Chris Hennes

Are you having trouble with the yolk leaking, or with getting the white to set? Or something else? I can never get the last stranghold of white around the yolk to set without cooking the whole thing to death or going over easy. I've tried water instead of oil, spooning hot oil onto the egg (this kinda worked but the egg was soooo greasy and nasty), tight lid, no lids. I just can't get the hang of it. ← I'm sure all the pro chefs out there will cringe, but my solution is to make the eggs in a pan with a good lid, and to pour in a few tablespoons of water next to the egg right before putting the lid on. This causes the white on top to steam, rather than forcing it to be cooked by the heat from below. I find that it works very well, though maybe I prefer my whites cooked a bit less than you.

Are you having trouble with the yolk leaking, or with getting the white to set? Or something else? The salt serves two purposes: first, to add flavor to the pasta (or rather, to enhance the already-present flavor) and the second, to (marginally) increase the boiling-point of the water. The first is the more important function, IMO. I don't add a "handful," though, more like a few large pinches (I suppose it comes out to around a tablespoon of salt to a few quarts of water). If your pasta came out salty, you just added too much salt. I'm sure there are more meaningful recommendations of exactly how much to add out there, so I would definitely start with someone's hard-and-fast numbers and adjust them to suit your tastes. You definitely should not end up with salty pasta. The oil is put in on the theory that it prevents the pasta from sticking to itself. Bupkis, I say. If the pasta is sticking to itself, you are not using enough water. Of course, I am far from an expert on these matters, but that has been my experience, and I make a lot of pasta! Have you tried it without, or just stuck with tradition? I'd give it a try without and see if it makes a difference for you. Edited to clarify and expand.

Thanks for pointing that out: I spend most of my big-city time in Philadelphia, which definitely is a walking city. Dallas in fundamentally different, and I definitely understand that "exploration" will require a car (or roller skates ). I am just thinking of those days when we get home from work and the last thing I want to do is cook dinner. It would be nice to have a couple nearby options, say within a six-block radius.

It's over here if you want to take a look. Thanks! Good luck with your garden, I love to grow food. It invariably tastes better, if only because you convince yourself it must, after all that work!

My wife and I are contemplating a move to the Dallas area, and in an ideal world we would like to live within walking distance of some decent restaurants. They don't have to be four-star places, but nice places you might want to be a "regular" at. I looked at condos in downtown Dallas, but there really don't seem to be that many food options there. If we want to live in a "food-friendly" part of town, where should we be looking?

Anywhere near Oklahoma City? I started a topic on restaurants there a while ago and no one replied! Strawberries don't generally produce well the first year they are in. The second year, you will have more than you know what to do with! I am still eating strawberry jam from two seasons ago.

When I set up the Ghetto Smoker with the hose fully extended it goes up then down then up again into the smoke box, and I have not had any trouble getting plenty of smoke through (an added benefit of this arrangement is that most of the moisture seems to condense out before getting to the smoke box, keeping it quite dry in there.

You might also see if your community has garden plots you can rent---that's what I do. My porch is nice, but I like being able to grow LOTS of stuff (especially tomatoes and peppers). I'm not sure it pays for itself in the end, and maintaining it can be a lot of work, but home-grown tomatoes taste infinitely better than store-bought because you can wait to pick them until they are actually ripe (what a concept!!!!).

I cannot call to mind any particular passage in anything Faulkner wrote that is about food. Unless, of course, the "my mother is a fish" chapter from As I Lay Dying counts.

Maitake and oyster, mostly. Using up what I had left in the fridge this afternoon.

Looks more like 60% Escoffier, 30% Nouvelle and 10% Adria, by my reading of the chart... ETA: That is to say, 1900-1965, 1965-1994, and 1994-2008 are the time periods given. Of course, the closer to "now" on the chart, the more chefs are listed, but I don't think that is meant to imply that Adria has been more influential over the last 108 years than Escoffier. Or maybe it is...

I was thinking of stopping at Chicks when I am Philly next month, but I will be dining alone, unfortunately. Is this the kind of place where I can eat at the bar?

I seem to be on a mushroom fried rice kick right now:

I think a lot of the problem with that second photo is what is called "white balance": the colors are off because your camera is not correcting for the type of light (incandescent in this case?) so things that should be white are not. Most photo editing software, including the free stuff, has a "Set white point" function someplace that lets you click on something in the picture that should be white, and it will recolor the image based on that. It won't be as good as the top one taken under diffuse natural light, but it will be a lot better than what you've got. If you want, I can re-post your image with that adjustment made so you can see the difference.

Rob, thanks for being willing to share this with us. Depending on where I end living, I hope to try to do the same thing at some point. I agree that as a meat eater (with no vegetarian leanings in my case) and as a food lover, I would prefer to know what my decision to eat meat entails.

