Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Looking at this again today, I think the really simple change you could make is this: when you open the "columns" menu, the link at the bottom of the menu should say "all columns >>" instead of "most recent posts >>". The effect of clicking the "most recent posts >>" link is not in fact to take you to the most recent posts, but to all of the columns! So just retitling this would really help. And the name of the columns could be highlighted more, perhaps.

I made a mockup of what I think would work well, here it is: http://dp.smugmug.com/photos/1049722869_aVmsz-O.png

As dbcurrie said, a set of tabs for: "Regular Columns" "Authors" "Topics" and so forth would also be great.

@Kenji-- I've always read that one should make tea with "fresh" water as opposed to water which has been boiled more than once. I follow this recommendation, but blindly... does water boiled twice have enough less dissolved oxygen than water boiled once to matter? How much less?

Kenji,

I'm really excited to make these! We followed your bake-then-sear method for steaks from the May 2007 Cook's for dinner tonight, which yielded a gorgeous if slightly-too-chewy bone-in grass fed ribeye.

I don't know if you care but I noticed a few nits in the recipe above. The sentence beginning: "Using damp hands" suffers from an excess of commas. "Slice" is misspelt as "silce". And step five instructs us to "Lift and bun." Which just sounds sketchy :-)

Since I often make a roast (say a tri-tip on the grill) with a probe thermometer inserted the whole time, the 5-degree heuristic is perfect. I can simply note the temperature when I remove the roast from the grill, then carry the whole thing inside and wait for a 5-degree drop. While I've been resting meat for several years (probably since I started watching ATK and getting CI), it never quite occurred to me that very large roasts would need so much longer to rest. Thanks for an incredibly informative article!

"something feels disconnected when a chef has to buy a machine costing tens of thousands of dollars to cook"

Like... a restaurant output stove? Like a walk in refrigerator?

I feel like, more and more, every party I go to features a Costco or Safeway or similar cheese and/or meat and/or veggie tray (not always provided by the host: sometimes a guest shows up with one of these in hand). Living in the Bay Area, with nearly unlimited access to amazing food, I find this incredibly sad.

Ok, a little off topic but: I am always astonished when I go to people's parties and there isn't any ice. And I always think it's truly gauche when the host hasn't considered non-alcoholic beverage options (score an extra point if the inconsiderate host is drunk when you arrive). While I drink alcohol, I frequently have to drive, and so digging through someone's fridge for the last swig from an old, flat bottle of Pepsi Zero (or One? Or two?) is super irritating.

I feel like hosts must consider that their guests' time is valuable. If you throw crappy parties with bad food, you are essentially wasting the time of your guest, who might have instead thrown their own party, or who might have declined another invitation to attend your event.

We've made this several times now, it's fantastic. The chorizo we have access to is fairly large in diameter, so we now cut it smaller so that there's chorizo in every bite or every other bite.

Also, we've taken to scooping off some of the beans/turnip/potato mixture, and pureeing it with a stick blender. This gives the soup a little more body and made for a slightly more modern variation.

The first time we made this we were lucky enough to actually have some turnip greens, which were pretty amazing-- they stayed bright green and had a distinct lemony flavor, adding another layer of flavor. In contrast, chard (which we also tried) tasted OK but turned dark green and was less interesting. We've had trouble finding turnip greens subsequently, but we discovered that sorrel (if you can find it!) makes a fine substitute, because it too has a lemony flavor.

This pairs (somewhat obviously, I guess) with a nice Spanish Red wine. Finding a really nice loaf of crusty bread is worth the effort.