SethG

Thanks again for participating. Another controversy for you: In your first work, Brother Juniper's Bread Book, you address a criticism leveled at commercial bread by John Thorne in his book Outlaw Cook. Thorne romanticizes wild-yeast (sourdough) bread, baked in a brick oven, as the only bread worth making-- and in my view he over-romanticizes it. In your book, you defend the professional or home baker who relies on commercial yeast, arguing that there are many ways to address the problem of bread, and that the baker can think of his or her own approaches to many different bread issues as artisanal, even while using commercial yeast. Thorne responded to your essay with some faint praise of your book-- but he basically derides your Brother Juniper bread as reliant on flavorings, and states a preference for breads that create greatness from just flour, water, and salt. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this issue some twelve years later. It seems that in your own works on bread you have moved toward Thorne's position, if not on the subject of the outdoor brick oven, than at least on the issue of the ingredients of what you call "world class" bread, which extracts its flavor from the wheat, and not from imaginative additives. You've devoted much of your attention to the ways in which we can coax the most out of just flour, water, and salt, and focused less on things like Tex-Mex Cumin bread. On the other hand, your multigrain Struan bread--which is chock-full of extra ingredients-- is such a great achievement that I imagine you're still quite proud of it, whatever Thorne thinks. Thanks for any thoughts you have to add.

Let me be the latest to thank you for participating in this Q&A! Your books taught me to bake bread; I'm forever in your debt. In the Bread Baker's Apprentice, you tell the exciting tale of your victory in the Beard competition and your subsequent journey to France to visit with several different bakers. You credit Mr. Gosselin of Paris with the pain a'lancienne that you feature in your book, and you trumpet the bread as a product of a new technique you call delayed fermentation: the dough is mixed cold and allowed to sit in the fridge overnight before it rises, giving the flavor-producing bacteria a head start on the yeast. (Forgive me if I've recounted this incorrectly-- I'm going by memory.) Some have angrily denounced your pain a'lancienne as being completely different than what Gosselin actually makes. For my part, I've always thought that it would be very strange for you falsely to give credit to someone else for such a fantastic, easy bread! What's the real story? Who deserves credit, Gosselin or Reinhart?

Perhaps this is a sign that the New York Times restaurant critic-- permanent or interim-- retains more power than many of us have posited here? I think this is very sad. My wife and I had several wonderful meals at Union Pacific, all of them pre-TV Rocco. I'm sorry to see him brought so low by his ambitions, if that is indeed what's happened. He's a very talented chef, and I hope that despite his stated intentions he'll end up back in a kitchen in NYC sometime soon.

Hey, Hathor, how much for the porcinis? I recently went looking for fresh porcini, only to find them at Whole Foods for $30 a pound. (I didn't buy them.)

You're right about that. The real challenge in 30-minute cooking is to make good food quickly without relying on expensive cuts of meat. Grimes doesn't seem at all concerned with economy, however: It'd be nice if we could all afford to eat like this every night, but most of us cannot.

Never thought I'd say this: I miss William Grimes. I think you're being too hard on him, Toliver. He acknowledges his snobby standards up front, and although he disapproves of the canned peaches, he grudgingly concedes that Pepin makes a good dessert out of them. I'd like to read pieces that are this well written every week in the food section of the New York Times.

Thanks, I eventually got the beeswax, although I still haven't gotten around to the caneles. Hmmm.... I was happy to see the downtown market up and running today (Tuesday). I got some bartlett pears, tomatillos and cilantro at Migliorelli, and some apples (something "Crisp" apples) from another stand.

This seems about right to me. I had a nice lunch there with Suzanne F several months back, and I'd say it hit all the right notes without really inspiring us. I'd go back, although I haven't. Do the Vietnamese refer to their country as "Nam?" I was under the impression it was just Americans, and maybe no Americans other than Principal Skinner.

I made it to the Thursday downtown market too late for most of the stands, but I acquired an impressive bunch of "Sammarzano" [sic] plum tomatoes, which I peeled, seeded, diced and used to top two pizzas. Yesterday in Brooklyn I bought peaches and nectarines (from Kernan), some zucchini blossoms, green beans, boston lettuce, some beefsteak tomatoes (the last few weeks have definitely been disappointing, tomato-wise), and some of those tasty cape gooseberries about which Florence Fabricant wrote this week. I wanted raspberries but they were moldy, right there in the boxes at the greenmarket!

Susan, good to see you larbing... er, blogging, this week! This comes from way back at the beginning of your blog, but I couldn't let it pass without comment: Does that sound like heaven or what?

I had to work at the courthouse on Sunday night, but there wasn't much to do and I got out of there at 9:00 p.m. My family had vacated the city for the weekend and it was a beautiful night, so I just walked uptown without any particular goal in mind until it occurred to me that I might be able to get a seat at the bar at Babbo. And I got one-- I was lucky to be dining solo. I was seated right away, much to the apparent irritation of several couples waiting for the dining room. One couple walked in right behind me and waited another half hour for seats at the bar. I felt very grateful for the seat, but as I went in on a whim I had no guidance as to what to order. I went with the mint "love letters" (large ravioli) with lamb sausage to start, and I was very impressed. The portion was very large, and I tried to linger over every bite. The mint presence was much stronger than the sausage; every taste was bright and refreshing, but was balanced by the slight savory element of the sausage and a hint of spiciness in the tomato sauce. I also had the special entree of brined, roasted pork loin topped with onions, in a reduced pork dripping sauce which also contained fennel. This didn't send me quite as much as the mint dish, but it was really satisfying. I finished with the peach crostada. The peach part was great, but I thought the vanilla gelato that came with it stole the show. I drank two quartinos, one white, the other red. I let the bartender/server help me out there and I wish I could remember more about them. Music, pretty loud, and definitely in the classic rock vein: The Who's "You Better You Bet" was playing when I arrived. Then came the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers (the whole record). Led Zeppelin (the first album) was most of the way through when I left. It was a great experience-- now I have to go back with my wife, who is very jealous!

