Poivrot Farci

...the cellular breakdown of various foods...

Cooking for Geeks.  Chapter 4.  Time & Temperature: Cooking's Primary Variables.

I recall chit-chatting with some Frenchman from Cuisine Solutions  almost 10 years ago at a saucy champers tasting or whatever and while I conceeded that SV certainly has its merits, he grumbled that SV fish is a waste of both fish and plastic.  I concur.

If a professional cook needs the resources of a vacuum machine, bags, more than 30 minutes and a circulator to cook a piece of fish, they might get a nose bleed crunching the minutiae of fish type flesh varieties, thickness and other organic variables that make 1 piece of fish different from another and beckon the practical theory of human senses being able to fiddle with the damned thing without a dental dam around it.  Though a hobbyist could be forgiven as its a way to pass the time.

A good technician always blames their tools.  But a competent cook shouldn't need that many gadgets to cook a pieces of fish consistently well.   Practice, discipline and technique are just as useful and probably more marketable skills than pressing buttons.

Count me as one who will not be gracing the doors of that restaurant. I'm sure he has a wonderful story and is a talented cook. But this is not what I am seeking in a dining experience from an inexperienced chef.

What part of Chef Kwame being named a "rock star redefining the industry" by Zagat DC for its inaugural "30 under 30" list in 2015 did you gloss over?  ESPN is probably spit balling a 30-for-30 documentary befitting his mercurial rise through kitchen puberty. You're just a jealous fuddy-duddy well into a twangy Traveling Wilburys kind of rock star decline.

Sure, he has never run or overseen a restaurant or worked in one for longer than a year but this boy band duo was able to get investors with very deep coffers.  He will do just fine.

Washington Post: "Onwuachi and Vakiner's concept departs dramatically from current dining trends... It also will require a steep learning curve."

Fantastic.  I've become so drained from the stuffy boredom and indignity of current fine dining doldrums now that I have just about aced the predictable mouth-breathing paradigm of pointing at food words, mashing food into my face hole and paying for it.  I'll bring my slide rule and take notes (if the lighting permits).

With two DC chefs in the final six, chances are good at least one (hopefully both) make the final four.

Carl lived in DC for about 5 years  (like, literally 5 times longer than Kwame) working 3 years at Palena then 2 at West End Bistro in a sous-chef capacity with keys to the executive bathroom. And yes, he channels a cheerleader boy scout twirling pompoms but had the shrewd reflex to re-baptize yours truly as the "executive wet blanket" way back when.

It's cuter than a sack of kittens that Kwame has embroidered himself as chef/co-owner since 2015 of a restaurant that hasn't quite opened yet.  I'm not sure how long or what qualifies as a "stint" at Eleven Madison Park, but Carl was there too, albeit for a New York minute; he didn't like it and went to Battersby instead (and Fat Duck, Trio, A16, Craigie on Main before that).   It is unfortunate however that any of them, particularly Marjorie and Carl, feel the need to validate themselves as capable cooks on a tilted mouse-maze cable game-show which serves as a vehicle for Padma's garish wardrobe experiments, creepy lipstick selections and Whole Foods' generic shakedowns.  Top Chef Tom is a good sport though, and his semi-flappable Larry Fine exasperation makes the chewy show more fascinating (after 13 seasons) than palatable.  Rachel Sugar's rollicking round-ups are a particularly terrific soporific digestif.  Here's hoping the cheftestants still get a lifetime supply of Gladâ„¢ plastic chefwrap to keep their dreams from spilling out.

You had me at "quality" then lost me on "good", so I'll defer to Inigo Montoya and maybe Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
 
It depends on what "quality" and the indifferent one-armed hug of hot air that "good" conjures. Putting Guy's famous Donkey sauce, any of many curries or truffled nönsense on a chicken isn't going to change the quality of the bird.  Quality is different than taste and judging by America's collective cholesterol and waistband, what tastes good might not be the gold standard of overall excellence.  I don't think anyone can give a definitive, absolute, guaranteed, clinical answer as to whether chickens (not cloned ones) of a certain provenance are always, without fail, better quality than others or if that quality can change by squeezing curried ketchup on it. I'll give it a shot.
 
1. Is a fancy, pampered western chicken invariably better quality than an Indian chicken that has been taking bird baths in the Ganges?  
Probably.
2. Is a fancy, pampered western chicken invariably better quality than that Indian chicken after it has been given a spice treatment? 
Same as above.
2a. Does the fancy one taste better than tikka cinderella?
That's apples to apple sauce comparison.  The flavor might depend on the caliber of the spices and who is making it.  There is delicious, awful and septic international food depending on your tolerance for spice/heat/flavors, who makes it and where/if they washed their hands.   If there is a polluting child labor scourge in the lucknow fennel and dhania coriander industry, then I'll re-evaluate my spice rack with more conscionable reasonings behind the seasonings.
 
