David A. Goldfarb

Time Out is good publicity, so it's definitely worth something from a business standpoint. They've been featured two weeks in a row. M. Wells is one of the few interesting restaurants that isn't hard to get to from where we live in Maspeth, since the bus that stops at the end of our block actually goes directly there. Now that they're open for dinner, we'll have to try it.

This is a case where I'm not too concerned about purchase tracking. The Stop&Shop doesn't send me junk mail or spam. If they offered it when I signed up for the card, I would have opted out. If they can figure out a way to market things I buy to me, I don't see any harm in that.

They seem mainly to be for processed foods that I don't buy, so I tend not to bother. I think most supermarket chains have replaced store coupons with loyalty discounts you get by scanning your card before checking out. That I do. These discounts are more likely to apply to fresh foods that I actually do buy.

The KPEXTA looks much better that the KA extruder set that I have, which is basically a set of dies that fit on the grinder attachment.

I've made a few foams. Potato foam from a cream whipper is much lighter than whipped potatoes made with a stand mixer. It's perfect when you want the flavor of potatoes without the heaviness. I had a great yuzu foam as part of a dish at Corton once. Yuzu is a very strong flavor, and a foam communicates that cutting acid flavor without letting it take over.

I've never gotten anything good to come of the KitchenAid extruder attachment, but since it is cheap, if you happen to have a bowl-lift mixer, it comes with a pair of clips to keep the bowl attached when working stiff doughs, and those clips are very handy. I don't know if you can order them separately. The extruder dies seem to require a softer dough than I think would make good pasta. Once I tried it, and it actually forced dough back into the fitting for the screw pusher, and it started extruding dough with a streak of grease in it. We just tossed that batch and made dried pasta that evening. I also have a nice hand-cranked roller machine made by Pastalinda in the 1980s or so, and that works well.

I know what you mean by "mealy." I had the basic steak frites at Les Halles last week, and I know they use one of the chewier French cuts for that as would be used in an authentic Parisian bistro, but it had that texture of meat that's been Jaccarded or tenderized in some way.

It looks nicely marbled. I don't see an advantage to Jaccarding a steak like that.

$8 for Lurpak is fairly high. I've usually seen it in the $4-5 range for 250g, like most similar imports like Kerrygold, President, and my usual choice, Celles sur Belle. Seasonally they may edge over $5. I've tried the Parmigiano Reggiano butter, which often sells for $6-7, but despite the cachet of its origin, the flavor isn't that interesting. A premium imported butter that I tried recently and liked is Polski Smak Masło Ekstra, from one of the local Polish markets here in Queens, and it has a very rustic cultured flavor and texture, and only costs $3, which is less than the domestic Plugra. I think the European butters for export to the US market probably try for a more refined, neutral flavor, but fortunately the Poles haven't gotten that sophisticated yet.

I sympathize. I like nonuniformity of texture in many foods - omelets that are browned and charred rare beef. For properly lumpy farina bring the liquid to a boil, pour in the cereal all at once without dispersing it, and wait briefly before stirring.

If I ever have occasion to wrap Martha, I'll be sure to have a roll on hand.

People are often traveling to Poland in our office, and one of the better things they might bring back are the prune confections from Krakowski Kredens. The best are a thick layer of dried prunes compressed between thin wafers and dipped in chocolate.

Exactly, and it works with the simplest rice cooker, no fuzzy logic or settings other than "on" and "warm" required. Use a sticky short grain rice, and it comes out sticky. If you want to make another kind of rice sticky, you can add short grain sushi rice to it, and it will increase the stickiness.

I've also liked Solera 77. I don't think it's 77 years old.

We grew up with a Panasonic microwave/convection oven, and it was handy both as a second oven and for baking things that fit in it, as well as for the usual microwave uses. I don't use a microwave enough to justify a standalone microwave. It's got to do something else. Our current one is a microwave/toaster (Sharp Warm 'n' Toasty) with regular heating elements like a toaster oven as well as the microwave tube, and it's not a great toaster, but it's an okay little second oven for temperatures around 350F.

When I've had cask strength whiskey, I've found it's often helped by a splash of water that's been left standing at room temperature. The temperature makes a surprising difference.

One of the more popular items at receptions hosted by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, where I work, are the beziki kawowe (coffee macarons) from Cafe Riviera at 830 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint. Even our colleagues from the Alliance Française can't resist them. They make other flavors as well (chocolate, pistachio, lemon, lime, passionfruit, etc.), but the coffee ones really stand out.

I usually start it on medium heat with a little oil or butter. It never gets hotter than a little over medium.

I have a whole stack of small containers for freezing braising liquids and sauces in small quantities and such. They find their way into other sauces, braises, soups, stews, and what not.

I learned a lot from my father--knife skills, roasts, grilling, breading and frying, sauteeing, soups, pizza, lasagna, fish, braised dishes, turkey on the rotisserie for Thanksgiving. He didn't bake much, but enough for me to figure things out from books and family recipes. His mother was a good cook--mainly Jewish-American specialties like braised brisket, stuffed peppers, stuffed cabbage, and dispensing with the wrapper to make something she just called "BBQ Meatballs," hearty soups, matzo balls, kreplach, chopped liver, "Passover rolls" (essentially baked matzo balls), and fried chicken with cornflake crumbs. She also made great chocolate cupcakes with white marshmallow frosting. I learned some things directly from my grandmother, but my father could make most of those dishes as well. She just did it using an ancient butcher's knife with rubber bands around the handle, and had a fondness for the pressure cooker. She told a story about peeling spaghetti off the ceiling once, but why she was making spaghetti in the pressure cooker I'll never know. My mother didn't cook so much, and her mother cooked of necessity, but was more of a baker. I have my maternal grandmother's recipe box and it has a recipe for hamburgers that starts something like, "melt 1/4 c. Crisco in a heavy skillet." She also had a recipe for a honey cake that calls for "three whiskey glasses." There was one that specified, "a glass of oil," which in the context must have referred to the 4-ounce juice glasses with the avocado Wedgewood pattern they had. But she could do a fine apple cake and great mandelbrot.

One of the great pleasures of making one's own corned beef is the fantastic aroma when opening the bag it's been sealed in before cooking it. After doing this myself for several years I noticed a Freirich corned beef on sale at the supermarket after St. Patrick's Day, and thought, "what the heck, I'll dredge it in pepper, garlic, and coriander and smoke it in the wok, and make a pastrami" as I've occasionally done with my own corned beef, and it is presently smoking on the stovetop, but there was no particular pleasure in opening the bag. It had the aroma of nothing in particular--old wet meat. It will be okay, I'm sure, but I think that's my last store-bought corned beef.

Usually no, though it can make sense with very bitter vegetables like bittermelon (it seems the Chinese always blanch it, but Filipinos tend not to, at least not the ones I know). I think of this as a technique that makes sense in restaurants that have to prepare a green vegetable in quantity--blanched, shocked, held, and finished just before service--and still make it seem like it was cooked à la minute. At home one can just make it à la minute.

Usually where I've eaten at a communal table, the items were still served individually as they would be at a normal table. Unless there's some occasion where the people might have reason to introduce themselves to each other, at communal tables in New York people tend not to interact with other parties seated at the table. It's more like being on the subway.

I had a couple extra to use up tonight. Juice of one lemon, 1 tablespoon simple syrup, in a 12 oz glass of seltzer and ice. Lemonade doesn't get better.

My wife generally divides restaurants into "good water place" and "bad water place."