I think the communist comparison was more apt, with the restaurant management taking the role of the politicians in charge of the centralized economy. No self-respecting union would endorse a pooling system in which management collects all the tips and doles them out, with no check on how much was collected in total tips. This isn't to say it couldn't happen, but it certainly wouldn't be the goal of any organized group of workers. There is power in a union! (This poster is a card-carrying member of UAW Local 2325 (AFL-CIO).)

Thanks for telling me. My consternation is total, but at least I won't waste my time going down there.

It's good to see you here, Rhea.

This has also been noted by Regina Schrambling in her food blog gastropoda.com. I guess I have low tomato standards. I haven't been disappointed. And I was pretty happy last year as well, while lots of others were griping about the quality.

Isn't it possible for a person to take advantage of TWA as an overall listing of decent wines, since Parker doesn't list anything that he thinks is plonk? You don't have to get bogged down in whether a wine is worth 95 points instead of 87 points. If you pore over his list for affordable wines, all of them probably rated in the high 80s, you'll find a bunch, right? This is a useful service, no? He also provides a listing of his own ideas about "best buys" in TWA, right? Do these remain good buys after he identifies them as such?

I've really enjoyed Ferber's fig/pear jam.

I made the Truffles Au Cocolat this week. They are incredibly rich-- and delicious. I can't eat more than one or two little pieces at a sitting. I used her instructions for 70% chocolate, adding sugar and more butter than the master recipe calls for.

Oh. Sorry. I used Stonyfield Farm. Here's the ingredient list: I think the use of pectin puts this in your gelatin/"creepily unctuous" family. For nonfat yogurt, I think it's pretty good.

That Salon article to which Steve linked is by far the most appealing presentation I've seen Ruth Reichl give of herself (and I've read both of her books). She offers a spirited defense of her ratings, and claims that Miller's really the odd man out. Reichl says that Sheraton and Claibourne had a much greater appreciation of ethnic food than Miller had, and that she's really in their tradition. She also argues that the star system becomes hopelessly muddled when you accept the premise that foods of other cultures can equal French food; if you want a star system that makes sense, you have to elevate one cuisine above all others, as Miller did. While I think her argument is absolutely valid, it is impossible to deny that Reichl was pretty quick to give three stars to make a political point about a restaurant, and sometimes gave three stars to undeserving restaurants for no political reason. She's a grade inflator. Still, I think I prefer her New York to Miller's.

I was most tempted to substitute whole milk yogurt for the non-fat. I share your disdain for non-fat yogurt as a general matter. In this instance, the yogurt is thickened mostly with flour. It is also enriched with eggs, butter, vanilla, and sugar, I think. I went with the non-fat yogurt because I feared the whole fat yogurt would result in a brick-like texture. In the end, I thought the dessert was quite rich-- maybe more than I wanted it to be. But you're right, there was a little bit of that non-fat yogurt taste, which left me wondering if a substitution might have been an improvement.

This quote demonstrates how little Keller understands New York. His sports analogy is particularly revealing in its wrongheadedness. He thinks sports stars are received as heroes in New York? How many sports stars have come to New York with enormous salaries and high expectations, and found themselves targets of a media frenzy, scrutinized unfairly, and booed every night? What he's witnessing is a New York phenomenon across the board. It isn't that food people get less respect than masters of other arts. They get the same New York treatment as everybody else: "Mr. fancy pants, you think you're so amazing, I'm going to take you down a peg. And then you'd better prove how great you really are, or I'll eat you alive!" All of that said, the treatment of Per Se in the article is pretty misleading. The author attempts to create strife out of some pissing matches between Keller and the building management, in order to mask the fact that Per Se doesn't fit with her thesis of a bunch of failed restaurants. Per Se seems to be on its way to being a smashing success (culinarily, I don't know about monetarily), and you can't really blame anybody for the fire that temporarily halted its momentum.

I'd say the yogurt tart came out well (sorry, no pic). The recipe makes a very deep tart with a rich yogurt custard under the berries. I would make it again, but I think I would make it in a standard nine inch tart pan instead of a springform, and cut the amount of yogurt custard in half. This would make the dessert a little lighter and place more emphasis on the fruit. And I thought there was a little too much vanilla, so I'd cut back on that a little too.

Sorry, jgarner, but I think I'm actually not making the Savarin after all. We're having guests, one of whom is an AA member, so I'm obliged not to serve a dessert that's soaked in rum and liquor. I have all these berries I bought for the Savarin, so I think I might make the Baked Yogurt Tart (p. 368). This actually looks very easy, and it was contributed by Leslie Mackie, who also contributed the really tasty apple tart we made near the beginning of this thread.

Got some raspberries and huge blackberries today at Brooklyn GAP. $2.00 per pound for heirlooms-- someone really should send Union Square the memo. Many different plums. Peaches. Got some bluefish. And three pounds of mussels (about 50 of 'em). Three pounds of mussels for $4.50. These are the fish folks from the North Fork of Long Island. Their boat is called the Blue something.