David A. Goldfarb

I tried an organic hummus bar today called Nanoosh on Madison between 32nd and 33rd. I got the Nanoosh wrap, which had hummus, ground beef, mushrooms, mesclun, onions, and probably a few other things. The bread had a bit of a cottony texture, but the wrap was otherwise pretty good, particularly with the mushrooms. They also serve a decent organic coffee. There's a horrific looking thing across from the ESB on 5th Ave. called Pizzacone, but something tells me I'm going to have to try it one of these days. The concept reminds me a bit of a pizza place in Warsaw in the late 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall that served pizza on a kind of cardboard-y waffle.

Walked by Artisinal yesterday and it looked very attractive. On the way there on 32nd between 5th and Madison I had a nice cappuccino from Cafe M, which is a small bakery that has very attractive looking cupcakes and serves coffee.

You'll have access to much better products from a butcher like Jeffrey Ruhalter, but if you just need cheap and plentiful and industrial meat is okay, there are a few Western Beef outlets around town.

How about asking one of the poultry vendors at the Greenmarket? If you're going to make the effort to travel to a farm, you might as well get a Belle Rouge from Violet Hill or something along those lines.

Thanks Kathryn. Those are good to know. I keep walking by the Empire Room and it looks very elegant, and it's always empty, though it seems like an obvious place to have a really nice cocktail establishment. It may just be that I notice it in the morning when I walk into the building.

I just started a new job with offices in the Empire State Building, and there's lots of commerce and food in the area, but what's good, specifically? Could be anything from a decent sandwich to fine dining. What's the best Korean BBQ in that area? Any really good coffee? An interesting bar? I've been to a pretty good dumpling place in Koreatown on 32nd called Mandoo, and today was a nice day, so I got a sandwich from the 'wichcraft kiosk in Greeley Square and sat out on the plaza. I used to like a hole-in-the wall Indian place at toidy-toid and toid called Curry & Curry, when my not-yet wife lived in that area circa 1993, and I think it's still there. It's not a part of town that I would think of going to eat, so what else is there that's potentially interesting to e-Gullet types?

My conclusion from this discussion is that anyone who buys an expensive high-powered blender necessarily goes on a liquid diet for about three weeks after setting it on the counter. Don't tell me about the steak. I don't want to know.

Thanks. It's one of those heavy NordicWare pans, which I think are cast aluminum coated with teflon. But, oy, I signed up to bake something for my the end of year party in my son's preschool tomorrow and made cupcakes using that same batter, and as I was taking them out of the oven I noticed that cup of butter I'd set to melt still sitting in the microwave. Conclusion: the low-fat version isn't bad either!

Into the stock bag in the freezer with the other vegetable scraps. I usually put onion skins in there generally, except for the outermost layer, which can be dirty. They have a good oniony flavor and add a nice color to stock, unless it's to be a white stock of course. Those decorative Ukrainian Easter eggs are made by boiling the eggs in water steeped with onion skins, and then patterns are etched into the shell with a needle.

I've had avocado ice cream and I've made an avocado sorbet a number of times, which I usually serve as a garnish to a very creamy cold avocado soup. Tomato sorbet also makes a nice garnish for gazpacho.

It looks like you're using full sun or some other very bright, direct light, which can be very effective, but is harder to work with, because you need to pay more attention to shadows that could be distracting. You're using a smaller aperture, so you have more depth of field, which means more detail in the background and it's less clear where the viewer should be looking. When you're very close to the subject, particularly if you are using a wide lens (or a wide setting on a zoom lens), objects in the foreground will look unnaturally large, so the limes are taking over a bit. You could use fewer limes or smaller wedges. You could also move them more into the lower right hand corner, so you've got a nice splash of color in the foreground, but not front and center.

This is great. I've also been delving into The Epicurean a fair amount of late and observing how much mileage Ranhofer gets out of that veal blonde and things like "mushroom essence." If you look at the illustrations, you'll note that a "tammy" of his day seems nothing like a drum sieve that we would call a tamis today. There's an engraving in there somewhere of two guys wringing a sauce through some sort of mesh cloth about the size of tablecloth (or maybe it's just a tablecloth) over a large trough.

I don't know if Quattro's still has the smoked pheasant, but it's excellent, and a very good deal at around $19 a bird. Those belle rouge chickens from Violet Hill, which seem really expensive for a chicken, are a revelation. I've been really pleased with clams and oysters from Seatuck. The other fish guys are good, but Seatuck seems even fresher. Lots of strawberries this past week.

I think there might be legitimate reasons for a rubber coupling on a blender, like reducing potential for injuries or designing the coupling to fail before the motor does or before the blades or the pitcher are damaged in case something gets stuck. My Waring Commercial (the restaurant line, as opposed to "Professional," which seems to be the consumer line) bar blender has a rubber coupling, and there are instructions on a sticker taped to the power cord explaining how to replace it as part of normal user maintenance.

