David A. Goldfarb

It usually gets poured into smoothies with a healthy dollop of yogurt. It usually needs a little liquid anyway to blend smoothly, so it's either whey or a splash of milk or juice.

There are a few cachaça cocktails on the menu at a Hawaiian themed bar in Soho (NYC) called Lani Kai, which we visited last night. I liked this one -- THE TIDES: Cachaça, falernum, cane syrup, lime, grapefruit juice and Peychaud's Bitters. Served in a tall glass with ice cubes. I didn't get the proportions, but it was fairly potent.

Archie Bunker wasn't too far away. The house from the opening credits on "All in the Family," I gather is in nearby Middle Village, on 80th St. around Metropolitan Ave.

Some diners don't regard arrogance as a negative. It's part of the show. New York has enough culinary masochists to support such establishments. They want to be dominated and want it done properly!

I guess I've become a regular at various sandwich joints for lunch around the Empire State building-Tina's where I almost always order the Cuban sandwich, No. 7 Sub on 29th & Broadway, 'witchcraft on Greeley Square. If I had more time for lunch, I'd try to be a regular at Les Halles

We were regulars at Cendrillon, and we're regulars at Purple Yam. It's a really great place that way, in that Romy and Amy have become good friends, and we've gotten to know some of the other regulars as well. Maybe we've met. Were you at the closing party at Cendrillon?-- http://www.davidagoldfarb.com/cendrillon/

Poke! There is an annual poke competition on Moloka'i, and as I recall the winning recipes are usually published in the _Moloka'i Dispatch_ and should be available on their website. Of course a lot of it is about the freshness of the local fish, but I've had good salmon and tuna poke that could be made on the east coast. About poi, someone wrote a good article a while back saying the key to poi was how good it was with fried spam on top. Can two wrongs make a right? In Hawai'i you can buy poi by the number of days it has aged, as it gets more sour as it ages. I tend to favor the fresher bags.

Shave ice with vanilla ice cream, adzuki beans, and flavored syrups, maybe spiked with something interesting. I think it's possible to rent an ice shaver. Quail egg loco moco sliders? I don't know if there's any source for poi in New York--maybe L&L sells it by the pint. There's one down near city hall and one I think in Hell's Kitchen.

The article also mentions Shopsin's, which had all kinds of quirky rules, and that was part of the attraction of the place. They never lacked for customers. Unfortunately he wasn't so lucky with landlords. The whole Momofuku experience involves accepting the policies of the establishment, such as waiting in line in the restaurants that don't take reservations, or dealing with the computerized reservation system for Ko (parties of 1, 2, or 4 only), or accepting whatever they happen to be serving as the lunch to go at Ma Peche. They attract customers who want the whole package. Likewise the espresso place that refuses to serve coffee in paper cups--there are plenty of places that will make a coffee to go in a paper cup. If there is one place that can stay in business by refusing to serve coffee in a paper cup, it seems to me not so different from the better pizza places that refuse to serve slices.

I guess if you wanted it to be more even, you could trim off the thin side at the bottom, and maybe pound the thickest part a bit to flatten it.

Is it more complicated than a boneless half of a turkey breast?

I can see in a place like the Momofuku restaurants that are basically concept driven, if you're not there to take part in the concept 100%, then Chang has a point--why go there? As long as he's got enough business, and he certainly does, then it's his prerogative to run his restaurant as he pleases. At the same time, there is a certain virtuosity in being able to respond to all kinds of special requests and still turn out something interesting, and that's also impressive in its own way, so I don't see one approach as inherently better than the other. The alternative one often sees is the kind of menu where there are items meant to cater to all tastes, with a few uncharacteristic selections provided grudgingly and not done well.

I had a pumpkin velouté served as a soup at La Grenouille in New York a few months ago. If anyone is doing the classic French sauces, it's them. I make velouté as a sauce occasionally.

I'm still very much a fan of The Theory and Practice. I don't pick it up as much as I used to, but it's always suited the way I cook and the way I learn in general.

I must have missed this thread when you posted it. Hickory isn't far from Sims BBQ in Dudley Shoals, which I visited some years ago, and I've heard is still a good place for authentic North Carolina barbecue, bluegrass, and clogging.

There are some extremely good shelf stable bacons. I know Broadbent is shelf stable and I believe that Benton's is as well. And then there's this: http://www.campingsurvival.com/yocaba.html?gclid=CNahzfyZrKcCFac65QodhnawBA Now THAT stuff scares me.

We often have the shelf stable milk in our office, and I use it in my coffee, but I can't say that I really like it. To me the difference in taste is obvious. Vacuum packed shelf stable gnocchi aren't so different from gnocchi sold for the freezer or refrigerator. I tried the dried shelf-stable tortellini once and didn't particularly care for it. I think the Pomi tomatoes in the box are fresher tasting than many of the analogous canned products.

It seems that part of what one is paying for with a Sub-Zero is the mechanical quality, and part of it is the sleek or integrated design. Menus, grocery lists, poetry magnets, and kindergarten art projects are not part of that design concept.

I've had the Benton's Old Fashioned at PDT and the Del Sasser at Angel's Share in NYC (and when I've had it, it didn't have the bacon garnish shown in the photo, but I don't recall what the garnish was offhand--maybe a slice of orange). The Benton's Old Fashioned was smoother and more straightforward, but I liked the bacon/plum combination in the Del Sasser. I'd think bacon/pomegranate would be a nice combination as well. Angel's Share I think uses a house-smoked bacon, and the drink was smokier when I've had it.

Yes, this is why I don't care for electric, which I grew up with for the most part, but one can manage with what one has. If the flame on a gas burner is too large for the pan, then the problem isn't the fact that it's gas--you either set the flame lower or use a bigger pan. That's like saying the problem with water is that the sink overflows, if you put in the stopper and don't turn it off. I was watching some old Julia Child videos on YouTube some months ago and noticed she was cooking on an electric range, at least on a couple of the clips I watched, maybe all of them.

The packing date isn't necessarily the date they were laid. I believe eggs are usually rolled until packed.

Do they really get to market within a couple of days of being laid? My sense was that commercial eggs could be stored for weeks before making it to market, and that waiting time is in part responsible for their cooking qualities. Farm fresh eggs tend to be hard to peel when boiled. As the eggs age, water evaporates and air permeates the shell, making it easier to separate from the white. If you hard boil a fresh egg, it won't have a large air space at one end, but an older egg will have a larger flat surface on one side.

The pastrami I smoked for about 3-1/2 hours, with the intention of cooking it fully in the wok/smoker, figuring that a stovetop smoker probably imparts less of a smokey flavor than a regular outdoor smoker, and with a conventional smoker you might smoke the pastrami for 90 minutes or so and finish cooking in the oven. The results really were astonishingly good, and the meat had a nice smoke ring. I would definitely do it again.

Alum is used as a hardener in photographic processes, and the gelatin in photographic emulsions is a pure form of the gelatin used in the kitchen that comes from bones and hides, so the alum is probably hardening the gelatin in the jellyfish and in various other things, though I don't know that that would account for crispy pickles.

A heavy skillet and a couple pieces of plastic wrap are what I use in place of a tortilla press.