Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Take away the condiments and fancy buns and one hot dog stands alone, the Kogel Vienna from Flint, Michigan period.

I'm sure if you like bland tomatoes, plain yellow mustard, and raw onion, etc etc... then Chicago dogs are fine. I personally don't like drowning a good beef hotdog with all those condiments. Give me a delectable grilled Hebrew National topped with a slightly spicy mustard and some homemade relish...absolute perfection! If you go this route with a Vienna dog, you will soon realize where it pales in comparison to the much superior Hebrew National dog. Sauerkraut can also be a good option, but it's an acquired taste. I find tomatoes and yellow mustard to be a clash of flavors in any situation. Long live Hebrew National, king of the hotdogs!!!!

Eatdrinkandbemerry: I've eaten at both Morimoto and the Metropolitan Bakery. Both are wonderful...but I must say that the Omakase at Morimoto is where it's at. And I'm definitely going to try La Colombe and Amada. Thanks!

VerasTastyFreeze: Creperie beau Monde!! I've been just dying to go there! I'm definitely going now.

lemons -- I totally agree about reading those important notes. Failing to realize that a recipe calls for kosher instead of table salt can be disastrous. I still find, however, that most cookbooks don't tell you by which method they measured flour for baking (or even better, their calibration for a cup of flour). That's why I assume the 4.5 oz unless told otherwise.

I'm finding more and more reasons to measure by weight vs. volume. Having lived in both Colorado (NO humidity) and Florida (TONS of humidity) I know how the weights of dry ingredients can vary.

Lexophile said: "It sucks compared to the original. It is so terribly "Fox".

Well said.

Before mastering the art of basic pastry dough, I attempted a plum tart. I made the dough, thinking all was well-and-good, and put it in the fridge to chill. Then, I made the plum filling with fresh greenmarket plums. It looked, smelled, and tasted wickedly delicious. But, when the time came to assemble the thing...the dough was horrendeous.

I ended up trashing the whole thing and making a lousy plum cake.
Drat!

My weeknight cooking definitely varies in style from my weekend cooking. Weeknights are for quick but delicious and REAL FOOD meals. Opting for something that can be cooked in one pan and/or utilizing weekend leftovers are the orders of the day.

I don't use envelope food (like Lipton pasta sides) and if that makes me a food snob, I'll have to wear the badge.

Weekends OTOH, are for long-simmered, long-stewed meals that may be elaborate and fancy or just stick to your ribs good but time consuming.

It would be a much more common occurrence for me to throw together a batch of dough for pizza or bread on a weekend. I also love to bake something on a Sunday my BF can take to work for his department on Monday.

While thought definitely goes into my cooking on weeknights, I don't ponder the same things I do on weekends. I might be thinking along the lines of "What can I throw together with what's in the pantry and fridge," while on a weekend I'll think, "What stores do I need to visit in order to accomplish 'X' menu?"

I definitely plan on leftovers (especially proteins) during weekend cooking.

Weekends = snacks and leftovers and things evolving from Greenmarket purchases. No set meal times, no structure. And Russ and Daughters on Sunday.

"But they do illustrate the extent to which a lot of people use food in ways that have nothing to do with nourishing the body and pleasing the taste buds."

You have (hilariously) hit the nail on the head, I think, maggiesara. Food seems to bring up more than nourishment and pleasure for most people, because it carries inevitable links to class, body image, ethnic identity, and other issues. Piling dietary restrictions (whether medical or self-chosen) onto the already-extensive list of the cultural work food does can make preparing a meal for others exhausting.

When planning a meal for many people, the host has already gone through long considerations, whether consciously or subconsciously, about how best to satisfy his guests. Depending on their relationships (boss? future in-laws? drinking buddies?), this would include not only making food delicious, but also balancing the cost of ingredients, the guests' supposed cost of the ingredients, the healthfulness of the meal, the cultural meaning of certain dishes (e.g. comfort food vs. "fancy" food, exotic dishes vs. commonplace dishes), ease of serving, ease of eating, and many more.

When someone with a restricted diet comes into the mix (especially if it's last-minute), the balance is upset as the host has to figure out a way to accommodate this person as well as fulfilling all these other considerations. Doing this is annoying and may be the last straw in what has already been a thoughtful and often stressful process.

As a vegetarian (and one who really really hates mushrooms to the extent that they give me nightmares), I just have to recognize, and hope that others with special diets also recognize, the work that has already gone into planning a meal, and not expect to be accommodated. When it's a good friend, obviously things are different, but if it's an invitation from a new acquaintance or a work associate, it's important that those of us on restricted diets don't expect hosts to go to great lengths to meet our needs - since they've already gone to such lengths in the planning of their meal.

On the other hand, regardless of the additional cost and prep time, I think it's good business sense for a restaurant to have at least one vegetarian dish on the menu. Not everyone who eats meat wants it at every meal or even every dinner, and a lighter, vegetarian main dish will appeal to more than just those who don't eat meat.

maggiesara, please don't go on like that...I laughed so hard I nearly hurt myself.

Re profitability of vegetarian dishes, no question that they're more profitable than meat or poultry dishes when costed on the basis of raw materials. But if you factor in labor, the cost can rise significantly. At a mid-level restaurant, the steak may well arrive already portioned, so it's just a matter of slapping it on the grill. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on a halved tomato and stick it under the broiler, dish up a portion of the mashed potatoes that accompany half your entrees, and you're done. Chicken breast, salmon fillet...same story.

