slkinsey

Eh... Suzanne, I wasn't suggesting that everyone buy a piece of heavy copper. But, if I may correct a misconception, what All-Clad calls a "Chef's Pan" is classically (and, I would suggest, more accurately) called a "curved sauteuse evasée." As explained in my cookware class: These graphics may also be relevant in understanding this: This design is one that depends on having a straight gauge design, and as such it will never be a particularly inexpensive one. All-Clad, in my experience, is the worst offender in the business when it comes to overpriced cookware -- even at fairly steep discounts.

In my opinion/experience, most residential stoves comply cannot put out enough heat to make a wok useful as a cooking vessel. This is especially true of "authentic" carbon steel woks -- even those with flat bottoms designed for stovetop use. If you throw in any more than a tiny amount of food, the pan loses all of its heat and you are suddenly steaming your food in its own juices rather than stir-frying. The only wok designs I've seen that sort-of work on the average residential stove are the heavy cast iron woks by Le Creuset. For my own use, I've found a large stainless lined heavy copper curved sauteuse evasée, preheated for several minutes on high heat, works better than any of the many woks I've tried.

All those places down there used to be part of all the other places at one time or another. This is not odd from a historical standpoint. What is odd is tha fact that the borders have been fixed for the last 50+ years.

This, I think, is the salient point. The best cooking in italy is entirely tied to the growing season and certain locally-grown, raised, caught or produced ingredients. Due to the geographical nature of the country, there are literally hundreds of microclimates that lead to entirely different ingredients than another zone a hundred miles away. Even in Italy, it would be almost impossible to have a really good "Venetian-style" restaurant in, say, Napoli. I have always been able to make 100% Italian-in-Italy tasting food when I am cooking in Italy. We've got a lot of people on these boards, including myself, who spend a lot of time in Italy and have done a lot of cooking over there, and I would imagine that I am not alone in my inability to exactly replicate those tastes in the US. So, clearly there is something about being in Italy. The first and most important thing in making "like in Italy" Italian food is to have access to the same ingredients. This is simply impossible. For example, there is no American equivalent of the vacca rossa and so we cannot have a real Fiorentina here. Even if one were to import vacca rossa t-bone steaks from Toscana, the miles would take their toll on the meat and it wouldn't be the same (it would also become prohibitively expensive). Consider the fact that beef is a relatively robust ingredient when it comes to shipping, and imagine what effect that might have on vegetables and herbs. After that, one has to deal with the fact that American expectations, appetites and dining customs are different than those of Italians. And the bottom line is that the people who own Italian restaurants in America are in the game to make money. A typical cheap Saturday afternoon lunch in Toscana might be a mixed salad followed by grilled pieces of pigeon, guinea hen, turkey and rabbit drizzled with young olive oil. This sounds pretty good to me (and many of you , no doubt) -- but this is not something that will appeal to all that many Americans. Furthermore, it is unlikely such a meal in America can be priced (or will sell) to working people. It is also unlikely that such a meal is fancy or refined enough to sell at a higher price to the upper-middle class fancy restaurant set. This kind of thing presents a real problem when it comes to selling "authentic" Italian food to Americans. So what one is left with in terms of Italian style restaurants (as opposed to Italian-American style restaurants, which are much more common and a related but unique genre) are places like Felidia, Babbo, etc. These are places that prepare food with an Italian sensibility, but adapt to the use of American ingredients and American customers. These two restaurants in particular represent the two approaches I see in such restaurants as well as the two approaches restaurants use in Italy. Felidia serves largely traditional foods of Italy, with minor changes resulting from the use of American ingredients or adaptations to the locality. Babbo, on the other hand, seeks to forge ahead and create new dishes using the Italian approach -- almost treating New York as a new Italian region and creating a new regional cuisine based on the foods and people of that region. Neither one serves food exactly like what one finds in Italy. But I think both serve food that would be recognized as Italian in spirit were they transplanted to that country.

I would have suggested you cut it into small pieces and make fried rice. But, alas, it is too late...

Dude, forget the standing bib roast. I'm making saddle of lion, or... what do you suppose is the chance they have walrus chops back in the walk-in?

Man... one day I really have to order the lamb chops as an appetizer. That's the real old school way to do it!

Yea, you have a point there. I guess I'm saying I don't mind so much that a lot of people didn't/don't have a great experience there. I like to think that restaurants and other establishments not-for-everyone still have a place in this world. Yea. What is with that stuff? It just isn't good.

Hee hee hee! Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's bread. I'll have to make a point of checking out the bread the next time I go over, because it's been uniformly horrible thus far. But... maybe I'm not going to the right places.

This is a good point... although I was able to act like an "insider" the first time I went to Peter Luger by reading all about it in the web (Fat-Guy.com in particular, as chance would have it). Even the first time I went there, I knew what to order and didn't ask for a menu. In fact, almost everything you read about the place says that everyone gets the same thing anyway (not that there are all that many things from which to choose), so you're better off putting yourself in the hands of your waiter -- which they are always happy to do. I've always had a great time there and never found the waitstaff anything other than friendly to me. Personally, I kind of like the quirky, old, gruff New York atmosphere at the place. Those of us who like it for what it is are comfortable with the way things are, and I admit to enjoyingit a little that some people are put off by the atmosphere. If they put tablecloths down, started serving gussied up side dishes, hired young, friendly, attractive waiters who introduced themselves and explained the menu items, put a bunch of fancy wines on the menu, etc... for me, some part of the experience would be lost.

As others have noted, black eyed peas are a traditional "lucky" food in the South. They must work, because all three of the children in my family were conceived after my parents had eaten black eyed peas (which were not easy to get in the New England of my youth and were generally sent from Texas by my grandmother).

