John Whiting
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Posts posted by John Whiting
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A belated entry. I take the key to this enquiry to be the desire for meat available through the week -- in other words, not just a beautiful object to put on the Sunday dinner table. The reason that there is so much argument about how to roast a chicken is that the dark meat and the light meat cook at different speeds. My suggestion is to quarter the bird such that the light and dark meat are on different segments. Roast them with whatever oils and flavorings you favor in separate trays, foil-covered, on different shelves of a slow oven, with the dark meat on the top shelf -- the slower the better, if you want meat which will still be moist by the end of the week. The top shelf will probably be nearly done before the lower one; if so, reverse the trays. The skin will not be crisp, but after a day it won't be crisp however you cook it.
Even a tough old boiling fowl will respond to this treatment. Lower the temperature still furher and roast it all day. Remember -- the tougher the meat, the stronger the flavor. (Speaking as a tough old bird.
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Steve, your argument is merely an impenetrable apologia for Spenserian economics. My point was not that one form of elite selection is superior to another, but that access to expensive restaurants continues to be limited to a small number of diners who are arbitrarily chosen by their circumstances. Four-star dining can hardly be rated as one of life's necessities, but to suggest that it is available on "merit" would be considered laughable in any country other than our own.
P.S. Wilfrid, your last posting is a model of clarity.
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Continuing my "typically American" theme, please note that this argument assumes that merit and the wherewithall to patronize fiendishly expensive restaurants are coterminous.And if the downside of things being valued according to popular choice is that a marketing director makes decisions and not an artist/chef, it also comes with an upside that who gets to dine in an establishment is determined by merit, and isn't hand chosen by royals or clerics.
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Don't forget that The Emperor's New Clothes is not an ancient fairy tale such as those reported by the Brothers Grimm, but a quaint modern concoction by Hans Christian Andersen. It should therefor be approached, not as a repository of folk wisdom, but as a piece of tailor-made (!)modern fiction like any other.
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Sungold indeed. At tomato tastings I've been involved with they have won time after time. Homegrown tomatos allowed to ripen on the vine and eaten soon after they're picked are, compared with any tomatoes bought from any supplier, like Chateau Mouton Rothschild compared with vin ordinaire.
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The meaning of The Emperor's New Clothes is not that innocence is more reliable than experience, but that the child was unaware of the dangers of mocking the emperor. One by one the adults felt emboldened to speak aloud what they already knew. In other words, adults have learned the hard way that it is best to agree with those who can destroy them.This reminds me of The Emperor's New Clothes a childhood story with which western society attempts to pass on some of its collective wisdom to the next generation. Our society, although generally hypocritical, is keen on believing innocence is a true judge.The other message, especially relevant to our times, is that the emperor himself was prepared to accept as gospel blatant nonsense from the mouth of a cultural guru. This has a certain relevance to our parallel thread of commercial support for artistic ventures.
A favorite New Yorker cartoon is of an emperor staring into an empty plate, with the caption, "The Emperor's Nouvelle Cuisine" -
Steve, that was a very useful report. I haven't eaten at Craft, but the last time I was in NYC I passed by just as they were about to open and read the menu. To me, it was like trying to solve a crossword puzzle with abbreviated, illogical and conflicting clues.
I suspect that what is wrong with Craft is what is wrong with American culture in general. Just around the corner at Gramercy Tavern, this team has been doing everything right. But in America, that's not enough -- you have to keep doing things *different*. During two week's eating in France -- some of it very good, some ordinary, none terrible -- I was grateful that I could go into a strange restaurant, order a dish by name, and have it arrive in a recognizable, if not totally predictable, form. The chefs were like competant jazz musicians, or Baroque musicians, who could have sat down and played together without discussion, following a sort of "ground bass" of culinary conventions. What makes ordinary French cooking both pleasant and reassuring is that if you say "Wow!" it's likely to be after you've tasted it, not before.
If I were a billionaire, I'd set the Craft team up in a restaurant in which they were told to do what *they* wanted to do, not what a marketing director told them they *had* to do. The most unaffordable luxury in the world is, "To thine own self be true . . ." I'd like to know how they responded to that -- not to a reporter, but in the private recesses of their own minds.