And then there's the vegetarian risotto. For the sake of convenience, let's assume you bring in your vegetable stock -- which is wasteful as hell, but does save someone endlessly cleaning and trimming the scraps of onion, mushroom, turnip, etc., and reducing it down and down and down until it actually has some body and flavor. Assume something relatively simple -- an asparagus and morel risotto, say. Somebody has to trim and peel all the asparagus, slice it, and par-cook it such that when it's turned into the rice base, the bottoms will be tender but the tips won't be overcooked. And somebody has to clean the morels, which can be sandy little buggers and harbor all kinds of creepy crawlies that no vegetarian (or anyone else, for that matter) is going to want to find on the plate. However, giving the morels a good solid rinse will leave them waterlogged, since they soak up moisture like mad, so you've got to go one at a time, cleaning each one individually. And then there's onion and garlic to mince, never mind that if you've got a halfway decent restaurant you're making the risotto to order, so someone's got to stand there stirring the damn stuff.

And that's for a bog-standard vegetarian entree, with no little zip or wow factor. I recently bought two vegetarian cookbooks that absolutely blow me away -- I can't wait to cook from them (Cafe Paradiso and Cafe Paradiso Seasons, for those playing at home, coming out of a truly incredible veg restaurant in Dublin). These dishes have some major wow factor. But many of them also involve a LOT of trimming and peeling and chopping before anything hits a pan. There's just a lot of labor there, compared with the labor involved in firing a chunk of protein, and labor costs money.

Sure, some protein -- especially if you're going for a wow --is a PITA as well. The person who invents the self-shelling shrimp will win my undying gratitude. But as much as I loathe shelling and deveining shrimp -- and it is just about my least-favorite kitchen chore -- it can't compare with, say, podding and shelling fava beans. Spend an hour on the shrimp, and you've got enough cleaned protein to feed a small platoon. Spend an hour on the fava beans, and you've got enough for maybe three portions, assuming it's a side-dish.

And then, seasonality comes in. Chicken is chicken, in May as in November. But tomatoes are not tomatoes in January, and if I'm putting vegetarian dishes on my menu in the winter -- and I don't live in Fresno -- I have a choice between serving a LOT of cabbage and root-vegetable stews (for which it's tough to get the punters to pay up) and using tasteless, expensive, out-of-season, flown-in-from-Chile produce, which will both piss off the locavore types and, again, send my food costs spiraling up.

And finally, the majority v. minority issue. I've got one incredibly hard-working kitchen porter. I can have him spend his time shelling and deveining shrimp, or peeling fava beans -- he can't do both. How many customers are likely to want the shrimp, if I put it on the menu, v. the number that are going to opt for Favas en Suprise? With finite resources, I have to choose between playing the majority and playing to the minority. As it happens, it makes sense to offer something that the minority can eat, so that mixed parties will be willing to come to my restaurant. But for every "minority" dish I put on my menu, I have to further restrict the number of "majority" offerings, and it becomes a pretty delicate financial balancing act.

Understand, I'm not arguing against restaurants' offering vegetarian dishes; rather, I'm suggesting one reason why the restaurant community, as a whole, may have some hostility toward vegetarians.

On another note -- because hey, it's two in the morning, and I got the keyboard, baby -- I used to have a friend in L.A. who would often have dinner in restaurants with his mother. The two of them would engage in a game I though of, privately, as "Who's More Allergic?" J would look at the menu and say, "I kind of like the idea of the beet salad, if they could make it without the hazelnuts." And his mother would say, "Oh god, beets, I even look at a beet and my blood pressure starts shooting up, I can feel the veins in my forehead starting to pulse." And J would say "Wow, the veins-thing, that's exactly what happened to me when I went to Maggiesara's house and she was cooking apples." And his mother would say, "Please, don't talk to me about apples. I was at your sister's, she gave little Sophie a glass of apple juice, they were in the kitchen, two rooms away, and I started breaking out in hives." And J would say "I used to have the hives-problem, but ever since I started drinking two glasses of pure spirulina-juice every time I went to the bathroom, the hives haven't been a problem. Well, at least, not with whole apples. Applesauce is another story."

And on and on and on. It became very clear that in their family, being a delicate flower conferred some kind of specialness -- everybody must race around making sure that every trace of apple has been wiped away, that nothing with beet-sugar in it or beet juice or pickled beets or maybe just the letter "b" has been anywhere near the house for at least 30 days. And in restaurants, of course, waiters are sent scurrying back and forth to the kitchen to determine whether the vegetarian dumplings have any soy products in them, whether the salad dressing is soured with lemon juice or (horrors!) vinegar ("it's FERMENTED," J explains with terrifying gravity), whether the "Buddha's Stir-Fry" can be prepared "without any nightshade vegetables" in it, etc.

J and his mother are nuts -- and, happily, hardly representative of any community of restricted eaters I can think of. But they do illustrate the extent to which a lot of people use food in ways that have nothing to do with nourishing the body and pleasing the taste buds. And I think that those of us on the outside who get dragged into these scenarios -- waiters, chefs, home cooks whose only sin was in inviting someone over for dinner -- have reason to resent being forced to play a roll in someone else's tedious psychodrama.

I cook more on the weekends then the weekdays.