Chris Hennes

I can't vouch for any of those particular products, but I have a few places listed over in the Guide to Online Meat Sources.

This season's product placement does not strike me as any more egregious than any other season: annoying, of course, but ultimately a necessary evil. As for the quality of the contestants: I wonder if the show has reached the point where all of the contestants were familiar with the show and its judges before arriving? Everyone seems to be trying to play it safe in these early episodes, just trying not to be eliminated. In addition, Ariane keeps getting praised for her work... which is what, exactly? Um, not overcooking a protein? Hooray. Is this lost on the other contestants? I doubt it.

It is at least warm enough that I can't consider the pork to be "under refrigeration." 30°F at night, 55°F during the day (and of course, it's going to be 70°F today...). Under normal circumstances I always brine in the fridge, it's just not practical with a chunk of meat this size and a normal home refrigerator. It really seems to me that there is a damn lot of salt and TCM in this brine and that for only 10 days it should be fine at a cool temperature. Is it really that much different from dry-curing at 55°F in terms of bacterial growth?

Well, it's the new year, and that means that the nursery where I buy my tomatoes and peppers is taking orders for the Spring. Now that I have moved into Zone 7 I am excited to be able to begin my garden early this year! Strawberries go into the ground mid-February... the won't produce this year, of course, but I'm looking forward to playing in the dirt. I'm building some raised beds for them and for some asparagus. I've also got an area set aside for a few blackberry bushes. For stuff that will actually be ready to eat this season, I'm planting a pretty basic selection of peas, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions and radishes. Oh, and some horseradish. I think I'm going to do all my herbs in pots near the door to my kitchen, but I have not decided on what varieties yet. Suggestions? Some sort of basil, of course, but there are so many kinds to choose from! Mint, thyme, rosemary, sage, marjoram, oregano...

I generally deep-fry my meatballs a little on the under-done side and then freeze them. Works great.

See, now, that's what I am looking for in a beer list. Lots of great details there helping you to pick out what you want to drink.

Agreed on all points. Truth be told, I would not have been sorry to see any of this ep's bottom three gone, but I am especially glad to see Bangs off the show (finally!). She never once did anything that said "Top Chef" to me. I had also been doubting that Ariane was Top Chef material, but in this episode she made some good looking food, and I am starting to wonder if she may be a contender after all. Overall I thought the premise of the episode was excellent: just a plain, simple, "show us what you got." If you can't shine in this challenge, you don't belong here. They couldn't do these all the time, but as a nice mid-season checkpoint I thought it was great.

I just started in on the American-style ham (I wanted to do the dry-cured, but my hams are skin-off). I don't know where Ruhlman gets his hogs, but my hams are twice the weight he quotes. So, I doubled the brine recipe. I notice when reading the recipe that he does not indicate that the ham be brined under refrigeration: is this just an overlooked step, or is there enough salt and TCM in there that a cool room temp brine would be safe? There is no way this leg is going to fit in my fridge, so refrigeration, even in January here, is going to mean constant ice additions.

I'll be sure to check it out next time: I've walked past it on many occasions, but never stopped in.

Nope. But if they pride themselves on having a long-ass beer list with no descriptions, I'm not interested... once you get beyond 20-30 beer selections I think you really need to include a) a useful categorization and b) a description of each. I feel the same way about long wine lists. At Eulogy the beers are arranged alphabetically, and the only description is "Lager," "Pilsner," etc. Your options are to a) drink a shit ton of beer and learn about them all on your own, b) ask the bartender, who will recommend one of the beers on tap, or c) close your eyes and pick at random.

Without any useful description of the beers, as far as I am concerned a long beer list is a cop-out: the restaurant refuses to narrow it down to some reasonable number of "best" beers, and instead includes every one they can find, indiscriminately.

