ScoopKW
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Posts posted by ScoopKW
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Roasted bone marrow, I find it incredulous that anyone would actually pay good money in a restaurant for what my butcher gives me for free. What cooking is involved? Put bone in oven for 15-20 mins, toast bread, dress some leaves. Bam, a tenner!
Wait 'til your butcher finds out how much people are willing to pay for marrow bones.
As for "gaming the menu" -- trying to get the absolute most value -- that's something my mother-in-law does. My do I get withering stares if I order something with a low food cost. (Even if the prep involved is tedious.) That's what I tend to order when I go out -- things that I dislike making myself because they take so long. (Or things that make no sense to prepare for just two diners.)
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We paid $1.15 here for Hatch chilis.
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My wife and my mother in law have both recently had a lot of surgery.
In all cases, neither one had much of an appetite at all. My wife in particular -- she didn't want much other than light broth for days.
I wouldn't bother shopping for anything until you've asked them what they'd like. And then go get it or make it for them. Not nearly as convenient, but saves the embarrassment of bringing a nice lunch to someone who feels nauseous at the thought of food.
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In reading dozens of news stories about this incident -- one thing is clear. The students say it was a financial hardship for their parents to pay the visa fee, They did not want to be deported because they needed to make as much of that fee back as possible, so they didn't go home empty-handed. Even assuming the best pay and the lowest visa price, each student is out $1,500 for the "privilege" of that great cultural experience of a graveyard-shift factory job, and company housing.
1) I would like to see this company housing, and know how many people were put in one room.
2) I want to know if the "docking students for the timecard" part of the story is true. If it is, than what ELSE was happening in Pennsylvania? Any company so petty as to charge workers for a timecard is certainly drifting into "sweatshop" territory.
3) What happened to the students? Last I heard, they were protesting in Times Square, after Hershey's offered them a bus ticket to compensate them for their lousy experience.
There is a DOJ investigation going on. But I have no confidence in the DOJ anymore -- at least not when they're investigating corporations.
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1) You didn't pay $6,000 for the "right" to work for three months.
2) Nobody told them it was a graveyard shift at a warehouse. They were led to believe it would be a fun job at Hersheyland.
3) To a man (and woman) they insist that this work should be done by Americans -- with decent pay and benefits.
4) They PAID for a cultural learning experience. How is a sweatshop a learning experience? Other than "school of hard knocks."
Given our standing worldwide, it doesn't make much sense to me to exploit foreign kids and send them back to their homes hating this country. And if it's happening at Hersheys, where else is it happening?
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Sorry?
They should be entitled to free rent, board, utilities, and transportation?
Have you ever worked a job where the cost of your timecard was deducted from your pay?
This reminds me of the stories of the company towns, with company housing and company food where everything is deducted. Cue up the Tennessee Ernie Ford song:
"You load the 16 tons (of chocolate bars), what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store."
But don't get me wrong -- I'd like to hear the other side to this story.
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We freeze leftover rice. Our method is to wrap it in plastic wrap in "hamsters" (which can be later microwaved).
Oooooh, cuy and rice. That sounds delish.
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The problem is the over-entitled stroller jockeys that don't seem to grasp that not everyone finds their screaming brat as cute as they do.
That is excellent. I'm adding "stroller jockeys" to my list of favorite idioms.
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Screaming kids make my blood boil. In my view, if you have children under about 7 then you should either get a babysitter or refrain from going out.
You're going to catch flak for that -- mainly from users with names like "TrevorsMom," "DylansMom," "PipersMom" and so on.
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We don't see any guns, or Gordon Ramsay being lined up against a wall.
Pity, that.
Oh, what am I saying, I don't even know the man. But based on his TV persona? Pity, that.
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You-finish kitchen cabinets -- solid oak, no less -- are fairly cheap at the big box stores. I used some as the foundation for a kick-butt entertainment center. Cost 1/10th as much as a custom setup, and looks just as nice.
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I've spent the afternoon reading up on this. The more I read, the more disgusted I become.
Here's a link to get started:
The upshot as I understand it is, Hershey -- through subsidiaries -- enticed foreign students to pay from $3000-$6000 to obtain student "work/study" J-1 visas for a "cultural work exchange program." And then put them to work, graveyard shift, at a warehouse. After mandatory rent was deducted from their pay, the kids earned $100-150 for a 40-hour week. So, after their three-month labor contract is done, they've earned $1,800 (or less) to offset the $3,000-6,000 they paid for the visa.
I keep looking for some sort of "other-shoe" story that shows this wasn't some sort of Dickensian bait-and-switch, but I haven't found anything.
The first thing I did was go to snopes.com to see if this was some sort of urban legend. No dice.
