ScoopKW

I am currently trying to buy some more copper pans and a pot rack from someone on the internet. The description? "All-Clad Cop*R*Chef -- never used. Just used for decoration." Who the hell buys All-Clad and then hangs them on a rack and looks at them? Having looked at a lot of houses recently, "Gourmet kitchen" means "Viking appliances that show no signs of use. A Sub-Zero fridge that has only held bottled water. A honed granite countertop that is totally unsuitable for cooking. And a ridiculous range-side spigot for filling pasta pots."

Considering the food landscape of the United States, yes. Based on what I see in the shopping carts, we still have a very long way to go. The average American seems to exist mainly on reheatable frozen food and cola. My completely unscientific wild-assed guess is that about 15% of the people give a damn about what they eat. The rest will eat anything -- so long as it's loaded with salt and fat. And it's easy to reheat. "Foodie," for me at least, is interchangeable with Epicurean -- taking modest pleasure in life. I think there's still plenty of room for both words in the language. "Gourmet" should be returned to the French -- with our deepest apologies -- for repair and some TLC.

One thing I've learned from the In-n-Out "secret menu" website is you can ask the In-n-Out people to do anything reasonable -- and even some unreasonable things like the 100x100 burger. So I've taken to asking them to drop my fries twice. I don't eat at In-n-Out often, so when I do, I don't mind waiting an extra 10 minutes for my fries to be cooked properly. "Hi, I have a special request. Please drop my fries into the fryer for one minute. Take them out. Shake them off. Let them sit for a few minutes. And then drop them again and fry them normally." They've never said no. (I cannot ask them to lower their oil temperature, so a one-minute blanch is a good approximation.) I agree with your assessment of Fatburger's burger quality vs. In-n-Out. Even "Animal Style" In-n-Out is just a fast food burger. Fatburger makes burgers that approach homemade. But as a friend from California famously said, "You've got TWO Tommy's in Las Vegas and you're still screwing around with In-n-Out and Fatburger? What the hell is wrong with you?" Tommy's Original Hamburger Shack trumps both of them, because they serve their food with "addicting like crack cocaine" chili on top. So, for the ultimate fast food experience: A Fatburger, with Tommy's chili on it, accompanied by double-dropped In-n-Out fries also with Tommy's Chili on it, and a Sierra Nevada beer. And a serving of chili on the side. But if a Fatburger, Tommy's and In-n-Out were next to each other and I could only spend money in one, I'd go to Tommy's. While a part of me would pine for the Fatburger patty, Tommy's wins the "best overall experience" -- their burgers are better than In-n-Out. The fries are about the same as In-n-Out (and better than Fatburger). I can't speak about milk shakes -- I don't like ice cream paired with beef. EDIT -- And Fatburger onion rings are horrible. At least they are at the Fatburgers in Las Vegas. Great burgers, but crappy rings.

I have only dined at the M buffet. When it first opened it was the best deal in Las Vegas. They have since removed many of the high-dollar proteins (appx. two-thirds of the sushi menu) and it is not quite insane value that it once was. I would still eat at the buffet, however. It's one of the few places in Las Vegas that offers free beer and wine (stick with the beer). My favorite buffet is still the Sterling Brunch, Sunday morning, at Bally's. I doubt any resort will be able to knock Sterling off it's pedestal. EDIT -- NO, it is not possible to stack restaurant.com coupons. One coupon per party.

Considering how much peeling most people do, that peeler is whack. Send them to "Bed Bath and Beyond My Means" for an Oxo -- and show them that the peeler works on both the up and down stroke. I only recently learned this. Now I can peel a 10-pound bag of potatoes in a matter of minutes. Bamboo scrapers and spatchula? I don't like them one bit. I'd send them in search of silicone -- it won't melt, or scratch, and it's a hell of a lot easier to make an omelette with one. Also, bamboo tongs don't have the grabbing power to grab what needs to be grabbed. I'd rather have a good metal set of tongs for manipulating heavy items (especially when a quart of hot fat is involved). Your friend will need a sharpening stone and a steel for the knives. Here is a nice, inexpensive one. Oven mitts! Here's one area where Alton and I are in complete agreement -- buy them at the hardware store, in the welding supply section. It's only $5 to $10 that way. I'll put my $10 welding gloves against anything sold in kitchen supply stores for a lot more money.

