Bux

I'm not a fan of dinner and theater in the same evening. I understand we all have to eat every day, but a great meal deserves it's own evening and good theater deserves less than an overstuffed stomach. From that position, I find Nougatine the better choice for pretheater than Jean Georges. For the same reasons, I'm not inclined to opt for a tasting menu for myself beforfe another event. A really fine meal deserves it's own attention during dinner and after dinner. The last thing I want to do is rush off for another entertainment. I want to savor the great meal. That said, there's no reason you have to have a lousy pretheater dinner and a lighter meal at Nougatine would see an excellent idea to me. For various reasons, I haven't been at either in a long while, but I consider both intelligent restaurant choices in general. One of my other suggestions to people contemplating dinner and theater is a light pretheater dinner of perhaps two courses followed by dessert after the theater. Picholine comes up as a post theater spot for a cheese course, with or without a light dish before or dessert afterwards.

I'm volunteering as judge or taster. Hmm, maybe there's the opportunity to make fewer enemies by just volunteering as free loader. Or I could be a paying cutomer at the eGullet bake sale. That's a crumby idea. How about a loaf of butter or a bottle of wine.

Oh, I don't know. CEO seems to be looking good.

Trillum - Are you saying that the Italians add MSG or other glutamate(s) to Parmesan cheese, or that it occurs or forms naturally? Can we actually taste glutamates? For years it's been advertised as a flavor enhancer with the implication it had no taste of it's own, but that in some mysterious way it made other flavors stand out. Monosodiumglutamate is the one that's sold for cooiking. How does it differ from others as it seems there are others. Have scientists studied differences between glutamates that are added and those that occur naturally in the cooking or preparation of a product?

When grinding meat, the Kitchen Aid gives a consistent grind. You can make it finer by regrinding the meat and that will also produce a consistent result. The foodprocessor offers a range of fineness, but you may have a hard time getting a consistent product by pulsing. If it comes out of the grinder just as you like it, you may not be happy with the processor for that reason alone.

Under those circumstances the ice cream takes on a mythic quality. If fact, the machine is not really good enough to match commercial production. It also sits in the freezer while churning, so it's not always possible to use unless the freezer is half empty. Worse yet, the last crop of berries was very meager. I'm not sure if it was just a bad crop or if we're paying the price for ignoring the garden and not pruning as we've done recently. When is Batali's pizza and ice cream parlor opening? I am expecting some fine ice cream. If anyone is listening I think chestnuts should make some very nice winter gelato.

This would seem to imply that if one ate some pure MSG or other glutamate, one could perceive a particular taste that would be distinguishable from other powders even with one's eye's closed.

I beleive I get the symptoms at times--or at least two out of the three. I find I am most likely to notice a certain tingling and lethargy after having large portions of soup at some restaurants. I've rarely noticed it when I don't have large portions of soup. It may or may not be a reaction to MSG. I just assume soup has more MSG than is found in other dishes. My wife has a much stronger reaction to MSG, or perhaps the same reaction makes her less comfortable, but she's less likely to order a bowl of soup and noodles for lunch because of it. It's not an entirely unpleasant reaction unless one needs to move about and thing clearly immediately upon leaving the restaurant. My understanding is that it has no taste, but somehow enhances the flavor of other ingredients. It undoubtedly serves a culinary function if not a nutritional one. Few of us eat pure for the nutritional value of the meal. Few of us are likely to judge the value of a meal soley on the nutrition supplied. It would seem to me that if it makes your food taste better, you'd want to use it as both a cook and diner and that if it made you uncomfortable, you wouldn't want to use it. For those of whom it may do both, I guess there's a trade off and decision to be made. For me, I hope very little is used, but if it tasted good enough, I go back to the same restaurant even if they use it.

We have raspberry bushes in pots on our roof. They are not the best berries in the world and often ripen in misshapen odd berries, but some years we have had bumper crops. From them we have made the most wonderful intense sorbets and ice creams using a machine that must have cost about twenty bucks. Maybe it was little granular or had other faults, but it was a great treat.

Why am I not envious at your good fortune? Credit to this site that the first few answers were on the mark and there were no misleading and dangerous old wives tales. I think the one thing that may not have been clearly covered is that hot, even warm, food that's sealed in a closed container--or even plastic wrap, can breed toxic bacteria quickly. The reason for not covering the food tightly while it's warm is not only to let it cool quicker, but to have it exposed to oxygen/air.

