JAZ

I have a good recipe for a carrot salad with a spiced (garlic/cumin/mint) yogurt dressing, which I've also altered into a dip for carrots. You might be able to play with the proportions, using a little carrot for color and flavor, but keeping it as a dip rather than a salad. If you're interested I'll find the recipe and post it.

Very nice analogy. I'd not thought about food in terms of syntax and meaning before (too busy thinking of musical analogies, I suppose). One could go further and say that some other utterances, while not meaningless, are still so banal that they should certainly have been edited out of the final draft. There are numerous references in books on language to computer programs that attempt to create meaningful sentences and paragraphs, most of which have been dismally unsuccessful. I wonder what the result would be if a chef tried to use a computer program to generate ideas for new dishes?

And Can you explain a little more about what this sort of balance entails? You've said quite a bit about what it's not (i.e., it's not "nutritional" balance and it's not sensation based), but not much about what it is. Is it just an awareness that how I feel is, in part, affected by what I eat? Is it an awareness that what I eat has an effect on the environment? Both of those? More? Maybe this is something that I'm just not going to understand, because I'm not by any definition of the term a "spiritual" person, but I'm really interested, if you could give some examples (sorry, but watching Eat Drink Man Woman is not an option for me).

This isn't new -- it's been out for a couple of years and, in fact, has long passed its height of popularity.

Here's a fifth. I'm with you on the Tanqueray, but I prefer my gin and tonic with lemon. I'll have to try the gorgonzola olives - that sounds yummy. Hey, I may be with you on the gin, but those olives sound vile. How could you ruin a good olive (not to mention the gin) with something as loathesome as blue cheese? What you want to get is olives stuffed with a piece of lemon peel. Now that's an olive for a martini.

I just pulled out the article again, which reports that Reiman posted 2001 revenues of $300 million (total, not just from TOH). And you gotta figure that if Reader's Digest just paid $760 million for Reiman, they must think it's a money-maker.

I think a well designed menu does a number of things: it stimulates the palate but doesn’t overstimulate it; it provides a sense of continuity but doesn’t bore; it keeps one’s interest with contrasting elements but doesn’t confuse the palate. One crucial element of a successful menu that hasn't been explicity mentioned is continuity. Yes, of course you need contrast, and you want to balance various elements, but if there is nothing that ties the menu together, you're only left with a string of dishes. That's why Wilfred's ideas would, I imagine, work so well. The "themes" give some structure to the experience, and even though I don't think most people think of that consciously, I think they would notice the absence of some kind of continuity. That being said, many different elements can provide the continuity; it can be as obvious as sticking with the same ethnic cuisine o a feeling of seasonality (e.g., "winter food" v. "summer food"). Then, once you've got some kind of continuity working, you can work on contrast. I think the aspect where contrast is crucial is in texture, including mouthfeel. As Lizziee mentioned, all foam and no crunch is boring. (I found it very interesting that Michel Trama felt he had to to drag in using one's fingers for shellfish as an example of food engaging our sense of touch, when that is precisely what texture and mouthfeel do. "Crunchy," "crispy" and "silky" are not tastes; they don't engage the taste cells at all, yet chefs are always conflating the two.) One final point: I was struck by the comment of Thomas Keller's that Lizziee quoted (on the subject of serving five to ten small courses), "I want you to say, 'God, I wish I had just one more bite of that.'" Like many people, I went through a stage of always wanting several small plates or tasting menus, but I think I'm over it. Not that I don't enjoy a couple or a few courses, but I've found that lately I want more than a bite or two or three of any given dish. This stems not from physical hunger, because a small amount of ten dishes would certainly satisfy that. Rather I find myself wanting to be able to experience the way a dish changes from the first to the last bite. Subtly complex dishes, especially, can require more than a few bites to appreciate fully. That's actually one criticism of Thomas Keller that I've read -- that his dishes lack "staying power" (for lack of a better term), by which I mean that everything there is present in the first bite, and subsequent bites don't add anything else to the experience. Note that I've never been to the French Laundry and I have no idea whether this is true. But I have experienced that phenomenon of eating something that lacked this sort of staying power, and it's very disappointing. Finally, if anyone is interested, there was a fairly recent thread on this topic, menu creation.

