Mjx

Agreed, but using a screen doesn't seem like a shortcut so much as an alternative. Just to get an idea of your point of departure, what characteristics are you aiming for, when you make a pizza?

I've never had a pizza stick to whatever it was baked on, so I'm not getting the non-stick argument for the screen. I can't imagine that heat transfer through a screen would ever be such that you'd get those charred spots on the underside of the dough (but you may not want that). The only real advantage I can see to a screen is that, being lighter, it would be easier to remove the pizza from the oven on the baking surface, but since a peal is pretty easy to get hold of in NYC, this seems a minor advantage.

Layered with white? What did it taste of?

No seriously, the CDC site is pretty accessible: The overviews are meant for everybody to read, and although they don't go into as much detail as the monographs and articles, they're comprehensive and useful (plus a great way to pass a rainy afternoon when you realize your mood is too cheerful, and you want to do something about it). I didn't find anything on the site (yet) that specifically addressed thick glop in tinned legumes, but I'll bet there's something in there!

Damn. That duck prosciutto is impressively beautiful and delicious-looking.

Pink slime was my thought, too.

Boiling won't destroy all bacterial toxins (although it is effective on one of the most common offenders in preserved foods, botulinum toxin), but even heat stable toxins are destroyed when cooked long enough at a high enough temperature. It's certainly a good idea to carefully boil tinned goods for ten minutes or more, before eating. Leaving aside the fact that the wikipedia article only states that these toxins remain stable at temperatures up to 100C (not at any temperature), wikipedia is not particularly reliable: anyone can edit it, anyone can make mistakes, and there isn't enough fact checking/copyediting. The statement about toxin stability doesn't even cite a source. Reliable (even if only for self-interested motives), original sources such as the CDC's website are a better bet: If wikipedia screws up, its an 'oops!'; if the CDC or a similar cite blows up on its facts, it's a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

Heat does destroy most (including botulinum toxin), if not all bacterial toxins; the cdc.gov site (hardly casual about foodborne illenss; e.g it recommends throughly cooking sprouts) adresses the prevention of foodborne illness, both briefly, in their overviews (www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/diseases/) and in individual monographs, also available on their site. The thing is, just getting things hot doesn't do the trick: You need to keep a rolling boil for a decent chunk of time to be reasonably certain. And if something looks dodgy, it isn't worth taking chances. I buy as few tinned/preserved/vacuum-packed things as possible, and use them immediately. Then, if something looks like it's gone to hell, I go back to the shop with it (yeh, they love me), I've still got the receipt.

If you have any friends in France who take cooking seriously (or friends who know people who take a cooking seriously), they might have some great suggestions. I'm afraid the first (and only) thing that came to mind is Dumas' Encyclopedia, not exactly contemporary cooking or detailed recipes.

Offhand, I'd say the gloop was gelatinized starch, but it could also have indicated some sort of bacterial growth (lots of nasties, e.g. C. botulinum, have no smell, that's never a safe indicator). I've come across tinned legumes of various sorts where the liquid had gone thick, and rinsed them well, then brought them to a boil in enough water to cover, and boiled them for 10+ minutes (I routinely do an extended boil for pretty much all vacuum packed/tinned goods goods, regardless). According to the CDC's downloadable Botulism Manual (1998), 'Botulinum toxin can be inactivated by heating to 176°F (80°C). Therefore, heating home-canned foods before consumption can reduce the risk of botulism intoxication.'); I've never had any problems. However, if in doubt (and botulism isn't the only possible pathogen, you can spend heaps of time freaking yourself out, investigating the CDC site), it can't hurt to err on the side of caution, and toss them.

After looking in vain for ostie, I went ahead and made panforte (really more of a pampepato) anyway: This is clearly more rustic-looking than pretty, but it tasted amazingly good, although sweeter than the ones I've bought. I surveyed about a dozen recipes, and decided to use David Lebovitz's recipe as a point of departure, but used rice flour instead of wheat flour. The fruit included some quince that I'd candied, and candied citron, ginger, and orange peal; with the exception of the last, I cut everything in fairly large chunks. The spices included cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, black pepper, and a pinch of salt. I heavily dusted the buttered parchment (and afterwards, when it was cooled, the top) with cacao powder, which offset the sweetness nicely.

Have you considered poaching in oil? Much gentler and more gradual than poaching in water or broth, and very recommended for delicate fish, so likely a good choice for the liver, too.

Panini doesn't mean roll or sandwich, it means a sandwich that's been toasted on a panini press and panini is the most succinct word for it. If I'm going to be ordering at an American restaurant, I'm going to say "give me one chicken panini and two ham paninis". I'm not going to say "give me one chicken panino and two ham panini" because I care more about the other person understanding me than trying to follow the grammar rules of a language that I'm not currently speaking. That's a 'toast'! (as I said, other nations muck about with foreign terms, too) In Italian, a panino is a roll. The word is also used to describe a sandwich made with a roll. Not toasted. If someone doesn't care what a word actually means, why even use it? The things called 'paninis' in the US seldom resemple what you'd get in Italy, why not call it a toasted sandwich? Seriously, this makes no sense, unless it's just a question of thinking it sounds fancier if a foreign languge is used. Which is pretty silly. Indeed, hence why "on mange les sushis" in French. Pluralizing "sushi" always makes me cringe, but it is perfectly grammatically correct French! The 's' pronounced, then? I'm a little surprised, since there are French words that sound the same in plural form as they do in the singular, even if they're written differently.

