JAZ

I made white corn and leek soup a couple of weeks ago, and had some of it with Cajun-spiced shrimp, bacon and green onions. This soup is nice because it can be garnished up in a number of ways, so it's not like I'm eating the same soup for days in a row. It also freezes really well.

One thing that makes this week easier for me than for many others is that I'm only cooking for myself. If I end up with Triscuits and peanut butter with a side of tater tots on the last day of the week, I don't have to worry about endangering children or disappointing a spouse. So, Day 1 for lunch, I had leftover mashed potatoes with some cheese stirred in. No big deal. Night 1 for dinner, I had leftover grits (aka polenta) topped with some tomato sauce I had in the freezer. I added some mushrooms and pancetta and topped it with Parmigiano. A salad of romaine and arugula finished the meal. I would have made croutons for the salad, but I feared I was running low on bread. Although actually I've found a few slices in the freezer -- they're probably only good for toast or croutons, but that works for me. Day 2 for brunch, I scrambled one of my four eggs, mixed it with some jalapeno pepper cheese and had it in a flour tortilla. For dinner, I went over to a friend's. In the way that any dieter will recognize, my main problem so far has just been wanting whatever I can't have -- for instance, ordinarily, I can easily go a week without fish, but since I don't have any on hand, that's all I can think about.

The only time when I willingly ate medium-cooked eggs was my first year of college at the dining hall. If you wanted real eggs (i.e., not powdered scrambled), your ostensible choices were hard or soft cooked. But of course since the eggs sat around on a warming tray until claimed by students, the soft cooked, if they ever were soft, turned to medium cooked. Still, they were better than the hard, and as Maggie so eloquently puts it, butter helped. Plus, there was the appeal of actually getting a soft boiled egg, when serendipity took over and you picked one that had just come out of the water. All in all, not a bad way to start the day.

I've had opened bottles (in my fridge) that have certainly lasted longer than two years. Go for it.

So, it's my first day of not going to the grocery store when I "need" something. I've realized that I have no tomatoes and the half a cucumber in the fridge is spoiled -- not the end of the world, but there goes the idea for Greek salad. On the other hand, I discovered a hunk of pancetta in the back of the freezer and a container of strained tomatoes in the fridge. So I'll make tomato sauce and it'll be pasta for dinner tonight. I've discovered that right now I have a lot of beef and pork in the freezer but no fish or chicken. I don't even have a can of tuna -- I donated the two cans I had to a food drive in my apartment building. But instead of listing what I have in my cupboards and freezer, I think I'm going to keep track of the things I would have bought this week, and see what I save. Thus, so far, I've not bought cherry tomatoes and a cucumber, but I probably also would have gotten some bread (I'm low) and potatoes (I'm out). I love to shop for food. I really miss going to the grocery store, and it's only the first day. Sigh.

I don't do a weekly shopping expedition. I live next to a grocery store, so I shop as needed. But I can certainly stop shopping for a week, and I can probably do pretty well with what I have on hand (thank god I stocked up on cat food). I know I have a lot of stuff in the pantry and in the freezer, so I think this will work for me. I'll probably have to break into the emergency stash of shelf-stable milk for my coffee, but, hey! that's why it's there.

I live in Atlanta, hardly a small town, and I could buy everything on the list IF -- and this is a big if -- I was willing to drive all over the city. Personally, I'd be willing to drive for ingredients, but if you're asking what you can get at the usual grocery stores, then, this is my experience: Of your list, I could get smoked paprika (probably not Spanish) and Mexican crema at my main grocery store. I know I can get duck and sherry vinegar at Whole Foods. The other items? I know I can find them, but as I said, it might take a drive to a lot of markets that are out of the ordinary.

I've done this with pistachios, and it worked fine.

What we always tell our students is to look through the book and make sure the edition includes the illustration of how to skin a squirrel. Then you're safe. And yes, a spiral bound edition does make it easy to use. Mine is paperback, and it's kind of a pain -- never wants to stay open. What you really want to avoid is that revised "new" edition, as emilyr mentioned above.

I'm going to disagree here -- I think a typical North American Thanksgiving dinner is completely unbalanced in this sense. Everything from the stuffing to the gravy to the sweet potatoes is heavy, creamy and sweet. No crunch at all, and nothing acidic. For typical American food, a BLT is much better balanced. Crunchy lettuce, acidity and sweetness from the tomatoes, salty crisp bacon, creaminess from mayonnaise. I have a question: Does bitterness not enter into the Japanese taste spectrum?

Just to further complicate matters, keep in mind that some small producers -- especially those who raise grass-fed beef -- prefer not to have their beef graded at all (it's optional) because they don't have the kind of marbling that will get them a prime or choice grade. It doesn't mean the beef isn't good; it's just different.

I made potato-leek soup recently as well, but I use butter and chicken stock; I like the flavor and body they add to the soup. And I finish with a drizzle of cream. Strictly speaking, by the way, the potatoes don't absorb salt, but you're right that this soup does need quite a bit, especially when you start with water instead of stock. I also add a pinch of ground mustard and some nutmeg. More recently I made the coconut seafood soup from Kasma Loha-Unchit's It Rains Fishes. Really easy if you have the aromatics on hand, but it does require lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal (I used ginger) and fish sauce. I used all shrimp instead of the combination she calls for, but it was great.

