project

Yup, in your picture, that's the one! As I recall, I got mine for about $3 at A&P, but maybe the price was $3.99. I was pleased to see that this thing eases getting 1/2 C of minced garlic. On "plate", I stand corrected, it is also a verb. Still, as you note, the verb does not mean to place food on a plate!

In a recipe for a stir-fry pork dish elsewhere on eGullet, mentioned that the dish used 1/2 C of minced garlic. Well, using a cutting board and a chef's knife to mince 1/2 C is too much work: The mincing takes too long. Have to keep scraping the garlic from sides of chef's knife and bringing the garlic back together as it scatters on the cutting board. Can get garlic pieces on the counter top, in the sink, on the floor. If a flying insect leaks in from outside and is attracted to beads of perspiration on head from kitchen heat and effort and have to swat insect, then can get minced garlic in hair, then get hair in the minced garlic, etc.! Further, this method tends to yield a wide 'distribution' of particle sizes. One way to get a narrower distribution is to press the garlic into a thin layer and then aim the knife at the largest pieces, but this method still does not work very well. So, I looked for a better way to mince 1/2 C of garlic. Some decades ago bought a simple nut chopper. It may be packed away in some box, but recently couldn't find it. So, at local A&P, happened to find another one; it may be just the same model as the one decades ago. Tried it on garlic, and like the results. The key to why the thing works is that there is a grill in the chopper so that, once the cutting action has cut a piece of garlic to be small enough to fit through the grill, the piece likely will fall through to the collecting jar at the bottom and, thus, not get cut again. So, the distribution of sizes is much more narrow than I was getting with my chef's knife. Now I have used this thing to make 1/2 C of minced garlic and cooked and eaten the resulting food, two trials, and can report that I believe the chopper works well enough to be better than my chef's knife and okay. The results are about what I had hoped. I tried to write down the details of the manufacturer, forgot, had the chopper soaking, hoped to soak off the printed paper label, and then discovered that I had soaked off the printing on the label also. Also I am not sure that the business name on that label was really the manufacturer or just some distributor with their own brand name. So, to identify this thing, and to say how it works, will describe it: It is in two pieces, a top piece and a bottom piece. The bottom piece is a clear glass jar with a threaded top. The volume of the jar is about 1 C. The chopped nuts (or minced garlic) collects in the jar. The top piece has a hopper for the input nuts (or garlic) with a cap and is threaded on the bottom to connect with the jar. The bottom of the top piece has the chopping mechanism, and it consists of the 'grill' mentioned above together with some fingers mounted on a shaft with a handle. So, the handle is outside; turning the handle rotates the shaft and makes the fingers grab nut (or garlic) pieces and press them against the grill. The fingers rotate through the grill and, thus, push pieces of food under the grill where they can fall into the jar below. The grill openings are narrower on one side of the shaft than on the other, and this means that, by reversing the rotation of the shaft, can get two size distributions, one larger than the other. I believe that the fingers and grill are stainless steel. The hopper and cap are made of smooth white plastic. The handle and shaft are steel, perhaps stainless, perhaps just plated. The handle has a white plastic sleeve to hold with fingers and act as a bearing when turning the handle. The pieces of garlic that result have partly been cut and partly been torn. So, most of the cut pieces have some garlic fiber shreds attached. A chef's knife yields smoother pieces. In the final cooked dish with the 1/2 C of minced garlic made with this nut chopper, however, I thought that the garlic was fine; I didn't notice the shreds. For garlic, I start with a one pound jar of fresh peeled garlic cloves (Sam's Club). For each clove to be used, I cut off the root ends (which I suspect might be bitter) and then pass the trimmed cloves through the nut chopper. It is possible to buy bottled minced garlic, but my experience with it has not been good. To me the garlic tastes stale. The reason may be due to how garlic works: Apparently much of the aroma is from a reaction between two chemicals that are in the clove but separated until the clove is cut or crushed. So, once garlic is minced, the chemical reaction starts. I suspect that the garlic, then, has to be used quickly or taste stale. However the bottled minced garlic is cut nicely, nicer than from either my chef's knife or the nut chopper. So, nicer means of mincing are possible although the machine used by the producer of bottled minced garlic may about the size of a room and cost about as much as a house. For one clove of minced garlic, I still prefer the usual method of giving a solid whack with the side of a knife and then chopping the result a little. For 1 T of minced garlic, I would still use my chef's knife because using the nut chopper would require getting out the device, using a long spoon to get the minced garlic out of the jar, cleaning the device afterward, and putting it away. However, for 1/2 C of minced garlic, I conclude the chopper is a good time saver. I was not sure if the garlic from the nut chopper would be okay in the food, but I conclude that such garlic is okay. Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in any aspect of such a nut chopper or source of garlic. Off topic note to TV cooks: "Plate" is a noun, not a verb, and taking liberties with the language does not imply cooking better food.

Biscuits: There are two standard classic 'baking' skills that are very similar and that I learned from my dad. One is biscuits, and the other is pie crust. In both cases, the main secret is not to work the dough very much. In one step more detail, a 'good' result is light and flaky, but the flakes come from pieces of fat that were NOT mixed very well. Recently the fresh strawberries available in my area got me to do some cases of strawberry shortcake. Now the shortcake is just a slightly sweetened biscuit dough baked as one piece instead of several. I got out some old notes dictated by my dad as my wife and I were eating lunch with him in a Hot Shoppes in DC. I took the notes on the back of a Hot Shoppes paper place mat. To double check the notes, I got out our inherited copy of Ruth Berolzheimer, 'The American Woman's Cookbook', Consolidated Book Publishers, Chicago, 1939. Originally this was done at Cornell. Congratula- tions on their doing something so useful and practical -- they used to! There on page 547 I found what was likely the original source for Dad's recipe. This book listed this recipe as "Old Fashioned". On page 554 they also had a newer or fancy one, with eggs, creaming butter and sugar, etc., but such nonsense is not necessary. The old version is fine. I checked out several other sources, did some trials, discovered that a new can of baking powder does significantly better than one I first opened about 10 years ago, and settled on: Shortcake Preheat oven to 450 F. Take an aluminum cake pan, commercial style, with vertical sides, inside diameter 8", and inside depth 2", coat inside with Crisco, add 1/3 C all-purpose flour, tilt pan to coat Crisco with flour, invert pan over sink, tap to knock out excess flour, and set aside in a cool place. 3 C all-purpose flour 2 T baking powder 2 T sugar 1 t salt 1/2 C cold Crisco 1 1/2 C cold milk Sift flour and measure 3 C by spooning sifted flour into cup and striking level. Sift dry ingredients together through three screen sifter three times. Add dry ingredients to a 2 quart mixing bowl. Cut Crisco in with pastry blender. Add milk to make a damp sticky dough (depending on moisture level in flour, may need a little less or a little more than the 1 1/2 C milk). In bottom of mixing bowl, gather dough into a ball. Flour exterior of ball. Holding dough in floured hands, make a smooth thick cylinder. Add dough to cake pan and spread to edges and leave top surface slightly convex (depressed). Bake in oven for 24 minutes or until top is lightly browned. This dough baked in such a hot oven comes out plenty good. Some of the goodness is from the browning on top. The last time I did this, the cake rose about 1/3" above the top of the cake pan. This recipe is simple: So, here there is just all-purpose flour and no butter, cream, buttermilk, eggs, etc. Still, it's plenty good. Net, this cooking is good for people working very quickly before dawn trying to get a big breakfast for a crew of hungry farm workers. This baking is supposed to be fast and easy, and it is. The secret to getting results that rise high and are light, delicate, and flaky is to avoid mixing the dough very much, which is good for people in a hurry to feed a big crew. The first part of this secret is to use a 'pastry blender' which is a simple kitchen gadget generally shaped like a U with about six parallel wires or blades forming the bottom of the U and a simple handle across the top of the U. The idea is that the wires or blades will cut the fat and let flour coat the cut fat. It is possible to do just as well, although taking a little more time, with a dinner knife and a dinner fork: Hold the fork upside down in the right hand with knife in the left hand. Cross these two in the bowl with the fork on one side of a lump of fat and the knife on the other. Then cut, using the fork to push the lump in one direction and cutting with the knife in the opposite direction. When the largest piece of uncut fat is about the size of a pea, STOP. Then, pour in nearly all the milk at once. If recent experience with flour supply lets you know how much milk is needed, then pour that amount in all at once. Use a fork to mix to get a damp sticky dough. The second part of the secret is, mix as little as possible. And, when handling the dough in the hands, do this as little as possible. Don't need a pastry board, a rolling pin, to let the dough 'rest' in the refrigerator, or any other such nonsense. Just get on with it, quickly. And, I have no idea how an electrically powered machine could be useful here. Just getting the dough out of the machine could represent more handling of the dough than is advisable. Usually to make individual biscuits, just put the dough on a floured flat surface, mash it down to maybe 1/2" thick, and use a simple 'biscuit cutter', possibly homemade from a metal can, to cut round pieces. Then put these on a cookie sheet. There is enough fat in the dough so that as flat biscuits they usually will not stick to a clean cookie sheet. Also, for ordinary biscuits, omit the sugar. Also, one reason to have a damp sticky dough is so that a shortcake can come out nicely as one piece without a lot of cracks. That is, with dry dough, it can be difficult to get it to stick to itself, and the result can be cracks. But, for biscuits, a drier dough will likely cut more cleanly with a biscuit cutter. With a little practice, should be able to cut back a little on the milk, make a drier dough, still have the dough hold together enough for individual biscuits, and have the biscuit cutter work more cleanly. For a shortcake, I wanted nicely formed sides; for this I wanted to use a cake pan; and I found that to grease and flour the cake pan was important or the cake would stick. To continue with the strawberry theme, this recipe makes a SHORTcake, which is not like a sponge cake, genoise, American cake with creamed butter and sugar, etc. With strawberries, it's terrific. Somehow the browned flavor of the cake goes well with the strawberries. And, the syrup from the strawberries soaks into the cake and makes it awesomely good. To make such a dessert, as soon as the cake is baked, I put it right side up on a clean cutting board. Then, I cut the cake in half horizontally: For this, I start by using a small knife with a sharp point to get the cut started; I cut about 1" deep through the side crust at the desired height all around the cake. Then I use a long thin roast slicing knife, with both ends of the knife always visible to make the cuts deeper all the way around until I have cut all the way through to the center. Works fine. With the two pieces cut side up, I dot with fresh unsalted butter. I make the butter dots by using a vegetable peeler on a stick of cold butter held in a butter dish. For the strawberries, I start with about 60 ounces of sliced fresh strawberries and add 1 1/2 C sugar. Then, I cover the first half of cake with strawberries, top with the second half (both halves cut side up), and cover with the rest of the strawberries. I am working on the 'architecture' of how to get in more strawberries and how to make the resulting assembly more stable. But, it's pretty good as it is. One standard addition is some heavy cream, possibly whipped. In my area of NYS, there is now Ronnybrook Heavy Cream, in glass bottles, bottled on the farm. My experience is that this whips up nice and firm and STAYS whipped and firm unusually long. But, where I buy it, it is about $8 a quart, which definitely makes it a premium product. The label does not state the butter fat content. Also, my dad's proportions were for a shortcake recipe with 2/3rds of the recipe above, still 8" in diameter. So, he ended up with a thinner cake. The thicker cake is easier to work with, but I may return to the original thinner one.

