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I have to say it is one of the few times I have seen a liver dish which looked completely unappetizing. I have no idea what the thinking behind this molding was. It is very offputting.

Indeed. But as far as I can tell, Cantonese home cooks don't get too excited or worried about it, either. Two of my silly sample were Cantonese speakers. But there also seems to be an amusing tendency for some westerners to think they have stumbled upon some deep and significant, secret oriental mystery. It is a simple Maillard reaction - combined with slightly burnt oil. I think this is probably what is going on here. It is difficult to season and cook well out of your native context, and much easier to blame the flame. Turning it into a lesson on cultural differences takes a lot of the sting out too.

I feel like the posting of this stuff is some sort of performance art whirring straight over my head.

Stick them inside a kitchen aid whisk attachment or just cut a part of the paper egg crate and place the whole thing in. The crate stays down and sturdy because it becomes soaked, and it holds on to the eggs.

In the New Restaurant you don't get to order and you are supposed to pay attention to the food (and your camera) and not your dining companions, so the excess noise makes perfect sense.

You can do whatever you like. To me the dish looks unappetizing, so I would try the salmon sans accoutrements.

The brine makes it so the albumin doesn't bloom to the surface and make your salmon look dirty.

It certainly performed well in any number of those taste tests. Tests like that are silly, especially when it comes to something like vinegar where the traditional method product hasn't been available for a long time and is just coming back on the market. People react to what they believe vinegar is supposed to taste like, which generally means garbage, so better things are inevitably ranked worse. Really dumb.

There have been a lot of untenable farm policies in the last 75 years in this country. Perhaps the worst was all of the dumping of excess crops on developing nations in order to keep prices here up as "aid" to farmers which basically served to drive the local farming structures bankrupt as they couldn't compete with free or ultra low prices, and then when yields were lower in the US, and thus prices already high, there was nobody set up to produce food overseas. Why do I mention this? Because that food was not ethical or unethical food, it was food. Hell, if you asked a lot of people at the time, it was ultra-ethical to "help the farmer" which is not at all removed from many of our other feel good policies still in place. Anyway, the ethics of the farmer, seedmaker, congressman or bureaucrat are not transferred to the food, they are human qualities. Likewise, food cannot transfer good ethics to the denizens of Whole Foods or insert favorite locavore hipster food outlet despite what the label conscious consumers might think or hope. By the way, your beans are great. I don't have a comment on whether they are ethical, though I understand your practices are. I do think they are absolutely delicious.

...and marketed. Is there a problem with using integrity in reference to food? The personification of food is meaningless marketing drivel, but I don't have a particular problem with it.

In my experience you need to pre render the duck breast before sous vide or you are going to have to keep it in the pan a long time after in order to shrink the fat layer. So place it in a cool pan, cook over medium to medium low until the fat is thinned down, then refrigerate and vacuum. The fat layer will insulate the meat so it doesn't cook. No reason to cook the legs over 68C unless you want them stringy or are pressed for time.

I wonder how long until Michael Symon has to "clarify" his position.

No, it really is. If you are labeled a racist you ought to lose your job, be outed in public, shamed. It doesn't matter if you really are, and it certainly doesn't matter whether you are competent, whether you act fairly toward people, what matters is your inner thoughts. You may have mistaken my use of social blacklisting as blacklisting by her social acquaintances, but I meant blacklisting by "polite" society. Of course, she did use a bad word with her husband back when, and there are accusations, so it is fair anyway. I guess.

Should I throw away my LC4 chaise longue? Le Corbusier was a Nazi symp and I am afraid my ass might light on fire from the thought energy. Strike that, he pretty much stole the design from Charlotte Perriand, so maybe I should throw it away because of his misogyny, or because of her radical leftism. I'm so confused, can I just enjoy my damn chair?

In other words, it's when people say what they really believe. So you truly are proposing a social regime of thought crime? Didn't we learn anything from the red scare and McCarthyism? And no, I understand the first amendment, I am talking about social blacklisting for incorrect thought, not government hearings. I'll judge people by their actions, thank you.

Fraises des bois and maras des bois are totally different. Maras are a hybrid, an exquisitely delicious hybrid, but you won't find them on the California coast. Or really in markets here, unfortunately.

You need liquid lecithin, not powder. They probably (99% sure) have it at Berkeley Bowl.

Wait a minute. You "consulted" with them on your tasting menu prior to your arrival? Why in the world would you do this? Is it a food blogger thing?

Gourmet and More stocks fleur de maquis.

I don't think you understand my point.

Oh come now. This info was leaked by the plaintiff in the suit looking to get money out of Deen. The allegations will never be proved, because they are not part of the case. They are completely peripheral. The leak was to press her into settling, which is hardly an uncommon tactic in civil suits with celebrities. So don't talk about her "actions" hurting these poor little people. Blame the attorney and plaintiff. The leak is the proximate cause of their potential misery.

I guess it always comes back to corporate greed in the end.

And so your answer is no? Read what "David Ross" assumes to be fact in his unreadable posts and tell me how they relate to the transcript and Alan Colmes piece. Look, I think she is a piece of shit, but I think stupidity is also a crime against humanity, and there is a lot of it on this thread and in the reaction to her.

Correct me if I am wrong, but what we know is that she admitted to using a certain word at an earlier time in her life. Anything else is the accusation of the plaintiff in an unsettled case. You people are assuming it is true when there is no reason to, and there is every reason to be skeptical of it. If the facts have changed, I am all ears.

I'm confused. Who was talking about repressing anyone's 1st amendment rights? Can you please explain where any suggestion of the government banning someone's right to free speech was made? The first amendment does not protect you from people thinking you are a vile human being for expressing controversial views, it only protects you from government persecution. Well, flying the Nazi flag in Germany is illegal, so it would not be surprising for somebody to see a Nazi flag flying and think "that person is going to be fined, and perhaps go to jail." Not saying this was Annabelle's point, but the person who first made the statement didn't take into account the various legal strictures on speech in Germany and throughout Europe, so the door was certainly open for the interpretation. That's not even to get into the different historical and cultural context of the oppressions at hand or the current politically correct ways "the Jews ruined the world" has been reworked for public consumption in Germany and other collaborating nations, so the comment was lame on its face and quibbling about definitions of speech protection probably isn't worth the time.