Claudia Greco

AHAHAHA! So glad you hit the TRUE #1 locations of life-long Brooklynites! Debating the merits of different pizzerie in New York is a lifetime occupation, but for those on the east side of the river, there is ONLY Grimaldi's for thin crust, and L&B's for Sicilian. Nathan's hasn't been the same since the family sold the business to a conglomerate, the old time grizzled grill guys (excuse the alliteration) died off or retired, and - worst of all - THEY CHANGED THE GREASE ON THE GRILL!! Oh, man, that was bad - made the dogs taste like Nathan's in Manhattan. Or the mall. But we've shaken it off.

Gordon Ramsay a BAD influence? Because he screams and humiliates would-be chefs? Any chef who has apprenticed with the old-time French and Alsatian masters will tell you that abuse, degradation and low pay was (and might still be) part of the whole chef-in-the-making program. I'm not condoning that approach, mind you - I'm just saying that the drill sergeant approach was standard for generations LONG before Gordon and Hell's Kitchen. By the way, did you notice that Gordon was MUCH nicer to other people's staff on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Makeovers? And some of those chefs were just appalling - lazy, filthy, clueless, stagnant. The well-scrubbed contestants on Hell's Kitchen were much more earnest, and I suspect they were viciously humiliated for ratings. And they knew it. Again, while in no way sanctioning abuse of any kind, I will posit that any kid with dreams of culinary glory might expect being verbally thrashed regularly in his/her career - if not at school, then certainly as an apprentice or new chef. Not everyone will get to work for the cool, calm Thomas Keller or the good-natured Battali just 5 minutes out of school. Any thoughts from professional chefs on whether they were verbally lacerated routinely, and if this is a thing of the past in professional kitchens? (At least in the States?)

Sure, the producers may have their grubby little mitts on some of the set-ups, but the experience is pure Bourdain. ← I can just picture Chris, the producer, hitting Tony up with some of these ideas, and the occasionally prickly AB just microwaving him to dust on a single glance - "You f_____ want me to do WHAT?!!!" Almost as much fun as AB deciding he's gonna up and do something and the production team trailing helplessly after him. They should do an episode just on the inherent conflict of Chris wanting Tony to do something hair-raising, or Tony up and doing a Tony - the outtakes alone would be worth it!

I TOTALLY agree that Tony should not be put in danger for dazzle - or for ratings But, on the other hand, isn't Tony himself the one who puts himself in danger, rather than his producers? For instance, the ATV incident wasn't inherently dangerous - it BECAME dangerous only because Tony either did not hear (or misheard) the ATV expert's instruction NOT to follow him up the sand hill and do wheelies/zig zags. What looked to be intended as a nice zip along the NZ beach, la dee da, while waiting for the boar to be cooked, instead turned into a near-death experience. And then again, in Sicily, was Tony MADE to jump off the cliffs, or did he himself decide to do it as a guy thing because Cicco was doing it it? (True, it looked great for the camera and allowed Tony to do his usually "What the F___ Am I Getting Myself Into?" shtick, but you have to wonder sometimes . . . is it Tony's producers, or is it Tony being Tony sometimes?)Tony is 49, a 2-pack-a-day smoker with a well-known fondness for vodka and brewskies, and at 6' 4" and about 160 lbs. wet (!), knows perfectly well he is not exactly Mr. Athletic. But I think he still enjoys a good challenge, a dare, and hanging his butt out over the edge, "money shots" or production values notwithstanding. It is possible that Tony has instinctively combined his inherent wise-assness with his beautifully described "spectactular urbanite unfitness" (!) to produce kind of a goofy antihero, a man who will gleefully sink his teeth into a challenge, knowing full well disaster and embarrassment lurks just behind the corner? (!!) No doubt that Tony does do a lot of the stuff that the producers set up for him - but since Tony is famous for his occasionally on-camera "rebellions" against his producers, I think a man of strong opinion such as he would have no trouble putting his foot down and refusing to do anything he truly, truly believed would kill or cripple him - ratings or no. A final thought -Tony actually seems not so much "world-weary" as "production-weary". He apparently has days, as he did in Sicily, where spending the day leanring about salt, picking capers and line-fishing in a raging storm to net ONE calamaro gets to be too pointless for him, especially when the sun-drenched paradise of Pantelleria was calling. I think he'll gladly put up with the lost baggage, multiple time zones and the ever-present need for Imodium as long as he isn't asked to do something inane. Trapani seemed to be his breaking point (!) So . . . here it is, the larger question: Not whether Tony can be saved (from danger) - but Tony can be saved from . . . well . . . Tony? (!!) (I hope not!)

