JAZ

I tried some on salmon tonight. I have a couple of rubs that I like to use with salmon, but neither seemed to go with the side dishes I had planned, so I was thinking I'd just use salt and pepper. Then I remembered Old Bay and gave it a try. Nice.

From the website: Ah, so that explains it.

Yes, they're all non-smoking with the exception of a very few bar & grill places that seem to have some kind of exception.

I think it's not that All Clad is a bad product (except that the handles truly suck). It's just that you can find equally good cookware for much less money. It sounds like you got a good price on your set, but lines like Le Creuset's stainless/clad line or even Sur La Table's "tri-ply" are anywhere from two-thirds to half the price of the All Clad stainless line and perform just as well, if not better. And the AC Copper Core line is a joke -- for that price you can get Demeyere's Apollo or Sirocco line get a significant layer of copper, instead of a thin layer sandwiched by aluminum. The other thing about All Clad in my experience is that because it has the big name, many people choose it as their first "serious" cookware, so of course they love it -- they've been using crappy pans and this is the first decent stuff they've used. I've had lots of customers over my years in cookware stores who have started out buying All Clad and then ended up upgrading to Demeyere; I've never had a customer go the other way, even if the All Clad was on sale.

I had lunch at the burger bar on a recent trip to New York; my lunch companions knew Waldy and Sergio, the chef, so my experience was probably not typical. We started with some of the wild mushroom pizza, which they apparently give to all the tables. Thin crust and wood fired, it was among the best I've had. (Since I didn't get a chance to have any other pizza on this trip to New York, it was very welcome.) The burger was also one of the best I've ever had. Apparently the burgers used to be served on sliced bread; I'm glad they switched to onion rolls because I've never been a fan of burgers on bread, but I'm told that they were great that way too. What was exceptional about the meal was that Beacon just changed its menu, so the chef sent out quite a few samples from the new lunch menu to see what we thought (by way of disclaimer, the chef offered and these dishes were all complimentary). We tasted a nice smoky seafood chowder garnished with tiny pate a choux puffs, plus a number of items from the wood oven -- grilled smoked pork belly served with charred peppers; shrimp in butter sauce; razor clams; chicken livers and lamb kidneys; an artichoke stuffed with breadcrumbs and gremolata; lamb meatballs; and asparagus with egg and parmesan. For me, the most successful were the asparagus, pork belly, meatballs and shrimp. The razor clams were very tasty, topped with buttery breadcrumbs, roasted garlic and chorizo, but razor clams are just not my favorite -- they're always chewy, and these were no exception. Likewise, the artichoke was nicely done and flavorful, but I think roasting isn't the best treatment for the vegetable -- it was a bit dry and would have benefited from a dipping sauce. Overall, though, I think the menu works. Given that they'd just started it a few days before, they had the dishes down well and execution was solid. We got to watch quite a few dishes leaving the kitchen, and I could easily have found another half dozen I'd want to try.

Back in the early days of the eGCI, David Leite did a class on Food Writing. Although most of it is about breaking into the field, some of it is about the writing process itself. One excellent point he makes is to learn to write a grammatical sentence. Too many food writers seem so enthralled with the subject matter that they forget about the underlying structure.

Depending on the diameter of the onions, I do that too -- split the white part before I start chopping.

The only dark rum I currently have is Appleton 12 yr. Reserve. Would this drink work with that rum, or should I wait and buy a bottle of Cruzan?

Messermeister, for its serrated peeler. Several other manufacturers make similar peelers now, but this was (I believe) the original, and it's certainly the best.

Quite a while ago, I was teaching a private cocktail party class for a Junior League group, who wanted a cocktail "like a cosmopolitan" for their group. Using white rum and pomegranate juice, I came up with the Pomeranian: 2 fl oz white rum 1 fl oz pomegranate juice 1/2 fl oz triple sec 1/2 fl oz fresh lemon juice 1/4 fl oz grapefruit juice It was a little on the sweet side, but they loved it. I preferred a version with the amounts of pomegranate and grapefruit reversed. (I'm sure it's not the only cocktail out there called the Pomeranian.)

All of my cooking life, when I've used green onions, I've trimmed the roots and started chopping from the white end. Unless a recipe specifies whites only, I use the white part and the tender green parts, stopping well short of the dark green ends. I was recently cooking dinner with a friend of mine, however, and asked him to chop some green onions for potato salad. He washed the onions, trimmed off a bit of nastiness in the greens, and then started chopping at the green end. I wasn't really paying attention until he asked me if I wanted the white part too. Huh? I swear it never occurred to me, despite the fact that I've always referred to "green onions," that the green part might be a crucial element in cooking. My friend explained that in Cajun and Creole cooking, it's the only part that counts. Who knew? What part of green onions do you use? White, green or both? Most important, which end do you start at when chopping?

I add chipotle puree to mashed sweet potatoes -- the sweetness is a good match for the smoke. I have tried adding dried chipotles (ground up) to brownies, but it's easy to overdo it -- the smokiness becomes acrid if you add too much. I've come to prefer cayenne or ancho.

I make this Asian style coleslaw often and it's always a hit -- it actually won a prize at one potluck. Also, if you're a beet fan, you might consider a beet salad -- sliced beets in a vinaigrette with mint and feta cheese is different and beautiful, and beets and oranges also go well together in a salad. I also make a Southwestern style salad with julienned jicama, red bell pepper, red onion, orange and avocado slices with a lime/orange/chipotle dressing.

My standard operating procedure is to puree the entire contents of the can (adding a little water if necessary) and then refrigerate it until it's used up. It will last well over a month, which is plenty of time for me to go through a small can. Only rarely do I encounter a recipe that doesn't call for mincing or pureeing the chipotles first, so this just gets it all out of the way at once. I add it to all kinds of dips, salsas and sauces, including salad dressings for Southwestern/Mexican slaws or tossed salads.