We have a model KSM5OP (or is it 0P?) 350 watts. I believe it's the high end of Klc's #2 line. We used to have the smaller tilt back model years ago, but when my wife started to bake breads, she needed this one. It's far better all around. We were always a bit sorry we had purchased the other model but we bought it early in our lives and it seemed so much more expensive than the kind of mixmasters that were standard in most households that baked. The bar has risen significantly in terms of what's used as standard American kitchen equipment since the sixties. The meat grinder. We have used it to a great extent, but I've come to prefer grinding meat in the Cuisinart food processor as it chops the meat more cleanly. Others believe it tends to overheat the meat. From time to time we still make good use of the meat grinder for stuffing sausages. The juicer worked real well, but was overkill for a couple of oranges and we bought a presser anyway. It's been a while since we bought even the new KitchenAid and a much longer time since I've checked the market on mixers, but back then KichenAid had the lock on mixers with planetary action. It was the only one superior to a manual rotary egg beater. I'm sorry to hear that the KitchenAid machines produced today may not be as reliable as the ones made years ago. If that's the case, one can bet they'll be worse in coming years. Get the better one then, as by the time you can afford it, it may not be as good. By better one, I'm really not thinking the very large one Klc describes as #3 unless you anticipate needing that size bowl. Still, it's hard to speak for someone else.

BlackDuff, That's an area in which we find ourselves from time to time. We seem to be combining visits to our friends with visits to Bracelona and Catalonia. We've become very interested in Catalan food, both new and traditional. Collioure is a neat town. I guess it's been saved from over development by it's topography.

In reactions to the English signs, it's too tempting to say it's "for tourists." I'm not sure if it is or isn't and a little English often has the same cachet in France as a bit of French does in America. Truthfully, I don't know who goes there. With Chenonceaux little more than an hour further in the other direction, I don't get the charm of Sleeping Beauty's castle. McDonald's seems successful. Of course I know a France without them and any growth is noticeable. I see then all over France and they're often crowded. Not infrequently, they operate a good sized sidewalk cafe and seem very integrated with the France I know. They tend to have a local student trade in many places. From afar the one on the pl. de l'Ancienne Comedie in Montpellier would appear to be the most appealing cafe on the plaza, at least until you realize it's a McDo. BlackDuff, my firend lives near Bezier, close to the town of Pezenas. Toulouse is far more built up. In that aspect my friend is lucky. He has roads that are lightly traveled to use.

I probably contradict myself more than anything else. But I assure you that I am correct on both sides of the issue. More easily I can assure you that having thrity years in front of you is probably the greater luxury. You have much more time left to grow as a cook and it should be less important that what you do now is correct. I have bought very few books on cooking, all things considered. One doesn't need many books, which is quite different than saying one can ever have too many books. Books are good, but one can learn to cook on a budget and some books are better references than others. If every cook book were required to teach the basics, cook books would be larger and more expensive, yet each would have less to add to your knowledge. Sometimes one needs to go to the reference books to prepare a recipe from the cook book at hand. At that moment, it may seem like an inefficient thing to do, but in the overall picture I think it works better. The multipurpose tool or item always seems good in theory, but when it comes time to use it the unnecessary functions often get in the way of using that item for the purpose at hand. All true, but I think different cookbooks should, and will, be written for different audiences. Of course a cook book writer should aim to serve the greatest number of potential readers, but he, or she, must also aim to please a certain market or risk pleasing no one. I'm not arguing for sloppy writing or incomplete recipes or even for any sort of elitism, but for diversity.

I recall having it once in Louisiana. It was deep fried. It was tough and dry like overcooked lean pork. I don't know if it had been overcooked. I thought it tasted more like pork than chicken. There was a producer/distributor? of gator at the recent restaurant show in the Javits Center. He had samples. I don't recall trying it, but if I did, it didn't change my original impression. I'd imagine aligator gets tender when it's tenderized. If it doesn't, it wasn't tenderized. Better is a relative thing.

Big windows? Doesn't the DC location have a full wall of glass on the street, or do you not want to see the street in DC?

Not to give this thread any direction, but to add some personal experiences, I cooked for myself during much of my college days and thereafter. My wife remembers her father as a great cook and sometimes still gives him credit for teaching her how to cook. The truth is we both learned the basis, of what we now draw on when cooking, from Julia Child's books and TV shows. The incredible thing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking was that the recipes were so detailed. Almost every recipe contained a thorough lesson in the technique(s) involved. The details were so well covered that the recipes were almost infallible. The recipes were also so long that many novice cooks we knew couldn't be convinced the recipes weren't too hard to follow. They prefered the shorter recipes that left out important steps. As we graduated to other recipe sources, we found ourselves matching the new recipes with the techincal instruction from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking books. Some thirty years later, we don't find ourselves needing those instructions as often, but every now and then when we have a question in our minds, we take a peek to see how Julia did it. Her techniques don't always rule, but I'm surprised at how much of her basic instruction is still valid even when the recipes themselves now seem old fashioned. As much as I valued all that detail when learning how to cook, I'd find it a hinderance in reading a recipe now and the desire to skim the page might well lead me to miss something important. Learning the technique is far more important than learning any single recipe. In Suzanne's review of Glorious French Food, which I'm a bit suprised hasn't already been mentioned here, she says "Most of all, I love Peterson’s philosophy of cooking and eating" and quotes him as saying As Klc said "Recipes aren't that important."

