Stone

I decided to make this again for tomorrow's dinner. But I forgot to buy walnuts, so instead I chopped up 3/4 of a golden delicious apple. (The apples in Hudson Valley -- Golden Delicious, Macs, Matsu, etc. -- are amazing right now.) I was worried that the moisture from the apple would screw up the batter, but the cakes seemed to have come out all right. They're sitting in saran in the fridge till tomorrow. Hopefully I wont eat all the icing before then.

I'm smoking two turkey breasts and a corned beef.

I used to really enjoy Ollies. But the last time I was there, they seemed to have changed the menu and the cooking. I remember Silk Road being very good as well.

Wow. Why use frites then? Is this a common thing? ← My favorite wing place in Manhattan, The Back Page,* makes great fries as well. Their medium cut (not shoestring, not cottage, not steak), fried just crisp on the outside, but soft on the inside. Perfect. I've taken to ordering hot wings (extra crispy) and a basket of fries. One day, I just started dipping the fries. Go figure. I actually think I like the fries better than the wings now. One of the top five sandwich shops in the country, Hungry Herbs in Malden, MA, makes fries all sorts of ways, including smothered in hot sauce and blue cheese. The problem with the smothering is that the fries get soggy too fast. *Other than the wings and the football games, there is no reason to go into this Upper East Side sports bar. I believe it used to be The Polo Grounds.

If the fries are good, I enjoy the Buffalo combo of blue cheese and hot sauce.

The donner/gyro at Taksim on 2nd at 54 is great. Much better flavor than most.

I wonder what those Talmudic scholars would have thought if they'd been around in the age of the microscope. Most of the really worrisome things are not visible to the eye. ← Things aren't worrisome because they're unhealthy. They're worrisome because they're forbidden.

Once you say "within the genre of Thai cuisine," you no longer have "a" four-star sytem. You have dozens or hundreds. Sri still would not be four-star within the "genre of Thai cuisine." It does not have the decor, service or range of a four-star restaurant. It is not serving particularly innovative dishes, although there are many that are not well-known to Americans. They're serving basic Thai food, with a menu that looks like many if not most that I recall seeing in Thailand. They're doing it better than most American-Thai places, but that doesn't make it four-star food. Again, the best hot dog or burger-joint in the country is not "four-star food," unless you're completely redefining the phrase.

Is there really a significant nutritional difference? I don't like brown rice, and I'm tired of getting stuck with it because people claim is so much healthier.

I've seen so many different methods for roasting chickens and turkeys that it makes me laugh. Basting every 10 minutes. Breast up/Breastdown/Breast facing the full moon. Wrapping the whole thing in cheesecloth. Oy. My lazy-man's theory is that the juice is going to get out of the bird no matter what we do. Cheesecloth isn't going to stop it from coming out and is just going to make the skin soft. Basting may help get a golden skin, but the juice isn't going to penetrate and find it's way back into the bird. If anything, a dry outer skin will retard the passage of moisture through and out of the bird. Do you baste? If so, how? Does your "no brining" apply to poultry as well? One more quickie -- we had a discussion here about penne ala vodka. The thought was that because all the alcohol would evaporate from the vodka (leaving water), adding vodka to the sauce wouldn't add any flavor. All that vodka sauces I've tasted have tasted like vodka was added. Do you have an opinion?

That's absurd. There are college students all over the country earning their way by waiting tables. And they do a great job. It's not brain surgery.

Do the servers get tipped?

Imagine if the NY Times Book Review gave four stars to The Sound and the Fury and The Shining? Please, we must be able to agree that one is categorically a better book than the other, even though both are tops of their genre.

That's not what I'm saying. It has nothing to do with comparing different cultures. It's 4-star cuisine (for lack of better term, perhaps haute) compared to street food. The best hotdog at Grays Papaya cannot meaningfully be rating equivalent to a dinner at Gramercy Tavern. Nor could the best burger served anywhere, unless it's stuffed with so much foie, braised short rib and truffle that it's no longer street food.

Sripraprai is not serving "4-star food". Its not even serving 2 star food. The luxury of the ingredients just isn't there. ← And yet another argument against the star system. ← When you say that Sripraphai serves four-star food, are you suggesting that it's of the same level as Per Se, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges? Dude, it's street food. ← If Rich believes that Sripraphai's and Per Se's food can be meaningfully compared other than to say "they both serve excellent food" (and I'm not saying Rich has taken this position), then I'd say that there's no meaningful rating system to account for that position.

Sripraprai is not serving "4-star food". Its not even serving 2 star food. The luxury of the ingredients just isn't there. ← And yet another argument against the star system. ← When you say that Sripraphai serves four-star food, are you suggesting that it's of the same level as Per Se, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges? Dude, it's street food.

I don't understand precisely what you mean; please elaborate. Are you suggesting that stars are all about price and ambiance? I prefer for them to be about the quality of the food, above all. ← "Worth a detour" is a meaningless phrase in this context. Yes, the words have meaning, but they are so broad that the phrase means nothing. What restaurant isn't "worth a detour" to some person for some reason? The suggestion that "by the way, if you find yourself at Tompkins Park, it's worth a detour to get a falafel sandwich at Chickpea" merits two michellin stars is silly, even though I'll agree that Chickpea is worth a detour. The debate here seems to have become the question of what place and purpose the NY Times food review should serve in the panoply of publications (paper and digital) that review restaurants. (As opposed to a debate over the star-rating system.)

Well, shit, if you can't drink, how can you see any stars?

Which is?

Two star restaurant according to the traditional conventions of the NYT rating system (which we can all say with confidence is completely shot to shit now) -- No. "Destination" restaurant by representing the epitome of its genre? Yes. By the same token, China 46 is also a "Destination" restaurant, although it rated "Very Good" in the Jersey section of the Times. I'm not sure how we can evaluate the star ratings of the other metro sections versus the main paper, though. ← By this interpretation, and I'm not suggesting that this is what you mean, Gray's Papaya deserves two stars. (Or Papaya King, I can't remember which is better.) So does Popeye's Fried Chicken, easily the best of its "junk food" genre. Quips like "worth a detour" and "destination" are just that. They are not meant as complete, accurate descriptions. Asserting that any place worthy of a special trip deserves two stars because the Michelin Guide defines two stars as "worth a detour" is semantics.

So Thai can only be fine dining if French techniques have been applied? From my two visits to Spice Market, I can say it's far far away from fine dining. Sripraphai kicks it's ass, food-wise. And from what I hear about Klong, it's good but nowhere in the league of either Sripraphai. Kittichai might be another story. I like what Bruni's doing. He's a little flowery sometimes, but I like his attitude to dining in NYC which seems to include all the borroughs. ← You're not paying attention.

If you were smart enough to have saved the liver, simply apply it to your wound. (What's the matter with you people?)

I feel like I've been rather bluntly leavened. But I do appreciate a good flesh story.

I use the recipe on Saveur's site. But I use a combo of cheddar, gruyere and parmesan.

too much heat can and will burn your oil; oils have different smoke points, i like grapeseed oil because its smoke point is higher than olive oil and its flavor is not very intrusive. however, i was referring to the tendency of thin-bottomed pans to burn the food, as they do not distribute heat evenly. and do be careful when doing this, as the oil will spit and pop as any moisture on the fish instantly boils. good luck! ← The main reason for heating up the pan before adding the oil is that as the metal expands, it seals any tiny cracks and crevaces on the surface of the pan that could promote sticking.