Dave the Cook

The fish thing is done Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day, not that that matters much. My Italian ex-brother-in-law and I introduced the tradition to our then-wives' Irish-Catholic-Polish family about 25 years ago. We were inspired by the Philadelphia Italian Market, which, at the time anyway, was an amazing place to shop for such a feast. We're both divorced from the sisters we married, but the family continues to celebrate Christmas Eve with a massive seafood dinner (though I hear that Mrs. Paul is a frequent guest, along with a supermarket-prepped shrimp tray.)

That is correct. It's a proprietary formula that's mixed with water. Like many chain restaurants, what Waffle House is named for isn't necessarily the best thing on the menu.

What is actually in an appletini and its variants?

Generally, the red is sweet (sometimes called Italian) and the white is dry (sometimes called French). These are relative terms, of course.

Portable induction burner?

You're modern, though I don't know what that means. Out on the west coast you'll see a very different notion of modern -- forget twists, you'll have to poke your nose through shrubbery to get to your drink. Sure it does. Even the best snap-and-rub leaves substantial aromatic remnants.

I don't think adornment is a "take it or leave it" proposition. A twist is pretty, usually -- and what's wrong with that? Also, in my experience, the ability to wring every last bit of aroma out of a twist is overestimated.

I keep a couple of Kyocera parers around for cutting citrus for cocktails because they allow me to be lazy about not washing them right away. I also have several Shuns, a couple of Henckels and a Wusthof. My impression is that the ceramics are about as keen as a properly sharpened German-style knife. The thing is, unless you want to pay for time-consuming regrinding (they have to go back to the factory), a ceramic knife is as sharp as it will ever be the day you take it out of the box. After that, it's a long, slow decline. I consider mine disposable; I've had one for a couple of years, and it's about due to be replaced.

Here's the idea: take the skin off the breasts (we'll be doing two whole breasts, cooked sous-vide) in single pieces, cut into eight portions. Prepare a sheet pan with a silicone mat draped over paper towel cores to simulate the classic tuile shape. Lay the skins over the humps and bake in a low oven (maybe 275°F) until crispy. As I say, that's the idea. I'll let you know if it works.

Until last night, I wasn't sure how many we'd have -- numbers ranged from two to twelve. But now the guest list is confirmed and the menu is set. Probably. We'll be doing it on Friday, as my ex-brother-in-law hosts a big dinner on the actual day, and my kids attend with their mom and cousins. And since he serves a traditional sort of meal, we have to mix it up a bit so as to avoid boredom on the kids' part but maintain the essential component of a Thanksgiving dinner. I speak, of course, of leftover turkey sandwiches. Openers, made and consumed standing around in the kitchen: ham and gruyere in phyllo; sweet and spicy walnuts, andouille deviled eggs. Beer, sparkling wine cocktails. App: crabcakes with roasted asparagus, Creole meuniere sauce, toasted pecans Mains: breast of turkey, rolled and stuffed with a duxelle-type mixture, wine reduction, turkey-skin tuile; broccoli with garlic chips and lemon; French fries (why not?) Dessert: individual tarte tatins with dulce de leche ice cream I'm off to dig out a football helmet and bicycle horn, then head for the madness of the market.

I haven't made it, but Kinsella's Professional Charcuterie has a promising recipe for "English Fresh Herb Sausage." For six pounds of butt, it calls for 4 grams of fresh sage, 2 grams fresh thyme, 10 grams pink salt, and -- I noticed you're looking for applications -- 28 grams prepared horseradish. Another formula, this one for "Irish Breakfast Sausage," uses 8 pounds shoulder, 3 grams each dried sage and dried thyme. No pink salt.

As none of the usual suspects has answered, I'll offer the shrimp formula I was given by a modernist chef: 2 hours at 123°F/50.5°C. For service, he grilled them for 30 seconds per side, but said that was just to warm them up. 50°C seems low to me, but I have to say the shrimp were perfect.

I'm with Chris: roast them and don't be shy. About an hour in a 425°F oven does it. Deglazing the roasting pan with water or chicken broth gives you a nice start on the stock. When I make stock ahead of time (which for Thanksgiving means almost always) I use wings but no mirepoix. I don't find that the vegetables add much to the stock, and if I want veg in the gravy, I'll add it later.

The Chicago Reader plotted out the relationships among that city's chefs back in 2006: http://www.chicagoreader.com/pdf/060414/060414_family_tree.pdf It's worth pointing out that Richard Blais worked for Keller at the same time as Achatz.

I don't know about better, but there are certainly lines that are more or less equivalent. The Le Creuset, KitchenAid, Calphalon Tri-Ply and Viking ranges come to mind immediately, and there are probably others made by companies like Meyer for private labels like Sur La Table. I'm wondering about the fully-clad requirement. That eliminates some excellent cookware for reasons I don't understand: Demeyere and Sitram are two. As for dishwasher-safe, that's a matter of aesthetics. Except the cast-iron pieces, I run all my cookware -- including non-stick -- through the dishwasher with no effect on utility.

It turns out that a fall from three feet can be fatal to a digital scale, so I'm in the market for (a) new one or ones -- a large capacity (say, 5 kg) with 1-gram resolution; and one for powders, yeasts and so forth: 0.01-gram resolution would be nice. Anything new I need to look at?

Welcome, epicureanrebel! That's a beautiful dish. What's the egg sitting in? What's underneath? When you say "no bag," do you mean in the shell, or out of the shell?

Desire for drama might also have led to them allowing Malika to short-circuit the judging process. They hadn't declared a losing team, and in any case, they made it clear that she wasn't personally going to be on the bottom. In the past, we've complained that the wrong person went home; in this case, it seems to me that the right person didn't go home -- because we don't even know who it was. I feel kind of cheated.

There's also slow-roasting, which surprisingly few people consider. Rochelle Myers (she's known as "malawry" around these parts) wrote up a nice variant on my technique in a column for her local paper. You can read it here.

We're thrilled that Margaret McArthur (maggiethecat) will be returning to her post as Editorial Director for the Daily Gullet, effective immediately. Under her previous tenure, the Society's literary magazine became the heralded bastion of voice and verve that it is today; we expect even greater things to come. Welcome back, Maggie!

It's a little time-consuming, but I've enjoyed the Broccoli Gratin with Mustard-Cheese Streusel on the Epicurious site. You make a topping of bread crumbs, dry and prepared mustard, and parmesan cheese. Boil the broccoli, mix it with some cream, top and pop in the oven. Seems like it could be simplified for everyday use.

Pretty much all those tests show is the difference in performance between jar designs when used to do an arbitrary task. (I'm not sure what it matters that you can liquify a whole orange, anyway. Is this a common smoothie ingredient?) Pick a different ingredient -- strawberries or bananas -- and you'd probably get very different results. I'd also point out that their failure to read the manuals caused the VitaMix and Blendtec to appear to be less capable than they actually were. I guess if you're buying an appliance to pulverize whole fruits the size of apples and oranges, then you should get the KitchenAid. But I can tell you from experience that it's not a very good blender.

Too bad all of them most of them suck.

Jerry Thomas's work is in the public domain, so both DeGroff and Peek would be off the infringement hook.

One of the panelists, Vickie Kloeris, has been with the ISS food program for 20 years, and almost certainly can make such predictions. As it happens, Vickie participated in a fascinating symposium back in 2004. You can read it here: eGullet Q&A with NASA Food Scientist Vickie Kloeris.