I for one am happy that people bring their cuisine to other countries and it becomes something totally new. General Tso's Chicken. Obviously the gastronomical equivalent of nuclear fusion. The byproduct of having a lot of Chinese and Jewish immigrants in New York simultaneously. Italian-American food. The United States is rife with people who say, "I'm Italian." Yet they don't know what "Buona Sera" or "Tutto Bene" means. Spaghetti and meatballs is a direct result. It's not really Italian food. But it's GOOD food. And think of all the cuisine that owes it's origins to southern Spain or Madras. As much as I love true ethnic cuisine, sometimes the best things are caused by "shuffling the deck" as it were. Please excuse me while I drink a Vienna lager (made in Mexico -- Vienna lager is no longer produced in Austria) along with an Italian/Spanish stuffed cuttlefish recipe I've been tweaking. (Although this thread has got me hungry for lamb for some reason....)

Me: Hi, my name is Scoop and I'm a recovering gadget addict. Support Group: "Hi Scoop!" Me: I had it bad for a couple years. I bought a hamburger patty press, thinking it would give me perfect burgers. A friend taught me how to form (and then chill) burgers so they came out perfect every time. I donated the burger press to goodwill. Support Group: "We feel your pain." Me: Then it was the Bloomin' Onion cutter. That was when I knew I had hit rock bottom. I don't know why I bought it. I went through a phase where I wanted to make the perfect onion ring. To this day, I have yet to make an onion ring that didn't suck. (Aside: I may start a thread asking for onion ring help.) I blame my wife. She was a total enabler. "Well, you love onion rings. Why not? It's only $9.99" Support Group: "Did you quit after that?" Me: I tried. I really tried. But I relapsed. My family bought me not one, but two Slap Chops! Well, they weren't actually Slap Chops, but Zyliss versions of the Slap Chop. Either way, they stunk worse than a VW Microbus full of dead skunks (driven by Kenny G across the Mojave desert). I used the first slap chop for a total of five slaps. Tears in my eyes, I said, "No, they can't make me go back." and I regifted it. Support Group: "But you set someone down their own path of addiction!" Me: I know. I'm really sorry. Then the next year, another freakin' Slap Chop arrived. I gave it to my mother in law. It sits, unopened, in her garage. Every time I visit, it mocks me. "Scoop, I am the Slap Chop. I can obviate the need for knife skills. Just pull me out of the package and stick an onion in me!" Support Group: "Don't do it!" Me: Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night with cold sweats, having just dreamt I was in Bed Bath & Beyond, buying an egg scrambler, olive pitter and single-shot coffee maker. Support Group: "Be strong!" Me: But I LIKE some of my gadgets. The raclette grill. The lever-action espresso machine that cost as much as my first car. The rice cooker. I cannot give up my rice cooker. [sobs uncontrollably.] I don't use them every day. But they get a lot of use. Well, not so much the raclette grill. But it's a lot of fun at parties, and a lot easier to clean up than fondue. Support Group: "Fondue!!?!? Hiss! Boo! Do not use the F-word here." Me: Is my garlic press OK? Support Group: "NO!" Me: If I can't have my garlic press, then I'm quitting your 12-step program. Besides, "Gadg-Anon" sounds like some sort of perverts' support group. Support Group: "Stay with the program. Don't go back to the dark side. You'll be blowing your paychecks at Williams Sonoma again in a matter of weeks!" Me: Did you hear about their new induction shabu-shabu pot? Looks killer! And the tagine. I love a good tagine! Support Group: "Nooooooo!"

We go to Napa Valley every year. We make a bee-line to Oxbow Market first thing and load up our pantry. Oxbow is an assortment of little gourmet markets in one building. We particularly like the seafood market, the butcher, the spice market and the produce market. (Especially the seafood market. Good oysters at reasonable prices.) The Fatted Calf is next door to Oxbow and that is always stop #2. And #5. And #8, 15, 20 and 27. Pate, rillets, confit, porchetta, I find an excuse to stop there nearly every day. Early in the trip, we always stop at Sunshine Market in St. Helena for cheese and nibbles. (Sunshine also has less expensive meat than the Oxbow butcher. The Oxbow butcher's wares are better aged. I'll spend a little extra.) Bread from Bouchon can be had at all of the above places -- often less expensive than they sell it at Bouchon. Go figure. There are other bakeries that put out great quality also. I price compare breads because I have never been disappointed by the quality of Napa's bakers. Restaurants? I can't help you. Part of the allure for me is having a kitchen in Napa Valley. We load up with wine and the best groceries we can afford, then experiment with them in the kitchen. Every year, I promise myself I'll at least dine at Ad Hoc or Bottega. And every day, a dry aged rib eye (or Iberico jamon, or Tomales Bay oysters, or chicken and truffles, or dungeness crab) win out and I dine in. I'm certainly missing out, I know. But we enjoy our vacation and that's really all that matters.