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Shaun, thanks for running the gauntlet!
People often speak of your withdrawl to the wilds of Shropshire as though you had chosen the isolated existence of a hermit; but you must have known that, with people like Mirabel Osler and Lesley Mackley about, you would be likely to reach a quorum of like-minded diners who would see eye-to-eye with you about what constituted a good meal. Obviously you wanted to cook, not just use the restaurant as a launching pad for a media career -- otherwise you wouldn't have set up a modus operandi which locked you as inexorably into the kitchen as little Francine up in the furthest heights of the Ardeche, whom Mirabel writes about so appreciatively.
But you must have something else in mind for your reclining years. Chefs are lucky if they have the professional longevity of a prize-fighter, and you are blessed with a classical education and the ability to write as well as you cook. Someday, when you can no longer stand the heat, do you have a magnum opus in mind -- a book which will bring together your grasp of cuisine, culture and civilization?
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Can we agree to be confused?
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Now, that's pretty good. You extemporize much grander than del Grande!
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Fluoride is another of those substances over which there is by no means unanimity. One thing is certain -- fluoride toothpaste, used twice a day without rinsing, reverses tooth enamel deterioration in the elderly. At least, according to a good friend who's head of a respected dental school. Of course he may be part of the Great Fluoride Conspiracy.
We never buy water, any more than we buy air. The most distasteful thing about London water is the slight taste of chlorine, now not nearly as bad as it used to be. We take water from the tap and leave it overnight in a loosely covered pitcher. The chlorine evaporates. We then refrigerate it in sealed glass.
Home filters are an excellent breeding ground for bacteria -- a much more likely danger than biological warfare. As for the latter, when it starts we want to be among the first to go.
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I quite agree about Alice Waters expressing a philosophy through her food, but she also expresses it eloquently in words and through the way she has organized her restaurant. I've mentioned it before, but it's all set forth in my essay, The Green Gourmets
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Which I did. I capitalized it because it began a sentence. I don't understand what you're saying. (You don't mean re, you mean vid.)Sorry John Whiting, but the " gender-neuter like "Mann" in German" is always spelled "man" (small m and one n).(Re. Cassell's German/English - Deutsch/Englisch Dictionary)
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The chorizo sausages grilled in front of Brindisa and served up in a bun with rocket are good as well -- witness the interminable queues of enthusiasts who cheerfully wait for them a quarter hour or more. Just before you reach the grill there's a table of olive oils and vinegars in dishes, together with cubes of bread. As you arrive there's a rush of hungry people gobbling the marinade in advance of the rocket.
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Richard's description of the effect of location on film reminds me of the best lobster I ever had, near Bar Harbor, Maine. It was a rough lobster establishment where we ate outdoors at tables under the stars, with minimal lighting and electric bug attractors that sizzled all evening. The lobsters were kept in a big tank filled with local sea water. Every week, I was told, a local marine biologist came by and checked the temperature, salinity and other factors which I don't remember. In other words, the water environment was as close as was practical to what they had lived in. They must have been doing something right, because the result was spectacular. (Though a Cape Codder by birth, I must admit that the lobsters get better the further north you go, up to a point -- something to do with the results of struggling, like hillside vines as opposed to valley vines.)
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To be drawn out slowly into two gliding syllables, in the traditional Southern fashion.While they're at it, they might as well write s/he/it.
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The Peets-trained proprietors of Union Coffee, London, bring the water to the boil, let it stand for thirty seconds, then pour in a little water, stir it, fill up the coffee maker, stir again, and immediately cover with the top. Wrap the coffee maker with a towel for heat insulation, let it stand for four minutes, and press the plunger. If left on the grounds too long, the hot water begins to extract bitter oils as well as flavor.
As for grinders, I am as strongly attached to my Spong hand grinder as are many cooks to their hand Moulis and their morters and pestles. Call it irrational and quasi-mystic, but there is something in the direct physical relationship to one's food which is very satisfying.
