alacarte

Very Julie/Julia to cook your way through the book. Very ambitious project, in any case. I'll be content to watch (and cheer) from the sidelines. More flour-power to you.

Wish I could join. Have a great trip, Marlene!

Shillful. Also NOT helpful, in that case. Prove us wrong.

Good luck tomorrow Elyse!

All it says on their website regarding their upcoming NY locations is: Uptown – Summer 2004 Midtown – Two locations opening March 1, 2004 Downtown - Summer 2004 NOT helpful.

Does anyone have a good recipe for an ice box cake? I need to provide four of them for an event next week. I have no preference or restriction on flavors or ingredients except: --no raw eggs --preferably the whole thing can be made in advance. I've rejected a couple of recipes because they require whipping a pint of cream at the last minute before serving. I don't mind if it takes a lot of prep work before hand, but at the last minute I need to be able to unload and serve the cakes. Thank you!!!

How is taste affected by space travel (if at all)? Do foods need to be more highly seasoned/spiced? Or do you deliberately keep foods bland to avoid any allergies or other complications among the astronauts? Thank you!

The following is excerpted from financial newsweekly Barron's. The site requires a password, sorry.

I'm going to try making the vinegar pie, and picaman can tell me if it's authentic or not!

Make any pie you want. Call it quiche.

We shall see, won't we? alacarte, I actually am tempted to go over to Landmark and glue it to their window! Either that or our 'waiter's' forehead. I just burst out laughing at the thought of you doing that, elyse. I can see you actually doing it, that's why it's so funny!

Soba, please put me down as plus one, the hubby may be joining us if there's enough room for all of us (plus pie!). Thanks! Are we supposed to claim what we're bringing at this point? Shoo-Fly Pie is a Pennsylvania Dutch pie with a molasses and/or brown sugar filling. The name supposedly comes from having to shoo the flies away from the sweet pie.

Interesting -- I followed Jinmyo's link to Cook's Illustrated from the Food Media & News thread, and they have a rather detailed writeup on How To Grill A Hamburger. Anyone have Landmark Tavern's e-mail address to forward the link?

In Albany, we used to head to Sutter's Mill for burgers. And beer. Mostly beer.

Does this mean that Burger Club's 15 minutes of fame are officially over?

Isn't the actual condiment spelled "Chipolte"? At this chain, the T and L are transposed.

Did they give you a funny look when you asked for mustard with your hot sauce?

In Nigella Lawson's latest NY Times article, she makes an observation about cooking for weight-loss regimens, which sums up my thoughts on this thread to a T: I think this applies to any "restricted palette," whether that restriction is by religious mandate, Atkins rules, or anything else -- if you are allergic to shellfish or strawberries, you just don't "paint" with that particular color. The point is that one still can paint an artful and lovely picture. Which is not to say that it's easy to eat well, or to be a "foodie" while adhering to kashrut. I think this thread has made abundantly clear that keeping kosher can be a challenge! Nigella's article makes a similar point. "Anyone, I thought, could make food taste good without any dietary concerns getting in the way at the stove," she says, but quickly concedes that "the romance was short-lived." It took more work and thought than she had expected to make good and varied meals, but she did it. And those of us keeping kosher do it too.

It was brutal but relatively short-lived--went to work today and am basically back to 100% Highest overall average rating in a category: Blue Smoke, "Bun", 16.8/20 (84%) Highest average rating in "Burger" category: Le Parker Meridien, 39.5/50 (79%) Highest average rating in "Toppings" category: Le Parker Meridien, 8.0/10 (80%) Highest average rating in "Miscellaneous" category: Le Parker Meridien, 16.4/20 (82%) Who wins for best supporting actress in a burger role (roll)? If we really wanted to be PR hounds (which I don't necessarily) after a certain period of time we could issue eGullet NY Burger "awards" and put out a press release. Ha! Jamie, glad to hear you're feeling better.

welcome Mulcahy! Nice report.

Good question. Or -- to make this more secular -- an Atkins dieter who puts their whole family on the diet? Can you still be a foodie and follow the restrictions of Atkins? Which brings me to another semi-related observation. We've all noticed the Atkins economy by now. Every food manufacturer is jumping on the boat to provide products to allow the dieting masses to follow Atkins and not feel deprived. I felt a surge of familiarity when I last stood in the store, noting all the boxes to make no-carb cake and no-carb pasta, etc., etc. Then it hit me: it reminded me of Passover. Boxes upon boxes of no-chametz cake, bags upon bags of no-chametz pasta. But the main difference: Passover lasts only eight days, and you're SUPPOSED to feel deprived. Oh, and you're allowed (nay, encouraged) to eat potatoes. Maybe that's why I never lost weight during Passover. Will we see better Passover products this year, with all the advances made by Atkins-driven technology?

I didn't say that YOU should eat it! Just poke at it a bit and talk about it. "You see how the burger is only a quarter-inch thick and cardboard gray throughout? That's a bad burger. It should be five feet tall and perfectly pink. Bla bla bla..."

Even if you grab a McCardboard Burger on your way into the studio, a visual aid is a visual aid is a visual aid.

oohhhh, I LOVE pelmeni. I've been searching for some ever since Blini Hut closed, they had a great pelmeni soup. One of these days I will haul my butt to Brighton Beach to eat pelmeni soup there. And pierogis. And blintzes. And.....

This will happen Thursday the 8th, sometime between 4 and 5 pm. This is Fox News Channel, not Fox 5. In my area with RCN, it's channel 52. Any words of wisdom? yeah. be fair and balanced. I'm kidding. Be colorful and outspoken, and to hell with the facts. That's the Fox News way. Consider bringing burgers with you to "show" as well as "tell" what a good burger is. That should make for good TV. Hell, it might even be informative. You could bring good and bad burgers, and explain the difference. Make the host sample the burgers too.