The NZ episode cracked me up almost as much as Zamir did in the Uzbek episode. I think Tony's problem with the first NZ audience was that (1) he might have just been one panelist speaking at Savour that week, so his audience wasn't necessarily a total AB crowd, and (2) even they were all Tony aficianados, we, as Americans, tend to talk in bullet points, sound bites and snippets of cultural allusions - I think he might have assumed that they were all used to not only the American way of speech, but also his particular style. As an American and a foodie, I didn't see any reason why his "food porn" remark would have killed off a room like that; but as someone who was raised overseas (among Brits, Aussies and, yes, Kiwis, etc.), I could see why his literally shorthand might have taken them aback - or not registered. I noticed that with the second NZ crowd, Tony backed the verbal car up a bit by whipping out the actual book, making very clear he was quoting from it, and THEN went for Charlie Trotter's and Woody's jugulars (!!) The crowd KNEW where he was going with that one, because he gave it context. Most Tony fans (and Yanks in general) would have got the verbal shorthand right off the bat. I'm glad he was able to rally his audience the second time. I'm just surprised Tony didn't get some serious Maori tats, to go with his Malaysian one (!!!) Charlie seems to have dug himself in deep doo-doo with Tony . . . first the dread foie gras issue, and now the raw one. Time for an episode in which Charlie and Tony go noshing in, say . . . oh . . . France? Or Charlie and Woody in Tibet? Not too much raw/vegan food up THERE, that's for sure . . .

Hope you can open this link. This is Slate's take on Michelin "lowering standards" so some NY restuarants could get three stars: http://www.slate.com/id/2129306/ And a "waitron" at Les Halles downtown is very upset that LH was referred to in the Times on Thursday (Section B8) as "a generic French diner." I let him vent and smoothed out his hurt feelings - and ordered more game (!) My husband was mystified - he thought a bistro WAS a French diner, so I'm going to have point out the preceding comments about "bistros" as opposed to "brasseries" and hope all feelings get assuaged (!)

You can use it like almond flour - in a tart or pie crust. It works particularly well with apple pie.

Urbani's here in NYC usually carries white truffles, and does do mail order. They had trouble getting them either last year or the year before (a catastrophic truffle harvest, I believe), but should be back in full swing. Eli's Vinegar Factory at 80th St/3rd Avenue always has white truffles, WT paste, WT "carpaccio" and various other products, as does Citarella at 75th/3rd. Ironically, Tuscan Square (51th Street/Rockfeller Plaza) has a pootato salad made with walnuts, beautifully melted fontina, celery root and lots of white truffle oil at their salad bar today, and given the fact that I've had to work 16 hour days every day this week except Halloween, I figured I owed myself a little white truffle something. I haven't checked, but I imagine Dean & DeLuca carries WT and they also do mail order. In terms of restaurants, I can't think of any one off the top of my overworked and over-caffinated brain at present, but a lovely little restaurant called Ribollita (Park Ave/19th? /22?) has, in the past, dished up a FABULOUS white truffle risotto that made us all nearly weep. And, yes, even though risotto is a "first plate" and you're only really supposed to get one serving, those dear men at Ribollita immediately sensed my need for a second order without a word being said about piatti primi, gluttony, or why Americani can't eat the way we're supposed to. They knew. Oh yes. They KNEW . . .

Since my parents firmly believed in Nietzche's dictum that what doesn't kill you will make you stronger, my siblings and I were always allowed to eat street food growing up in Hong Kong. OK, we all got mild dysentery when we first moved there, but for the next 31 years thereafter, we all ate whatever we wanted with impunity. Naturally, we horrified a lot of other ex-pat parents by "going native" (this was 1966, remember, and British civil servants could be TERRIBLY condescending), but ironically, it was eating fresh, organic meat and veggies trained in from Canton just that morning and killed right before you in Wanchai market, that probably made us all so robustly healthy now. We never had processed food, chemicals, additives or even junk food - but we had those great fried peanut snacks, dumplings of every size, shape and stuffing, and, of course, the weird and wonderful Temple Market. And Stanley Market. And Taipo Market - home of the most perfect cha siu (barbecued pork) on a stick I've ever encountered. The cha siu bao (stuffed BBQ pork buns) were a little chunk of heaven in a bun, too. Too bad you guys will never get to try the baseball-sized Lao Fo Shan oysters (the oyster beds were closed down because of high mercury levels, a while ago), or the really fabulous chow fahn my sister and I used to find in tiny little eateries out in the country, near the Chinese border, when we were out horseback riding through tiny little villages - some of which still had moon gates from the 19th century. Man, just discussing this brings me back (!!)

