kopi-susu

Just got an 8:30 reservation at the Chez Panisse menu / book-signing event next Monday ( 4/12) The Monday Menu List currently lists a rabbit thingy, but the receptionist said it would be a four course meal (instead of the usual three) featuring offal recipes from the book. Better be, I'm not driving 300 miles for parsnips.... Oh am I looking forward to this! Didn't check with the husband, didn't go down babysitter list, just got our reservations.I'm going to this come hell or high water. Will report back PS They had a 6:15 for 2 open if anyone else wants to go

A handshake, an expensive handshake will often get you what you desire at a restaurant. Approach the maitre'd with your most fabulous posture and self-confident smile. Stick out your hand to shake his. In this outstreched hand you have palmed a crisply folded bill of the appropriate denomination, held inside by the folded flesh of your thumb. Visible money is crass and dropping your intended bribe is unrecoverably embarassing, so practice this until smooth. As the maitre'd grasps your hand, he will feel the tickle of your generosity. Hold his hand firmly and look into his eyes while you make your request for a table, special seating accomidations (the coveted corner banquette), or just general suck-up-ness. If the maitre'd is willing to play ball, he should exchange a significant look with you as he withdraws his hand from the handshake, subtly scraping the bill from your hand to his (the act of opening your hand enough to firmly shake should leave the bill floating between the two palms), and transfering it into his pocket as he peruses the book to find what you need. An honorable maitre'd who really, really can't do anything for you will not take your money, pressing the bill back into your hand as he expresses his regrets. Don't take it personally, there really are nights that are just so fubar that no amount of money will help. Practice with a friend, but one who will give you back your money...

Tiramisu was done to death in the '80's, speaking as somone who spent about half that decade in pastry departments. A couple of eye-roll ingredients and techniques from then: - passionfruit (reminded of this reading J. Tower's memoir) - white chocolate, as previously mentioned - serving everything in a plopped in a puddle of sauce, so the bottom of whatever dessert was good and soggy by the time you ate it. - squeeze bottle cuisine: drip, drip,drip, squiggle, squiggle, squirt! So how about all four in an appropriately over-the-top dessert: Tiramisu with white chocolate mousse (instead of mascarpone) served in a pool of passionfruit sauce. Ala Gotham, stick something tall and ridiculous into it for a garnish, and dot the edge of the plate with blobs of something else (probably rasberry coulis, it was ubiquitous) and you're done. It sounds horrible to me, but about right for the decade. And yes, back in the '80's, EVERYONE had to have a flour-less chocolate cake, or death-by-chocolate item on the menu. A creme brulee/pot du creme item was not optional either. I can think of some restaurants where these rules still apply 20 years later...

A couple of seemigly boring, but actually liberating resolutions: 1) a kitchen inventory/ shopping list Why? because I live in a pokey, no-sidewalk, Wal-Mart-loving, one-horse town, and to do much interesting cooking, especially Thai, Indian etc. dishes, I need to drive between 1 and 3 hours for ingredients. It's a real bitch to get home and find there's only a half an inch of sesame oil left in the bottle. Also, a once a week walk-through of the cupboards, fridge and freezer reminds me of what I need to use up, what I could do with what I already have on hand, etc. It really does make me a better cook. 2) getting rid of my mish-mash of thrift store napkins and buying a LARGE number the same napkins. Don't talk to me about paper napkins or (heaven forbid!) paper towels. Grew up with cloth napkins - my mom still irons hers, but I do my best with a quick shake out of the dryer, except if we're having company. Lately though I can't seem to have three matching napkins on table, so it's time to grow up and buy about two dozen new ones. All that trouble cooking, my food is going to be eaten in a pleasant setting!! 3) rip out the small lawn on the side of the house and plant raised beds. Strawberries, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, herbs. Need I say more? We got all the sprinklers out and turned over a small area before the weather turned nasty. 4) replace the hulking stationary island island in our kitchen with a much smaller butcher block topped work table. Two people cannot pass each other in my kitchen, one person needs back up almost to the door to let the other one go by. Arrrrgh, what stupid dope remodeled a perfectly good '30's era kitchen into something so dysfunctional? If I can get all these done it will be a pretty good year...

