mags

Nope - in Nuova Iork itself. At what was then New York Hospital (and is now something like Columbia-Presbyterian-New-York-Cornell-and-its-Sisters-and-its-Cousins-and-its-Aunts, Esquire, Unlimited), and into a household on 89th and West End. I'm a conductor's brat, so the first 10 years or so of my life saw us moving around a good bit (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, wherever the major gigs were), but always gravitating back, in-between, to NYC and/or environs - that being where the family, the new-immigrant roots, and the Broadway show jobs were. Ahhhhh, we were about two blocks apart; I grew up on 90th and Riverside. And at about the same time, if the avatar is anything to go by -- as a birth-date, I mean.

Have now read my way through this entire thread, and am grateful for everyone's speriments. I have a big party coming up this week, and while the bulk of it is being catered, caterer couldn't include much meat in the mix if she was going to stay within our budget. Since my partner -- who is picking up half the tab -- basically lives on meat, Marlboros, and Red Bull (and gets REALLY cranky if she doesn't have a sufficient supply), I thought it would be a good idea for me to supplement the catered goodies with some meat items. The plan, therefore, is to make two kinds of canapes: Chinese-flavored pork terrine on Japanese rice crackers with hot mustard and apricot chutney; and thin-sliced fillet on toasted ficelle topped with a mustard-and-green-peppercorn butter, with a dollop of caramelized onions on top of the beef. My original plan had been to make some basic stovetop-caramelized onions -- just olive oil, s&p, and maybe some fresh thyme. But after reading through this thread, I'm thinking that onion confit would give me a much richer flavor. However, everybody seems to be using the confit HOT, and the canapes would definitely be room-temp.; WILL THE CONFIT NOT BE DELICIOUS???? I expect to use all EVOO, rather than a butter/EVOO mix.

How do you use the salsa?

Ahhh, now there's a businessman I can respect!

Being a prick doesn't have anything to do with making tough decisions, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with competence. I don't think anybody here is faulting Choderow for taking whatever steps are necessary to save his investment or at least stop it from bleeding more cash. But there is a significant difference between taking those steps and A) refusing to take any responsibility for their having become necessary, or B) taking them in a manner calculated to cause the greatest possible humiliation and discomfort to the people who will bear the brunt of them -- like snottily denigrating a business in front of its employees when they are in no position to respond or, for CHRISSAKE, snottily denigrating a business to the manager's mother. I recognize that these scenes were almost certainly at least partially staged for the camera's benefit -- i.e., it's possible, maybe even likely, that Choderow, left to his own devices, would not have staged his pricky little "business meeting" at Rocco's. So we're really not talking here about Choderow, but about the character of Choderow, as played on TV. But in terms of that character, I don't find him remotely worthy of respect. The ability to make money does not, in and of itself, render a person worthy of respect, any more than the ability to generate large numbers of sales -- as Rocco's has apparently done -- renders a business successful. In both instances, you have to factor in the costs involved as well, and if the costs are very high (whether you're talking about the price tag on the flatware or the humiliation of underlings), your business may be a failure, and your decency as a human being -- which is what makes someone deserving of respect, in MY book -- is similarly in question.

Would like to go on record as stating definitively that I have no desire to be In Charge In Seattle. I would want to start smaller. Maybe Spokane.

Gotta love Michael Lewis. The book is "Liar's Poker" -- a classic of the horrors-of-Wall-Street genre that incidentally provides a window onto the hideous food-consumption habits of bond traders. Remember the "how many cheeseburgers can you charge to the company and then stuff into your mouth in 15 seconds" contests? Owen, you may have put your finger on the identity of Monica's repulsive crew! I know all too many Street bozos, but had my last working experience there in the early 90s. I had just returned from a month in China, and found one of the aforementioned 26-year-old males (think of him as a Little Swinging Dick with a Gro-Light) packing a carry-on bag full of peanut-butter crackers and cans of tuna. I asked him, umm, what he was doing, and he told me that he was about to go to China to watch the launch of a satellite owned by a company he was researching. The conversation went like this: Me: Ok, but....what's with the peanut butter crackers? Him: You don't think I'm going to EAT that shit they have there, do you? Me: Ummm....actually, the food is pretty goo.....well, you're planning to eat nothing but tunafish and peanut-butter crackers? Him: There are Snickers bars in the outside pocket. Me: Hunh. You really think you can pack enough candy bars and crackers for an entire trip to China? Him: I'm only going to be gone overnight. Me: You're.....you're going to China as a DAY TRIP? Him: Correct. I fly to Beijing -- and I'll eat the stuff on the plane. Then I take a train to Wuxi [or whatever the hell city it was], I watch the satellite go up, take the train back to Beijing, and get back on a plane. Me: (after long pause): Michael....you're literally going to the other side of the world. You don't want to, you know, take a couple of days to look around? See the Forbidden City maybe? Him: Why would I want to do that? Besides, I have a squash game on Friday. I'm going to beat the shit out of Feldenstein. He's totally gonna be my bitch.

