David A. Goldfarb

Dinosaur is a good suggestion. I lived at 125th and Riverside for four years, and we went there with some regularity. The big red bus even stops close (on one of the routes at least) in front of Riverside Church (or maybe the stop is one block up by Sakura Park), across from Grant's Tomb. From there just walk north past the big highrise on your right and then The Cotton Club down the hill underneath the viaduct, and it's about a 5-minute walk on your right. With kids, make a reservation to be sure you get a table, if you'll be there on a busy night. Without kids, it's usually easy to jump the line, if you'll take a table in the bar area, but they're tall tables with stools that won't work with a two year old.

That sounds great. I'll try it next time.

There's a falafel place called "Golan Heights" that sounds just like what you're looking for--lots of sauces, big laffas with fries, Israeli chopped salads, etc.--right across the street from Yeshiva University in Washington Heights. We lived in that neighborhood for about a year before finding our current apartment and used to take out from there occasionally. Here's an article about them-- http://www.manhattantimesnews.com/index.ph...mid=166〈=en

These are great. I found a pair in Brooklyn, and I use them often.

They are. The paste I have is brown and tastes like it may be made from toasted seeds. That said, I suspect that all of the above could make a nice cold noodle dish with Asian flavors, if one isn't too concerned about authenticity, though I'm not sure what counts as authentic here, since peanut butter could be a Chinese-American adaptation. Here's a recipe from a Chinese source (though I'm not entirely sure it's more Chinese than, say, Ollie's Noodle Shop on the Upper West Side, since the publisher--Wei Chuan--is an American manufacturer of Chinese food products) that uses only Chinese sesame paste-- http://www.americastestkitchen.com/ibb/pos...ter1-p=1#278895

The straight Chinese sesame paste is very dense and needs to be thinned. The brand I have is Hsin Tung Yang, made in Taiwan, and contains only sesame.

I wouldn't think that he thinks that they would have the same flavor, but since he has a national audience, he's providing an option for people who can't find tahini easily.

I've made it with the thick sesame paste you can find in Asian markets, but I don't see why tahini wouldn't work just as well or why peanut butter would be a necessity. Here's Bittman's version which has chicken, but that seems optional, if you don't want chicken-- http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30...-and-cucumbers/

Chinese restaurants that brew tea in large urns and serve it in stainless steel teapots usually offer unlimited tea, in my experience.

I was thinking about this while making dinner this evening, and I suppose another factor is whether I'm following a recipe or improvising. I think it's more important to work clean and be organized, and whether that involves using bowls depends on what needs to be ready and when. So I go into the kitchen planning to make some kind of simple pasta dish with some nice heirloom plum tomatoes I got this morning. I start a pot of salted water boiling, dice up some pancetta and start it frying in a separate pan, clean the board, take out some Reggiano and the microplane, wash the tomatoes, and since they're really ripe, I can peel them using a knife without blanching. I reach over to toss the pancetta occasionally between peeling tomatoes, and think an onion would be nice, and I've got some shallots right there on the board, so I quickly peel and dice one, toss the pancetta, go up into the cupboard to grab an ziploc to start a new bag for vegetable trimmings for stock in the freezer, toss the pancetta, and peel the rest of the tomatoes. Pancetta isn't quite ready yet, so I can wash a few dishes that are in the sink, reaching over to toss the pancetta occasionally with one hand. Dishes done, shallots in the pan, and I can dice the tomatoes and chop a clove of garlic, wiping the board as needed. Water is boiling, add spices to the pan, toss, and there's time to label that ziploc, toss, add garlic, and when it's far enough along, put the pasta in the water. Set timer for four minutes, diced tomatoes in the pan, toss, stir the pasta to keep it from sticking. When the pasta is done, I transfer it with a spider to the pan with the sauce, toss, decide to toss in a little fresh parsley at the end, let it sit for a minute, put the bag with shallot peel and parsley stems in the freezer, and the pasta's ready to serve with some cheese grated over the plate. The whole thing took about ten minutes. Adding a step of preparing things in bowls beforehand would have taken longer, left me with more idle time while cooking, and left more dishes to wash.

My main board is a 25x24" maple board, which usually has things on it, so 24x16" is normally available, without moving things around, but if I need the full space, it's not hard to move things. I'm always cleaning as I go to keep space available, and if I'm running out, then I'll start using bowls. The board is right near the sink and the stovetop as well as the mixer and blender, so I'm not transporting food any significant distance usually. I've also got a few smaller boards.

'Sokay, I'm down with old skool. I also make demi glace from Espagnole and veal stock. For the amount I make, it's not hard to use the poached chicken. It goes into chicken salad, pot pies, ravioli and such. Stock always generates several related meals. It's been a cool rainy day, so I have an 18 quart pot of chicken stock on the fire right now. Considering that I have other kinds of stock in the freezer, that should be enough for 2-3 months. I usually make a batch of some kind of stock every month.

Board mostly, but it depends on how quickly I need to have things ready and how much board space I need. I'll move things to bowls, if I need the board, and I tend to put things in bowls for stir frying, because I want everything ready to go into the wok immediately when it's called for. I'll also move things like raw meat off the board, if I want to hold them for some reason and clean the board in the interim so I can do other things on it or put cooked food on it without worrying about cross contamination.

Today $3.99 at the Chinese market, probably Canadian; $5.99 at the local Italian market for Maine lobsters around 1.25 lbs.