I hit Chick's a couple times while in town over the holidays: unfortunately missed Katie, but George took good care of us (he needed a little help remembering how to make an Aviation rather than an Aviatrix, but that I can handle). We also tried the fig and gorgonzola flatbread: it seemed more like a cracker than a flatbread to me, but it tasted good, so who cares? I am always amused by the people who come in, take one look at the bar selection, and run away.

No photos of any of these, but they would be redundant to others in this topic anyway. I finally got off my lazy ass and hauled out to Pat's for a Wiz Wit last week. Steak is sliced too thick, IMO, and you gotta let it sit for a couple minutes to let the Wiz work its way into the sandwich. Color me unimpressed: so far, I prefer the steak at Apollo's in Bensalem... with Provolone, not Wiz. Heresy! I also tried the peppers along with the rabe and prov on a DiNic's roast pork: I'm not a fan. DiNic's is just about perfect with rabe and prov, the peppers did nothing for me. I also gave their roast beef a go, with just the prov: not bad at all. I'll stick with the roast pork on most visits, but the beef might be a nice change of pace on occasion.

I ate at Tinto last week and was pretty impressed. There were a few questionable items, but overall it was a very good meal. For me the best part about a Tapas-style meal is that I don't feel any obligation to order the "entrees": I'm sure they are fine, but just reading through the list at Tinto made me bored. I asked our waiter about ordering on-the-fly and he discouraged it on the basis that those entrees take time to prepare, but since I wasn't interested in them anyway we decided to wing it anyway. Our first round was some olives, a short rib sandwich, some pork belly on toast, and a crab salad. All the flavors were very good, though the sandwich was served as a single sandwich, rather than as multiple small pieces. This made it difficult to share (kinda defeats the point of tapas, no?). The crab salad tasted fine, but nothing unique or interesting about it. Next up we had the Bacalao a la Viscaina and some potatoes (small cylinders fried to a crisp and served with a tomato compote and a cream sauce): both were very good. Finally, for "dessert" we had the Moules Basquise (yes, we had mussels for dessert—you got a problem with that?). This was the best item of the evening, a really fantastic dish. The atmosphere was pleasant, the waiter was attentive (but not too attentive...), and overall the food was tasty and reasonably priced. I have not eaten at any of Garces' other places so I cannot compare, but taken alone Tinto is not bad at all.

Gave Beneluxx a shot after having a pretty good meal at Eulogy the other night, and was not quite sure what to expect. It's not really a restaurant, it's a wine tasting room. They have a large number of wines by the glass, and they are very proud of their dispensing system. We had a few glasses, as well as a cheese plate (nothing really extraordinary, but the cheese selection wasn't bad—as MarketStEl mentioned, a little gouda-heavy) and a classic fondue, which was also OK, but nothing special. They had a few items of "real food" on the menu, some of which were recognizable as riffs on the Eulogy menu: my thought is that if you are after wine Beneluxx might be worth going to, but if you want dinner, look elsewhere.

My wife and I ate at the Eulogy Belgian Bar on Christmas Eve. It was pretty empty, but given the holiday that was not surprising. It is a small space---we ate in the dining room upstairs from the bar. The appetizer we started with was a duck confit and mushroom strudel. It was a little too salty, but the phyllo was crisp and the whole dish tasted of butter (a good thing, in my book). As a main course I had three different wild game sausages served with some hybrid of mashed potatoes and carrots that tasted of nothing but white pepper. The sausages were very flavorful, if a bit overcooked. Of course, since the sausages were not made in house, I can only give them credit for good selections. I also snagged a few fries off of my wife's plate: they were not bad at all. Maybe not the best fries in the world, but worth ordering if you're here. While there we also enjoyed a few Belgian beers. Their beer list is so long as to be worthless; I just chatted with the waiter to find a couple to try. I think most of them are bottled, they only have around half dozen on tap.

