ScoopKW

Just for clarification, you're from Singapore -- so I assume you have amazing pan-Asian food every day. If you're looking for food that is more foreign to you than dim sum and noodles, I'd head to North Beach, and get a sandwich at Molinari's. I'd pick up some focaccia at Liguria bakery. I'd get some salumi from Boccalone in the Ferry Terminal (a short walk from North Beach). For me, a trip to San Francisco is all about the pork and bread. Their salumi makers are among the best on Earth, as are their bakers. Try to find some Pliny the Elder beer to go along with your meals. In addition, Napa and Sonoma wines, while not cheap, are a real bargain*. We like to have our lunches at Coit tower, while watching the parrots. I'd also find a coffee shop. It's hard to find a bad coffee shop in San Francisco -- as long as the name on the door is something other than "Starbuck's." You'll have to find someone here to give you a recommendation for simple steamed dungeness crab. I always have access to a kitchen when I visit. So I buy live crabs and steam them myself. In my opinion, it is the best crab on earth, narrowly edging out the Florida Stone Crab. I have my go-to dim sum and ramen joints as well. But you likely can find as good or better in Singapore. Eat pork, crab and bread. Drink coffee, beer and wine. I think that's what the Bay Area does best. * It is worth your time and money to schedule a trip to wine country. We always stay in Napa, and visit San Francisco by using the ferry from Vallejo. That requires access to a car, though. I'm sure you can find an inexpensive bus trip that includes a few stops for wine tastings.

I have a 15" Nuova Simonelli grill that someone gave me to settle a debt. I didn't really want a $800 panini grill. But it was that or nothing. That being said, I've come to really, really like the thing. It makes a fantastic sandwich. Having a commercial model, I can't understand why people buy lightweight panini grills. I've yet to see one that feels heavy enough to make a proper sandwich. The model I have weighs more than 50 pounds. I also can't imagine how ceramic would do as good a job as cast iron. Ceramic makes a great insulator. Iron makes a great conductor. I want a great conductor for crusting up my sandwiches.

I wish I lived near a Dion's. I'd send you as many boxes as you want at that markup. Send? No. BRING. I'm not interested in three day old chicken from the postman. You'd have to fly it to me personally. Thus the markup. Ringo Starr once commented that Key West fried chicken was "the only decent meal" he ever had in America. I doubt Dion's was in operation when the hurricane forced the Fab Four to stay in Key West instead of the Bahamas. But still, give me Key West chicken over than Kentucky stuff any day.

1) Drive to the Florida Keys. 2) Look for a small chain of gas stations called "Dion's" 3) Order the fried chicken. Be prepared for shortages and/or long lines. I would gladly pay $100 for a $5 box of Dion's Fried Chicken right now.

And more for the "Let's make Duncan cringe about retooling costs" angle: The heating unit looks basically like an inverted J. I think it should look like an inverted U, and it should be deeper. And there should be knobs akin to C-Clamp screws on both the X and Y axis* to accommodate differently-shaped containers. I don't want to have to worry about evaporation. Currently updates to the software appear to be using the "send it back to us" model. How about a USB plug and downloadable updates? I'll echo the sentiment that a beeper of some kind is a key feature -- especially warning beeps if temperature goes out of range. Some kind of battery backup to save the elapsed time might be nice, too. Finally, the heating element should be connected to the controller via a plug. That way, if something goes wrong, the end user only has to replace the broken part, not the whole thing. That would also lead the way for a do-all controller, and various heating elements suited to the user's cooking requirements. Of course, I realize that these suggestions will increase the cost of the unit. But when you get down to it, there isn't much of a market for entry-level sous-vide contollers. The concept hasn't yet trickled down to America's soccer moms. * A knob at the bottom of the U to change the depth of the unit, and one at the side of the U to lock it to the container.

