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David A. Goldfarb

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Everything posted by David A. Goldfarb

  1. If I use anything, it's likely to be a dusting of flour on the fruit before assembling the pie. For whatever reason, I've never cared much for the consistency of things thickened with cornstarch, though I use it occasionally where it seems appropriate.
  2. East Side or West? Finally another Clevelander responds, and I'm still the only one who knows this as "Rocky Mountain toast" (East Side). ← Eastsider here (Cleveland Heights), I never actually ate this at home only at girl scout camp and that is what everyone called it. It was just regular bread. Before I posted I googles Texas toast and was really surprised to see it was a kind of bread I had never heard of that bread before. ← Must be a Girl Scout thing. My father always did most of the cooking at home, but this was one of the things my mother made, and she grew up in Beachwood. We moved around a bit when I was a kid, but we mostly lived in Lyndhurst (Ohio) when I was growing up.
  3. East Side or West? Finally another Clevelander responds, and I'm still the only one who knows this as "Rocky Mountain toast" (East Side).
  4. Yes, pretty much, we're mostly in the city, but I think there are a few others in the New Paltz area.
  5. Paul--Our supplier is a guy named Herb Litts. We have one person who lives up in New Paltz who usually coordinates the order, collects names of people interested and works out the distribution. We buy shares of 1/8 of a side (some purchasing multiple eighths), and our coordinator takes orders and makes it work out so that we have an even number of full sides. The meat is butchered and frozen, and we all have a big gathering to split it up. The regular muscle cuts are included in the share. Organ meats and bones are giveaways at the end of the process. The one issue I and others have had with this arrangement is the butchering--steaks cut too thin, some strange cuts like a rolled trimmed brisket instead of a whole brisket, and lots of burger that I'd rather get as a whole cut and grind myself as needed. We could have the meat cut differently, but when it's being split between several people, it's hard to meet all demands. The beef has generally been good though. If you want me to put you in touch, send me a PM.
  6. I've been buying beef cooperatively with some friends from a small producer in the Hudson Valley, and after a few rounds, we've been asking for grass-fed corn-finished beef, which has the flavor of grass-fed beef with a bit more marbling. It usually grades somewhere between choice and prime.
  7. Or PFK, which you can find in Quebec--"Poulet frit Kentucky." ← What is wrong with that, David? I'm not a native francophone, but it looks like a faithful translation. It is a faithful translation, and I'm generally opposed to the imperialism of the English language, but it seems a bit perverse to translate a corporate name that as far as I know isn't translated anywhere else. For instance, here's a KFC in Paris-- http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=utf-8&clien...2,340.16,,0,5.4 Just to clarify, this isn't just what they call the product on the menu, but it's the actual name of the restaurant--"PFK"--only in Quebec. Out of curiosity, I looked up various KFC websites and it's "KFC" in India, and "Rostik's" in Russia, though it still has the KFC logo in the Latin alphabet. Here's KFC in China-- http://www.thebeijingguide.com/deutsche/modern/index.html
  8. Or PFK, which you can find in Quebec--"Poulet frit Kentucky."
  9. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my mother called this "Rocky Mountain Toast." To my knowledge, no testicles were involved.
  10. I've been using Bourdain's garlic confit method from the _Les Halles Cookbook_ lately, which is 2-3 heads of garlic separated, but roasted with the peels on in a little olive oil and maybe some thyme at 375 F for around 20-25 minutes (I don't have the book in front of me, but off the top of my head, I think I've got it all in there). The garlic cloves are popped out of the peels after cooling, and the garlic and oil can be chilled. As I recall, he does it in an aluminum foil packet, but I just use a small copper casserole. The garlic has a nice rounded flavor this way, and it's easy enough to make that I don't need to make more than I can use in a reasonable amount of time, which I usually consider to be up to a month, though if I were being really careful, I would probably use it within a week.
  11. I've occasionally heard "tender-crisp" used to describe the consistency of properly stir-fried vegetables, and it seems like an apt term for vegetables that have been nicely browned on the outside in a really hot wok while still crunchy on the inside.
  12. I haven't tried it yet, but I've been considering getting one of these, which would suit fish that I'm likely to scale-- http://korin.com/Fine-Fish-Scaler?sc=7&category=36179 They also sell a coarse one for large fish.
  13. I'd call it a success. Amazing what you can learn on internet forums. Last time I was in Sag Harbor I'd planned a seafood dinner, and a friend I was visiting mentioned that he'd seen some good looking oysters in the fish market, but by the time I got there, the clams looked better, so I got three dozen littlenecks, only to learn that my friend was allergic to clams and his wife was somewhat ambivalent about bivalves in general. At least the chowder froze well.