I have bags of bones and bags of "past their sell-by date" vegetables that occupy one shelf in the freezer. When that shelf is full, I thaw and crack the bones, roast them, cover with the veg, roast again, and make stock. I've got my stock production and use almost at equilibrium. It's a wonderful thing.

Oops... sorry. That IS a lot of orange blossom. Forgot to mention, I whip mine up by the pitcher. 1/2 teaspoon per pitcher. A drop or two otherwise.

I use 100% agave blanco, Cointreau, key limes (and the zest, which I macerate overnight with the tequila), 2:1:1, shaken. My secret weapon is 1/2 teaspoon of Lebanese orange blossom water. The orange blossom water brings this drink to the stratosphere. PS -- Orange blossom water also goes great in lemonade, gin and tonics, over ice cream and sorbet, in turkish coffee, and has a zillion baking applications. I hope everyone buys a bottle today!

A development -- a student (or students) withdrew from the classes I wanted at College of Southern Nevada. So I am taking basic cookery and restaurant management 101. It's a start at least. I'm hoping being around culinary students, chefs and instructors will open a door or two.

I use a scary-sharp kurouchi. But my knife collection is rather limited -- that's the best tool I have for the job. I slowly pull the knife against the fish, cutting as thin as I am able. On a good day, I can get almost see-through slices. I'm also very interested in the responses. I make gravlax at least once per month. Would a takohiki be the best knife for gravlax? That's my guess, at least.

I double checked it. This is the second instance of "serrated" in this thread. I cannot live without a serrated knife for dispatching bread. Next in line is my nakkiri, followed by my oyster shucking knife. (What can I say? Bivalves are my life. They go with beer.)

Actually, they do know it: they buy stuff packaged in metric all the time in grocery stores; beverages are probably the most common. But they still don't really have an intuitive sense of what a kilo is. As a former stoner, I must protest. I have a VERY intuitive sense of what a kilo is. I can tell you if my kilo has been shorted by more than say, 50 grams, just by holding it. Kilos? No problems. This may explain why so many good bakers I meet sport dreadlocks. Alton has demonstrated proper scale use several times (sometimes with "W"). (What's to know, other than "set your scale to metric and learn how to zero out with the tare function?) He also wrote a nice little bit in his baking book explaining the logic behind weighing ingredients instead of measuring them. It's a shame our foodie community doesn't have an "Oprah" -- a mogul who has more clout in the publishing world than any author or editor. If Oprah said, "Honey, you can't make a decent meal unless you WEIGH the ingredients," her minions would cause a run on Williams and Sonoma. Bed Bath & Beyond would crumble under the crush of consumers demanding a damned scale.

I love penobscot mac and cheese -- with five different cheeses and an herbed crumb topping. But to be true to myself, I probably love blue box even more. What's your cheese powder source? All I've found is cheddar powder that looks suspiciously natural. I want my powder to be bright orange, with some MSG if at all possible. I'm fine with three-buck Chuck Sauv. Blanc, and I prefer Trader Joe's Blanc de Blancs to many more expensive sparkling wines. I can't think of a better use of $4.50 than a bottle of TJ's Blanc. My wife's guilty pleasure is McNuggets.

Orlando's markets are adequate. The ethic groceries are, as always, your best bet. Your condo/timeshare will have non-stick pans where all the teflon has been scraped off and/or burned off. Buy a $10 teflon pan at Marshall's/Ross/etc when you arrive and leave it for the maid with the tip money inside. That's what I always do. Here's a thread on a timeshare forum you might enjoy: http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showpost.php?p=723655&postcount=4

Christmas Pudding. I spent roughly 20 hours over a four month period to make it. I plowed through recipes and chose the one that was the most complicated and had the most elaborate ingredient list -- candied fruits were shipped in from England for this dish. We ate it Christmas day after a roast goose and yorkshire pudding dinner. My reaction was "You have to be kidding me. All that work, for this???" It's not that it was bad, but it was basically a very expensive fruitcake. With the amount of work, it should have tasted "orgasmic." At least I had plenty of Pussers rum left over. Anyone want to buy a pudding mold?

