This recipe for crab salad on brioche makes any picnic festive. My advice is to assemble the sandwich just before you serve it to prevent the brioche from getting soggy.

Today's recipe--curried duck and mango sandwiches--is easier to make than it may sound.

The secret? You don't have to cook the duck. Make your way to a Chinese market and buy a succulent cooked Peking duck for these sweet-and-spicy sandwiches. (Alternatively, substitute four sautéed duck breast halves.)

Heartfelt thanks to all of you who wrote such supportive replies to my recent posts.

Here's a little giveback from the kitchen of the Ryland Inn. It's the first of four of my favorite recipes, which I'll be posting in coming days.

The other day, I was cooking at an elaborate special event in New Jersey. The adrenaline was pumping. In the frenzy of activity, I felt close to my “old friends”: the energy, the aromas, the heat, the pressure of the kitchen. After scrutinizing and adjusting every dish, I walked out on the floor and was greeted so kindly, so warmly---by quite a few of you---that my heart nearly burst.

"Will the Ryland Inn ever reopen?" People ask me this question all the time, along with two others: "Why is it taking so long?" and "When will it reopen?"

My family and I recently returned from a visit to Newport, R.I. At this time of year the weather alternates between brooding melancholy and wondrous full sun.

With crag and bluff, the rugged isthmus between playful Narragansett Bay and the brooding Atlantic brings to mind the Scottish Highlands. Traipsing up to the lighthouse, you notice the wizened, vine-entangled trees agelessly defying the headwinds. All about you is water.You cannot help but contemplate the stuff.

Water again came to mind during our tour of the Breakers—the 70-room, Italian Renaissance-style palazzo of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. In the magnate’s marble bathroom, I marveled at his 3,000-pound, hand-carved marble bathtub with its four polished nickel taps for hot and cold running salt water as well as fresh water.

It reminded me of a calamitous Mother’s Day incident at the Ryland Inn, involving conspicuous consumption of expensive water.

Today almost no world-class chef disputes the superiority of low-temperature protein cookery. In spite of their credentials, they were almost entirely ignored by the rest of the population.
 
In this post, I’ll tell you why.

The trouble started more than a century ago with the absolutely false notion that “searing meat locks in the juices.” 

In restaurant and home kitchens to this day one hears, “If a little searing locks in juices, then a lot of searing will lock in even more!” Or, “If an 800°F broiler sears the outside of the steak decently, a 1,600°F broiler will sear it that much better.”

But anyone who has grilled a steak might well ask, “If searing locks in juices, how come the seared meat weeps juice all over the plate, while the raw meat barely weeps at all?”

For 25 years, I have heard words to that effect from many parents. My answer usually goes like this:

“Being a chef can be an exceptionally rewarding career, especially at the high end. It is still possible for someone to reach the top at a relatively young age, though it is becoming more and more difficult.”

The next questions usually are, "Cooking school or college?"

"Can a great palate be acquired? Or do you have to be born with it?"

And, "How long does it take to achieve mastery as a chef?"

The answers are complicated, and people are often surprised by what I tell them.

Let's take the questions one at a time.

Hello, Class. I hope my last post didn't make you feel you were back in Chem 101. Today I promise to be a teeny bit less technical. But I am still going to rant, this time about marinades and frozen fowl.

Perhaps the most discussed “innovation” of the last few years is the technique of brining a turkey before roasting. Adherents claim that submerging the whole bird in heavily salted water overnight produces moister and more tender meat on the plate.

Does it work?

Yes, to some degree.

Unfortunately, it has drawbacks as well. I am inclined to believe that the results people are getting have more to do with lower roasting temperatures in the new brining recipes and less to do with the brining itself.

Every hip menu today seems to have a section devoted to “small plates.” Some restaurants are even replacing the traditional three-course menu with a variety of appetizer-size dishes that can be ordered in any sequence or even all at once. But as any devotee of tapas or dim-sum knows, there is nothing new about small plates.

The streets of New Haven being less charming than the bucolic beach roads of New Hampshire and Maine to a cyclist with now other aspirations, the green bike was eventually, after having served dutifully many thousand miles, stored away.

I was driving on 287 the other day when I spied a green mountain bike strapped to the back of a car. It filled me with a warming wave of nostalgia. It was the particular shade of green—celeste green—that brought the memories flooding back.

I'm not the type to dance with a lampshade over my head, but I have my own form of over-the-top end-of-holidays merry-making. I get a sudden craving for English romantic poetry. But being a chef I have to substitute my own ingredients while keeping the form. So here is "Ode on a Greasy Spoon," with deepest apologies to John Keats (whose original, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," follows immediately after).

Welcome to “Breaking Eggs,” a web log about food, wine, and gastronomy from the viewpoint of a veteran chef. That would be me.