slkinsey

Anyone have an ISBN number or possible purchase information for this? Is there a current Italian edition in print?

Seriously, though... That constant tasting and whatnot must give you a stomach of lead. Or do you find that you need to keep a supply of Gaviscon and Immodium at the ready?

What are your thoughts about organizing a menu around a central theme? I, for example, like the idea of "a journey through the fifth quarter." Perhaps starting with tripe in tomato sauce, then some chicken liver quenelles in broth, then some rigatoni with intestines and mint, then maybe a few pieces of head cheese with a tart little salad, then sauteed sweetbreads... That kind of thing.

hee hee hee! I can hardly wait until you have to do something like: taste one tablespoon each of extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil, pomace oil, peanut oil, canola oil, corn oil, vegetable oil and sunflower seed oil.

Much better and cheaper to go to your local purveyor of building stone and get a piece of one inch thick soapstone custom cut slightly smaller than the size of your oven floor.

That's an interesting idea, but perhaps a little outside the scope of this kind of article. Do do such a survey in any kind of meaningfully comprehensive way would require an article of a length that might make Chad's knife sharpening epic look short. That said, I am happy to answer any such questions here in the Q&A. I am also reluctant to make specific brand recommendations in the body of an article, because the idea is that I am trying to convince people I am unbiased. Most of the time there is no clear cut winner anyway, as many things come down to style and personal preference. In these informal Q&As, however, I am much more free to answer questions as to my own personal brand preferences and recommendations. 90% of the time, my personal pan of preference would be heavy copper with an interior lining of stainless steel if cost were not a consideration. My dream pan, however, would probably be 2.5 mm of copper with .2 mm of brushed stainless steel on the inside and the outside, and a solid cast stainless steel handle. This would offer the thermal benefits of straight gauge heavy copper, but would be dishwasher-safe. As for how much difference high end cookware makes... that is a very tough one to answer. All great cookware does is make the job easier. It doesn't really make the result better. To make an example, I have little doubt that Jean Georges Vongerichten could make a much better meal using a crap stove and cheap thin stainless cookware than I could do with stainless lined heavy copper and a restaurant stove. To make another example, using a Falk Culinair sauciere does make it easier to make a Hollandaise over direct heat without fear and with great control. But, you can make one that is just as good using a "double boiler" made from a cheap stainless saucepan filled with barely simmering water and a cheap stainless mixing bowl on top. In general, as with all things, the differences become smaller and smaller the higher the price point gets. There is a huge jump up in performance characteristics from a 15 dollar stainless saute pan and a 65 dollar Sitram Profisserie saute pan. The jump from the Sitram Profisserie saute pan up to a Falk Culinair saute pan at 235 bucks? Not nearly as big. So, let's have a go at this one. The first thing to understand is that we really don't saute chicken breasts. If you refer back to my description of the saute pan, you will see that the French verb "sauter" means "to jump." When we saute, we have a number of small items in a pan over high heat, and the pan is constantly agitated in order to jump the ingredients around and expose every side of the ingredients to the heat. The straight, relatively tall sides of the saute pan help to bounce food around back into the pan. You don't really need to "toss" or "flip" the ingredients to saute either. All you need to do is simply shake the pan back and forth vigorously on the burner. My impression is that home cooks don't tend to do all that much real sauteing. Sauteing is, then, something you might do with chunks of chicken breast, but not with whole chicken breasts. Whole or flattened chicken breasts just sit there in the pan and fry. Fundamentally there is no reason you shouldn't use a fry pan to do this. Among other things, it will be much easier to get a spatula under the food when it needs to be turned if it is in a fry pan. As for the pan sauce, if all you are going to be doing is deglazing with a little white wine and maybe swirling in a little butter there is no reason you couldn't do this right in the fry pan. I'd recommend a nice heavy fry pan. But, let's take a slightly different approach and see how that changes the pan requirements. Let's say we want to fry some chicken thighs until they are nice and brown together whith some small onions then add some white wine to the pan and quickly braise/steam the chicken until it is cooked through, at which point the solid ingredients will be removed and the liquid will be reduced and mounted with butter to form the sauce. In this case, a saute pan would be much better -- even though you are not sauteing -- because the higher sides and the lid make it a better environment for the quick braise and subsequent reduction part. The Internet and places like eGullet can be a great place to gather information. Now that you are among the cultural elite that is the eGullet membership, you know about cookware makers like Sitram, Paderno, De Buyer, Falk Culinair, Mauviel, Demeyere, Staub, Chasseur, Griswold and so on. My only advice is to beware people who are dogmatic about a certain brand of cookware being "the best." If someone has a collection of nothing but All-Clad Stainless and Le Creuset, there is a very good chance that he/she is heavily invested in the marketing hype that these brands represent the best cookware available. I got into a fun debate with a guy on Usenet several years ago who insisted that Demeyere was the best cookware available because "it says so right here in their brochure." There are also some interesting books that are worthwhile checking out. The Well Tooled Kitchen by Fred Bridge, the ledendary owner of Bridge Kitchenware, is a great reference book and the classic one, IMO. There are also interesting books here, here and here. But also, as I hoped my article explained a bit, an understanding of the materials used and the properties of those materials can really inform your choices. A lot of the time, you can get the cookware company to give you some of their materials specifications. For example, until someone from rec.food.equipment emailed All-Clad and posted the information, I had no idea that the Stainless line had so much less aluminum than the MasterChef line -- never mind that I was previously going on my best guess as to how much aluminum there was in any of their lines. This kind of information can be very valuable. I hope this answers your questions somewhat. Please post again if there is any clarification I can offer.

