gfron1

Anyone been to Reno since 2007? I'm looking for unpretentious, quality restaurants in the area.

Cold water...who knew! Thanks guys.

When I make my sourdough and need to clean the bowl I typically use a copper brillo after a scraping with a pastry scraper. But the dough always makes the brillo so nasty that I have to pitch it. What is everyone else using that is easier and less wasteful?

I also find them mostly flavorless so this year I've been pickling and fermenting to see what might come of them. Last night I even treated some as if I were preserving lemons.

We're finally getting rain the desert so I've pulled plums, puffballs, shaggy parasols, dropped walnuts, some polypore (awaiting identification), oysters. Tis the best time of year.

Looking forward to hearing more in your posts. Welcome.

Today's unexpected surprise - fonts! Back in the days I did a lot of graphic design and remember the days of buying 1000 fonts for $80. My designer's initial layout had a font that was really beautiful and I complimented him on it. He said, yeah, its $600 but I think its worth it. $600!!!!! Holy crap! Unexpected expense but we've said that we want award winning design. And as my designer responded to me, "I can go eat at your restaurant or spend a buck at Taco Bell. There's a difference."

That's printing 3000 books in China shipped to my door. We hope to sell at $40ish understanding how Amazon drops the price way down. And that's comparable for similar size and quality books.

The big question of the day is - how the hell do chefs get a cookbook done on top of their other work!? I'm doing my best but I can't seem to carve enough time out to make it happen. Deadline is looming so my staff needs to step up!

Not sure if you'll read this fast enough but Judy Shertzer formerly of Terra Spice is offering a complete set of Chocolatier magazine free - you pay the shipping. Please PM me if interested.

I did hit the wokshop and loved it. Grabbed a specialty wok, but also picked up some new mooncake molds and got a lesson in using them.

I'm another black pepper fan. Rosemary isn't too bad either in limited quantities.

I love that - many I've never heard of!

I do not. I used to when I first started until I learned how it moved when poured into my bowl.

I don't think your suggestions need to be specific to me. I'll research what I can do and not do, but that said, we did install a hive this year.

I'll start with a couple that the seed guy suggested: One of his favorite catalogs - Seeds of Change His favorite tomato - Matt's Wild Cherry

I just came back from a week in the San Francisco area and the highlight turned out to be my trip to the Berkeley Bowl grocery store. What was most impressive was the produce. I counted 30 types of tomatoes. 10 types of pears. 12 plums. And on and on. I returned home to my lame grocery produce and extremely limited farmers market selections. Interestingly, a few days ago I had a customer at the restaurant who turned out to be a professional seed grower for a business owned by Mars inc (we know them as the candy bar company). He started rattling off name after name of tomatoes, lettuce, squash, beans that are "the best flavors" among their type. And then he would tell me what company carried his seeds...all companies I had never heard of. I asked him about Seed Saver Exchange since its an amazing catalog that I'm familiar with and he said that they were just "okay." Now I'm meeting with an architect to put in a large greenhouse behind the restaurant. My goal is to try out seeds and the ones that work best in our high dessert climate will be turned over to our farmers market growers to do their magic. So my question is twofold. First, among various produce are there any superstars that you would suggest I look at. And second, which seed companies do you prefer? Thanks.

Here's my publishing strategy. As I previously mentioned, one of the models that we're using is a small restaurant in Northern Arizona. A good restaurant, but not particularly notable. They're in a mid-size city with 40 covers...so slightly bigger than us, but not as recognized. They went the route of self-publishing and because of their sales were ultimately picked up by a regional publisher. They've grossed $110K in three years. Because of a conversation here on eG years ago with Dorie Greenspan about one of the Pierre Hermé books and choices her publisher made against her will, I want to retain as much creative control as possible. And I want to retain as much of the profit as possible. Our research on printing suggests that for a run of 3-5,000 book in the format that we're designing the cost will be between $9-11 per book. Please correct me if you think this is off. So what I want to do is design the book in a common format (size, layout, etc) to allow for the possibility of a publisher grabbing the project, but take the process all the way to final proof. At that point, approach a few publishers that I think will be open to being a distributor moreso than publisher. I would pay for the printing. They would handle distribution, and importantly, include it in their catalog. We are creating the book with aspiration of awards (JBF, IACP, etc) and I think having a publisher including the book in their catalog is important to that end (hence not self-published). This would reduce their percentage and allow me to not have to store a cargo container in my driveway. I know this isn't traditional, nor the way it works, but is there any reason why it couldn't?

Interesting question. I don't know the mechanics of creating an e-book. And I would love to hear thoughts about this - when the book straddles the line between functional cookbook and coffee table cookbook, does an e-book have merit. For comparison, I think the Manressa book share many similarities. From a design perspective we've been watching Chapter One by Ross Lewis, and my favorite book of all time is Black Pudding & Foie Gras by Andrew Pern.

Sesame oils vary but my current favorite is a Japanese brand, Kadoya

I've considered availability, and in fact, its one of my complaints about other books that tend to be coastal - mushrooms, seaweed, etc. I'm focusing on more commonly found items like acorns, cattails, hackberries, wild grapes, prickly pears (you won't have that one), walnuts, etc. But i'm also hoping to create a confidence in substitutions...if you don't have cattail, sub cucumber for example. This editing question keeps being brought up so I'm meeting with my team later this weekend to talk about how we want to handle it.

I guess I'll start with why I'm writing a cookbook. Its odd actually because I rarely write down my recipes, and never repeat them. That's how I've cooked at home since 1990 (graduated from college in New Orleans), and how I do it in the restaurant. My food is very seasonal - for example, this morning I foraged recently dropped walnuts so I'm working on a young walnut croquette with thai curry. But over the years I've had many customers ask if we had a book. So quite frankly the book is a revenue source. How much? I don't know, but I have talked to a number of other small restaurants that put out books and have a good guesstimate on our revenue. Its also about building my brand. Things are going well for me and I want to keep them that way. I am constantly thinking about my relevance in the industry - something I have to fight extra hard for since we're 3 hours to any city. I'm also writing the book because I haven't been happy with the forage movement in restaurants and I think someone needs to make a statement about how it could or should look to have chefs traipsing around in the woods. I won't make the book a sermon, but I think making the statement is important. And lastly, I do feel like I have fresh perspective that might be enjoyable with modern foraged foods. Over the weekend I'll try to explain how we plan on getting this published, so stay tuned!

I am unlikely but if the dates work out, and life allows, then I'd love to see everyone again.

Recipe testing is one of the things that scares me the most since I'm at 6,000'.

The photo is a foraged mesquite chocolate chip cookie. Today I worked on all of my foraged booze and soda recipes. I won't shill here but part of what I'm learning about is the timing of production and printing relative to sales. Our hope is that we'll be on bookshelves next Christmas (2015) which we think means the book needs to be done and off to print in October. Crazy long turn around.