Michael Ruhlman

I hear she has a sweet book deal for a memoir. one i'll gladly read after her chicken killing essay in the nyer. the girl can cook, and she's got a real story. i hope she can pull off a book-length narrative.

don't buy cured hams. pls buy fresh pork, a cut called picnic ham (front leg), back leg or shoulder butt (above the picnic), preferably from farm raised hogs.

Susie Heller tests and writes all recipes for Thomas Keller. I'm responsible for all text that's not in the recipe. and i have to say susie does a heroic job, with this stuff. she is really good.

i'm looking forward to the charcuterie book too! those recipes do convey my personal experience with the food, especially the basic ones or master recipes. judith jones wrote a great story about good recipe writing in the nytimes several months ago. the times's site probably charges for it now, but if you're writing a cookbook, this grande dame has some very smart words on the subject.

I'm not in NC or an expert in corned pork, but you should be able to use any part of the leg or shoulder. always use kosher salt for something like this. the skin is loaded with gelatin so keep it on. after it's cooked, it can be fried or baked crispy. and i would think it would be better to cook this thing longer at a lower temperature, but that depends on the final texture you want. i'll bet varmint loved it because it was from a really good hog. this cannot be pork crack. pork belly confit that is then deep fried is pork crack.

so this is simply salted fresh ham. how does it differ from freshly roasted leg? and is sodium nitrite ever used (is done in corned beef)?

And don't neglect the opening pages of Ingalls's Little House in the Big Woods, a veritable primer in curing and smokin, food preservation and the glories of the hog on the frontier.

Thank you. I AM a total suburban farm boy. swear to god. tony's people called me, yes, he has people, said tony would like to apologize for all the bad blood, was flying me out first class to have dinner in vegas, everything would be totally comped and the next thing i know, i'm trashed, in polyester hawaiian shirt and driving through the dessert. really got to hand it to his pharmacist. I can't say i wasn't happy during. but i felt really lucky to be bolting the moronic inferno when I did. and i have no idea where those cigarettes came from. when i walk by her, my young daughter, who saw the show whle i was away, is still looking at me with narrowed eyes. I'll settle the score. I still have those tapes from the post-Masa debauch. And a book coming out in may.

it's a good article, on the money.

http://www.feastmagazine.net

there's a decent magazine in cleveland published its first issue this spring, called Feast, edited by Laura Taxel a writer and the woman here who covers in her book Ethnic Eats all the ethnic restaurants and markets in the city.

And how about chefs out there, especially those teaching. What are the main teaching books. Can any non-CIA chef instructor note the books he or she uses? Why? And what makes them effective?

Well, there are many sidebars and full pages dedicated to technique in the book. Look at p.765 and you'll see a page on blind-baking, p.205 has tips on cooking pasta, and p.336 shows you how to clean soft-shell crabs. Also, there's a lot to be said for a well-written recipe. You can, to a certain extent, learn to cook by following recipes. That's what we all did before mags like Cook's. I grew up cooking from Gourmet magazine, and by the time I got to cooking school I knew a ton just by reproducing all those Gourmet centerfolds. ← I wasn't putting down the gourmet book in any way or putting recipes down. but it seems to me there are two ways for someone learning to cook to approach it: starting with the basics and working up, which is methodical and effective in the long run, or doing a series of intriguing recipes which may be more gratifying but gives a rather more haphazard self-education.

i admire the gourmet cookbook, but that's in a different category, isn't it? that's a compilation of recipes. it has nothing to do with the basics of cooking except obliquely

I like Julia's The Way to Cook, Jacques's 2 part The Art of Cooking, Madeline Kanman's Making of a Cook, Joy of Cooking, and Time Life's The Good Cook series. There's probably a bunch more, I'm sure. ← There are probably a lot more out there but I bet there aren't that many that are widely used. I bet only a few are, and I'm wondering which ones they are. Does Bittman's How to Cook Everything fit the category, for instance? How about The New Best Recipe by cooks illustrated? And MXH--which edition of New Pro Chef? My favorite is the 6th, much different from the 7th. I may sound like thorough geek here, but I comment because cooking is all about the basics, so I'm curious where people are getting their basics.

