coming to the realization that acidity and bitterness can be good things balanced in the hands of talented people--be they chocolatiers, pastry chefs, chefs, vintners, etc.--and paired with other things. You just have to get the thing in the mouths of the public--which was one of the unfortunate missed opportunities of the Field Museum Chocolate exhibit--an effort wasn't made to get small tastes of good bittersweet and extra bittersweet chocolate into the mouths of all those attending. Hopefully by the time this show travels to the American Museum of Natural History in NYC next June the programmers there will figure out a way to remedy this defect. However, this is one of the good things about the New York Chocolate Show--coming up this weekend in NYC at the Metropolitan Pavilion--Valrhona is there, Guittard is there, Sharffen Berger is there--among others--and all three hand out samples of fantastic chocolates with higher level cacao percentages made from flavorful, interesting bean blends. The masses will have an opportunity to have their awareness raised, their horizons broadened. This weekend, look especially for the E. Guittard 61% and 72% blends--and several of their 65% single nation varietals. This thread also reveals a bit of one's subjective preference for what constitutes good chocolate work--me--as anyone who has read the site for awhile knows--I'm clearly on the French side and clearly against the Teuscher, Swiss and Belgian national styles. I find all that too sweet, too molded, the fillings too fatty/buttery/sugary/airy/whipped, with an over reliance on white chocolate, marzipan and sweet milk chocolates (because they use milk chocolates with less cacao % and a higher sugar %) and an over reliance on thick-walled molded chocolates rather than thinly dipped or enrobed chocolates. I definitely prefer ganache-based chocolates and bon bons, with dark chocolate couvertures, very little sugar and milk chocolate with a higher cacao percentage--say around 45%. The few Belgian chocolates I like are the ones made by chocolatiers influenced by the French "style"--like a Pierre Marcolini. I've had good and bad Payard chocolates over the years--it depends on who is on the staff running things at the time and who is making them in the shop. But the Payard chocolates, including a white chocolate-passionfruit ganache at last year's NY Chocolate Show--were very good indeed. The Torres chocolates I've had over the years were very traditional and I've really enjoyed them, and this goes back to when Jacques was developing his line while still at Le Cirque 2000 and providing chocolate amenities for guests of the New York Palace Hotel. (Chefette, in fact, was doing her several months long stage with Jacques at Le Cirque at that time and spent many a Saturday working directly with him--Jacques was very generous in that way--if you staged with him, he appreciated that you were volunteering to be there and you worked directly with him on tasks, doing them together.) I haven't had any of Jacques' line since last Fall, but hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend at the show. The new NYC chocolate and what just might prove to be the sleeper as far as I'm concerned is the line Drew Shotts has developed--it will be interesting to taste his stuff at the Chocolate Show. Also worth checking out--selling and schmoozing at the show, I hear, in addition to the aforementioned Drew, Jacques, Payard, Valrhona, Guittard and Sharffen Berger will be Eric Girerd, Cluizel and El Rey.) In NYC, but not at the show, both Maison du Chocolat and Richart are worth trying if only for the point of comparison--both are very high quality mass produced chocolates, representative in different ways of the French style. I think Maison succeeds better on flavor while Richart is certainly very pretty to look at with very nice packaging and design. Fauchon is a wild card--before hiring a pastry chef as good as Florian, their desserts and their chocolates were underwhelming, outsourced and inferior. (Remember, the NYC Fauchon opened WITHOUT an in-house pastry chef.) In fact, their stuff was awful. I wonder if Florian has begun producing his own line of chocolates in-house? If so, the NY Fauchon would definitely be worth investigating again! Florian is a big Valrhona guy and he's demonstrating at the Chocolate Show, so maybe someone could ask him. This weekend's demo lineup--albeit posted on a very, very poorly designed website--is buried somewhere here: http://www.chocolateshow.com/