Elizabeth Schneider, in Vegetables fro Amaranth to Zucchini, mentions in passing that some old or poorly stored turnips might have a fibrous layer under the skin -- maybe that's what you've heard about. She suggests tasting any such turnips to make sure they aren't bitter.

In addition to what Dave mentioned (the TOH products for sale and a traveling cooking show), there's also the new Taste of Home Cooking Expo. I mentioned this in my original post, but didn't include expand on it. With 45 exhibitors from Campbell Soup and Kraft to Chef's Catalog, I imagine this expo generates major revenue. Also, keep in mind that these magazines are published with a very small staff -- seven full time employees, who also work on other publications. All of their photography is done in house as well, so they have incredibly low overhead.

I like it. Can we have a contest?

Now that wasn't so hard to figure out, was it? Well, no, it wasn't. What I should have asked is whether it was ONLY the entertainment value, which apparently it isn't, since several of you have bought these products. What happens if you get one of these and are dissatisfied -- are they guaranteed? Is it easy to return them?

Okay, I can't believe that a) I know this and b) I'm admitting it here, but having dated a bartender is my excuse. A Slippery Nipple is equal parts Sambuca and Bailey's Irish Cream and is disgusting. A Buttery Nipple substitutes Butterscotch Schnappes for the Sambuca and is also disgusting. I believe that most requests for the former actually result in the latter. My impression from watching the sort of person who orders drinks like these is that the perceived "naughtiness" of the name is part of the appeal. Like a "Sloe Screw" or a "Sex on the Beach," they seem to the drinker to lend them a certain panache, when really all they do is point out the amateurs (sorry Dave; I know you had mitigating circumstances; these comments do not apply to you).

Since we're talking poly boards, Sur La Table now sells one with a backing of rubber for about $15 (11x14) -- it does mean you can only use one side, but you don't have bother with the damp towel.

Although omelets are tough to do for a crowd, frittatas and tortillas (basically Italian and Spanish versions of oven baked omelets) are not too hard. But you do have to choose your additions a little differently than you would for rolled or folded omelets, as they are baked in the eggs rather than added after the eggs are cooked. And as for potatoes, I think they rank up there as one of the most adaptable foods ever. If you baked an oven full of them the first night, you could use the leftovers for: hash browns or home fries, corned beef or smoked chicken hash, potato salad, potato pancakes, twice baked potatoes, gratin or a potato casserole. (Damn, now I want potatoes and I don't have any...)

Having dealt with the situation of cooking for a part vegetarian crowd, I can offer a couple of suggestions on that point. If you make chili, it's not too much more trouble to make two batches, one with all meat, and another with only beans. This satisfies everyone from the no-beans-in-my-chili-dammit-I'm-from-Texas contingent to the moderates (who can mix the two) to the vegetarians. And enchiladas are another dish that's easy to make with and without meat -- make one pan of cheese only and one pan with chicken or beef. And finally, one last general suggestion: regardless of whether you usually use it, Bisquik is a wonderful thing for vacation kitchens.

This probably isn't in the same league, but there was a time when my then boyfriend and I had just moved and were pretty broke until the next commission checks came in. We had money for food, and the then-boyfriend being a wine broker, we had wine, but what we really didn't have disposable income for was liquor, so the liquor cabinet was pretty bare, and of course we couldn't afford to go out. We had half of a big bottle of really cheap vodka that we'd bought for bloody marys, and that was about it. Problem was, neither of us was a real big vodka fan (even if it was good, which it wasn't). So we crushed a bunch of juniper berries and added them to the vodka, which at least gave us a cheap tasting facsimile of gin. I still can't believe we drank it, but we did.

Okay, this is going to sound strange, and I really don't mean to make any moral pronouncements by it, but this thread is completely incomprehensible to me because I don't have a television. Haven't for quite a while, actually. (and just to forestall questions, it's not any big "value" statement; it's just that I've lived with TVs and without them, and when there's a TV there, I spend time watching it that I'd rather spend doing other things.) But, can I ask why you all watch this stuff? I mean, I can see it being like Saturday Night Live "commercials" (even though I guess this sort of thing is serious) -- is it the entertainment value?

