David A. Goldfarb

There must be some real ketchup aficionados on my block. There is a tiny grocery on the corner that sells a little of this and a little of that, a few imported Irish products, because there is an Irish immigrant population in this neighborhood, sodas and beer, sandwiches. It's really not that well stocked in general, but there are five brands of ordinary ketchup last I noticed.

Aside from the RoundUp issue is the way that Monsanto uses its patents to obtain monopoly control of crops that it is invested in, making it impossible for farmers to produce a non-Monsanto crop. Even if a farmer doesn't buy and doesn't want Monsanto's seed, and wants to select and save their own seed crop from season to season in the traditional manner, Monsanto can sue them for patent violation, if they discover (and they investigate this sort of thing aggressively) that the independent farmer's seed has been contaminated by Monsanto's genetically modified seed from nearby farms. So slowly they buy out the smaller farmers who can't afford to fight Monsanto, and they put the seed cleaners who process seed for small farmers out of business, and Monsanto controls the whole crop.

On the one hand, maybe the market would seem ripe for a show with modern techniques, but maybe people who are really interested in such things are just more likely to use the internet than to watch TV, the idea being that if it's on TV, it really isn't cutting edge anymore. I know someone who was producing a series of travel shows for a cable network who told me that the producers were very resistant to anything that was vaguely intellectually challenging or different from the usual images of attractive people sitting around the pool at sunset. He still managed to produce some interesting episodes, but didn't get any more work from them afterward.

I forget where it was where we were talking about cassoulet with or without bread crumbs, but if I remember correctly in that discussion I observed that in the Les Halles cookbook, Bourdain recommended breaking the crust to build up the crustiness rather than using breadcrumbs, but I had it tonight at Les Halles, and there were breadcrumbs. I don't know if that's their usual practice, or if it's just because it was a busy night with customers waiting for tables three deep at the bar.

Most useful thing in the kitchen: Sabatier **** Elephant 8" carbon steel chef's knife Most prized more for personal than practical reasons: It's a tossup between my grandmother's Griswold #9 cast iron skillet and my father's Henckels 8" chef's knife Most extravagant recent acquisition: La Spaziale Mini Vivaldi II. The pump cracked on our 11-year-old Briel Estoril entry-level espresso machine, and instead of going through a long period of upgrading by steps, I decided to get what I really wanted, which was a first-rate machine with separate boilers and a hot water tap for tea. Next step will be upgrading the grinder from our KitchenAid A-9 to something like a Mazzer Mini.

I don't "plate" either. At the same time I'm sure some words that have become absolutely common, like "saute," were once considered pretentious. And then there are words you find in older cookbooks that have been pretty much lost. I definitely think we need to bring back "despumate."

"Break down" seems to me more about quantity than a specific method for cutting something up. I think of someone breaking down a side of beef into the primal cuts or breaking down a case of chickens, but to "break down a chicken" sounds a little silly to me.

It's not in my kitchen anymore, because I threw it out, but once I bought a french fry cutter that had a grid of metal blades in mounted in a plastic frame with handles on each end, and you were supposed to push this down over the potato to make fries. Of course the hole was too small for any reasonable-sized potatoes, and it wasn't particularly sharp or easy to use. Totally worthless.

My wife and I are planning to go to Purple Yam for their special Maine-themed Valentine's Day menu, but they're serving it the Saturday before Valentine's day, which happens to be Lincoln's Birthday, and I would think that a cocktail inspired by Lincoln's Birthday could be fairly unromantic.

Thanks for the pointer. Now I have a reason to make it over to Eataly finally. If it's really absurd, maybe I'll propose splitting a box with someone.

Anyone see bergamot in NYC this season? I just had some shaved over a shrimp dish at Corton, but I forgot to ask if they had a local source for it. There is a grower in California that sells them by the 6 lb. box (http://www.ripetoyou.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=94), expensively shipped to the East Coast, but I don't think I need quite that much.

I usually eyeball 1/4 lb per person. There's often some left over after that.

I like the natural flavor of the pods, but have never thought too much about how to use them in some other way. The comparison to chestnuts is probably a good start. I could imagine something like chestnut cream made with carob, or it could be interesting in a soup, but I'm not sure how it works, like if you try to blend it or combine it with a hot liquid like a starch.

Last night at Corton we had a dish called "Maine Lobster," and another one called "Pheasant," both of which were served many ways, but they weren't called "X, Y ways," nor was that fact indicated on the menu. My sense was that they wanted the presentation to be surprising and not to create expectations or to invite immediate comparisons to another restaurant before the food was even served.

