David A. Goldfarb

I've used a wok as a stove-top smoker, and have gotten pretty good results following this basic procedure-- I've done salmon, pork ribs, pastrami, and chicken, and I've been quite surprised that it works as well as it does without smoking up the house.

Two cast iron reversible grill-griddles make quite a fine pannini press, if you happen to have two cast iron reversible griddles handy.

I'm still not persuaded by the idea of a fuzzy logic rice cooker. Is there any commercial rice cooker with settings other than on/off/warm? Somehow all these Asian restaurants are turning out adequate rice with such primitive devices.

I'm all for basting and turning most things I roast. Turning as I see it is a bit like basting in that the juices that were on the bottom drip over the meat or poultry and crisp up as they cook, but turning also has the effect of letting the roast cook more evenly, since a conventional oven is likely to be hotter at the top than at the bottom. Those fatty salty juices are adding to the flavor and texture of the surface of the meat, and I think that's a good thing.

Alas, there were no bergamot oranges left when I went.

There are a few recipes in my copy of the Scientific American Cyclopedia of Formulas. It's out of copyright, so you can find it in Google Books.

I visited this evening for the first time between 6:15 and 6:45 or so. Lots of excellent stuff, some of it reasonably priced for what it is, some of it overpriced, not too many bargains that I could see. Bought some guanciale, a very eggy imported piemontese pasta, a few chanterelles, a braid of French rose onions, and a couple of things to have around the house, like white anchovies, and a hunk of fantastic millefoglie al marzemino cheese just to have on its own. Dinner was, I'd say, one of the best pasta carbonaras I've made or had, so I can't complain about spending too much money on good ingredients, I suppose. They either have excellent anti-theft control, or maybe there is just no black market for balsamic vinegar. They had $200 bottles of tradizionale (that's about 3-1/2 ounces) just sitting out on the shelf. At the end of the day, the fish and the meat look like, well, like they've been sitting out all day.

I've had it a couple of times, and it didn't strike me as being Afghan--just ordinary fried chicken, kinda greasy--but from the article, apparently there isn't any consistency across the shops--they're just all called "Kennedy Fried Chicken" and are run by Afghanis, so maybe some of them produce something more unusual.

I've made this recipe from Gourmet 2008 a number of times now, and it's become my standard recipe for burger or hot dog buns or parker house rolls, and it would be fine for lobster rolls as well-- http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Hamburger-Buns-242614

I'm always amused by this thing, and even more by how many devices there are out there for this purpose (Google "Spargel Schäler" for many examples). For carrots the main thing is having a sharp peeler. I like the straight kind and don't understand the appeal of the Y-shaped peelers that seem so popular of late, but I guess one can get used to anything. I find I can often go a bit faster by putting the carrots on a cutting board and rolling them, just scraping with the peeler in my right hand from left to right.

I have an old two-sided Norton oilstone that I used for many years and have since retired to duties like reshaping and grinding bolsters. I also have a file that I use for that kind of work. Mostly I use a 1000/6000 two-sided Japanese waterstone, and I steel between sharpenings. I have around 20 carbon steel and stainless Western knives. No Japanese knives--yet.

I don't really follow sports, but it didn't hit me until I got home from our local Italian deli (Iavarone's for the NYC/Long Island area types) why everyone was ordering so much stuff and all the counter guys were tied up making 6-foot hero sandwiches.

The Braun hand blender. I mean, it seems to work well enough, and I don't really use it that often since I have a nice Waring bar blender for most of what I have to blend, but I've had it for something like 20 years, and it seems like that when I want to use a hand blender for something that a hand blender does best like blending a soup in the pot, I wish I had something a bit more powerful.

I'd be interested in finding out which of the NYC diners (that aren't upscale comfort food places done up in the style of 1950s diner) are actually making most of their own food. I often wait at a bus stop near a diner and see their deliveries come in, and recognizing a lot of typical diner food arriving in #10 cans, buckets, and frozen packaging. Egg dishes are made on the spot, and I suspect meatloaf tends to be homemade, and some must be roasting their own turkeys. Burgers of every sort arrive frozen. Probably the fries, too. That mushy diner corned beef hash is usually from one of those big cans. I'd imagine the soups are often canned or prepared elsewhere, but occasionally you see something like a chicken soup that appears to have freshly cut vegetables. There's really good corned beef hash made fresh at the Carnegie, but I don't think of that as a diner.

Stock. Rendering fat. Knife sharpening, too.

Maybe I just do a lot of things on the stovetop that involve oil and high heat (wok, stovetop grilling in a cast iron grill pan, double-sided griddle where grease always is going to leach out of the bottom side) or stovetop braising or simmering stock for hours at low heat, all of which tend to leave a glaze that isn't easily removed.

When we moved into our current apartment, the stovetop was covered with carbonized grease. A 30-minute soak in Heavy Duty Easy Off, and it wiped clean with a sponge, no scrubbing required. Since then, I've been a devotee. Easy Off is basically sprayable foaming lye. Lye is a very hazardous substance to come in contact with, so one should always wear gloves, and eye protection would be a good idea, but it breaks down quite readily and doesn't stick around in the environment. It's also great for enameled cast iron and bare cast iron, but not for copper, which it discolors.

I have a lot of nice copperware, but I also think of that as replaceable, and I think it's wonderful that these things have been produced the same way for over a century. I saw a nineteenth-century stockpot that was indistinguishable from the one in my avatar in a culinary antique shop once for around $1000. Mine was a closeout at Zabar's for around $300.

Easy-Off Heavy Duty is exactly the thing for that.

Black beans and yellow rice.

That 24 x 25 x 1.5 inch side-grain maple cutting board that shows up in a lot of my photos here was being discarded by contractors renovating an apartment in a brownstone in Brooklyn where I used to live circa 1994, and a friend who was visiting noticed it leaning against the fence near the trash. I sanded it down and cleaned it up, and I've been using it ever since.

Lacking a tortilla press, I use a heavy skillet and two pieces of plastic wrap. I do have a hand-cranked pasta machine, but I think tortilla dough would be too soft to make it through in one piece.

Fine work gentlemen. A note on the dumplings: Pierogi are the Polish version, and uszki are Polish, frequently a garnish to soup, as in "barszcz z uszkami." The Polish form of borscht (barszcz) is typically made with fermented beet juice. There are also "pierogi leniwe" or "lazy pierogi" where the dough and the cheese filling are combined into a kind of flat log and cut like biscotti, then boiled. Then there are silesian potato dumplings, and various other kinds of Polish dumplings. Varenyky are usually the Ukrainian version, though they can also be called that in Russian. Pelmeni are the Russian version. There are also Russian piroshki, which are baked meat pies. In practice, pierogi and varenyky can't easily be distinguished, and in Canada, where there are large Ukrainian and Polish immigrant populations, you can see "pierogi" and "varenyky" used interchangeably.

The milk steamer on the espresso machine not only makes frothy milk for cappuccino and excellent hot cocoa (just combine cocoa, sugar and milk in a cup and steam), but is useful for quickly bringing a pot of milk up to a near boil for things like oatmeal as well, before adding oats and transferring the pot to the stove.

This would seem to be one of the key components of currywurst, the popular German street food.