Fat Guy: The tour stories are TERRIFIC! Ron Johnson: Fat Guy said: I've long been under the impression that Memphis barbecue's national reputation rests on its ribs. Does anybody else have data points here? and I believe that he may be correct and that's why I said "by weight and by dollars" and not by fame, flavor, reputation, quality, or competition. For your You are correct. Based on my experience living in Memphis for six years and cooking in the Memphis in May Barbeque Contest twice, pork shoulder is the king of barbeque in that town. Ribs are a big deal at Corky's and Rendezvous, but thats about it. One way to demonstrate the dominance of pork shoulder is the fact that the top category for the Memphis in May Barbeque contest is the pork shoulder category. He or she who wins pork shoulder may proclaim the title of champion of the contest. I think that says it all. The most popular barbeque in Memphis is pulled pork from a slow smoked, dry-rubbed shoulder, on a Rainbo bread bun with a squirt of hot sauce and a spoonful of slaw. With a cold beer, I can eat about 5 of those. I am trying to envision where this barbeque place is on Poplar that you describe. Is it before you get to the Poplar Lounge? I thought that I had been to every barbeque joint in Memphis. It would be strange for me to have missed that one because I lived in that area for a year before I moved back to Midtown. I was eating BBQ in Memphis from 1948 through 1964 and then again in 1973-4. Then as far as I could tell, the meat was always "coarsely chopped" and not "pulled". I first heard about "pulled" BBQ years later from my brother in Knox Patch. Since then, in Knox Patch, I've had some that was "pulled", and it's good, too. When I was in Memphis, Leonard's was famous, but I ate at Beretta's near Memphis State U., that place on Poplar I tried to point to, various other places, many places with a counter and some school chairs with arms for seating, and on the road up to Dyersburg and further east in TN. One special place was an annual sportsman's picnic on the grounds of the Shelby County Penal Farm on the south side of Summer street, near the eastern edge of Memphis as of about 1960: The BBQ was done on iron racks set over shallow trenches dug into the ground. Each person got a big paper plate with chopped pork shoulder BBQ, slaw, potato salad, bread, etc. There was often an awesome shooting demonstration by Herb Parsons of Winchester. To my taste then, the pork shoulder BBQ in Memphis and west TN was all very similar. When I visit my brother in Knox Patch, sometimes we go to a fancy place with pulled BBQ, but mostly we go to places with coarsely chopped meat like we had in Memphis. I believe that, net, all things considered, for a lunch, with some beer, it's darned good food. Of course, a cute poodle skirt, circle pen, and pony tail don't hurt! Exactly why that food is so good, I don't know, but it has some obvious points: The pork basically has a delicate meaty flavor. The pork shoulder has a lot of fat under the skin and around the muscle groups, and during the slow cooking the fat bastes the meat well. The meat ends up with a tender, moist, elastic texture. The sauce builds on the old idea -- apparently discovered independently by more than one of the world's cultures -- that a sweet, sour, hot, spicy mixture of vinegar, sugar, tomato, peppers, etc. can go well with such pork. And, there is also the smoke along with the flavors of any rubs or sauces used during the cooking. I guess the coleslaw provides a simple contrast. And, with the bread, it's a sandwich, which is wildly popular in the US. Why it works with beer, I don't know, but it does. Compared with ribs, the chunks of shoulder meat are 'meatier' with less that is dark or brittle. Of course, the ribs may be getting a lot of Maillard browning. For Poplar, I haven't seen it since 1974. I doubt that the place I mentioned has been there for some decades -- my reference would ring only for ol' timers from Memphis. But, I do remember where the place was, and unless Poplar has been wildly changed the corner should still be there: Starting at the river, go east on Poplar. After a few miles will pass Overton Park on the north side. Continue on, cross East Parkway, and soon will come to a bridge over some railroad tracks. Just before the bridge will join Poplar from the south an 'extension' to Union Avenue. The BBQ place was on the SW corner of Poplar and that extension. Around 1960, the place had some of the character caught in 'American Grafitti'. So, it was a drive-in, and many people ate in their cars instead of inside. Evenings there had a steady flow of traffic rolling through to see and be seen. One guy took his 1957 Chevy two door, replaced the two four barrel carburetors with six two barrels, and lowered the rear springs. One guy had three two barrels and lowered the front springs. Another guy had the Rochester fuel injection. There were various short drag races on the clean concrete of the Union Avenue extension. A fifty cent tip would permit anyone that could drive in to buy beer. But, I just mentioned the BBQ, which was good, and I often ate it also for lunch when there was no 'American Graffiti' scene. Fat Guy may be right that the Memphis ribs are terrific and famous, but what I grew up on there was BBQed chopped pork shoulder. Measured in total pounds or dollars, I believe that then shoulder was much more important than ribs. Your remarks on the now famous Memphis BBQ competition was a surprising "but welcome just the same" (Bogart) support for my pork shoulder remark! Fat Guy is right that there is enormous variety to the BBQ 'scene' for any part of the country. Sure, we know that pork can make such a good substitute for veal in many dishes that it's tough to tell the difference, and there are many, many terrific uses for pork from Germany, France, Italy, China, etc., but US TN, TX, etc. BBQ is also terrific for pork, so good it seems that the animals come with BBQ recipes written on their backs for all cultures to use.

Fat Guy, you wrote: The myth of Texas barbecue as beef is similar to the myth of Memphis barbecue as ribs: You go to Memphis and everyplace sells plenty of stuff in addition to ribs. Nor is it a question of authenticity: Pork ribs are as entrenched a part of Texas barbecue as anything made from beef, and I'd hazard a guess that many Texas barbecue establishments -- even the old timers -- sell more pork than beef and have done so for ages. Got to comment on ribs in Memphis BBQ: I ate TX BBQ only once, but on Memphis BBQ, I have to be something of an expert! I fed myself and lots of Poodle skirts, circle pins, and pony tails lots of Memphis BBQ, for years. I grew up on the stuff and now decades later likely have several pounds of fat still present! I may have eaten close to a ton, literally, of Memphis BBQ, and I hardly ever ate a BBQ rib in Memphis. Then, and such things rarely change, Memphis BBQ, by weight and by dollars, was nearly all fresh pork shoulder, cooked over oak and hickory charcoal, and served coarsely chopped on a white bread bun with BBQ sauce and coleslaw. And, the situation was similar all the way up to Dyersburg and all the way over to Knox Patch. That time in Memphis also makes me an expert on R&B music. I well remember The Five Blind Boys, Memphis Slim, Guitar Slim, BB King, Little Richard, Fats Domino, WDIA, WHBQ, Dewey Phillips, Red, Hot, and Blue, and, eventually, even that truck driver from Humes High School, Presley. The R&B music is junk: I much prefer Bach to Prokofiev, violin, piano, organ, and symphony orchestra. But, fresh pork shoulder, slowly roasted, coarsely chopped, with some BBQ sauce, a white bread bun, some coleslaw, some hot sauce, and a bottle of beer is still a decent lunch, competitive with cassoulet and Macon Blanc! But, if you get up to Memphis and take Poplar from the river going east, then on the south side of the road past Overton Park, just before the bridge over the tracks and on the SW corner of Poplar and the Union Avenue extension might still be a good BBQ place with some terrific BBQ beans. These are about the only thing worth having with a BBQ sandwich, and a good description of what they do would be good to have. Of course, for such a lunch, the best dessert is chocolate ice box pie! Ah, some of the best good ol' time flavors still left to enjoy! On TX beef BBQ, http://www.eaglequest.com/~bbq/faq2/10-4.html#10.2.1 claims that the origin was just two German butchers in about 1950 which means that it is quite recent.

