slkinsey

My mother and father got Willie Gluckstern's "The Wine Avenger" and a box of Maldon sea salt, respectively, as stocking stuffers. Gave copies of Bourdain's and Steingarten's best books as gifts. Um... got an interesting pair of wood salad tongs, plus The Art of Eating by M. F. K. Fisher.

Hey Sam, it seems like things are drifting toward the French Laundry. Maybe it should be moved to France. Don't make me give you the eye with all your funny talk, now! Oh... wait...

Hi, guys. Since El Bulli is in Spain, we're moving this thread from the NY Forum to the Spain & Portugal forum. Carry on!

I don't know the price, but I have always been able to find reasonably priced duck legs at the Chinese butcher on Bayard.

Whoa. Bummer, dude. That's not too cool. One thing you might consider doing is calling the guys at Bridge Kitchenware and talking to them about shipping to you in Canada. I am sure they do some business up there.

I really don't know what's available in Canada. But, I'd like to point out that there is this wonderful thing called the Internet that helps you to buy cookware from companies that are located in America. Just because you live in Canada doesn't mean that you can't buy cookware from Bridge Kitchenware, for example. Anyway, if you're set on buying locally available cookware, I'd look for a Chaudier (also called Chaudier 5000 in the US). It's very good quality, heavy stuff. Yes, it's a pretty good buy. I don't think the specs are quite as good as some of my favorites, but I wouldn't mind owning a few pieces. Yes, this is a complicating factor, and something I will probably discuss in version two of my class (whenever I get around to revising it). That said, my working assumption is that there is not a significant difference in the kind of aluminum used by the high-end manufacturers. One does't really need to do CR-style testing to understand the differences, however. All that is required is to have the materials specifications for the alloy they are using. These specifications are all public knowledge. No, it doesn't significantly change the heating properties and no, it doesn't justify their higher price. As I say in my class: You can draw your own conclusions about which manufacturer I was thinking of when I wrote that. One word: plastics. No, seriously, if you want a big sauté pan, I'd get Sitram Profiserie or, if you don't want to buy from an American company (due to tax reasons or whatever) I'd go with Chaudier's heavy line. You'd probably be pretty happy with Scanpan Steel as well -- it looks good.

Heh... I don't know if it's a goal per se. When I make it, it's just a consequence. I also use fairly fatty cuts of meat.

I take care of the oiliness factor by A) including ground pancetta as one of my meats, and B) starting the whole thing with insane amounts of both butter and evoo. Looks delicious, Tommy.

On their web site they say: Doesn't sound too promising to me, but you never know...

A fun glaze to do is a Coca Cola glaze. It works really well, tastes very good and it's always fun to tell your incredulous guests that you glazed the ham with Coca Cola. Here is a recipe for a whisky and cola glaze or, for something simpler, there's this recipe for a cola glazed ham.

Why do you think there aren't as many ethnic places upstate? Is it the case that there aren't enough people of these ethnicities living out there? I have always found it interesting that there can be areas that have fairly large concentrations of certain ethnic groups and still have no good restaurants associated with that group. I've been in some midwestern cities with sizeable Asian populations and no good Asian restaurants. It also strikes me as odd that, even in Manhattan with its huge Dominican population, Dominican restaurants are fairly scarce.

Brazilian ironwood burl.

Sam, I'd love to see photos of your knives. Any way you could post a couple? Hopefully Santa will be bringing me a digital camera. Then I'll see what I can do. Here's a picture I already had (the picture was folded, so that explains the crease in the image):

How's this for a generalization: my youngest sister is Shannon Michelle, my oldest sister is Cathleen Marie, my brother Thomas Franklin. Also, growing up I knew a Keith Brian, a Brian Keith, and a Roger Nelson. And my mom used to try to convince me that the Beach Boys wrote a song about her, Barbara Ann. Unfortunately one rarelysees the truly colorful Southern names of old any more, like this one from one of my favorite Faulkner novels: Admiral Dewey Snopes.

Custom made kitchen knives are indeed cool. I hace a number of custom made cast dendridic steel knives in my kitchen. Wouldn't trade them for anything. Haven't done any "at home modifications" though... yet.

Might be an interesting idea. Certainly it is the case that the average Southerner will be using a softer, lower protein flour to make CFS. Using Wondra would probably give it a nice effect, but one that isn't entirely traditional, I'd guess. You should try it!

