Chad

Oooh, I hadn't thought about par-boiling. Good idea. I was resisting pre-cooking the andouille because my wife has a phobia about sausage casings (I know, I don't get it either). I was planning on removing the casing, keeping the sausage in a roll and baking. Can I still do that if I par boil? Chad

I'm planning an andouille sausage in puff pastry hors d'oeurve tonight for dinner guests. I was planning on using some frozen puff pastry I have on hand (I know, I know, bad cook). However, I'm estimating that the pound of andouille is going to take 30-40 minutes in the oven to cook through properly. Will the puff pastry hold up that long or will it go from light & flaky to burned cardboard? Help! Chad

Have you looked into Lodge cast iron? Cast iron cookware since 1896 -- and damn fine stuff. The nifty thing is that you can usually find it at your local hardware store. I couldn't live without my 12" Lodge cast iron skillet. Chad

David Leite has a great article about this very thing on his website. Nice piece, and in David's very witty style. Chad

If you're looking for cool steak knives, take a look at the Grohmans. These are some seriously slick knives. They have the added advantage of the "Why, yes, they're custom" (sort of) factor . Chad

Cool pans. Any idea where one can get these in the US? Oh, and those folks are seriously confused about Maillard reactions. Chad

"If the shoes are on the feet, you must eat!" Wait, that's not quite right . . . Chad

Bingo! This is an excellent point, one that we have been talking around but hadn't quite hit until now. The problem is not that relationships exist. Of course they do. And anyone with half a brain realizes that. It's when those relationships pop up unexpectedly and potentially have an impact on something a journalist has written that we become suspicious -- why didn't we know that before? Why was he hiding that? Disclosure solves a lot of those problems. An example: I'm Chef Chad, host of a new FTV show Put It in Your Mouth! My wife works for the giant, yet shadowy, soy sauce lobby. On my show I exhort viewers to call their congressmen to lift sanctions on artisinal soy sauces because they'll never be able to make my wasabi brownies without it. A news story appears later featuring my wife as spokesperson for the soy sauce lobby. A good reporter (or even a thinking reader) puts two and two together and I look like a lying whore, even if I believe strongly in artisinal soy sauces and haven't spoken to my wife in months. If, on the other hand, I said during the show, "My wife works in the soy sauce industry, and I've been appalled to learn what hardships soy sauce ranchers have to endure to get their products into this country," and go on to demo my wasabi brownies, I've disclosed the relationship and even turned it into a positive. In many cases that disclosure can be turned into a positive. You have back-room, exclusive information that no other writer has. And by being open about the relationship you forestall any chance of the relationship surprising anyone later -- and causing doubts about your credibility. Chad (pawn of the Bacon Lobby)

Friends over on Friday. I'll be doing Andouille in pufff pastry as an app. Should be pretty dang wonderful. Keep your fingers crossed. Chad

I've noticed that a lot of FTV shows feature topics that you have written extensively about. For example, Tony Bourdain's "A Cook's Tour" chows down on Kaiseki, hits the the Chang Mai market and several other places that follow in your footsteps. Likewise, after reading your books, I realized that Alton Brown is covering much of the same ground. Dunno if its the Harold McGee influence on you both, but I can definitely see your shadow in the scientific approach and many of the topics on "Good Eats." Does you feel that the FTV hosts are influenced by your writing? Do they ever call with questions or ask for advice? Would you do an FTV show if you were asked to host? Enquiring minds want to know. Chad

FG, I agree with you on the issue of anonymity. It is silly and pointless. And it does perpetuate the problem. Now, to tackle your other point. I don't see this as a PR issue so much as a pragmatic solution that gets us closer to where we want to be. Let's assume for a moment that you're my tax attorney. I want to file separate returns for all my multiple personalities . You, as my professional advisor, counsel me against that. There may be very valid reasons to file separately. The tax system might be seriously flawed and biased against schizophrenics. The whole system might be dead wrong. BUT, you, my attorney, have to deal with the system as it stands. Together we might work to change it for the betterment of all sufferers of multiple personality disorder. We can certainly make our case. In the meantime, making a principled stand against the system is going to get us both thrown in jail. In a similar fashion, trying to overhaul the perceptions of the entire populace is going to take some work. Trying to overcome those perceptions by ignoring them or flauting them is a recipe for failure, in my opinion. Giving the public the tools to make up their own mind, e.g. disclosing relationships, builds credibility and moves us forward. Chad (geez, why do I suddenly feel like Rick Bayless? )

No argument from me. But I don't believe that saying "You, the general public, just don't understand how journalism works" is going to get us very far. The fact of the matter is that the trust level that the public places in the media (all media) has plummeted. Gone are the days when Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. The reality of the current distrust of the media cannot be ignored, no matter how we might feel about it. This applies, albeit somewhat peripherally, even to food writers. We can work to change that, but it's going to be a long, slow process. And we can change those perceptions, regain that trust, only by being above board and honest. Anything that reduces that trust level -- a heretofore undisclosed relationship that casts doubt on the credibility of a restaurant review, for example -- slows the process of change. We may yet again come to a time when the public realizes that a journalist has friends, has a network and has relationships that help him do his job better, or have nothing at all to do with the way he does his job. But surprise revelations of those relationships -- especially if they are seen to have an impact on a story the journalist has written -- don't help. In my opinion, disclosure is not a red herring. It is a way to get those things out in the open so the public can make up its own mind about the potential impact. Chad

Oy, too many political campaigns as media/PR guy make you paranoid 'bout things like perceived biases and relationships. Even though relationships are the most important things in politics -- you cannot get anything done without them -- you don't want any surprises hitting the general public.