I saw this at the bookstore the other day and was impressed. Lavish production, the experts weighing in in their field. Was this published in the UK or here? I'd like to know how it will be used. What are the best basic fundamentals cookbooks out there?

If tony left anything unflattering about himself out in his book, it was only because it was either boring or not applicable. I'd say he came pretty clean. i haven't heard anyone call him a liar, and surely they would have by now. Ruth, in practically invisible tiny print on the copy right page of her first books, i believe, says some characters are composites, which i find unfortuneate. but at least she says so up front. and her main obligation in her books seems to be to entertain via story, and she's such a good generous writer, i'll even forgive the laziness of composites, whatever her reasons might be. Neiher of them are misrepresenting themselves. In my first post on this amusing but increasingly tedious thread, I was clear to note my bias. I wish all writers would. Of course it makes a difference that the other party is Keller. But I don't even know Barber and he seems to have taken the brunt of it, named or not. If every writer conveyed their bias, the stories themselves would be far more entertaining, and far more durable.

he's not bound by anything, as he's already shown.

this is the only relevant point in this too-long conversation.

I meant to say "properly." Symon's got a saucing problem but other than that, he's a killer cook and a chef I admire endlessly. that said, morimoto's food looked pretty fuckin good--some of the best LOOKING food i've ever seen on iron chef. that terrine appeared to be craftsmanship at its best.

If Symon ever learns to sauce his food properly, he may have a future in this business.

I'm glad that it's a distinction people here would use to decide whether or not to go--I'd guess most people who frequent egullet don't choose to go to pf changs or houstons or outback. but that's not the case generally, so is it a matter of educating the public? or maybe the general public doesn't give a shit. but i think it would if they understood, lik M.X.'s parents.

Isn't is important to recognize and acknowledge the different categories before we evaluate the experience and the food? I'm sorry to be starting a new topic this late in the week--the subject has been obliquely referred to (perhaps it's been overtly written about here and I've missed it?)--but it's something I've been writing about recently and thinking about a lot, especially in my city where good independent restaurants are far out numbered by well-regarded chains. To go to a P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, a successful Arizona-based chain, in Cleveland, for instance, is different on many levels from going to Michael Symon’s Lola Bistro or any of Cleveland’s independent restaurants. P.F. Chang’s is a corporate driven menu composed of decent but generic Asian food designed to appeal to people from California to Texas to Wisconsin to Alabama to New York. The ingredients they use are available to all chefs all year round. An independent restaurant is more likely to serve regional specialties using seasonal ingredients; the menu will change more frequently and probably convey the particular tastes and eccentricities of the chef. On the other hand, these independents will be less consistent in quality—the first time in you don’t know what you’ll get. Among the biggest lessons we’ve learned in this gigantic dining industry is the primacy of consistency over quality (thank you McDonalds!). But there’s an impact consumers don’t normally consider when figuring where they’ll take their evening meal. All P.F. Chang’s China Bistros are company owned, so some of the money spent there is going back to Arizona rather than into your own city’s economy, which it does when you eat at an independent restaurant run by a chef who gets his or her food locally. Given the increasing prominence of higher-end chains, this can have a some impact on a city’s economy, not to mention on all the purveyors who grow or raise the ingredients in the area and who sell to local chefs. The chains are the ones with the big Syscos trucks at their loading docks. Independent restaurants here have in fact grouped together in order to leverage better prices to compete with the big chains. My question, finally, at this eleventh hour is, do diners distinguish between chains and independents, and should they? Should we make decisions based on this distinction?

the food service industry remains one of the surest ways for an immigrant to work him or herself into the weave of a city and a culture. starting a restaurant can be a low capital, high labor cost ordeal, but a family of immigrants can provide that labor. see a book called the migrant's table, by krishnendu ray, he' a genuine sage. immigrants will continue to bring their food into our culture because it's a win win situation, will continue to be one of the main influences of the restauratn culture.

travel has been perhaps the biggest influence on the food industry, ever, and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon...