JAZ

I like mashed sweet potatoes with a little pureed chipotles in adobo; toasted cumin seeds with sauteed cabbage; and broccoli with oyster sauce or hoisin.

Definitely. Don't plan to make anything that requires specialized equipment, unless you plan to bring it yourself or are sure it's available. I made dinner for a family reunion in a condo kitchen that didn't have a blender (we bought a cheap one at the hardware store and gave it to my nephew), measuring cups or any knives but steak knives (I'd brought my own, fortunately). Oh, and only two of the four burners worked. That's extreme, of course -- most rental kitchens are stocked better than that. But it will help if you're good at improvising. And if it's at all possible, bring your knives -- that's the one thing that you just can't improvise. The menu I did was pork braised in tomatillo-green chile sauce, cheese enchiladas, chicken fajitas and a couple of southwestern salads. It worked pretty well, once we bought the blender.

Egg salad (if you like it, of course) is great on a BLT -- use it instead of mayonnaise. In this case, a less chunky version is less messy.

For me, the most important thing I learned was to get the worm (the screw part) inserted in the middle of the cork and straight (a nonstick coated worm helps with this). That part does take practice, at least it did for me. Now that I've got that down, I have a lot less trouble. But it is crucial to have a good corkscrew. If the worm is bent at all, you're doomed to frustration. There are corkscrew styles that don't require the kind of pulling you seem to be talking about. The little table model from Screwpull is really easy -- just place it over the bottle, start turning, and keep turning until the cork comes out. No pulling at all.

I'm interested to hear why you say that "even if the coating lasts forever, its performance will be gone, anywhere from 6 months to a few years from now." What do you mean -- that food will start sticking to the surface? Do you have any evidence to back this up? As I mentioned above, I've had a Swiss Diamond skillet for 6 months or so. I use it several times a week on average, don't take any particular precautions with it and put it in the dishwasher. The surface is still as non-stick as when I got it. I've also had an Analon skillet for almost 6 years and have used it several times a week (at least) without being really careful, although because I didn't have a dishwasher for most of that time, I washed it by hand (now I put it into the dishwasher.) The surface is fine. Can you ruin a non-stick surface? Certainly. But it's not inevitable.

I don't use mine all that often for cutting vegetables, but I do use them for chicken. I also use scissors to cut through the skin on bacon slices to keep them from curling up when frying.

I enjoy photos in books, but with a couple of exceptions it's not a necessity. I think technique-driven books are helped by photos, and of course books on ingredients need photos of the ingredients (like Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini). Drawings can be distracting and silly, but on the other hand, sometimes that's great. What would The Joy of Cooking be without the drawing of how to skin a squirrel? The photos that I don't care for in cookbooks are of the authors -- Food Network stars' cookbooks tend to be filled with them, which is a major reason I don't have any of them. I don't want pictures of Tyler or Jamie or Paula or Rachael; just show me the food, please.

Raw: and cooked:

You could also roast a chicken (whole, or parts) and serve it over a mushroom risotto. Sauteed spinach or chard would make a nice side. I might start with bruschetta topped with tomatoes and basil, and end with a fruit cobbler or berry shortcake, if you can find good berries.

Creative Loafing has a piece on Element: Lab Experiment. I find it interesting that except for that bit, the author really doesn't talk about the food much -- he's much more entranced with the theory.

I had a great tasting menu at Element a few nights ago. The service was a little uneven, but the food was all great. A few highlights: "Fried fish and some tartare sauce" is a deceptively pedestrian name for a dish that has probably spoiled me forever for fish and chips. A piece of white fish (not sure what) was cooked sous vide (I assume) until it was silky, and then battered and fried a la Heston Blumenthal. Served with a paper-thin lemon slice also battered and fried, which made me never want to eat anything else with fried fish. It was great on its own and brilliant with the fish. Tagliolini with pork belly and parmesan, served topped with a poached egg yolk, was also spectacular. (Forget eggs benedict -- this would be the perfect brunch dish.) The sea urchin with smoked bacon made me realize that I really do like sea urchin. (Admittedly, I'd only tried it once, and it was terrible. I was happy to have a good example of it to change my mind.) The diver scallop with sweetbread hash (which also had tiny cubes of potatoes and -- I believe -- shitake mushrooms) worked remarkably well. I tend to think of scallops as delicate and it always surprises me that they can stand up to strong flavors. This was a great combination, and the scallop was exquisite. Other dishes were uniformly good -- I thought everything worked in both concept and execution. If I had a complaint, it would be the cocktail list -- nothing seemed particularly complex or very interesting. But I'm told that they're working on that, so I hope to see less vodka and more variety in the future.

I don't like the taste of warmed milk, which is probably why I've never been a big fan of cappuccino.

I made a Communist from Dr. Cocktail's book a while back. It's gin, orange juice, Cherry Heering and lemon juice (Here's a picture of it) -- a little sweet, but it bears tinkering with.

I got a Swiss Diamond skillet around the first of the year. I've used non-stick pans by Analon, Look (very similar to Scan Pan) and All-Clad in the past, and never had any problem with them, but I do think the Swiss Diamond is more durable. I've been putting it into the dishwasher ever since I got it and it's been fine. I've overheated it inadvertently and haven't noticed any problems from that either.

Dim sum options are good -- what places do you like?