Dave, I don't think that the point is whether or not a reviewer can write an honest review. Only he knows that. The reader, however, has to make a decision about whether or not to trust a reviewer. It may not be an explicit thought -- "Do I trust this guy's opinion about food?" But the question is always there, as it is with anything we read that contains a judgement about something's worth. We tote up our experiences, compare them with the reviewer's and decide if he's full of shit or not. That judgment of the judgment, as it were, is based on our working knowledge of the topic, the reviewer and his track record. Any trust that the reviewer has built up with us can be all too easily destroyed by a perception of bias. Note the word perception. An undisclosed relationship can create that perception. If our past experience is that the reviewer is not affected or biased by relationships ("I was this chef's best man, but I gotta tell you that his minestrone sucked the night I was at the restaurant") we'll not be swayed by his revelation somewhere in the article that he has a relationship with a chef or restaurant -- and by relationship I think we all mean more than a professional acquaintance. If we don't have that experience with a reviewer, then an unrevealed relationship that later surfaces can look pretty damning. Chad edits: Damn, I can't spell today

I think this statement, on its face, is illogical. I think I understand the point. It is not the reviewer who gets to decide if his relationships appear improper, it's the reader. The reviewer or critic may be (as in FG's case) more than willing to slag the food at a restaurant owned by a friend. Unless we know the critic or have followed his reviews for a long time, there's no way to know that that is his MO -- complete honesty at all times. Until we know that, a glowing review of a restaurant can be negated, in the reader's mind, by the later revelation that the reviewer is the chef's brother-in-law or something. An upfront disclosure of the relationship precludes the later (seemingly) damning revelation. Chad

Howdy John, its good to see you weighing in on this issue. I admire your writing. I don't think the discussion is a referrendum on FG's relationship with a chef as much as it is a general question about how cozy the relationships between food writers -- and especially restaurant reviewers and food critics -- and restaurateurs/chefs/et al can be before the perception of impropriety starts to creep in. Jeffrey Steingarten addresses this somewhat in his response to the Don't Call Us Conde Nasty question in his Q&A. He points out that 1) he's not a restaurant reviewer so isn't under the same strictures that a reviewer/critic would be, and 2) that he' said plenty of nasty things about people in the past. Which raises the questions: Are restaurant reviewers/critics held to a higher standard of ethics and disclosure than general food writers? Should they be? Does having a cozy relationship with a chef/restaurater change what a food writer writes? Does it appear that way to the general public? Does the general public realize that even the most muck-raking journalist has to cozy up to somebody to keep his sources fresh? Chad

Oh, and open a window or two while you season your pan. Otherwise your house will smell like a foundry. Chad

That's amazing Louisa! Congratulations. First ADPA, now El Bulli? You'll be unstoppable. Chad

In addition to Dave the Cook's excellent linkages, there are a couple of points to keep in mind. As other folks have said, keep your skillet in the oven. Not only will that help keep it dry, but the sheer thermal mass of the cast iron will help even out temperature fluctuations in the average home electric oven. And one of the folks on the Good Eats Fan Page called Lodge. In the conversation they admitted that the 350 degree seasoning temperature in their literature is way too low. Think 450-500 instead. With that in mind, you'll need a fat that has a smoke point higher than 450 or so. And your first couple of dishes should be fat/oil heavy -- fried chicken is good, but bacon works, too. Just wipe the surface clean afterwards and put the pan back in the oven. If it gets really nasty, put about half a cup of kosher salt and a couple of tablespoons of canola or peanut oil in the pan, heat it and swab/scrub with a wad of paper towels (shop towels are even better) held with tongs. Chad edit: spellig

Rachel, great interview! I have to admit I've never seen "Queer Eye," but I may have to watch after reading this. Ted sounds like a fascinating guy. I'd like to see what he does in the kitchen. Chad

Thank you so much for being here. I've just read The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must've Been Something I Ate back to back and enjoyed them very much. In "Waiting Game" in The Man Who Ate Everything, you attended waiter's school to learn the tricks of the trade. Along with learning where the fish fork is placed you learned about upselling, not filling water glasses in order to sell bottled water, pushing a particular dish, the waiter's desire to "control" the interaction with the guest and other waiter Jedi mind tricks. Were you outraged? I was. I would've stabbed the waiter/instructor with a fork (if I'd known which one to use ). Did the experience change the way you deal with waiters in restaurants? Have you developed any counter strategies that we should know about? Chad

In the Riedel Vinum line, I'm a big fan of the Chianti/Zinfandel glasses. In my limited experience, these are the most versatile glasses that Riedel offers -- they improve the taste of just about any red wine. I have those and the Bordeaux glasses. We also have a set of the Sauvignon Blanc glasses because that's just about all my wife drinks. We've tried the Spiegelaus and are just not impressed. Here's the review. Chad

As much as we bitch about Food Network and the dumbing down of its progamming, their approach seems to be working. USA Today story So what do y'all think? Is FTV bringing food to the masses? Chad

It shames me to admit that I have run out of garlic, olive oil, rice and black pepper at various times. I have never, however, run out of wine or hot sauce. Those two things are always to hand. Chad

Before sending your knives out, you might want to take a look at our very own eGullet Culinary Institute class on Knife Maintenance and Sharpening. Even if after reading you still decide to have a pro do it, at least you'll have a better idea what you want. Take care, Chad