Kyocera makes ceramic knives. The advantages of ceramic knives are that they remain sharp for a lot longer than their metallic counterparts. They are also significantly lighter (which some people prefer, but I prefer heavier knives), and they are a little more delicate (meaning, you don't want to use them on product that could potentially damage the knife (meaning frozen foods, or anything with bones). I say all of this, only because I was recently reminded of this knife, and I wanted to hunt down the original FAQ, which included something that I find very entertaining:
Q: The peeler is great! How come you don't make a shaver?
A: Too dangerous! A metal razor blade has a relatively "rounded" edge (under the microscope) which prevents the blade from cutting into the skin. A ceramic razor blade, however, does not have a rounded edge and slices into the skin. Thus, a ceramic shaver would be too dangerous to use. Several engineers in Sendai who tested prototypes can confirm this painful fact!
A quick disclaimer: I don't much care about the morality of sound judgement of comparing bankers/customers/anyone to Hitler or Stalin.
A bunch of online outlets are linkbaiting the crap out of this Bataligate bullshit. It's lazy, layup blog-o-journalism, taking advantage of the current political climate along with riling up the primary readership of financial trades.
Despite having apologized for comments comparing bankers to Stalin and Hitler, the internet backlash against Mario Batali rages on. Yelpers have been dropping one-star reviews for his New York restaurants; the #BoycottBatali and #BataliGate hashtags on Twitter are blowing up; financial types are trashing his restaurants on Bloomberg terminals; and bankers are bad-mouthing the chef in the Wall Street Journal: "I must have spent more than $5,000 on his stupid black truffles over the years, and now he says I'm Hitler?!"
They reference four sources: Yelp, Twitter, Bloomberg Terminals and the WSJ. Let's actually look at those sources:
Yelp
While Yelp ostensibly does not allow reviews that have nothing to do with, you know, actually eating at a restaurant, the ratings for Batali's New York restaurants Babbo and Del Posto have taken a bit of a beating since BataliGate began. Two Yelp users in particular, James P and Steve G, seem to be leaving generically bad reviews on the restaurants, but a (since removed) ad by one Joe D. doesn't mess around with the fakery, calling Batali "idiocy in orange crocs."
I did a quick check, and Yelp may have deleted reviews, but so far there have been a total of three negative reviews of Del Posto since this came out and a total of six reviews of Babbo. If you heard "Yelpers have been dropping one-star reviews for his New York restaurants", would you think nine bad reviews, some from the same person?
Twitter
the #BoycottBatali and #BataliGate hashtags on Twitter are blowing up; ... a select list of tweets
Maybe I got this wrong, but a search of twitter as of earlier today showed a just over a total of 200 tweets combined. Also, not mentioned in this is that a fair number of said tweets are overall neutral or supportive of Mario Batali.
How do I know? I scored each tweet. Yes. I read all of that shit, and scored it positive, neutral or negative. You can even check my numbers.
Of the 193 tweets from a total of the 159 users who "blew up" the #boycottbatali and #bataligate hashtags, I could only determine 75 of them to be clearly negative. 53 of them were overwhelmingly positive. Let's assume the margin of error is 100%. That would 193 negative tweets.
I bet Bourdain's scrotum had more of a negative response on twitter.
Wall Street Journal
The WSJ got quotes from two bankers reacting negatively to being compared to Hitler or Stalin. Probably not hard to do. Their coverage was pretty balanced, but you know, is this really a story?
Bloomberg
I don't really have access to the data they reference, and you know, if there is a place where you are going to see the heat on something like this, it will be on Bloomberg terminals. I totally believe there will be a bunch of negative reviews piling up there.
Conclusion
I am not naive. The people that were supportive of batali during this twempest are probably no more likely to eat at his restaurants because of what he said. And people with a negative response are less likely to eat at his restaurant (assuming that they ever were going to go). I believe this will cost him some business in the short run.
My issue is not about the finance industry or Mario Batali. It is with the total number of articles dedicated to this bullshit.
Whats worse is that I just wrote about it, continuing these shenanigans.
I don't really share recipes on this blog. It just isn't what I do. But, today is different. Just like the last time I posted a recipe. But this time, I blame a providence of Michaels. I read Michael Ruhlman's post on french onion soup, and Michael Nagrant tweeted about reuben soup.
The trick with doing a dish like this is honoring the souls of these iconic dishes without being constricted by them. So...
What is french onion soup?
How can anyone forget the first time they had french onion soup? Molten cheese bubbling on top of crouton floating over a rich, deep caramelized onion broth. The flavors muted only by the burning sensation in your mouth, not realizing that this soup was just sitting underneath a jet-engine-hot broiler.
How about a reuben?
The reuben is an iconic sandwich of the jewish deli (*). Corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and russian dressing layered between two slices of caraway studded rye bread. Then the whole sandwich gets the grilled cheese treatment. Crisped golden brown in a pan with some butter. Anything else is bullshit.
