JAZ

I’m not "dissing" the book based on two sentences. Qwerty asked specifically why I said the writing wasn’t good. I went to the chapter on Amazon, which is what I’ve read, and picked two confusing sentences (out of several) with lots of errors. I’m not saying the book is worthless because of them; I’m saying that in my opinion it’s not an example of good writing. By the way, I think Ruhlman’s books about other people (Making of a Chef, etc.) are good -- much better than his books about cooking. Some writers are great at capturing the essence of a person or situation and not that great at explaining concepts. So I don’t think I have preconceived ideas about his writing. I was really hoping that the bad writing in Elements was a fluke and that Ratio would be better. Also, as I said, this doesn’t mean I think the book is worthless. It’s limited in scope, but limited can be a very good thing, if it’s done well. And as I said, pedestrian writing is not the worst fault in a cookbook. I think it’s great that he’s getting cooks to think about weights, and I think as far as ratios can take a cook, they’re a valuable thing to think about, especially for a beginning cook who may not have considered that aspect of cooking.

Not only is his writing oddly phrased and awkward, it also contains grammatical and punctuation errors. For instance, here's the second sentence in the "Doughs" chapter that's excerpted on Amazon here: "The simplest dough is flour and water, and will be relatively flavorless unless you do something to it, such as add fat, egg, yeast, salt, sugar, or if you wrap it around something tasty (ground pork) and fry it, as with a Chinese pot sticker (6 tablespoons of cold water into a cup of flour will give you a workable pot sticker dough, or about 2 to 1 by weight)." This appears a page or so later: "A bread that’s mixed with a lot of yeast and baked 4 hours later hasn’t had the time to develop flavors – so adding flavors to these doughs, herbs, aromatics, olives, nuts, even a coating of olive oil and coarse salt before baking, goes a long way in this case." I'm not saying that a cookbook has to be elegant and beautifully written (although that's a wonderful thing when it happens). But I don't expect to have to stop and read a sentence twice or three times to get its meaning. If that happens once in a book, I can overlook it. If it happens twice in three pages, I assume that it's going to keep happening, and that makes me reluctant to keep reading. That's what I mean when I say it's not good writing. I expect more from a published author.

I've never cooked any Thai food before, but last night I decided to try my hand at beef satay. It turned out well, I thought, but I've ended up with a lot of sauce left over, and I wonder if anyone can suggest the best way to keep it. The coconut milk in the sauce is what concerns me -- I'm not sure how long it will last in the fridge. Can I freeze the sauce?

From what I've read (admittedly only what's available on Amazon), the writing is as pedestrian as I've come to expect from Ruhlman, although it's certainly edited better than Elements was. At the time when I asked my question, I had no idea what the book was actually going to include -- I may have phrased it facetiously, but it was not a ridiculous question. It seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, that ratios are useful for baking and sauces (sausages too) but not the majority of cooking.

I can't really see that attitude has anything to do with it. It's not about how I relate to the food I'm served, or the attitude of the person serving it. It has to do with, as Holly said, whether or not the food is made to order and served to me at a table.

Although I happily use (and actually plan for) leftovers, I've never been a fan of trying to use everything in the fridge in one dish -- I find flavors get muddied and you end up with something that has no focus. In your example, although I'm sure the fritatta was great, I would have used the grilled mushrooms and onions on a salad, (alone or with leftover steak if there was some), and saved the onion/garlic jam for another dish -- maybe pureed with some roasted red pepper into a sauce for the pasta. Or as an appetizer, spread on some crostini and topped with slivers of the pecorino.

From a Tales of the Cocktail press release: From the list, in addition to RoyalSwagger, former eG Forums host Erik (eje) is one of this year's apprentices. Congratulations!

Now that (I guess) the book is out, I'm curious to take a look. Can anyone tell me what kinds of recipes are covered? It seems to me that "ratios" are important for sauces, baking and pastry primarily. And that's great, but does the book include any actual ratios or recipes for, like, dinner? I can't see that there's a ratio for pot roast, or chicken and dumplings, or roast pork. I'm not saying that the book isn't worthwhile if it doesn't have these, but I'm very interested to see what it does actually cover.

The Kapoosh looks just like the photo Andie linked to. Perhaps there was an early version with bamboo inserts, but when I bought one, it had the plastic rods, not bamboo. A friend of mine has one now and it also has the plastic. My problem with that style knife block was simply that it didn't hold very many knives. I think if you only had a few knives, and especially if you had cleavers and other large knives that don't fit into an ordinary block, it would be an okay choice.

I was just in Denver for the weekend for the IACP conference and had two great meals with Steven Shaw (Fat Guy) and Dave Scantland (Dave the Cook). One was at O's, which is described here; the other was at Rioja. We opted for the tasting menu at Rioja, and after a brief discussion of how many dishes we wanted, we went for the full tour. It turned out to be an amazing spread of food -- three "tastings" at a time from each of the sections of the menu (online here), plus wines. The standouts for me were the tuna tartare mixed with fennel and apple and served napoleon style on apple chips; the pork belly on garbanzo bean puree; the "candied lemon" gnocchi with Dungeness crab; and the lamb,which was done perfectly. If there was a drawback, it was personal -- there was a lot of goat cheese, not a favorite of mine. Overall, the dishes were nicely conceived and executed, and the wines were a good match. Great value too -- $75 including the wines. I'm glad we went there for our first dinner; if we'd gone after O's, Rioja surely would have paled in comparison. As it was, it was a delightful surprise; we honestly didn't know what to expect, and it was a great meal all the way through.

