Ling

Good luck! I'm interested in reading your update in a few days. I tried eating half the bread and chocolate I normally eat during the first 3 days after I got back from our rather food-heavy NY trip, and lost the pound I gained on the trip, plus another pound. I know I get really bloated the more alcohol, pastries, and coffee I consume, so I definitely think eliminating these foods would improve your skin. I admire your willpower for doing this around the holidays too, with all the parties and holiday meals going on!

^It's not as dense as, say, pound cake, or as light as angel food or chiffon cake...it has a similar moistness and density as carrot cake, I guess.

They had the Essential ones as samples at Whole Foods today. Very dry, no fiori di Sicilia aroma/taste.

There has been a thread on sticky toffee pudding already. This is the recipe I use, but I make a real caramel sauce instead of doing the brown sugar/cream sauce. sticky toffee pudding

Sentiamo: I like Humboldt Fog very much. Enjoy your time with the expert! alanamoana: We should start up a collection for 66 hours in Paris. I enjoyed the food at both, and as Henry mentioned, it is hard to compare a lunch (simpler preparations, less expensive) to a tasting menu at dinner. I also agree with what he said that the Jean Georges lunch dishes seemed to be consistency very good, while Bouley had an excellent dish and some merely good ones. If you can send me a plane ticket and pay for a tasting menu at Jean Georges, I will be happy to give you a more detailed response comparing the merits of both restaurants.

TOP TEN Some rather difficult decisions--we ate so many good dishes, and it is hard to compare sweet and savoury. But here is the list of foods that made me smile the most when I tasted them. 1. Bouley--lobster with Vidalia onion, red pepper sauce, passionfruit/yellow pepper sauce, praline nut sauce 2. Room 4 Dessert--pomegranate spuma, cafe/chestnut puree, grapefruit pastis puree, coconut powder 3. Jean Georges--hamachi carpaccio, pink grapefruit sorbet, cilantro-chili seasoning 4. Jean Georges--scallops, caramelized cauliflower, caper-raisin emulsion 5. Momofuku Ssam--three terrine sandwich 6. Jean Georges--Earl Grey/lemongrass sorbet, dehydrated grapefuit, lime curd 7. Gordon Ramsey--chocolate cremeux, raspberry, sable, ice-cream, tuile, cocoa nib 8. Gordon Ramsey--porcini veloute with chicken tortelloni 9. Bouley--Concord grape and fromage blanc sorbet, ginger and peach sauce 10. Bouley--rack of lamb, fingerling potato puree, black truffle gnocchi, Langres cheese sauce, artichoke puree Honourable mentions: -Rocco's cannoli -Daniel and Alica's beet ravioli and frozen egg nog souffle -French roll from Sullivan Street bakery -caramelized mousse chocolate from La Maison du Chocolate -a sour Chartreuse cocktail and the Champagne Apricoto from Pegu Club

This bakery is definitely more pastry than baked goods. I didn't see any muffins or cookies today, but they did have a few "American" desserts like a triple layer chocolate cake and cheesecake.

I wrote a little piece for Daily Candy recently about William Leaman's (ex-Essential Bakery, medalist at international and national pastry/chocolate competitions) new bakery. Just went in today to try some of the items...I chose one each of the different doughs (brioche, danish, and croissant), a baguette, and a pastry. Sugar brioche, croissant, and apricot danish in the background The croissant and danish doughs were rather dense and bready. The croissant dough also contains quite a bit more sugar than the plain croissants I've eaten in the past. The brioche, however, was pretty good. "Praline Dream"--hazelnut, crispy layer (feuilletine?), chocolate--I enjoyed this the most out of the items I purchased today. Very tasty. baguette--not much flavour in the crumb, a bit dense, but a nice crispy crust

I tried another pannetone from Luzzi, which I gather is a very popular brand. Not bad, but I still like the Marabissi one best! (Thanks for the correction on the name. )

A few last pics... the teeny tiny macaroons at Jean Georges lemon pound cake from Bouley bakery a few of the chocolates from Jacques Torres (left and center) and la Maison du Chocolat (right)

Yeah, that's why I can't do diets.

