Dave the Cook

As long as the holding temperature isn't wildly out of control, cream should work to stabilize a butter or egg sauce. I often finish a Hollandaise before I do the final cooking, and leave it over hot water at the back of the range. It's fine for a surprisingly long time. Let the temperature get over 130 or so, though, and you've got trouble. Alternatively, somewhere -- maybe it was in Cookwise -- there's a butter sauce technique that uses shallot puree as a stabilizer. I've tried it. It's not obnoxiously oniony, and it's as stable as . . . well, I'm having trouble with the simile, but the sauce works.

I think you're wildly off base here. Sure Fat Guy is defending his friend, but that in no way suggests that eGullet management are in agreement on this book. You can clearly see that in what Bux and others have posted. ← Circling the wagons is a defensive tactic, no? Lots of people have been challenged on this topic; the list is getting pretty long. Even Doug Psaltis's right to write a book has been questioned. But the Society has not, as far as I know, so I'm perplexed as to why there would be wagon-circling going on, or why anyone would think there was. The truth is, we're happy just to be hosting the discussion. As for the notion that Fat Guy is defending his friend, I think that stretches the definition a bit, given that he gave the book a middling review and has called Doug, by turns, self-serving, stupid, naive, and ridiculous. There have been a number of contrasting views expressed by staff on this topic. No one has told them them what to say, and no one will. Staff members don't give up the right to express their own opinons in culinary matters when they sign on. That's as far off-topic as we ought to go. If this particular part of the discussion needs to be continued, let's move it elsewhere.

Pim, if you have a point to make about how the "eGullet establishment circled the wagons" with regard to Doug Psaltis, his book, or this topic, please cite examples. If you are trying to make some larger point, the place to do it is eG Forums and Society Questions and Comments.

Would a caper-modified avgolemono work?

← And we all know rich, famous highly influental people with interests and empires to protect - always tell the truth. ← Truth or not, it's not Ducasse talking -- the quote doesn't even say, "Alain Ducasse said through a spokesperson . . ." Since Ducasse himself is not on the record, he can pick this up later -- and confirm it, deny it, whatever he chooses, if he chooses. The man has a cell phone, and could have provided his own words, even if it was "no comment." It's true that Steven was a champion of ADNY when practically no one else was. Of course, he also coined the phrase "Ducasse's bay of pigs" to describe what happened at Mix.

Marlene, I can't believe you're asking. Have you forgotten already?

The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters is very pleased to announce the launch of the eG Scholarships program. Applications are now being considered for four scholarships: The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Culinary Arts Scholarship: a $5,000 cash scholarship for a pre-enrolled student, currently enrolled student or career professional, toward any culinary degree or certificate program at any accredited domestic or foreign culinary school. This scholarship is valid from 1 July 2006 through 30 June 2007, and may be used for tuition, tuition and residence, or tuition and supplies. The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Professional Chef Independent Study Scholarship: a $5,000 cash scholarship for a professional chef (culinary or pastry) to conduct independent study worldwide. This scholarship is available for a professional chef with a demonstrated commitment to advancing his or her skills as a chef or pastry chef. This scholarship is valid for research and travel conducted between 1 July 2006 and 30 June 2007. No extensions will be granted. All applicants are required to include a project proposal that clearly demonstrates the utilization of skills obtained during study; an itemized budget detailing the use of this award; a tentative travel schedule with dates and locations; and a current resume to qualify for this scholarship. The Day/eGullet Society Culinary Journalist Independent Study Scholarship: a $5,000 cash scholarship for a career journalist to conduct independent study and research worldwide; designed to further writing on an original and innovative culinary topic. This scholarship is available to a career journalist who demonstrates commitment to advancing his or her skills as a writer, and whose work is primarily focused on food, wine or some other aspect of gastronomy and the culinary arts. All applicants are required to include a project proposal that demonstrates true literary merit in both promise and achievement at writing (not just knowledge of food); an itemized budget detailing the use of this award; a tentative travel schedule with dates and locations; and a current resume to qualify for this scholarship. This scholarship is valid for research and travel conducted between 1 July 2006 and 30 June 2007. No extensions will be granted. Primary funding for the Day/eGullet Society Culinary Journalist Independent Study Scholarship is provided by Jonathan Day and Melissa Taylor, as well as the eGullet Society general fund. The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters Humanitarian Scholarship: a $5,000 cash scholarship for a displaced victim of Hurricane Katrina, toward any culinary degree or certificate program at any accredited domestic or foreign culinary school. Recipient must be a pre-enrolled student, currently enrolled student, or career professional. This scholarship is valid from 1 July 2006 through 30 June 2007, and must be used for tuition, tuition and residence, or tuition and supplies. Proof of residence as of 29 August 2005, in an area rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina, is required. The eG Scholarships program is administered by the Culinary Trust, a not-for-profit organization that administers scholarships for, among others, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Julia Child Endowment Fund and the Culinary Institute of America. Scholarship applications and information are available now on the Culinary Trust website. The Culinary Trust administers these scholarships independently, and has a long-standing reputation for objectivity and dedication to excellence. The Culinary Trust team stands ready to address all technical and administrative inquiries about the eG Scholarships program. Scholarship applications are being accepted now, and must be postmarked no later than 15 December 2005. A team of independent judges will review the applications, and eG Scholarship recipients will be notified on 15 March 2006. The eG Scholarship program is a public service of the eGullet Society, and is open to members and non-members alike. eGullet Society Society staff (which includes past and present hosts and managers, as well as former affiliates and moderators) are not eligible. The eG Scholarships program is possible thanks to donations from eGullet Society members. We intend to increase our scholarship offering next year, but to do so, we need substantially increased member support in the coming year. As our membership and readership grow, so do our operating expenses. Our first fiscal year as a not-for-profit organization is about to come to an end, and we will incur significant accounting expenses. Liability insurance, office expenses and governmental fees add up. 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The eGullet Society is steadfast in its dedication to increasing awareness of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, and the literature of food and drink. The launch of the eG Scholarships program is a major step forward in the pursuit of our mission. With your support, we can look forward to taking many more such steps together.