It's at times like this I wish you Americans would find another word for the language you use and abuse. "Au jus" is not an English word (or even a word) it's a phrase... Well, to be fair, the tendency to misuse/mispronounce foreign lanaguage terms isn't unique, or even most pronounced in the US, it's prevalent the world over (e.g. upthread, I mentioned the use of the word 'grape' for 'grapefruit' in Denmark; I could also mention 'expresso' pronounced as 'exPRAHso', and heaps of other misuses and mispronunciations... and don't get me started on the things that happen to foreign language terms in Italy). But for better or worse, the American language is still English.

Saying 'paninis' if you know it's incorrect is ridiculous (what's wrong with the words 'roll' or 'sandwich'?); so is 'with au jus'. There may be no way to get people to get their shit together about these things, but they're incorrect. It all makes me think of Miss Piggy using 'moi'. Absurd.

But the US is not the only island where 'au jus' crops up (for example, there are entire countries where they speak French correctly), it isn't even your own language you're mucking about with. There's a substantial difference between trying to freeze a language at a point in time (a few countries have made that effort), and avoiding the perpetration of wilful mistakes. I'm a copyeditor, so I hear the argument you've made all the time; it's as though people believe that no nation exists other than their own. You might argue that with the many idiotic terms that are are tolerated in the culinary world, this is nothing, but if you visit France, and ask for your whatever 'with au jus', and your waiter rolls his or her eyes, are you then going to complain the French are rude and arrogant? Language shifts, it's natural. But if you know that something is incorrect, it just makes no sense to defend the mistake, you suck it up, and avoid it in the future. I know what I'm talking about, because for a lot of my life, I've been learning one new language or another. Some of my mistakes (e.g. 'snot papir' to mean tissues) have been adopted by friends in a joking way, because they're funny and communicate clearly; most are dinner stories (my confusing the Danish for 'bra' and 'necessity'). Most countries do odd things to culinary terms from other languages, I've heard some beauts in Italy (I once spent most of a day trying to figure out 'peenat batr') and Denmark (Danes use 'grape' to mean 'grapefruit', which makes for some confusion when they travel outside DK); this isn't unique to the US. But regardless of where you are, or whose language you are attempting to use/incorporate into your own, it just makes no sense to run with what you know to be incorrect, then say 'Eeverybody is doing it' (unless you're 14 or so, then you get a pass ). That's not an argument: It's a really weak excuse for laziness.

It is incorrect usage, no matter how common it may be, as documented in Common Errors in English Usage.

In a French restaurant that might be a faux pas, but in American English "au jus" is thought of as a side sauce, not its literal French meaning. If you are at a deli and the waitress asked you "would you like jus, with your sandwich?", you would think her an idiot or pretentious. She is going to ask, "would you like au jus, with your sandwich?" You can buy packets of "au jus" in any supermarket in the U.S., you are not buying a packet labeled "jus". If a waitress knows enough to ask whether I want something with jus, she'll ask whether I want it 'au jus'; this isn't idiotic or pretentious, it's acknowledging a well-recognized convention. I haven't seen packets of any substance marked 'au jus' in US supermarkets; where does this happen? Mass misuse doesn't make something okay. If someone can't wrangle terms in other language, better to stick with what they know; there's nothing so damn special about being multilingual, so attempting it, only to fail, is silly.

Your diligence is admirable. But I'll trust my grandchildren to the folks with the lab coats. It's not a new science, and it feeds millions. I get your point about the folks with the lab coats knowing what they're doing when it comes to the science of producing edible meat. The ammonia solution used as an antimicrobial is "generally recognized as safe" by the USDA, and clearly scores of people have been eating meat containing pink slime and not getting sick (i.e. there is no epidemic of illness resulting from using it). . . . . The accumulation of toxins (such as ammonia) or their effects in the body can take a number of years to be clearly evident/identifiable, if it posed a problem; you wouldn't be that likely to see a sudden outbreak of acute illness. As for the people in lab coats knowing what they're doing, well, maybe, but they're working for enormous industries, and the profits these businesses make from producing cheap product offsets the costs of reimbursing even several thousand parents for potential harmed/dead kids. A few heads might roll, but... that's it. I personally wouldn't care to take for granted the level of safety involved in producing something that massively profitable (I can't get too worked up about the 'ick' factor, the components don't sound that different from what is in a lot of hot dogs, which don't seem to have experienced a massive downswing in popularity).