When it comes to figuring out how to pick the best cookware for your needs and budget, I'd like to toot my horn and suggest ny eGCI class as a resource.

It has to do with cooking on an Aga cooker.

Anodized aluminum, by any chance? Nope, Calpholon Tri-Ply. I'm on my third one, and I'm tired of taking them back. The 5-qt saute is a big pan, much bigger than the burners on my stove. I believe the uneven heating is why the center regularly buckles and becomes convex on the bottom. That's interesting. How wide is the pan? (I don't understand why some manufacturers size their saute pans by volume, which really isn't very meaningful.) Also, do you have any way of measuring how thick the pan is? I've been curious about Calphalon Tri-Ply's specs. You know... for less money than one of the Tri-Ply pans, you could have had one of these or one of these.

Anodized aluminum, by any chance?

Interesting. I could never do that, because I make too much pasta (need to have a pasta pot for that) and I cook too many things with an acidic component. That said, I could probably get by (albeit with constraints on what I could do) if I removed everything from my list but the chef's knife, a wooden spoon, a saute pan and a stock/pasta pot.

This is very hard to say, because cooking styles and needs change so much between users. Many people, for example, will likely mention a wok whereas I don't have one and don't feel a need to acquire one. For me, they are: 12" chef's knive Paring knive End-grain cutting board Several heat-proof rubber spatulas Several wooden spoons Apex spatula 1 small saucepan - straight gauge 1 medium sized tall saucepan - heavy disk bottom 1 large stockpot with pasta insert - heavy disk bottom 1 large (11" or more) saute pan or curved sauteuse evasee - heavy disk bottom 1 11" frypan - straight gauge 1 11" nonstick frypan -- straight gauge 1 large enameled cast iron casserole

Um... all of them? There is something about making a meal where the primary focus is something other than making the food taste great that tends to produce... well food that doesn't taste great. The only low-whatever meals that are actually good are those where the low carb/fat/calorie/whatever-ness is incidental.

Oy. That sounds horrible. I guess I've been lucky in this regard. I don't have any relatives outside my immediate family (my parents are both only children) and my friends who do entertain (which are precious few) can generally cook pretty well. My one golden rule about eating at someone else's house is that I will at least make a show of eating a little of whatever they're serving -- even if it's something I absolutely despise, like eggplant. When I was a little gigantic eyeball, I used to spend the night at my best friend's house fairly frequently. Breakfast was always very wet, runny scrambled eggs. Yuck! I can remember my friend's mother remarking to mine that I was such a light eater. My mother kept her mouth shut... but just barely.

Oh my GOD, mags! That is one of the funniest airport stories I have ever heard!

Or, think about it this way. If a friend in Milano wanted some corned beef, which do you think would be better: 1. imported American corned beef bought in a Milanese specialty market; or 2. corned beef from Katz's that you hand-schlepped on the plane?

I can see this as being a new fancy restaurant term: "Do you like the chopped liver? You know, it was hand-schlepped."

My point is that Bayless' expertise and experience greatly lowers the "misguided" threshold. If RJ Reynolds paid me to do an advertisement for a 'step in the right direction low tar cigarette' -- that would be me being misguided. If, on the other hand, RJ Reynolds paid a tobacco industry critic and antismoking campaigner to do the same advertisement -- well, that crosses the line from "misguided" into something more.

Matthew, at some point you just see enough evidence that you can no longer believe someone's explanation at face value At one point one might say: "Hey, maybe that actor was just misguided when he did those 'low tar' cigarette ads. Maybe he really does think that even lower tar is a 'step in the right direction,' and he just made a mistake." But, at another point one has to say, "Wait a minute... this isn't just an actor we're talking about. This is a guy who doesn't allow smoking in his movies. This is a guy who has read all the research on tobacco-related cancer. This guy has been speaking out against the evils of the tobacco industry. This guy has been involved in media, and he knows how brand avertising works. This guy knew what he was getting himself into." That is the point I have reached with Bayless. I'm not attributing any intentions to Bayless. There are any number of motivations he could have had for doing it. I'm just saying that I don't believe his half-baked after-the-fact explanations. What I attribute to Bayless is saying "yes" to a big wad of money from a company that he knew stood for everything his expressed core values stand against. That fact seems inescapable to me. I'm not saying that other people don't do the same thing every day. I'm not saying you or I wouldn't do the same damn thing. But, by God, I am not going to pretend it's something else just because I think Bayless is a good guy who has done some things for food -- both of which are things I think. As I have said before, Bayless worked hard to put himself in the public eye as the embodiment of a certain set of principles. Bayless isn't stupid or naive, and I refuse to accept that he didn't understand something we all appear to grasp with ease. He did something that any person in his position with his experience and knowledge would understand went against those principles. The piper is being paid in the appropriate currency: public perception.

I have a friend who took back a cryovaced Prosciutto di San Danielle in his bags. That thing was damn tasty. At some point I do think it has to do with freshness. But it also has to do with the ubiquity of those ingredients in their regions of origin. Parmigiano Reggiano is practically falling from the trees in Reggio-Emilia. As a result, she probably started off with really kick ass cheese to begin with. Same thing for the Darjeeling tea. I think the point can also be made that hand-schlepping is much easier on the product than, say, container ship-schlepping or overnight FedEx-schlepping. That said, I wonder whether the cheese wouldn't be just as good if you called up the same place in Reggio-Emilia, got the same guy to pick out a really good Parmigiano Reggiano, carefully package it and send it to you via FedEx (which would, of course, take more than 24 hours what with customs, etc.).