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That much is very well observed. The rest of the paragraph is ill-defined and self-contradictory waffle. For instance, simplistic means over-simplified. For the world to be oversimplified, it must be so with reference to a higher standard; but the world, by definition, must include that higher standard. In Wittgenststein's words, "The world is everything that is the case". Another chef whose culinary talents outweigh his logic and his literary style.with young cooks, with every dish the first question you ask them is, ‘How much can you take away for it to be just as good?…’ Generally, with the young cooks, you can take away half of it and it generally improves… -
To begin with, I haven't eaten at the Fat Duck either, which makes me eminently qualified to discuss it!
Having said that, let me say that, according to Shaun Hill, he once passed on to Blumenthal an invite to participate in a resident seminar with Harold McGee, and that Blumenthal's occupation with scientific recipes dates from that time.That is by no means a condemnation. McGee is very informative and very stimulating, and he appears to be as expert in the kitchen as in the lab. His second book, The Curious Cook (out of print the last time I checked) is much more personal and idiosyncratic than his first, and makes me like him very much just as a human being. So if Blumenthal has learned from him attitude as well as fact and technique, it will have done him no harm whatsoever.
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Andy, the retail market is only open on Friday and Saturday, with a very few stalls on Thursday. Of course there are some adjacent shops that are open normal weekday hours, but I don't know if any of the butchers are among them.
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Continue north along the Finchley Road past Temple Fortune and on the right, shortly before you get to Staples Corner [the A1], there's an old Mom & Pop (Mameh & Tateh?) salt beef caff that serves good generous sandwiches at a reasonable price.
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A review should be free to start from a vantage point, perhaps distant, and gradually zoom in on the particular restaurant or book or painting or concert that has prompted the discussion -- like a long tracking shot at the beginning of a carefully crafted film. Otherwise the reviewer is in danger of simply placing the subject matter under a microscope and diving straight into the detail. Unless you are an expert or obsessed with minutiae, close up all restaurants are boringly similar -- food arrives on plates, wine in glasses, and you either like it or you don't. Those who prefer a less devious approach should obviously be reading some other reviewer.
Most periodicals are not prepared to give reviewers such breathing space, unless they are celebrities in their own right, in which case they need never get around to even mentioning the subject at hand. Space is money, and editors are parsimonious in dealing it out. A forum like eGullet allows correspondents to rise or sink by their own adopted standards.
[i hate using plural constructions when the singular is more appropriate, but I hate "he/she" even more. It's a constant reminder that we Anglo-Saxons don't properly understand the structure of our own language. "Man" used to be gender-neuter like "Mann" in German -- otherwise a word like "husbandman" and "wifman" would have been redundant or self-contradictory.]
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One of my best friends insists that I haven't graduated until I've gone over to espresso. However, French press seems to be perfectly good enough for my Peets-trained friends, and it's still good enough for me. I do not insist on Petrus every time I'm offered a glass of wine; neither will I throw away every balsamic vinegar that costs less that 60 pounds a bottle.
One respect in which espresso has it over French press is that the former is made one cup at a time and drunk immediately, while many people make a French press pot that holds several cups. Any method that keeps coffee hot enough to drink also keeps it hot enough to burn itself from its own heat. And so, by making my coffee one cup/mug at a time in a small press, I'm duplicating that particular advantage of an espresso machine.
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Borough Market, like eGullet, appears to be relatively uncensored -- in other words, there's no quality guarantee just because a particular dealer or product is represented here. We had a crab tonight from a stall whose crab has been good; this one was dry and relatively tasteless, although not nasty or ammoniac.
Borough Market doesn't qualify as a Farmers' Market, since foods are not necessarily from within a given radius or sold by the maker/processor. But there is an enormous variety of good foods which couldn't so qualify, such as olives and olive oils from Greece and the range of wonderful Spanish comestibles from Brindisa. When I demonstrated brandade for the Guild of Food Writers last Monday I went to Brindisa for their loin of salt cod because I knew I could count on its quality. There's talk of making Farmers' Market standards compulsory; Borough Market would be the poorer for it.
Craft
in New York: Dining
Posted
Let me say again that you talk a great deal of sense about food, as opposed to economics.