There is some discussion of chemistry of meat cooking in http://www.eaglequest.com/~bbq/faq2/12.html Will look for McGee again. Wanted to make 'stew' starting with lean cubes of bottom round roast, and did some trials. First efforts were to brown the cubes, cover with water-based liquid, bring to simmer on stovetop, cover, place in oven at, say, 325 F or 350 F, and cook. Results were quite uniform: Disaster. Meat came out dark, hard, brittle, dry. If cook long enough, say, 36 hours, then the meat will crumble but breaking as easily across fibers as between them. Tried in a pressure cooker, on a stovetop, and at careful lower temperatures, e.g., 180 F. Order of events: The meat, raw, is flexible. The heat of browning starts to make the meat firm. In the cooking liquid, as the temperature reaches, say, 170 F, the meat becomes quite firm, we could say tough and hard. Continued cooking causes the meat to shrink and become dark, hard, brittle, dry. At no time in the interim does the meat become tender, flexible, 'succulent'. The common view that long slow cooking will make tough low fat meat tender is not fully true. An EPA document on effluent from industrial processes said that such effluent sometimes contains acids because in cooking meats, it is important to have the pH lower (acid, below 7, instead of basic, above 7) so that the meat will be grey and flexible instead of dark and brittle. Also, many credible recipes for cooking bottom round roast involve vinegar. Hmm? So, for a trial, when stewing 6 pounds of lean cubes of bottom round roast, tossed in 1 C of Heinz distilled white vinegar -- i.e., just simple acetic acid at a standard concentration. The EPA was correct: The vinegar was a BIG help. Put three oven thermometers in electric oven and adjusted the dial to get the thermometers reading 175 F. Used two 'instant' reading thermometers and stovetop to get meat cubes and liquid up to 175 F quickly (food safety) and then covered and placed in oven. After 24 hours or so, put meat cubes in a colander. Interesting results: o Hot Flows. For some of the trials, had a lot of flavor in the cooking liquid. E.g., took two pounds of yellow globe onions, chopped coarsely, and cooked slowly in Canola oil to a nearly uniform brown mush with lots of sticky lightly caramelized onion juice; removed; cooked 2 pounds of sliced carrots in same oil until soft (GREAT tasting carrots with all the sweet caramelized onion and carrot juice and oil); added usual suspects, maybe 1 ounce fresh parsley leaves with stems, 2 sprigs of fresh thyme, two medium dry bay leaves, 2 cloves of garlic with ends removed, lightly crushed, lightly chopped. For about 10 hours, the vegetables and vinegar filled the kitchen and beyond with aromas. But, when the meat cubes were in the colander, could put face close, inhale, and smell everything that was there, and, surprisingly, could detect NOTHING of the flavorings in the cooking liquid. NOTHING -- nichts, nie, nill, zip, zilch, zero. Could smell some 'beef' and maybe even a cow pasture or a stockyard but NOT the cooking liquid. In particular, could not smell the vinegar. Conjecture: When the meat is hot, the flows go only one way -- from the meat to the liquid. o Cold Flows. When the cooked meat cools, it will readily absorb water-based liquids. And, it is possible to put a lot of flavor into meat by marinating in cold flavorful marinade. So, at room and refrigerator temperatures, it is possible to get meats to absorb surrounding liquids and flavors. Lesson: When making a beef stew, by all means let the cooked meat sit in the final dish overnight in a refrigerator so that the meat can absorb liquid from the stew 'gravy'. o Vinegar. With the 1 C of vinegar, it is not noticeable at all in either the meat or the cooking liquid after 16 hours or more at 175 F. So, increased the vinegar to 2 C. Now the vinegar IS noticable at the end, in the liquid but still not in the meat. So, with 2 C, the vinegar does not all evaporate; so we have to suspect that with 1 C the vinegar does not all evaporate and, thus, must be lost to a reaction of some kind. o Broth. One way to analyze what is happening is to keep some of the ingredients separate. So, for the cooking liquid can use just water and vinegar. In this case will get a light 'beef broth'. With 1 C vinegar, this broth will be reddish; with 2 C vinegar, the color is more yellow. Generally we know that acids with proteins turn yellow. If brown the beef cubes and use 1 C vinegar, then the broth will be reddish brown. The browning does affect the flavor of the broth a little but hardly affects the texture or appearance of the meat. Generally the beef broth is not very appetizing. The smells can be strongly of a stockyard. Can remove fat from such broth, filter it, and clarify it: To clarify, add one egg white, whip vigorously, bring to boil, simmer for one hour, and pour through paper coffee filters. Reducing will result in, say, 1 C of syrup. When cool the syrup can be a firm glossy jelly. If the reduction goes too far and the syrup is burned, then result can smell a little like chocolate -- but then I sometimes think that Chinese fermented black beans sometimes smell a little like chocolate. o Fat. When stewing the meat, can have fat in the stewing liquid. So, can have fat from browning onions and carrots, and can have fat trimmings from the meat. It is not clear that such fat in the stewing liquid affects the texture of the meat. So far my trials suggest that any such effects are at most small. Future trials will investigate effects of stewing with wine with its alcohol present and effects of marinating the meat at refrigerator temperature before stewing.

Steve Plotnicki: Thanks for your Posted: Mar. 07 2002,09:04 with Project-You are taking the quote out of the context of the article and saying that by itself it doesn't support the thesis. But the article has numerous examples of where French cuisine has "dimmed." But your variations of how the curry could be viewed are all correct. He could have passed it off as a "one-timer." But if you read the article, the rest of the paragraph about L'Ambroisie talks about the perfect Hare dish he had. So the curry dish is isolated as a "single" example. But it is the writer (Gopnik,) he's the one who plucks the quote out of the air to make the larger point. The author of the quote is only making a small point. He thinks the curry dish is wrong. As for the rest of your post, that is a terrific analysis. But I don't think it is speaking to my question. Like I said earlier, nobody said French cooking isn't relevent. The question I asked is, is it as relevent as it used to be? Now there are many definitions of what relevent means but, I have used it as if to ask if it is as influential. And one would think that just based on the fact that chefs who cook with other techniques now have global impact, and that is a phenomenon of no longer than 15 years or so, the answer seems like they must have. "Out of context"? Wow! A tough crowd! Of COURSE it's "out of context": I didn't see the article! An article? There was an article? 'We don't need no stinkin' article' .... In the old school of "ready, fire, aim", I just posted after seeing Topic: Has the light dimmed on French cooking?, What do those guys count for these days? and a little about curry. Okay, now that, for the second time, you have written me a custom tutorial to get me caught up with the crucial points of the discussion ... Let's see: We're not saying that French food is 'bad' or might not still be the best but just that comparatively it is less influential than it once was -- that is the only sense of 'dimming' or some such. Wow! Well, the promoters of French food might be pleased to see such finely formulated concerns about their favorite subject! But, okay, it a fair question, if a less pressing one. Glad to see we're not afraid that the Chambertin's going sour, that people are about to plant cucumbers for McDonald's pickles everywhere between Beaune and Dijon, and all of the cheese factories in France will be converted over to making Velvetta! Those WOULD be disasters! So, for the question: Sure, it used to be that a person or family was lucky to have enough to eat of anything; to be able to 'play with the food' and to have a big kitchen and staff to do expert 'playing' and to construct a body of knowledge and a serious art form based on playing with the food took some serious 'comparative' economic advantage and interest in art, sensory experiences, and food. France did. Maybe in 1789 some lost heads over it, but the knowledge about the food remained! But, now, due to rising economic productivity in many places of the world, many people can toss in a few Shitake mushrooms, etc. and otherwise play with the food. So, sounds like the 'comparative' lead of French food is less large than it once was. But .... As standard of living continues to improve, someone can go shopping on Saturday, buy a few pounds of dried Morel mushrooms, and then get out what the French say to do with them in cream sauce for chicken. Or, there are a lot of ingredients and flavors coming forward and spreading around the world. Then, what culture, country, and cuisine stands to make the most of these? I claim the French. They have more to stand on, more interest, and more existing density of communicating and competing expertise. And, their 'methodology' is better: First, they actually believe that there should be a good 'framework', that things really should have some sense and order to them. Second, they work hard to discover what a good order would be. Third, they borrow a little from science in that they are 'cumulative', e.g., stand on the shoulders of giants. Fourth, they work carefully, repeat over and over, teach it, and write it down, fairly clearly, right out to saying how much garlic to use in grams (e.g., Escoffier). So, in the end, the dishes are built on the best foundation, are well tested and practiced, fit well into a good framework, are definite, documented, taught, and repeatable, and, net, move the 'state of the art' forward. And, as part of that work, they can argue for days about how appropriate it is to "sprinkle" curry powder -- we have to note that this argument is not just whether the specific dish was good or bad but whether the practice was good in principle and appropriate in a larger framework. Right away, then, we see the lion by his paw -- we are deeply concerned with frameworks, principles, practices that might be repeated. Those concerns are very big advantages. So, to answer the specific question, I vote that these advantages of French cooking continue to put French cooking essentially as far ahead as before. That is, some cook somewhere can make an interesting use of a flavor, ingredient, or technique, but in 10 years, their effects will have been picked up by, exploited by, incorporated in, and enriched French cooking or likely just have been lost so that, net, French cooking will have stayed the same or moved ahead while the rest will have had a few good new dishes on a few good days and then returned again to what they had before. Ah, back to coarsely chopped yellow globe onions, coarsely cut sweet carrots, fresh parsley, fresh thyme, dried bay leaves, fresh garlic, and clarified butter mixed with vegetable oil!

Steve Plotnicki: Thanks for your Posted: Mar. 06 2002,08:52 with Project-The quote in question doesn't criticize Pacaud for just using curry, it criticizes him for sprinkling it on a dish like he was sprinkling oregano on an antipasto. To the author of the quote, it is a sign to him that the chef doesn't understand curry (in fact I have never heard of sprinkled curry powder) and he says that in times when authors like Madhur Jaffrey are available to read there is no excuse for using curry in a manner that he thinks is wrong. And the author of the book uses the way the author of the quote feels about it as an example of how French cooking has hit the wall, or might even be declining. The point (by the author of the book,) isn't that this is a misuse, it is that here is a sophisticated diner (well-known chef) who feels that way about it. The inference is that people feeling that way about a 3 star restaurant is a new phenomenon. Hope this clarifies it because I certainly have no problem throwing a few pinches of curry powder (which I bought at Izrael in Paris) into the pot with my Mussels and Curry Cream Sauce. Generally I hate to gloss over details and draw conclusions anyway, but the question French cooking has hit the wall, or might even be declining. is quite broad. You did clarify the details for me. Still, I have a hard time, from 40,000 feet up on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean, concluding that there is anything seriously wrong with French cooking, will be soon, or has been since yesterday, last week, 1995, 1985, 1960, etc. Maybe sprinkled curry is an anathema and an abomination. Sure, maybe a restaurant reviewer visiting a place with sprinkled curry should write "This culinary experience has much that is good and new, however the good is not new and the new, not good." Or, we have to believe that single cooks with single efforts to do something both good and new have long made mistakes. To make a good omelet, it is necessary to break some eggs; mistakes are standard, even necessary, in efforts to make progress, especially in artistic efforts. Single awkward steps or single mistakes are small things, and such things tend to find their way out of the favor of the customers, off the menus, and out of the favorite efforts of the chefs, all soon enough. French cooking is not a small thing; it's a big thing, and it doesn't hinge on some case of sprinkled curry, that some French chef comes to NYC, or that some chef in Spain does some things new that really are good. And, I believe that French cooking will survive the invasion of McDonald's, economic fumblings of the French government, and even the EU. Let's make the rounds of the nations and cultures: o France. Good cooking, wines, cheeses, etc., are taken seriously all over the country. This has long been the case and is much of the reason French cooking became the world's most respected. It still is. o Rest of Europe. They have their cooking, long ago made their peace with French cooking, and the situation is in equilibrium. Kirschwasser, bratwurst, and bier come from Germany, not France. Sachertorte mit schlagobers comes from Vienna, not Paris. When the English want good food, they import it. That French cooking is so terrific is a declaration of war in Northern Italy. o The US. Here real men don't eat quiche. Here real men like big, thick, juicy, red T-Bone steaks, washed down with lots of really cold beer, potatoes on the side, and maybe a green salad with both Thousand Island and Ranch dressing. Their opinion of curry is the same as that of Sherlock Holmes "Curry? Horrible stuff". For delicate efforts on 'European' food, real men sense effete aesthetism, might use it to seduce bimbos, and otherwise say "you know I hate that glop". The US likes efficient productive processes, e.g., the greatest weight in chicken white meat per dollar of cost. For people interested in the 'flavor', that's why we have herbs and spices. A little French cooking can prosper for a while in a few small areas of the US, total area smaller than one good cattle ranch, and otherwise the US will do to French cooking what the Phylloxera did to vinifera. For the world's best cooking, the US is perfectly content to vote for the French. o Japan. Tough to say they don't know about making awesomely intense, expert, precise, and artistic efforts with food, especially seafood. But, they are terribly short on good farm land per person and, really, are mostly concerned about future economic productivity and past cultural tradition. Nearly all the rest of the world finds the best Japanese food nearly impossible to understand. People in the US and Europe voting for the world's best food have a tough time voting for Japanese food they can't understand. o China. At their best in cooking, they have awesome expertise and creativity, but their cooks, and their culture, are missing the advantages of the Western tradition of precise specification, description, documentation, education, and promulgation. In most cultures, the best cooking of today stands on a foundation of palace cooking of, say, 200 years ago, and the culture of the Chinese palaces then would not favorably impress people in the US and Europe selecting the world's best cooking today. And, China is now mostly concerned with getting their economy going while feeding their population. The best in Chinese cooking does not travel well outside of China; thus, people in the US and Europe voting for the world's best cooking have a tough time voting for China based just on some one awesome banquet in China with a thousand inscrutable dishes apparently never seen before or since. The rest of the Asia and the world sometimes bring interesting ingredients, flavors, techniques, and dishes, but tough to believe that any one of these countries will threaten the position of France in the minds of people in the US and Europe. Someone misused some curry powder? 'Sacre bleu!' Rush right out and see if the Eiffel tower is still standing, that the bread is still rising, that the Chiberta isn't rancid, that the Chambertin isn't sour.

