JAZ

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.

Thanks for the advice. I have a question about the jar -- Wolfert says to sterilize it. Will the dishwasher do the job, or should I use boiling water? Ripert and Ruhlman don't say anything about sterilizing -- maybe that's why they use so much salt, thinking it will inhibit mold growth. An interesting note: In Ruhlman's latest book, he has an updated version that calls for sugar -- half as much sugar as salt (2 lbs. salt to 1 lb. sugar) -- plus a cup of water. A recent discussion of the recipe seems to indicate problems with the lemons not staying submerged. Ruhlman suggests that too much water is the problem, but it seems to me it's just the opposite -- that much salt would make the liquid so dense that almost anything would float in it.

If lemons ever come down in price, I want to make preserved lemons. I was planning to use a recipe by Paula Wolfert (similar to this one), but I figured I'd take a look at some other recipes. I came across a recipe by Eric Ripert for what he calls "lemon confit." The main difference seems to be the amount of salt -- 5 cups, compared with 1/4 cup in the Wolfert recipe --and the addition of sugar. I figured maybe he just used the term "confit" because he's French, but when I searched for "lemon confit" I found a few more recipes. Michael Ruhlman has one on his blog that's very similar to Ripert's (sugar is optional) -- although his calls for curing for 3 months as opposed to Ripert's 2 weeks. Then there's this one from the Washington post, which is yet another method, using olive oil and onions along with salt and sugar. So now I'm confused. I'm inclined to trust Wolfert's recipe because I know she's familiar with the cuisines that use preserved lemons. Plus I'd rather not use the larger amount of salt if I don't have to, and I'm unclear about what the sugar does. In addition, it sounds from the comments on Ruhlman's blog that a lot of people had problems with his method. Can anyone shed any light on these recipes? Should I just stick with my original plan?

I like this recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum. The only change I make is to add the lemon zest with the lemon juice and then strain it out, because I don't like the texture when it's stirred in at the end.

Y'know, I was thinking I should offer to share with the bartenders. Kaffir lime margarita? How do you make lime cordial? I use both the rind and the leaves in my lime cordial (my recipe is at the end of this essay, Any Other Name). I've used the entire fruit a couple of times, but I haven't found that the juice makes much difference at all -- as Patrick said, there's very little actual juice in them. The rind has a funky bitterness (in a good way) that the leaves don't have, and lacks the hint of citronella that's in the leaves. I think the rind and leaves complement each other nicely -- when I've made my cordial with just the leaves, it's less complex.

Wow, I haven't thought of that for years. My mom used to serve that for breakfast sometimes.

If you have underdone marrow, you can still use it. Treat it as beef butter. For instance, try mashing it with some kind of hard cheese -- Parmigiano works well -- and spreading it on bread, then running under the broiler.

The first olives I had that weren't just the generic "black" and "Spanish (aka stuffed green) were Graber olives. I haven't had them in years, and I have no idea if they would still be as good now as they were then, but I remember them as being irresistible. Now, I like almost any olives -- I'm not a huge fan of the little salt-cured black ones (whatever they're called), but that's about the only kind I've tasted that I didn't like.

I've never found soaking to make any difference at all. Am I missing something?

You can brown onions and get a fond on an enameled surface, but it does take much longer than in a clad pan. We've done side by side tests in our cooking classes and the Le Creuset group always finishes much later than the others.

For those prices, one would think they could get a better copy writer.