I never used my slow cooker, until I learned that it is unparalleled in the creation of stock. Now I use it all the time -- for stock. Nothing else. (And I love the trio of used All Clad Cop-R-Chef pans I found on eBay for $50.)

I've always been partial to Epernay. It's a small town, but has everything a visitor could want -- like the ability to buy good, inexpensive champagne everywhere, including the gas stations. As much as I like French seafood, I like rillets, cassoulet, pate and snails more. Epernay is a snails and cassoulet kind of town.

How about someone who's 40-years old, and wants to work in a restaurant due to mid-life crisis reasons? Here's a bit of backstory. I was once a reporter and editor. That went swimmingly, until I saw that the jig was up for newspapers in general. I decided to switch careers in the late 1990s and became a brew master at a small brew pub. Brewing beer turned out to be my main reason for existence. It's impossible for me to describe the pride and joy of turning grain, water, hops and yeast into great beer. Things went swimmingly in my new-found career until family got in the way of life. My mother in law became very ill, and we both quit our jobs and moved close to mom. (Moving mom close to us was not an option.) My wife was able to find work in her field, but I am not. Resigned to the fact that my chances of finding a position as brewer (or assistant brewer) here in Las Vegas are slim, I'd like to regroup and do something else. My idea is find work at a pizza restaurant to gain experience on a line, and eventually in restaurant management. When we no longer need to take care of mom, I'd like to leave this town. We'll move to Oregon, where licensing for a brewpub is quick and inexpensive. I'll start a brewpub where I serve beer, pizza, iced tea, and nothing else. (Ideally, the restaurant would serve beer, pizza and nothing else. But I'll have to put tea and water on for the tea-totalers.) I wouldn't even serve soda, unless it was fountain soda and I made the extracts myself. So, here's my problem -- all the job postings on craigslist want someone with 3-5 years of hand tossed, high-volume pizza experience. While I can toss a pizza, and I have scads of restaurant experience (as head brewer), I have no line experience and am disinclined to bullshit my way into the position. Any thoughts? My next step is to knock on doors and start talking to pizzeria managers. But if anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears. As far as cooking skills, I'd rate myself a six out of 10. My knife skills are adequate for the career change. I know the fundamentals. I'm not adverse to taking classes. But at my age, I'd rather just get in somewhere and start working my way up. (Besides, all of the culinary classes at the local community college are booked solid. I registered as a student and checked.) So, chefs and cooks and everyone else -- if you wanted to break in, how would you go about it?

Back... and tired. (Actually I've been back for a few days, and I have a "nuts and bolts" travel report here.) I'll work up a Celestial/Din Tai Fung/Stinky Tofu/Goose Esophagus post in a day or two.

I'm leaving for Taipei on Tuesday, I'll post a report upon my return. Signing off... Scoop

I have the best possible situation. My mother-in-law has six laying hens that I don't have to take care of. I built a 4'x4'x8' cage for them, but they lay (and mostly live) under a fig tree. We keep their wings clipped, because chickens can "powered-jump" over the fence. On an average day, we get three to six eggs. They're fairly small eggs, but they are grade AAAAA. I've never had the pleasure of cooking eggs as fresh as these -- the whites barely spread out. The whites and yoke are so high -- it's truly one of life's pleasures to fry them. On the "con" side, her back yard smells like a chicken coop. I'm sure it's good for her orchard, but I want no part of this operation, other than accepting a dozen eggs every couple days. Eventually, I'll be called upon to make a coq au vin, I'm sure. Bonus, if you ask me.

As a brew master, cleaning stainless is basically my life. Powdered Brewery Wash (google it) is the best for cleaning anything stainless. It isn't cheap, but a little goes a long way. It works best at 100-120f. It must be rinsed with water at about the same temperature as the solution, otherwise it leaves a residue. It's best to soak stainless in it, but also works as a clean and rinse. And it's food safe, and enviromentally friendly. I cannot say enough good things about PBW. It's made by a company called 5 Star Chemicals, and is available at any homebrewing supply shop and online.