The role of "curry" in French food indicates a change in French food? Hmm ..., let's see: Looking at Louis Diat, 'Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook: Techniques of French Cuisine', Gourmet, New York, 1961. we see curry with chicken, p. 159, lamb, p. 159, scallops, p. 256, shrimp, p. 245, turkey, p. 233, veal, p. 198. The veal use is in a 'Blanquette de Veau'. P. 71 has a curry sauce, made with a 'veloute' and cream, and to be used with fish or poultry. In A. Escoffier, 'Le Guide Culinaire: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery', Translated by H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann, ISBN 0-8317-5478-8, Mayflower, New York, 1982. we see a curry sauce, also with a 'veloute', this time, from veal or fish, as recipe number 112 on page 20. There is also chicken with curry, as recipe number 3199 on page 384. In Western Civilization, and perhaps in the world, tough to believe that French cooking will fall from first place: In all of Europe, France has some of the best farm land and some of the best access to seafood. The French have long had high interest in good food and excellent examples of it. Broadly in the world of wine, nearly all the world standards are from France, and that situation has not been changing quickly. French cooking constitutes a body of knowledge and a huge list of examples solidly grounded at least in Western Civilization and tough to improve on. In the West, we can look to England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Russia for various specialized contributions, but in cooking we look first to France. Sure there are changes now, but there have long been changes. Curry, potatoes, tomatoes, and much more were brought in from outside France. At least in the West, and likely in the world, the country, culture, cooks, and cuisine already ahead and working the hardest on continuing to move forward are, uniformly, just the French.

Watching the cooks in some of the restaurants, I have seen them poach the vegetables and remove them to drain; stir-fry the meat and remove it to drain; make a sauce, bring it to a boil, add the meat and vegetables, heat through, toss, and serve. I made the sauce separately partly to try to discover just when, and, thus, possibly, why my sauce was breaking. So, I discovered that the sauce ingredients per se resulted in a glossy stable sauce and what caused the sauce to 'break' was from the addition of some of the solids, the oil on the solids, or some such. For which solids, issues of temperature changes, etc., have not diagnosed that yet. So, additional investigation would be to make a sauce and add just poached broccoli and see if the sauce breaks. Stir fry some chicken, with or without a corn starch breading, add it to the sauce, and see if the sauce breaks. Try something other than Argo corn starch. Etc. Thought that maybe the sauce broke because of a salt concentration problem: That is, there is salt in the soy sauce and, thus, in the stir-fry sauce. And, there is no salt in vegetables but there is a lot of water in vegetables. So, water from the vegetables will diffuse into the salty sauce in an attempt to dilute the salt. In this way, the sauce is getting a dose of vegetable juice AFTER it has formed its thickening structures with the corn starch. So, maybe this late dose of vegetable juice is the problem. So, one solution might be to poach the broccoli in very salty water and, thus, get the vegetable juice out before adding the poached broccoli to the corn starch thickened sauce -- tried that, and it didn't work. Or, maybe the trick is to have all the solids boiling in the sauce, all the juices in the meat and vegetables in equilibrium with the sauce, and THEN to add the corn starch to thicken everything that is there and after equilibrium has been obtained. I may have tried that -- can try it again. For measurements, for small quantities of sauce, I tend to believe that the measurements in many of the Chinese cookbooks are okay. But, they use 1 T of this, 2 T of that, 2 t of some other thing, etc. and, therefore, get a small volume of sauce. For a 1 quart serving, the restaurants seem to be making 1 C or more of sauce. My trials of just taking the 1 T of this, etc., and multiplying to get 1 C or 2 C of sauce results in a wildly too salty sauce. I read the labels on all the several different kinds and brands of soy sauce I have, and the salt content does not vary enormously; so, changing soy sauce won't seriously reduce this wild excess of salt. One suggestion is "for more sauce, just add more chicken broth". I don't think that this is a good solution -- there's more to it than that. So, I just started improvising stir-fry sauce mixtures using the usual suspects -- chicken broth, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, dry sherry, sesame oil, minced garlic, minced ginger, hot pepper flakes, etc. I can go back and do some more, but I got off onto to other projects -- that have been more successful! And I guess it would have helped if the last time the canned chicken broth didn't smell like sulphur. Tried using Kitchen Basics Chicken Stock: It seems like a good chicken STOCK -- maybe an excellent chicken stock -- but not nearly the same as the light chicken broth of the inexpensive Chinese restaurants. Also, have wondered what the source is of the several chickens one of my local restaurants has simmering in their main broth supply: They may be using inexpensive 'spent' laying hens -- they will be very lean and very inexpensive, and possibly have better flavor, but I know of no sources. Next time, I plan to make my own chicken broth: Get an Oven-Stuffer, remove the breast and thigh meat, toss the rest into a stock pot, cook until the meat is done, remove the meat from the bones, toss the bones, skin, scraps back into the stock pot, simmer for a few hours, strain, heat to 180 F to sterilize, chill, remove the fat, and call the result chicken broth. Use the raw meat for some purposes, possibly Chinese, and the cooked chicken for other purposes, possibly chicken soup. Chicken soup will deserve a chicken STOCK complete with onions, carrots, celery, leeks, etc., but it may be possible to add those to some of the broth later.

From your mention of "lo mein and Gen. Tso's chicken", by "Chinese food" it appears that you mean essentially the food served in the many inexpensive Chinese carryout restaurants in the US. And, my experience is that this food is curiously uniform as if somewhere there were one book on how to do Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce Beef with Broccoli General Tso's Chicken Beef with Orange Flavor etc. This food also has some other advantages: o Cost. It does appear that the ingredients for this food are remarkably inexpensive. So, don't need many truffles or much 'foie gras'. o Popularity. These Chinese restaurants have had a good and stable business going for years. At lunch or dinner time, they commonly hand over sacks with 1-4 dishes for $5 to $35, one sack every minute or so. Although I live in a very rural area of Upstate NY, I can think of at least five of these restaurants close to me and several more not much farther away. Curiously, I believe I can think of more of these Chinese restaurants near me than McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King restaurants combined. Interesting. o Ingredients. It does appear that nearly all the ingredients these restaurants use are not very difficult to get. These restaurants are doing a lot with yellow globe onions, carrots, celery, various forms of cabbage, broccoli, beef, chicken, pork, eggs, corn starch, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, white button mushrooms, bean sprouts, canned water chestnuts, canned bamboo shoots, canned straw mushrooms, chicken broth, hot peppers, cooking oil, and long grain white rice, and these ingredients are readily available in the US in high quality at low prices. o Novelty. The food in these restaurants really is quite different from other popular food in the US. Maybe the food is not authentically Chinese or the same as one would find in Taiwan or China, but it is quite different from what is in US or European cooking or in corresponding cookbooks. o Labor. It is easy to watch the cooks at these restaurants, and they do their work very quickly. Sure, there is prior preparation, but the effort is clearly not enormous. Net, the labor required is comparatively small. o Efficiency. And, beyond just what the restaurants do, there is more efficiency in the whole 'supply chain': Clearly the rice is easier than the McDonald's hamburger buns. And, the soy sauce is easier than the McDonald's mustard, pickle, or catsup. The efficiency is not uniform -- wood ears may be harder than pickles. But, generally, there is some good efficiency in this Chinese cooking. Net, this cooking is doing a lot efficiently. Sure, a suitable heat source would be good, but I believe that King Kooker Manufactured by Metal Fusion, Inc. 712 St. George Ave. Jefferson, LA 70121 (504) 736-0201 Model No. 88 PKP "FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY". "170,000 BTU CAST IRON BURNER". I bought at Sam's Club a few years ago has power enough and is suitable -- outdoors. So, it would be good to have a good cookbook to show how to cook such food at home. And, this objective has been noticed: E.g., this objective is mentioned prominently in Linda Drachman, '365 Ways to Wok', ISBN 0-06-016643--6, HaprerCollins, New York, 1993. But, I don't believe that in this book the author does very well achieving this objective. If you find a cookbook that explains what these Chinese restaurants are doing, then by all means tell the world! I have been able to find no such book. The cookbooks want to be more authentic, and perhaps many of them are, or want to be simplified to provide 'fast, easy recipes you can prepare quickly and easily to feed your whole hungry family and that they will all love' or some such. Telling people how to do what the restaurants do seems to be lost somewhere between the woks and the bookstores. It is easy to suspect that the restaurants are in business based on what people think of the food being sold while the cookbook publishers are in business based on cover pictures, celebrity authors, various promises of getting love and approval from happy family members, etc., i.e., lots of things other than the food itself. For the next book signing ceremony, I believe I would like to pass up the signature and, instead, see the author work directly from recipes in the book; then I would like to taste the results. One of the differences is illustrated by the two dishes you mentioned "lo mein and Gen. Tso's chicken". The first has long been common in the US but is regarded as a terrible US distortion of some of Cantonese cooking and, therefore, not worthy of instruction. Still, "millions" of orders have been served to customers that return for more. For General Tso's chicken, that appears to be a speciality of the restaurants, and just how they do it has been regarded as too commercial or some such for the books. Still, the dish is darned popular in the restaurants. Broadly there are other differences: o Sauce Volume. The restaurants typically include a lot of sauce. For eating with rice the sauce is convenient as a way to flavor the rice. The cookbook recipes usually provide much less sauce. Possibly one reason for all the sauce from the restaurants is some requirement from their business liability insurance: To be protected, the rule seems to be that just before the dish comes from the wok the last time, all the solids will be fully submerged in boiling water-based sauce. There are some exceptions: E.g., maybe the chicken pieces in General Tso's chicken were deep fried and the sauce was boiling and then the two were combined. And, maybe the broccoli was also added separately -- but, in my watching the cooks, it appears that the broccoli was also parboiled separately before being combined. Also, we can begin to see that these restaurants seem to be moving away from fresh pork: So, they want to provide stir-fry dishes where the pork was previously roasted. Having the fresh pork stir-fried in some oil and then submerged in boiling sauce should be sufficient for all purposes except possibly for convincing a skeptical jury -- so, the pork gets cooked three times: (1) roasted, (2) stir-fried, and (3) boiled. So, the pork gets overcooked, beef and chicken become more popular, and Sam's Club is selling whole pork loins, very well trimmed, for 1.99 dollars a pound. Hmm? o Oil Content. The cookbooks commonly have us stir-frying vegetables in oil, lots of oil, even 1 C of oil just for a little broccoli, and including the oil in the dish. While the restaurants did get some bad publicity a few years ago from using far too much oil, my observation is that they have greatly reduced the amount of oil to reasonable levels and to far below what is in many of the cookbook recipes. o Poaching. Many of the cookbooks seem to ask us to stir-fry the vegetables, including broccoli, while my observation of the restaurants is that they usually parboil the main collection of vegetables. So, there is mystery here. Or, the question millions, or perhaps at least thousands, of US carryout customers are asking: "How'd they DO that?". For just some recipes, there is Joyce Chen, 'Joyce Chen Cook Book', J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1962. The Moo Shi Pork there is easy to do, tastes good, and is similar to, generally drier than, generally better tasting than, what is in the restaurants. But, mostly what the restaurants are doing is not in this book. Of course, could go to the people with a high interest in helping people cook such dishes. So, we should go to the Web site of, say, Kikkoman? Did that. Found lots of 'fast, easy tasty delicious recipes to perk-up the lagging appetites of your whole family', lots of roast ham with maple syrup and soy sauce, Fajitas and soy sauce, etc., but not a hint about anything that would keep one of these restaurants in business even for a week. Of course, it is easy just to take some soy sauce, chicken stock, dry sherry, rice vinegar, corn starch, etc., and start improvising stir-fry sauce. The cookbooks say to use dry sherry; it's tough to believe that the restaurants use any of it; but, I bought some. Hmm. My experience is that it is easy to get (1) far too much salt from the soy sauce, (2) a flavor that is comparable to but a less good than the average dishwater, (3) canned chicken broth that is not so good, and (4) a corn starch thickened sauce the 'breaks', that is, thins out, soon after the dish is assembled. The Web site for Argo gives a long list of reasons a corn starch sauce will 'break', but I have yet to find any discussion of sauces breaking or how to avoid it in the Chinese cookbooks. I am beginning to conclude that the restaurants are not using Argo corn starch! In my last experiment, my 'stir-fry' sauce thickened with Argo corn starch was fine in my stainless steel pot, for over 30 minutes -- no evidence of breaking at all. And, the sauce had nice color and was glossy. Then, when I combined with the stir-fried chicken and the poached broccoli, BOOM, the sauce leached color from the broccoli, turned a color a good match for dishwater, got cloudy, tasted awful, and 'broke' into cloudy thinness. Flush, slosh, slosh. The septic tank bugs ate well that night. Clearly, for an answer, one solution would be to get (1) someone good with both English and the Chinese spoken by the cooks, (2) some of the cooks, (3) a capable careful Westerner that wants to learn, and (4) a cookbook writer, and, then, with this crew, teach and practice over and over until the Westerner can reproduce the dishes and the writer can describe the work clearly enough for other Westerners to be able to reproduce the dishes just from the writing. Sounds like a book for the series 'Dummies'. And, maybe there is one. Or, maybe the main cookbook has already been written, by the insurance companies as in "This is what we are willing to write liability insurance on." which would help explain why the food is so similar.

