Mjx

Danish cuts don't entirely overlap US cuts, but it's more or less shank meat (I've often used this this cut). It's dry and tasteless. The sauce tastes fantastic though (I got my hands on a great recipe). I think it'd make a good sauce, if I can face all the dicing involved. I tried shredding a piece and it resisted my efforts completely.

Made a peposo today, which involves simmering the beef for a couple of hours in tomatoes, followed by another hour's simmer with a glass of wine added to the mix. I've made it a million times, and thought it was pretty much impossible to mess up. These days, I'm sharing a kitchen, and the only burner I could use for the stew runs very hot, so a simmer isn't possible; I pushed the pot to one side of the burner, but although it reduced the temperature, it wasn't enough. I had a bad feeling about this, but hoped for the best. At the two hour mark, the beef was dry and rubbery. I added the wine anyway, and gave it another hour. Still dry and chewy, not good at all. Do any of you know of some way that this can be saved, or is boiling it from the outset simply a recipe for irreversible ruin? Worst case scenario, I guess I'll shred or hack up the beef, turning the stew to a sauce, since the tomato base around it still tastes really good, but I have to admit that breaking down about a kilo and a half of beef wasn't how I'd planned to spend tomorrow morning... I wanted to break in my new food mill

YES!!!!! The Rösle just arrived, and it's sitting here, all shiny and new. Now ready to take on the half dozen or so kilos of quinces that my boyfriend's mother has harvested this year Performance report to follow.

It's also possible that they have a 'no photography' policy without one, because there are rather a lot of high-profile people who won't eat at a place that doesn't have this policy.

I think the deal with raw chicken is largely cultural: I recall a conversation with a fellow student who came from China, in which he mentioned that raw snake really does taste like raw chicken, and he didn't seem to regard either as unusual (although my initial thought was, 'He ate raw chicken? How is he not dead?!'). I just find it difficult to believe that chickens in Asian countries are freer of salmonella than those in NA or EU countries. On the other hand, since I, and plenty of other people I know, have had salmonellosis (none from chicken, however, no idea why), I'm not feeling tremendously inclined to ditch my preference for chicken that is fully cooked.

Well that, and... try hocking an ice cube (even an obscenely expensive one with a silly name)

Probably would not admit this if I wasn't already halfway through a glass of this stuff, but it struck me that a splash of Cointreau might be an interesting addition to a glass Kirsberry, and--provided that you, like myself, find the concept of 'too sweet' more or less meaningless--I can kind of recommend this. Although it's sweet, it has a fair amount of dimension.

So is that a resounding "No Thanks!" on the stone ice cubes? They didn't really impress me either. Actually, for me, the entire ice-for-drinks topic is sort of academic, because I don't like my drinks that cold. But I have to admit that I bought the rocks in a 'why not' moment during the latter part of an Icelandair flight, where they were sold as 'Icelandic lava stones'. I failed to interest my boyfriend in them, used them occasionally as paperweights, then conscientiously put them in the freezer, next to the paint rollers. They're STILL a better value than the Gläce Luxury Ice... what bewilders me more than the overpriced ice itself, however, is trying to even begin to imagine the mindset of someone who would buy it. I can't wrap my head around that, at all.

Well, there are the stone ice cubes They make dandy little paper weights, too. AND they're cheaper than the 'luxury ice'.

I can't really tell, but the cap looks like it's plastic: if that's the case, I think the bottle you've got there is more recent than the 40s (I know plastic goes back to well before the 40s, but not its use for this sort of cap, as far as I'm aware).

Crap. You beat me to it.

That isn't actually a brand, but the trademark for an export consortium (http://trademark.markify.com/trademark-owner/uspto/consorzio+per+l%27esportazione+del+prosciutto+s.r.l./160305). Nothing about the producer on the label?

There might be a difference between freshly-boiled and reboiled water, and up to a certain point, I acted as though that was the case (never tested it, however), but then decided that the difference was unlikely to be significant enough to justify my wasting water by pouring it away.

If you're in the mood for some not-so-dirty hot dogs, you might give Dogmatic a whirl (south side of 17th Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue). Whenever I'm back in NYC, I have breakfast at Whole Foods (coffee + larabar/fruit) many, if not most days, and it's pretty reasonable. If you're going to be in NYC 4+ days, get unlimited 7-day Metrocards (unless you think you're likely to take ten or fewer separate rides each during your stay), especially if your plans may be scattered over the city on any given day. I love walking, but if I've spent several hours walking about uptown, then want to eat downtown, I'm not always in the mood for an hour-long walk, and the individually-paid fares mount really fast. Once you know what you've laid out for transit, you also have a better idea of what you can spend on food. I'd skip the Empire State building, and go to Rockefeller Center for your view: Not only is there a much better selection of food around the the latter, but you'll actually get the Empire State building in your photos, and the queue is shorter (I admit I may still be in a grouch because Mosaico – just a few minutes from the Empire State building – closed, and I loved their food).

Looking forward to this, percyn, especially and winter specialities you share!

Hell no! There are some mushrooms that are pretty unambiguously okay or not, but these aren't among them (and I do eat certain wild mushrooms). I know this echoes what everyone else said, but I don't think this particular 'No' can be overstated.