Ahh, what happy memories of my childhood in Hong Kong (yes, I was an ex-pat American "business brat"). My funniest memory of Temple Market actually is from my adulthood, when I returned home to visit my parents with my then-boyfriend (now husband). First, despite my repeated warnings, he bought a pair of jeans from a stall in the street (the legendary "Hero Remix" brand, which you all know and love.) Any native New Yorker or fellow ex-pat (or world traveller) will immediatelyt grasp the implications of THAT fateful decision. Second, we found ourselves in the main "drag" of the market, right in the middle of the food stalls with all the tables clogging the now-closed streets. The unofficial maitre d'/barker was, of course, a wiry little man with the obligatory little white towel, which he snapped and twirled and flapped as he hustled the crowd in towards the stalls Over the staccato clatter of Cantonese, my husband and I heard some tentative Italian spoken by a very nervous couple as they eyed the still-thrashing langoustines amid the mounds of rice, noodles and diced veggies. Eager to reassure them, the towel man cheerfully informed them (in Cantonese) that these huge lobster-like bugs were langoustines - no response. He tried again in French - no response. He tried in English - still no response. Finally, desperate not to lose potential customers, he draped his towel back over his left shoulder, pressed his fingertips to his thumbs in the traditional Italian hand gesture for emphasis, and screamed, "Scampi!" Ahhh - much happiness all the way around. Relieved to see a few other "gwai-los" (foreign barbarians - i.e., us) unconcernedly tearing into the street food, the Italians plopped themselves down next to us and warily began eating, stopping to examine each piece, bite by bite. The towel man, by this time in a high state of anxiety, scuttled over to inquire how they were enjoying their Langoustine Fried Rice. "Sic fahn?," inquired the Towel Man. "'Have you eaten today', " I translated for my husband, "meaning -'how are you?' 'Come estai?'", I asked the Italians, but pointed to their food. "Ah! E molto buono," said the Italian man. "'It's very good,'" I told my husband, "HO yeh-ahhh," I told the Towel Man. Beaming. Smiles all around. Another burst of Cantonese from Towel Man, and another look of dread from the Italians. Before I could (rougly) translate one more time, Towel Man marched over to his langoustines, picked up one, and, smiling, thrust it towards the hapless couple. "MANGIA BENE!," he barked ("Eat well!"). The Italians finally cracked up and relaxed, the langoustine was marched off to meet his fate at the hands of other diners, and the Towel Man proved he was as truly cosmopolitan as any three-star maitre d' in New York. Talk about street cred. My husband and I still laugh about this - especially when he stubbornly insists on trying to wear his street jeans, which hang off the back of his ass like unbuttoned Dr. Dentons after just one wash. Told the stupid gwai-loh that would happen . . . (!)

I read back through all the foie gras posts, back to Charlie Trotter's original statement. Has anyone heard one word from Charlie - as opposed to the city of Chicago - since the Molotov cocktails started being thrown? Also, something about the Jewish/Muslim pork-handling analogy bothers me. While my husband, an EXTREMELY secular Jew (hey, he eats ham and is married to shiksa - that should tell you something) would gladly wrassle a wild boar if the opportunity arose, most observant Jews I know WOULD NOT TOUCH a piece of pork if they are of the persuasion that it is unclean. Under any circumstances. I don't know of any Jewish person who, if he subscribes totally to the dictum of pork being unclean, would sell it, handle it, cook it or even transport a piece over to a friend's house from another friend. My husband's sister's mother-in-law, while producing an equally pork-loving son, is herself Orthodox, which means none of the family cooks can include any non-kosher ingredient (pork or shellfish) in any recipe for any dinner at which she is a guest. So . . . just as an aside . . . does anyone actually know of a case in which an observant Jew is regularly handling pork (or shellfish) as part of his food service industry job? Because all the ones I know would never take such a job in the first place. Or quit, if they suddenly got confronted with a lobster. Inquiring Shiksas Wanna Know

← I last did some (WELL drained) with some sauteed scallops. Beautifully caramelized scallops can fix just about anything.

A frittata - pancetta/mushroom/chesse, or herb, or jalapeno/crab/fontina. How 'bout a big ass glazed ham? A lot easier to deal with than turkey (which everyone just ate three days earlier). I do one involving either apple/mustard glaze, or a Cointreau/brown sugar one . . . and it's edible hot, warm, room temp. Whatever.

Phew! Usually, 2 cups of dry Arborio rice (okay, I'm a Vialone fan), 8 cups broth (unsalted chicken, vegetable or, my preference, 7 cups broth and a cup of white wine) will feed 12 people. For 150? 22 cups of rice? 80+ cups of broth? Go a little heavier on the broth, like the Venetians do, because it's going to have to sit in a big-a__ chafing dish or some other hotwater-heated receptacle for a while. Man, you're brave - risotto for 150!! Claudia