Cleaning Pads: Two of my favorite kitchen cleaning pads are from my shop. Since they were intended for wet finishing on wood or metal, being used in water in my kitchen hasn't hurt them at all. They are more abrasive, that is, cut faster, than the usual kitchen cleaning pads. That's the good news. The bad news is that they can scratch surfaces. Knife Edge Grinding: The sharp edge on a chef's knife should be convex, but after long sharpening the part of the edge nearest the handle can need reducing. So, first cut is the grinding wheel in my shop. Tool Making: Shop tools can be good for making simple kitchen tools, e.g., rings for cutting out biscuits or for forming hamburger patties. Pot Cleaning: My favorite way to remove calcium carbonate from the pot I use to make boiling water is to use muriatic acid -- chemically, just hydrochloric acid, HCl -- which is sold in hardware stores for cleaning bricks, etc. Yes, it can be dangerous, and I don't recommend using it. Cotton Filters: Not really from my shop but from my clothes closet, I have several cotton handkerchiefs and use them as filters in stock making. So, I put a handkerchief in a wire mesh strainer and pour the liquid through. Soon enough the handkerchief does its job which means it gets full of the stuff to be strained out. So, I pull the four edges together, twist to seal, press with the back of a spoon to squeeze out most of the rest of the liquid, toss the twisted handkerchief into a small bowl, get out a clean handkerchief, and continue. Then I toss the bowl contents into the clothes washer with (1) cold water and a liquid detergent to get the cloth mostly clean and not set stains, (2) cold water and chlorine bleach to disinfect, and (3) hot water with detergent to finish the job. They come out nicely clean. Then I hang them up to dry, and then put them away for use the next time. Hot Oil Filtering: One way to make hot oil, popular in Chinese cooking, is to heat to slow bubbling 1 C light vegetable oil (e.g., Wesson Canola oil), 1 C crushed red peppers (e.g., Tone's), 1/4 C ground Cayenne pepper (e.g., Tone's), and pour into a Melitta paper coffee filter set in a 300 ml glass custard dish. Then I pull together two opposite points on the edge of the filter, clip together with a binder clip from my office, hang on a stiff piece of wire cut from a coat hanger, and suspend above the glass dish to drain. If you get some of the oil on your fingers, the wash your hands well before rubbing your eyes! Here wire came from my shop, and the binder clip, from my office. Mixing: Hardware stores sell stirring rods intended for mixing paint and being driven by an electric drill. If any of these are stainless steel, then they might be useful in a kitchen.

ActorDan: Have fun with it. Some additional notes: Some people call the yellow sauce a 'Parisienne'. The proportions I gave for the Parisienne sauce are precise, but I did not give corresponding proportions for crepes, seafood, or Bechamel sauce. So, you may have some ingredients left over. But, the amount of Parisienne is enough, or maybe a little more, for a home-style baking dish full of rolled filled crepes. In the Parisienne, after you add the 1 1/2 C of liquid to the roux of 8 T of butter and 10 T of flour, the result is THICK. That's okay because the next step is to add some hot milk, and then you will get back to something that will pour. For a Bechamel, see nearly any French cookbook. Some books will suggest a long slow reduction, filtering, etc., but I don't bother with that. I suggest putting the Bechamel together much as I described for the roux and hot reduced stock for the Parisienne. That is, have the roux bubbling slowly, then, off heat, add the hot milk all at once, then whip vigorously. Should go together nearly perfectly and look fine. Also, such a Bechamel is quite stable. For the "hot milk", as you likely know, we should not actually boil milk -- that's a no, no. But, for "hot milk" might get it up to, say, a 'simmer'. Better instructions would give you a temperature in F, but I believe you get the idea. Or, when the milk looks like its threatening to start to boil, then that's hot ENOUGH! In the early part of the Parisienne, I described a stock and then said to reduce to 1 1/2 C. And, I mentioned that in some applications might poach in this stock. Okay, but I meant poach BEFORE the reduction, not after. Also, may want to be careful about some of the poaching applications: It is possible to poach, remove the seafood, strain out the vegetables, and have a rather dark brown liquid. This can taste fine, but if you want a really nice yellow Parisienne, you may be in trouble. So, just what is left in the pot after poaching seafood can vary in color and likely also in flavor. But, if you are going to start with cooked seafood and not poach, then your Parisienne should be a nice bright yellow. I didn't give a recipe for crepes, but just look in any of the usual suspects. I do recommend that the batter be thin. So, make the batter as suggested. If it is not suitably thin, then add some milk. Also, as the batter sits, it tends to get thicker -- add some milk. For getting thin crepes, which is supposed to be desirable, I do recommend the trick I gave of pouring in too much batter and then pouring out the excess. That is, this is better than pouring in the minimum about of batter that will coat the bottom of the pan and then just leaving all that batter there. Or, somehow, pouring in too much, pouring out all that will pour, and leaving just a film leaves in less batter, and gives a thinner crepe. You asked for a Mornay sauce, and all I said about cheese was to put some grated Swiss cheese on the top which is not really a Mornay sauce. I'm not sure you really want a lot of cheese in the dish. Also, the Swiss cheese I mentioned becomes mostly just decoration. You should only sprinkle on a little, again, mostly just for decoration. So the cheese is decorative because it has some shreds which can contrast with the very smooth sauce. The reason for using Swiss cheese instead of some other cheese is that the flavor of Swiss is mild enough not to interfere with the rest of the dish. Browning the top is also mostly just for show. And, depending on your broiler, it's not always easy to do. Better put, usually it's TOUGH to do. And, the Swiss cheese does not brown beautifully. And, you shouldn't expect that a Parisienne under a broiler will brown easily or nicely, and, if you heat it too much, then it will separate. The idea of putting in some whipped cream to get something to brown more easily can help. As you likely know, some restaurants got tired of struggling with such browning, got cynical but productive, and just light up a torch and give a few passes. I believe that they are using propane. I suggest you not ask for much in effect from either the Swiss cheese or the browning. The dish can work out fine just omitting both the Swiss cheese and the browning. You will note that my instructions are to get the filled crepes hot in the oven then pour over the hot Parisienne. That is, we do NOT try go heat the Parisienne in the oven. The reason is, if a Parisienne is cold and we want to heat it, then we should be whipping it as we heat it; if we just heat it in the oven, then it will likely separate. Sometimes I will make a dish with Parisienne, put in small individual serving dishes, and refrigerate. Then, to eat, I heat in a microwave. That can work with no more than a little separation. But, even with microwave heating, the sauce texture will not be so good and a little stirring will usually get it back to nicely smooth again. I mentioned adding soft butter one T at a time: Possibly surprisingly, that the butter be soft instead of cold seems to be important. The soft butter can go in nicely; cold butter put in, even with lots of whipping, still may not go in so well. The added butter does make the sauce still less stable; the added butter is not needed for an excellent sauce; and these days people like to hold down on the butter. So, I suspect that you will not be adding this butter; but if you do, then be sure it is soft. A Parisienne is a bit unstable but also beautiful and delicious; being careful to work around the instability is worth it. The easiest way to handle the instability is to have the serving dish with the filled rolled crepes hot in the oven, have the Parisienne in the pot and just put together and still hot, pour the Parisienne over the crepes, grind over an ounce or so of Swiss cheese, rush it to the center of the table, sit down, and dig in -- no delays. Also, for a crepe pan, I would use only a cast iron skillet with a machined interior and with inside diameter what I want for my crepes. But, I have such a skillet (no, it's not for sale!), and they are no longer sold. So, without such a skillet, guess you will have to use maybe an aluminum saute pan, some non-stick pan, or who knows what. But, crepes are NOT sensitive things; actually, with no more than a little experimentation, you should do fine. Hope you enjoy it. Do it a couple of times for yourself before you do it for your guests!

wingding: Thanks for your Actually, my original purpose in going to Barnes and Noble that evening was to look at McGee's book. But, they were out of stock on it. I did read about it on Amazon, and I was discouraged that McGee seems to be just a 'general writer' with a lot of curious and entertaining filler (according to one Amazon reviewer) and not a chemist or biochemist. Will have to look at Corrihers.