Since the attendance was much larger than the 100 people we expected, many in the main front section didn't get tastes of all desserts and those in the wings or standing in the back didn't get handouts. I've asked all the chefs to e-mail me their recipes and we'll get them all out somehow--that's the giving spirit of the Societe Culinaire Philanthropique and the chefs involved--Dan, Mike, Stephane Motir, Meredith, Suvir, Colleen, Michael, Patrice and Paul--many of whom just happen to have a connection to eGullet and all of whom volunteered tirelessly to pull this off, many travelling great distances just to come work in an odd ramshackle kitchen. (Wonderful new ovens, Robot Coupes and Vita Mix blenders--but no Kitchenaid stand mixers, no stainless steel mixing bowls.) While that alligator cook-off was taking place out front--all the pastry chefs were behind the curtains, prepping and fighting for space with the dishwashers. It might take me a week to collect all the recipes, though, since Michael Laiskonis, Patrice and Paul are still in NYC preparing for their NY Chocolate Show demos this weekend. I also think they are planning to dine at one or two NYC restaurants while they're in town. Let's also not forget the volunteer assistants--especially those from Monday who plated and served around 550 totally new desserts and tastes in about an hour and a half. We couldn't have done it without Burke--a chef colleague of Paul's who came down from Boston to assist, Erin Demuth up from DC, Claude "He's the boss" Beausoleil from Montreal and Julie Miller--the very talented lead pastry instructor for SUNY-Delhi in upstate NY. I have the recipes for Colleen's beet jus and corn espuma on the iBook: Beet Jus 250g Red Beets (peeled & chopped) 100g Fresh Cranberries 40g Sugar 200g Water Crushed peppercorns 2 Bay leaves 50g Pomegranate juice 50 g Water Put everything in a pot and allow it to simmer about 45 minutes, then puree, strain and cool. Corn Foam with Guinness 500 g sweet golden corn (canned or frozen) 75 g sugar 150 g water 1 vanilla bean 200g Guinness 400g heavy cream salt 2-3 sheets gelatin (or 1 envelope gelatin powder) Combine sugar, water, corn, vanilla bring to a boil and simmer about 5 minutes; Puree and strain; Soften gelatin in cold water, squeeze out and stir into warm puree to dissolve; Add Guinness, cream and salt to taste. Fill foamer and use 1 charge. Unfortunately I did not get to taste Michael's dessert, but it was the most elegantly constructed and looked intoxicating. I also did not get to try Paul's mushroom ice cream but did get the cucumber sorbet with apple and chocolate mint salad, which he does as a pre-dessert--it was fantastic and alive. Patrice--who essentially shopped for all his ingredients at Dean & Deluca once he arrived--he snuck his own spices across the border--did a goat yogourt and nutmeg panna cotta in the bottom of a glass, with butternut squash pulp sweetened with an incredibly expensive little jug of maple syrup (from Quebec by way of Dean & Deluca.) He topped this off with a green apple foam, some apple julienne and a pistachio/butternut squash macaron. I only got to taste the foam and the puree behind the scenes but both had me wanting for more. Paul Connors came up with the idea that at next year's demo instead of vegetables we should all create desserts with cheese--and so we shall. One final note--as Bux mentioned and I'll be a little more specific about--Suvir was joined by a very talented, charming pastry chef and baker--Surbhi Sahni--who collaborated with him on the apple halwa and actually worked very hard during the demo. She was a wonderful surprise addition and I encourage all of you to try her desserts at Diwan.

