Katie Meadow

Anna, that's the tidiest club sandwich I've ever seen. The toothpick that sticks up is very important, whether or not it has a curly top, although yours is so pretty it deserves a fancy toothpick. Nevertheless, the architect of the club determines whether the poultry is ground level or second floor and the up-end of the toothpick pretty much seals the deal, indicating the maker's preference. Personally however I am in favor of turkey on top, so that it is easier for me to simply remove the middle slice of bread and toss it over onto my husband's plate. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that many people reconstruct a club sandwich as soon as it is served. Clearly the club sandwich will take over any given thread once it gets a claw in the door.

The hotness level of jalapeños seems pretty unpredictable to me, but yes, I agree that they have become tamer, often to the point of being insipid, especially the average super market supply. When I lived in New Mexico during the sixties and early seventies that was not the case. But generally here in CA they are oh so bland. I have found that if I shop at Mi Pueblo, the big hispanic super market, they tend to be hotter, although it varies according to the batch. When I buy them I always buy a few serranos as well, just in case I need them to add heat to the pickle. They are not so predictable, either. As for the end result, if they are hot to begin with when raw, then the pickle will be hot accordingly. I make pickled jalapeños or a mixed pickle with carrots frequently and I'm just resigned to the fact that the heat level is somewhat a factor of chance.

Okay, here's my two cents. First of all, the original post really seemed to be posing a moral question, so I'm gonna back up. Is the donut shop a small mom & pop operation or independently run part of a franchise, or is it inside of a large supermarket? I don't know about where you are, but here in CA most of the standard donut shops are owned by hard woking Cambodians who probably don't see a lot of profit. We are all of us amateur advice columnists, so I say leave well enough alone. If ya like their cronut, or whatever they are calling a cronut, buy and enjoy. If you don't then don't. The world really doesn't need a cronut police any more than it ever needed a cronut. Of course I admit I've never had one and wouldn't know a "real" one from an imposter, but in this case it seems like a little poetic license isn't hurting anyone. Reasonable? I know this doesn't address any legal issues, but where is the offense in all this, really?

I've never done it but here's what I know: Martha Stewart puts plain lightly salted Kettle Chips in the oven 5-7 min "until you can see the oil" and then removes them from the oven and sprinkles them with finely grated hard cheese and paprika. Another recipe I've seen is for BBQ Kettle chips in which you also spread the chips out and bake for about 5 minutes "until you can smell the chips. Remove and sprinkle with salt, sugar and smoked paprika. I would love it if someone else would make them and I could try a few, but somehow I just can't get up the energy to take something that's already salty and greasy and make them more salty and greasy. I could maybe see doing it with just a bit of smoked paprika.

From the video, facing the cooking grill, the line extends out on the right. That would mean it isn't the one on the southwest corner of 6th and 53rd, which is my fave. But the one on the SE corner has had scaffolding over it for a zillion years and wouldn't look so sunny. Unless the scaffolding has been removed. I have great fondness for the Halal Guys. They got me through the last few years of my mother's life. I spent many hours on that line waiting for comfort food.

How about an update on current good eats in Atlanta? It has been almost 2 years since anyone posted on this thread, and that person was me! My daughter and boyfriend have actual jobs now after getting their MPH's but the two of them are almost as frugal as when they were students. Public health has never been about the money, just about the lack of it. My daughter's birthday is coming up, and I thought they might like to be gifted a splurge restaurant. Her horror of expensive eating has abated, at least if someone else is paying for it. What about Woodfire Grill? Anyone eaten there recently? Looks appealing to me, and isn't too far from where they live in Decatur. They like the idea of locally sourced foods, don't really care for white tablecloth dining or excessive noise, and they both are into cocktails and wine. She has worked in food service and can't abide snobby or stuffy waitstaff. Any other suggestions?

Made a b'day dinner (husband and a friend one day apart) for five last night using three recipes from Prune. Apps included the garrotxa with buttered brown bread and salted onion (thanks to my husband for baking a wonderful dark pumpernickel the other day.) Super good! For a main I did the Farmhouse Chicken Braised in Hard Cider (universally praised) with a side of Roasted Beets with aioli. The recipe for aioli is excellent and seems fool proof. The good news is I have practically a full pint of aioli left over. The bad news is I have a full pint of aioli left over. It's been a long time since I had a book with so many recipes calling to me. And no, I did not use leek bottoms for a table decoration--and I never will! But I'm thinking that it would be fun to go to Prune this spring when I come to NY.

My favorite recipe is Clair Robinson's flourless peanut butter cookies. http://whisksandwhimsy.com/2012/01/12/flourless-peanut-butter-cookies/ I tweak them just a bit by adding a T or so of buckwheat flour, which helps manage them, but isn't necessary. Without flour the pb taste is BIG. I use natural unsweetened chunky pb, Adams or Laura Scudders--both easy to find in supermarkets. Then I add a few sprinkles of goodies, such as some cocoa nibs and/or black sesame seeds. They are really pretty great. Along with the sea salt on top I also sprinkle a little large-crystal sugar so they are sweet and salty on top. These are not super-sweet cookies, but I find the sugar can be cut back a bit for excellent results.

