Michael Ruhlman

I don't prepare, I just jump in. I spend a lot of time in a single place, preferably a place of excellence. And I listen to what people have to say. And I hang out some more. And if possible, try to do the work myself, try to understand the ethos of the place and try to fit in, learn the language. Learn the language.

I love to eat traditional stuff, basic stuff very simple ingredients, and simple preparations that have to be exact. I love to roast chicken, I just love it, and I do it really well because I love it, because I really care about it. When you pull it from the oven, and it's deeply golden brown, skin that's been aggressivley salted and is visibly crisp and powerfully aromatic. I love to cut it into its pieces, I love it when my wife can't help herself and snatches a wing to eat while we get it on the table because it's too good to let it just sit there. I love make a sauce from the juices--with just wine water and the skin stuck to the pan (if I have shallots better, and if tarragon is in the garden, beautiful). I just love to cook that way. I do it once a week and I never ever get tired of it or get tired of trying to make it better. That's what cooking is all about for me. Trying to perfect that stuff that you do all the time. ... A custard, when you hit it right is one of the great substances on earth. But it takes real care to get it just right. I almost never do. But I love the challenge of it. That's what home cooking is about--really it's the best kind of cooking there is, and far outstrips the best of restaurant cooking, which is about so many other things. About the pig--there's no better creature on earth for cooking. The variety of stuff you can do with it, the miracle of its fat, so creamy and luxurious, oh man. Grill some hog belly, finish it slowly in the oven till it's meltingly tender--if I die I want it to happen when I'm eating hog belly and I'll pray simply to be preseved in that moment. No, wait, better: hog belly confit, deep fried so it's crispy outside and melting inside. ... I'm getting hungry.

Lola, of course, because I know it so well. Theory, across from Lola just opened and is good. I like Fire Food and Drink at Shaker Square. I've always admired Parker Bosley (Parker's) as well. To your second question, no.

I'd forgotten about that until just recently. I find that if you cook a stock so that there are no bubbles rising to the surface but the pot is too hot to hold your hands against, that's a good temperature. And that easy easy cook (in the oven at 170-180 degrees) results in a very clear stock. A stock becomes cloudy if you simmer it too hard and emulsify the fat into the stock. Trying boiling chicken bones and scraps really hard for an hour. It will look almost creamy. The idea you mention is one of adding enough acid to a stock to denature enough proteins to trap the impurities that cloud a stock. As you make a consomme raft with protein (egg white) and acid and for flavor aromats. Have you made a consomme? You should try that if you haven't already so you get a good visual picture of a clarification and a perfectly clear liquid.

Grant, Great to hear from you. I split my time between food and non-food. When I was writing FL cookbook and soul of a chef simultaneously, I burnt out on it. so we moved to martha's vineyard so I could work in a wooden boatyard. While I was working with Eric Ripert, a gentlman and a fantastic cook, real finesse with seasoning like I've never seen, a great sprititual cook, I was reporting and writing a book about pediatric heart surgeons. You think you see grace under pressure on the saute station on a saturday night? Observe the OR of a great surgeon rebuilding a baby's heart, the size of walnut, with the clock running. I like to write about craftsmen, men and women who work with their hands for living. In cooking I find bigger issues about personal standards, a quest for excellence (or an acceptance of mediocrity), about compassion and care--those bigger issues are the important thing to me, not the cooking itself. Though I love cooking just for cooking, too, and admire intensely those who do it for a living and those who do it carefully for their family. For anyone reading this e-mail, I'm responding to Grant Achatz, who is among the country's best chefs, a cook I really admire, and I urge everyone who cares about excellent food to go to wherever Grant is cooking, which happens to be Trio outside Chicago. Don't stop cooking, Grant.

I don't know the answer to that. A guess? I think people are finding out that the work of cooking is about much more than cooking and food, and that's why we like to read food narratives. I don't have a lot of patience for cookbooks either. I have to go write headnotes now for the bouchon cookbook and I all but fall asleep trying to write them, but get me talking about what makes it perfect, and how to perfect it, and the kind of person who will want to perfect this or that dish, then the blood start pumping again.

I find recipes that give a specific wine a little pretentious. I suppose naming a varietal is ok but specifying a vineyard is a bit much. Rule of thumb is to use a wine that you would enjoy drinking. Don't use a $300 bottle of wine. Just remember that if you reduce a bad quality wine, it's bad quality will be concentrated. Use a good drinkable wine appropropriate to the dish you're making.

Thanks, glad you liked the book. Funny when I finished it, I thought it was a complete disaster and couldn't wait to get it out of the house and be rid of it. Brian did return to take Day 10 of the test. He did not pass. He is a little bitter about it. But he's a better cook, an excellent chef. And we're writing a book together on charcuterie.

Comfort food is an idea we're all familiar with. By French comfort food we're mainly referring to those dishes that we return to again and again throughout our lives (if you like that kind of food). Onion soup--throughout our lives we have various onion soup experiences; our hope is to explore what are the qualities that make us return to specific dishes again and again, what makes this kind of food excellent and how do you achieve that excellence in cooking. What are the qualities that define a perfect onion soup? Frisee salade with ladons and poached eggs? Leeks vinaigrette, roast chicken, beef stew etc.? French comfort food is potentially better and usually more refined than American comfort food.