This is how I make stock usually, but I picked it up from James Beard, who suggests poaching a whole chicken in a batch of chicken stock on the second day to strengthen it. I do the same with beef, and I'll use the poached chicken or beef for some other purpose and throw the bones back into the pot to extract more flavor and gelatin.

Invest an afternoon and some wet/dry sandpaper and see what you get. It might not be so bad. When I decided to invest in a nonstick Mauviel copper frypan, I looked into the possibility of recoating, which wouldn't be worth doing with a Calphalon pan, but might be justified with a more expensive pan, and this company at one time offered that service under the business name "Frypan Man"-- http://www.continentalcompanies.com/non-stick-coating.html I don't know if they are still handling small non-commercial orders, but if I needed that service, that's where I'd look first. My pan still looks pretty good and functions perfectly about 8-9 years later, and I figure I have a few options when the coating wears out eventually. If recoating isn't feasible and there's stainless under the coating, I'll remove the coating. If there's copper under the coating, I can always remove the coating and have it tinned.

My sister is a "bento box mom." I didn't even know this was a concept, but she's always posting photos of her bentos for her twin daughters on the family blog. I'll have to find some egg molds for her. Our toddler is a couple of months younger than my sister's kids. He starts preschool next month, and I'll be making his bento lunches, so I will probably get sucked into this trend, but for now he really loves to use the egg slicer (who doesn't really love to use the egg slicer?), so egg-shaped eggs are of sufficient interest.

Yeah, the Carnegie is more touristy than Katz's, and everyone knows the sandwiches are absurd. If you order a combo, like corned beef and pastrami ("the Woody Allen"), instead of giving you a sandwich that's half a corned beef sandwich and half a pastrami sandwich, they give you something like a whole pastrami sandwich on top of a whole corned beef sandwich and they were both huge to begin with. They'll give you extra slices of bread at no charge, if you ask. Some New Yorkers disparage the Carnegie because of the clientele, ignoring the fact that the food is still good despite the tourists. I like the Carnegie for corned beef, Katz's for pastrami.

I recently got a Mario Batali wooden soup spoon that I like. There are some other interesting wooden utensils in that line, like a combination spoon/spatula with a flat edge for scraping. There's also a thing with a large spoon for stirring at one end and a small tasting spoon at the other end, which seems like it would be messy and unsanitary. It reminds me of an elementary school cafeteria I remember from the third grade, I think, where they decided to try out a spork that had a knife as a handle. They quickly realized that they needed to include a knife on each tray, because the sporknife was not only unsanitary, but there was no way to cut with the knife, if you couldn't also hold down the food with a fork. This looks like an interesting concept-- http://www.dezeen.com/2009/08/11/elevate-b...-joseph-joseph/ I don't know that these utensils are so attractive qua utensils, but the handles that prevent the working end from resting on the counter look great.

You obviously haven't been to the Carnegie.

I just looked in the cupboard and counted only nine types of vinegar, which I suppose is not excessive by eGullet standards. I don't have any balsamic at the moment. I decided to take a break from it for a while until I think my budget and some festive occasion can justify a tradizionale.

Gloopy sauces and braised meat provide a good occasion to think about using very short depth of field instead of trying to get everything in focus. One option is to go close and focus on something attractive and let the gloop blur out.

Sort of. Depth of field is determined by aperture, focal length, and subject distance (the format of the film/sensor is also a factor, but since Holly is only using one format, it's not relevant in this case), so if you move the lens closer to the subject, the depth of field also decreases. In the macro range, things get a little more interesting, because if you were actually to calculate it, because of the factor of subject distance, depth of field will turn out to be effectively a function of magnification and aperture, regardless of focal length. So if you photograph something smaller than 10 times the size of the sensor or the film frame (for the D90, that would be something smaller than about 8 inches that fills up the entire long dimension of the frame), it doesn't matter if you zoom out and move the camera close or zoom in and move the camera back--the depth of field will be the same, if you are framing the subject in the same way. Now I said the format isn't relevant in this case, but if you wanted to consider it for the sake of argument, here's how it would be relevant. Say that instead of zooming out and moving the camera closer you were to zoom out, keep the camera in the same place, and crop the image. This would be like using a smaller format, and would give you more depth of field, but since the D90 is already a small format camera, the loss in overall image quality from not using the whole frame isn't worth the increase in depth of field from shooting wide and cropping. Another thing to consider is, if you're in a situation where you can't use a tripod easily, stopping down for more depth of field will give you a longer shutter speed, which will reveal more camera shake. With a digital camera you can turn up the ISO setting to give you a faster shutter speed. A higher ISO will give you more image noise, but this is usually less of a problem than camera shake. Another solution for camera shake is to hold the camera more steadily--left hand palm up cradling the lens, right hand squeezing (not jabbing) the shutter release, elbows in and braced against your body, relax, and shoot between breaths.

Manual focus is even better. It's very difficult for any autofocus system to know what the subject is in close up photography, and food photography is usually close up photography.

Retinning isn't such an esoteric craft as people seem to think. There are probably places that can do this for you in Canada, but I usually use Atlantic Retinning, which used to be in Manhattan for something like a century, and moved out to New Jersey when Chelsea's industrial zone was taken over by fashionable art galleries-- http://www.retinning.com/ Turnaround time can be long with Atlantic Retinning, though, so I've been considering a couple of other possibilities-- http://www.metalcoatingcompany.com/ http://www.eastcoasttinning.com/index.html