Question: what's the advantage of using a smoked ham hock vs a smoked ham shank? Way more meat on the shank and flavor wise the resulting stock from the shank is at least as good. I always tell the butcher to cut twice through the bone in each shank so the marrow is exposed. Perhaps smoked shanks used to be less available than they are now?

I know this isn't exactly the point of this thread, but let's say you had beef, drippings, apples, onion and bit of flour. If I were going to make a curry I might make a beef and onion curry using drippings and them make an apple chutney on the side. Let's say I was really flush, and had a few potatoes. I would braise the meat with the onions and drippings, make some potato pancakes and some apple sauce to go with. The curry recipe as written might have come to mind if I only had one pan and one utensil and limited fuel.

For lunch yesterday I had a club sandwich. At least that's how I remember it.

Too bad those people didn't have any jam around the house, they could have made a pretty decent sandwich. Without the jam however, one crucial step was ignored. The knife should be kept at hand until the sandwich is consumed in order to pry open your jaw afterwards.

How did the name "club" come about? Because it was so big you could club someone over the head with it or because it resembled the ugly architecture of the club house itself? Or because the club house had so much extra stale bread they needed to come up with a triple decker toasted sandwich? Or maybe because they had so many of those frizzy toothpicks and they seemed more necessary if the sandwich was too high to stay together otherwise? I really always thought it was called a club because it was always served at a club house, and the two times I ever went to a club house that's what I had, because I thought it was the "house sandwich" and a specialty. I can see that a reasonable sandwich would basically be a BLT with turkey or chicken, although frankly I am happy without the poultry. That third piece of bread is just plain dopey: it makes it hard to eat and dilutes the bacon. Ham and cheese on a club? But why? You might as well put fried squirrel in it. Oh wait, if you catch the squirrel and then club it to death you really do have a club sandwich. I like to keep a foot in both camps. One foot in the so-called "open minded" camp and the other in the camp that allows you to acknowledge a really bad idea. The methodists were truly minimalists: only two pieces of bread, and no lettuce or tomato. And they spent a lot of time trying to flatten their bacon. No wonder it got cold.

At the risk of repeating myself (wouldn't be the first time) I am a huge fan of Dorie's custardy apple thing. So easy, so fast, so good. That one looks perfect. My apples are cut a bit thicker, since I've done it by hand, but I now have a mandoline, so my next one will be upmarket. Until the last few days I really didn't know what a spiralizer looked like, nor did I think I needed one. I'm going to keep my eyes....peeled. http://twistedsifter.com/videos/how-to-peel-apples-with-a-power-drill/ I thought this was pretty funny. I'm sure I would lose a body part if I tried it.

I'm a broth person. I love soups of various kinds, mostly non-creamed, but truth be told I am very happy with a mug of strong broth, be it chicken, turkey or beef. A little squeeze of lime in turkey broth never hurts. My freezer is mainly a stock and broth staging area. Plain bones may not contribute to flavor much, but they definitely add health benefits and emotional support. It just feels good to have a few bones in the soup pot. My best stocks and broths are the result of variety. Chicken stock needs wings, backs and feet and benefit from a fair amount of meat on the bone. Turkey stocks are especially good when made from roasted parts--necks and wings. Of course having a roasted chicken or turkey carcass is a gift from heaven. Beef stocks are richest when made from lots of cuts and various bones: oxtail, shank, marrow bones, veal knuckle, whatever. I just make an assumption that everything contributes in some positive way. I don't dwell on the difference between stock and broth; there seems to be one, but it's a rather murky distinction. Most definitions of stock imply that you wouldn't want to drink it straight, that it's meant as a cooking ingredient. My technique is a short cut, I guess. If a recipe calls for a stock or braising liquid I might dilute my broth a bit before using. If I had to pick a source for where I found stock and broth tips when I first started cooking, I guess I would name Julia Child. Her basic rules seem to be to throw lots of meat and bones into water, add a bit of onion, carrot, whatever, simmer very low for several hours and don't cover the pot.

This is a discussion that gets more complicated the more you look into it. Besides the issue of the two types of corn--dent and flint--the issue of nixtamalization is very confusing. When you buy masa, or nixtamalized corn for tamales/tortillas, it usually specifies "lime," which means it is nixtamalized. But neither polenta nor grits says whether it is treated with alkali. Yes, hominy would mean it is nixtamalized, but most ground corn for either polenta or grits does not say "hominy" it just says ground corn. Perhaps it used to be more common for the grits in the south to come from nixtamalized sources, but I don't see any indication that this is the case with artisan products that are grown and ground in the south today. As far as I can tell, most corn destined for drying and grinding is not nixtamalized. I read through the rather lengthy treatise re corn products on the site for Anson Mills and that question is not answered. That last paragraph about hominy doesn't actually address whether or not the Anson Mills grits are in fact made from hominy. Unless I am reading this wrong, which is entirely possible.