The 'Sachertorte' in 'Foods of the World: The Cooking of Vienna's Empire', Time-Life Books, New York, 1968. is likely the best I know how to make. The Black Forest Cherry cake in the Time-Life book on German cooking, same series, is a close second. I like strong flavors and dense textures, and I don't like baking powder. Or, what's the best can do with chocolate, coffee, vanilla, hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, apples, apricots, dark sweet cherries, red sour cherries, strawberries, raspberries, oranges, lemons, limes, Kirschwasser, Grand Marnier, rum, sugar, molasses, maple syrup, butter, cream, eggs, and maybe even a little flour of some variety or other?

My main concern on cookbooks is just quality: Do the authors really know what they are writing about? Is the information provided of high quality? Are the descriptions careful and complete? Does the information have claimed 'cultural' authenticity? Are there some good broader lessons and principles presented well there? Can I really learn some solid lessons there? If I cook from the information provided, will the results actually be good? So, if the book says to cook the mixture for five minutes to the softball stage, and I cook for 75 minutes and am still 15 F short of the softball temperature, then I question the quality of the information provided. If the recipe says to make a beef stew of cubes of bottom round roast and does not explain sufficient means for getting a good stew from bottom round roast, then I question that the authors ever got good results from what they wrote. It is easy to suspect that most of the recipes in cookbooks, the authors never used and that nearly all cookbooks are sold based on the covers, pictures, travelogues, issues of style, fads, or personalities and not on the quality. Bluntly put, they are getting paid for the books, not for the food. I have concluded that nearly all recipes are just invitations to waste time, money, and effort and feed the bugs in the septic tank. Literally. Unless there are some really strong reasons to believe otherwise, most cookbooks fill much needed gaps on bookshelves and would be illuminating if ignited. I would like a good cookbook for Chinese cooking, but so far I have not found one I am willing to list. In particular I would like one that, just as a start, would be very clear on how to duplicate what is in the many inexpensive US Chinese food carryout restaurants -- have not found such a book. Somehow, Chinese cooking 'does not translate well' into the traditions of detailed documentation of Western Civilization. The books I have found useful and give some significant trust to, essentially in order, are: (1) A. Escoffier, 'Le Guide Culinaire: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery', Translated by H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann, ISBN 0-8317-5478-8, Mayflower, New York, 1982. Escoffier is the lion, and you can recognize him just by his paw. This guy is SERIOUS. He did NOT write this to provide "fast, easy, economical recipes to perk up the lagging appetites of your whole family" for busy soccer moms. (2) Louis Diat, 'Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook: Techniques of French Cuisine', Gourmet, New York, 1961. Good, but compared to Escoffier, a kitty cat. Not NEARLY as serious. (3) 'Foods of the World: The Cooking of Vienna's Empire', Time-Life Books, New York, 1968. Adding in some experimentation, the 'Sachertorte' can be good. (4) 'Foods of the World: The Cooking of Provincial France', Time-Life Books, New York, 1968. (5) 'Foods of the World: Russian Cooking', Time-Life Books, New York, 1969. Quite good and novel Strogonoff. (6) 'Foods of the World: Classic French Cooking', Time-Life Books, New York, 1970. Franey had some good influences. (7) 'Foods of the World: The Cooking of Germany', Time-Life Books, New York, 1969. Adding in some experimentation, the Black Forest Cherry cake there can be quite special. (8) Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, 'Joy of Cooking, Main Course Dishes, Volume 1', The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, 1964. (9) Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, 'Joy of Cooking, Appetizers, Desserts & Baked Goods, Volume 2', The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, 1964. (10) Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck, 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking', Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967. I recently sat for an evening in the cookbook section of Barnes and Noble. Looked though stacks of books. Often thought: "You don't know, do you? Tried that, then flushed it. Later, found out how to do it, and there's no hint here that you know." Got some real laughs. Walked out with nothing. For my next cookbook, I want among the authors Ph.D.s in chemistry and biochemistry. I want to see discussions of pH, solubility, esters, amino acids,etc. My main work is in some topics in applied mathematics; the quality of work and exposition in that field is quite high; and in all of cooking I have found only one author with comparable quality -- Escoffier.

On pots larger than 8 quarts: Sure, I'd like a pot larger than 8 quarts. And, I'd like a commercial kitchen in my house. When I get the second, I'll like the first even more. Actually, I did get a 12 quart stock pot: Bought a Vollrath, 12 quart, stainless steel with a thick sheet of aluminum stuck on the outside of the bottom and two large metal handles. Also got the lid. The inside is polished to nearly a mirror. It's nice. I use it. But: It won't fit in my oven -- it's too tall, that's all. Thankfully, it will fit in my two favorite refrigerators. It's not easy to wash, and if it were much taller, then washing would have to be done only in warm weather, outdoors, with a garden hose. If it were just 2 mm taller, then it just would not fit under the faucet in my sink. It won't fit in my dishwasher, and in my plastic dishpans can get it wet only only on its side and then fully wet only by rotating the pot about its long axis. In contrast the 8 quart Farberware can be fully submerged in a standard plastic dishpan. Eventually it can dawn on one that the Farberware people knew how big usual things were in a usual kitchen and made their 8 quart pot to fit -- ovens, refrigerators, sinks, dishpans, and dishwashers. Thank you Farberware! On whipping in a sauce pot: The Farberware pots I use, 2, 3, 5, and 8 quarts, I often use with a wire whip. For the wire whips I usually use, it's easy enough to get into the corners. Got the whips about 30 years ago: They are 100% stainless steel. The largest loop at its largest width, outside, measures 2 11/16" wide. The longest loop is 7 9/16" long, outside, in its exposed parts from the handle to the working end of the loop. The overall length is 11 3/4". The handle is slightly offset. The handle says "Made in Denmark". Sure, a slightly larger radius at the bottom of the pan would make getting a whip in there easier, but you don't really need a radius as long as (2 11/16")*(1/2) = 1 11/32" to clean the corners effectively. E.g., elsewhere on eGullet someone asked about seafood in crepes, and I answered with my favorite old recipe. An early step has 1 1/2 C of reduced stock added to a roux of 8 T of butter and 10 T of flour. We're talking STIFF stuff here, at least until some milk gets whipped in. I do it in a 2 quart Farberware pot with one of the wire whips described above. Works fine. The Farberware pots I listed are stainless steel except for some aluminum on the outside of the bottom. My understanding is that these are no longer sold. I started buying them about 30 years ago. For the 2 and 3 quart ones, I have a nice collection of each in the kitchen together with several new ones of each still in their unopened original boxes. Noticed that Amazon is selling the current version of the Farberware 8 quart pot for a little under forty bucks. If it were the same as what I have, I would buy it. Putting stainless steel over the aluminum on the outside of the bottom seems to me like something for less in functionality and more in style. Such backsliding can be a step down a slippery slope to the destruction of civilization -- need to resist such things! The Westinghouse electric fry pan I listed has a nice advantage: In any dry weather, hot or cold, can just plug it in outdoors, pour in some cooking oil, let it get hot, put in four frozen hamburgers, set a timer, and walk away. On my list of 7 pots, I left off the Vollrath.

10" cast iron frying pan with a machined interior. Best for sauteing at smoking temperatures, especially over propane burner outdoors. 9" cast iron frying pan with machined interior. Right size for crepes, pancakes, hash. Farberware stainless steel pot with aluminum on the outside on the bottom, sizes 2, 3, and 8 quarts -- good for sauces, soups, stews, braising, stocks. Sears Altiva saute pan, heavy stamped aluminum, Teflon interior, enamel exterior, 12". Good for second side of crepes, pancakes, omelets, low fat sauteing. Westinghouse electric skillet -- square shape, durable non-stick surface, about right for four slices of French toast, convenient for setting up on back porch for sauteing at smoking temperatures outdoors.

If the knife steel is so hard, then how do we sharpen the things? If we sharpen at home, how do we maintain the right edge geometry? Where in the range of knife design is the one I've used for over 30 years: Veritable Breswick Sabatier Paris - France Chef au Ritz sharp edge about 9 3/4" long, and in the middle of the lettering a drawing of the head of a chef with a tall hat and a long mustache? Yes, it is carbon steel, and can rust and pit, but I've enjoyed it for over three decades. I've never oiled it; it isn't 'rusty', and it doesn't get rust on food. I don't regard it as difficult to maintain. I sharpen it with just a steel, with ridges on the surface parallel to the axis of the steel. Under a small microscope, the edge looks fine. I've never used a sharpening stone on the edge. It is easy to believe that a knife could be much sharper, but I think that it's very easy to sharpen, and it gets sharp enough to do well enough cutting onions, carrots, etc.

