JAZ

Butter toffee nuts. I've used peanuts, almonds (blanched, slivered, or whole), and even pine nuts when I didn't have anything else. They cook fast and then you just have to wait a few minutes for them to cool and harden. They're good on their own or with chocolate chips, and great over ice cream.

Why is it that American TV/radio food people pronounce "marinade" as "mar-i-naaahhhd"? Lynn Rosetto Kasper and Sara Moulton are two of the worst. Do they think it sounds high-class, or European? Drives me crazy.

We made this salad -- Wolfgang Puck's "Chinese" chicken salad -- but used iceberg lettuce instead of the romaine. It worked quite well with the dressing.

So, no added oil at all? Just water (or water-based liquid)?

And even better I imagine with a garnish of crispy duck cracklins! I once bought twice as many duck breasts as I needed for a class (they came two whole breasts to a pack and I thought they came packed with two halves), so I ended up with lots of extra duck breasts. I repacked and froze them two halves to a bag, so when I took one bag out to defrost, I always cooked both halves. I'd take one half out very rare and then use it a couple days later for hash. The first thing I did was to cut off the fat layer and re-crisp it, both to provide fat for the potatoes and also so I'd have the cracklings to top it. Ordinarily I don't have written recipes for dishes like this, but I wrote this up for an article on poached eggs. For a photo, click here. 1 Pekin duck breast (whole) or 1 small magret (moulard) half duck breast, cooked 1 to 2 small Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 1 cup) Kosher salt 1 very small onion, diced (about 1/2 cup) 1/2 cup chicken or duck stock 1 tablespoon cream (optional) 1 to 2 teaspoons cider or wine vinegar Fresh ground black pepper Chopped chives or parsley for garnish Place the potatoes in a small pan and cover with water. Over medium high heat, bring just to a boil. Reduce the heat to maintain a simmer and cook for 5 to 6 minutes, until almost done (potatoes should still be slightly firm in the center). Drain thoroughly and pat dry. Meanwhile, remove the skin and fat from the duck breast and dice it. Cut the meat into 1/2-inch cubes (you should have 1 to 2 cups of meat). In a medium skillet over medium heat, saute the diced duck skin until fat renders and the skin is very crisp. Remove the skin and reserve. You should have a thick coating of duck fat in the pan; if not, add vegetable oil to coat the pan. Raise the heat to medium high. When the fat is hot, add the drained potatoes. Sprinkle with salt and saute for 3 to 5 minutes, until crisp and golden brown. Add the onions and cook for a couple of minutes, until they begin to color slightly. Add the duck meat and cook to heat through, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the stock to the pan and stir to dissolve the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce until most of the stock is evaporated. If you like a richer, more cohesive hash, add the cream, stir and cook just until the cream is heated through and coats the hash. Sprinkle the hash with a teaspoon of the vinegar and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt or vinegar as desired. Divide the hash between two plates and top each with a poached egg. Sprinkle with the reserved duck cracklings and chives or parsley, if using.

We tried the Pink Lady -- not bad, but very sweet for our taste. I'll make it again, but with less simple syrup.

I've done this several times since this thread started, using about a dozen and a half eggs and haven't had any problems. I've done two eggs at a time in a 1.5qt stainless saucepan with aluminum disc base and four in a 3.5qt of the same brand and model (Cuisinart classic). The only thing to clean is dumping out the water and wisps of egg. What did you have to clean up? Did the eggs stick at all? Bottom of pan was caked with albumen though the eggs themselves did not stick. Put pan back on heat with some dishwasher detergent and it is pretty much cleaned up now. It is an excellent stainless steel pan and I use induction as my heat source. JAZ mentions some problems with overcooking the bottom of the eggs maybe because of her use of a better pan than I used and I wonder if that's what gave you problems too. The pan I used is fine but not excellent: maybe that's the key? I believe that Anna is talking about the method of starting in cold water that Varway mentioned, not the original method. My guess is that in cold water, the thin albumin separates out, sinks and cooks on the bottom of the pan as the water heats up. In hotter water, the eggs sometimes sink and sit on the bottom of the pan, but they don't stick. And although my usual poaching pan does have a heavy bottom, I've poached eggs in all kinds of pans and have found that with the vinegar and salt in the water, eggs don't stick regardless of the pan.

