JAZ

Over here, there's a discussion going on about the Chicago Tribune's take on the decade's worst dining trends. Number 10 is "deconstruction." San Francisco restaurateur Joyce Goldstein (whom I know and who is incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly narrow minded) is quoted: "I do not want a poached egg on top of carbonara sauce and the pasta on the side. I don't want the ingredients laid out before me anymore. I want a chef to show me how it is brought together." I think she misrepresents (and possible misunderstands) deconstruction, but I'm not sure if I'm right. To me, "deconstruction" is not simply taking a dish, separating out the components and placing them in piles on a plate. It's separating the components and then recombining them in (presumably) unexpected ways. In other words, "deconstruction" to me is shorthand for "deconstruction and reconstruction." For instance, a couple of years ago at New Orleans' Mila restaurant, we had "deconstructed oysters Rockefeller" that was possibly the best oyster dish I've ever had, and it wasn't just separate piles of oysters, bread crumbs and spinach; the chef took elements from the classic dish and created something new and wonderful from them. Joyce Goldstein might well not like that dish either. But before we start taking sides on "deconstruction" I think we should try to figure out what we're talking about. So, regardless of what you think of the trend, who's got the right definition? Do chefs use "deconstruction" literally? That is, do they merely take dishes apart? Or does the term imply something more, as I've always thought?

Beans are great done in a pressure cooker -- about an hour and fifteen minutes, with no soaking. I steam root vegetables and tubers in my pressure cooker all the time -- 10 to 15 minutes for whole beets (depending on size), 8 minutes for sweet potato halves. Also, any meat that needs slow cooking -- pork shoulder, chicken thighs, chuck roast, lamb shanks -- works great in a pressure cooker. I've started with "country ribs" (strips of pork shoulder) and had falling apart tender pork in 30 to 45 minutes. Braised chicken thighs are falling off the bone in 20 minutes. The main thing I've learned using my pressure cooker is not to think of it only as a "one-pot-meal" cooker (stews, chili, etc.) but to treat it as just another cooking tool that can save lots of time in many instances.

These small silicone ice cube trays by Silicone Zone are my current favorite. I've used the larger trays for ice cubes and stock and love them, but they're too big for some other uses. Thus I've been looking for a smaller size for ages, with no luck until now. You can't really tell from the picture, but the cubes in these trays are just under an inch on a side. Filled halfway, they're the perfect size for caramels, which pop right out in perfect shape -- ready for wrapping or dipping. I've also used them to freeze basil paste, and they were great for that as well.

Yes, one of the things I found in my freezer today was a container of duck fat. It's been there for months since the last time I took it out to fry potatoes. It lasts a very long time.

Thanks, Lisa. I ended up cutting the sugar from 2 cups down to about 1-1/4 cups, and the corn syrup to 1/2 cup. I added 1/2 tsp. of baking soda at the end, and I'm very happy with the texture. I agree about a little salt in brittle -- I make a salted nut crunch that starts out with roasted salted cashews and macadamias, and it's always a hit. In this case, I'm layering peanut butter truffle filling over the base and coating with bittersweet chocolate, so I'm not sure about the salt, but maybe I'll try a few with a sprinkle of salt on top after coating.

The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. From what I'd read here and elsewhere, I expected this to be filled with inspirational food combinations and expertise. Instead, it's jumbled, confusing and random. Hate it.

I was talking about twice-baked potatoes a few days ago with an acquaintance and realized that we had entirely different approaches to something that I thought was pretty simple. I always bake russets, then cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the centers. I mix the centers with (usually) cheese, cream, butter and seasonings -- sometimes getting fancy with diced cooked bacon or caramelized onions -- then stuff the potato halves with the mixture and bake again. So my friend looked at me as if I were crazy. "When I get a half potato like that I always think of cheap steakhouses." He cuts a slice off the flat end of a cooked potato and discards the top, then fills the whole potato and bakes it. I've always thought a whole stuffed potato was way too much to eat, but I have to admit that his method would make for a more pleasing presentation. Here I thought the only question was what to use in the filling. Who knew? So, what else am I missing? How do you make twice-baked potatoes? What do you put in them, and how do you construct them?

One of the first spiced nut recipes I ever made was one from (I think) Gourmet magazine for cajun pecans. It called for whipping egg whites and mixing in Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce, then the nuts. Then you sprinkled them with salt, black and white pepper, cayenne and thyme. So, no sugar, and they were great. As for the walnuts, the boiling water serves two purposes: it makes the walnut skins less bitter and tannic, and it also makes the sugar melt, so you have a syrup that coats the nuts evenly. They do get toasted, although since they start out wet it takes longer than with dry nuts. I've had batches that took nearly 45 minutes to toast, and if you don't have the nuts in a single layer, it takes even longer.