The K14 looks very interesting as a knife that woulldn't duplicate what I already have. Do you have any thoughts/experiences/reviews to relate about this one?

Mmmm, must be David Boye's dendtritic 440c -- very, very nice knives. He cast the blade blanks, but another knifemaker finished them off and did the handles, etc. Super sweet knives. Very toothy, aggressive edge and it takes them forever to go dull. When I became interested in these knives, the maker sent me a sample to play with and suggested I sharpen it up and compare it to my other knives by seeing how many slices I could take from a 1 inch hemp rope until it became too dull to be effective. The dendridic knife held its edge twice as long as the others (the usual Solingen suspects plus a few others) and I eventually gave up before I was able to dull the blade.

Thanks for the info, Chad. I do have some knives (cast dendridic steel) that I want to keep nice-looking, so I usually just put a strip of clear packing tape on each side of the blade and cut off the excess.

I am rather of the opinion that Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is the one essential book no kitchen should be without. After that, it varies depending on taste and the regional cooking that interests you. As far as I know, there is no book that goes through all the regions comprehensively explaining why the cooking has evolved the way it has (what the agriculture and resources are like, levels of affluence, etc.) and giving representative examples of the most classic recipes from each region. The few books that I have seen which do claim to make such a comprehensive survey still focus the vast majority of their material on the few best-known regions at the expense of others. I have spent a lot of time in Le Marche, so it is always a dead give-away when a cookbook lumps Le Marche together with Umbria and Toscana or Abruzzi. If anyone is aware of a book (in English or translated into English) that actually does a good job of this, I would be interested to know about it.

I don't want to put words in Chad's mouth here, but this would be extremely difficult to do as there are a number of different sharpening systems. What you might be able to glean from watching Chad use, say, the Edge Pro system would not really help you if you were using crock sticks or wanted to sharpen freehand, etc.

Chad, one thing I was curious about... would you consider the "stones" in the Edge Pro set to be "waterstones" per your descriptionm, or do you suggest they be used dry?

That's cheating! Isn't this good advice for how to cook just about anything?

Yikes! I dropped a small scalpel-like knife years ago and it ended up sticking straight out of the big toe knuckle on my left foot (I was barefoot at the time). Still have a funny indented scar there.

Blanch it in salted boiling water for a minute or two. Shock in cold salted water. Squeeze out the excess moisture and roughly chop it together with a lot of fresh mint. Saute in evoo with thin slivers of garlic, adding a generous amount of crushed red pepper just at the end. Serve with grilled meat, fish or poultry of any kind.

Yes, my point exactly. Try not to let yourself get distracted. Your flesh is much softer than most of the other things you chop! Unless you happen to be chopping up a bunch of fingers, of course.

Dude. Go for it. They're not all that expensive and it makes a huge difference. I got the idea on rec.food.sourdough back in my sourdough idealogue days.

