Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I have had the pleasure of eating at Keens and rank that as my personal best. It is a steakhouse in the true sense of the word, dark, wood paneling, history and a very attentive staff. Any time I had to quench a thirst at the bar there was always someone willing to have a chin wag.

@kristyandjamey...wow...thanks for posting a comment on my post from over a year ago :) Gorgonzola is one of my favorite cheeses.

SE's....any other new additions to you mac & cheese since talked about it last year?

Try BLT Steak, while it is not a hardcore Steakhouse in the tradition of a Smith & Wollenskys or Peter Luger, it is a great Steakhouse with reasonable prices. You can do the Porterhouse, but the Butcher's Cut is also worthy of praise, which oddly you don't find too often in the NYC Steakhouse Universe.

For some of the reasons discussed above, I really enjoy reading the publications from Cook's Illustrated, whether it's their magazine or cookbooks. They painstakingly detail all the tests that went into developing their recipes and give a pretty accurate description of what defines their "ideal" end product. Sometimes my opinion lines up with theirs and other times it doesn't, but at least I know beforehand.

I've never made a recipe from AB that turned out horrible -- I own all of his books and use them a lot -- but sometimes I find that I prefer someone else's recipe. For example, his muffin batter base is adequate but not spectacular for my tastes...I still eagerly anticipate every new episode of his show, though!

Dominic
the zen kitchen

I've made several of Giada's recipes--they come out fine to me...

If you just follow AB's recipes exactly you've missed the whole point of the show. He doesn't just spew out a recipe, he spends the show telling you the why. Armed with the knowledge from the rest of the show you can add or remove bits, alter the cooking process or make substitutions with more knowledge of what the outcome will be.

I also am not a big recipe follower, which is why Good Eats is a good show for me. I don't need yet another cookie recipe, but I could use info into what makes a cookie, crispy, chewy, or cakey.

I have to admit I am an AB fanatic, Never miss Good Eats and I'll watch anything else he appears on including sitting through every episode of who will be the next iron chef. I love his recipes and even though I seldom measure anything when cooking, as opposed to baking, his I will measure for. I've always had good luck with his recipes. so YAY!

I have had great luck with his Gold Cake recipe. Both in cake and cupcake form. Extremely tasty and moist!

I Say Yay! Be sure to read the comments on recipes at the Food Network site and also check out Good Eats Fan Page. It has transcripts of each episode, in case you missed something.

So, I made Alton's brownies much earlier tonight. They came out looking perfectly and they were dense and dark and they looked like everthing a brownie's supposed to be ... but the taste was different than I expected. Dominic, you were totally right. Alton and I have different views on what brownies are "supposed" to taste like. Since it called for a cup of brown sugar and a cup of granulated sugar, I assumed they'd be pretty sweet. I didn't really take into account the fact that a cup and a fourth is a whole lot of coco. They tasted different than I expected and differently than I'm used to. They weren't bitter, but they weren't really sweet either.

I usually braise on the stovetop b/c turning the oven on makes my tiny apartment extremely hot, esp in conjunction w/ the dryer (and I always do any braising & laundry on saturdays so almost always at the same time!). I always have good results, esp with my Le Creuset.

I am a New Yorker who has been living in Boston for some 25 years. New York has always been a world-class food town. Who could really argue. When I was growing up in New York in mid-20th century, New York was the capital of the world, and where food was concerned there were some truly great things I simply took for granted.

Many of these are as unobtainable now in New York as they are elsewhere. Is New York pastrami still great at Katz's? - yes but it's not like it used to be, and it's made in Albany. Is New York cheesecake wonderful? - not like it used to be when Leonard's of 2nd Avenue was still supplying the best to restaurants and hotels so anonymously. Today you can barely find any mention of the place or its extraordinary product anywhere on the web. You'll notice my name here: "noshstalgic" - I've been blogging about this stuff for a while now at noshstalgia.blogspot.com.

After a while, ranting into the blogosphere didn't seem a sufficient response. So I began an effort at culinary archeology to recreate the things I so missed. And even though I still love many of New York's signature items, I am here to make a claim. The best pastrami in the land is now hand-made in Boston, MA - to my specifications. My recent blog postings at Noshstalgia extolled the virtues of pastrami as the ideal Super Bowl food. Not nachos, not chicken wings. Quoting now:
"Nothing else so distills the essentials of football sustenance - Beef, Spice, Warmth, Smoke, and Beer Affinity."

So - confining ourselves to the dual questions of pastrami as football food - and as quintessential New York food - who's wrong here - Ed or Sheryl?
Both...
Sheryl because pastrami is perfect for football.
And Ed because the best is actually to be found here in Boston. If you don't believe me, (and please pardon the commercial plug) stop on by to Savenor's or John Dewar's (Boston's two premier meat purveyors) and ask for some of Boston's Deli Arts brand pastrami. Take it home, steam it up as directed, and slice it down. It's like a time machine. You'll smile.

I'm a NJ/NY person who went to school in Boston for 2 years, and I love the city as well as NY.

But aren't we being a bit unfair to B-town, judging it on a NYC food group basis? Things might stack up differently, with say, who has the best lobster, or even linguini with clam sauce from the North End? Plus, does New Haven count in the New England pizza sweepstakes--if so, Pepe's might throw a wrench in the voting...plus, what about lobster rolls?

Ice cream seems really unfair, too, given that eating ice cream on a Boston street in the middle of winter seems more like a health hazard than a treat!