"best" news and stories

At the end of the year, restaurant critics usually put together lists of the top restaurants - or the top dishes in Frank Bruni's case - creating a new "hit list" of restaurants for their city for the next year. San Francisco's list includes Dosa, Nopa, Coi, Kaygetsu and Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. Seattle has cheap eats on their list, as well as pricier places, as does New York. All are surely fine eateries, but these lists are not the be-all and end-all of dining in their respective cities. Are your favorite restaurants included?

Restaurants are left off because they aren't trendy, aren't new or are just plain overlooked and I know that some places that I like to eat don't always make the cut. I'm not saying that this makes them the best restaurants in any given city, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve some recognition. Is anyone up for making our own list of reader favorites from around the country/world? List some of your favorite restaurants in the comments (along with a city and/or website, if applicable) and we'll see if we can't come up with something even better than the standard newspaper top tens.

Rounding out their year of travel and restaurant reviews, Gayot has put out their list of the top restaurants of 2006. Interestingly enough, the way they attempt to give credibility to their list is by putting down bloggers and people who, in their opinion, are too young inexperienced to know a good restaurant when they see one. But to be a really top restaurant, it should be able to appeal to all types of people, not just those who are old with potentially outdated ideas of what high quality cuisine should be. That being said, their list actually has quite a few good picks on it and certainly seems to be in touch with current dining trends. In fact, it pretty much looks like they just picked out some of the hottest spots in the country to make up their list. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Some highlights from their list include the following, but click here to read the whole thing.

• CHICAGO
  - Alinea, TRU
• HEALDSBURG, CA
  - Cyrus
• LAS VEGAS
  - Picasso, Restaurant Guy Savoy
• LOS ANGELES
  - Mélisse, Patina
• NEW YORK
  - Alain Ducasse, Daniel
• SAN FRANCISCO
  - Gary Danko, Michael Mina
• WASHINGTON, D.C.
  - CityZen, Michel Richard
• YOUNTVILLE, CA
  - The French Laundry

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Cook's Illustrated is definitely one of the best resources for any food-related technical questions. They test everything - from ingredients to recipes - exhaustively, so you are basically guaranteed a good result just by following their meticulous instructions. Most of the sections on their website require a subscription, so unless you get the magazine through the mail or register with them, your access to their vast resources will be limited to the few things that they keep in the free section of their site. Fortunately, a great article called Mastering Turkey Gravy is available just in time for Thanksgiving. They talk about equipment, as well as the major components of the dish, before getting down to the recipe and the technique. Their recipe calls for a quick turkey stock, a roux to thicken the sauce and the addition of the pan drippings to get the maximum flavor. Take a look at the whole article before the season ends ad it goes back behind the pay wall.

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Since we were talking about the best apples to use in making pies last week, it put me in the mood to make one myself. I love making pies because, even though there is some prep work involved, the procedure is very straightforward. Also, I really enjoy making homemade pie crust. It's fun to get your fingers dirty and a flaky, homemade crust is better than one you can buy at the store - especially because you can taste the work that went into making it.

If you've never made a homemade pie before, winter is the perfect time to start and apple is the best kind to start with. Not only are the apples easy to work with, but the fact that the weather is colder makes it easier to handle the dough for the crust. In summer, you need to work faster to keep the butter from melting as you work it in to the flour. After the jump, you'll find a photo-heavy, step-by-step guide to making both the crust and the whole pie. I make my crusts with a combination of shortening (non-hydrogenated, for those who are concerned) and butter. The combination of butter, which adds flavor and some leavening, and shortening, which adds tenderness and flakiness will produce the best crusts. I use a 3-1 ratio, so not much shortening is needed.

The best apple for making a pie, or any sort of baked apple dish, is not necessarily the type that is best for eating out of hand for several reasons. When you choose an eating apple, the primary consideration is flavor, but even though flavor is reasonably important to the apple destined to go into a pie, the most important thing is texture. A pie apple must keep its shape during baking so that you have something to bite into and don't end up with apple sauce pie. The best apples for pies include Jonathan, Jonagold, Winesap, Pippin, and the classic Granny Smith. All, excluding the fairly tart Granny Smith, have a moderate level of tartness, which will be tempered by the sugar in your pie. If you want sweeter apples, Fuji, Pink Lady, Suncrisp, Rome Beauty, and Empire will work well, too. You will probably want to avoid Red Delicious apples, which are popular for eating, but won't hold their shape in the oven, turning watery and mealy instead.

If all else fails, it is a good idea to go for a mixture of apples, not only because you won't have to remember to look for one particular type, but to give the pie a well-rounded flavor.

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