There are samplings, but they tend to be of the commercial egg roll or quick parboiled paella variety. There are always some gems, but the show really is an industry thing--geared to the nuts and bolts of making hotels and restaurants work--lots of frozen foods, stuff that can be outsourced, very good breads I must say, wholesale suppliers, mucho espresso and coffee, tons of hardware and equipment and plates and dishwashers and linens and computers and vacuums...well, you get the point. "Normal" foodies would not be interested in much of this stuff out on the show floor. Curious people, perverse people, like me though, might find some enjoyment in wandering the aisles--be forewarned, though, there is alot more low end than high end stuff. You will discover why all Chinese takeout restaurants seem to have the same 4 sauces--they buy them from the same supplier. Some of the stuff is absolute dreck and then some things are surprisingly, compellingly appealing. This show is not a celebration of small artisinal products--or small scale--which is but one reason why I invited a few chefs sensitive to the changing seasons and farmer's markets and special ingredients or techniques outside of the mainstream. In past years there have been some serious networking events concurrent with the show--some of the "Restaurant Futurists Conference" topics have been cool, some of the seminars and special events have appeal--but it is hard to appeal to all people all of the time. The educational sessions usually tend to be free and those with special tastings tend to have a fee. I'm not up on what is happening this year outside of my own small area of responsibility--but usually the seminars Michael Batterberry has been involved in or organized have been the most interesting, subjectively, to me, along with the stuff on design. I'm a sucker for talks on restaurant design, especially if Warren Ashworth or Larry Bogdanow are on the panel discussions, as they frequently are. There is also a wonderful Salon--a free culinary competition--which runs during the demonstrations. Lots of thankless work, lost arts like tallow carving, garde manger work and pastillage, wedding cakes and pastry showpieces and displays of chocolate and sugar--it can be browsed easily--and Chefette (Colleen) happens to be one of 6 judges of that competition now, having won the top medal herself a few years ago. (Only the second female chef in over 130 years to win the Grand Prize, something she shares with male chefs like Albert Kumin and Andre Soltner.) If any eGulleteer wants to walk through the Salon and ask questions about any of the work, I'd be glad to answer them.

Cab--I'm participating in all the demos. I organized them and host them. Click on the link above. Suvir and Meredith Kurtzman are demoing at 3:30--and both are deep frying! (I love deep fried things.) The gang of four--Michael, Patrice, Paul and Colleen--demo on Monday.

Jin--if I had the time to find the thread about best eGullet lines, I'd nominate that last one of yours--"Chicken breast is just bad tofu." That's precious and up to your very high standards.

Rumor has it Dan and Mike are doing "Stuffed Pain Perdu" with roasted local apples and gingerbread ice cream, Suvir said he's considering his special version of apple halwa made in a wok and Meredith is planning on "Quince 3 ways" with a concord grape sauce made with saba [aged grape must.] Some of the dishes I've heard about for Monday's demo are pretty interesting--I'll let the pastry chefs involved reveal the final versions ahead of time if they so choose. You know how chefs are--things can change right up until the last moment. Suffice it to say Chefette has had me taste versions of a white corn flan/creme brulee, caramelized popcorn and a corn cob foam this week; Patrice was planning a goat yogurt and nutmeg panna cotta with butternut squash pulp, sweetened with maple syrup finished with a green apple foam and some apple julienne, served with a pistachio/butternut squash macaron.

Perhaps you'd be willing to talk a bit about how your dessert philosophy meshes with your cuisine Michel--do you make exceptions for butter and cream in desserts--or do you steer away from things like creme anglaise bases for ice creams and sauces and do more sorbets and ice milks instead? Have you developed ways to utilize 0% fat fromage blanc or the fat in yogurt or lebne in dessert applications? Do you use a PacoJet--and has that technology allowed you to create the look and feel of certain components--like ice cream or mousses--with a more immediate taste yet without relying so much on heavy cream? I suspect you rely heavily on honeys--and can you mention a few you particularly enjoy and why you use them for a given application? Do you use gelatin? Do you "juice" by hand or machine for all of your sorbets? Do any commercial frozen fruit purees, i.e. Boiron, Ravifruit-- meet your standards for taste--some claim to be flash frozen at the peak of ripeness? I realize these wouldn't fulfill your goal of using seasonal locally sourced fruits, but do they all pale on your palate? For example, coconut--would you shave and extract coconut yourself, use a frozen coconut puree or just not use coconut in a dessert application because either the labor cost would be too high or it wouldn't fit with your concept, i.e. wouldn't be healthful, local or seasonal enough?

