I'm sorry, I'm finding this exchange to be hilarious. Have you ever actually made a béchamel sauce? Or any au gratin dish? Have you ever prepared potatoes in this fashion? Because it sounds like you're just parroting info that you've gleaned from food52, Harold McGee, or Serious Eats, and not actual cooking and…

You're seriously overthinking this. Béchamel has been used for this purpose since before Éscoffier codified the mother sauces—and for good reason, it works!

It's not ill-advised at all. Using a béchamel to make this dish is traditional for a reason—it works and tastes delicious. The consistency is fine too. I mean, where did you get the idea that using béchamel would be "ill-advised?"

Béchamel is perfect for au gratin/scalloped potatoes. Perfect. The author was correct when he called his version of sauce for this dish "half-assed." There's no reason not to make a quick béchamel, and have it properly seasoned and ladled over the potatoes as you build the casserole...unless you're half-assing it. ;)

If you're using a waxy potato like Yellow Finns, Yukon Golds, or white or red potatoes, they simply don't hold enough starch to really thicken the sauce. Béchamel is the perfect answer for this dish since you can make it as thin or as thick as you'd like. I find a layer of potatoes covered with a layer of sauce to be…

That's exactly what you should do! Use a béchamel sauce instead of just cream w/some flour in it. That way you can make sure that your sauce is properly seasoned so that your potatoes—famous salt hogs they are—taste good when cooked.

And the chin. I have a feeling that the cleft chin is entirely illusory.

Right? I have no idea how he does it, and I find it totally flummoxing. I mean, I'll read toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, cereal boxes...if it has words, I will read it. ;)

People in the cities, perhaps, but people in rural areas who still think that the people in hazmat suits are coming to infect them and would rather listen to their local witch doctor? Fat chance.

I'd say that 90% of the problem is that he simply refuses to read like most people do. He'll look at a box, but won't actually absorb any information. It'll take asking him direct, probing questions about the instructions (amounts, temperature) on the box that forces him to finally read the damn thing. As someone who…

You may, or may not, be surprised by what the suburban Whole Foods contingent does to destroy lovely food. :\

Salad. Shredded lettuce, cabbage and carrots, with olives on top. Pepperoncini on the left. ;)

No cans @ Chipotle! The meats come in cryovaced bags, the rice is bagged, and all the veggies/herbs come in their requisite plastic/cardboard packaging.

Pointing out that we don't prep our dead for burial on the kitchen table, nor do we kiss corpses during funerals seemed to miss quite a few people who were hazy on how our sanitized American funeral industry is more developed than it is in western Africa.

I would totally eat that. Especially if it was some sort of spicy mango relish/chutney on super tender pork shoulder.

Plain bands are no problem whatsoever. But anything with stones is rather disgusting after just a few wearings; lotion, skin cells, soap, food, baby poop—whatever you have touched ends up caked behind the stone(s.)

Even if you started with full-on amazing looking tuna fillets, after the 'pulling' process, they'd still resemble canned tuna. Any fish would, it's simply how their flesh flakes after cooking.

As the current partner of a man who is unable to 'cook' anything more complicated than a pb&j, and must be talked through 'cooking' a box of macaroni & cheese or even boiling noodles...let me tell you that gendered cooking practices are alive and well in far too fucking many households because 'boys don't cook' was…

Only make it when plums are in season—early summer! The plums in the markets right now aren't very tasty.

I felt like I was going to have to sign a waiver to get an order of steak tartare @ a nice French restaurant; it's beautiful small diced beef, dijon, parsley, a bit of lemon and served with a raw yolk on top. The waiter actually tried to talk me out of it!