Having tried a lot of poaching methods when I was working on an article on poached eggs, I'm guessing that the purpose of the plate is to keep the egg from overcooking on the bottom before the top cooks. That's the main problem I had with poaching at lower temperatures -- the egg sits on the bottom of the pan and cooks unevenly. Many chefs and authors (including, as I recall, James Peterson) use the method Maggie espouses. It worked okay for me, but I found that my poaching pan retained so much heat that the water continued to boil after I turned the heat off, and the lid intensified the effect. There was enough turbulence in the water that the whites tended to shred. I do prefer a temperature just under the boil and I had pretty good results at that temp with or without vinegar and salt in the water. The method I settled on (described here in my article) was to add a small amount of vinegar and salt to the poaching water, which makes the eggs bob up to the surface of the water as they cook. That seems to guarantee that the eggs cook evenly -- since they don't sit on the bottom of the pan, the bottom side doesn't overcook. Since it's not much vinegar or salt, I didn't notice any difference in taste from eggs cooked in plain water. The other element of my method -- draining the thin white off before cooking -- is primarily for aesthetic reasons. You end up with nice compact ovals without having to trim off any stray whites. While we did pick from about 10 poached eggs for the photos in the article to get the nicest looking ones, we didn't have to trim any of them -- that's how they came out of the water.

I had a Cuisipro and really liked it at first (including the plastic bottom piece, which made it easier to keep the cheese contained and move it to where I needed it). But it cracked, because the housing for the blades was made of plastic, and then the bottom wouldn't stay locked in place, and the cracks just kept getting bigger. Now I have an Oxo, which I really like.

Two incredibly stupid comments from TV peeps (on the same day, no less): From Christopher Kimball (talking about brining): "Salt is made of two molecules, so it's faster at osmosis than sugar, which only has one molecule." I don't even know what this could possibly mean. From Rick Bayliss: Having visited mussel and oyster farms in Baja Mexico and coming back to shore with a bin of each, he said they were coming back with a "big load of crustaceans." C'mon Rick! At least edit that out -- it was a voiceover.

Cream sherry is a type of sweet sherry, so unless a recipe specifically calls for sweet sherry, it might not be the best choice (certainly if the recipe calls for dry sherry it won't give you the intended result). I use Osborne Fino, which is about $10, mostly because it's about the only inexpensive but decent choice I can find around here. Your Amontillado sounds like a good choice as well.

I must have read a different article -- the one I read was all about a vain, shallow woman who wants to be thin because men don't like chubby girls.

My opinion of Ruhlman's Twenty is very different. I don't think it would be particularly useful for a beginning cook, and a more experienced cook could do much better reading Pepin for technique and McGee for science. While I think the idea behind Twenty is solid, the execution is poor. So many things in the book are either wrong, inconsistent, incomplete or confusing that it's not something I would buy for anyone, beginner or not.

I really don't understand what you mean here. Are you saying that only thin people run? Or that no fat people exercise? That's simply not true.

If you're close on the triple sec, you could add a bit of simple syrup to get it to the right level of sweetness.

How limited is the triple sec? There's a great cocktail called a Jasmine from Paul Harrington's Cocktail that calls for gin, lemon juice, Campari and triple sec. Harrington's original cocktail is 1-1/2 oz. gin, 1/4 oz each triple sec and Campari and 3/4 oz. lemon juice. I find those proportions a little too acidic for my taste and I prefer a bit more Campari, so I use 2 oz. gin, 1/4 oz. triple sec, and 1/2 oz each lemon juice and Campari. Robert Hess's version is 1-1/2 oz. gin, 1 ounce triple sec, 3/4 oz Campari and 1/2 oz. lemon juice. In any case, it's a good combination that ends up tasting like grapefruit juice.

