Chris Hennes

Kerry, where is this being held, exactly?

I think my plus one and I will be there: I need some more practice!

Panela en Salsa Verde (pp. 144–145) I now understand why Bayless chose not to include a photo of this dish in the book: Sorta like badly undercooked scrambled eggs, no? Can I assume that I cooked the cheese for too long? Or that my Panela (I did use Panela, not mozzarella) was somehow inferior? I sure hope it's not supposed to look like that... Aesthetics aside, the taste is actually very good: it's a basic salsa verde on a pretty tasty cheese, so pretty hard to screw up. I'd love for someone else to have a go at this and see if they can get it to look better than mine...

Is this the right one? Zarela's Veracruz: Mexico's Simplest Cuisine

At what point does it stop being "Restaurant Wars" and just turn into a normal team challenge?

Just remember that while these may be "vegetable-centric," those tamales are by no means "vegetarian"! There is a huge pork chop's worth of lard in every one of them...

Roasted Garlic Tamales with Ricotta and Swiss Chard (pp. 222–223) Creamy Roasted Jalapeño Salsa (p. 185) Roasted Beet Salad with Red Onion, Poblano and Lime (p. 159) Dinner tonight was excellent: I enjoyed all three of these recipes, including the beet salad. While I agree with Florida's post above that the beet salad does not exactly scream "Mexican," I thought it was sufficiently different from the standard American-style beet salad to really jump off the plate. My poblanos are typically very spicy, and this one was no exception: as with Florida's, my salad was very fiery (though I didn't add the goat cheese). I like the balance of the tartness of the lime, the sweetness of the onion, and the earthiness of the beets, and overall thought it was very successful. The chard and ricotta tamales were also very good, though I'm glad I didn't count on his filling quantities: I don't think the recipe would actually make enough filling for 24 tamales. I made six and used a half batch of the filling. I guess maybe I was putting "too much" in, but I liked the ratio of the filling to batter, and thought the flavors worked quite well together in those proportions. I served this with Bayless's recommended salsa, the Creamy Roasted Jalapeño, which was great both on the tamales and as a dip for chips later on. It is also very simple to make... just roast up a bunch of jalapeños and garlic, toss them in the blender with lime juice and oil, and press "go." Be careful, however, that you read the instructions first. The ingredient list calls for 10 cloves of garlic peeled, but the first instruction is to roast the unpeeled garlic.

Have you been happy with the recipes in Wise's book?

Are we going by volume, or weight, or what, here? Does one of them use extra-large eggs? Once of my pasta books does, but I don't remember which. Frankly, I completely ignore any actual recipe for pasta, as MaxH points out, none of them really work that well. Once you have made pasta a few dozen times you start to get a feel for what texture of dough you are looking for, and just add flour to get there. I never add any water, it's interesting that Bertolli calls for it.

Smoked salmon is better at room temp than right out of the fridge, I think.

That 30-35% discount is really only found on books where the publisher is printing 2x their projected sales (the convention in modern hardcover publishing). I doubt that Nathan's publisher is printing twice as many of these as they project selling, it's too expensive, and the market too small.

I just saw this piece over on Serious Eats about The Food Network's new show, The Great Food Truck Race, and I have to admit to being intrigued. It sounds like the judging is as fair as judging can get (profits, period), there is minimal intervention from the host (Tyler Florence), and some of the trucks are interesting. Anyone else planning on tuning in?

Tostaditas de Carne Tártara (Chiapas-style Steak Tartar) (pp. 210–211) This seemed to be a promising dish (I like steak tartare a lot), but in the end it was doomed by too much sauce. Once dressed, all you could taste was the lime juice, with some of the bitterness of the chiles. I think you could make this work, using less juice, and overall less sauce on the steak. The sauce by itself has a good flavor and color, but the recipe calls for way too much of it. Also: the recipe makes it sound like hand-chopping the beef is some sort of challenging ordeal: I am by no means a kitchen prep whiz, and I had no trouble with it. I much prefer the texture of steak tartare made with hand-chopped beef, I don't care much for ground here.

It's funny to me to look back over this topic: it seems most people are pretty skeptical about this thing. I got one yesterday and I love it. I'm ludicrously lazy, and this allows me to make a mango smoothie-ready in about 10 seconds. Those who just use knives must be handier with them than I am, I can't do any better than this gizmo, and it takes five times longer. You give up a tiny bit of space in your kitchen drawer, but I've got space to spare so that wasn't really a concern for me.

Are you happy with this ratio, or are you still experimenting?

Yeah, mozzarella.

And from the Main Event... You know you're in for a good time when you've got one of these: Edsel doing some veggie prep: The shrimp course: Edsel rearranging the berries on Tammy's course: Opening the fish en pappillote: malawry plating her rabbit course: The completed rabbit plating: Burn, baby, burn...

Here are some photos from the Market saturday morning: This is where the Bibimbop and Seoul Dog below were purchased: Fish and chips from Monahan's Seafood: Plantains: Tamales: Salmon belly and avocado (I think): Smoked salmon: Bibimbop: Seoul dog (Deep fried bacon-wrapped hot dog covered in kimchi): A reuben: Fish sandwich:

For my birthday this year I got a copy of Marianski et al.'s new(ish) book, Polish Sausages, Authentic Recipes And Instructions. Their writing style never ceases to make me laugh. For example: They are highly opinionated, but generally pretty well informed. In particular, there is a lot less "cover your ass" in the food safety chapters, and more "these are the facts, you decide how to proceed." I will stop short of declaring them absolutely correct on these issues (I'm waiting for Modernist Cuisine to come out and turn all of our food-safety knowledge on its head...), but they do seem to know what they are talking about, citing lots of apparently-solid research on the subject. I have not made any of the recipes in the book, but they are all apparently taken verbatim from old Polish government standardized recipes. Hard to say if that's a good thing or a bad one (of course the authors make a case for the high quality of the recipes). Anyone else have a copy of this one?

Based on feedback from the 2010 eGullet Heartland Gathering it seems that the Marianski and Marianski Finocchiona was the clear crowd favorite. The flavors had intensified a bit more over the past few months (some spent in the fridge and some in the freezer), and it disappeared about twice as fast as the other three varieties I brought. If you've got this book and are looking for a next recipe to try, I highly recommend this one.

I wish... it looks from their website that they've released a few more tickets for the Taste of Copenhagen event, though.

This recipe has you poach the chicken in the spiced escabeche and then shred it. I think maybe if the pickling sauce were a little bit thicker, and not cooked, it would be better.

Flimsy? Dental floss? I guess maybe I've just been lucky, but the thin asparagus I buy here is excellent: no flimsier than a fresh green bean of the same diameter, and certainly not "dental floss."

That's only true in the short term, single-season view. Long term, if they want credibility, they have to be careful about being so cavalier. And in fact, that's why they have the credibility they have. So far, a legitimate case can be made for every season's winner.