David A. Goldfarb

I wash and dry them as I use them by habit. Even though we had stainless knives growing up, my grandmother had carbon steel knives, so my father developed that habit, and I learned from him, and I have a both stainless and carbon steel knives. Always good to have them clean and ready as I need them.

Hugh Grant (not the actor)

Bagels. They have to have been boiled, and with the possible exception of cinnamon raisin, about which I have my doubts despite the history of that option, they should not be sweet or have fruit or be made with spelt or other non-wheat flours. Ideally they should be smaller, denser, and chewier than even most "good" bagels one can find today.

The bad rap comes from the grammatically impenetrable name. The legal conditions under which she acquired the restaurant are no excuse.

I'd avoid the basic steak frites--the cheapest one. The steak I had seemed over-tenderized. Perhaps the better cuts are, well, better. Other than that the boeuf bourguignon is very good, and I've been happy with the cassoulet and choucroute garnie.

I've been a few times recently. They're still doing the classics well.

I guess the cows know they'd better produce if they don't want to be turned into shoe leather.

I like kippered snacks and sardines in oil. There seem to be two kinds of kippered snacks--one that's really smoked and one that is kind of smoke flavored, and the good ones are really smoked but seem harder to find than they used to be.

Ranhofer recommends mushroom essence frequently in _The Epicurean_-basically mushrooms boiled briefly in stock and allowed to steep until cool.

In my bottom photo above, I've got a mag strip over the sink on the left to hold the big cleaver, a 12" chef's knife that doesn't fit in any of my blocks, and a couple of spatulas, and long mag strips aren't terribly expensive, for things that stick to them.

I had a grid system that I used and transported from one apartment to the next for years, and it was very useful. I like having things out and accessible. It didn't fit the wallspace in our current place so much, so I left it at our last apartment, and our cookware collection has become more stable, so now I just have ordinary screws and anchors to hang the pots and pans I like to keep out.

Get a cast iron skillet and the rest can be standard issue cast aluminum from a restaurant supply shop.

A long standing NYC phenomenon--Few decent grocery stores in poorer neighborhoods, so less competition and higher prices in the places where residents can least afford it.

Short of a tablecloth another option would be a runner to cover the spot without getting in the way.

Here's Julia making omelettes on an electric stovetop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmvfUKwBrg

One of the more interesting uses I've seen for one of those recently is for deep frying. At No. 7 Sub at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, they've got a freestanding induction hob like that one with a stainless steel stock pot of oil that they just leave on all day, and it's always ready, clean, simple, compact, with no special installation requirements, and no hazard of open flame in case of any mishaps.

Disposals became legal in NYC during the Giuliani administration. New Yorkers still have some residual fear of them, even though they have long been almost as common as indoor toilets just about everywhere else in the US.

I've had pascha, and I used to know someone who made it reliably every year, and somehow all those Russian grandmas have been making it for ages without modernist thickeners. I suspect the problem is "cottage cheese or farmer's cheese." There's just way more moisture in cottage cheese, and the two are not interchangeable, and then there seems to be some variation among things called "farmer's cheese." Sometimes when I've wanted to make something with farmer's cheese, I've gotten "hoop cheese," which is a very simple, unprocessed, fairly dry, white farmer's cheese, which should be closer to what was used traditionally. Recently I got some farmer's cheese (twaróg) imported from Poland that didn't have too much moisture, so you might see if you've got East European or Russian markets in your neighborhood, if they have something that looks like farmer's cheese, and there's a fair chance it's more suitable than the stuff in the white package from the supermarket.

I use mine mainly for braising and things like cassoulet, which are low to medium heat applications. If I turn up the heat to brown the top of something, of course the cover comes off, so no danger to the knob. I suspect that when they started using those knobs, they never imagined that people would be baking bread in an oven using an enameled cast iron Dutch oven with the lid on.

Milk Thistle sells excellent cream from their Greenmarket stands at Union Square and other locations. Expensive at $7 a pint, but simply the best you can get around here.

I get plenty usually as a byproduct of stock. I chill the stock, peel off the fat, cook off the liquid from the fat, and filter it through paper towels usually.

I don't know who made this, but it's one of my favorite things in the kitchen. I bought it at a pottery studio down the block from the apartment where I lived in the early 90s on 105th and Amsterdam. It was called something like "The Mud Shop." The ridges on the juicer are fairly sharp, so it is particularly effective for this style.

Me too, pretty much. I'd probably still use a grapefruit spoon, because I still have a nice set of them--the same ones I used as a child, and they really are perfect as grapefruit spoons go (narrow, deep, and serrated)--but my wife doesn't have the patience for that method.

What? Next you're going to tell us you don't have plastic covers on your furniture!

I've seen the replacement knobs available at Zabar's and such places.