I'm waiting for Claudia's sandwich book.

Django is better than "that good." On my next visit to Philly I will eat there twice before I eat anywhere else. In fact, I eat often in NYC and DC at the high end and I would go to Django, if I could, before just about any other restaurant in either city. It's BYOB, so you can bring your own wines with no corkage fee or hassle, small, charming, warm service, personal cooking, chef in the kitchen, his wife handling front of the house issues and the stellar cheese course with super honeys and accompaniments, as Rosie mentioned. Considering the quality and creativity of the food the price is a steal. Move heaven and earth to go here and wait two weeks if you have to.

"Using sumac (red zataar) in desserts? Wow, great idea, since it adds that tart, almost-citrus-y tang!" I agree with you, Suzanne, and couldn't have said it better. Sumac has an irresistible sourness, an astringent taste--the question is, how to use it in dessert? And I think that comes down to how open-minded you are, how much experience you have and how much confidence you have in your own ability to tell good from bad once you try something--and then go back to the drawing board to start all over again if an experiment goes awry. It helps if you are fearless. It also helps if you are willing to make mistakes. I have to admit, I'm still working on the "sumac alone" angle--I have a Lebanese chef friend who makes a "juice" out of the sumac powder and then substitutes it for lemon juice, when he wants the red color and astringency in something--maybe that's a clue. That makes me think about a "gelatin" of sumac--maybe cut into little bright red cubes sprinkled into a milk pudding or muhallabeya for a tart contrast--or maybe a sumac--blood orange--red fruit soup--thanks Jin--sprinkled with pistachio! I bet sumac would marry well with a strawberry-rhubarb compote? (Come to think of it--that will be a dessert special next year when strawbs and rhubarb return.) However, the best I've personally come up with so far is lightly sprinkled sumac on lemon sorbet--boring, I know--as an intermezzo or palate cleanser. That works well, especially after a course which contained sumac, say a salad like fattoush or a kebab. Now zaatar, the blend, is something I’m a little more familiar with--I've used dried wild thyme mixes from Jordan, Israel and Syria--and for me it is the combination with toasted sesame seed, sumac and salt which makes it very interesting for dessert. (I think the Jordanian zaatar mix had toasted wheat in it as well.) Maybe zaatar is not meant for a sundae, but I've had good luck with it in breakfast pastries--and incorporating it into laminated doughs--and especially doughs like danish and croissant with lots of sweet cream butter in the mixture. The first issue is, though--is your mind open enough? Suzanne--it seems yours definitely is. It also seems at least a few eGulleteers have the confidence and experience to accept thinking outside of the box, outside what is numbingly familiar or traditional within a culture--like when Robert mentioned the rosewater/pistachio milk pudding and a restaurant dusting it with sumac or Jin with her blood orange/tofu dish (both of which sound fab to me)--and if you can’t accept that--or if you’re the type of person that needs to follow exact recipes or follow only what is in a book, you might run into trouble. But, say you take the plunge, the worst that can happen is you don’t like what you make, then you move on and try again. What chef or cook hasn't learned from their mistakes? So if you can get over the mental hurdle, then there's the 2nd issue--what does it do on your palate? And here’s where it gets interesting--again, because you are going against the grain--against what is traditionally accepted and passed down in books or from mentors. You have to trust how you create, how you taste things and your judgement in whether it works. It can't just be seen as new, bold or "fusion" food, it has to be good food. I don't know why I thought zaatar would work with laminated doughs but I did--maybe it was because I knew chefs had sprinkled herbs and spices onto puff sticks and served them as long thin twisted breadsticks for as long as I can remember. Lots of chefs and pastry chefs around the world have used the components of zaatar--individually--in desserts for some time now and some even since antiquity: salt has been added to dessert components for centuries, thyme with chocolate, or with fruits like apricot can be heavenly, sesame seeds toasted and/or cooked with honey or candied are used in innumerable desserts and sweets, sea salt and chocolate is now ubiquitous in high end dining--so that just left sumac. Well, blended into zaatar--the sumac is balanced and the effect of the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. (Kind of like a good curry powder.) Anyway, for me zaatar paired with the sweet creaminess and richness of unsalted butter rocks--use it in puff, roll it into your dough as your turning it, use it in breakfast pastries like danish or croissant dough, and if you really want an almost indescribable treat--use it with any of these doughs baked in combination with an unsalted fresh cheese, loose like ricotta, thicker like lebne or fromage blanc--basically make a wrapped or stuffed cheese danish--but bake it with zaatar. A slightly sweetened cheesecake, sprinkled with zaatar, tuck in an apricot half, all surrounded by a buttery browned dough--I tell you it is awesome. One version I did with a goat’s milk yogurt (from a Greek farm in Ontario) strained, pressed, sweetened slightly--came out great--and another with crumbled goat cheese, sprinkled with zaatar and chopped pine nuts, and then wrapped in dough and deep fried--served with a caramelized thyme honey reduction--also came out very well. (Instead of brushing the edges with egg wash to seal--I brushed them with tahini.) Zaatar mixed with some granulated sugar, and sprinkled on phyllo sheets after brushing with butter, make nice tuiles for your sweetened cheese or yogurt cream fillings, too. None of these have made it onto a formal menu yet, for varying reasons, but they're all good, involve zaatar and work as a dessert--if your definition of dessert--and your outlook--is not so rigid. And the beauty is you don't need recipes, really--these forms are familiar--who hasn't had a cheese danish or a rustic tart or deep-fried pastry? Just start with a light hand--and then taste. You might be surprised with yourself in a good way.