I once tried Calvados in a Jack Rose. Despite what's been said about this substitution by others, I found it undrinkable. Maybe it was bad quality Calvados, but I'll never do that again.

I forgot -- I've also made cookies that use Chinese five spice powder, so that would be anise, fennel, Sichuan peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon.

I've seen several "copycat" recipes online, but they seem wrong to me. If you look at the ingredients listed on real Old Bay, celery salt is listed first (meaning that it's the predominant ingredient in the mixture), with red and black pepper and paprika also making an appearance by name -- everything else is just "spices." The recipe versions I've seen all seem to make the erroneous assumption that the "Bay" in Old Bay refers to bay leaf and start with a huge amount of it -- in most cases, more than any other ingredient. My sense of taste and knowledge of how ingredient lists are put together make those recipes highly suspect.

I used to have a recipe for a shortbread cookie made with cumin seed and (I think) black pepper. The cookies were different, but oddly addictive. I also make brownies with cayenne and cinnamon, but that's another question entirely.

Much as I like Anderson Valley and the Mendocino area, the problem with staying there is that you'll then have a 4- or 5-hour drive to Crescent City. If you need to make it by noon, you'll be getting up at the crack of dawn and you won't have any time to spend in the redwoods. Depending when you actually get on the road, you could make it to Point Reyes Station for lunch on your first day. You wouldn't have a whole lot of time there, but it's not way out of your way -- it's about an hour and a half from the airport if traffic isn't horrible. Then what I would suggest is driving from Point Reyes after lunch up to Eureka -- that gets you close to the redwoods and to Crescent City so the drive the next morning can be leisurely. I've heard great things about Restaurant 301 in Eureka -- I wanted to go there when we drove up the coast last summer but we got a very late start and didn't make it into town in time. It looks as if they do both tasting menus and a la carte. Added bonus: It's conveniently located in a B&B that sounds nice too.

I'm definitely trying that the next time I make potato chips. I've used it on popcorn but didn't think about chips.

Old Bay seasoning wasn't common in my cooking world (Western US) and it wasn't until I visited Baltimore a few years ago that I had it in anything, at least not knowingly. But oddly enough, it was a visit to O's Steak and Seafood in Denver that brought Old Bay to my attention. The chef there used it on popcorn that garnished one of the best shrimp dishes I've ever had. So I bought a can when I got back. I've discovered that Old Bay is what made the shrimp salad I had in Baltimore so good -- I found this recipe at the Old Bay website and it's now my standard for shrimp salad. In addition, I now use it in Bloody Marys -- anywhere I would have used celery salt, in fact. Any other fans? What do you use it in or on?

Update: to see if I was really missing something crucial, I bought a bag of JollyTime popcorn and started experimenting. I used almost the whole bag, with various amounts and types of oil, various pans and various heat levels. Sometimes the results were edible, but I can't say that they were ever actually good. I finally threw the rest of the bag away when I found Walgreen's house brand of "natural" (i.e., not butter flavored) popcorn in small bags, 12 bags for $3. Yes, it's still more expensive than a bag of Jolly Time, but not less than premium popping corn, and it's great every time.

I definitely overbowl when it comes to salads, for exactly that reason. Although when I feel like being civilized, I don't eat from the giant bowl. And I have to admit that sometimes I overbowl just because I have really great oversized porcelain Revol "soup plates" and I love to use them. On a related issue, when choosing a storage container for leftovers, I almost always choose one that's way bigger than necessary. (That's a conceptual problem, though -- I have trouble estimating volumes.) But does that count as overbowling?

I realize that the points that are being made here in this discussion are good ones. I teach beginners to cook and I love doing it (although I don't do it for free, as Amanda suggests). But let's return to the actual piece that Ms. Hesser wrote, and not what we think about cooking and families and convenience foods. The fact is that Ms Hesser wrote a poorly constructed and poorly argued op-ed. It wanders; it makes claims and fails to back them up; it sets up straw men and can't even knock them down. Her first point is that Michelle Obama is responsible for making cooking seem like it's not a chore. She says: "Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore" and "Americans have been told repeatedly that cooking is a time-consuming drag." Then she makes the point that home cooking has decreased, and that 32 families have been polled and they think that cooking from scratch is a "rarefied hobby." She states that "Companies like Kraft and General Foods promoted mix-and-eat macaroni and cheese, rice with mix-in flavor pouches and instant pudding. Pillsbury, the flour maker, became Pillsbury the biscuit, pie and cookie dough maker: baking just by turning on the oven." The implication is that a word from the First Lady could change this. To finish, she says that "convenience foods save neither money nor time." I interpret all of that to say: Michelle Obama is wrong for saying that she doesn't like to cook because it sets a bad example; no one cooks from scratch and that's bad, because rice with mix-in flavor packets and frozen biscuits are bad products -- and, presumably the cause of childhood obesity; pre-washed romaine hearts aren't worth the money and we should all buy whole romaine heads. I don't think I'm out of line with this interpretation. I'm not reading evil intentions into her article: these are the points she makes. Ms. Hesser has said elsewhere that she's not saying that Michelle Obama should get into the kitchen and cook. If that's the case, then why end with the whimsical daydream that "it wouldn’t be surprising if, with a little exposure to the kitchen, Mrs. Obama took to cooking herself"?

I think what I would do as a first step is buy a Sara Lee Frozen cheesecake, cut it up while still frozen and mix it into the ice cream to see if the basic idea works. If it does, then go to the next step and make cheesecake (I think the idea of making it in a sheet pan is great), but if it doesn't, you won't have taken the time and effort to make a cheesecake for nothing.