Okay, I'm working on a theory for large kitchen appliances. Here's my theory: purchased appliances seem to last about half as long as the the previous one you bought. When we bought our house it came with a 30 yr old Kitchen Aid dishwasher that was still limping along, but pretty grody. It soon broke and we replaced it with another KA. That one lasted 15 years. The next one lasted about 10 years. Now we have an Asko and it is still going strong after about 5 years, but it gets lighter use since it is now the two of us only and I don't use it for large pots and pans. Aside from the mechanics, the Asko is incredibly smart in design; that may be just a lucky coincidence due to the size/shape of our dishes, but it holds a lot of dishes. The GE dishwasher at my in-laws' beach house is about the same size, and holds a third less dishes due to really poor design. So bad design in this case means having to use a third more cycles in the same time period reducing its life by the same. Taking a sample of your dishes when checking out dishwashers is very helpful. We settled on the Asko rather than the Bosch simple because its dimensions fit our space better. Both European models were well designed. I have had similar experiences with washing machines and dryers. Each generation seems to be half as good as the previous one. The one exception was a Maytag washer that was bought 30 yrs ago and is still working, although not very energy efficient. If my theory has any validity, soon appliances will last about 5 years, tops, and that will be considered good.

I don't hate fruitcake, but I come from a long line of non-bakers and don't remember EVER eating fruitcake or being gifted with one. About thirty or forty years ago I baked my first and only fruit cake from a recipe in an old tattered book of uncertain provenance called Party Foods Book; I no longer have the book, just the page with the cake recipe. It calls for "butter or margarine" and "sour milk or buttermilk," so I'm thinking it comes from that transitional time when processed foods started appearing. The cake was called Old Kentucky Black Fruit Cake and contained no neon fruit at all, just real dried fruits and candied orange peel. The recipe says the cake keeps indefinitely and suggests periodic soaking with wine, but I don't see why Kentucky bourbon wouldn't be nice. Whatever dried fruits (black and white figs are the main ones suggested) the baker had available and whatever nuts were also at hand seem to be the way to go. It does not specify any soaking of the fruit before using. Actually it was very good; dense and healthy. I never made it again but I have no idea why.

Popover batter takes 3 minutes to make, so why bother?

What a nice gift, the Willett. We were invited to cocktail hour on xmas eve at some friends where the food and drink is always fabulous. We finished off a bottle of Van Winkle Family Rye--I didn't look very hard at the label, but it just said Van Winkle, not Pappy Van Winkle. Apparently when the bottle was getting low our friend checked in with his favorite liquor guy, who just started laughing. Anyway, it was smooth and very delicious. I'm sure I've never had it before. I love rye! (Not relevant, but just singing his praises, he also gifted me with a bottle of Nocino, which I also swoon over.) [Host's note: To avoid an excessive load on our servers this topic has been split. The discussion continues here]

Having a modest Boxing Day cocktail hour with some very old friends and feel compelled to experiment with that signature dish. This is the first time in forever that I have actually gone out to buy triscuits on purpose. My last encounter with a triscuit was in circa 1960 when I nearly choked to death on one. They're good though, at least I remember it that way. Happy Boxing Day to all. A toast to the fox that got away!

Prune was a gift this xmas morning. It's hilarious! I have no trepidation about getting it stained or putting my own notes in it, despite the fact that it is a high-end production on expensive stock and weighs as much as a brick and the chicken that's under it. Only Gabrielle Hamilton could make me want to run to the cupboard for sardines on triscuits. So fun!

Yep, that's it. So now you know who Frank Bruni is. He is still a regular at the NYT, only not food critic. When the Times originally published the recipe it was attributed to his mother, Leslie, I think. Anyway, it's a keeper. I don't do the eggplant exactly like she does. I do it the way I learned to make eggplant parm, which is to mix the eggs and flour and make a dipping batter: approx 1 egg for every 2 T flour. And I use about half as much hard cheese, but that's just me. Now I'm off to the beach for xmas eve with my husband's family. Tomorrow I celebrate xmas by starting the day with bagels and lox, then going to a movie, then maybe eating out Chinese. No cooking!

Thanks for the quick responses. I'm gonna bake it once, before dinner tomorrow. And yes, it satisfies my desire for eggplant parm without the layers of mozz, which I need to avoid. Frank Bruni says it's his mother's go-to recipe for family gatherings. And it works for mine, since half my husband's relatives are strictly veg. Travel safe the next two days!

Because it is labor intensive to put together there's no way I can wait until tomorrow to construct this casserole We have a long travel day and then early dinner. Here's what it is: Frank Bruni's mother's baked penne with eggplant and tomato sauce. It has alternate layers of sliced eggplant that has been sautéed with a light batter as for eggplant parm, then layers of red-sauced pre-cooked penne. There is a minimal amount of grated pecorino in it. I guess what worries me about assembling it this evening and then waiting to cook it until tomorrow afternoon is that the eggplant slices might suffer, get soggy, whatever. You think? If I cook it ahead tonight then I would just reheat it in the oven before dinner; it is large, and will probably take half or more than half the time to reheat as it will to cook. It gets baked with foil for about 45 minutes. I haven't made it in a year, but it's a very good dish. I've already assembled it, so the question is do I just throw it in the fridge and bake it before dinner on xmas eve or do I bake it tonight and reheat it tomorrow. Eek!