Again, chicken should elicit more than just isolated, singular taste.  There are other variables.  It is like those achingly dumb best restaurant lists which try to separate the wheat from the chaff using a weenie thumbs up/down Academy Awards method (the Gong Show does better merit calculus) which doesn't factor anything remotely tangible such how much they pay or exploit their staff, do they offer benefits, paid vacation, recycle, compost, donate to charity, etc"¦the kind of measurable under-the-hood-mechanics that actually make a restaurant function; sort of how one rates a car on fuel consumption and reliability in addition to how much the V8's purr makes yours and everyone else's genitals tingle. But most people have only so many shits to give, -whoever cooks the food is decidedly not one of them- and they rarely look beyond the mismatched estate-sale forks because it is *only* about the taste and food just comes out from behind a door shaped curtain, like pre-cut plastic-wrapped meat at the supermarket show and it's just easier that way. 
 
In Steak R-evolution, heavyweight Parisian meat-wad Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec sweats and slobbers so much over the porterhouse served at Peter Luger's steakhouse you'd think it was ortolan.  He lauds their Angus' marbling and its tender juiciness, the payoff of a young animal's gluttonous diet (less collagen is best suited for Luger's crude and fashionably unskilled 800F grill) and goes globetrotting, visiting farmers who raise different breeds of blue-ribbon cattle with varying degrees of hayseed folklore,  farmhand massages  and premium husbandry.  The liability of the Peter Luger's CAFO meat slabs however is the amount of commodity feed that needs to be purchased from so far away to fatten the things up and they make absolutely no mention of how (horribly) they are raised.  The camera crew never went to go film those animals.  Exceptional subjective taste, but the quality is not even debatable.  So you are left with one of those 5 room/feedlot puzzles: how to raise animals on pasture to market weight in less than 2 years without having to buy too much environmentally nefarious feed or compromise the humanity of which they are raised "“provided those variables matter to you in the equation.  If not, then why care? Eat up and enjoy because in 40 years you'll be eating chickens out of a test-tube.

With fig and olive being found to use Hellmans, not actual aioli, I'm starting to not trust anyone. How we do know anyone is actually using high end products, except by their price? Rasika may be the best Indian restaurants in the country, but how do we know their meat and poultry is of high quality?

 
What is so scandalous about using Hellman's? Americans eat more Hellman's than whatever constitutes salsa and the saintly Heinz's ketchup annually.  Sure southerner contend Duke's taste better, but as far as a pasteurized product goes, it is consistent and very safe until someone mucks it up with truffle lube or sticks their fingers in it.  If the CDC and consumers expects a national chain to make their own mayonnaise from whole eggs then they might want to print out some more egg safety brochures and stock up on Ipecac.  If you are curious as to the quality of the chicken a restaurant uses, ask them:  "what kind of chicken do you use?" Tell them you are and intern at the City Paper. They should be delighted by your curiosity would be even more delighted to brag about the quality of their ingredients.  

If you haven't stocked up by now, you may be in for trouble.

While I'm down in Charlottesville, the roads have been fine here but the grocery stores have been insane. Security guards are out and many shelves are out of bread and eggs.

How many egg salad sandwiches do people with absolutely empty pantries and refrigerators plan on eating during a 48-72 hour period?  This isn't rational, nor the siege of Leningrad.

How does this help somebody living in DC looking to make better poultry choices on a budget?  What local options are better than Whole Foods?  This ain't Paris.  i know that Harvey's Market stocks D'Artagnan Green Circle birds; are they any good?  What else doesn't require a trip across town or out to a farm to pick up a grocery staple?

Eat Wild has a list of farmers and which ones come to the metro area or farmer's markets.  It ends up being a fair amount of work for a chicken, but it will help you look down on your neighbors and their bargain basement broilers. If enough people get organized and select a pick-up venue (market) they/you can probably buy enough birds (3-4 each, freeze a few)  where the farmer can cut a deal, get rid of everything he has slaughtered for the week and still make more than enough gas money.