Here's what I'd do (sshhh, don't tell Fat Guy): Cut and chop on it to your heart's content. Knife marks are not a big deal. But if you need to mince several cups of parsley for tabbouli (sp?), or dice dozens of carrots, or peel beets for an army, throw one of those little flexible plastic cutting sheets over it. Otherwise you'll spend an hour with a scrub brush and some bleach water to get the stains out. You don't know me, I realize, but you can trust me on this one. I teach classes in a kitchen with a huge built in wooden chopping board, and before I taught there I assisted (read: washed dishes and cleaned up). This surface has been cut on for five years, and with a little oil, it looks pretty good. But cleaning up parsley or carrot stains is a BIG pain. Yes, you can get them out, but it sucks. (Oh, and try not to spill red wine on it either.) If you use the little flexible sheets, you can just toss them in the dishwasher after they becaome imbued with beet blood, and while not in use they're easy to store.

John, I don't think that the "literary food writing corner" is such a bad place to be. It's one of my favorite corners to hang out on.

Also keep in mind that some foods will tend to stain the maple -- parsley, blood oranges, beets, carrots. A little diluted bleach will usually take care of it, but it might be a consideration.

It works, even for a larger chicken. The drawback is that it can create a lot of smoke and a big mess in your oven. But you can minimize both by putting a layer or two of sliced potatoes in the bottom of your roasting pan. They absorb the fat so it doesn't burn and smoke, and they keep the splattering down as well. And then you can eat the potatoes too, if you like that sort of thing. With butter under the skin, you probably don't need the brining for moisture, but it does season the meat all the way through, which I think is an advantage. If you do brine, don't salt the bird before roasting, but you probably figured that out.

It strikes me that we're all speaking of "food writing" as if it's a homogeneous category, when there are really many different species of food writing, all with different qualities. How can one compare On Food and Cooking with How to Cook a Wolf with Kitchen Confidential? It's like trying to talk about "non-fiction" as a cohesive genre -- what do you mean by that term? newspaper columns? personal memoir? "how-to" books? magazine articles? history books? It seems to me that "food writing" is almost as vague a category as "non-fiction," and trying to explain what makes "food writing" good, or trying to delineate necessary and sufficient conditions for successful food writing, is an exercise in futility. What makes a restaurant review good is different from what makes an essay good, which is different from what makes a cookbook well written. And that's not even scratching the surface of possibilities -- what about food science? or histories, or biographies? I find the Best Food Writing compilations amusing for that reason. Not that the writing in them isn't good; it's very good (and I'm not just saying that because Steven and John's writings appear there). But it's all very much the same type of writing - essays and articles. You'd never find a chapter from Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini in it, nor an excerpt from something like On Food and Cooking. Both are very well written, but they don't fit the profile of the book series, which really should be titled "Best Food Articles, Essays and Memoirs." And if those of us in the business (or those with a decided interest in it) succumb to conflating the various types of writing that comprise "food writing," the average person out there is even more confused. (I don't know about Steven and John, but here's my least favorite conversational exchange in the world: "So, Janet, what do you do?" "I write about food." "Oh, you review restaurants?" "Um, no. Actually I'm working on a book." "Oh, a cookbook?" End of dialog) If we recognize that food writing is not one cohesive category, then I think it's obvious that everyone here has expressed valid points about what constitutes "good food writing." But Steven's criteria are valid for one sub-category (restaurant and travel reviews), and John T's apply to another (essays and memoirs). And food science would require yet a third set of criteria. Expertise is crucial in some cases, extraneous in others. Personal experience is distracting in some cases, delightful in others. I'd bet that if we chose a topic at random and each of us here wrote about it, we'd all write something good, but there'd be nothing in common among our results except the general subject. And that's what's so wonderful about "food writing"; there's room for just about anything as long as it's well done.

does it also serve the purpose of tenderizing tougher cuts of meat? I thought it was papaya that contained the tenderizing enzyme. Does mango also tenderize?

The nice thing about braising with a cover is that you don't have to pay as much attention to the dish as it's cooking. I prefer to braise without a cover, or to start with a cover and remove it part of the way, through, because the liquids evaporate and become more concentrated. If you do it right, you don't need to reduce at all at the end, because the liquid reduces slowly throughout the cooking process.

That was always one of the major criticisms of Michael Bauer (at the Chronicle in San Francisco) -- that for years he was both editor of the food section and the primary reviewer. He isn't any longer, but the damage has been done. No one takes the Chron's food section seriously anymore, despite the fact that there are some decent writers on staff.