I still do that, maybe a half dozen times, just to get the texture I like. The key seems to be to process in the food processor just long enough to get the gluten going, but not so long that you then need to let it relax for a long time before rolling. I suspect that one could improve on the texture with more passes through the rollers, but I find that it is a diminishing-returns thing.

That sounds fantastic! Sort of a Mexican-themed ravioli. I love mexican food. Do you cut the ravioli by hand? I only make ravioli rarely because it is so much work. I've never tried the stuffing attachment to my roller because my grandmother said they don't work very well.

Yeah, I use a hand-cranked pasta machine my Italian grandmother gave me when she switched to buying the DiGiorno stuff! I would love to get the attachment for my stand mixer, but justifying the $100 is tough when I have the regular machine. I make fresh pasta a lot, so I'm pretty good at going quickly: the 20 minutes time I quoted above includes the resting time and the rolling time. In the lunch thread I've got a post where I tried to make fresh pasta in the time it took to boil the water: I missed by something like three minutes. I was a freak of nature by the end, covered in flour from the rolling, so not something I can do on a regular basis, though . Sorry I don't have any great tips for you... (I promise it's not just because you're from Pitt and I'm at Penn State )

I usually just use all purpose: I found that semolina makes the dough more difficult to roll out properly, though I went for a 50/50 blend when I tried it. 10% would probably be more reasonable. Try it and let me know how it turns out: I'd love to know if it makes a flavor or texture difference in the finished, sauced final product.

Just the regular metal blade. I put all the ingredients in, flour first, then pulse it until it starts to come together. Then I run it full speed for about 10 seconds, until the dough looks right. I'm trying to think of a way to describe it at that point... it is not a single cohesive mass: if it is, your dough is too wet. It is more cohesive than wet sand (too dry), but it is in sorta small particles that are sticking to each other. So it doesn't process long enough to heat anything appreciably. I pull it out, give it a quick knead to form a ball, then let it rest for 15-20 minutes to hydrate the flour. Roll, cut, eat . I'm not claiming this is the definitive technique, but it takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, and I think the resulting pasta is damn fine .

Personally I prefer the food processor, since it handles small quantities better. My stand mixer is just too big to make pasta dough efficiently. Plus, a food processor only takes about 30 seconds .

I think we can probably give more useful flash advice if we know the model of camera you use: I generally always use a flash for food photography, except on overcast days when I can put the plates near the window and get nice diffuse light. The rest of the time I use an external flash and bounce it off the ceiling or a card, depending on my mood . Back when I used a small point-and-shoot with a built-in flash I sometimes used a little homemade tinfoil reflector to force the flash to bounce off the ceiling.

White button mushrooms don't do much for me, but I do enjoy creminis, left whole and quickly sauteed in the drippings from a steak, then served atop same. I'm also a fan of reconstituted dried porcinis for use in things like bolognese---they round out the flavors perfectly. I was tempted to pick up some bluefoot at the Wegmans the other day, but they were a bit pricey.

Toliver, thanks for bumping this. Reading through people's memories is a wonderful way to while away a Friday afternoon. Here are mine: What was your family food culture when you were growing up? My dad worked at the local newspaper as an editor, so he didn't get home until 9 or 10 most night: everything we had was something that could be microwaved with reasonable results five hours later. Mom worked too, starting when I was fairly young, so we had a lot of crock-pot meals, or very simple preps (baked chicken, jarred-sauce spaghetti, etc.). Was meal time important? It was at a fixed time each day, but I would not regard it as particularly important until my dad got a non-newspaper job and was able to actually come home for dinner most nights. I was much older by then. Was cooking important? No---typical middle-class Americana: low prep, low fussiness factor. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? None that I recall, but that may be because I was a wonderfully well-behaved child . Who cooked in the family? Mom. Dad made Bisquik pancakes some Saturdays, though. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? Very, very uncommon. Ususally just for Easter, and the anniversary of my sister's adoption (she was adopted from Korea, so we went to a local Korean place on "got-her day" every year). Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? No, and as the oldest child and grandchild, I generally got a seat at the "adults" table anyway, at holidays. When did you get that first sip of wine? When the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987 we had a bottle of "champagne" to celebrate. Was there a pre-meal prayer? Yes, my family was very Catholic, so we always said grace before eating. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? Nope. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? Basically none of it! Mom instilled a love of cooking in me unintentionally by letting me help with Christmas cookies: that made cooking a special occasion. When we got a bread machine when I was around 12 the booklet that came with it had a recipe for making croissants (using the machine to knead the dough): I stayed up all night playing cards with my dad, siblings, and best friend, making the croissants between hands. Those were the most phenomenal, magical, wonderful croissants ever (to a sleep-deprived 12 year old). I never really looked back.

Kim, that's what really counts! If it tastes good, we look the other way (even for canned gravy ). I just try not to admit that some of the nights I don't post here it's because I ate at the Olive Garden!!