JAZ

So it seems to me from what's been said here (and thanks to all for the various opinions) is that you want a wet dough for texture (and taste, but to a lesser degree); and you want a slow rise/long fermentation for taste. Further, it seems obvious that since you don't need to knead the dough vigorously for gluten development if you're letting it ferment for a longer period time, you may as well skip it. Finally, it also seems that a wet dough would be harder and messier to knead, but that the wet dough and the lack of kneading don't necessarily have to go hand in hand. In other words, you could have a drier dough and let it ferment longer rather than knead it; just as you could have a wetter dough and knead it. Is that it, more or less?

In the pages I've seen, the recipes don't speak for themselves. Some of them, in fact, sound very unappealing. But if I see that they were developed by a bartender from a place I'm familiar with, I'm much more likely to believe that they're worth trying. For instance, the "Broken Shoe Shiner" calls for Pernod, Aperol, Benedictine, pineapple juice and rose water, among other ingredients. That hardly speaks for itself; it actually sounds completely unappetizing to me. I don't know who the creator, Stephen Cole, is, but if I knew that he'd worked at (for instance) Pegu Club, I'd be likely to try it, because I trust the place and know that a disgusting drink is unlikely to make it on the menu there. (It doesn't mean I'd love the drink, but it guarantees a certain base level to me.) If on the other hand it came from Red Lobster, I'd give it a pass, because to my knowledge, Red Lobster doesn't produce bartenders with the kind of skill necessary to make a good drink from those ingredients.

What's the rationale for using a very wet dough? I was hoping the article would give some clue, but it seems to be just the recipe.

My point wasn't to ask where he works, but to say that the book should include that information. If I see a recipe by "Kyle Davidson" (or whoever) and that's all, then if I don't know who he is, that doesn't give me much information. But if I see that the creator of a drink worked at Violet Hour (or Pegu Club, or PDT, or Zig Zag, or Holeman & Finch) it'll tell me more -- it may give me a clue as to the style of the drink, if the place has a certain "style"; it will at least tell me that the creator of the drink comes from a serious cocktail venue. Details like this make this book much less than it could be.

Kyle Davidson does indeed get credit, but the book doesn't include anything about his working at the Violet Hour. (On the other hand, maybe there's a bio section in the back; I'm just going by the online preview.) In general, though, what the authors have chosen to write about the drinks they present is rather capricious and not helpful at all if one is interested in the provenance of the drinks.

I have experimented. Spreading the butter definitely does work better, both for grilled cheese and for egg-in-a-nest. More even butter coverage, especially if the bread is hand sliced (which means that the bread doesn't lie on the pan evenly). Less wasted butter as well. And, by the way, a glass to cut the hole out is less than ideal, whether or not the bread is buttered. Biscuit/cookie cutter is the way to go.

A Cuba Libre is rule breaking? I'm sure these guys are great bartenders, but this book is hardly earthshaking. It's a compilation of some drinks. Spare me the "philosophy."

As I understand, what's necessary for gazpacho is bread and oil for thickening; stock is not. If you want to go reasonably traditional, you could try these recipes (both based on recipes by Penelope Casas): Andalusian gazpacho and green gazpacho (scroll down to second recipe). I discovered the first one a couple of years ago and have never made any other tomato-based gazpacho since. I haven't made the second one, but I imagine it's also good (my guess is that her original version calls for more olive oil, though, and I would leave out the lettuce).

I'm curious: my Mom always cooked both the bread and the egg on both sides, so it definitely wasn't sunny side up. And although we liked our eggs on the runny side, she would make it with the yolk broken or simply cooked harder if anyone wanted it that way. Was that unusual? Do most people cook the egg only on one side?

Okay, I swear I'm not making this up. When I was growing up, we called this "a piece of bread with an egg in the middle." Unimaginative, but accurate.

Chris, if you have the budget, you might consider these miniature cocktail glasses. Plastic is okay, but there's nothing like glass to showcase a cocktail. I'm not sure if this will help, but when I started teaching cocktail classes, I found that what worked for me was to make a list of the most important elements of drink making (I only had a couple of hours, so I had to pare it down to the essentials). After I briefly went over equipment and ingredients, I paired each element with a drink to illustrate the point I was making. So, for instance, when talking about shaking v. stirring, I made them martinis -- one shaken and one stirred so they could see and taste the difference. When talking about the importance of fresh citrus, I made a Daiquiri with lime juice and one with the stuff out of the green plastic lime and let them taste the difference. And a Sidecar or Pegu Club is a good choice to teach flavor balance.

When I taste something great in a restaurant, I often start thinking about how to make it myself (unless it requires equipment I don't have or ingredients I can't get). Maybe it's genetic -- my mom used to do this as well. Sometimes I try to make it exactly as I had it; other times I just use a flavor combination or other element and make my own version. My latest experiment was pretty straightforward; a copy of a snap pea and radish salad we had at Momofuko Noodle Bar. It was dressed with sour cream and horseradish and chives, and I thought, "I can make this." And after a little playing around with the dressing, I did pretty well. Sometimes, though, my efforts aren't so successful. For instance, I had a shrimp and bean dish at a now defunct restaurant in San Francisco that I never did figure out -- it seemed simple, but obviously I was missing something crucial. I figure I'm not the only person who does this, right? Has anyone else had any successes or failures?

Old Bay?

Dried out and overpriced?

Foie gras hotdogs.

This reminds me of a recipe from Barbara Kafka's Roasting cookbook, except she uses chicken stock and then drizzles them with butter or chicken fat to finish. I don't really think of them as oven fries, but they are fabulous.

Maggie, this is brilliant. I usually just stuff the shells and then bake at 400F. The outsides of the potatoes get a bit crisp, but your way sounds as if the crispness factor is markedly increased. Do you rebake after filling?