Jason implies that the labels don't list everything. My understanding was that the original Haagen-Daz Vanilla had nothing but dairy, vanilla and eggs. This is not true for the newer flavors and especially not true for those introduced after it was bought out. I don't know if the original Vanilla has stabilizers today, but it's not necessarily the same formula as the Vanilla Swiss Almond. I've always assumed the stabilizers were added either to compensate for ingredients in the new flavors that didn't freeze well or to compensate for corporate sloppiness. Expansion in the size of the operation might make stabilizers necessary even if there was no sloppiness in the operation. Some ice creams seem plastic and don't even melt properly in your mouth. I suppose it's a matter of which stabilizers are used as well as how much. Jason also mentioned hydrogenated non dairy fats. I've always assumed these entered into "premium" ice creams as an ingredient in the mix ins--e.g. shortening used to bake the cookies that are crumbled into the mix. Of course the English have long "enjoyed" hydrogenated non cocoa butter fat in their chocolate and prevented the EU from requiring that products with these fats not be labeled as chocolate. I suppose one could make a "chocolate" frozen confection ("chocolate ice 'creme'") using crisco and no dairy fat or cocoa fat that wouldn't melt at room temperature. At some price point it would probably sell okay. Does the current Haagen-Daz Vanilla have additives? No one has mentioned Breyer's Vanilla which in spite of a high air content is one of the more delicious tasting ice creams. They use real vanilla as well and I wonder about the point of making one's own vanilla ice cream without real vanilla beans when you can get Breyer's at well below top premium price. I believe there are no eggs in Breyer's and it can get a bit grainy if not properly handled all along the way.

Some do, but most don't. I particularly enjoy it when they don't understand that while the success of McDonald's in America may be a testament to our lack of taste, the success of McDonald's in France is a testament to their bad taste, not ours. Sometimes I tell stories for the amusement of the people I'm talking to and sometimes it's for my amusement. My son-in-law is French. Well actually Breton.

You want to talk geographic distribution of good restaurants, you want to talk France not the U.S.

Nickn, here's the eGullet Amazon.com Zuni Cafe cookbook link. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I think you stretch a point, but the point is valid nonetheless. One can learn something by reading and by example, but ultimately one can't expect to learn everything from books. I sense a premise in this thread that every recipe should be able to be read by anyone and than anyone should be able to cook anything from a recipe if the recipe is properly written. I just don't agree. I remember some disasters from following recipes that were written for someone with more experience in the kitchen than I had at the time. I didn't know enough to know what I had done wrong, or even enough to be sure if it turned our as wrong as it seemed. I also learned I had a responsibility to educate myself about food one way or another and to pick the recipes that I could handle as well as those that would teach me something. By the way, I don't find fault with a thread if members line up on different sides as long as they can discuss the issue intelligently and with respect for those with whom they disagree. There are usually at least two sides to any issue and we're all better off for the chance to hear the other side. Is that akin to "fizzle," "blitz," and "winkling." I rather like Nigella and think I could learn something from her, but even when I can't, I think she's making a nice contribution to the education of home cooks.

It was all pretty good. I can't remember any flops. One stand out was an eggpant dish with red peppers as I recall. It was surprisingly good. We ordered it for the variety it lent to our selection, but it was a big hit. Otherwise we found few surprises and no bad ones. Go with your instincts. It's a very enjoyable place.

I might have a greater problem with an industry that pays him to bite their hands.

Pre buttering is all I can think of, but that creates more problems than it solves. I can't imagine a basket full of pre buttered bread. I guess if you had a very large platter ...

I think that's very huorous and will be sure to repeat it at many cocktail parties in the future--especially when I am amongst Frenchmen. The evidence is still anecdotal and based on humor and rumor. My 60 yeaqr old American friend is one of the juniors in the group with which he rides. In variably he has to work hard and often pedal fast just to reach some of his elders in the next village before they're off again sharing the roads with cars in the Languedoc.