David A. Goldfarb

The xanthan percentage solution we were discussing a while back turned out to work really well in terms of stability in the fridge and measurability. It lasted for months in a stoppered bottle in the refrigerator without molding or picking up off flavors, and it was way easier to measure ml of a 1% or 0.1% solution than hundredths of a gram of the granulated xanthan gum, but in the end I decided that I just didn't like the mouthfeel even in minuscule quantities, so I haven't maintained it.

I like arrowroot to thicken roux- or other starch-based sauces that I want just a little thicker without changing the overall flavor balance.

Homemade stock improves everything and having bags of things that go into stock in the freezer will change one's way of cooking entirely. I always buy whole chickens, for instance, because I like to be able to cut them for whatever purpose I have in mind, and I always know that anything I don't use can go into the stock bag. I usually try to buy fish whole if the bones and head will make good stock, and many whole fish are half the price of fillets even if you only use the fillets. And then once you have stock, you can make other handy things like demi glace, glace de viande, and sauces that in many cases can be frozen in small containers for use later.

Toss aggressively and serve when it looks even. If you've got the space for it, you can also make up all the plates at once, so you can even them out before serving, if some of the ingredients have settled to the bottom of the serving vessel, rather than serving each plate as it is made up.

I don't have the book, so maybe it doesn't add anything, but the calculator is handier than doing it with an ordinary calculator or pencil and paper. Plug in one weight, and it gives to you all the other weights in the recipe and the total yield. If you happen to have an iPhone or iPod touch, it's not a bad trick for $4.99.

I like the iPhone app. The main attraction is a calculator, which is handy for making odd quantities or quickly figuring out the quantities of ingredients in a ratio-based recipe based on, say, the weight of the eggs, which can be awkward to parse out in small quantities or nonstandard if you use farm eggs.

There's always a use for the purple bag.

Try JB Prince-- http://www.jbprince.com/professional-cookware/sitram-profiserie.asp Looking closely, I think the 30cm is out of stock, but the 34cm is in stock and is actually less expensive than the 30cm, perhaps because it's older stock purchased at wholesale when the dollar was stronger. They've also got an 11" stew pot in their Catering line, which I prefer, but isn't suitable for induction, if that's an issue.

Nicely done!

I don't think the mechanism that McGee describes, where sodium ions are swapping with calcium ions in the potato, can be responsible in itself for the absorption of much salt, since the amount of calcium in a medium 299g potato is on the order of 41mg ( http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2770/2 ). The molar mass of calcium is 40.80 g/mol, and for sodium it's 23.00 g/mol, and the replacement of calcium with sodium isn't going to be complete, I don't think, without the potato falling apart, but even if it were, that means that by this mechanism alone, a medium potato could only remove around 25 mg of sodium from whatever solution it's in, and there are about 2300 mg of sodium in a teaspoon of salt. So that mechanism aside, there are many articles on the net about what happens to a potato in (cold or room temperature) salt water, because this is a fairly basic demonstration for teaching about osmosis in high school biology classes, and what happens is that the fluid inside the potato cells does tend toward equilibrium with the solution it's immersed in, but the salt draws water out of the potato; the potato doesn't draw salt into its cells. So if this is what is happening, then the potato is just making the soup more watery. Another possibility might be that if the salt and heat are breaking down the potato cells, then maybe there's something else going on after the cell membranes are damaged enabling the potato to absorb salt, but it could be that this just allows the potato to release even more water.

I don't think I've ever seen anti-bacterial wipes for carts or hand sanitizer dispensers in a New York food market. At our local Stop-n-Shop in Queens, I've noticed that there are napkin dispensers in the meat section, but they only contain napkins about half the time.

I found another one, and he seems remarkably consistent in his technique--

Here is a video of Mr. Uyeda himself doing the hard shake-- It doesn't seem that hard, but maybe the video doesn't quite capture it. While the shake looks fancy, he doesn't seem to be wasting any time letting the ice melt. I like the texture of little ice chips myself, and letting the ice sit in the drink wouldn't be advantageous in that regard.