Folks, we're veering quite a bit off topic. We're not here to debate the definition of literature. Let's talk about the book. (For those of you catching up, Doug Psaltis posted on the subject of the hand-slapping incident: here).

This is, I believe, exactly what one will get in most UK bars. It's simply a regional difference, much the same way that an order for a "milkshake" in Boston will get you a glass of whipped milk with syrup (the drink with ice cream is called a "frappe"). I believe this UK understanding of "Martini" comes from the popularity of Martini & Rossi vermouth, and that many UK bartenders interpret an order for a "Martini" to simply be shorthand for "Martini & Rossi" (i.e., a glass of white vermouth). ← So how does order the gin-based version? edit: cross-posted with mizducky. Glad to see that I'm not the only one who's concerned.

Nah. He would at least have known the proper glass, since that seems to be all that's required to earn the -tini suffix these days.

In addition to trying to explain how to learn how to cook --something that JAZ touched on -- or at least one way to go about it, I think this excerpt teaches you some other things, starting with: you are on your own. If it's not opening up your hand while shucking oysters, it's cleaning fifty pounds of shrimp and contracting a life-long skin sensitivity, or standing for hours in a zero-degree freezer, banging into rock-solid corpses and maneuvering trays of fragile hors d'oeuvres about in order to count the uncountable. If it's not trying to decide whether or not that bleeding palm requires stitches (which you will pay for, since it's unlikely that you will have medical coverage), it's trying to decide if it's worth getting up early on your first day off in three weeks to take the bus into town and stage at a new place, just because you might learn something. I'm not sure how much sympathy is required -- or expected -- here. Learning to be a chef is a life people choose, for the most part. And certainly there are other paths: culinary school, formal stages, corporate ladders, if those choices are open to you. But this is the story of a life. It's not escapism to wonder what it's like. It's curiosity. Maybe it's educational.

I've tried Citronge. I found it to be slightly sweeter than Marie Brizard, and less complex by roughly the same measure as MB is less complex than Cointreau. Either Citronge or Marie Brizard is far better than an orange syrup like DeKuyper, Bols or Hiram Walker, so unless the triple sec is front and center, I'm happy with MB (it's $20 vs. $32 for Cointreau); slightly less happy with Citronge (it's the same price as MB). Anything else, and I'm inclined to do without.

Maybe it's just my experience talking, but it seems to me that you're most likely to find what you're looking for among familes that have been rearranged by divorce, separation and remarriage -- in other words, families that have been forced by circumstances into a two-dinner holiday. Last year, since my dinner was second (and luckily, a day later), I had to come up with something that featured the familiar foods in different (but not too different) ways, since the day-of dinner was pretty straightforward traditional. And yet, it was Thanksgiving. Prime rib wasn't going to cut it. I didn't depart quite as far as you've suggested, but I did have to do some displacement and reconfiguration.