Yes. Thank you, Tommy. I would like to point out a few things, and then I am going to absent myself from this conversation: 1. I have never said that "tourists are ruining Babbo" or that "people who were not from NYC are not qualified to eat at Babbo." In fact, I have quite clearly explained several times that this is precisely not what I have been saying. If certain participants on this thread decide that they want to deliberately interpret my remarks as having that meaning, there is nothing I can do about that. I have clarified my thoughts to the point where I think they would be clear to any reasonably intelligent person reading with an unbiased eye (never mind the charity to give me the benefit of taking me at my word when I explain myself). 2. What did do was speculate about whether the recent huge increase in visitors to Babbo who came to the restaurant with different sets of cultural expectations than typical NYC high-end restaurant-goers might explain part of the observed increase in complaints. The fact that New York City culture -- which is to say "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits characteristic of that place" -- is different from mainstream medium-to-small town Midwest culture (or West Coast culture or Southwest culture or Deep South culture or Sri Lankan culture, etc.) is quite clear. It is, frankly, ridiculous to suggest otherwise. It also seems to me quite naive to assert that cultural differences don't or can't ever play a part in a customer's satisfaction at a restaurant. I see this happening all the time with Americans in European restaurants. 3. As Tommy surmises, I am not going to apologise for my remarks. I don't think there is anything wrong with what I said or with what I intended to say. That said, I am sorry and disappointed that certain people have chosen to interpret my remarks as having a different meaning and underlying motivation. Perhaps there is some history there of which I am not aware, but I really don't care. I don't think there is anything in my history here that would suggest that I share the sentiments that have been ascribed to me by these individuals. At this point all I can do is decline further interaction or discussion with these individuals and abstain from future participation on this thread -- and that is what I will do.

I agree. And please, slkinsey STOP, STOP, STOP, ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You should be ashamed. When you have had a few people on these boards publicly accuse you of slandering 90% of the American population when such was not your intent, then you can lecture me on whether or not I should be ashamed. Until then, please keep it to yourself.

Yes. If that is what you think, then you are totally and completely misunderstanding me. What I was saying was that I thought certain cultural differences, certain expectations that are by and large different for most out of town visitors to NYC than they are for NYC high-end restaurant habitues might, in part, explain the rise in the number of complaints about Babbo. Let me give one example completely removed from restaurants: In New York City supermarkets, we don't tend to talk to the checkout people, and they don't talk to us. It is quite common that the only word that is exchanged between the cashier and the purchaser is the price of the groceries. We like it this way. It's efficient and we get out of there as quickly as possible. On the other hand, in Texas is is quite common for customers to chat a bit with the cashier -- to chat with the cashier to the extent that it takes you just a little bit longer to go through the checkout line. In Texas, this is all part of being polite. Now, let's say that one of our Texans is in a New York grocery store. He expects that the cashier will chat with him. But she doesn't. In fact, she doesn't particularly respond to the Texan's overtures to engage in banter. Our Texan is angry now! That cashier was rude to him! He writes an angry letter to the manager of the grodery store, and posts on eGrocery about how much the customer service must be slipping at Fairway because he had a simply awful experience where the cashier was unbelievable surly to him. Do you see what happened? The cashier was not, in fact, rude to the Texan. The cashier acted in a way that is perfectly fine for a New York City grocery store. The fact that the Texan had a bad experience was due to cultural differences between the Texan's understanding of what is expected at a grocery store, which is based on his experience in grocery stores in Texas, and the New York City grocery store culture, which is completely different. More to the point, neither one of them is right or wrong or better or worse. They are just different. I never said that one was better in the other. That was all read into my posts by other people. The closest thing I said to that was that I thought NYC people tended to behave (and I used this in the general sense, which includes reactions, perceptions, etc.) more appropriately in NYC restaurants. If you understand the foregoing, this hardly seems like a radical statement. And, as I said numerous times, one could say the same of New Yorkers in other environments. Do you see how similar situations might arise when someone from a different part of the country, with a different set of expectations as to dress, modes of interaction, etc. and who has perhaps never been to a fine dining establishment goes to a high end New York City restaurant like Babbo? I can. And I've seen it happen plenty of times. I have also seen similar things happen with people from the Northeast in Southern barbeque places, etc. It's no big deal. Gosh, people tend to have cultural paradigms that are formed largely by the culture around them. What a revelation! Sometimes issues arise when people with certain cultural paradigms find themselves in settings that do not share those paradigms. What?! Tar and feather the guy who said that! Now... I ask you, does that seem like I'm calling everyone in the Midwest a slack-jawed yokel? In my usage, it means someone who doesn't live here who comes to visit. Period. Nothing pejorative about it whatsoever. In my usage, they are the same thing. I'm not using it in the "high culture versus low culture" sense, but in the social science "American culture versus Elbonian culture" sense. 5b and c here.