Suvir--of course Alberto, Lesley, you, other chefs and pastry chefs and I "understand curry powder to be two very different animals." There's no shame that chefs beg, borrow, steal and even bastardize from histories, cultures, exotic ingredients, concepts--that's how artists create and act on inspiration or whim. This is neither arrogance nor misunderstanding nor culinary hegemony. Some chefs may "see" or "hear" flavors and ingredient combinations in dishes or desserts as musical notes on a page a la a Philippe Conticini, others search for a language to describe their own way a la Kunz and his complex tastes pushing and pulling. Regardless, I am not comfortable talking about how a chef or pastry chef "should" describe, what he should think or what associations a creative type should bring to the table when it comes to food, ingredients, words, whatever. This is where you're going and I wonder if you want to go there. Your Sri Lankan friend is already there, I'm afraid, when she speaks of tolerance, hegemony, murdering customs and traditions as if the creative process were one big personal crusade directly in response to her and all she holds dear. It's not. The creative process exists on many different levels, often in parallel, with no one correct perception or view. As I said, and this is just my own personal sense, I don't care whether a chef uses "curry" in his description, like when Adria calls his dessert "coco-choco-curry" and whether said chef is even aware that for some "curry" or "curry powder" is a loaded word/ancient savory concept/richly varied technique/font of mystery. I care about what I put into my mouth and whether it works. It doesn't matter whether it is described as curry, curry powder, masala--whether it does or does not contain an onion or a curry leaf--and I'm afraid you are being unrealistic if you expect modern chefs and pastry chefs not to use the term "curry," as if it were sacred and proprietary, since it has entered mainstream cooking many decades ago--and you are possibly tilting at windmills if you expect these chefs to invent or search for a different word to describe what they create. To them, it is curry. Their curry. It's not your curry or any of the curries you've tasted on your world travels. Now I also happen to be very interested in your writings and thoughts about curry. Is that a contradiction? No, for curry is like the color blue. There is no one blue, no best blue, no single blue emotion, no blue sky that is the same to two people at the same time. One can apply historical uses of the color blue to modern applications and ascribe meaning or significance, as one does with art all the time, but that is personal and subjective. What I'm interested in with a dish or dessert in front of me--as a diner and as a chef--is the personal and subjective-- to discover what "curry" means to them, factored through their personality, as I taste it in their dish at that moment in time. It can be tradtional and centuries old or it can be avant garde and I wonder why both can't be appreciated for what they are without having to pay perceived politically correct homage to the other's language and culture first? You are bringing your associations to the table--which you are of course free to do--but so much of food is freeing one's self from these impositions, these associations, from previously held perceptions and rigid beliefs in how things should be or are meant to be. I think one can see the merest hint of the same attitude in something Lesley wrote earlier about how she expects to perceive certain spices and tea with chocolate. As a result of her palate, training and experience, there are rules and/or personal preferences--for her-- about how to taste chocolate in a dessert or confection--must you taste the chocolate first and then search for the hint of spice or flavoring as an end-note or is it ok to taste spice up front, more directly and use chocolate more like vanilla--as a harmonious background? Well, the traditional, old-school French chocolatiers Inviolate Rule #1 is it always has to be taste the length of chocolate first, primarily chocolate. It's worked for a few hundred years but times and artisans are changing--even within France, land of the rigidly culinarily conservative--and for some subtle is not as prized anymore. Some French are pushing the flavor envelope and rebelling ever so--which is why a Conticini line of chocolates at Peltier can be viewed by a top American pastry chef like Michael Laiskonis as standing a bit above the crowd. For him. Conticini is willing to be ever so more daring in ways a Hevin or Maison du Chocolat could never be. For Lesley or me or you, we might feel differently. But none of us would know for sure until we tasted them and none of us would necessarily be wrong in our assessment afterward. How we individually perceive things will always be personal, gloriously personal. We can't really taste or perceive things differently than we do--despite all of our different palates and experiences we have this in common--but I wonder if you really want to go so far as to deem appropriate or to codify how the creative work of others should be termed? Taken to an extreme, that could turn into a Curry Inquisition.

