Jinmyo

We soak and sprout nuts, seeds and some grains so that their enzymes, vitamins and minerals remain intact, so it's for reasons beyond taste, although I've eaten sprouted wild rice and I think it's quite comparable in taste to boiled rice, although it's of course room temperature rather than hot, which is fine with me. Anyway... I eagerly await sarcastic replies! Sarma, I'll serve both at room temperature then. My intent is not sarcasm. I'm simply bewildered and curious.

Sarma, I know what it is. I use it extensively on its own and mixed with Korean short grain sweet brown and other rices. I mean soaking it for a couple of days instead of simply boiling it. Tell you what. I'll soak a bowl full and after it's swollen hae a few dozen people taste it in comparison to cooked wild rice. Both will be plain and I'll use salted water in both cases. I'll get back to you.

Sarma, with all due respect, that seems to me to be positively barking mad.

Is beer or even cider a better match than wine?

I've decided that souffle means anything fluffy and tartare means anything chopped finely and tall means white and salad means raw meat torn from the bone.

Just get to know the produce guys at the grocers and then ask for a sample.

Egad. That's outrageous. Taking the stems off a bit less so.

Juniper berries, actually. I don't dislike gin but haven't much fondness for it either.

Welcome to both VicVegas and gimb.

Soba, at least it seemed to talk more about the food than his other reviws have. Go, Frank, go! Come on, you can do it!

Hi Chef, thanks for participating. First, I must thank you for helping me to appreciate Italian food again. Although I travelled around there for months with my parents as a child, my mother's Welsh-Italian red sauce clogged my mind as a teenager. Now I'm an old hag as you can see from my photograph. It wasn't until a few years ago that I saw the light in your EVOO ways by watching the Molto show and Mario Eats Italy. Then reading interviews with you on the web and your cookbooks brought me to some understanding of how Italian flavour profiles and ingredients can be handled as deftly as in Japanese and French cuisines. Bless you, St. Mario for you have blessed me. Now, to my question: As a chef and restaurateur, what areas or opportunities are you looking to explore further? The flipside to that: Is there anything you feel limited or constrained by? ______ For bonus points and a chance to win a guess about what's behind door number three, what is your favourite cooking activity? (For example, for some reason I love chopping ten pounds of mushrooms and then hearing and smelling what happens when the hit the hot olive oil. Disregard this question if you don't want to win the Ferrari.

Jason, no pictures of cooked hot dogs?

Jason, I am awed. You know, not a single one of those brands is available in Ottawa.

Yes, frico. Great photographs, Anna.

Helen, this is a wonderful blog. Thank you for your work on it.

If they're the main component in a salad, I'll blanch in boiling salted water and then shock in ice water.

Ah! No! No steak rub! Just salt and pepper, perhaps garlic.

Ah! No! Please don't!

Again, I liked it because I didn't take it seriously. I mean, if an over-broiled steak is two stars but Bouley only rates three then it's all a joke.

Okra. Slimy manky okra. Comes in a styrofoam bowl with a straw.

Well, I thought it was funny. But perhaps more appropriate for a blog or NY Mag or other such trifles. I don't think the New York Times fine-dining critic should be doing steakhouses (except on his own time and dime). But then this is the fine-dining critic of the no tablecloth, tube tops, and tapas era of American cuisine. I think that the relevance of the post might be much less than many people assume. And that with Bruni we will get entertaining accounts, some good observations, but without the experience and knowledge that the haute cuisinistas are looking for. This is a New York fine-dining critic for the times.

Bruni on Wolfgang's Steakhouse What do you think? (Not so much about the restaurant but the review as a review and Bruni as a reviewer.) I enjoyed it. I thought the story well told and provided a nice frame for the inevitable comparison between Wolfgang's and Peter Luger.

Indeed.

That's a lovely photograph, nemissa. Welcome to eGullet.

Thanks, Andrew. I'd be more likely to have heard of them if they had released a definitive verson of Das Lied von der Erde or played back-up to Eric Clapton or something. I'm not so hep to this hippity-hoppity thing. Word.