The main thing is mise en place. No matter what you decide to cook, how you go about doing it will be the difference between success and failure. In the professional kitchen, everything is broken down into logical steps. For instance, if you need minced garlic or diced onions for more than one dish, do it all at once. Some things you can do hours and even days ahead of time -- pasta sauce for instance. Make sure that you can be on auto-pilot the day of the event. If you try to whip up dinner for 26, with sub-standard equipment, and you begin the process the morning of service, you'll be dans la merde (in the weeds) for sure. I think your biggest problems will be fridge space and storage containers. Have the fridge thoroughly cleared out, so you have a place to put all this food as you work through the recipes. As for storage, got any five-gallon food grade plastic buckets? I second the idea that Indian cuisine is a good way to go. Rice is dirt cheap. But know how to cook it in large quantities. EDIT -- If you know any fellow students who hail from Asia, I'll bet one of them has a rice cooker. Ask to borrow it. Preferably with a quickie instruction lesson prior to the event. You'll probably end up wanting a rice cooker afterwards, so buy one if you have to. They're not expensive, and you can find one in every Asian food market in North America. And an Indian braise is dead simple -- you can knock most of that out the day before, and then reheat it. It will taste better anyway, because the flavors have more time to marry. You could easily do a braise for 26 of red lentils, aromatic vegetables, curry spices and inexpensive proteins in the roasting pan most people have for turkeys. I wouldn't do tempura because it has a usable life akin to a mayfly. Stick with easy braises and let Isaac Newton's laws of thermodynamics do the work for you.

Thanks for digging that out! That is a refreshingly-honest product website. My big red flag is the tiny little heating element and circulator. It doesn't look nearly beefy enough to withstand what I would do with it, even for home use. I still don't have a sous vide setup. And I'll likely go the DIY route. But products like this show me that it's going mainstream. And someday soon we might have the killer product that everyone puts on their holiday shopping list.

And this is why I think refrigeration led to the downfall of cooking skills. The lack of a garden (victory or otherwise) distanced the US consumer from the food they ate. People no longer think about where their food comes from. It comes from a plastic-wrapped styrofoam package, of course! And while lobster could now be sold in Kansas City, refrigeration also contributed greatly to the industrialization of agriculture. Not that I'm saying refrigeration is a bad thing, mind you. I'm not about to give up my refrigerators and freezers. But if you want one invention that was the beginning of the end, I'd say that's the one. Everything else hinges on the ability to store food for long periods of time.

Refrigeration. Only now are some of us going back to the locally-produced, seasonal food that EVERYONE once had to eat. There was no choice, after all. Your food came from a nearby farm. And that's that.

Your school doesn't have a restaurant that serves the public? If so, that counts as a professional kitchen. Unfortunately, I think your chances of jumping straight into fine-dining are nil. There are simply too many applicants for a dwindling supply of positions. My experience with culinary school is that it allows the graduate to skip the "start as a dishwasher/pantry worker" bottom-rung on the ladder and go straight to prep. Prep is prep -- it doesn't really matter where you do it. If fine-dining is your goal, move someplace that has a LOT of fine-dining restaurants. New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans -- whatever city fits your needs the best. Go work at any restaurant. Work like hell for a year. Go out to eat a LOT (and network, network, network*). And then start putting in resumes. * Don't just network with back-of-the-house. A good restaurant manager can get you a job just as easily as a chef can.

1) What's your GPA? 2) Does your school have a culinary competition team? Are you on it? Has the team won anything? 3) Have you done any volunteering? 4) What languages do you speak? Basically, are you graduating with something to show an employer besides a sheepskin? Makes a big difference when job hunting. There are thousands of recent culinary school grads hitting the streets every semester, looking for work. It's my experience that employers are looking for people who did more than just attend classes. The reason for question #4 is that I would leave the country and work in a kitchen abroad to build up experience.

Another unitasker that has no place in my kitchen. The best shucking platform is a clean, damp bar rag. Not sexy, but it works. No need for chainmail or one-hit-wonder shucking platforms that way. Just a $0.25 rag will do.

Reuben culture is alive and well in Las Vegas. They use corned beef where I work. But at home I use a 50-50 mix of corned beef and pastrami. And I disagree with grilling after assembly -- how are you going to get that sauteed sauerkraut taste if the 'kraut is sitting between two slices of bread? For me, the correct way is to put a pile of meat, a pile of 'kraut and two pieces of rye on a well-buttered flat top, grill the items individually for awhile, then assemble and grill a little more to melt the cheese.