Elizabeth--I just re-read this thread and noticed your question about Guittard--I have recently become a huge fan of the following "E. Guittard" chocolates--E. Guittard being Guittard's higher-end couverture formulations: their 61% "Lever du Soleil", the 72% "Coucher du Soleil and two of their 65% single varietals--the Ecuador Nacional and the Sur del Lago (from Venezuela, I believe.) Guittard will be at the NY Chocolate Show and I am sure you'll be able to sample these varieties there, in case anyone plans to attend. I chose the E. Guittard 61% and 72% for all the chocolate components--a cake, a flan and a sorbet--at my most current restaurant project. (I am told Charlie Trotter now uses E. Guittard, not that this means anything, however; Trotter once endorsed Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate, a truly awful chocolate if ever there was one.)

Great question Lesley, since conducting the research for that Indian restaurant consulting project of mine in NYC a few years ago, I only use whole spices, make my own blends, some are toasted or roasted first, and then ground in a powerful but surprisingly affordable ($120) Indian spice grinder (Sumeet from JB Prince) that can even grind wet mixes--so you can put the fresh ginger right in with the tea and spices, like whole cardamom or stick cinnamon, grind and in seconds have a pulverised paste. I burned out a few cheap Krups coffee grinders before I saw the light. Of course, if I knew Suvir then he probably would have saved me a few years of frustration on my road to enlightenment. I haven't had much luck with commercial blends or pre-ground spices, I must admit they all seem like sawdust to me. For some other applications I use the Pacojet to get incredibly flavorful powders or essences of pure flavor which can be added to batters or creams directly and do not require straining--much more intense and immediate than any traditional form of infusion. By the way, in case anyone is wondering, you can tell when a chocolatier is using a pre-made commercial shell--just cut the truffle open with a knife: you'll see a perfectly uniform, relatively thick sphere all around--and this is usually dipped or enrobed in a very thin covering of chocolate. You'll be able to see the thick and the thin as two layers--attached but separate--kind of like a coat of paint on thick wallpaper as you peel it off the wall. What Lesley was pointing out is that in the finest artisinal or machine enrobed chocolates--even in molded chocolates--the wall is impeccably thin.