Hey, Pennsylvanians, what's really going on?
EDIT -- Here's a quote from the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:
The students paid $3,000 to $6,000 to participate in the J-1 visa program and worked for $7.85 to $8.30 an hour, according to The Associated Press. Rent, transportation fees and even the cost of their own timecards were deducted from their checks, leaving them with little money.
Roman Suzhou, 21, from Ukraine, said the students worked 12-hour days packing large boxes of candy.
“If we were not moving fast enough, they would say ‘go faster or be deported,’ ” he said. “We had enough spare time to sleep.”
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The absolute best meal of my life was in Italy -- a cuttlefish stuffed with chopped squid in a garlic sauce. I've been chasing this dragon for a very, VERY long time. I was a kid and I don't even know the name of the trattoria. But I can still taste it like it was yesterday's dinner. Without a doubt, it's the meal that set me on this path.
I can score cuttlefish from my local Asian market, so that part is easy.
The problem is the timing -- the squid need to be cooked quick (otherwise it has that murky deep sea taste, the dish in question was certainly sautéed in a very hot pan for a couple minutes, tops), the calamari has to be cooked slow so it's almost fork tender.
Next time I attempt this, I'm going to sous vide the cuttlefish, stuff it with sauteed squid, and give the whole shebang a quick sear.
If anyone is saying, "oh yeah, I know this dish," please, please, please reply.
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I'm a hop head. Ranger IPA or Pliny the Elder for me.
And I won't talk down Budweiser. It needs more hops, in my opinion. But name me a beer brewed in so many places by so many different brewers that tastes exactly the same everywhere. That is extraordinarily difficult. So while it's not my beer, I respect the care that goes into it.
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Question for all of you who disdain the need to use ingredients from an ocean away. Where is your olive oil coming from? Italy? Spain? Tunisia? Argentina? California? Pluto? My Bulls**t detector went off when I read that the age of an oven or the number of pizza's produced, in that oven, influeneces the taste. I can see an experienced pizzaiolo being important.
The pizzas I get in Naples (and elsewhere in Italy) all seem to have more char on the bottom, which influences the taste. I am guessing that the build-up of tens of thousands of pizzas has something to do with that char. It tastes different than the the VPN pizzas. Since the VPN pizzerias are using Italian flour and baked in ovens imported from Italy using "correct Neapolitan methods," something has to account for the difference.
As for sourcing ingredients from the other side of the globe, I'm certainly not against it. Where else are we going to get saffron, porcini and parmesan? But for common ingredients that can be sourced locally (or at least far more locally) like flour -- what's the point of bringing it in from Italy? The clock starts ticking the second it's milled.
I've NEVER seen a baking recipe that starts, "take a sack of flour, and let it sit in a hot shipping container on a humid dock for a month or two."
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Personally, I find the idea of VPN certification a little silly. But the point of VPN certification is that you are trying to replicate the exact pizza you would get at a traditional pizzeria in Napoli. That means slavishly duplicating the actual ingredients used in Napoli to the greatest extent possible.
See, that's my problem. They're slavishly sourcing ingredients instead of slavishly devoting themselves to replicating the final product. Italian 00 flour that has sat in a shipping container across the Atlantic and then shipped by truck across America is inferior to flour we produce domestically.
I've eaten at a few VPNs and all of them are very well made, but I think the crust is lacking compared to what I get in Naples. I think it's because of the flour and that the ovens aren't old enough -- pizza cooked in a 150-year old oven that has baked millions of pies is going to taste different than pizza cooked in an oven that was built last year.
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But do you think there are many ristorantes in Campania that would import oysters from Washington state, because they're perceived to be the best? I can throw a rock and hit an Italian restaurant on the Las Vegas strip that imports sardines or branzini. This I don't get.
Last time I checked, there weren't any local sardines to be had in Las Vegas....
Are you asking why these places have non-local foods on the menu? -That sardines should only be served within a certain radius of where they were caught?
IMO, they do it because sardines are a classic topping that some customers expect on a pizza. And, because they are available in shelf-stable tins which provide a consistent experience, the pizzaiolo provides them. This is in keeping with the Vegas tradition of providing certain customers whatever they want. Face it, seafood in general is big business in Vegas -a city in a landlocked state.
I think you misunderstood. I'm not talking about importing canned anchovies to put on pizza.
I'm talking about flying fresh fish in from Italy to use in "hyper-realistic" Italian restaurants on the Las Vegas strip -- Mediterranean sea bass (branzini) for instance. To me, that flies in the face of the Italian tradition of sourcing local ingredients whenever possible. The closer the better. Surely striper could be substituted and save some Italian fish a trip on a 747 just so they can end up on a table at Rao's.