Interesting. I agree that the pasta dishes are outstanding -- especially the fresh pasta dishes and even more especially the pasta ripiena dishes (I speak of the goose liver ravioli, the beef cheek ravioli, the calf's brain "francobolli" and the mint "love letters"). That said, the most outstanding dish I have ever had there was the fennel dusted sweetbreads with quince vinegar and duck bacon. The tripa alla parmigiana blew me away too. The grappa tasting at Babbo is pretty cool, too. We've always managed to make friends with the wine guy (I love Italian wines and grappa even more), who always gives us a very generous pour and sometimes an extra grappa to taste.

I think it's a mystery. We still don't know how to cultivate most kinds of mushrooms (or truffles), or even necessarily know why they grow in one place and not another. If we knew more, porcini and chanterelles, etc. would be as cheap as portobellos. I actually think that decent mushrooms pop up more frequently than people think. It's just too bad that most people don't know enough about mushrooms to take advantage of it. The average American, upon waking to see his lawns covered with brown-gray spongy fungus would immediately head for the lawn mower. The only reason we were lucky in that regard is that my parents are both scientists and, due to the incredible mushroom activity around our house in Western NC, they decided to learn everything they could about North American mushrooms so we could pick and eat wild mushrooms. (There are, BTW, mushrooms known as "false morels" that you don't want to eat.)

Not if you're me! One year when I was in high school, my parents opened the front door of our house in Boston to discover the entire front yard awash in morels that had popped up overnight! They picked them all, took them to the lab and freeze dried them. This happened several years in a row and then just as mysteriously stopped. We still have a huge bag of freeze dried morels.

Interesting. I don't know why we always did it with rice. Perhaps because it's easier to make? My father's family comes from both East and West Texas, though, and I never got the impression eating it with rice was all that unusual.

I agree on the Texas version (my grandmother's being the one with which I am most familiar). She used to soak the pounded meat in salted water for an hour or so. Perhaps a more interesting question is what starch to serve with chicken fried steak. A lot of people have mashed potatoes, but we Kinseys often like white rice. Leftover chicken fried steak biscuits are mighty nice the next morning, too.

And again... "And a minute of silence for Peppino Cantarelli. Two stars for an very traditional Emilian kitchen. Not even Michelin could ignore it." Okay, guys. Basta con la lingua Italiana! eGullet is an English-language board. If you want to make occasional rare comments in Italian, you must provide a full translation in English. And yes, I know that I was the one who opened Pandora's box on this thread. But if we're not careful, Pan will start posting things about us in languages we don't have the slightest hope of understanding.

Esatto!!! Sono sicuro che ci sia qualquno qui nel filo che ha mangiato al famoso Enoteca Pinchiorri a Firenze (due stelle). A me, quello non e cibo italiano --- e cibo francese! Si puo dire la stessa cosa di tanti altri ristoranti "stellati" dalla Michelin, come La Tenda Rossa (due stelle) a Cerbaia (Toscana). Mi dispiace di usare l'italiano, ma mi ha sembrato giusto per questo soggetto particolare.... For the non-Italophiles: "I am sure that there is someone here in this thread who has eaten at the famous Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence (two stars). To me, that is not Italian food -- it's French food! One may say the same thing about other restaurants "starred" by Michelin, such as La Tenda Rossa (two stars) in Cerbaia (Tuscany). I'm sorry to use Italian, but it seemed just to me for this particular subject."

They are cheaper than the prices we have been discussing for heavy copper because they're tin lined and not stainless lined. Stainless is considerably more expensive. Fantes is a great store, but I wouldn't say that their prices for tin-lined heavy copper are substantially lower than the competition.

Odd that they are not upfront about this, given that anyone, especially someone with an expense account, could buy a small saucepan from all of these lines and have the answer in a few days. On the other hand, they probably aren't interested in competing on mm of Al, but rather on how exclusive they can be. Yea. I think that's pretty stupid on their part. If I were ever to write a book or publish an article comparing the various lines of cookware, I would tell the manufacturers up front what specifications I wanted. If they decided they didn't want to give me the specifications I wanted, I'd simply buy a cheap piece, saw it in half and measure the layers myself. The fact is that they must be aware that it would be ridiculously easy for any competitor to reverse engineer their product to this extent. And, really, they are hardly giving anything away to a competitor by disclosing the thickness of the stainless and aluminum layers they use. Personally, I think they don't want to give out those measurements because they don't want potential customers making direct comparisons between the various clad aluminum lines on the market today. It is interesting to me that I was able to get their materials specifications with nothing more than an email several years ago when they were the only game in town. If you look at the data in my cookware class, you will see that I have the exact measurement for the aluminum layers in the fully clad lines (Stainless and Cop-R-Chef -- both around 2 mm) and the interior clad lines (MasterChef and LTD -- both artound 4 mm).