Yes, that it does, and that's why I use it. Good cheese shops that cut to order usually use butcher paper that's coated on one side, rarely plastic, and people who know cheese often recommend wax paper to store cheese that was purchased in plastic. It also works well for bacon and some cured meats.

It's better for most cheeses than plastic wrap, so I use it for that, and for the cake frosting use described above, and other things occasionally when I'm out of plastic wrap.

I had both styles of dough hooks for a while and I found that the traditional J-style hook worked better with smaller quantities usually than the spiral type, though the spiral type can handle more dough and produces a result more like hand kneading. If your mixer doesn't have "slow start," it helps to combine the ingredients by hand using the dough hook before putting the bowl and the dough hook on the mixer. I've never considered climbing a big problem. It climbs and comes off back into the bowl, and it's still working the gluten. I haven't had it climb out of the bowl. If the dough quantity is too small and the hook is just moving around on top of it, then I just stop the mixer and scoop up the dough with a rubber spatula or with the dough hook, removed from the shaft and start it up again. It will work eventually.

I never watched Yan when I was younger, but in the last couple of years I've occasionally watched Yan on the internet for his knife skills. I don't use a cleaver, but I like that pepper rolling technique. I use it all the time. There's a video on the net where he's doing a demo selling his knife, maybe it was at some college if I remember correctly, and he shows how he makes the swan garnish from the apple.

A really nice pop-up toaster seems by nature to be a scaled-up, ruggedized, domestic toaster, unlike, say, a "prosumer" espresso machine, which is a scaled down version of the 2, 3, or 4 group cafe machine without the requirement for special plumbing (though that is always an option for people who like plumbed-in ice machines, pot-filling spigots over the range, and blenders built into the counter). Where is the domestic conveyor toaster? Is there no innovation out there? When is Breville or DeLonghi coming out with the home version of something like this, for people who are serious about their toast: http://www.zesco.com/Hatco-Toast-Qwick-Conveyor-Toaster-Up-to-1-800-Slices-Per-Hour-Commercial-Toasters-TQ-1800-pz476D023.htm

When I was in Cracow in the late 1980s and there was rationing and there were meat lines, there was usually no line in the shop that sold mutton, lamb and lamb sausages, which were regarded maybe not quite like horse meat in the US, but not too far from it.

Okay, finally made a reservation for Corton for this coming Saturday. Places that have been on the list for a while and that we never seem to be able to plan far enough in advance to get a reservation for, but we will do this this year-- WD-50 Per Se Le Bernardin Babbo Work and small child haven't left much room to explore the cocktail scene that much in recent years, so being a little more organized about getting to places like PDT, Death & Co. and Pegu Club are on the list.

At Carnevino in Las Vegas a little over a year ago, our waiter, who was otherwise a decent waiter, was not only aggressively pushing the truffle up-sell, but there was also "you can have that Rossini, if you want" like he was asking me if I wanted to supersize it. We didn't go for the Rossini, but we did split a half order of capellini with shaved truffle for $50. Not sure how much the Rossini up-sell would have cost.

Smoked prunes are really wonderful and work well with meats that can be prepared with dried fruits like pork, duck, or in a stew like bigos. I've had them in Poland from farmers' markets in the late 1980s, then I tried finding them in Polish markets in New York, but it turned out that the local Polish immigrants regarded smoked prunes as inferior to ordinary California dried prunes, and they said it was just the way those rubes dried prunes in the Polish countryside. I beg to differ.

It's been a few years since I was at last in Cambridge, but I visited 22 Chesterton Road, which I think is the same as Restaurant 22, or has it changed hands? It was one of the better meals I had in Cambridge, and it had a very nice cozy atmosphere. The menu on their website looks like the sort of thing I remember. I've usually stayed in the University Arms, which has a big English breakfast buffet, which may be unremarkable as English breakfasts go, but for Americans it's something of a novelty.

I find it hard to justify counter space for a toaster or a microwave so I have a little Sharp Warm and Toasty (or something like that) microwave-toaster, which does anything we need a microwave for, and is a passable toaster, as long as you're willing to ignore the toast settings and just set your toast on the grill-both-sides mode for around ten minutes. The turntable runs while it's toasting, so it's very even, but it's kinda "low and slow" as far as toast goes. The door is getting a little wonky, so I was just surveying the territory to see if there is a suitable replacement that is no wider than 17.5", and there isn't one particularly. The combo models tend to have a microwave and toaster side by side, instead of in one chamber like my current one (which puts the toasting elements too far from the bread to toast quickly) or stacked. If I have to replace the microwave, I think I'll just toast in the broiler.