Like so many chefs now obsessed with nose-to-tail cooking, Michael Psilakis offers whole pig, lamb or goat for private parties at his new Eos at the recently opened Viceroy Miami. The fun twist: Instead of turning the animals on a spit by the Viceroy's infinity pool, his chefs cook them indoors in their mammoth double-stack Rational Combi Ovens. "I love to use a spit, but it's kind of barbaric," Psilakis says; the open coals don't allow for nearly as much control over moisture and temperature as the Rational ovens. But don't expect Psilakis to offer indoor-cooked whole animals at his new Manhattan gastropub Gus & Gabriel or at his New York City flagship, Anthos. His New York kitchens, he says, just don't have the room.

Click here for Psilakis' Grilled Pork Tenderloin; For more recipes from Psilakis, look for his forthcoming cookbook, How to Roast a Lamb (on shelves in October), in which he shares his vivid memories of slaughtering goats for spit-roasting as a kid in suburban Long Island.

I've always wondered what it's like to be an ambitious, charismatic and kleptomaniac chef. Last night I lived out my fantasy by playing The Sims 3, the newly released version of the popular life-simulation computer game The Sims, now with special features for the virtual foodie.

Using the Create-A-Sim tool, I came up with an avatar that has the above-mentioned personality traits. My Sim self reads cookbooks (such as Cooking Vol. 2: Why You Need Baking Soda), takes cooking classes at the local grocery store and practices making everything from mac and cheese to sushi, all in an effort to move up from Kitchen Scullion to Celebrated Five-Star Chef at Little Corsican Bistro.

So far, things are going pretty well in my virtual life: I’ve eaten pancakes and waffles for breakfast every day, gotten promoted twice and "acquired" new furniture for my home (OK, so I stole lamps and chairs from the bistro, but kleptomania is an acceptable mental disorder in The Sims 3). I just hope my stealing habit won't derail my culinary aspirations.

I like making candy in a saucier ( a round-bottomed sauce pan) because it's easy to stir into the corners. The only problem, and this exists for candy-making in all sauce pans, is that the candy thermometer gets in the way while stirring, even if it's clipped to the side. Making toffee yesterday (all day, I might add) I cursed a blue streak stirring with my right hand while holding the thermometer with my left. Boiling sugar is NO fun to mess around with, I can assure you.

I finally gave up on the spoon and started stirring with the thermometer-practical, but not completely effective-and thought, someone should invent a spoon/thermometer hybrid. Then, with the magic of Google and a little dumb luck, I found the FMP Spoon Thermometer.
While I haven't yet used this example of American ingenuity (yes, it still exists), I can only marvel at its potential place in my kitchen.

A day after my lunch at Manhattan’s fantastic wd-50, I’m still thinking about the spicy pulled pork served on cornbread toasts, the smoky corn chowder and the rich Grand Marnier chocolate fondue. Not just because they were all delicious but also because, remarkably, they were all prepared in a Panasonic microwave. Panasonic recently partnered with the Culinary Institute of America to develop these and more than a dozen other recipes. The purpose of the lunch was to introduce the recipes to editors and to talk up Panasonic's patented Inverter technology. While other microwaves turn energy on and off when working at lower settings (creating that distinctive whirring noise), Panasonic units maintain a constant energy flow for better cooking. If you try one of the new recipes (all available online), shoot me an email to let me know what you think.

Not long ago, I discovered that pecans and walnuts (two very fatty and delicate nuts) toast beautifully in the microwave. This morning, with no time to preheat the oven for a meager handful of hazelnuts, I decided to put the microwave method to the test. Well, it worked like a charm—mostly. For 1/2 cup of raw, unblanched hazelnuts, I set the timer for two minutes, which was a tiny bit long. A few of the nuts were too dark to use, but most were perfect. The nuts cooled more quickly, the skins blistered and were magically easier to remove. In the future, I think I'll do 30-second intervals (which is good for all nuts) to control the toasting.