My grandmother thought it worked. She added a potato to the farfel, if she thought it was too salty, and she made the best farfel. You can't argue with that.

I just picked up a bottle of Luxardo Maraschino from Warehouse Wines and Spirits on Broadway near NYU to try this. 2 oz. Boodles, 1/2 oz. Maraschino, 1/2 oz. lemon juice, shaken with three ice cubes until cold, lemon zest garnish. I think I'm about ready for another one.

I agree with Paul, but I could imagine there might be some particular soup or other dish where salt becomes more predominant than other flavors when cold, so maybe not more salty in an absolute sense (if that even means anything), but more salty relative to other flavors when cold.

I suspect that these products are inherently bland, because they're not made with interesting ingredients, so they substitute salt for other flavors, and they probably test them and determine that they sell better that way. I don't think it is necessarily the case that home cooked food has the same amount of salt as processed food, because in the more egregious examples, where the amount of sodium (which may also come from MSG and elsewhere) is converted into more familiar units like "teaspoons of salt per serving," the numbers often sound absurd, and anyone who cooks would be aware that they never use these amounts in food they make themselves. Here's the CSPI page on salt with some figures that have been published recently-- http://www.cspinet.org/salt/

I used to like the Bertucci's in Harvard Square in the late 1980s. I don't know that they really had many locations then, and they did have a wood fired oven as I recall. I was there less than a year ago, didn't order pizza, so I didn't note whether they still had the wood fired oven, but the other food I had was perfectly acceptable and the mussels were even memorable. I guess it doesn't feel like I'm going to a chain restaurant there, since I remember it from when they didn't have 90 locations.

I think there is a difference between the way one addresses someone in person and written style. I'm sure the New York Times White House reporters address direct questions to "Mr. President," but they refer to him in print as "Mr. Obama," for instance, and even the use of "Mr." in this case is something of a quaint formality associated particularly with the Times, as other news sources would use only the last name with no title at all.

The only times I can think of that I particularly patronize chain restaurants are when I'm waiting around in airports, where one must acknowledge that Wolfgang Puck's and Outback are an improvement over the dismal airline food that was available in US airports as recently as the 1980s. Jet Blue is trying to improve things at the recently renovated JFK Terminal 6, but there's nothing quite like the aroma of butter wafting from Leysieffer when you walk into Tegel airport in Berlin.

I haven't tried this myself, but there's a series of videos with June Taylor on chow.com (now with an annoying advertisement up front that used not to be there), where, if I recall correctly, she says that keeping bright colors is a matter of stopping the process before it caramelizes-- http://www.chow.com/videos/show/obsessives#/show/obsessives/10695/obsessives-jam-packed but to get it to set up properly at that point, I'd assume there's also a question of having the right amount of pectin.

Tongue is something I have every few years or so to confirm that I really don't care for tongue. My wife likes it, so once when we got the tongue in our cooperative bulk beef purchase, I made it for her, but indeed, she couldn't eat the whole thing before getting tired of it after a week or so.

Parsnips and carrots roasted together offer a little more visual contrast. Chunks of parsnip also work nicely in a stew.

I use it in beef marinades often.

And I don't think that even the NYT uses "chef" as a title. Generally NYT style is to use the full name at the first mention, then Mr./Ms./Dr. and the last name. I don't even think they use "Prof." typically. American academics who have doctorates don't generally make much of a show of it, unless they are in medicine, psychology, or in certain institutions where that has historically been the norm. Generally the more exclusive the university, the more informal the faculty are about titles in the U.S. In certain European universities, it may be that only the most senior faculty of the highest rank use the title of "Professor," whereas students in the U.S. generally address faculty of all ranks as "Professor." When referring in writing to a chef, I generally use the last name without title, as I would for the author of a book or just about any other situation.