You hit one of my old favorites. I'll move on to new stuff when any of it is better than this old stuff! I made some crepes: To get them thin, used thin batter, used a cast iron pan, got the pan hot, using a wad of paper towels, put a thin coating of light cooking oil on the pan, poured in too much batter, tilted the pan to coat the bottom with batter and quickly poured back into the batter bowl all that would pour, and left just a film of batter in the pan. For the part up the side of the pan from the second pouring, removed that with a rolling pizza cutter. Made a big stack and froze them. Just thaw them gently -- frozen they last nearly forever. For the seafood: Just used fresh lump back fin crab meat. Made a 'Bechamel' -- simple, fast kind, just flour-butter roux and hot milk and without a long slow reduction. For the sauce, started with 5 T minced shallots 2 C French Macon white wine 1 bay leaf 1/3 turn on pepper mill 8 ounces bottled clam juice For the wine, would recommend any Chardonnay that had low sugar, high acid, and delicate flavors. Sorry California. So, the clam juice is a simple substitute for a light fish stock. Of course, could use a fish stock. May want some mushroom flavor: Could toss in a few, just a few, simple clean slices of white mushrooms that don't smell like a cow pasture. Simmer that stock for maybe 15 minutes to mix the flavors and then strain. Discard the bay leaf and keep the shallots and any mushroom slices and, perhaps, include in the seafood mixture. With the strained stock, reduce to 1 1/2 C. For some applications, can poach raw seafood in this stock, but here we're assuming that the seafood is already cooked. Put 8 T butter (your favorite kind) 10 T sifted all-purpose flour in a pot, say, 3 quarts. With frequent stirring, heat gently to melt butter and mix with the flour. Try to get this 'roux' all mixed and smooth before the butter starts to separate. With constant whipping, bubble slowly for 30 seconds to cook the flour. Off heat, immediately, while the roux is still hot, add the simmering stock all at once, whip vigorously. Sauce should be very thick and very smooth. At least near sea level, pouring simmering water-based liquid into slowly bubbling roux makes the two go together nearly instantly and nearly perfectly, nearly every time. Add 1 1/2 C hot milk Whip in gently and get to a smooth sauce -- this is easy to do. The hot milk goes in nicely. Mix 1 C whipping cream 4 egg yolks (from USDA Large eggs) While whipping this mixture, slowly add about 1/3rd of the hot sauce. Here you gently warm the egg yolks so that you will get a smooth 'hot custard' sauce and not scrambled eggs. Then add this yolk mixture to the remaining 2/3rds of the sauce. Whip together. With constant whipping, bring to a simmer. This sauce will easily separate: To avoid separation, be sure that are whipping constantly whenever the temperature is rising or near a simmer. Only when the temperature is falling or low can you be very sure the sauce will not separate. Note: Here is where a stainless steel whip is important: With all this whipping inside bowls and cooking pots, a chrome plated steel whip will soon get the chrome plating knocked off and leave you with a rusty whip. Correct for salt and pepper. Good to do lots of tasting, lots of tasting! Need to be sure, you know! Then, add juice of maybe one lemon -- add a teaspoon or so, whip, and taste. The lemon juice brightens up the whole thing. As soon as you begin to notice the lemon itself, that's enough -- want to keep the mystery for your guests! For the last of butter lovers, can have some softened butter close at hand and whip in a few T, one T at a time. This tends to make the sauce still less stable but taste still better. Moisten the seafood with the 'Bechamel'. Maybe include the shallots and mushrooms from the stock. If the mushroom pieces are large compared with the seafood pieces, then cut the mushroom pieces. On each crepe, place some of this moistened seafood and roll to an attractive presentation. I just roll the crepes and do not fold or tuck the ends -- not making an egg roll and don't need something able to withstand deep frying. Of course, when rolling, have the side of the crepe that was cooked first -- the more attractive side -- on the outside. Pick a suitable bake and serve dish: In my case, I have a Corning dish with inside width about the same as the crepe diameter. So, can put the rolled, filled crepes in parallel, one layer, side by side, with the long dimension of the rolls horizontal and perpendicular to the long axis of the dish. Also, to get a better looking dish, and to have the assembly hold together better, it's also good to put the exposed crepe 'flap' down, that is, next to the bottom of the dish. Warm in an oven. When the filled crepes are warm, pour over the hot sauce. Top with some grated Swiss cheese. Place under broiler until top starts to brown. Serve. Last time did this, my mother discarded her usual decorum and used her right index finger to clean the baking dish -- passed the KFC test! The egg yolks make the sauce a nice light yellow. The egg yolks also make the sauce a 'hot custard' with a nice texture. With this much butter, cream, egg yolks, shallots, no wonder it's good. This cooking is from a style where we take the seafood, chicken, or whatever, cover it with 'Bechamel', wrap it with crepes, cover it with the yellow sauce, top it with cheese, and brown the top of whole thing. So, the seafood, etc., becomes very thoroughly hidden and enclosed. This fact may offend the seafood, but it doesn't offend me. I just think the whole thing both looks and tastes good. Still, dishes that let the seafood be visible on its own can also be attractive. So, you could get a dinner plate about 3 feet in diameter, or, maybe that's the radius, cover the plate with a thin layer of the yellow sauce, use the white sauce in a plastic squeeze bottle to draw Rococo swirls in the yellow sauce, then drag through the point of a knife, arrange the seafood in a small high pile in the middle, top with a few shreds of crepe, arrange 12 slices of Kiwi fruit on the edge of the plate to make a clock face, call the photographers, pass out the photographs to the politically correct food police, give the plate to the kitty cat Paul, and then go back and eat the original version. Can also do the sauce with chicken stock and onions, pour over cooked chicken. Cubed breast meat from roasted chicken can work well. Might include some pearl onions, fluted mushroom caps, and carrots -- 'Blanquette de' Oven-Stuffer! Can also poach seafood, e.g., scallops, in the stock, make the sauce, pour over the scallops for 'Coquilles St. Jacques Parisienne'. Here you are supposed to include some mushrooms. Can also poach fillets of fresh low oil white fish, make the sauce, and pour over the fish. There are famous names for this sort of thing. Also, when poaching seafood in the stock, especially fish, due to the time needed to make the sauce, better to do a 'phase shift' of the recipe: Make the sauce, poach the fish, serve the fish and sauce right away, and save the poaching liquid for the next batch of sauce. Also can get excellent results with somewhat less butter fat: Can use milk instead of the whipping cream. And, can eliminate the egg yolks -- can get good results, e.g., with roasted chicken, and the sauce can now be quite stable. Can also start with, say, raw frozen chicken breasts, poach, and continue much as above. Also, it's possible to get some shockingly good results with much less fat and much more careful use of the flavorings: So, might explore not mincing the shallots but slicing them nearly paper thin, something like might do for a transparent sample on a microscope slide. Once you find a good way to do that, with suitable equipment, razor blades, etc., let us all know the details! So, get a lot of surface area, and flavor, per unit weight of the vegetable. And, might use vegetables from the onion family other than just shallots: Might work with leeks. These white sauce things, with butter, cream, egg yolks, are fairly easy to do, with ingredients that are easy to get, can taste darned good, and are lots of fun. Brown sauce things might be better, still, but can be much more work and present some problems in getting ingredients.

"Boiling", "simmering", can we be more clear using a thermometer? Or, at least for a given shape of pot, nearly at sea level, with temperature measured at the surface of the liquid, is temperature sufficient to characterize these conditions?

Ah, have to disagree on knife sharpening, partly, and then ask a question about newer knives: My main knife is a Veritable Breswick Sabatier France Chef au Ritz In the middle of this lettering there is a drawing of the head of a chef, with a tall hat and a long mustache. The sharp part of the blade is about 9 3/4" long, so I guess it is a "ten inch" chef's knife. Got it at the kitchen store on the east side of Connecticut Avenue in DC about 35 years ago. Partly I have to guess at the name, use a magnifying glass, and use some memory because much of the name is worn off. Uh, yes, the thing WILL rust! Easily! Yup, we're talking carbon steel. Sure, I guess I should use a sharpening stone, but I never do. I just use a sharpening steel. To be more sure, I get out a high powered magnifier, small microscope, and look at the sharpened edge -- looks fine. I used lots of sharpening stones in my early teens: Did lawn work and had a sickle could shave with -- at least the hair on my forearm if not yet on my face! Used stones on the sickle, and still have the stones. So, at least for the Sabatier carbon steel knife, the sharpening steel I use is fine. Uh, the old story goes that the original purpose of a sharpening steel was just to 'shape' the edge, e.g., to bend back the thin jagged parts. So, such a steel could be smooth and not abrasive at all. But, now most steels are quite hard and are abrasive. So, at least with a suitably soft knife, can use the steel to remove metal and sharpen the blade. And, with a lighter touch, can use the steel for its original purpose. At times I've been tempted to get another knife. A longer blade, and a wider blade that gives more room for my knuckles, would be welcome. But, I've never seen this particular "Sabatier" brand again. Called one guy, and he said "Au carbon" as if that brand name answered all the questions -- I don't believe that brand names answer any questions. Knives with steel that rusts don't seem to be very popular, and I'm very suspicious of, and unsure about, the metallurgy and usefulness of knives with steel that doesn't rust. The things look so pretty, tough to believe that they could be useful. So, what's the steel like in some of the knives that don't rust? Some of that steel might be really hard -- maybe for those, a sharpening stone would be essential. And, for them, if the steel is really hard enough, a sharpening steel might not be sufficient to sharpen the thing. And, I'm not trying to make sushi: Mostly I just cut the usual suspects -- onions, carrots, celery, garlic, mushrooms, beef, chicken. I cut less than 100 pounds of fresh French truffles a day! Actually, for a stone, back in the days when I couldn't pass up a gadget I didn't already have at least six of, I bought Robo, Jr. It has two wheels, each with a rubber tire, on an axle with a circular stone between. You get down on the floor and roll the thing with the knife blade resting where it is supposed to, and get a grind at a nice predictable angle. Ah, my finance's family kept all their knives in the same drawer, and apparently when a blade was too dull they just used the other edge. So, I got them a Robo, Jr. and demonstrated it on my next visit. Amazing their daughter still married me; still more amazing the parents came to the wedding! Uh, no, the Sabatier knife is not for sale. Neither is my Griswold cast iron skillet!

Steve, Thanks. For "When I was describing Burgundy, I was describing the terroir system. The entire strategy of Ca. winemaking is not terroir driven. I mean what is the equivalent of Montrachet, i.e. the actual best spot in Napa or Sonoma to grow chardonnay? Or where does Ca's best pinot come from? Is there an equivalent to Musigny?" Okay. I see what you're saying. Sure, we all know basically what's in Macon, Chambertin, Haut Medoc, etc., and that knowledge helps growers sell and buyers select. But, on a given hill in Napa Valley, I don't know if they are growing red, white, table grapes, or raisins, and it might have changed since last year! In my naive way, I had been assuming that a California grower with some 50 acres and trying to make good wine would of course just naturally grow the grapes that made the best wine in some reasonable sense on that 50 acres. Hmm. Maybe not: Fundamentally they are trying to sell their stuff. Soooo, they can (1) establish their own reputation for quality in some basic and direct way as in my naive view or (2) hook on to what wine buyers might go for. So, assume that some wine buyers ask "Now, the best red grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon and the best white grapes are Chardonnay, right?". For such a buyer, the poor grower can't select Pinot Noir, Riesling, Merlot, or anything else. Gee, when I was trying Chianti or Barolo, I didn't ask that they be like something from France. With such a long hot growing season in California, sounds like the growers further up the coast have a good chance, if the humidity is low enough to keep the mold off the leaves. I'm getting tired of cooking up rationalizations for California. Chile seems to make good wine from Chardonnay. They could have gone off and done something strange, but from what I've tasted, they didn't. Sounds like some other things from near there in California: To heck with what we really know makes good sense. Instead, the customers are prepared to believe that "this is the next, next big thing and changes everything", so, start-up another dogFood.COM! Then, don't be between the VC and the door when the lock-up period is over! Hmm. Maybe before we buy, we should sneak around back and see what the grower is drinking with dinner?