I think you lead a sheltered life -- sheltered, at least, from the kind of spectacularly boorish arrogance that can be produced by the combination of 26-year-old male + ridiculously inflated salary + aggressively hierarchical corporate ethos that constantly promotes the message that one is either a "player" (i.e., somebody who "matters," and thus whose every whim shall be indulged) or pond scum. The financial industry is particularly gifted at putting together this combination of factors, though large white-shoe law firms also field a strong team. The arrogance tends to be particularly unpleasant in the case of young men, because within the context of their offices, it is they who are the pond scum, regularly peed on by (and required to indulge the whims of) the real "players," who are typically at least 10 years older, with even more inflated incomes. In the time honored way of things, the young men then go looking for people that they themselves can pee on. It's not a pretty sight. Editing for spilling

You say this like it's a bad thing.

I'm with the majority here. I'm a business owner, and within certain VERY broad limits, I don't allow behavior in my store that either makes me unhappy or might, I believe, make other customers unhappy. I believe in being polite about it, but absolute. I don't allow people on roller blades to roll all over my carpet (happily this doesn't seem to be much of an issue anymore, since the blading craze has passed); I don't allow anything other than very brief and hushed cell-phone conversations, I've been known to tell more than one kid -- again, nicely but firmly -- to be quiet, stop swinging on the door, put the book down unless you want to read it, stop smacking your brother. While I've become much less of a martinet about open drinks -- sodas, cups of coffee, etc. -- I remain a stickler about ice cream cones and food in general; I'm really not interested in your getting your buttery croissant crumbs on my books, thanks. I suppose this could cost me customers, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for an environment in which I and my many regular customers are comfortable. It's a damn shame that people have to be taught manners by restaurant-managers and shop-clerks, but we all have to put up with far too much rudeness as it is; I'll be damned if I'm going to let it invade the tiny space over which I hold sway.

Hillvalley, Meaning no disrespect to you or your kids at all, those lunches really trouble me, and are a pretty solid indication of why the Japanese lunches sound so appealing. The lunches you describe are based on large quantities of sugar and starch, with very little (if any) solid protein and virtually no fresh fruits or vegetables. I don't want to embark on a flame war with anyone, but I can't see that it's healthy for kids -- or for their future waistlines and blood-sugar counts -- to be eating lunches of processed cheese, honey buns, canned corn, white bread, and "fruit-flavored" drinks. Actually, I think it's a disaster.

(sigh) I never ate rabbit. In fact, I had sworn an oath never to eat rabbit, because the furry little adorables scrubbing behind their ears in the Easter window of a Bleeker Street boutique reminded me so much of my beloved cat. It's all Charlie Trotter's fault. I broke my oath, and now I am a broken woman. But it was really delicious.

Maybe I'm dumb, but I thought Kurl literally meant smuggling stuff back -- as in stuff it's not legal to bring through customs. For me that would probably be granary bread and double cream. Oh, and as many Cox's Orange Pippins as I could get my sticky little hands on.

I had a good experience with them, food man. The fellow who owns it is very pleasant, and everything arrived quickly and in good shape.

This is a very good description. I may have to steal it.

You know, I hate hot, humid weather the way my great-grandfather the union organizer hated Pinkertons.....but you actually made me want to go to New Orleans in May, Brooks. Have a great time.