Good Lord! What's scary is that when I first viewed your photo, I thought it actually looked like a baby suckling pig--like some sort of dwarf piglet that you'd normally see in a jar in a biology class! Is it just me or does anyone else see that little ear, closed eye and snout? Not only that, but at first glance I thought it was clutching the white bottle in its jaws. In my freezer today, I found three bags of chicken carcasses waiting to be made into stock. I try to keep one bag and just keep adding to it, but obviously I failed. I wonder if there are more in there, and how old they might be.

Her essay (I think it's in More Home Cooking) on bad dinner parties is one of the best pieces of writing about food that I've ever read. As is her essay about her first kitchen.

Although I'm not a professional chef or cook, I have decent if not amazing kitchen skills. I teach avocational cooking classes and am adept in the kitchen. But even though I know better and swear virtually every day that I'm going to correct it, I have one really bad habit that I just can't shake. Because I worked for years in cookware stores, I have a whole rack of knives from which to choose when I cook. So, what I do is this: I use a knife, set it by the sink to wash, and then get another knife for the next task. Somehow, when I'm cleaning the kitchen, the dirty knives are always left at the end. Instead of just washing and drying them -- which would take virtually no time -- I leave them, thinking I'll do them in the morning. Of course I don't, and then when I'm prepping the next meal, I just keep picking up clean knives and adding them to the dirty pile. When I'm down to the 9-inch bread knife and a paring knife, I break down and wash the pile. Then I start over. Yes, I know better. Yes, I know it's bad for the knives, and easy to remedy. And yet. It's my shameful secret, but I keep doing it. Now, you might not have this particular bad habit, but I'll bet everyone's got one. So, confess -- what's yours?

Ah! That makes sense. I guess 12 quarts of soup would be a lot for anyone to store, and it would solve the problem of people feeling as if they had to take a soup they knew they wouldn't or couldn't eat. It's a brilliant idea.

I'm confused. Wasn't the point to make one soup and leave with six different ones, or twelve, or however many were made? Why didn't everyone just get one of each? (Or, given allergies and dislikes, do some swapping.)

Talking Heads, Life During Wartime ("This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. This ain't no mudd club, or CBGB, I ain't got time for that now.") Be that as it may, I agree with Steven -- I did know both of the referent songs, and I still don't understand why Sifton was quoting them. All I can think of was that he wanted to seem cool and hip, and as usual, when a writer has to reach to sound cool, he doesn't.

Bumping this up because I'm planning on experimenting with this again. I found a different recipe online here, which doubles the amount of sugar in the recipe quoted above and increases the corn syrup as well. The other major difference is adding some baking soda at the end with the peanut butter, which from what I know about candy would seem to make for a flakier and lighter texture. I'd like that, but I don't want them sweeter than my first batch. My question is, if I cut back on the sugar, will that change the way the baking soda acts?

I like six. More than that and you have to contrive ways that everyone can talk to everyone else. With six, you can (barely) all follow one conversation, or you can split up into two or three smaller ones. I like bigger groups, but find that sit-down dinners aren't the best way to handle them.

I think it definitely depends on how experienced and determined the crab picker is. I know my brother can get every last shred of meat from a Dungeness, and I'm sure his yield is 10% higher than mine. That being said, I think 25% is a good average for Dungeness.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should get rid of cookware or kitchen tools they haven't used recently, unless one is moving or has very limited space. Now that I rediscovered those two Pyrex items, for instance, I might well start using them again. I just find it curious that something I used so often for so long became completely dormant in the kitchen.

I recently went through my kitchen (details here, if you're interested) and got rid of a lot of stuff I realized I didn't use. As an aside, I worked for cookware stores for 10 years, so I had a lot of stuff to go through. So, you'd think I wouldn't have much stuff in my kitchen that I don't use. And yet, yesterday, I was looking for a dish I could use to cool some chicken thigh-leg quarters. I thought of my Pyrex pie plate, which I always used to use for this kind of thing. I got it out of the cupboard and realized that it wasn't big enough, but I also realized that I hadn't used it since I'd moved. It was dusty in that way that an unused pan gets. Next to it was an equally dusty Pyrex casserole dish -- you know, the 8x4 or whatever it is, that fits into the basket thingie. I don't know where the basket holder went, but I do know that that baking dish used to be a workhorse for me. I used it for everything. Now? I can't even remember if I've used it since I moved. Why did I stop? I have no idea -- I have more baking dishes now than I did when I bought those two pieces, and maybe that's it. But it seems strange to me that within a few years, I simply stopped using cookware that used to be a regular part of my batterie. Another example: A long, long time ago, I posted about a new knife that I'd fallen in love with. It's not a bad knife, but now about the only time I use it is if my other chef's knives are packed (for class) or dirty. I don't know why I stopped using it, but it certainly no longer holds the appeal it once did. Do I just have too much cookware? Does anyone else stop using things that they once loved, or at least relied on?