As I understand the terms, "gratin" comes from the French term "gratinee," which refers to browning the top of whatever you're baking in order to form a crust of sorts. To aid in the browning, you can use crumbs, cheese, butter or nothing at all. Any baked dish can be finished "gratinee," but it's potatoes that most often got the treatment in American cooking. "Scalloped," on the other hand, refers to the way the thin slices of potato (or anything else) are layered -- they're overlapped to form a pattern like a scallop shell. From a linguistic standpoint, the presence or absence of cheese is irrelevant.

I don't know if this is even possible, but I wonder if you could talk a pizza place into giving you uncooked pizzas, or ask for them to be half cooked.

Having used a wide variety of cookware for braising, I have found that enameled cast iron can achieve both fond and good browning; as several have mentioned above, it just takes more time for the cast iron to heat up. That being said, I'm generally not that concerned with a crisp crust when braising because it doesn't stand up to the long cooking in liquid anyway. The one nice thing about searing in a skillet and then transferring to a dutch oven is that, as Dave said, the high sides of a traditional dutch oven can make it difficult to turn your protein. It also tends to keep any steam in the pan rather than let it dissipate, which inhibits browning. LC does make what they call a "buffet casserole" or "braising casserole" which is much more shallow than the usual dutch oven shape. When I braise in LC, that's what I use.

The gums and stabilizers do a wonderful job of keeping cold cream cheese stable, but they were never intended for heating. If you've got a cheese sauce on the verge of curdling (and, these days, curdle prone recipes are abundant), then cream cheese will put it past the edge. I guess, maybe, if one were to add cream cheese after the sauce has cooled a bit, that would be okay, but I would never heat that sauce again. That would pretty much preclude any possibility for baked mac & cheese. Try microwaving cream cheese until it's close to a boil and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about. I'm not sure how you make white sauce, but mine never comes anywhere near a boil. When I make my sauce for macaroni and cheese, I cook the white sauce until thick, then stir in a small amount of cream cheese just until it melts, then add the rest of the cheese off heat and stir until it melts, then add to the macaroni. Ordinarily I don't bake it for long -- just long enough to brown the topping, but even when I do, the sauce stays smooth. It's never curdled or separated.

When we had dinner at Alinea, I didn't find the amount of food overwhelming -- yes, there are a lot of courses, but they're spaced out and each one is small. In any case, I never find that skipping meals is a good idea -- either I'm so hungry I eat way too fast too soon, or my stomach rebels and I don't want to eat much at all. The idea of drinking a lot of water seems odd to me; I'd just be way too full. So I guess my advice would be to eat a light breakfast and light lunch and don't worry. If you get the wine pairing, though, make sure you drink plenty of water during dinner -- they pour very generous tastes.

I keep Diamond Crystal in my kitchen, so that's what I use. As far as level, that I think is up to you. Taste, taste, taste! MelissaH For the walnuts, I prefer fine salt -- I think it goes on more evenly -- but I have used Diamond Crystal when I've been out of table salt. Maybe it's because of the sugar, but I find I always use more than I think I'm going to need; I salt the nuts pretty heavily and then taste. I almost always give them another light sprinkle before I think they're right.

If you use an aged cheddar, that might cause the graininess. When I make macaroni and cheese, I like the flavor of aged cheddar but not the texture by itself. To counteract the graininess, I add a small amount of cream cheese -- the gums and stabilizers seem to do the trick.

My mother always made the sauce for her creamed onions with equal parts chicken broth and half-and-half, and that combination works well. You get the richness and flavor of the cream, but the stock keeps it from being too cloying.

Are you completely set on All-Clad? If not, I'd suggest looking at Demeyere -- much better quality for the price. Here are a couple of pieces I'd recommend: Atlantis 3.2 qt. saucepan and Proline 11-in. skillet. These Amazon prices are absurdly low, so you could get both pieces for your budget. If I didn't already own more cookware than I'll ever need, I'd order that saucepan in a flash.