Not sure if this is a generalization (wouldn't want that now, would we? ) but in my experience, the Northeast (Boston, NYC, Washington, Philly) is more formal in dress than the West coast, or Denver and Austin, to name two states in the middle that we've spent a lot of time in. Washington DC is a very formal town. Men go to nightclubs wearing ties, ferchrissakes. I have always percieved NYC to be far more casual than where I'm from. You fucking snobby DC people! Always calling us New Yorkers shitkickers and yokels! How dare you make a comparison?! Oh, wait...

But you did state this in response to my direct question: Right. And you interpret this as saying that New York is better than everywhere else rather than pointing out the fact that people from everywhere need to make these kinds of adjustments? For Christ's sake, I specifically mentioned that New Yorkers would have to do the same thing in your town! How, could you please explain, does this imply that the people from your town are rubes compared to New Yorkers? What you have to understand, Matthew, is that people like you and the other eGullet members are not typical in terms of your ability to make these kinds of adjustments. With your interest in and understanding of food, restaurant culture and high-end dining you are far better able to fit into NY high-end restaurant culture smoothly than 95% of the people from your area who visit NYC every year. The typical out of town visitor to a place like Babbo is operating with significaltly less advantages than you will be when you visit Babbo. The typical out of town visitor to Babbo watches Molto Mario on TVFN and thinks it would be really cool to bring the family to his restaurant while in town to see the Lion King, etc. The same thing works the other way around when the tyical New Yorker comes to your town. You still haven't explained what these "cultural differences" are. What is it that you, Sam, *do* in places like Babbo that I wouldn't do? What is it that I would do, that you wouldn't do? (Remember I've lived nearly all my life in the Midwest.) Share your secrets. I lived in the Midwest myself for five years. Presumably you understand that the words "Midwestern behavior" means "social interactions typical of people from those areas of the country and different from those in NYC" and not "behavoir" in the sense that one's mother uses saying "Matthew! We will have no more of that behavior!" A few things here. As I pointed out in an earlier post, it is naive to take the position that there are no cultural differences with respect to restaurant culture between different parts of the country. It's too bad that people chose to interpret my example as badmouthing the Midwest, but I think it is only pointing out that there are cultural differences that may lead to some dissatisfaction. If I had said, "Sri Lankan" instead of "Midwestern" would you have taken offense? Somehow I rather think not. I also rather think you would not have taken offense if I had said something similar about New Yorkers fitting in to restaurants in Grinell, Iowa or Sheboygan, Wisconsin. As for some of the cultural differences -- keeping in mind that they do not necessarily apply to you and other people on eGullet, nor do they all necessarily apply to all people from the Midwest -- here are some examples: - The dress in NYC tends to be much more formal than other parts of the country. The staff may feel like you aren't showing the restaurant the proper respect if you show up in the same outfit you'd wear to Bennigans. This means slacks (and not Dockers), an ironed shirt, leather shoes, perhaps a sport coat of some kind. - Yes, it really is that expensive. 60 - 70 bucks is not considered a lot to pay for drinks and dinner at a good mid-level restaurant like @SQC. Expect to spend $150 - $200 a person. Expressions of surprise/dismay (joking or not) at the prices are not likely to be well met. Also, unless you are into this kind of thing, it may not seem like it was "worth it" to you. - There may be a lot of things on the menu that you have never/will never eat: brains, liver, thymus, stomach, feet, intestines, etc. - Children may not be particularly welcome. You may be asked to leave if you let your kids run around, or if they make a lot of noise. Accomodation for strollers is likely to be minimal. There is no kid's menu. - The waiters tend towards "efficient" rather than "friendly" in demeanor. New Yorkers in general are not as demonstrative in these situations as in most other parts of the country. They are not being rude. This is the way people act here. Your waiter will not give you his/her name and may balk at giving it to you if you ask. It is not appropriate to call the waiters "honey" and other such endearments. If you flirt with the waiter or attempt to "loosen her up" by saying things like "why don't you give me just one big smile" you will not get the response you are looking for. Likewise, the waiters are not likely to respond well to comments such as, "so... I bet you're an actor or a singer or something, right?" They are there to help you select your food and to serve you your food, not to pretend be your friend, which you may be used to. - Reservations may be very difficult to get. They only accept reservations one month in advance so people can have a chance to get a reservation -- not to make life more difficult for you. Otherwise they'd be booked solid for 5 years in advance. It may also be very difficult to change your reservation as to time and number. If it is more than 30 minutes and 1 person, you are bascally starting from scratch. They do not "owe you" the right to make changes like this just because you already have a reservation. - Even though your reservation is for 7:00, you may not be seated until 7:30 or later. This is the reality of a busy Manhattan restaurant. It is not something to get upset about unless they are pre-theater reservations (that they know are pre-theater) or until you have been waiting 45 minutes to an hour, at which time you should reasonably expect some kind of compensation. - If your reservation is for 7:00 or earlier (and many people from the Midwest like to eat dinner at 5:30 or 6:00), they will need to turn your table at some point. You can't hang out there all evening. - The food is served primo/secondo. That means that there will be no pasta with your veal chop. - According to the restaurant's philosophy, you may be corrected when you refer to Prosecco as "Champagne" or they may try to get you to change your mind about putting grated cheese on your seafood pasta or they may say things like "risotto... is a starch -- it doesn't really go with spaghetti." They are not talking down to you when they do this. - They probably won't accept your Discover card... and they may not accept any cards at all. - There is no smoking section. They are very serious about not allowing smoking. If you light up and resist putting it out immediately, you may be asked to leave. - The portions may be significaltly smaller than what you are used to. You are not being stiffed or deceived. This is the way it comes. - There is likely to be a lot less room at your table and between your table and the next table over. Again, you are not being given a "bad table." They are all like that. - Even though you may be important and have clout with the restaurant people in your home town, you cannot bluster or bribe or ingratiate yourself into a better table or a seat with no reservation. - There may be famous people there. Leave them alone. - Etc. Now... do most of these things apply to you? No. Do they apply to most eGullet readers from around the world? No. Do many of them apply to a significant percentage of the out of town visitors to a place like Babbo? Absolutely. Anyone in the business will tell you that. Do some of then apply to New Yorkers that eat at these restaurants? Sure. But not nearly so many nor so often.