Green Circle birds are a bit small, on the cusp of 3lbs, about $4.50/lb but I have not tried them.  D'Artagnan may have been a beacon of quality a long time ago, but I feel that at times they are peddling a Sam Adams version of "quality" which is just a step up from Bud Light commodity with their label slapped on (their Muscovy ducks and guinea hens coincidentally come from the same part of California that cheaper Grimaud poultry does) and they take advantage of unregulated food term/labels.  I've gotten the same mushrooms from other distributors for less, kind of like how Harris Teeter sells 3 Sunkist blood oranges for $2 while Whole Foods sells 2 of the same for $3. Their lamb options for example are befuddling.  Either you get grass-fed pastured all the way from Australia (Dorset/Suffolk/Merino cross) or pastured Rambouillet/Suffolk cross-breed sheep from Colorado that are finished on grain (according to their website). Rambouillet/Suffolk might as well be elk since they grow to an enormous size in their first year during which they can still be sold as lamb rather than mutton after 1 year of age.  It is unfortunate that the vanguard of the farm-to-table movement which "continues to anticipate the demands of the palates of American chefs and consumers" hasn't picked up on their "local" sensibilities and cannot find any lamb east of the Mississippi.

D'Artagnan prides itself as being a "pioneer in a movement that is chock full of buzzwords. Farm-to-table, artisanal, free-range, grass-fed; all of these are in the DNA of the company, because to Ariane that is just the way things should be done. She built D'Artagnan on the idea that the care taken on the farm can be tasted on the plate. In other words (her own), "A happy chicken is a tasty chicken.""

Sounds preppy, but those pioneers pop down their starched blue collars by packaging their retail organic chicken breasts and thighs in chock-full of average Joe-6-pack Styrofoam (which they acknowledge in their FAQ, but it is "efficient and lightweight").  As for buzzwords, their Green Circle is on a bit of a Greenwashing cycle.  "Every chicken that bears the name is raised free-range on a diet of actual vegetables, is certified-humane and air-chilled. Now that is chicken as it should be." Except that chickens are actual carnivores and have been since the time of dinosaurs

To qualify for the Certified Humane label that Green Circle carries, the chickens must have all of 2 sq/ft per bird and, weather permitting, be able to chicken strut all cocksure through a 1.5' x 3' wide door and spend at least 6hrs a day in the yard to work out and play cards for cigarettes.  In that aspect, the Green Circle is better than the hot-house most birds are doomed to suffer in.  The Certified Humane website has plenty of PDF charts and whatnot concerning poultry, pigs and ruminants and is transparent regarding their standards.

Ayrshire chicken are Certified Humane and at $6.50/lb a 3.5lb bird will cost you 2 decent drinks at a bar with tax & tip. I like them

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service requires that the regular ol' "Free Range" poultry need to have access to the outdoors in order to carry that distinction, which means there is a little door or something, but the birds are usually too terrified to go outside, may not even fit their whole bodies through or even know it is there.  These birds often have their beaks cut to keep them from pecking at each other on account of the density and their deprived insect craving.

United Poultry Concerns has a more cynical view of what "free range" means, with some rather awful testimonials, if they are true.

So D'Artagnan's organic chickens are USDA free range and eat organic bird food (and the breasts/legs are sold in Stryofoam, the herpes of man-made trash)  while their Green Circle cohorts get to go outside but eat ACTUAL vegetables, like commodity broccoli, corn on the cob or cabbage that isn't up to snuff for human consumption.  It would appear that the permutation of both organic and Certified Humane is not in the cards, maybe because of the cost and limited number to fit their enormous needs.  That's too bad, but expected for a company that had about $95 million in sales last year. D'artagnan claims that their birds are raised on Mennonite and Amish farms which is a common theme in the Mid-Atlantic and that doesn't count the Easter Shore farms that help saturate the Chesapeake Bay watershed with lots of chicken shit. Their Rohan ducks come from a Cochecton Farm in NY where they raise 250,000 a year, slaughtering about 4,800 a week on average.  With those numbers, they are also in the business of waste management.

Aside from the Certified Humane standards, which is better than the casual fluff on most packaging:

-"All Natural" has absolutely no standards or legal definition in US and with the exception of artificial thing like nylon, polyester and glass, virtually anything can qualify as natural and it passes the animal's sniff test.

-"Cage Free" There is no legal standard or definition and it is a more charming way of describing high density confinement, like "free roaming".  They are not in cages, but don't have much room to roam and rarely if ever are allowed outside.  And their beaks are probably cut which is just as horrible as it sounds.

"Free Range".  There is no legal definition for "free range".  As it relates to eggs "Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside" but there is no government oversight or standard for how long they must be outdoors, nor the size of the opening.

If it suits your diet and conscience, eat bird seed or cardboard and save yourself the headache.

