JAZ

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.

I'm not sure how relevant this is to Bob's search, but I would like to make the point that a gas stove is not, simply by virtue of being gas, better than an electric. In my old apartment, I had what was probably the bottom of the line gas range -- I don't even remember the brand. It had one of those worthless broilers under the oven, so in effect, I had no broiler for 4 years. The "low" setting on the burners was the low-end tiny "ring of flame" that burned the middle of the pan -- and I have heavy, copper-disk bottom cookware. For anything I wanted to simmer, I had to use a flame diffuser. Plus, I didn't realize how wimpy the "high" setting was until I moved. So now I have a new apartment with an electric stove. Nothing fancy -- just the usual coil type burners. Yes, I've had to make adjustments -- the residual heat takes some getting used to. But hey, I can make perfect rice without it boiling over. And the heat this these burners put out makes me wonder how I ever managed with my old gas stove. For instance, in an unlined copper pan, it took about 20 minutes for sugar to caramelize on my old stove; now I can get caramel in about 7 minutes. Even little things are apparent -- water comes to a boil much faster on this stove than it did on my old one. In short, I'd take this electric range over my old gas stove any day.

I find the effects partly visual and partly tactile. Sometimes aluminum tools that have been through the dishwasher get a kind of weird feel to them, as well as spotting and turning an unattractive shade of gray. But I'm not sure what the process at work is, because not all aluminum does that. My Chicago Metallic sheet pans, which are "aluminized steel," are fine in the dishwasher. My garlic press, on the other hand, has passed the point where it even looks like aluminum (I like to think it has a patina). I use it anyway. I don't have any anodized cookware, though, so I'm not sure how that does in the dishwasher.

Now available: The Hog Island Oyster Lover's Cookbook. Not as good as oysters in the Ferry Building, but a good read.

Maybe it's supposed to hold a teaspoon -- but in fact, all barspoons don't hold the same amount of liquid, which is what my point was. One of mine holds quite a bit more; one quite a bit less. It's that fact that led me to ask my question. So if they're all supposed to hold a teaspoon, then why don't they?

I own two barspoons -- one is the standard twisty-handled sort with the red knob on the end of the handle, another is Rosle's stainless, very beautiful but not very standard. The twisty one holds just under a teaspoon and a half; the Rosle doesn't even hold a teaspoon. Here's the question: in lots of old cocktail books, a "barspoon" is used as a standard measurement, just as a "wineglass" is. But just how much liquid does a "barspoon" hold? Is it a really a measured amount, or is it shorthand for "a little bit"? Is a teaspoon a reasonable guess? Does it matter?

Any idea where Alberta has gone, Erik? I hope she's found a home behind another bar somewhere in the city. (Yeah, she's quirky, but she's way too good to lose.)

The title of "The Hog Island Oyster Lover's Cookbook: A Guide to Choosing and Savoring Oysters, with 40 Recipes," by Jairemarie Pomo, Ed Anderson, and Leigh Beisch is a bit of a misnomer: the recipes, while they sound great, are almost beside the point of this book. The main draw (for me at least) was the clear explanation of species and varieties of oysters, and the section on the history of the oyster industry in the US. I'm a novice when it comes to oysters but I've wanted to learn more, so I found this information invaluable. Who knew there are only 5 species of oysters? (Lots of people, probably, but not me). There's a list of common oyster names with the species to which they belong and the area they come from. There's a chart with the common flavor characteristics of the various oysters. There's also an extensive section on selecting oysters and shucking your own, if that's something you're interested in. (I'm not sure that I ever will, but at least I'll have I guide if I change my mind.) For those not familiar with Hog Island, it's an oyster farm north of San Francisco that also has a small retail shop on the site of the farm and an oyster bar in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. But the author of the book, while obviously a fan of the company, is not an employee. The sections that discuss oyster farming, of course, concentrate on Hog Island's methods, but the book is not a fluff marketing piece for the company, which is what I half expected. In short, I'm thoroughly enjoying this book, and I haven't even made it to the recipes.

Just a note about tile floors: no doubt the tile floor in my new apartment kitchen is not the highest quality, but in five months I have grown to hate it passionately. I've broken more glasses and bowls in the past five months than I did in four years in my old place, which had sheet vinyl flooring -- ugly but very forgiving. I could (and did) drop glasses and bowls and they survived intact. Here, if I drop anything on the floor it shatters, and I'm picking up shards for days not only from the kitchen floor but from the dining room and hallway as well. Plus, it's dangerously slippery if it gets wet, and it's hard on my feet and back. I used to think tile floors were great; now, I would choose anything over tile.

Kerry Beal's eGCI class on toffee might help answer some of your questions.

They're great for pouring out candy.

I just tried to read this, and I couldn't do it. I mean, I couldn't wade through the flaws in spelling, punctuation and grammar to actually find out what Bourdain was saying. I know it's a blog, and I know that he has devoted readers who love everything he writes, but I'm appalled at the lack of care he took. For example: or or That's not even a sentence.It's such a shame -- Bourdain is a talented, witty, sharp writer when he tries. I guess he didn't feel the need to try.

I've been using another of the recipes from Fine Cooking -- for Fudgy Brownies -- as my starting point for brownies with a Mexican slant. I add cinnamon and a touch of cayenne, plus a little tequila.

The thinner the bacon is cut, the crisper it gets. (I recently saw bacon labeled "microwave bacon" whose defining feature seemed to be that it was cut very thin -- maybe that's worth a try.)

I just got the MT 500. I'm very happy with it. I believe it brews at 200 degrees, or even a little higher. It certainly makes great coffee. It's considerably more expensive than the original price range, though.

Exactly. I think that's why this is working so well for me. Without an easy, out-of-the place to toss the used ones, it would drive me crazy.

In what way can they be a plus? . . . Do they ever really work and stay meaningfully cool in a wide variety of situations where regular handles would not? In my experience, they simply don't work very well at not heating up. Sure, the handles on my 1 quart All-Clad saucepans don't get very hot when I'm making a little bechamel. But, then again, the cast iron handle on my Falk Culinair 1.5 quart sauteuse evasee doesn't tend to get very hot when I'm making a little bit more bechamel either. More to the point, however, the handles on both brands get hot of the pans sit on the stove doing a reduction for 45 minutes. I suppose the All-Clad's "stay cool" handles take a few minutes more to heat up, but this is not a meaningful difference in practical terms. ← Well, just to put your theory to a test, I put two saucepans about 2/3 full of water on the stove, covered them, brought the water to a boil and then turned the heat down to keep the water simmering. One saucepan was a Demeyere Sirocco, 2 liters. The other was a 1.5 quart Mauviel professional pan. The results: At 15 minutes, the Mauviel was really warm, and by 20 minutes, I could hold the handle just long enough to slide the pan off the heat. At 25 minutes, it was too hot to lift at all, although I didn't burn my hand by simply touching the handle. I turned the heat off at that point, and a half hour later, it was still too hot to hold. After more than an hour, I could still lift the Demeyere easily, and hold it more than long enough to carry it across the kitchen to the stove and empty it out. (Incidentally, not that anyone asked, but at 5 minutes, the lid handle on the Mauviel was too hot to touch. The lid handle on the Demeyere was still cool at 1 hour.) I'd say that's a meaningful difference. It seems to me that condemning stay-cool handles for heating up in the oven, or if the burner is bigger than the pan, or if the handle is too close to another burner is to miss the point -- stay-cool handles (at least Demeyere's) do stay cool enough to be used safely in most normal situations in the home kitchen. Whether it's too difficult to remember which handles stay cool, or to pay attention to the pan-burner area ratio or if a pan just came out of the oven is another question.