I vote for one preparation that highlights the salt (like the bread with good, unsalted butter), one preparation with meat (the foie gras idea is great, but a little pricey! You could do little devilled quail's eggs, or sunny-side up quail eggs on little truffled toasts), and then one sweet (the salted caramel idea is wonderful--I especially love flaky salts on caramels! Don't bother using the different salts in a baked item--their individual nuances would be masked.) I just got a new salt from Halen Mon--it's sea salt that's been smoked over 800 year old Welsh oak. The flakes are quite big and a pretty golden brown colour. I am going to serve it on grilled hangar.

^I guess you'd either have to give up kimchi and rice for 3 days, or this diet's not for you. This doesn't seem to be a lot of food to me. I bet most men (and some women) would be rather hungry on this diet!

Amy's Bread We got a baguette and a "Tangy Sourdough" loaf for the plane. The baguette was nice; I didn't particularly care for the sourdough. Forgot to take a picture of our purchases, though. Murray's Cheese shop We stopped in for some meat to make sandwiches on the plane. Also picked up some of the Parm puffs you see in the foreground--they were quite tasty. This place was a zoo on Saturday afternoon! Looked like they had a great selection of cheese. I regret not getting some--our initial thought was that our seatmates wouldn't appreciate the smell on the plane, but I guess we could've eaten it at home. Ah well. And so, this concludes our rather ambitious 66 hours in NY. Thanks for reading along.

Well, it was good, but I didn't love it. I much preferred my desserts at Gordon Ramsey, but the citrus shooter that came with the Citrus dessert at JG was great. Still, of the 3 meals in NY where I had dessert (GR, JG and Bouley), I liked the desserts at JG the least. Do you mean you like the look of the molded chocolates (like at GR?) I don't think I got any molded chocolates at JG. The fillings at Jean Georges were more balanced and tasted fresher to me.

Yes, the kitchen was cool! I opened 2 of the bars out of curiousity after reading your post, and there's no bloom but there are lots of bubbles and bumps on the back of each bar...not very attractive. Too bad about the box of chocolates--I had high hopes! I actually much prefer the taste of the chocolates we got after lunch at Jean Georges.

I forget if this is Rocco's, or the Italian bakery next door on Bleeker Street. Inside Rocco's... I forget what the ones on the left are, but the ones on the right look like babas au rhum. left--some laminated dough filled with buttercream, right--"French Lulus", which are pate choux filled with buttercream, covered in more cream, and then rolled in some sort of graham-cookie crumb (?) rows and rows of cakes you can see the lobster tails, strawberry shortcake, eclairs, and napoleons in this pic tarts cookies by the pound I got 2 full-size cannoli, a mini lobster tail (not that mini at all!), and a mini French Lulu. The cannoli was so good--I have been craving them since Saturday! I think these are the first good cannoli I've ever eaten. They fill the shells right when you order them. I ate them right after paying to ensure maximum freshness. The lobster tail was also very good, the French Lulu was kinda "meh"...

Kee's was apparently out of chocolates by the time we got there (1pm Saturday)! So we headed off to Jacques Torres. They certainly go all out for Christmas! some of the chocolates croissants--plain, almond, chocolate I chose my favourite--almond. It was disappointing--overbaked to the point of being very dry and crunchy almost all the way through. There was some chocolate inside as well. Probably one of the worst almond croissants I've eaten in a long time. I picked up these chocolates... ...plus a small box of the filled chocolates. I chose some of the signature stuff (like the "Wicked", and some that looked more interesting to me, like a red wine one, fresh ginger, a homemade peanut butter/hazelnut one, and a seasonal egg nog chocolate.) I've since eaten about 3/4 of the box, and they are pretty good for the most part, but not as tasty as the ones from La Maison du Chocolat. I said hi to Jacques and asked him to take a picture with me.

The next morning, we headed off to... A friend told us to get the celery soda...it was interesting... pickles We tipped the guy $2 and asked for "fatty". He got a fresh one for us and the meat was definitely what we asked for... (We were both picking off the meat before I remembered to take a picture...oops!) a slightly smaller than usual pastrami on rye I liked this a lot, but I haven't had much (any?) good pastrami before, so I have nothing to compare it to.

BTW, the Bouley meal was the only meal during our trip when I felt like I couldn't fit in one more bite. I was actually kind of scared my dress would burst at the seams during dessert.

