John Whiting

Aha! Salt and lemon -- sounds like the makings of a tagine. Do you think it has a similarly antisectic effect on one's innerds?

Butchers have used end grain wooden chopping boards since time immemorial. The molecular structure of the wood seems to interact with bacteria in such a way as to kill them within a short time. Plastic however soon develops cavities within which bacteria survive unless boiled in a dishwasher. This in turn further breaks down the structure of the plastic so that it harbors even more bacteria. The only people to benefit are the manufacturers who, having sold us a rainbow-colored collection, then sell us a never-ending series of replacements. Just one more example of built-in obsolescence.

One of the greatest frustrations is for bakers and pastry cooks, who encounter flour in America that just doesn't work with European recipes. One great English pastry chef demonstrating in the US produced a total disaster! I find it remarkable that Steven Sullivan, who started the remarkable Acme Bakery in Berkeley, was able to model his bread-making on Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery, which he worked his way straight through.

Have you tried mixing a Big Mac with a salad? Don't even think about it!

Larry Elliott is the Guardian's economics editor; every tenth day he is a magistrate. His opinion column today explains what has been happening to Britain's pubs, and why.

Aside from the fact that nothing is "somewhat unique" , a very good interview. I look forward to this.

Watching the last (disappointingly tame?) episode revealed Ramsay to be the sort of kitchen boss who does in fact know how to manage people. You can't produce excellence through terror alone.

The understatement of the year! Vitriol drips from the pages. But John and Karen have given me an appetite for vitriol applied by intelligent hands; the world would be a less well-seasoned place without it. Jonathan is of course quite correct in recommending a salutary taste of the Real Thing. My plea for flexible standards was not meant to encourage laziness or mizerliness, but rather as a reminder that when we run out of champagne, we're allowed to let down the bucket where we are. EDIT: There are certain oriental chicken recipes that are so elaborately flavored and highly spiced that it would be difficult to tell the worst battery chicken from the best organic free range specimen. Given the quality of birds that have been coming here from the Far East, there's probably a very good reason.

I've discussed this with Eric, and the book he set out to write was a nostalgic history of everyday food and the unifying force of certain chain restaurants that brought different areas of the country together. What he discovered in the process of research was so horrifying that the book irresistibly turned itself into a diatribe. For information on the background on his book, see Unhappy Meals, an interview four years ago in Atlantic, the magazine that has backed Schlosser's entire journalistic career.

It's ironic that those who accuse Spurlock of ambitious self-promotion have a PR budget many times what this one-man-band has been able to summon up.

So did Lady Macbeth.

There's a revealing cultural divide in that all the Americans are talking about what they do with their dirty dishes before they go into the dishwasher.

. . . as, historically, did the good housewife. In the days of widespread poverty, slow transport and no refrigeration, "local and seasonal" were compulsory, not voluntary. People would have had cravings for foods that were on the edge of seasonality. When the ingredients were before or after their prime, they would have done the best they could. Or indeed, when ingredients started to go off, they would make the best of it -- "hanging" meat and the aging of ripe, smelly cheeses would have been accidental discoveries. Consider also long-distance migration, which DNA research now reveals to have been much more prevelant than we had imagined. Such migrants would have taken their food preferences with them into regions where their favored ingredients didn't exist. It would have taken a long time to evolve totally new combinations and methods of preparation; meanwhile they would apply the knowledge they brought with them to what was at hand. Here in Britain, I've had cravings for favorite French foods at times when the ingredients were either unobtainable or extravagantly expensive. When no fish scraps were available, I evolved a soupe de poisson costing only a couple of pounds for a couple of quarts; on another occasion I made a cassoulet from ingredients bought in an ordinary smallish supermarket on the north coast of Scotland. Neither was "authentic", but both were instantly recognizable and better than I've often had in their native habitat (not habitat as in Conran). As Julia Child openly stated, this was the rationale behind her Mastering the art . . . The ingredients she experimented with in Paris all came from a US military PX.

