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Don’t Try This At Home

Day #2: Just in case you live in a top-floor Parisian apartment with feeble water pressure, if you’re testing recipes involving baked meringues, I don’t recommend disposing of them here. I hope by tomorrow they’ll finally be gone. UPDATE: March 8 (the next day)—they’re still not gone!

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Taillevent, Illy, Chez Dumonet, and O Chateau Wine Tasting

Taillevant & Le Cave Taillevent Last month I had a fabulous lunch at Taillevent, the recently-demoted three-star restaurant, courtesy of some good friends from the states. But if our lunch was any indication, I don’t know who’s plucking the stars. And at 70€ it’s the deal of the decade: Three courses and lots of little extras. Plus they were very pleased to substitute any of…

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Should You Go To Culinary School?

If you’re thinking about becoming a professional cook, whether or not to go to school may be the ultimate question for you to ponder. There are some very good culinary schools, but in general, I think it’s worth getting some experience either in a restaurant kitchen or bakery before you decide to invest a lot of money in education. Perhaps the work is far more…

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REGIS Chocolatier

Living in a foreign country, as an outsider, you tend to notice lots of contradictions. If you try to learn the native language, like I am, you’ll notice there’s all sorts of curiosities specifically designed to trip your up. When people ask me what I do all day, they don’t realize that just to do something as basic as write a check, I often have…

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Allegedly The Birthplace of Kouign Amann

Anyone who uses iPhoto probably remembers your first thrill of plugging in your digital camera and magically, with no effort at all, having your photos automatically downloaded for you. Then they’re neatly filed on your computer so you can view, cut, or paste your memories until your heart’s content. It’s great for the first few times, but once you’ve hit a certain number of photos,…

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What vanilla should I buy?

I sometimes get messages from people pointing me to bargain deals they find on vanilla beans online, but I’m happy to spend a bit more on the top-quality beans that my friend Patricia Rain sources, someone who’s dedicated herself to doing the right thing for the native farmers by working to ensure that the producers she works with get their fair-share of the profits. I…

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Pastry Chef Sherry Yard

With all due respects, the first time I met Sherry Yard, I was squirming in my seat. I was sitting in the originally Spago, in West Hollywood, overlooking the city of Los Angeles. The room was filled with celebrities, but I remember getting special treatment. I arrived in my best; a well-tailored Italian wool suit that I hoped made me fit in a little better…

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Blog+Spam x Server=No Email

You may have noticed a couple of explicit comments here on the site (more than the usual ones that I leave…) Although I’ve closed comments for older posts due to spam, now they’re appearing in recent ones, which I delete as soon as possible. (Yesterday I deleted 4785 junk messages.) I’m adding a comment verification feature shortly which should alleviate the problems, since I welcome…

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Sunday Stuff

Global Warming=More Ice Cream I recently recommend an ice cream maker to one of my friends. It was the model I used to test many of the recipes for my upcoming book, the Cuisinart ICE-50. He then sent me a message that Amazon is currently selling reconditioned models of this machine for just $129! (That’s $270 off the list price.) That’s an amazing price for…

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