Pie crust? Well, I learned from my father. He learned from his mother. When she was cooking at her home, in West Valley, NY, a little south of Buffalo, she made about one pie a day. Mostly she made apple pies, but there were some occasional cherry, etc. Yes, when my father taught my mother to make pies, the crust was the hard part. Long after I learned from my father, I read lots of descriptions in books, American techniques, French techniques, etc., and the books mostly didn't do what my father did. I think my father's pie crust is good for pie crust, but it's not puff pastry or some such. It's not a 'tart' or 'flan'. Instead, it's "as American as apple pie". It's not what you might serve at a state dinner or in one of the world's best restaurants. It is appropriate for someone that is to make one pie a day, by hand, at home, to feed their family. It is pragmatic. Still, done well, it's tough to beat no matter what elaborate gymnastics are performed. For the flour, my father just used all-purpose. For the fat, he used just shortening (Crisco). I did some trials once, for a cherry pie, with lard, and found that it can yield a better texture in the final result. My father used a wooden pastry board, not a marble working surface, and he didn't wrap the dough and let it rest, use butter, etc. Yup, the idea is to get the crust tender and flaky. Okay, for both of these, the big key is DON'T WORK THE DOUGH VERY MUCH. So, you are deliberately leaving small chunks of fat. These little chunks are what become essentially the individual flakes. To help with all of this, it helps to keep the dough cool. It's a little better to have a cool kitchen, but you don't have wait for a blizzard, throw open all the doors and windows, and make the crust standing in snow up to your knees. Actually, I grew up in Memphis; we had lots of terrific apple pies there, and the kitchen was never air conditioned. Start with the Crisco from the refrigerator. When you add the water, add ice water (without the ice). And, generally minimize how much your hands contact the dough. And, work quickly, and roll out the dough only once. If you make too many mistakes in the rolling part and have to gather the dough and roll it out a second time, then the results will be much less good. The crust will be tougher and less flaky. Now, to mix the fat and flour, don't do very much. One option is to use a little hand-held 'pastry blender': This thing has a U-shaped piece of metal with a wooden handle across the top of the U. The bottom of the U consists of about 5 parallel crude blades. So, with this thing, you can mash the flour and fat and get them mixed together. But, my father and grandmother thought that such a tool was over-kill, offered too little control, and risked over-mixing the fat and flour. So, they liked using a dinner fork in one hand and a dinner knife in the other. So, maybe the fork is in the right hand -- it is held upside down from the usual way of holding a fork. Then the knife and fork just touch at their sides and form an X in the bowl. Some of the mixture is against the tines of the fork, and you pull the knife to the left and, thus, cut some of the mixture. No, the knife blade doesn't go between the tines of the fork -- that's too intricate. This is AMERICAN pie crust, and we are pragmatic! That is just one blade cutting, no more. Instead of a knife and fork, it is also good just to use two dinner knives. Your goal is to get the fat into little pieces about the size of a pea with flour all around. Each such pea will become one nice flake. And, yes, there will be some fat and flour not so neatly deployed -- that's okay. But, when the largest piece of fat is about the size of a pea, STOP cutting! So, when you are cutting, you don't just cut randomly or blindly. Instead, at each cut, your target is the largest piece of fat not yet cut. That is, once you cut a piece of fat, the cut surfaces get coated with flour and then no longer want to stick together, and partly that's what you want. JUST DON'T CUT MUCH. And, keep the mixture spread out in the bottom of the bowl; you are not trying to form it into a ball yet, and having the mixture spread out lets you better see and control what is happening. Or, once some of the mixture is in a large clump, then you can't see what is in the middle of the clump or get to it to do things to it. Then you add the ice water. How much water depends on the moisture content of your flour, and that depends on the source of your flour, your kitchen, the weather, etc. But no matter: You want only just enough water to get the dough to hold together just enough. To add the water, just dribble it over the flour-fat mixture. Then use the knife and fork pair again very gently to spread the wetter spots to the drier ones. Don't pull the mixture together into a ball yet because once you have a ball, you can't distribute anymore water into the mixture. So, until you are sure you have enough water, keep the mixture loose in the bottom of the bowl. When you have in enough water, with the moisture distributed uniformly enough, use your fork to make a rough ball; put some flour on your pastry board, on your hands, and on top of the rough ball, reach into the bowl, pull the dough together into a ball, pressing enough to get it to stick together. It's good to use your hands to squeeze the dough, no harder than fairly gently, to encourage it to stick together, but really MINIMIZE this handling. Put the ball onto the pastry board on the flour. Put some flour on top of the ball. Maybe take out a few seconds to wash and dry your hands. Typically you will divide the dough into two pieces, one for the top crust and one for the bottom. To divide the dough, just use your table knife to cut it. Then, for each of the two pieces, stick half of the cut wet cut surface to its mirror image on the other half of that cut wet surface so that all the surface of the piece is dry with a coating of flour again. If one piece is a little bigger, then use it for the bottom crust. To roll out a piece, take a rolling pin, say, wooden with a smooth cylinder and where the cylinder rolls on an axle, and roll the dough into a rough circle. In this rolling, you may have to (1) add flour to the pastry board to keep the dough from sticking to the pastry board, (2) add flour to the top of the dough to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin, (3) use a metal spatula with a straight edge to remove dough stuck to the pastry board, (4) use your table knife to remove dough stuck to your rolling pin, (5) use a few drops of water and maybe a dusting of flour as glue to rejoin torn places in your dough. That is, you have to use some common sense. And, before the dough circle gets very big and the dough gets very thin, you should plan to put some flour on top of the dough and turn it over. During the rolling operation, you may turn it over twice, likely not more than three times. This turning over is the main way you have to get enough flour between the dough and the pastry board. Also, as the dough becomes thinner, the edges want to crack and split. My solution is to (1) generally minimize how much rolling and pressing is done on the edges and (2) occasionally use my hands to push the edges back toward the center of the circle, thus reducing the diameter of the circle and making the edges a little thicker. For rolling out the dough, (1) look at what you are doing and see what the dough needs and what it likely will do, (2) plan ahead a little on the work, (3) work quickly, (4) practice. That's my advice for the hard issues. My father's apple pies were not done with fancy techniques, but the pies were shockingly good. He just put the bottom crust into the pie pan -- usually glass. Then on top of the bottom crust in the pie pan, he arranged the apple slices, sugar, usually with some flour, and dots of butter. So, he didn't pre-bake the crust, pre-cook the filling, or water-proof the crust. He did pile the apples fairly high in the center. Then, as the pie baked, the pile fell and the top crust fell and became wrinkled -- looked plenty good enough and tasted fantastic. For an apple pie or other juicy fruit pie, it is important to get a good seal around the edge between the top and bottom crust and to crimp the edge and have it stand as a dam against the juices. But, with a good crust, the crimped edge will be nicely flaky and plenty nice to eat. My experience is that using lard gives a flakier crust but that handling is more difficult because heat from hands can more easily cause the lard to soften and the crust to fall apart. It's not puff pastry or 'thousand leaves', etc., but it is 'pie crust', and it's plenty good. And, yes, a souffle is easier. Of course, if you want to get the souffle texture just right, smooth, firm, not like scrambled eggs, then a souffle gets hard, at least until someone gives you the secrets there! The many souffle recipes in my cooking library don't even mention 'texture'. Uh, for any leftover dough, roll it out, top it with sinfully generous amounts of sugar, butter, and cinnamon, bake it, and eat it before others come running! Of course, this food is fine if your days are spent working on a farm, especially in cold weather. Growing up, my father could eat apple pie as part of breakfast and then again as part of dinner, one or both times with sharp chedder cheese. Between the two, it's good to milk some cows, shovel some snow, load some hay, repair some fences, chop some fire wood, break for lunch with some apple cider, etc.

Steve, thanks for your explanation. Yes, I never did like the Bordeaux wines very well. That likely means that I won't like the best reds from California very well. You said: "I agree with you about Ca. chard, but I have to say that they are purposeful and I've thrown a number of clam bakes where they perfectly fit the bill." Yes, I have guessed that the California wine makers are "purposeful". Due to the UC Davis efforts, etc., I have to guess that the California wine makers know quite well what they are doing and know what they want and are essentially getting it. But, from what I've tasted, I mostly don't like what they are getting: To me they seem to want the Chardonnay wine to be sweet, 'flat', and with too many flavors to be 'clean'. It's more like mixed fruit punch. Sure, there should be uses for it. One explanation is that I started with French Macon and concluded that that's the good stuff. But, there seems to be a little more to it: There seem to be a lot of white wines from Europe -- France, Spain, Italy -- that are dry, crisp, and clean. Yes, the Italian whites I've had seem to be a little less crisp (if that's the word) but still with some very delicate and nice flavors, and plenty dry. So, somehow in Europe, the combination of dry, crisp, and clean seems to be a common objective. And, the Chardonnay I've gotten from Chile seems to pursue this objective fairly well. So, somehow from what I've tasted, the California Chardonnay wine makers all seem to agree that they don't like dry, crisp, and clean. I'm a bit mystified on just why. On your "As for pinot, the strategy of Burgundy is so unique, that the power based winemaking technques they use in Ca. totally miss the point." Sure, I like Burgundy -- right at home between Beaune and Dijon -- but what is "so unique" about what they do? I'm not saying that they are not unique, but I'm in the dark on what characteristics or aspects you are referring to. I guess I don't understand your "power based". Do you mean 'production line', or 'large scale', or 'industrialized' or some such? Gee, I would have guessed that there would be many small growers in California that are forced to use small scale techniques. And, I see another anomaly: I can get a bottle of wine from France, Italy, Spain, some places in the Balkans, Chile, and sense that the wine maker and I share some values. Somehow there is something in common in the values, and it seems that California is pursuing different values. Curious. Yes, it will be tough to argue that there is one best set of values in wine.