Rancho, that sounds similar to the sauce I've been using, but I've also seen sauces that start with frying the chiles in oil before rehydrating. Any reason why one method is better than another?

I first heard of Chef Kleinman when I read this article, which was reprinted in Best Food Writing 2008. Although I enjoyed the author's explanations of how Kleinman got his effects, what really struck me were the descriptions of some of the dishes (anytime a good food writer says something brought tears to his eyes, I take notice). So I didn't have low expectations at all. I don't have too much to add to Steven's description of the meal, except to say that I found the shrimp dish to be nearly on a par with the pork, and found the duck to be less satisfactory: the duck itself was fabulous, but the beans were not as good as they could have been. The two frozen dishes were extraordinary. Like Steven, I'd had liquid nitrogen ice creams before, but these were a big cut above any of the others. The texture of both the sorbet and the ice cream was unbelievable. The ice cream was rolled in cinnamon tortilla crumbs, and the contrast of the crunchy spicy bits around the smoothest ice cream in the world was perfect. It's what yogurt and granola can only dream of being.

Here's a link to the paper cited by the Wikipedia article. Seems to be a case where some oxidized nuts caused the reaction, while most were fine. and I know I've eaten lots of pine nuts -- plain and in things. Never had them go rancid, and never experienced that taste disorder.

Jamon -- You've got to tell us a little more here! I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around this. What is the texture like? And is it sweet? I would think the carrots would make for a very sweet macaroni and cheese, which really doesn't sound all that appetizing... ← I agree -- especially with the orange juice. The one review posted of the recipe says the same thing (too sweet). You didn't find it to be so?

As long as whatever it is means that goat cheese is no longer on every salad ever made, I'm all for it. That was a trend that never should have happened.

Savory souffles? If time is an element, you can make Anne Willan's twice-baked souffles. I've made them before, and they puff up remarkably well during the second baking.

I got mine sharpened (by a local professional knife guy) and it's great. One thing you should keep in mind is that if your blade has "microserrations" like mine did, the sharpening process will remove that edge and leave a regular one.

It's been at least five years since I've been to Destino on Market. I took my brother there when he was in town for a conference. We were all very happy with the food and service. Now he's headed back to SF for another conference and is thinking about taking a group of colleagues there. I'd like to make sure it hasn't gone downhill since then. Anyone been lately?

In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee says that for best whipping, the cream should not only be cold, but it should be "aged" in the refrigerator for 12 hours or more. That is, if the cream sat out and warmed up for a while and was chilled just before use, it wouldn't whip well. Maybe it sat out for a while in the car while you were shopping, and then you chilled it quickly and tried to whip it?

I've made cardamom ice cream and got a subtle but definite flavor by steeping 8-10 pods in 2 cups of hot cream for 15 minutes or so.

I may be alone in this, but I find the organization and layout of this book sadly confusing. I looked up "Corn" (and found nothing I didn't already know, but that's beside the point -- it's corn, after all. But how odd it is that "corn" was listed under, well, "Corn") and was flipping through the surrounding pages and came upon "cooling," which was something about which foods have a cooling aspect, I guess. "Appetizers" comes after "Anise, Star" and "Korean Cuisine" comes after "Kohlrabi." I wonder why they didn't arrange the information into sections that make some sense, instead of just jumbling everything together. I can tell there's some very useful information there, but I'm unlikely to refer to it often. I certainly won't read through it or pick it up to browse for fun, which is what I expected to want to do. I'm very disappointed.

I wonder, though, if Ruhlman's intent is to provide starting points or to provide absolute ratios. I think it's the latter. For instance, from the blurb above and from what he's said on his website, it seems that he's saying that the ratio for a vinaigrette is 3:1, not that it's a starting point. From his blog: This seems absurd to me. Yeah, it's a useful starting point, but how you can discount the difference in acid levels between vinegars, the oil used, and the food you're using it on? I make some vinaigrettes with equal parts oil and vinegar, all the way up to 4 or 5 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. And his mention of a "Thai inspired vinaigrette" is especially confusing -- the Thai salads I'm familiar with don't even contain oil in the dressings; they use fish sauce and sugar to balance the lime juice. Maybe it's just me, but a book of ratios seems to be useful only in a very limited sense -- as a starting point for some sauces and baked goods. Not much else.

David, how did you get started with the show? Is your background in professional cooking? Did you know someone from the show? It also sounds as if you weren't the only guest chef on the program; is that right? Who were the others -- home cooks like you or local restaurant chefs?

Since it's brined already, I'd go very easy on additional salt.

I'm not familiar with a "Peanut Plank" but if it's anything like a Munch bar, maybe this information or this recipe will help. I think corn syrup might help keep the syrup lighter -- the nut crunch recipe I have that calls for a comparatively large amount of corn syrup stays much lighter in color than other toffee recipes.