I've been a long-time customer of Trader Joe's, from way back in the early 80's when it was a regional company in Southern California. I've thought that they diluted a little too much when they expanded into produce, which never seemed to be what they could do well. I buy lemons and limes because they tend to be cheaper than Publix (it's not easy for me to get to DFM, although I love it). But I hate buying pre-packaged produce, so that's about the only produce I buy. However, I've long been a fan of some of TJ's products -- I always buy nuts and chocolate there for my Christmas baking because the quality is great and it saves me a lot of money. The frozen foods do tend to be good -- I don't buy the prepared products, but the IQF products that I've bought have always been good. And their pizza dough is very good.

Having lived in San Francisco for 20 years, I got used to good (or at least acceptable) Chinese food in almost every neighborhood I lived in. Now that I've moved, I'm beginning to miss it. I'm sure there are good Chinese restaurants in Atlanta, but I don't know where to start. Certainly I get fliers almost every day for take-out places, but the only place in my neighborhood that I've seen -- a former IHOP on North Ave -- doesn't look very promising. Can anyone help me out? It'd be great to hear about places in Midtown, but for good enough food, I'll travel.

I was also going to mention spinach -- it goes well with both eggs and bacon or sausage. How about a base of blanched spinach instead of the English muffin for Eggs Benedict? Sauteed onions and peppers go well with eggs too. And don't forget a glass of tomato juice or V-8.

It used to be when you went to a "high class" restaurant, the apex of salads was the Caesar -- even if it wasn't done at the table, it was still the cool salad to order. It was on every menu. When I first became involved with culinary team building parties (which wasn't that long ago) it was what every client seemed to want, or at least what most clients got. Now, though, a new salad paradigm has emerged. "Mixed lettuces" or "field greens" or "baby greens" or even spinach -- plus pecans, goat cheese (or sometimes some sort of crumbled blue cheese) and dried cranberries, cherries or strawberries. Balsamic vinaigrette. I can't count the number of these I've seen this salad over the past couple of years, in restaurants, on private class menus, in cooking classes. It's as predictable as Caesar salad used to be. My feeling is that Alice Waters is responsible. I'm sure this salad was "discovered" in many places at the same time, but I think of it as the quintessential Chez Panisse salad. Now, for all I know, Chez Panisse never served this. Yet after Caesars became salad non grata in the San Francisco cooking class world, most of the chefs and instructors that switched to the greens-pecans-goat cheese model cited Alice as their inspiration. Maybe it was fresh and wonderful back in the early days. But pul-eez! These days, you can't open a menu without seeing the same old description staring you in the face. And if you happen to despise goat cheese or blue cheese and dried fruit bits (as I do), it seriously cuts down on the number of places you can order a salad. So c'mon, people. Come up with something new. Or go back to the Caesar. Am I the only one who's noticed this, or the only one who feels this way?

When I was in high school, my mother asked me to help her out in the kitchen by making meringue. I'd done it before, so I thought I knew how to proceed. Put the egg whites in a bowl, whip until frothy and start adding the sugar. All of which I did, except that the eggs never went much beyond the frothy stage. I asked Mom what I'd done wrong, and that's when she noticed that I'd grabbed a plastic bowl instead of a metal or ceramic one. I started over with another bowl and the meringue worked fine. So the moral of my story is that I have no idea about a speck of egg yolk, but I'll never use a plastic bowl for egg whites again. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

I do like skirt steak in tacos and fajitas, but I also like it grilled and sliced over all kinds of salads -- marinate it with Thai seasonings and serve it over a Thai salad, or with cumin, chipotle, garlic and orange juice and serve it over a salad of jicama, red pepper, red onion, avocado and orange slices.

The other day someone asked me the difference between crostini and bruschetta, and I realized that I don't know what it is. I've been told that it's a matter of size -- that crostini are smaller, bruschetta are larger. But I've also heard that with bruschetta, the bread is grilled, while crostini are toasted. Can anyone give me the real story?

OXO makes the greatest bag handles for plastic bags. You can't tell from the photo and they're kind of hard to describe, but these are flexible rubber tubes with a slit along the top side. You can slide the handles of multiple plastic bags into them, thereby cushioning your hands and keeping the bags together. (You can also use them for the paper "shopping" bags that have the twisted handles that dig into your hands). These handles are lifesavers for anyone who has to tote groceries; I can't believe they aren't for sale at every urban grocery store in the country.

A while back, a co-worker offered to get me a cup of coffee and asked if I wanted milk or sugar. "A little milk," I replied. He brought me a cup that was pale tan in color and had to have been 40 percent half-and-half. To me, it was undrinkable -- lukewarm and unpleasantly mouth-coating; yet another co-worker who got a virtually identical cup proclaimed it "perfect." (I ended up pouring half the coffee out and refilling the cup with straight coffee, at which point it was almost okay.) Since then, I've been paying attention to milk in coffee, and I believe I'm in the minority. Most people who drink milk or cream in their coffee seem to like much more than I do. I also prefer whole milk; although half-and-half is acceptable, it's much easier to overpour. "Reduced fat" milk is okay if I'm desperate, but non-fat is worthless in coffee. (And forget non-dairy "creamer" -- I'd rather not drink coffee than use it.) What kind of milk do others prefer? How much? Steamed or cold?

It seems to me (as a bar and restaurant patron with no professional cooking or bartending experience) that a bartender's job can vary quite a bit. If it's a neighborhood bar without table service or food, then I think the bartender's job has a lot of front-of-house aspects -- interacting with the patrons and making sure they have a positive experience. If it's a service bar, then the job seems more like a cook's job -- getting the orders right and getting them out quickly.