Today on Gourmet.com:

Rice Burgers: The Ultimate Fast Food

> This failed to dissuade me, so I asked my friend Rob Ketcherside, a software engineer based in Tokyo, about it. “My tastes aren’t particularly refined,” he admitted. Bingo!

In the December issue of Martha Stewart Living, you published a feature by Steve Almond of Candyfreak fame. Almond, who has also written in great detail about his sexual hangups and about Condoleezza Rice, writes:

> Among the countless things that can evoke nostalgia, two tower above the rest: Christmas and candy. The mere mention of either instantly conjures memories of the innocent pleasures of childhood. Combine the two and you have a recipe for old-fashioned bliss. Made by hand and decked out in handsome, easy-to-craft gift packaging that also calls to mind holidays of yesteryear, these retro confections may taste even better than you recommended.

Martha, I can totally write this kind of stuff too, and unlike Steve, I won’t embarrass your corporate empire by publishing collections of dirty short stories. Everything I write is totally safe for work. That’s all I’m saying.

Sincerely,

Matthew Amster-Burton
Seattle

P.S.: Steve, if you’re reading this, I demand to see a piece of easy-to-craft gift packaging that you, personally, crafted.

Since writing a column about knives in October, I’ve continued to obsess. I’m doing my own sharpening now–for real, not like last time.

So this is going to be pretty geeky. After a while of enjoying my current knife, I realized that part of why I like it so much is its lack of a full bolster. Take a look:

That’s the Togiharu Molybdenum 210mm. Did you know it’s currently on sale for $47
at Amazon and makes a great gift? Just checking.

The part I’m pointing to is going to make more sense when you look at the next picture, which is of my old knife (well, it’s similar), a Henckels:

See how the bolster is a thick chunk that extends down to the edge of the blade? This is–and if you own a knife like this, I apologize for dissing it–a design flaw. It means that when you sharpen the knife, eventually you’ll leave a pocket next to the bolster, and the bolster will hit the cutting board first, and you won’t cut all the way through your scallions, and you will cry. Then you’ll have to get the bolster ground down by a professional with power tools. (If you have your own power tools, okay, you win. What would you use for this sort of thing, anyway? Belt sander? Dremel? Router? Garden Weasel?)

Few knives are made with the full bolster anymore. The standard Wusthof and Heckels, basically. My parents have a Messermeister San Moritz, and the thing is heavy, sharp, German–and has a partial bolster.

So, anyway, back when I used the Henckels, I think my resistance to sharpening it myself was that I knew I would be slowly ruining it, and eventually I’d have to pass it off to a pro for bolster surgery anyway. With the Togiharu, okay, I might still screw it up while sharpening, but at least it’s not a sure thing.

Thanks for indulging me here. You’ll be pleased to know that I abandoned an extended skateboarding analogy after Laurie explained to me that my knowledge of skateboarding is perhaps less than current.

As for my current sharpening media:

Norton 1000/4000 grit waterstone

DMT D8X diamond stone

For some reason, Iris finds these sharpening stones completely awesome. It’s not like I would let her try sharpening a knife, but she likes to carry them around and stroke them lovingly and tell Laurie all about them. I guess it’s because one of them comes in a cool box and the other sparkles with real (industrial) diamonds.

I’m working on a column about cider. Did you know that the standard book on cidermaking is by Annie Proulx of _Shipping News_ and _Brokeback Mountain_ fame? It’s true! Here’s what she has to say on the subject of apple brandy:

> There’s a mistaken belief that North American “home” distillers must, by tradition, set up shop along a cool back-hollow stream or in an abandoned warehouse, utilizing ingenious hillbilly-crafted still made of such things as discarded boilers, water heaters, and even car radiators to boil off the “lighnings”–that’s “white” from corn, “Jersey” from apples. Instead, today’s devotees of homemade _eau de vie_ can set up shop in the comfort of their own kitchens. And a highly illegal home shop avocation, and sometimes vocation, it is.

> The ordinary pressure cooker is ideally suited for a secret double identity as outlaw.

Applejack, I wish I knew how to quit you!

I needed a vegetable the other night to go with Iris’s pick, crispy pork on a stick, and it turned out better than you might have expected giving the slapdash nature of the enterprise.

A small purple cabbage, thickly shredded; 2 tablespoons soy sauce; half a cup of white wine; a large amount of minced ginger. Cook in the pressure cooker at high pressure, 6 minutes. Release pressure, season with pepper, and eat. Great color, tons of ginger.

I ate seven pork cubes and was full. Iris ate ten. She has the toothpicks to prove it.