While in Philly over the holidays I ate at Ansill: overall, it was quite good. I found their menu a little confusing, mostly because nothing about it says "tapas" to me, but after a chat with the waiter about portion size and plating we went ahead. I can't review too much of the menu because I wasn't that hungry (day after Christmas...), but the fried trotters with some kind of pickle on top were very good, the sweetbreads were also good (as mentioned above), and the pasta special, a mustard spaetzle with duck confit, featured a bland spaetzle but an excellent confit. Overall, a pretty good meal, and a nice atmosphere. I didn't find it too dark, but then again, I wasn't trying to take photos. I did find it a little odd that we were seated at table next to another occupied two-top, in an otherwise nearly empty dining room (we had early reservations, around 6, I think).

Not that I noticed, but that doesn't mean much. I wasn't paying that much attention to the meat coming out of the grinder, at least not on a continuous basis.

Brian's Holiday Kielbasa (pp. 118–119, 1st ed.) Over the holidays this year I visited my in-laws, who serve kielbasa and sauerkraut on Christmas: I had forgotten how much I liked Kielbasa, so I decided to give Polcyn's recipe a try when I got home. It is a fresh Kielbasa, unsmoked, and has a very different flavor than the Hilshire Farms ring that I was used to. Not better or worse, just not what I was expecting from a Kielbasa. I used the second bag of scraps from my pig adventure, so probably had a bit more fat than just a shoulder would. Here it is after mixing and refrigerating overnight: Grinding it was a bit of work because I left it in the freezer too long: it was almost frozen solid. This kept it very cold during grinding, but I had to go slowly: Here is the stuffed, uncooked sausage. I was much more careful to not fill the casings completely full this time, but I still broke one link when I twisted them up. Finally, a cooked sausage braised with sauerkraut: The texture was very fine because I ended up taking a long time to do the bind: the meat was about 25°F before mixing, and took a long time to come together and get up to 35°F: probably between 5 and 10 minutes of mixing. I don't mind it, but I generally prefer a little more definition. These had almost the consistency of a store-bought hotdog. As I mentioned above, the flavor is not bad, but nothing special either. I think next time I will try the recipe for smoked Kielbasa from the CIA's Garde Manger book.

I don't think it's necessary to put the salami in anything during an oven-light fermentation: it is pretty humid in there, and it's only 12 hours. I put my Tuscan Salami in an oven overnight: it was a little damp when I put it in, and when I took it out the next morning the casing had dried a bit, but not enough to matter.

Yes—this is my primary home bar measurement implement. I use the 6oz since I am generally making two of the same cocktail.

I grew up in a house with butcher block tops---they are quite susceptible to all of the things you mention wanting lab grade tops for. I have burnt them with hot pans, scarred them deeply with dropped pots, and permanently stained them with aluminum cans, red wine, etc. If you are willing to call all of this abuse "patina" then you are fine. But in my opinion, from a functionality/ease-of-care standpoint, butcher block tops are just about the worst option out there. If you baby them they look great, but you better clean up those sulphuric acid spills right quick!

I'm not sure who's working there now, but I agree that the desserts should be excellent. Alas, that was simply not the case the evening I was there. It was not terrible, but it was a definite notch below mediocre. I certainly would not have willingly eaten more than the few bites I tried. It's always a shame to end a meal on a low note: there were some really fantastic plates (even the soup with chorizo I complained about above tasted great, it just didn't taste like anything but chorizo!).

In particular, make sure you include installation cost: if I recall correctly, it actually cost my lab more to have them installed than the material itself cost. I don't think we were able to use the university's labor force, we had to have a specialty contractor come in to do it. This may be particular to the lab environment, however.

In the lab where I worked we had these countertops. They are indeed as close to invincible as you will come, though they do scratch. The ones we had were also specifically NOT warranted against extreme thermal shock: liquid nitrogen to bunsen burner-type shocks, of course, so you're probably safe for kitchen use. I would not exactly call them attractive, however. We put in a solid matte black. Fine for a lab, but I wouldn't want it in my kitchen.