pjs

Good info, jackal10. My favorite French chef recommended throwing a few ice cubes into the bottom of the home oven while loading the loaves. My bread still sucks though. PJ

Yeah, but Divine heated up her shoplifted steaks in her own little oven. PJ

They are no more than plain clay tiles, elyse. Apparently valued for their durability and hardness in commercial-type flooring applications. They also have a low absorption characteristic. All this leads me to believe that they are also very brittle. So don't drop one. You might be out 50¢. PJ

I think your grey tiles will be fine, it's just the color of the natural materials used to make them. The fact that you paid only 30¢ each for them also indicates you've bought the right tile. I also got mine at Home Depot and I had to find them on my own. If you have trouble locating them in the store and the sales-help aren't any, just ask for the cheapest tile they sell. I leave mine on the bottom rack and only remove them to clean them. PJ

You want to use unglazed quarry tiles. They are brick red in color and cost about a buck each. You can fit four 8" x 8" tiles in your average oven. PJ

When in Sebring, FL we go to the airport to eat. There's a very good diner-style restaurant open for breakfast and lunch in the new administration building. An oasis in a culinary wasteland. PJ

Nick, that was a low blow but I'll cop to it. Speaking of veg prep has anyone else been handed 200lbs of onion to peel and been told, "Yeah, we do that outside, on the other side of the back door. And stop your complaining--the rain seems to have let up." PJ

Hey, my 8" Wusthof WIDE suits this boy just fine. PJ

If you're offered nine months in the county lock-up you should plea-bargain for a year in state custody. PJ

Suzanne, I'm not sure of exactly what you're describing but I'll assume you now have small cracks in the seasoning in the bottom of the pan's interior. I'd attribute this to the pan's metal and the seasoning expanding at dissimilar rates under the extreme heat. At least that's my best half-assed guess. I wouldn't worry about it. PJ

I bought a Magnum about a year ago, the larger one, and like it. It holds over a 1/4 lb. of peppercorns, grinds them really fast and has a wide range of adjustment for size of the grind. The grinding mechanism is imported from Italy. I think it cost around $45.00. PJ

I finished the book yesterday. I also noticed the dry style of the writing but wasn’t particularly bothered by it. Overall I thought it was a great read. I couldn’t wait to compare notes with the Franey bio so I started at the chapter where Jacques arrived in NYC. The two books are so similar in the way their lives paralleled each another. From their separate--but almost identical--apprenticeships to their working together. One compliments and fills-out the stories in the other. Dry or not there’s some well-crafted, seriously funny writing in here. The incident with the hippie lady selling the ducks had me spewing Bass Ale out of my nose. In fact all of the Hunter Mountain material was an unexpected bonus for me. I worked a weekend gig with a band there for a couple of months at around that time. I cringed when he described the accident. That road was dangerous even without the deer running across it. We used to drive up and down it to get to a great seafood restaurant next to the Thruway because there was nowhere to eat up on the mountain in the springtime except for the universe’s worst pizza joint in Tannersville and a sad diner in Haines Falls. Or so we thought. One weekend we found a small restaurant in the middle of Hunter that had absolutely fantastic food. The type of well-made stuff you’d expect in a good NYC restaurant. I could never figure out what that restaurant was doing there or why it was open during the off-season when the town was deserted. Now I know. PJ

Take it for what it is. An attempt at media-damage control. Initial tests upon hiring won't work. It has to be ongoing and random to cover your ass once you start. After 23 years of hiring and firing, all I can say is that if you or your hired management can't tell who is doing what in the parking lot during their break, you have piss-poor knowledge of your employees and control of your business. Crack-heads are easy to weed-out. The life-term junkies doing shots to just feel normal are the hardest to find--and in my experience usually very good employees. I strive to treat my crew better than I've ever been. I refuse to be responsible for their lifestyles or blamed for it. PJ

Always a good sign. I hate having my knuckles rapped. PJ

fifi, you're in LA right? (The state, that is.) Don't you have a Church's in the neighborhood? Agree with the 3 lb. limit for frying, sauteing AND roasting, but they do seem to be getting harder to find. I won't buy anything larger except for the stockpot. I'd part with some serious cash for some fresh 20 oz. poussins to roast. PJ

Nope. Medium to medium-high heat. I like to use 1/4" slices of par-boiled new small red potatoes. Start them in oil until they are halfway done and then add a good dose of butter to brown and finish them. The non-stick pan helps to keep the potato slices intact. Sprinkle with garlic, shallot and parsley moments from done. Potato heaven. PJ

Because it was part of a set of non-stick everything. Not to diss non-stick. A 12" or 14" fry pan is essential for sauteing potatoes. Likewise, a smaller pan for eggs and omelettes. And a crepe pan if you really need one. I distinctly remember seeing a Calphalon teapot. I hate it when my water sticks. PJ PS: FG, you're a bad person only if you have 12 bulldogs in the next room.

Recent article in the local fish-wrapper concerning the dangers of non-stick coatings to our feathered family members. http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJour...EAD01060303.htm Alton would approve. Kill 'em with and cook 'em in the same piece of equipment. Multi-tasking at its finest. PJ

Can anyone recommend other chef biographies that are worth checking out. johnjohn johnjohn, if you can find a copy of Franey's autobio buy it. It's out of print but used copies are available cheap. He was one of the first American GI's during WWII to liberate the town in France where he grew up. He walked in out of nowhere on his family in his Army uniform. Hollywood can't make this shit up. Also, Gen. MacArthur requested his services in the Pacific during the war. He had no idea who MacArthur was and he wasn't a citizen at the time so he could refuse to be transferred overseas and did so. And he duly caught shit for it. And just for the record his first chef smacked him upside the head with a spatula for making a bad omelette. PJ

Howard Johnson Sr cajoled Pierre Franey to take a vice-president's position at Hojo's shortly after Franey told Soulé to go fuck himself. According to Franey's excellent autobiography--"A Chef's Tale"--the recipes for the entire menu were ripped apart except for the ice cream and the clam chowder. (BTW I have the original clam chowder recipe ) I can't wait to read the Pepin book to fill in all the juicy bits. Where's that damn Amazon link? PJ

There are a hundred or so listed for sale here: http://dogbert.abebooks.com/abe/IList Singles, sets, cheap, expensive. Just type in "Time Life Foods of the World" in the title field in the search form. PJ

I can only hope that "personal blend" coffee wasn't Kopi Lewak, made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of the Indonesian palm civet. PJ

And then you feed the chicken shit to the pigs! PJ Uh. . . where does the pig shit go?

"We have a friend who was taught in Chinese cooking class to pluck off the tip and string end of bean sprouts--a far more elegant manner of serving bean sprouts than simply leaving them as they come from the Chinese greengrocer. He is one of those rare people who still have a devoted servant in the kitchen, but, after spending an entire afternoon at that task, she informed him that if he ever brought another mess of bean sprouts in for cleaning, she, for one, was leaving. Now he does it himself." --The Chinese Cookbook, Craig Claiborne/Virginia Lee. PJ

NyQuil dude? NyQuil. Poor man's Pernod. PJ