When I was a kid, my family spent several years in Western NYS, and I recall my mum referring a lot to a couple of books by Euell Gibbons, called Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Healthful Herb. From what I recall (I remember using them too, and bringing home my finds), they seem worth at least a look, even though hundreds of books on this subject must have been published since then.

I'd buy it, and I'm generally a neurotic freak about things like sell-by dates and possible food poisoning. Properly cured prosciutto is, as ScoopKW pointed out, something that ages, and it does so very nicely. The sell-by date is a legal requirement, even in Italy, where you can buy it at any stage from very young to well-aged. My only concern would be about the original quality... how the heck did they get so cheap?! But almost certainly worth a go.

Here (in Denmark) it also tends to be really damp, and I've seen friends string them on lengths of thread, then hang the thread-fuls of chanterelles in a dry corner, which seems to do the trick nicely.

Show me some stats that even begin to support this. My experience – and I too travel a lot (and speak several languages, and make part of my living doing translation), have waited tables, and know plenty of people who have waited tables/still do – just doesn't support this. Difference is, I know that any one person's experience, even if it includes lots of other people's war stories, is not enough to base this sort of conclusion on. Perhaps NYC doesn't count as a tourist city? But I think I'll stop here: like pretty much else in this thread at this point, I'm just repeating myself, and frankly, I'm fine with agreeing to disagree.

Well... because even if the generalizations were mostly true, that would be an example of what's not an acceptable reason to not tip? I'm finding it troubling that so many of the generalizations about foreigners in the US seem to be based on hearsay, not direct experience. In the time I waited tables, I was stiffed by Americans exclusively (it was the sort of town that is not exactly featured in travel guides), but there is just no way that I'd draw conclusions about American tipping behaviour from that. I've never been in the company of foreigners who failed to tip generously, but I know that this was often at least partly because I impressed upon them the importance of their tip to the waiter's earnings, and know that there are visiting foreigners who don't tip, for a variety of reasons. But dismissing foreigners as as a group of thoughtless non-tippers doesn't seem particularly reasonable or accurate. Every nation produces its share of thoughtful and appalling travellers, so why slag off one group, and hold up another as models of good behaviour? People remember the extremes, whether it's 'That group of inconsiderate boors/cheap bastards from [pick anyplace on this planet], who got $800 worth of food and tipped nothing', or 'That group from [pick anyplace on this planet] who tipped 25% and came back twice more, and did it again.' ETA: The OP question was, What are reasonable grounds for not tipping? No one involved in this discussion has suggested that not being a US citizen is an acceptable reason for not tipping, although it does explain why some visitors to the US might not think to tip, and educating people about this practice is important. Anyone who's ever tried to explain US tipping, however, is probably familiar with the incredulity/bewilderment that accompany trying to wrap one's head around the persistence of a practice (in the US) that would be condemned in a third-world country as disturbingly exploitive.

But the question originally raised wasn't about the tipping system as such (that was taken as a given), but what a waiter has to do or not do, to merit being undertipped, or not tipped at all. Just showing up isn't enough, any more than it is with any other job. It's a tough job, and I think it's reasonable to cut slack, but if the waiter is rude or negligent, he or she is not doing his or her job, and it's reasonable for the tip (or lack thereof) to reflect this. Some people would add 'incompetence' to the list of tipping offenses, but that's arguable (I come down on the lenient side of that). And... that's pretty much the gist of it, right? There are heaps of corollary/collateral arguments, and they've been raised, here, but they really seem like entirely different topics.

At $45, it might be worth buying, even to just satisfy your curiosity, although that price seems almost alarmingly low. The people we bought prosciutto from when we were in Parma recommended keeping it at 18C (64F), if I remember correctly (it's been a while). Incidentally, we bought bought a small commercial slicer, too; there are people who can hand slice beautifully (they have a competition for this at the annual Langhirano prosciutto festival), but we never acquired the skill, despite our best efforts and sharpest knives.

Hm. I actually thought that you were concerned about it being somehow derogatory towards the French, but I can't imagine anyone other then the chronically offended being bothered by that. Mostly, it made me think of the Monty Python 'Crunchy Frog' sketch, which is sort of gross... but pretty funny, so why not? Did I miss something?

Mostly, the US tipping situation really underscores the character of a restaurant guest, and the full-blown berk will dazzle with his or her indifference or stinginess, but this holds for both Americans and foreign visitors. I continue to have difficulty convincing many Europeans that such wage conditions are possible (especially in places like NYC, which are as expensive as Denmark), that they truly exist; they really don't 'get' it. I've spoken with plenty who, at least initially, worried that 'tipping' might even be a sort of dodge being played on foreigners, to take advantage of their ignorance of local custom. Once they're convinced, the Europeans I know have tipped appropriately. It just doesn't strike me that visiting foreigners are worse offenders in this matter than Americans, and one German guide can't be taken as representative (I'm curious, which one is it? Is it full of other equally charming advice?). And let's face it, if you don't take it for granted, as Americans do, not having a clear idea of how much you're going to pay up front for your meal gives a kind of uncomfortable feeling, which is naturally going to lead to questions.