Suvir--who wants to eat chocolate with curry? I do. Curry goes very well with dark chocolate, in the right hands. At El Bulli one of Alberto Adria's signatures is a chocolate-coconut-curry dessert (it's in his first dessert book and he'll be demonstrating it in his master class at The French Pastry School in Chicago this coming week: it contains a curry gelatin and a curry creme anglaise with the consistency of a sabayon.) Reserve judgement until Colleen and I do a chocolate-curry dessert for you sometime and we'll see what you think, ok? On the menu at Zaytinya I have a chocolate dessert called "Turkish Coffee"--dark chocolate with espresso, anise and cardamom--that is our best selling dessert so far--last night 48 of the 150 desserts sold were the Turkish coffee --and this is in Washington, DC--a very conservative food town, supposedly. Yes, to you, curry is a loaded term and full of meanings, but we've been down this road before discussing that (I think ill-advised) comment about curry attributed to Peter Hoffman of Savoy in Adam Gopnik's "Paris to the Moon," which Bux, Plotnicki, me, you and others talked to death on the site. I haven't had the Vosges Naga "truffle," pre-made shell suspicions aside, but it might be good and the fact remains curry is up for grabs--up for culinary interpretation and inspiration--and it doesn't really matter whether a chef or consumer is familiar with the subtleties and riches of Indian cooking and culture. It doesn't have to have any baggage attached to it. The final product does or doesn't work on the palate. It's like a chai blend--a novice could pull an Indian grandmother's recipe off the web, blend it with chocolate and make a creme brulee with it--and never have had real Indian chai--the beverage--ever before. I know, this is how Colleen and I created our first version of "Milk chocolate chai creme brulee," with a little crust of caramelized jaggery, years ago. It remains killer after all these years. Inspiration can take many forms and sometimes, despite what the Saveur/IACP/authenticity/purist-types would have you believe, it does not have to be based on extensive reading and research and immersion in a culture. Sometimes it just happens. Of course, you are much more likely to succeed if you do your homework, and that includes embracing what knowledgeable authorities have to teach you.

I'd also add that there's tremendous variety of flavor within the two styles--Dutch and not Dutch process. Buy a few, do a blind tasting, see for yourself. It's just like chocolate, it depends on the beans, where they're grown, how they're processed, etc. You might prefer one brand to coat truffles, another to bake with. I am sure there are other good ones, but I've liked Valrhona, De Zaan, Cluizel and Cacao Barry Extra Brut.

Brig--I happen to agree with your friend that Ghirardelli is complete crap. Crapola in any form. (As an aside, it always struck me, by the shape of your friend's chocolates, that she uses pre-made commercial shells--little hollow balls of tempered chocolate--kind of like a wiffle ball with but one hole in them that allows a chocolatier to pipe in a ganache. Ask her if that's the case and report back, ok?)

Lesley--Jacques Torres installed a piece of equipment with a vacuum feature in his DUMBO chocolate shop which he says allows his ganaches to last for many weeks past a traditionally-made ganache and lessens or eliminates the need for deep-freezing. One element Colleen didn't describe is the base--originally, we took the image of the stained glass out of the book and enlarged it, thinking we'd use it for the base somehow and echo the colors/patterns as we moved up the cake, going from dark to light. As we blew it up it lost some focus and became less distinct. Looked cool but not cool for our needs. So she went back to the computer and re-created the window digitally, drawing and coloring it entirely by hand. Then that was enlarged, printed out, cut and affixed to the bottom glass round, a spacer disk set on top, then a second glass round on top of that. That separation and layering showed up time and time again in the Wright books and buildings, so it seemed the way to go. You can't see it in the picture--but the dogwoods on that top crown set piece--designed so the bride and groom could remove it easily and save it--are also on a Fallingwater-like layered design--which rewarded people for looking a little closer into the piece. Colleen created this entire top piece--and built the little layered central stand--my job was to arrange the dogwoods on it "just so" and I only broke one of her window panels in the process. Par for the course for me, I'm afraid. The fabric like swags on the middle tier Scot are white modelling chocolate rolled through a pasta machine, texturized, cut into lengths, dusted with edible color, then folded, pinched and applied to the cake surface with a few drops of water. (Really pretty easy to create.) Dogwoods hide the joins or seams between the swags.