As the controller of a small, but very busy cash generating restaurant, I think I have a bit of insight into how the numbers work. Mr. Chowderhead might be a bit too busy himself for the daily report, but undoubtedly someone in that organization or in the Briefcase Brigade of accountants that seem to always be at his heels was in charge of the daily cash position of the restaurant. The invoices don't enter themselves into the accounting program and the checks don't get generated as if by magic. SOMEONE has that job. Whether it's an entry level bookkeeper who answers to one of the Briefcase Brigade, or a CPA who's only job is to oversee that restaurant out of Chowderow's stable of investments, SOMEONE has been asleep at the wheel if it's this out of hand. If no one is approving the purchase of sterling flatware for a place that serves food in cardboard, well, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for either side's whining and moaning at this late date. What happens when the numerous monthly and quarterly tax payments come due? Who's making sure that the credit card portion of the sales are accurately making their way into the bank account? Who's making sure the payroll is getting reviewed and the employer taxes are getting paid? Who's making sure the credit card portion of the waiter's tips is transferred to the payroll account so if the restaurant were to close tomorrow they wouldn't get sued for not paying those monies to the waitstaff? Who's making sure the cash sales minus any paid outs are equalling the cash deposits and that money isn't simply disappearing along the way? It isn't about being up the chef's ass, it's about sound fiscal management and oversight. Chowderow has owned enough restaurants for enough years to know better than to let shit get this out of hand (if indeed it is as out of hand as it's being described and isn't just for the camera's benefit) before "stormtrooping" the place. And if he did let it get this out of hand then he has no one to blame but himself. And Rocco is just an ass. He's reaping what he sowed by entering into this Faustian deal in the first place. I hope he thinks it's worth what was once a stellar reputation. Now he's just a punch line. He earned it. Really good post, Katie. And by the way, Lizzie Okin says hello.

I think it's possible to see someone's POV while simultaneously finding them loathesome. Yeah, if Chodorow has lost $600K on this venture, that's a lot of change, and it calls out for a major intervention. But I'm not charmed by the whining that HE has done in the press. For example, he's bitching that Rocco demanded -- and apparently got -- sterling flatware, despite selling fried scallops in paper cups. Well, SOMEBODY signed the bill for the sterling, Jeff. And if you allowed major expenses like that to be racked up without saying boo, than you bear some of the responsibility. Also, I find Chodorow's apparent need to surround himself with the most obvious and odious of sycophants to be no less repulsive (and in fact, rather similar to) Rocco's apparent need to surround himself with cooing chicks. Then there's the transparent manipulation of Chodorow's machinations vis a vis the staff -- making sure they're all signed up for their insurance and 401(k)s not because it's the decent thing to do but because -- as he makes clear -- he wants to appear to be doing the decent thing. I think he comes across as a totally repellent person, even though in the over-arching scheme of things, he may be in the right. Again, this makes it a lot more interesting to me than if you had -- as one usually does, on tv programs -- one saintly, perpetually charming good guy, and one irredeamable villain.

To quote my own business partner: If you can't fix it, feature it.

But why was that a waste of footage? Clearly -- to me, at least -- it was intended to illustrate that while Rocco's restaurant is imploding, while he is desperately needed to shore up morale and keep the damn thing from being taken over by odious boys in suits, he is, instead, getting his ego stroked in the basement of some suburban bookstore. The subtext is, Ok, Chodorow is a big bad corporate horrible, but Rocco is an irresponsible, self-absorbed flake with an ego the size of Detroit. It would have been very easy to posit Rocco as the hero, the passionate, adorably rumpled artist up against Armani-clad villains who will stick a shiv in while chanting "nothing personal." But by making it clear that he's not a hero, the story gets a lot more layered and interesting, IMO.

Actually, I think this is really fab TV, in part because there's no clear-cut good guy. I'm so used to cookie-cutter TV shows, where there's always somebody you're supposed to root for, and I like the uhhh...moral ambiguity. Which is my way of saying that I think Brick and Big Daddy are both coming across like major dicks -- in their own special, individual ways -- but we all get to hope that Drew will fall into a vat of boiling oil. Perhaps one of the oompa loompas in the kitchen will give him a nudge. On the thread devoted to last summer's episodes, some people were bugged that this didn't really represent restaurant life as they know it. Well, I've yet to see a TV show that represents publishing life as I know it, and the idea that Sex & the City represents the life of the groovin single Manhattan chick is ummmm.......oh yeah. I am all ABOUT buying $400 shoes. What I mean is, this IS a soap opera. Its billing -- that it's theoretically "reality TV" -- is just a marketing ploy. It's cheap, tacky thrills all the way, and I am loving it, though I do wonder -- even more than i did the first time around -- why the HELL Rocco consented to it.