This idea comes from New York chef Mark Bello, the amazing pizza maverick behind the in-home caterer Pizza a Casa. Mark sometimes offers his phenomenal pizza-making classes to kids as well as adults. When it's time to slice the Alleva salted mozzarella for his margarita pizzas, Mark gives the kids these Zyliss lettuce knives. Designed to prevent lettuce from browning where cut, the sturdy, serrated plastic knives are also a safe alternative to metal knives for slicing avocadoes, almost any cheese and even the bananas on Bello's signature caramelized banana, pine nut and Nutella dessert pizzas.

A Nintendo cooking utensil? Well, not quite, but today the company releases a new spring Cooking Bundle that might be perfect for Mom -- or a Dad or Kid who wants a DS-Lite (Nintendo's portable gaming console) under the guise of generous Mother's Day giving. The Bundle comes with one DS Lite, one fetching carrying case (pictured), and a copy of Nintendo's recent instructional program Personal Trainer: Cooking. As part of our food tech roundup in the March issue, Kristin Donnelly and I tried out the program. It held an impressive amount of information in a small machine: It walks you through over 245 recipes, with instructional videos and shopping lists. But I think my favorite part of the package might be the bag.

Our awesome kitchen assistant, Brian Malik, is also a total film buff. Here, he gives a glimpse into the best recent tag sale for food lovers:

This weekend I decided to trek down to Williamsburg because I heard there was a liquidation sale of props and set dressings for the upcoming film, Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as the late, great Julia Child and Amy Adams as blogger Julie Powell. Housed in a seedy warehouse on Dobbin St., the sale consisted of clothes, copper cookware, books, chinaware and stoves, plus boxes upon boxes of whisks, measuring spoons and spatulas that were all part of the film’s many set dressings, including a recreation of Child’s home kitchen in Cambridge. (The real one is exhibited at the Smithsonian). I spoke briefly with Gay Howard, the film’s art department coordinator, who told me that the hardest part was finding the right vintage stoves to match the film’s many time periods—some were shipped from as far away as France. I made one purchase: a copper jam funnel for $10, and upon returning home I discovered it is currently retailing for $89 on Amazon.com. I’ll be clutching it with pride next year when Ms. Streep picks up her third Oscar.

The problem is, when you become a tea freak—when you discover you rely upon a floral First Flush Darjeeling in the a.m., a sweet lemony Sencha in the afternoon and maybe even a little of the ethereal Ceylon Silver Tips at night—not only do you feel a little sheepishly pretentious, but you have to spend a lot of time watching water boil, since the best pure teas have their own precise brewing temperatures. The guidelines are easy enough to remember: Boiling water yields the tastiest blacks, 175° does it for greens and 160° for whites. But it's really embarrassing (not to mention discouraged in certain old wives' tales) to stand around watching a pot boil. Yet that's what you have to do to stop the kettle at the proper temperature, unless you have money to spend on Fine-T's awesome precision tea brewer, or Zojirushi's dreamy fuzzy logic water heaters.  Which many tea freaks don't, because they've spent all their money on good tea. Thankfully, or rather hallelujah, because ChefsChoice has come to the rescue — with their $99.95 electric SmartKettle. It's not the fastest, nor the most intuitive to set up, but it looks beautiful, it's cordless, and without anybody watching, it brings water to any temperature you want between 122° and 212° F for up to 20 minutes before it shuts itself off. I'm smitten. And off to have a Sencha.

 

I have a cooking-pot fetish that sometimes veers into the problematic. Particularly when I live in a 300-square-foot Brooklyn studio that doesn't, at first blush, seem the ideal home for 20-odd pots and pans, and growing (what can I say—I'm trying to keep up with Paula Wolfert). I try to exercise restraint and keep myself to just one of everything. So it's always a thrill when a new line of pots comes out, giving me the excuse to make room for one more. This month BlueStar, the oven company formerly known as Garland, has released a new line of aluminum-lined stainless steel skillets and saucepans. They claim the cookware is designed to work on their restaurant-grade home stoves, i.e., to withstand 22,000 BTUs of heat. I don't have an oven that cranks out 22,000 BTUs, but I do like the even cooking of the thick-bottomed saucepan we informally tested here. I also liked its balanced heft and its smooth, rounded handle, which didn't heat up with the rest of the pan. The helper-handle seemed a little extraneous for such a small pot, but its extra-large dimensions do give your fingers plenty of clearance if you like to use them.