Same with the Vera Pizza Napoletana places in America. They are REQUIRED to import their flour. Otherwise, they lose their cool little VPN sign over the door. Flour! Our domestic millers are capable of making flour every bit as good as Italian 00. Why import it when our own wheat is so good?
My point is that we're happy to import the raw ingredients, but not the philosophy.
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If the overhead is a bit higher than what you made in money, you either give shit to your staff for leaving the water running or you adjust your costing. Hope that helps.
It's the leaving the burners on full-blast with nothing on them that drives me nuts. The pilot lights work. And it's already 100f in the kitchen. This isn't a grill or salamander -- there's nothing to heat up. So why have a six burner Vulcan operating in "solid rocket booster" mode?
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But do you think there are many ristorantes in Campania that would import oysters from Washington state, because they're perceived to be the best? I can throw a rock and hit an Italian restaurant on the Las Vegas strip that imports sardines or branzini. This I don't get.
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His flight cancelled, Chef Michael Laiskonis from Le Bernardin drove from Miami to New York, and inadvertently took a picture that's perfect for this thread.
Praise the lord, and pass the waffles!
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When you do all the regulation and testing, etc. that the various Italian consortia do in order to ensure a certain standard of quality, that equals higher cost.
What gets me: Importing San Marzanos and FLOUR (of all things) from Italy seems 100% contrary to the Italian tradition of buying local products. Not just "local, as in a two day drive." It's "these vegetables came from my neighbor's farm down the street" local.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that American Italian restaurants (as opposed to Italian-American) are flying in sardines from Sicily every day. It seems to be a mockery of the Italian philosophy of how to source food.
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Hurricane Georges, in 1998, hit the the lower Florida Keys pretty hard. I ended up driving in a pickup all the way from Maine to my father's place in the Saddlebunch Keys, just north of Key West, with tarps and strapping to cover his bare roof because nothing was available down there. From Marathon on down the destruction was pretty bad. Roads blocked off getting into Key West, so impossible to get to building supply stores - which were probably cleaned out anyhow.
I was in Key West for Georges -- and every other hurricane during a 20-year span. I never once evacuated. I never felt the need.
Are you suggesting we looted Strunk hardware or Home Depot? Or are you suggesting there was nothing left because everything had been purchased? Either way, not true.
The only real damage from Georges was landscaping damage. A LOT of trees blew down. Some of them blew down onto houses. Georges was annoying, but we had the town up and running in time for Fantasy Fest a couple months later. Wilma was the worst of the lot, we actually got some flooding -- and that did a lot of damage. But three feet of water, again, is annoying, not life threatening.
As I've said before, terrible hurricanes are TERRIBLE. But there's a difference between a Cat 1 rainmaker and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. We have allowed ourselves to be cowed by the media -- which treats EVERY HURRICANE as if it's the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. And people run around like their hair is on fire, buying water and batteries and things they really should have on-hand already. Because they've been led to believe the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 is heading their way.
This was a non event. It would do my cynical heart good to see a headline someday that reads, "Weak Hurricane Limping Towards Florida, Fire up the Barbecue" But I doubt that will ever happen.
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One of my favorite restaurants in LA was a Sikh vegetarian place that had all kinds of religious stuff in the place. Was I ever going to become a Sikh? No, but the food was good and the atmosphere was calm and pleasing. Another favorite place is in Amish country in Pennsylvania. A restaurant run by Mennonites with tons of Christian stuff all over the place. The food is good, the people are nice and I love it.
In either case I don't feel threatened letting them be who they are.
Sikhs and Mennonites aren't actively trying to remove "blasphemous" books from libraries or adjust our educational curriculum. So when their religious symbols and passages adorn the walls of a restaurant -- it's cultural/authentic/refreshing/etc. A positive thing that adds to the dining experience.
But if the Westboro Baptist "church" were to open a restaurant and put their slogans on the walls, it would be intolerant/repugnant/offensive/etc.
See the difference?
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Exactly, Norm. At that point, I'd also be challenging the tomato as an Italian plant, since it's an import.
Sure, the tomato was brought to Europe in the 16th century. And it didn't really gain favor in Italy until much later. But I think it's been long enough that we can stop calling it an import. So what if the tomato is an adopted child in the food culture of Italy? It's still family.
Google Aqcuires Zagat
in Food Media & Arts
Posted
While Zagat may not be useful to me -- it appears to be very useful to restaurateurs, for marketing.
"Zagat rated" is displayed near the hostess stand of most of the restaurants in my area. Seeing that Google's business model is to give the consumer info for free and charge business for each mention, Zagat fits right in.
I'm sure that soon, any restaurant that can afford the price of admission will be "Zagat rated." Even McDonald's.