There are several Chez Bruce threads, but this has the simplest title. __________________________________________________________ Sunday being my wife Mary’s birthday, and only a few days away from that of one of her oldest friends, it seemed an appropriate occasion for a meal that would be a total surprise to them both. We all live in the north of London, and far away below Wandsworth Common is Chez Bruce, a favorite of Jonathan Day and a number of other Gulleteers. Accordingly we set out for Sunday lunch, guided by a talking GPS system whose route aroused increasingly contradictory and confused speculations. Once arrived and seated in the spacious white dining room, our expectations were happily aroused: first by the menu’s announcement that “Chez Bruce is a non-smoking restaurant” and then, from the very beginning, by the service. It reminded me of Chez Panisse: informed, courteous, relaxed without being off-hand, friendly without being presumptuously chummy. And the food! Mary is not overly impressed by what London restaurants choose to call “French”, but she approached it with an open mind. For starters the four of us shared the Salade paysanne and the Goat’s cheese crostini. I’m partial to both duck breast and calf’s brains; these were cooked to perfection and separate enough on the plate to taste them individually, but well coordinated in flavor so that they married happily. For a main course Mary ordered the veal, well done. The waiter didn’t bat an eye. It arrived exactly the way she likes it – thoroughly cooked but still moist and springy in texture. My own choice, the Navarin of lamb, proved to be printanier; i.e. served with fresh spring vegetables cooked à point. The lamb, underneath its rich crust, held its shape but could have been eaten with a dull spoon. Mary’s only slight quibble was with her Honey and stem ginger ice cream, which could have been a bit more intensely flavored with ginger. I opted for the cheese board and was magically transported back to France. What lingers in my mind is a soft pyramid of chèvre, with the texture of a loose fresh goat cheese but having a voluptuously ripe flavor. If I’d been alone, I would shamelessly have polished it off. As the afternoon progressed, we noted the arrival of a succession of diners so corporeally well-endowed as to suggest that they might be regulars. Thank heavens we live on the other side of London, a slow and inconvenient journey away! Chez Bruce is indeed “modern French”, showing its roots but original, even surprising, without descending into vulgar eccentricity. Together with our other favorite, Racine, they now form a pair of French restaurants in London to which we will happily return.

Bux's comments are thought-provoking. I would suggest that the US has become so controlled by money that its top chefs will inevitably have access to sources denied to those who are unable to charge for their meals in three figures.

I have been so impressed with the level of discussion here that I wish our panel could be sequestered together for a week to explore further their topics of conversation. It was on a level with the recent panel discussions at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons near Oxford, in which some of the greatest chefs and scholars in the world spent a week exploring the future of gastronomy.

Everything I know about El Bulli I learned from eGullet. When will the expression "just a load of El Bulli" pass into the vernacular?

Quite so; I almost wrote "classical" music to distinguish it from both ecclesiatical and folk. (The Hungarian music that Bartok collected will have gone back uncountable generations.) As for plainchant, it has been suggested that the first examples of notation, indicating only upward or downward motion, relate to the rhetorical symbols attached to certain Greek texts as a guide to orators. But I didn't mean to sidetrack the discussion into an analogy of dubious relevance.

As Guy Gateau has pointed out, photography has done much to create an appreciation of fresh produce, but it has also created in the inexperienced an unreasonable demand for visual perfection. Fruits and vegatables must be in their "Sunday best", or they will be rejected. The supermarkets, having created the expectation that you can pop a carrot straight into your mouth without washing it, must thenceforth abide by it.

For the disciplines of a culinary Mozart to be effective, there must be an audience which appreciates them as well. Those who listened to Mozart included large numbers who could themselves play his music, if not well, and the music of his contemporaries. (Bear in find that until the early 19th century, when Mendelssohn revived J.S. Bach, "contemporary" music was the only kind there was.) No matter how disciplined the finer chefs may be among themselves, if the eating public are not knowledgable, then charlatains can throw together anything they like and become rich doing it. Imagine spectator sports in which the fans knew as little about the games as most diners know about what goes on in the kitchen. They would turn into mere spectacles of chaotic violence, and no one would be the wiser.

I have often heard it said that there are top suppliers in the US who deal almost entirely with the best chefs, whose produce rarely reaches the domestic market.

Either that, or silver threads among the gold. Not those temples!

St. John's? University of Chicago? Mortimer Adler? Robert M. Hutchins? It is difficult to establish a historical basis for cuisine in an age which is resolutely antihistorical. To make Escoffier or Careme or Taillevent or Apecius the foundation of a new culinary tradition would be as Sysiphean a task as establishing a new school of popular music based on the polyphony of J.S. Bach. (Or inculcating an appreciation of the Great Books into a generation with a seven-minute attention span.) Not that we need forsake our minority enthusiasms. Two or three about the temples, remarked Ezra Pound, were enough to keep alive the old religions.

Has this droll resumé from the Wine Spectator been cited here? If so, please excuse repetition.

Gravy with your barbequed chef, sir? EDIT: Didn't see the program, so have no opinion. What?! This is eGullet!