Morning Flight Scones

I am flying to Washington D.C. in about two hours, and decided to make some scones for the morning's fun. For someone who is so good at bread, I have a surprising amount of trouble with pie crust and its brothers, scones and biscuits. Where is the lift of other scones here? On the other hand, these taste and feel like scones as I've had them in England, so maybe it's everyone else who is screwing them up. I can't shake the feeling, though, that they should have risen higher and more evenly.

Still delicious. The recipe is from the King Arthur book.

Real Fast Food

Here is my comment over at Bittman's place recommending Nigel Slater's "Real Fast Food" (one of the great, underappreciated cookbooks of the last twenty years, in my view):

I think of Nigel Slater’s “Real Fast Food” as a sort of a minimalist for the British taste. Mustardy sardines and kippers on toast, rarebit, potatoes baked and scooped out, and then stuffed again with cream and cheese, pages of sauces for simple, poached, salmon. It’s the food that helped me learn to cook, that fed me in college, and that I turned to as a graduate student. “Real Fast Food” is what I would take with me into a nuclear shelter, faced with cooking tuna forever, but my copy is also dog eared and circled and wrinkled with stray splashes of soy here in the real world too. Slater’s other books are good, but other people take nice pictures too. “Real Fast Food” is a lifesaver.

Starbucks Sandwiches

I said more than a year ago now that "Starbucks' effort to corner some of the breakfast market [through warmed breakfast sandwiches] will fail utterly".

I realize I'm bragging, but it has proceeded to fail utterly.

Schultz already has said he's killing the ballyhooed breakfast sandwiches and says he hasn't ruled out dropping more foods.

UPDATE: I now realize there is a "Save the Starbucks Breakfast Sandwich" website. I should say, amid all this gloating, that they were actually very good sandwiches. Just completely inconsistent with the chain, with no connection to the market, etc, etc.

UPDATE 2: And here is the discussion I had with PG on the comments at Crescat Sententia. Pretty good stuff, I think. We should be hired.

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I had the impression that the pastries at Starbucks were reasonably popular, actually -- at least I've had them several times, whereas I think I've ventured upon a sandwich once and never again. Pastries go with a Starbucks drink, or can be an alternative when you're meeting a coffee addict there and feeding your own sugar jones. I'm not sure whether meatier breakfast food goes with Starbucks coffee; eggs and bacon seem vaguely downmarket. I wouldn't bother making coffee at home, and pastries really are a lot of trouble, but I can fry eggs and bacon with little effort.

Posted by PG at January 11, 2007 04:31 AM
PG - I think the pastries are indeed reasonably popular, but not at breakfast, perhaps. Or not popular enough. As a matter of taste, I think they vary wildly from decent to bad.

As to the second point, I agree with you, but clearly there is a market out there for egg frying with coffee. i.e, Mcdonald's. Where I think Starbucks is going wrong is that they're fiddling with the "do one clean, simple , high margin thing well" model. (let's leave for another day the debate over whether they do that thing well or not). Now they have 5,000 super speed cooking machines eating into their margins. I think that way live starbucks frozen pizzas, and trouble.

Posted by Raffi at January 11, 2007 08:32 AM
Yes, I think the egg/bacon/cheese frying with coffee market is essentially a low margin one, and it doesn't sound like McD's is raising the price of coffee even as it raises the level of quality. So people who are shopping based on price will continue to go to McD's for breakfast. Starbucks essentially is just trying to get the customers it already has for coffee to buy more. The main problem I see is trying to train staff to do more than one thing well. My friends who like coffee claim that at Dunkin Donuts is actually very good, but that it's more trouble than Starbucks because DD doesn't train its staff to focus on coffee, but on serving up donuts.

Posted by PG at January 12, 2007 01:48 AM

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Just a (honest) question about Mark Bittman's "Sticky Toffee Pudding". Aren't most puddings, in the British sense, a) steamed and b) made with suet? I realize that the answer may be that people don't eat suet anymore, and steaming is a waste of time, but I'm just wondering whether we aren't losing something. Or, perhaps, sticky toffee pudding is just named that, and was always baked like a cake.

Yogurt Cake

Meg of Too Many Chefs makes a chocolatey yogurt cake, based on a yogurt cake which both she and I got from Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini. It is a delicate, simple cake, and to the overstimulated American palate is really almost a quickbread. But it is delicious nonetheless.

And the best part is that it is especially easy, and fast - just the thing to whip up for colleagues on Friday afternoon. Contrary to Clotilde, I like it especially after a day in foil, when it gets less crusty (which I normally crave), and the moisture from the yogurt distributes, leaving what I would almost describe as the texture of the syrup soaked semolina desserts that so characterize lebanese (and Greek, and Turkish, and Syrian) cooking. Delightful.

Pet Peeves

Frank Bruni asks about our restaurant pet peeves. I agree with many of those already mentioned, and especially with waiters who take away one person's food without waiting for everyone at the table to finish. When I'm paying so much money, I don't expect to be treated as if I'm in a cafeteria.

Having said that, why do waiters ever ask if everything is ok? What exactly, is this supposed to accomplish? If the food is good, then I'd like to be left alone to enjoy it. If the food is bad, but not bad enough to send back, I'll tell everyone I can about the bad food. but there's nothing you can do. And, of course, if the food is so bad I need to send it back, you'll know. So what does asking me accomplish? In reality, the waiter's question is more of an ultimatum than anything else - speak now, or forever hold your peace. I disagree.