What is the retail vs restaurant price range anyone reading would pay for:

1 x whole roasted 3-4lb chicken with vegetables and bread (4 servings)

1 x 750lm bottle of white wine with coasters and a smile (4 glasses)

And what determines the cost (personal finances and thrift notwithstanding)?

I have my doubts that I would feel the same about a $56 whole roasted chicken, unless it got up and entertained us upon being served... After all, it is just chicken.

Any chicken worth a damn that isn't "just" zombie Cornish Cross birds raised on concrete that haven't seen the light of day cost more. A couple raises organic pastured Poulet Rouge in NY state that sells for $8/lb retail and they sell 125 a week. Some birds in France cost up to $15/lb and beyond. $56 for a 3-4lb chicken split between 4 people seems reasonable, even a bargain if prepared and served with care.

It is unfortunate that good quality food has been made to seem unapproachable and dinner table benchmarks devalued by very mediocre commodity supermarket sustenance that bears little resemblence to foodstuffs eaten just 50 years ago.

TG2015.  The more photogenic fabrications.

Pickled mackerel.  Onion, garlic, rosemary, lemon and a few mustard seeds.

Roasted Virginia chestnuts.

Turkey consommé.  Smokey turkey neck, broccoli and carrots

Caulilower Polonaise.  Yellow, purple and romanesco lathered in white cauliflower and sweet onion soubise

before getting the gratinéed treatment and lemon-toasted breadcrumbs.

A stuffing of sorts.  Vegetables glazed in duck fat with some crusty bread and such.

Turkey leg, liver, gizzard and quince ballotine.

Slowly roasted in gravy with cranberries, chestnuts and Brussels sprouts.

Hot & cold turkey pies.  More gizzards, black truffle, dried cranberries and pecans in savory brown butter pastry.

Star shaped cutters were readily available.

 A "DC" shaped cutter was found in a free-stuff box.

Filled with spiked cider aspic.

It would appear that Momofucku Noodle bar offers starting line cooks a rather standard and anemic $12.50/hr in comparison to the $25-$30-$100,000 fantasy.

Though the 401k swear jar pays off handsomely.

Gerry Hayden.  An employer then friend for the better part of 14 years.  He suffered and held on tenaciously far longed than most would and was generous enough to re-introduce me to the burgeoning bounty of the North Fork, where he moved out to dry out, though he sneaked a drink or 2 in near the end, as well he deserved to. I am pleased to have helped him in his time of need, even if he wasn't to sweet on all the "French shit".

Best version of a lyonnaise salad I've had in either Paris or Lyon. Mintwood Place's roasted chicken consommé was better than the pale broth at Camdeborde's comptoir too.
Yes, rent an apartment and buy food from the storefronts/markets and go to La Grande Epicerie for an epicure's FAO Schwartz experience.
The revelation for Americans traveling to France (and most of Western Europe) for the first time might be that you can buy the same food in the marketplace that you will get in a restaurant. Not so much here.
Go to a fish monger (Aux ecailles d'argent 19th, market at Denfert-Rochereau 14th) and it rivals the Baltimore aquarium or Arthur Ave in the Bronx.
Get an early 3am cab and go to Rungis and you'll never be able to shop at a store again.

Is this last sentence referring to Adams Morgan, or Paris?

Adams Morgan

I think you can get all those dishes at L'Ami Louis. Maybe not the best but certainly the most expensive.

L'Ami Jean gets their tippy-top shelf grass-fed, 4+year old 30-day dry aged beef from the venerable Hugo Desnoyer.  It ain't cheap either.

Go to Le Boudoir (MOF chef 8th), Le Verre Volé (corkage & boudin noir 10th), Du Pain et des Idées (bread 10th), Gilles Verot (charcuterie 6th) and buy foie gras on Ile st Louis at La Petite Scierie to take back home.  Walk around Le Marché D'Aligre and get a bite at L'Ebauchoir in the 12th. All the markets are with the while.

Mintwood's grilled confit calves heart salad is the best version of a Lyonnais salad around.

For example, and this may be a bridge too far, boned and rolled calf head.

So, looking for an uncommonly good butcher shop with a good, old-fashioned butcher. Do they still exist?

In my experience, the USDA will not allow a calf or steer to leave the slaughterhouse with skin still attached to the head (probably out of paranoid fantasies and the consequences of having virtually all beef coming from filthy CAFO's)  and if the animal is killed with a bolt, the cheeks can not be harvested for fear of bone fragments.  That is why you will never find a proper tète de veau -if you are into that.

There little to no demand for uncommonly good butchers or shops.  Most consumers buy center/loin cuts from supermarkets that don't require more than a band saw and a myopic woodsman who traded in their ax.