Sitram has a line called "Pro 3" now that combines stainless with a thick copper disk and an induction disk. I've only seen it on their website-- http://www.sitramgroup.fr/ But that would give an idea of how thick the induction disk needs to be. "Pro 1" looks like the former "Profiserie" line and "Pro 2" looks like the "Catering" line, which I've used.

What about traditional larding? I don't know that I've ever seen a larding needle up close, but it's a standard technique in the old books, and I was able to turn up new larding needles on Google made by Matfer and F. Dick for $5-10, so someone must be using them. I think I'll get one.

To remove carbonized material try lye (works for enamel, cast iron, stainless, but not recommended for copper), if you can get it, or an oven cleaner with lye, like Heavy Duty Easy-Off in the U.S. (not sure what the comparable product would be in Monaco, but it's a foaming lye solution that comes in a spray can).

We went for the first time tonight, and I quite liked it in general. I was able to get a reservation Friday night on OpenTable with choices of 5:30 or 6:15 Saturday night, which was a surprise for a prime time at a restaurant of this quality, but I suppose they keep some tables open for hotel guests at The Four Seasons, so they may accommodate late reservations. Good to know, if you want fine dining on short notice. We sat at the counter, which I'd recommend, but don't expect much of a view. There are lots of plants, hanging baskets of fruit, pillars and such that obstruct the view, so you're sitting at the pass of a busy kitchen, but what you see is mainly plating, and not quite enough to figure out too many interesting things. The presentation is very nicely done, with one or two particularly decorative selections, but not everything is done in that style, so it doesn't come off as overwrought. It seems the options have been simplified from earlier reports in that we were not offered various smaller tasting menus. Instead there is a page of tasting portions, another page with traditional appetizers and mains, the full tasting menu for $190 without wines, and a dessert menu. It is possible to mix and match from the tasting portions, appetizers and main dishes, but we opted for seven tasting portions between us that we shared, plus two desserts, and the server helped us arrange our selections from light to heavy to make for a well paced meal. I thought our server was great, though the busboys were hovering a bit, prodding us along a bit faster than we wanted at first, though they adjusted after the first course or two. The amuse bouche before the meal was a shot of avocado cream with a grapefruit gelée and what I think was a small piece of beef carpaccio on top, which set the tone for the rest of the meal--lots of combinations of savory cut with citrus. Now reconstructing from memory and menus posted on their website, we started with a Portobello Mushroom Tart, with Eggplant Caviar, Tomato Confit and Arugula and Grilled Squid with what seemed like bacon or jamon and roasted red peppers. The mushroom tart was one of the more elaborate presentations with a thin line of balsamic, a small green dot of pesto, and a larger red dot of what seemed like a red pepper sauce, and various other little dots, and it always seems a bit obscure to figure out how to combine these things, so one tastes them separately to figure out what they might be and then dips to taste. It looks great on the plate though. The squid is quite wonderful, seared without being overcooked, smokey from the ham, with a hint of the citrus theme cutting through. Next we had the Seared foie gras and Grapefruit Gratin together with the John Dory Filet with Fava Beans, Chorizo and Sauce Vierge. The foie gras tasted fried in bacon (conjuring vague reminiscences of rumaki from the 70s, but elevated to something much more subtle) and the grapefruit gratin was a surprising counterbalance. We realized in retrospect that we had too many foie gras dishes, but this one was the most unusual, so for a dish that features foie gras, this would be the keeper. The John Dory was good, but not particularly surprising, which is fine. Not everything needs to be surprising. Then we continued with Braised Veal Cheek, Thai Jus and Crunchy Vegetables and the Free-Range Caramelised Quail Stuffed with Foie Gras and Potato Purée. Having seen a recipe for the famous potato purée, I couldn't imagine what was really that unusual about it, but the texture really is distinctive--perfectly smooth but not whipped or gummy and with lots and lots of butter to make a kind of a paste. In addition to the portion that came with the quail, we received two extra portions served in Staub mini-cocottes, which I think were a bonus. The veal cheek was incredibly soft and the Thai jus a good contrast to the other flavors in the dishes we selected. The ground hanger steak and foie gras burgers on brioche buns with fries and house made ginger ketchup seemed like a good dish to end on, since we'd each get one slider, and this is one of the house standards. Well, it's a very tender burger with a slab of foie gras on top. Do it once to see what all the fuss is about, but the foie gras and grapefruit gratin is more interesting. We received a pre-dessert amuse, which was another shot glass this time with a raspberry panna cotta and granita, which were well paired. Can I say something about the flatware? The spoons are weirdly deep and odd to eat from, and the knives have a symmetrical shape that in a dark restaurant makes it hard to tell which is the cutting edge and which is the spine. My wife couldn't understand at first why she wasn't able to cut through the crust of the mushroom tart. Desserts were a yuzu souffle with Okinawa sugar ice cream and a coconut dacquoise. The yuzu souffle was really wonderful, yuzu being a flavor that stands up well to the dulling effect of the eggs in a souffle, but I thought a little too large in comparison to the other dishes, which isn't to say we didn't finish it, but it could have been 2/3 the size and would have left us wanting more rather than thinking it was going on too long. I was expecting something that looked like a dacquoise from the dacquoise, but it was a deconstructed/reconstructed version with a dollop of coconut buttercream in a vanilla foam over tapioca with bits of hazelnut (I think) crunch floating in it, and that got me thinking about dacquoise and its connection to this dessert, which isn't an undesirable result. I had a glass of Alsace riesling and a single espresso, and the bill with tip came to around $325, which I thought was not unreasonable for this level of dining and service. The tasting menu looks wonderful, but eight tasting portions per person would have been way more food than we wanted, and I would only do that if we had planned ahead and not eaten for the rest of the day, but this being a Greenmarket day, we weren't passing up a dozen local oysters on the half shell from Seatuck--my favorite fishmonger of late--for a $10 lunch for two.