I've made a few recipes that use egg whites -- savory, with no sugar at all. I always thought the purpose of the egg whites was to make the coating adhere better. In my recipe, the sugar turns into a syrup and accomplishes the same thing (as well as making them sweet, obviously), so I've never considered adding egg white to the mix. In my experience, recipes that just use oil or butter (no sugar, no egg white) always seem to result in the spices falling to the bottom of the bowl, leaving the nuts underseasoned.

I got two of these (one large, one small) as a Valentine's Day gift a few years ago. All I can say is that they're elegant to look at and sensuous to hold. They also each happen to be the perfect size for several tasks I do frequently -- the large one may as well have been designed for scooping the flesh out of half an avocado, for instance. Considering how often one uses a spoon in the kitchen, why not have something really nice? Would you pay an extra $7 for the perfect knife, the perfect spatula, the perfect cocktail shaker? Why not pay an extra $7 for the perfect spoon?

I realized tonight that I although I may fall back on the same ingredient combinations, I do use them differently. Tonight, for instance, I made pasta with a sort of "deconstructed" pesto sauce -- basil chiffonade, toasted pine nuts, parm, and garlic infused cream. So I think you're right.

Over here, we're talking about all the cookbooks we have that we don't use. But in this topic, I want to talk about the books that we not only use but that were crucial to our development as the cooks we are today. I started thinking about this a while back when I was looking over a friend's cookbook collection. We both have a lot of books, but oddly, very few in common. Except for The Frog/Commissary Cookbook, which I noticed for two reasons: first, because his copy was just as stained, creased and warped as mine was, and second, because I thought I was the only person outside of Philadelphia (where the Frog and Commissary restaurants were located) who owned it. It turned out that we were both given the book at a time in our cooking lives when it spoke to us. I used it often back when I got it -- not only for the formal recipes, but for the lists of simple ideas in many of sections (25 quick hors d'oeuvres and appetizers, for instance) that inspired me to experiment in a way I hadn't before. It wasn't the first cookbook I owned, nor was it the "best" -- and honestly, I rarely actually cook from it these days -- but it was a big influence. When I thought more about it, I realized that at various points in my life, there were a handful of books that for whatever reasons were enormously influential in the way I learned to cook. Some were from very early on, but others came later. So, here's my annotated list (in chronological order): 1. Cooking with Spices and Herbs (Sunset Books) One of the first cookbooks I owned, this gave me a grounding in, well, spices and herbs. To this day, there are still a few recipes I go back to -- lamb curry, garlic creamed spinach, summer slaw and clove butter cookies. 2. Cook Book of Breads (also from Sunset Books) How I learned to bake breads of all kinds: yeasted, quick breads, biscuits, rolls. You name it, I made it. I've gotten more sophisticated bread books over the years, but this was my start. 3. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol. 1 and 2 My first "serious" cookbooks, from which I picked up technique as well as recipes. Still frequently consulted. 4. The Frog/Commissary Cookbook See above. 5. Real Beer and Good Eats by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly. Given to me when I was living with a homebrewer. Taught me a lot about beer, and provided great recipes. Come to think of it, I still consult this one a lot, too. Mostly rustic food, it taught me a lot about balancing acid and fat, and bold but not overdone flavor combinations. 6. Mexico One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless I've always liked Mexican food, but never approached it systematically until very recently. This is the first book in years that I've actually cooked recipes from as written. Finally: Cocktail: A Drinks Bible for the 21st Century by Paul Harrington Yes, I know I said cookbooks, but this changed my way of thinking about cocktails at least as much as any of the others changed my cooking life. Maybe it didn't make me the cook I am, but it made me the cocktail enthusiast that I am. So, there are mine. What are yours? No more than ten books allowed. Five would be preferable, but obviously I couldn't make it, so you shouldn't have to either.

My market had short ribs on sale, so I bought some today, hoping against hope that I can try to recreate a short rib soup I had recently at a restaurant here in Atlanta. It was simple -- an incredibly dark beefy broth with shreds of short ribs and caramelized onions, topped with a bit of brie on a crouton. But it was the broth that was amazing (well, along with the melt-in-your mouth rib meat). I'll see what I can do -- otherwise, I'll be living at the restaurant this winter, eating that soup.

At quick glance, my guess is 10-20 percent (and that's after I gave a box or two away). My excuses, lame or not, are much the same as Steven's (review copies, inspiration) with the addition of working in a cookware store for 10+ years with discounts and signings. How could I not buy a copy of Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way when I could get it autographed? How could I resist a copy of Rick Tramanto's Amuse Bouche when it was only $5?