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Middle eastern/ israeli/ halal style food. Kofta... falafel... gyro/shwarma... I get it on the street all the time but it just seems like alchemy to me.

WHITE DIAMOND!!! My parents are from north jersey and my dad used to take me to the Clark White Diamond and the similar White Rose in Roselle. These are seriously the greatest. Man, what a blast from the past. Love this blog...

the best I've got is the time I was grilling onions and they fell through the grates. so many fell through, and they were covered in oil... pretty epic flare up and ensuing mess... sigh...

i love barely grilled tuna encrusted with sesame seeds and dipped in mayo mixed with sriracha, soy, sesame and mirin. Yum!

And shrimp scampi will always be one of my favorite things.

Aloo Chole (Indian Chickpea and Potato dish). Done right, it's incredible. Aloo Chole. Wow.

How about the use of the word "caramelize" to mean "brown"?

Everyone is caramelizing everything nowadays. Caramelization refers to the oxidation of sugar, so since onions have a lot of sugar, we can get away with the use of that word.

Because it's become common usage, it's not like it bothers me, but while sugars can caramelize, proteins undergo maillard reactions when they brown.

In the salted, seared steak example, the great thing about salting a steak and letting it sit before cooking it is that the salt draws out water from the flesh and with the water comes dissolved amino acids, which, when exposed to heat, undergo maillard reactions and become delicious and brown.

With onions, breaking the cell walls allows enzymes in different parts of different cells in the onion to intermingle, creating gases that, when they meet the water in your eyes, create sulfuric acid. Ouch. The best way to protect yourself is to protect your eyes, refrigerate the onion and use a sharp knife. This minimizes exposure to and intermingling of the chemicals.

And the story of the flame and the onion is if you put the flame near the onion, it creates convection currents, and the fumes from the onion move with the air toward the flame and when they reach it they are incinerated. I'm not sure how well it works or how exactly to position oneself to minimize exposure, but it's worth a try.

I can't stand tomatoes or green peppers. My mom's side of the family is Italian, so these two dislikes were particularly difficult growing up(sausage & peppers, peppers and eggs, tomato salad, caprese salad...) I've only recently come around on red peppers. And cooked tomato things like sauce and ketchup are fine by me. Raw tomatoes, though, are horrifying to me and seem always to be added to otherwise perfectly good things in order to "enhance" them; e.g. guacamole, spinach and artichoke dip (garnish), black bean soup (garnish), fajitas and burritos (you didn't tell me there'd be pico de gallo!!)...

i hate raw tomatoes...

This is a really really tough question, and Ben and Jerry's Dublin Mudslide is amazing, but I would have to say that the ice cream to end all ice cream is a flavor entitled KGB from Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium in Oak Bluffs, MA on the island of Martha's Vineyard. It's a mix of Kahlua, Grand Marnier and Baily's Irish Cream. It's so rich and creamy, the alcohol is still just a tad present and the mix of flavors is just perfect. It's incredibly decadent and with a few sprinkles/jimmies/whatever you call them, the contrast of textures makes for a truly transcendent ice cream experience.