I'm going to multiply shelves by an average no. of books per shelf . Is that OK? Only counting the ones that are put away the way you're supposed to put away books, not the ones that are laying across the tops of the properly-shelved ones. Not counting the ones still in boxes, mostly because they're ones I think are dumb and probably will never use. So 27 shelves times 30 books per: about 810 cookbooks They take up about half the long wall in our basement where we had built-in shelves installed. The other half of the wall is my husbands tech books. Fiction gets it's own wall. AND we're selling off what we can bear to part with on Amazon. Doesn't seem to have made much of a dent. Cooked professionally for ~ 20 years, so a respectable accumulation

I'm so disappointed in you guys! I indulge in a rare bit of bragging and you're talking about my screen name? I HAVE A PETER LUGER CREDIT CARD. You know the one where you have to beg the Russian bookkeeper for an application, the one with the cool old fashioned looking statements. There is nothing like the panache of SIGNING your bill at Peter Luger, while all your tablemates have to dig for cash. Sheesh. Thank you for welcoming me to eGullet. I would reply in bahasa Indonesia, but I'd have to wake up my mom or sister to get it right. They did the expat artist thing in Ubud for about 10 years. I mostly learned food words for my visits... and about the only thing that gives me greater pangs of longing than discussions of Peter Luger would be discussions of Singapore food stalls and night markets. Torture me on the appropriate board

I have a Peter Luger credit card, I love them so much. My husband worries about what might happen to someone who got behind on their payments... Though you paint it as a pretty masculine place, I have to say some of my best memories are of impromtu cab rides* across the bridge with girlfriends for steak and martinis. All those tough guys LOVE to see a couple of women eating big juicy pieces of meat and asking for dessert 'mit schlag' And the next day we'd trade phone calls about how shocked and upset our respective husbands/bfs were that we'd go without them Man oh man do I miss Peter Luger *P.L. is the ONE spot in Brooklyn a Manhattan cabbie is guaranteed to know

I just use my purse As the mother of a two year old, I'm lugging around a bag the size of a small carry-on, and cram my day's produce beside the sippy cups, extra sweater, discarded toys etc. The checkers at the natural foods store in our town don't blink, but at the Raley's (lk Albertsons) they honestly look shocked. Otherwise I really, really try to do the canvas bag thing. My husband goes to lots of tech conferences and I told him no more t-shirts, just grab the nice bags. O'Reilly did one last year that's my absolute favorite; it's folded and stitched at the bottom to be square, so it opens up to a cube shape. The re-usable route is best navigated with LOTS of bags, kept in the backseat of the car. I'm just not organized to remember to bring a bag every time I shop, but usually think of it as I'm parking and reach back to bring a few with me. Still, I end up with both plastic and paper bags. The plastic bags usually come from purchases at the hospice thrift store and back they go, about once a month. At Trader Joe's I am weak, and let them pack my groceries in the brown paper bags, mostly because I'm getting so much stuff. But some of those bags get used for carrying out paper recycling, the others get opened up, turned around and used to wrap the books and ebay stuff I sell. Hardly any bags end up in our regular garbage, so I figure I'm doing OK

Speaking of strange and twisted conections, anyone know Michael (Union Square Cafe) Romano's middle initial? In my 1977 fifth printing of TNWC Michael S. Romano is credited for testing ' more than half the dishes and (writing) the first draft of many of the recipes ' A quick perusal of his bio on Star Chefs supports him possibly being right age (started pro cooking in 1971, book published in 1973) and connected (James Beard). Seems a little young, but Laurie Colwin would have been what? 29? in 1973. And yes Sheila Hibben (of the New Yorker) is the main cook credited in this early intro. Also a Barbara Burn gets a big mention for wording and testing. Re the scrambled recipe: for what it's worth, RS says all the dishes were cooked 'twice - some three or more times - by (Sheila) and me' . I am a fan of extremely slow cooked scrambled eggs. It's A LOT about the pan and the not-even-simmering water (barely, for normal cooks, is usually poorly interpreted) Re-read that recipe while envisioning the kind of custard you'd usually bake in the oven in a water bath and perhaps you'll be kinder. (or crueler, if you are a beleaguered pastry chef for whom this only brings back bad memories of just-overdone-pot-de-cremes) Maybe it was in one of the books, because I can't find it in the index, but what has stayed with me for some 25 years is an explaination NW gives about the quails he is going to have that night having only been fed only on blueberries and cornmeal, and that is why they are exquisite. Maybe it was because I was an adolescent, but I was never so much interested in the actual recipes as I was in the discrimination applied in the making of them.