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Host's Note: this topic is continued from Dinner 2014 (Part 5) NY strip salad with cranberry vinaigrette and tostones apologies for the focus

You might pick one dish to sample a day. Just that dish... as an amuse.

Good point. All of the meals I've had at his NYC places have been too sweet and a little too salty. And I'm a guy who salts my own stuff generously and doesn't mind a little sugar in a sauce. I don't see him as rude either, he's just an amped-up New Yorker. Of all the people we are discussing, Flay is the one I'd be happy to have a beer with. And maybe Fieri.

The NYT version is a sped-up method for this restaurant-y dish. In the original, halved tomatoes are roasted for about 3 hrs with garlic, thyme and OO. Onions are cooked slowly for an hour and had added thyme and chicken stock. Caramel is made and brightened with sherry vinegar. Then caramel + garlic clove + thyme + olives (which I left out) are put into a ramekin...then roasted tomatoes...then onions...then puff pastry. 20' at 425F.Total time 3.5 hours. But tomatoes can be roasted, and onions sauteed in advance. The book it came out of, Think Like a Chef, is very very good. Lots of technique discussion and recipes to ponder. FWIW Top Chef contestants ought to read it and gain insight into how Tom thinks.

Bavette steak (with pinot noir pan sauce yet to be applied), roasted yukon gold potatoes and Colicchio's tomato tart from Think Like a Chef. The latter is a bit of a production to make, but was tasty.

Hair, glasses, bling. But he's a friendly douche and has grown on me. Conant, no question, has a level of douchery that far surpasses Fieri. Conant is a more of a prick though. Flay? No douche. A NYC smartass who's very good at what he does.

You could say that most of the sauces are made a la minute and really cannot be sampled without cooking the whole dish

This whole tasting thing strikes me as odd. Tasting a sauce without the meat is usually a mistake since a sauce is seasoned to taste right when a thin film adheres to a protein, not when sipped from a shot glass. And how do you supply a pan sauce to taste without cooking the whole dish?

you can tell eG has high class members...we always spell douchebag correctly

microwave

Re indexing...please don't do this.... Roast Chicken- see "Chicken,Roast" Just give the page number at "roast chicken" and also at "chicken, roast" Please.

I grew some peppers from seed labeled as peppadew, which I understand is a Malawi pepper. While seeding them under running water...wearing gloves...the heat was so intense that my eyes watered and I coughed uncontrollably. Had to quit. Holy shit. Will the pickling process tame this, or did I grow a bunch of monsters?

Whoa. That's whack.

Or broccoli rabe!

LOL Philly street Italian bears little resemblance to Italian Italian.

Calzone dumplings. Filled with sharp provolone, hot gabagool, genoa salami. Should've made more.

I don't mind Fieri. He embraces his inner douchebag. I respect that.

Gail is a vegan until it costs her money.

I hate the arguing. Tedious, but Bravo thrives on trashiness.

There seem to be more than a few candidates for villain in this group. Should be entertaining.

Yes. The "pH thing" was what I was referring to when I said "manipulate conditions" in my extraction scheme. I think that it could be done safely and expensively by a good chemist. But why bother? Too risky and for what?

I'd say be careful. Tobacco varies in the amount of nicotine it contains. I don't know how anyone could tell you what is safe. You'll get advice on the order of "I did it by this method and nobody died". The scheme of a potentially safe method would be a technique that extracts flavor but no nicotine. According to Wikipedia nicotine base is soluble in alcohol and ether but not water unless in its base form. So in theory one could manipulate conditions to do an aqueous extract of tobacco that would get flavor, but not nicotine. Or you could ether extract tobacco to remove nicotine, and then aqueous extract for flavors. Assuming the flavor is water soluble. Or maybe just buy tobacco flavoring.

That's interesting, but be aware of being ahead of your time. It could confuse the shit out of people. On the other hand, I'd like it. Perhaps using the concept as an alternate indexing tool(ie in addition to the regular index) would meet everybody's needs. A Venn diag with dishes listed and pg #s given.

I'll do pork butt SV for a day or two and get wonderfully juicy, tenderized pulled pork.

Tortilla pizza using Kenji Alt's method of pan heated on stove for the crust and broiler for the top. Takes about 8 minutes start to finish using a 1/4 sheet pan and the Breville. Only trick is getting the crust crisp enough on the stove, which is always longer than I think it should be. Compares very favorably to any frozen pizza I've had.