Oh, you very well may be right. All I was doing originally was speculating about reasons why the volume of complaints might be increasing. Then I got hijacked by people who took offense at my use of the word "midwestern" to make an example. Frankly, I rather imagine that Mario pulled all his really good people over to Otto to get it going well and that he doesn't have his head in the game over at Babbo the way he used to. AND, the influx of out-of-towners may be adding their reactions to NYC "rudeness" to the mix of complaints.

I certainly wouldn't say that Mario's places do anything like this "deliberately." Let me make an example: Po, Mario's first restaurant, is down in the Village. Like most restaurants of its kind, there is always some kind of "downtown music" blaring over the sound system at a very loud level. This is something that is absulutely de rigeur for these restaurants of that kind in that neighborhood (or, at least it was 5+ years ago when I ate there last). Now, sound levels like this could (and did) impact the experience of Po customers who did not have the cultural expectation of loud downtown music accompanying their dinners. In the case of customers who had a pre-existing cultural expectation that restaurants are quiet, this could be a real problem and create a real negative experience. It could result in a number of complaints where customers not used to that kind of experience ask to have the sound turned down and are rebuffed by the staff at Po. At some point, if enough people with different expectations come to the restaurant, the question is whether or not Po decides to lower the music for these people or to stay the same. Now, with Babbo, there is some question in my mind (and if you go back to my original post, it is one thing that I threw out as a possibility among several) as to whether the huge influx of people with different cultural expectations (i.e., people from out of town who don't eat at a lot of high end NYC restaurants) might have contributed to the observed growth in complaints about the restaurant. For sure it is not the only factor, but it might be a contributing factor.

For fuck's sake, people. Get a grip. If you want to interpret what I wrote as saying that "Midwestern = Rube" then you're on your own there. That's your own interpretation. Nothing I have said in this thread necessarily lends itself to such an interpretation... unless you are highly invested in taking offense at my suggestion that the "restaurant experience" paradigm of most visitors from the Midwest is not the same as thhe "high end NYC restaurant experience" paradigm of most New Yorkers who patronize such establishments. And, frankly, I think one would have to be completely oblivious to such differences to suppose this were not the case, which of course runs in the opposite direction as well. And that's all I have to say about that. Back to the topic.