I'll bet you'll find that "what's good" is a regional thing. Here in Las Vegas, we have good Mexican takeaway. And with a bit of a drive to Chinatown, decent pan-Asian takeaway. (Not as good as San Diego or San Francisco, respectively, but still quite good.) My wife and I get takeaway dim sum regularly, but we usually eat it there. Dim-sum is best right out of the steamer.

My wife has a wild hair about doing shabu-shabu parties. Doesn't matter that we don't have many friends here in Las Vegas. Maybe she thinks if we put out shabu, they will come. (She just read over my shoulder and said, "You make it sound like I'm nuts. It's for Chinese New Year.") OK, dear. But we still don't have enough friends to justify a shabu/fondue/raclette party. Anyway, reading the description of these portable induction cookers, they claim to be able to hold food at various temperatures -- which could be IDEAL for small amounts of sous-vide. A couple steaks, for instance, but not a turkey. Here's a typical brand/model to run through Google -- Sunpentown Micro Induction Cooktop 964TB. Any chance this working?

So, for the first time in my career, I cooked for a celebrity. Who? Doesn't matter. A gentleman doesn't tell. But, since I'm no tease -- the celebrity in question came from the sports world. And every sports fan in America knows and respects this person. The dish? A very nice salad. I was working the cold line yesterday -- luck of the draw. But other than that, it's been another boring week. I really need a banquet for 5,000 to get the blood pumping....

How do you figure? A sphere holds the most volume with the smallest surface area. Cubes are going to slough off more water than a sphere. But I think the whole sphere thing is a waste unless using hard, clear, relatively oxygen-free ice. And while I have a lathe, it's not for metal working. Surely someone here is friends with a machinist?

I don't know how handy you are, but a backsplash is really, really, really easy. Anyone can do it. It's a lot easier to do tile vertically than horizontally. (You wouldn't think so, but that's how it is. I'd rather do 20 backsplashes than one bathroom.)

I'm with you. But just to play devil's advocate, duck can also be safely cooked medium-rare. Even with the "I know the rancher" chickens that I buy, I wouldn't hang a chicken overnight.

Synergistic craft-brewed artisan fair-trade eco-friendly coffee.

Also, the Whole Foods in my area sells Devonshire doublecream and clotted cream. Expensive, but don't use it very often.

I disagree. I've lived a considerable amount of time in places where poultry hangs at room temperature in the butcher's display window. Never a problem with those chickens -- and some of them were hanging SEVERAL hours at room temp. As a nation, we are WAY too uptight about food safety, and yet we allow and condone the most disgusting farming practices known to man. I'll stand by my statement. If a person knows where the chicken came from -- and by "know" I mean the farmer's name, address, and goes there to buy chicken, and always says, "Yes, this looks clean and wholesome to me" -- then a few hours at room temperature isn't going to make a difference. It's a clean animal to begin with. On the other hand, if a person is buying salmonella-infected, $0.49-per-pound, industrial, hormone-shot mutant chickens, then perhaps that person should reassess the wisdom of doing so. This is why I get so ticked off when places like Sonoma Artisan are legislated out of business. There aren't a lot places the average American can buy meat and be 100% sure of getting a wholesome product. Every real farm that gets closed down is a win for Tyson and Hormel.

I'd cook it and eat it. But 1) I have a healthy immune system; 2) I'm not adverse to risk; 3) I know where my chicken was raised.

Epoxy grout will not stain. It's expensive, and it's a pain to install. But once up it's trouble-free. We have travertine behind the stove, on the floor, on the walls of the island (but granite counters). If I were to do it again I'd go with roto-printed porcelain (which looks like real stone, but won't react with acids), with epoxy grout. My only beef with travertine is that acid (like lemon juice and vinegar and a hundred other things I use in the kitchen) will etch it. So I have to be vigilant about cleanup. But other than that...

I am coming to the conclusion that a not-small percentage of vegetarians will make EVERY thread a vegetarian discussion whenever possible.