Surely, if Wiseguy does, in fact, make its own mozz, that must be better than the bevy of cheese-product type things that roll off Sysco trucks across the land?  And, likewise on the sauce...

Just because it is made in a restaurant's own kitchen does not guarantee good quality or taste, at all.   Sysco doesn't make anything, they are just a distributor and while it is fashionable and all but mandatory to goof on them, they sell Paula Lambert mozzarella which can't be any worse than commodity stalwarts BelGioioso or Sorrento "“which many use.

Wiseguys alleges "house made fresh mozzarella" in addition to offering the grande variety. "Making" mozzarella is mundane and rather easy if you buy the curd, which most do. Making  it from raw milk is another matter entirely and, like other cheeses, dry cured meats and products where time, environment, and experience are integral variables of success, are best left to those who do it regularly and know the dance moves.  Perhaps Wiseguys has St. Uguzon on the payroll.

Thank you Dave.  (Insert high-five emoticon).

When available, Frank's páté pantin (not baked in a mold) is a finer farce-fine  of the highest caliber with judicious flavors of truffle, dried fruit, cured meats & game.  Brad at Boundary Rd recently received some recommendations (you're welcome) while experimenting with some lofty inlay ideas "“not sure if he made one; and Savenor's in Cambridge, MA will have their version pimped up/out pro-bono next week.

With that uncertainty in finding a proxy in DC, consider visiting the North Fork Table & Inn and 8 Hands Farm from June onward, where I'll be put out to pasture fabricating stalwart products & antique forcemeats with whimsical zoomorphic gadgetry salvaged from yesteryear.

The other picture has better production value.

They have a trio of crostini on their online bar menu within that orbit.

The clue is, I liked the food here a lot more than Tom Sietsema did.

Not a helpful clue.

A better picture of the Pinea crostinis.

I thought in the past I'd come across a definitive USDA chart which clearly showed primal and sub-primal cuts with their corresponding numbers (e.g., 120 = brisket); I can find lots of charts (just search for "Beef USDA cuts chart"), but not one of them spells out everything.

Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications

Bovine Myology

British equivalents

How little you should be paying for commodity flesh in your supermarket

Serratus Ventralis becomes the ruggedly sounding "Denver Cut", named after the Rocky Mountain Ragamuffin John Denver, who notoriously popularized the cut after demanding it throughout his Muppet Show appearances.  Not many butchers (retail/wholesale) buy whole steers, mostly CAFO primals from out west and it is easier for them to grind all the odd cuts rather than market them to a population that doesn't eat far beyond the loin so the colloquial names become moot folklore.  Parts & Labor only buys whole steers from MD/VA and is one of the few with a rail to hang them.

"Rockfish" is a regional name for striped bass but can refer to nearly a dozen fish throughout the world.  Many other fish differ by name in different regions for reasons that are not in the interest of confusing the consumer.  Meat cut names in Europe vary from town to town.

Speaking of which, has Julien Shapiro landed anywhere in these environs?

Not really. I left that job because I didn't want to go in a different direction that would have compromised what I like to do.  Been watching the original version of The Bridge, napping, reading Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, prequel to Theodore Rex (TR is a personal hero), odd jobs here and there, studying bovine breeds, unlearning Spanish and wishing I was born 20 years earlier. What I've made was never very popular, maybe it didn't have enough appeal or needed better PR and whatnot.  I've made my peace with that. Right now I don't feel like going through the indignity that is starting all over again and cooking in a restaurant for a pittance in what is the wealthiest region on the east coast.  Not many "chef" jobs out there this time of the year and it is hard to work for anyone else after Frank.   We'll see.  Maybe I'll go to art school or become a professional cat teaser.

For the Luddite purists, traditional salade nií§oise does not include haricots verts or cooked potatoes, or any cooked vegetables for that matter. Nice is not in a particularly fertile area and gets little rain.   It is an austere pauper dish comprised of a few raw vegetables: tomatoes (lightly salted), scallions, Cailletier variety olives with the pits (Nií§oise), basil,  then salt-cured anchovy filets in olive oil, a hard boiled egg, the lot dressed with olive oil on a plate rubbed with garlic.  When in season it gets sliced raw purple artichokes, bell peppers and tiny fava beans. Up until the 19^th century tuna was rarely used; too expensive and saved only for the good times.  Escoffier had the audacious idea to gussy it up with green beans and potatoes.  He was born in Villeneuve-Loubet, on the other side of the Loup river and got his knuckles rapped for not being a legitimate Nií§ois.