Not inherently crispy, but you could make them so pretty easily. I make them by boiling small- to medium-sized potatoes, then cooling. Cut them in half, scoop out the flesh and mix with whatever you like. At this point, I usually just pipe the filling back into the shells and bake them, but you could certainly deep fry the shells first, which would give you your crispy crunchy element.

Chris, are you firmly locked into skins? I make "twice baked" appetizer potatoes from small red or Yukon gold potatoes -- one or two bites depending on the size of the potatoes. They can have the same flavor profile you're looking for (bacon and cheese) or you can make a variety of flavors. They'll need to be heated before serving, but they can be made the day before, so there's really no last minute work.

I started caramelizing some onions for a steak tonight, but they weren't quite done when I was ready to eat. To add some depth, I deglazed the pan with sherry and sherry vinegar, then added a cube of reduced beef stock and a bit of butter. I usually don't like a sauce on my steak, but this was excellent.

My problem will be storage, but I'll make it work. I'm really liking the big cubes.

Having read the entire book, I can say no. Ruhlman almost invariably presents a ratio and then follow it with so much contradictory and convoluted information and exceptions to his rules that I think an average home cook will just be confused. Maybe. I can see someone trying additions to baked goods -- particularly bread, pancakes or shortbread. Whether or not his ratios and recipes "work" is, of course, an important part of the story. (And, incidentally, I'm sure the recipes do work; they were tested extensively.) But another more significant question is whether the book does what Ruhlman says it will do. Here's what he says in the introductory chapters: "When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe; it's like knowing a thousand." "Ratios free you." What can you do, now that you know the bread ratio? You can make fresh bread without opening a single book. . ." "I like to think of it as an anti-recipe book, a book that teaches you and frees you from the need to follow." I think the books mostly fails in these goals. I'll agree that ratios for ingredients can be a useful memory device, once you already know the rest of the recipe -- that is, the procedure and the details. But if you already know a recipe for, say, bread, what more does a ratio give you? An easier way to do math? The crucial part is not the ratio, it's knowing how to make bread. And so the only way you can make bread without opening a book is if you know the technique (oh, and those pesky additional ingredients like yeast). Ruhlman says this in the text of the book, so he knows it too. Then why does he insist that knowing the ratio is what "frees" you? What "frees" you is internalizing the ingredients and the procedure, and that just comes with practice -- not from memorizing a ratio. Another problem I have with the book is that once he leaves the realm of doughs and batters, the whole "ratio" idea falls flat. For instance, in the section on sausage, he gives "the ratio" of meat to fat as 3:1. But then he says the right amount of fat for sausage is 30 percent (3:1 results in a fat content of 25 percent). Then he says that the extra 5 percent is usually provided by the meat itself. Okay, fine. But then he says that some meat has more fat than other meat, so you have to use common sense and "eyeball" the mixture. Hey, I've made sausage (from recipes in Charcuterie) and I understand that, but I'm sorry, if I have to do all that, then that 3:1 ratio is pretty close to useless. Why not just tell me I want a mixture of 70 percent meat and 30 percent fat? Or make the ratio 7:3? It's even more confusing when you get to his recipes, which call for 4 lbs. of meat to 1 lb. of fat, except for the chicken sausage recipe, which calls for 3.5 lbs. of meat to 1.5 lbs. of fat. Still not a 3:1 ratio to be found. In short, I think there's a limited set of circumstances in which ratios play a crucial role. There's a larger circle in which ratios can be an interesting concept. Maybe for someone who never thought on her own to multiply or divide ingredients in a recipe, this would provide a breakthrough, and that's great. The subject of ratios would, with the right author, make an interesting chapter in a book on learning to cook. As a primer in its own right, it fails.

We went to brunch here last Sunday and as usual, enjoyed it immensely. The brunch menu is more limited than the dinner menu, but what's there is great. We had the fried oyster sandwich and a version of eggs benedict with chunks of pork belly instead of Canadian bacon. The oyster sandwich, similar in all respects except the bread to a po' boy, was the best I've ever had (my apologies to New Orleans). The balance of flavors and textures was phenomenal. The egg dish was only slightly less successful. The eggs were expertly poached, the hollandaise was excellent, and the pork was the perfect accompaniment. Three or four large chunks were (I think) poached or cooked sous vide, then pressed and deep fried. My only complaint about the dish was that the bread underneath, while tasty, had a crust that was very difficult to cut through. Thinner slices or a different bread would be a better choice. Drinks, of course, were great as always.

For anyone who missed Joe Truex's foie gras hot dog the first time around, Repast restaurant is bringing it back for the Fourth of July. Chef Truex, the co-chef and -owner, always does great things with foie gras, but this remains one of my favorites of his. I tried this the first time I ever visited Repast, even before I moved to Atlanta. Three of us ordered the appetizer (along with several others), and the first one to bite into it said to the waiter, without batting an eye: "We'll have another order." It's that good.

His main point, I think, is to get consumers to realize that blithely assuming that meat with a label of "free-range" comes from happy animals who are allowed to roam at will with no "cruelty" is mistaken. It's the same thing (as Dave mentioned above) that Pollan did when he talked about the Rocky and Rosie chickens from Petaluma CA. Are those chickens treated better than factory farm chickens? Certainly. Are they allowed to roam free and feed on bugs (which is, I think, what many people think of when they hear the terms "free-range" or "cage-free")? No way. Most people, if asked, would say that ideally, they'd like a reliable source of meat that tastes good and doesn't harm animals. What writers like McWilliams and Pollan have done is to point out that the issue is much more complex than placing "factory farms" on the evil side and "free-range" on the righteous side. How is that a bad thing?