I may have missed this, but where has it been said the Record's restaurant reviewers are widely respected and can be put up against anyone? If they're such good writers and reviewers more of us should be reading them--we certainly talk about Karla Cook's lack of ability enough--can anyone link to a discussion of them and give us out-of-staters a rundown of the talent?

Thanks, Kiz, for that post. I guess it is what might be accepted as "pretty standard journalistic practise" and the line between lazy and unethical which gets me hung up sometimes. But then as a chef, if I use someone's recipe, I say it's Philippe Conticini's or from Michel Bras unless I have re-worked and adapted it significantly. Even then I try to say I developed this from an idea I originally saw so-and-so do. When you post on boards for leads do you pose anonymously? Do you treat the content and have separate rules for sourcing on newer media--"boards"--apart from the content you might read published in older media or print publications that then spark ideas in your head? I see a problem developing with the justification for separate policies, especially if the sourcing, leads and tips garnered from the online source is more knowing, more knowledgeable, more helpful--and certainly more timely than that in the traditional print media, research the old fashioned way, don't you? It also might be--convenient--for print writers to feel this way about online sources of information.

No, you could have and if you were a pro, and some reader read your work and found interesting parallels to discussions we've had here, we'd mention that publicly as well, especially to see if the writer--you-- moved the story forward in any way or merely regurgitated the thinking and effort that's already been shown here. It is all out in the open here, perceived admonishments as well. I'm not crying foul nor making public admonishments--unless you feel my use of the word "appears" and my posing about 5 questions is the SAME thing as making statements and passing judgement. I don't. The truth hurts sometimes, though, and Katy knows the answers to the questions I posed. So do the eGulleteers she communicated with publicly and privately via e-mail. And just so you don't think I'm piling on Katy--on another thread I called attention to the fact that one of Katy's previous stories--on how diners and the public can be misled by untruths in labelling--appeared to be getting ripped off by some writer in Chicago who wrote a piece similar to the one she outlined but quoted local chefs. It's here somewhere, maybe you could follow the link, read both and tell me if you think I over-reached on that one as well? My questions, indelicate as they may be, still stand. Personally, not on behalf of the site, I'd wish some of the solicited private communications and discussions, tips, leads, questions asked, which took place offline--instead took place on the thread, so all could be privy to the twists and leads followed up, etc. But then I've always liked good reporting, good stories and a paper trail. And this is a free-speech zone after all.

Fish--I haven't made the potato chip, but it is derivative of something Ferran Adria has done at El Bulli for many years. He has pushed this to the next level--drying chips of various vegetables/spices/nuts into powders to concentrate them--sprinkling these powders onto silpats and then baking them off in between two silpats. Think about it this way: anything will brown or take color in an oven, it's just a question of how long it takes and at what temperature. Meringues will dry out overnight in an oven with the pilot light on but if you rush it, say at 200 F, you risk turning the white meringue into a light beige. Trying your flat potato/herb sandwich tuiles at 300 or 325 shouldn't be a problem--unless the added heat might discolor the herb in the process. Some basic caveats, apologies if you are all experienced cooks--did you see the chips your friend sliced and cooked? Was a mandoline used for very thin slices? Can you vouch for your friend's actual oven temperature and that the oven was pre-heated? You may be correct in that the recipe might actually be 275 in a convection oven, which would be roughly the equivalent of 325 in a conventional radiant heat oven at home--and that this was not converted. But like anything, it is just a recipe and as a cook, for many/most things, recipes just aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. So, make sure the potato slices are thin, turn the oven up a bit, and check after 20 minutes.