(*) Weird because it certainly isn't kosher, what with the beef and cheese.
French Reuben Soup (Serves 6-ish)
I love this dish because it gives you a lot of places to sneak in the familiar flavors of both of these dishes. I do it a little differently every time I make it, sneaking a little caraway seed or powder somewhere new. Architecturally speaking, we are going to make a soup base by combining caramelized onions and shallot mixture with a corned beef broth. Then we are going to float an open faced reuben on top of the soup and melt the cheese in the broiler.
Corned Beef Broth
4 ounces of Corned Beef (chopped)
288 grams of Mirepoix
8 cups water
2 tsp caraway
1 tbs olive oil
1. Toast caraway seed in a dry pan
2. Remove caraway seeds and add olive oil
3. When the oil is hot, add the caraway seeds
4. After about thirty seconds add the mirepoix.
6. After the mirepoix starts to caramelize, add the corned beef.
First of all, great article in the Boston Globe on the pervasive mislabeling of fish. My one criticism with the piece is the following sentence:
The Globe found escolar being sold as white tuna, super-white tuna, or albacore at merchants such as FuGaKyu in Brookline, Kowloon in Saugus, H Mart supermarket in Burlington, and Oishii Sushi Bar in Chestnut Hill.
While it is true that the FDA's Seafood List says that you can't sell escolar as white tuna, it is unfair to single out out places for selling escolar as white tuna or super white tuna when it is a pervasive industry practice. Now, selling it as albacore tuna is more dodgy, because as I have written about before, there is a genuine sushi bar distinction between albacore and escolar.
The noble frodnesor tagged me in to the link-baity "My Seven Links" internet cage meme. And while the speed of the internet is light-speed, the speed of a Pablo post is still all USPS baby. So while I am pretty sure this meme is dead, I am a sucker for the lay-up blog post. Of course, this took two hours to write. Why? Because I just reread a lot of my posts. Which I think is why this meme worked. It was really nice to stumble down memory lane, I definitely saw some posts that are totally horrifying, but then I also saw a lot of posts I had forgotten about, and were surprisingly, not shitty.
My Most Beautiful Post
This is a tough call. Like the aforementioned frod, I am pictorially-challenged. At first I was thinking that some of my travel posts like Taco, Epoisses or Paris, where I managed to take some quality shots. Of course, Ultimately, I think I have to give it to my initial thoughts on the SousVide Supreme Demi, which is really a short rib photo shoot, or my white tuna post, where I compare albacore tuna fillets and escolar. I guess I have to pick one, so fuck it, it goes to the white tuna post.
This one is a no brainer, it's my magnum-poopus. I wrote a post on the dangers of eating escolar. Sort of off-topic for what I pretend my blog is about, but this finely crafted post came from somewhere deep inside of me. It contained a crap-ton of research, as it was supposed to be my first blog post. But on the shelf it sat. When I finally completed it, it had the trifecta: Funny, Informative and Gross. If you want to know what I love about the post, it is that it launch a bazillion hilarious comments.
If I am a one-hit wonder, this is my "I'm too sexy"
My most controversial post also has the distinction of being my first post as well as being one of the posts that makes me cringe to read. I wrote a blog post about how Miracle Connect had mishandled customers Miracle Berry supply issues. While they definitely mishandled it, I think I come off like a livejournal blogger writing emo-etry. That being said, Grub Street linked to me on my first post.
I really pride myself on not being helpful or instructive. There were some exceptions to that, including my two part guide on building a polysciencesmoke gun, or my recipe for making roasted garlic powder. I also took my notes from the ideas in food class on liquid nitrogen. And while I think people seemed to really find my sous vide equipment posts really useful, I found my post on Umami, Kokumi and the Taste Map the most helpful post. Why? Cause I still thought that the taste map was actually how our sense of taste worked.
I don't really think I have had that many like blow-my-mind successes. But I wrote a tiny little post about edible cups that got a lot of traffic out of nowhere. I wish I had more to say about it, but the post was as disposable as the cups.
This one is also an easy one. I wrote what I thought was a barn burner similar to the Escolar post. I spent a crap-ton of time trying to figure out why Count Rumford was credited with inventing sous vide cooking. There was no easy to find citation, and yet it was one of the first facts in the sous vide Wikipedia page. Then I took that excellent nugget of research and batter dipped it in the funny. You should read this post now, and tell me how everyone got it wrong.
I would actually say that the escolar post or the Count Rumford post are really the top two. But I think I can't repeat or my phone will ring, someone will say "7 links" in a spooky voice and then a scary lady will come out of my tv and freeze me. As such, I think I have to go with either my shark fin controversy post for calling it as I see it, or some of my funnier lil bits like my post on chicken and rose flavor pairings or really, my mini screenplay on ordering technique featuring Frank Bruni, Snoop Dogg, Pickled Jalapeno and myself.
