The J

Last night's dinner: Lobster and ricotta pizza. Tonight's dinner: Flounder sauteed in butter, with a little raspberry chipotle sauce. Roasted broccoli and cauliflower. Spicy eggplant and roasted red pepper salad (from the "Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden).

Isn't that the point then? If you can't tell the difference, then you can't supervise a grill cook, and therefore you can't be sous-chef.

Ziti (since I was out of penne) a la vodka, with grilled chicken and chicken sausage, finished with pecorino. The sauce came out a little thinner than I would've liked, but I was looking for quick comfort food to end a (very) long week.

Frankly, I disagree with the whole notion that a tip shouldn't be reflective of service. I typically tip around 20%, but excellent service can get you more and crappy service will get you less. I will say that if I left someone what they considered to be a bad tip and the waiter blocked the exit to the restaurant I would flip out. The manager would have about 2 minutes to refund the meal (including the tip) and make that waiter apologize in front of the dining room, or I would be calling the police. That's completely unacceptable.

The sanitation issue wouldn't be a big one for me -- it's not like I go into the kitchen of restaurants to see how clean their walk-in is, and I'd hope that people who got sick from eating a provider's food would post that in any reviews. It's an interesting concept, and I could see myself trying it if I were in NYC. My bigger fear though would be some lunatic who decided that this would be a good way to poison people.

The picture isn't that great (I have to work on my food photography), but tonight's dinner was flank steak (marinated in grapefruit juice, tequila, salt, sugar and onion) that was cooked in a cast-iron skillet with a little olive oil, some soy sauce, tabasco and spicy brown mustard, on top of a mixture of charred sundried tomatoes and caramelized onions, with romaine, diced jalapeno cheddar and a little horseradish mayo, on freshly made garlic and black pepper flatbread, served with seasoned baked potato chips.

This year I got: - Henckels bread knife - The Flavor Bible - ThermoWorks infrared thermometer with probe attachment - A container of jerk seasoning - A "toas-tite" sandwich maker thing

I recently got a Shun Premier line santoku. It's a pretty amazing knife.

No photos, but the best meal I made in 2012 was pernil with potato salad and arroz con gandules. For the pernil, I roasted a pork shoulder (or 3 ) covered in sofrito for somewhere in the 8-10 hour range, until it fell apart at the tines of a fork. The potato salad was dressed lightly with a mixture of mayo, lemon juice and olive oil, and had chopped green olives. The pernil lasted about a week -- in addition to eating it with the sides I made along with it, I also used it to make tacos (corn tortillas, salsa fresca, queso blanco), pizza, pasta and sandwiches. Definitely going to have to do that again this year.

For steaks, I prefer medium rare to medium. Burgers I generally order medium, and they usually come out medium well, which is about where I like them. For vegetables, it all depends -- sometimes I want them super crispy, sometimes I want them kind of soggy. Eggs I like having well done.

My first was to finally join egullet, instead of just lurking. I guess I can cross that one off the list! Other resolutions: - Cook and bake more from the cookbooks I own - Learn to make pasta - Learn to make corn tortillas - Try new restaurants at all levels (fast food through fine dining) - Incorporate more vegetables into meals - "Perfect" my pizza dough recipe - Eat more vegan dinners: the main reason I want to do this is because I feel like it will force me to be more creative