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Dry-cured sausages are uncooked and hung to age in all their smelly, molding glory. Very few people  still make them due to health regulations, which are in place to address food safety concerns but can adversely affect the flavor that would result from a traditional curing process, which has been developed over thousands of years. Instead, vendors are buying them from commercial producers, some of whom offer only a cooked variant. The Times has a list of the places to get the real thing in New York.

Cured culatello, said to be a prince among pork products, and Armandino Batali (father of chef Mario Batali) learned how to make it in Italy and produces the $35/pound treat in his Seattle Store. He faces some of the same regulatory challenges as the salami makers (above).

Sometimes the desire for precision that a pastry chef has can be useful to savory chefs, especially when recreating recipes. Iacopo Falai, both chef and pastry chef, lets himself wing it - just a little bit - when preparing dessert, especially when dessert is disguised as a salad.  Salad then takes a turn as dessert in celery pudding cakes with strawberry rhubarb compote.

The minimalist, Mark Bittman, talks about fat vs thin asparagus and then cooks some.

Frank Bruni dines at Crema and gives it 1 star.

The next Le Cirque is scheduled to open on May 30.

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The second episode of Top Chef ran Wednesday night on Bravo. The bulk of the episode took place inside a fetish shop in San Francisco, since the main challenge involved making a sexy dessert. It was interesting to see some of the contestants cutting loose among the latex-clad party goers - one of which was RuPaul - while others were clearly out of their comfort zone. But as usual, there were two challenges on which the contestants were judged.

The first, quick challenge for immunity, dealt with presentation and the chefs were asked to make a fruit plate in 30 minutes. Elizabeth Faulkner of San Francisco's Citizen Cake served as the judge for this challenge. Some of the chefs really didn't seem to understand that not only were they making a fruit plate, but that they were competing against other people, so originality was important. Half of the chefs had garnished their plates with pineapple tops, which Ms. Faulkner didn't like, and the majority of the other plates looked very similar. She criticized some plates for looking like they were part of a buffet. The three top plates were Cynthia's, which was minimalist and used papaya seeds as a garnish, Harold's, which showcased his knife skills, and Stephen's, which used fruit and herb combinations served in espresso cups. Stephen won purely on originality; his presentation was gorgeous.