All of us at the eGullet Society have been shocked and saddened by the destruction that Hurricane Katrina has brought upon the United States gulf coast, and we want to help. And when other disasters strike, as they most certainly will, we want the eGullet Society to be ready to act. We cannot, of course, do enough. We have limited resources and reach, and we must act within our charter. Any efforts we undertake will pale beside the hand-to-hand, face-to-face labor that's going on, not just in Louisiana and Mississippi, but all over the world, much of it in places that don't get our attention often enough. We understand these proportions. Still, there is much our organization can do. Following is the eGullet Society plan for reacting to Hurricane Katrina, and the framework for responses to future tragedies. We seek to help in three areas: direct support, informational support and interactive support. Direct Support The eGullet Society has established a $5,000 scholarship for a displaced victim of Hurricane Katrina to pay for culinary school. This will be one-year scholarship for a disaster victim. We will extend this effort as circumstances dictate. The scholarship will be paid out of the eGullet Society general fund, and will be administered by the Culinary Trust, an independent not-for-profit organization that administers scholarships for, among others, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Julia Child Endowment Fund and the Culinary Institute of America. The scholarship application period will begin on 15 September 2005. We will provide more details then, and will make an announcement regarding the new eGullet Society scholarship program in general. In addition, the eGullet Society urges all its members to give generously to disaster relief causes. This is perhaps our most powerful resource: a large group of people with a common passion. In order to facilitate giving to worthy causes, the eGullet Society will allocate all of its banner space, which is normally devoted to acknowledging our sponsors, to food-related disaster relief organizations such as America's Second Harvest and CIRAjobs (if you have additional organizations to suggest, watch for the instructions we will soon provide for submitting such suggestions). Membership and general readership together account for three million views of eGullet Society banners per month. We are actively seeking agreements with rescue, relief and recovery organizations to allow us to post banners and links immediately upon the onset of a disaster. Informational Support We are establishing, in our General forum, a permanent pinned topic listing food-related charities and relief organizations. These organizations will be grouped by region, and the topic will explain how to get a group added to the list. We will publicize culinary fundraising events on the eG Calendar, and with listings in the "Upcoming Events" topics in the regional forums. We are appointing a coordinator, Dean McCord ("Varmint"), to handle Katrina-related event information. Please use the personal messenger (PM) system or e-mail (dmccord@eGullet.org) to relay any such information to him, and he will work to get it listed and cross-referenced. In addition, we encourage those who attend culinary fundraising events to report on them. Among other things, this acknowledges the good work that so many restaurants, retailers, wineries and other culinary entities conduct. Interactive Support So that eGullet Society members can share information and good wishes in the aftermath of a disaster, we will maintain a discussion topic for Katrina, as well as topics for future large-scale disasters. In order to make these materials as easy to locate as possible, we ask that responses be grouped in a unified topic in the General forum, rather than in multiple fragmented eG Forums topics. We will point to this topic from the relevant regional forums. (Needless to say, such topics aren't for political argumentation or confrontation. Our priority is not to second-guess, criticize or argue, but to provide help and support.) As the gulf coast rebuilds its culinary industry -- indeed, its legacy -- in the wake of Katrina, members will be there to report, celebrate and discuss. We will have first-hand reports from affected areas, and we will act as a clearinghouse for reports in other media outlets, which we will group together and discuss in relevant topics. We hope to do the same as other communities recover from future disasters. The staff of the eGullet Society wishes to commend the membership for its heartfelt response in the face of human tragedy and the wake of culinary misfortune. Thank you.

I'm not in favor of track lighting in this case. The premium you pay for track lighting is its mobility. If they're 12 feet up, you're not going to move them -- you're going to set them once and leave them alone. Moreover, unless you're willing to pay for expensive, long-throw, nearly focusable fixtures (we're talking about something close to theatrical lighting, or at the least, high-end retail fixtures), the effect is going to be pretty close to ambient lighting, anyway. Finally, as others have suggested, you could go through all of that, and end up obscuring the lighting with the simple act of standing at the counter. So why pay extra? I would employ Fat Guy's surface-wiring suggestion with a set of three or four inexpensive 150-watt capacity pendants (something like this, though you can pay even less for simple metal shades) in a line parallel with the outside wall: This will give you plenty of ambient illuminatation, and enhance the line of the ceiling as well. Supplement those with undercabinet lighting (I'd go for halogen, but good fluorescents will still be better than what you've got) for tasks, and you're all set. You can even paint the outside of the pendant shades for color accents, if you want to draw attention to them -- spray paint works fine, though there's special translucent paint for glass. Since they're eight or nine feet up, it's possible that no one will know the difference.

Eliza, is the ceiling the same height all the way across? And do the two pendants line up? Meaning: are they the same distance from the outside wall? Is the white/clear one (foreground in the second picture) positioned to be over a table?

Right you are: goatarama

79 cents a pound for honestly fresh chicken is pretty good. Buy two dozen.

No paper towels?

Under Ronnie's conditions, I think you might be able to separate the hickory and pecan from the oak and maple.

I haven't seen you produce a recipe yet. ← I've never used a recipe for it. However, if Brooks continues to disappoint, I'll be glad to figure one out.

Does the credit for that belong to the book, or to you? This egregious error in the potato salad recipe suggests the latter.

This is from a book that Brooks recommended? First he claims to be able to fry chicken, and now he recommends -- as authentic -- a potato salad recipe that doesn't include hard-boiled eggs? I am reconsidering my earlier belligerence toward the boy. Clearly, he needs help.

Brining does great things for the interor of the meat, but unless you've gone to extremes, you probably still need some exterior salt. For an untested rub recipe, I cut back on the salt by 75%, and work up from there until I find a satisfactory formula (which might be back to the original). In the meantime, I leave the salt shaker on the table. If you use sugar in your brine (for pork, I use a 2:1 ratio of salt to sugar), start at 50%.

Yeah, we lose a lot of members this way.