I've searched all the good grocery stores in about a 20 mile radius and came up with nothing. Do you buy twist from a grocery store? If so, which? Flax seeds I can get just about anywhere. Fresh flax seeds is a whole different story. Do you buy flax seeds that you're happy with? And, if so, from where? May I enquire as to your two sources for wheat protein isolate? The only one I'm aware of, locarber.com has excessive shipping rates. Since WPI is the most difficult thing to find on my list, that's something I might bend a little on and buy online, but not at locarber.com. Twist is available at my local (shudder) Gristedes. I bought flax meal -- pre-ground -- at my local healthfood store about a year ago, and I store it in the fridge; I haven't had any problem with rancidity. The wheat protein isolate I bought does come from locarber (she will reduce shipping rates if you order in quantity); I know there's another source out there, though do be aware that most recipes you find that are written to include WPI are written for the locarber version, and may not work as well with the other brand. (I don't know the outher source offhand, but can find it for you.) A couple of side-notes. First, and particularly if you're new to low-carbing, I really would steer clear of products like Twist. It's sweetened with sugar alcohols, and there are a couple of problems with them. First, "excessive consumption" can cause what manufacturers daintily call a "laxative effect," which you might want to translate as explosive hours in the bathroom and being completely unfit for human companionship for quite a while. It's neither pretty nor fun, and nobody seems real sure what "excessive" means in this regard. The other problem with sugar alcohols is that, while manufacturers are blithely behaving as though they don't metabolize at all, there seems to be pretty clear evidence that, in fact, they DO metabolize to some extent; the FDA looks likely to rule, fairly soon, that 50% of a product's sugar-alcohol load must be counted, on the nutriitional label, toward its "net carbohydrate" count. In other words, products like Twist can kill your weight-loss efforts. In response to a couple of other folks, I'm a big believer in the notion that healthy eating of whatever sort involves a minimum of packaged products. But merely because some of the products on scott123's list are somewhat unfamiliar does not make them "fake" -- or, at least, not any more "fake" than regular, non-low-carb versions of the same stuff. What's "fake" about wheat protein isolate or corn bran or powdered cream? They may not be on your shopping lists, but that doesn't make them unhealthy. I think manufacturers have done dieters and the entire population a serious disservice by bringing out so many packaged LC products. They can torpedo weight loss, they are all-too-often considerably higher in both carbohydrates and calories than labels indicate (and yup, I've got the lab stats to back this up), and they help people maintain lousy eating habits rather than creating new, healthier ones. But if you assume that people who are eating LC are as capable as the rest of us of, say, using ketchup sparingly, why shouldn't they have a sugar-free version available? I'm not at all singling out people in this thread, but it does seem to me as though the gen pop has this sense that either one "should" eat the standard American diet, including bread made with white flour and desserts sweetened with sugar, or one "should" be on a regime of steamed broccoli and chicken breast. It's as though we're supposed to suffer for our thinner thighs, and the unspoken Puritanism really ticks me off.

I ate at China Moon once, about a year before it closed, and I was sadly disappointed -- probably, in retrospect, for some of the same reasons the second book disappointed me. I'm guessing she did change her menu just as she changed her cooking (as reflected in the transition from the first to the second book), but somebody who ate there over a period of time would be better placed to answer than I.

Seems impossible, unless it's not really honey, just some artificial product; I think you might just settle for Splenda or Equal.... The Steel's product is honey-flavored maltitol syrup, with roughly the consistency of honey. And while it's by no means my favorite artificial sweetener, it's heaps better than either Splenda or (making attractive gagging noise) Equal.

Some of the stuff on your list should be available in good grocery stores -- the sugar-free Nutella (which is actually called Twist), the low-carb tonic, the Heinz ketchup, the sheet gelatin (although that's really a "gourmet" item in the U.S.), and the flax seeds, which you'll probably need to get at a good health food store (do be aware that their nutritional benefits require that the seeds be ground into meal -- and it's a good idea to keep either the meal or the seeds in the fridge). A number of the items on your list, though, are highly specialized, and unlikely to be available in any but the best-stocked low-carb stores, if there. I'm thinking particularly of the wheat protein isolate (there are only two sources for it, that I know of), the erythritol, the corn bran (really good health food store might carry this), the Maltitol (sold in both powdered and "honey" form -- I think that's the "sugar-free honey" you mention -- under the Steel's label), and the cream powder (I think what you're talking about is sold under the Expert Foods label). You look like you're stocking up, and many of the online low-carb retailers wave shipping on shipments over a certain amount, typically $100. For some of the funkier items, I suspect that online is the way you'll have to go.