On his blog, talking about making a smaller quantity, Ruhlman says: I don't know if he's ever actually tried to fit three pounds of bones in a 2-qt. pt, but I rather doubt it. I'm sure he's never ended up with a quart of stock that way. It seems clear that he's just not very precise in his descriptions of stock making. Which is odd, given his insistence on how it will improve one's cooking. I'd have thought that the book would have been edited to catch something like that, though.

Another good choice close to Midtown -- although not new -- is Repast. It can be a bit loud, but the food is always good. The chef there does great things with foie gras, if you're a fan.

Okay, I get that everyone loves Rachel Maddow. But lets say that -- oh -- Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper or Bob Edwards made a video demonstrating how to make a Margarita and he or she did the following: explained what 100% agave tequila is and then said that if you can't find 100% agave tequila you should probably use mescal; extolled the virtues of measuring ingredients and then measured only two of the three; Stressed the importance of using fresh lime juice and then poured Hiram Walker triple sec. Would I be hearing how Katie is the best ambassador for cocktails since William Powell in the Thin Man? How if I used Anderson's recipe I'd get a better Margarita than most bartenders in America make? Or that Bob is speaking not to eGullet members but to people who love Bob Edwards so he can use cheap, bad triple sec?

Guess my title was too cryptic -- it really was tongue-in-cheek, just as (apparently) Grub Street's was. I do know who Rachel Maddow is (and I apologize for my typo in the original post, which I've corrected). I don't watch much TV and haven't ever heard her radio program, so I haven't seen her in her real job, but I know who she is. Don't get me wrong -- I think it's great that she's into cocktails, and it's great that she's popularizing them. I just wish that if she decided to make a cocktail video, she'd be more careful about it. Talking about using real lime juice was good, but given her focus, she should have mentioned that there's a pretty substantial question about using lemon v. lime with the Jack Rose. And considering her vehemence about real lime juice, I really can't understand why she uses an industrial Grenadine -- Boulaine, which goes for $5.99 per liter. And as for Calvados vs. Applejack -- gotta disagree. Maybe it's just that I'm used to the Jack Rose made with Lairds Bonded, but Calvados has an entirely different flavor profile. For me, it's not a good match for the Jack Rose. I'd rather use the regular Lairds. I don't have a problem if she doesn't like regular Lairds in the drink, but it's odd that she didn't even talk about it. All of this is beside my original point, though, which is: what makes celebrities experts in cocktails?

Okay, being an amateur cocktail maker myself, let me start by saying that I know amateurs can know a lot about cocktails. This forum is proof of that. (Also, to set the record straight, I do know who Rachel Maddow is now, although I didn't two days ago.) But it puzzles me that someone with no apparent experience, much less expertise, in making cocktails is, all the sudden and seemingly everywhere, being presented as a "mixologist." First, on the cover of the latest issue of Imbibe was a teaser that read, "Cocktails with Rachel Maddow." A friend and I were looking at it and we both said, "Who's Rachel Maddow?" Turns out that it was just an interview with her about what cocktail bars she likes and what she likes to make at home -- reminiscent of the interviews at the back of what was it -- Gourmet? Bon Appetit? -- where someone thought it would be interesting for us to know what Richard Gere or Meryl Streep cooked at home. But then, within two days three friends sent me this link from Grub Street, entitled Rachel Maddow: Mixologist. So it's one thing for Imbibe to interview her, but a Grub Street video showing her making a Jack Rose, and not very well? Now, I know there are bad cocktail videos out there, and I'm not surprised that there's yet another one. I also know that every cook with a cocktail shaker thinks he or she knows cocktails (Bittman on cocktails), but still. What's the deal? Is it just that cocktails are in and everyone is now jumping on the bandwagon? If Rachel Maddow is a mixologist, who isn't?

I've only made these once (from the recipe quoted above), and I liked them because they weren't as sweet as the original. But if you want them sweeter and less peanut-y, why not just start cutting back on the amount of peanut butter until you get to the point where the sweetness level is what you want?

My pancakes aren't as good as anyone else's, as far as I can tell. My sister uses the same recipe I do, and hers are light and fluffy and perfect. Mine are not as good as you'd find at your local Denny's.

Maybe some of these charts would help? lamb basic cuts lamb primal cuts American lamb cuts

You can always run the cheese-topped bread under the broiler before you place it on the soup.

While I agree that coffee and tea can balance the sweetness of desserts, I'm not sure it's acid that does it. They're both bitter, and bitterness (think chocolate) balances sweetness as well as acid does, just on another axis.

The grocery store had smoked pork hocks on sale, and I had a big container of navy beans in the pantry, so I made, of course, navy bean soup. I'd never made it before, but it turned out pretty well. I'll definitely make it again. In the pressure cooker, it took about 90 minutes start to finish, and that's with beans that had been rinsed briefly but not soaked at all.

I have citric acid in my cupboard, but I use it rarely. Usually I want the flavor that various acids provide, but if I'm out of the appropriate natural acid (lemons, limes, the right vinegar) citric acid steps in as a great pinch hitter. Has anyone mentioned tomatoes? Or bell peppers?

I remember going grocery shopping with my Mom and watching her check the little window on the back of the bacon package to get a cut with some meat -- not all fat. Now, I check the window to find the fattiest package; pork is so damn lean these days that you might as well be eating tenderloin as bacon.