We met up with Daniel and Alicia again on Friday night for dinner at Bouley. (Sorry about the pics--we had a 10pm reservation and the room is very dim. I didn't use a flash.) amuse bouche trio grapefruit sorbet and foam, sweet corn tuile with black truffle, hamachi cornet phyllo shrimp, squid, scallop, "ocean sea broth" Says Daniel, "This 'ocean sea broth' tastes suspiciously like butter and parsley!" The seafood was very good and not over-cooked--it was one of my favourite courses. braised yellowtail, melon foam, honshimeji mushrooms, ginger sauce The fish was cooked all the way through, so it wasn't as moist as it could have been. The sauce was quite subtle and delicious. poached lobster, Vidalia onion, red pepper sauce, passionfruit and yellow bell pepper sauce, and praline nut sauce This dish had so many things going on but each flavour complimented one another so well. The 'praline sauce' (thick and nutty, no sugar really detected) tied it all together and made the lobster really stand out from all the other lobster dishes I've eaten in the past. This was probably my favourite dish on this trip. rack of lamb, fingerling potato puree, black truffle gnocchi, Langres cheese sauce, artichoke puree Just classic, good food. Gnocchi was nice and light. baby pig, noodles This was the one course that I didn't particularly care for. Kind of bland, and the noodles were mushy. mango sorbet, anise fennel gelee, meringue foam, fennel pollen a cow's milk from Switzerland (sorry, couldn't catch the name), petit Livarot, gorgonzola picante, Monk's Head (in the shape of a flower) I liked all the cheeses except for the cow's milk--too mild. I don't recall having the Monk's Head cheese before, so that was different. The tip of the cheese (the outer portion of the flower) is quite mild, but the middle (the base of the flower) is very pungent. Good stuff. This was a favourite at the table--Concord grape and fromage blanc sorbet, peach and ginger sauce chocolate sorbet, maple ice-cream, vanilla ice-cream, and Valrhona chocolate souffle The texture of the chocolate sorbet was the best, while the ice-creams had a few ice crystals. The souffle was very good--still soft and runny in the center. (The restaurant was empty except for our table at this point, so the flash came on!) They also give you a small lemon pound cake from Bouley bakery when you leave. This was the first time I've received a baked good meant to be enjoyed the next morning upon departure--I thought this was more a European tradition? It was a pleasant surprise. Anyway, the cake was quite good, but the soaking syrup could've used a bit more lemon juice...it was really sweet. We had a great time at dinner--it took just over 3 hours. The food was very good on the whole (with the exception of the baby pig), and the lobster dish was fantastic. (And of course, the company was fantastic as well!)

I like the look of the slow-cooked egg. Do you need to trim the whites after you cook them to get such a clean look? Or do you poach them in saran wrap?

I don't mess with tradition...you know you only get 1-2 bites max of each dessert, and then the rest is mine anyway.

I enjoyed this a lot as well. Uhh...what can I say? I like meat. And Henry's been talking up that weinerschnitzel practically since the day I met him! Of course I had to order it! Too bad it was greasy/soggy. The potato salad was not bad. We ate like 3/4 of the weinerschnitzel...it was a very big portion.

We were some of the first people into Room 4 Dessert on Friday night, at 7:30pm. Will Goldfarb was in, and he was really friendly. We chatted a bit, then Bob (ex-Morimoto in Philly, soon to be staging at El Bulli) made our desserts. BTW, did I mention Bob looks just like Justin Timberlake? And he does the most perfect quenelles. (Not that I noticed, or anything... ) Henry ordered the pom pom yeahs! (518). It was so good, I think I polished most of it off for him. pomegranate spuma, cafe/chestnut puree, grapefruit pastis puree, coconut powder It sounds like there's a lot going on, but the flavours balanced perfectly and the powder was an interesting contrast to the soft, custardy texture of the rest of the dessert. It is right up there on my Top 5 list for this trip! I ordered the laissez pear, which was baked pears "Ducasse", pear barvarian cream, crispy pear skin, kaboucha squash cake and vanilla ice-cream. It was presented on a long plate with each component in its separate bowl/plate. Everything was very good, especially the ice-cream and the barvarian cream. The cake was re-heated, but was moist and not too sweet. None of the desserts were too sweet, actually. Excellent stuff!