Is this an example of inverted inverted snobbery? Nope. Just straight-up snobbery, at worst

What I'm loving about this thread is the way it really brings out the inverted snobbery, self-righteous justifications of indifference, truly entertaining lack of historical perspective, and complete failure to cite credible sources, generously dusted with an unwitting credulousness. My heretical statement: I'm a bit tired of every conceivable venue offering a tasting menu, since frankly, most places don't do anything that original or effective with it, certainly not enough to justify the prices they usually see fit to ask. In the hands of a few, it impresses; when everybody does it, it just makes the whole concept look silly (N.B. my subjective opinion, it should go without saying). would that be ground grandmother, freeze dried grandmother, or made into stock? Oh, sustainably, locally-sourced grandmother, it goes without saying: you know, toenail and miscellaneous hair trimmings, ground fine, and sold at only three exclusive venues, globally (one is in Greenland; the other two are actually shifting locations, and can only be located via encrypted Tweets).

Artful. Not a food term, but one I see increasingly used in descriptions of food presentation to mean 'artistic'. Just say 'artistic', already; arranging your figs and prosciutto in the shape of a daisy may meet strike you as artistic, but by no stretch of the imagination is it particularly clever or skilful (i.e. 'artful').

You have some points, but... it's easy for this to slide rapidly to the other end of the spectrum, into inverted snobbery; it's something I see a lot, and defending myself against that is as much of a bore as pointing out that my drinking instant coffee when I'm too lazy to fire up the Silvia does not make me one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. A sense of humour tends to be hard to hold onto, for some reason (part of it – and please understand I'm not suggesting you're doing this – has to do with the fact that that a popular, sleazy strategy is for someone to insult someone else, then accuse them of lacking a sense of humour). I haven't got the equipment for a lot of modernist cuisine (haven't got the books, either), but I do browse the related forums, and honestly, they seem pretty level-headed to me. Who doesn't like experimenting with science in the kitchen? Taken to an extreme, any concept is goofy; getting produce that is easily grown locally from nearby is a good idea for reasons that go beyond the distance travelled: I like like having an idea of who's grown my food, and under what circumstances. This is self-evident (essentially, what I said previously, regarding the problem with taking things to extremes). When it comes to combating disease, I'm right with you. On the other hand, if a small producer is willing to commit to keeping a really, really clean herd, and have the veterinary supervision to ensure this, I'm also behind being able to get my hands on raw milk. I don't love dairy, and see no point in humans drinking the milk of a large grazing animal (don't get me started with the calcium argument, unless you've thoroughly read and can cite at least three recent academic articles published in reputable journals, discussing osteoporosis/rickets and milk consumption in the Western world), but have to admit that there is a distinct difference between the pasteurized and the unpasteurized product. FDA-approved doesn't mean a hell of a lot, since the FDA has made plenty of nightmarishly stupid calls. On the other hand, no, there isn't anything horribly wrong with a bit of artificial this and that, although the creeping advance of dubious synthetics where I don't expect them is kind of getting my goat. . . . . Might could be... not one of the threads I turn to often, since it isn't I'm not very knife focused, but if I was, and the tone struck me as unduly macho, I'd just give it a miss. While I don't think it's a heretical view, I do think that the surprise/entertainment aspects of food have become a bit overemphasized in some places. I love a beautiful presentation, but honestly, my life is pretty interesting, so if the food is simply well made, I'm happy with that, and I'm actually fine with my main of beef not being artistically presented in the form of an orchid.

Dinner may not be an occasion to Tweet or text, but the tradition of taking pictures in restaurants goes back to the 1920s, at least (think of all the groups you can find, taken at various restaurants). I feel uncomfortable taking pictures at restaurants (I also reflexively apologize to inanimate objects if I back into them), but have done it on a few occasions, when the food was so lovely that I wanted to be able to show friends/family who were not present at the meal. The quality tends to be so-so, because the meal is about the food, and the pictures are not intended for a large audience, so I don't fiddle with settings and such. Depending on the venue, I may ask whether it is okay to take pictures of my food (no one has ever said No, although on a few occasions, the waiter or other staff wanted to be photographed, too). I think that if people are courteous about it, and keep in mind that in some places/situations even asking is likely to be inappropriate (e.g. if there are highly-strung celebrities anywhere in the room), taking pictures shouldn't really be a problem.

Frankly, I caught a sardonic tone (something about the reference to where she was seated), but I may be mistaken. What's not making sense to me about the reactions to her review are a) the sort of dumb sniggering most people would never dare indulge in, if the same article were written by an 85-year-old woman in Somalia, and b) the disingenuous 'I just cannot believe people don't realize chain restaurant food is rubbish' tone of so many, apparently intended to make the commenters appear sophisticated and discerning; the actual effect is incredibly provincial and gauche (not to mention, her writing is far better than that of most of the imbeciles who see fit to air their views online). Compared to many places, Grand Forks is relatively small and isolated. The opening of a restaurant of any sort is, not surprisingly, an event. Since the local demographic is not dominated by Italians or those who travel extensively and have a nuanced appreciation of any of the Italian cuisines, the Olive Garden clearly provides an attractive combination of 'otherness' and accessibility. Ms. Hagerty is probably far more satisfied with her life than plenty of people I know, who have easy access to fine examples of nearly every cuisine under the sun. Why patronize her by feeling sad about the limited options that surround her, when she manages to make the most of the options she does have?