My father used to make a BBQ sauce that was mainly Worcestershire sauce and butter, maybe with a few other things like garlic, a little brown sugar, and I'm not sure what else, but interestingly, no tomato products. I make it like that occasionally.

There's also the method of getting the nice grilling cuts for less money. I've been buying shares in sides of local grass fed/grain finished beef with some friends, and it usually comes to around $3.50-3.75/lb trimmed for all cuts, and all the beef we've gotten has graded prime. One share is 1/8 of a side, and last time I bought two shares, which I think was around 80 lbs of trimmed meat plus bones for stock, which are given away along with organ meats to whomever wants them after the shares of muscle cuts are divided. The downsides to the way we've been doing this is that the beef isn't aged as long as I'd like, and we don't have as much control over the way it's cut as we would by having meat cut to order from a butcher, and of course you get some cuts that you might not ordinarily purchase, and when you buy by the side you get lots of ground beef (way more than I'd buy on my own), but it's been a good way of getting a lot of pretty good beef at a reasonable price.

I don't know the Bryan Peterson books you've listed, but a very useful book for food photographers is Hunter, Biver, and Fuqua's Light: Science and Magic. It's targeted more toward the studio photographer, but the principles of photographic lighting apply to any sort of photography, and you don't need studio flash units to take advantage of this book, if you can think about whatever kind of light you have at hand as if it were studio lighting. I was conversing online with an automobile photographer once and I asked him how he managed to get such great pictures of cars outdoors when so much effort was expended normally to control reflections and lightings in big car studios, and he said there's always an angle when the light, the reflections, and the background are right, and you just have to learn to see it, then move the car and the camera into the right positions. Available light food photography is often the same way. You have to think about what the strongest light source in the room is, and that usually becomes the main light, and the other lights you can use to your advantage or isolate or diffuse them so they don't get in the way, and then you can use reflectors and black cards to throw light where you want it or block it when it becomes a distraction.

Letting the background go out of focus is fine, and I'd say it's a good aesthetic choice with this kind of subject, but what you might do is put the limes in the foreground and in focus, since cut limes are more photogenic than ground taco meat. Of course more light or a longer exposure time (which will require a tripod) will let you use a smaller aperture and get more depth of field, but sometimes narrow depth of field and selective focus is more attractive.

BIG improvement! The lower angle and tighter composition work well. Fluorescent gives nice even light, but it's very tricky for most cameras to figure out the white balance, because the bulbs may be warm, cool, or daylight balanced on the red/blue spectrum, but they also usually have a green spike, so they tend to require some rebalancing toward magenta. It looks like the image from the camera is fairly neutral with a bit of a bias toward blue-green, but you did a fine job of warming it up in post. The colors look vivid but natural, and the food looks appealing, which is the main thing (and tricky with things like ground meat--garnishing with parsley is a good move)!

I've been sharpening my European knives on Japanese waterstones for a while now, generally with finer angle than the factory 20 degrees, and I've found I have to use the steel more lightly and for fewer strokes with a finer edge. This may not apply to the harder steels used in Japanese knives. I also think that the technique of using a steel works more naturally with knives that are sharpened symmetrically on both sides, and it requires a different kind of attention to steel a knife with an asymmetric bevel like traditional Japanese knives have (gyutos not being traditional). One European knife that I have with an asymmetric bevel is a Wusthof offset sandwich knife (discontinued and replaced with a new design), which has a scalloped bevel on one side and is flat on the back side--very sharp but the steel isn't really hard enough to hold the edge. I bought it thinking it would be low maintenance, but I noticed the edge rolling after the first week, and you can't sharpen a scalloped edge on a stone terribly easily. Wusthof recommends using a steel, but if you try it the normal way, the burr just flops back and forth from one side to the other, so I've found that it works to steel it lightly on the beveled side a few times followed by one stroke on the back side to straighten out the burr, going back and forth lightly until it's right, sometimes steeling on the push stroke to keep the scallops even. Very strange knife to maintain.

French-style knives have long been yet another option--thinner and lighter than German style (even German-style knives from Sabatier are thinner than the Solingen knives they're patterned after), and French-style chef's knives usually have a more subtle curve with less belly than a German chef's knife. At the moment I think they are kind of off the radar, so there are some good deals to be had in older carbon steel knives from Thiers.