  14. A favorite Roz Chast cartoon from _The New Yorker_-- http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=120703
  15. Big improvement! The third one is your best yet. On the first two, where you're shooting more straight down on the plate, think about the shape of the plate and how you want it to look. In your mind, you know it's round, but it's not necessarily going to look round unless it's aligned and centered--not that you always want the plate aligned and centered, but if you're shooting approximately straight down from the top, distortions become more noticeable, and could be visually distracting. In the first shot, for instance, the front of the plate seems to be looming a bit. You can reduce this effect a bit by moving the camera farther from the plate and zooming in, but stay within the optical zoom range of the lens (as opposed to the extended digital zoom range), or you'll lose optical quality.
  16. I had a great uncle who began a long, successful career as a wholesale electronics distributor as a wholesale rep for a company in Ohio that made electric skillets. Somewhere in a box in storage I have a pair of cufflinks that he gave to his brother (my grandfather) in the shape of electric skillets. All my grandparents had electric skillets. I think I remember them using them for potato latkes and maybe fried chicken.
  17. I've been visiting family and we've got a lot of relatives over, so yesterday I made bacon and eggs for breakfast for about eight people with the idea of using the bacon fat to brown the meat for a batch of chili for about ten people at dinner, so I made the bacon using a Calphalon anodized rondeau of around 12 inches and in a bare aluminum Leyse Toroware fry pan of the same size, both of which would be involved in said chili making. Leyse has been taken over by Vollrath, so this pan is of the same weight as a modern Vollrath aluminum pan. I'd guess the anodized Calphalon is around 25 years old, and the bare Toroware is around 35 years old. The bare aluminum has a lot more pitting than the anodized, and the pan has been warped and hammered back a number of times, but it's also been used more for frying on high heat. The metal seems to be of the same gauge in both pans. It's not a fair comparison, of course, since the burners were different, and the pans are of different design, but I was getting a lot more sticking on the bare aluminum. I was also surprised at how much more even the heat was in the rondeau, which was on a smaller burner and took longer to heat up, but once it was going, the bacon cooked faster and more evenly, mainly I think due to the extra mass on the sides. Off the topic of the thread, I discovered a beautiful Griswold #9 cast iron skillet that I don't think I've seen for about thirty years, when it would have been at my grandmother's house. It has to be at least 60 years old. I think this is the one that my Grandpa Buster used to use every day to make eggs with onions and potatoes, which I think is what he customarily ate either before or after his shift driving a cab. My father tells a story that once when he was a teenager, he made something in his father's skillet and washed it out afterward, and Grandpa was none too happy. It handled yesterday's eggs with aplomb. Now I remember my grandmother had a bigger cast iron skillet for fried chicken and such. I wonder if that ended up with one of my cousins.
  18. Pie and tart doughs hold up well in the fridge for a few days and can be frozen easily, if you want to do that part in advance and have something fresh baked on the day you serve it. You could also make a tart with a shell that you can bake a day or two in advance, then add fruit and a custard and bake the assembled tart on the day you plan to serve it. Both of these approaches don't have much downside and let you present something fresh even as you shift some of the labor to a more convenient time.
  19. I've been developing a collection of such sauces in four-ounce plastic containers in the freezer. They're very handy for turning out a seemingly complicated dinner quickly.
  20. When my grandparents said "nosh" it was okay, because they also said "nosherei" in a native and unselfconscious way. But how Brits of a certain generation got "nosh," I've never been quite certain.
  21. I recently discovered that I'm not so far by public transportation from neighborhoods like Ozone Park and Howard Beach. Anyone know of any decent old-line New York-Italian food out there that doesn't require membership in an "Italian Social Club"?
  22. Out of curiosity I checked the Vollrath website for aluminum seasoning instructions, and Vollrath would seem to be the source for the instructions on the Globe Equipment site. Click here to download a PDF from Vollrath-- http://www.vollrathco.com/document_controller.jsp?id=16
  23. Maybe the surface of a freshly spun aluminum pan just has more tooth than one that's been scrubbed and worn down with use, polymerized fats aside. An older pan will have pits and knicks, but maybe the greater part of the surface is just smoother.
  24. I always like Bombay Brasserie for Indian when in London. If you haven't done it, high tea at the Savoy is something you should do at least once. Be sure to stop in the loo in the lobby on your way out. The food shop at Fortnum and Mason is also not to be missed. I usually pick up single malts at the duty free in Heathrow on the way home.
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