conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Frog, Originally, Commissary with the genre: Cookbooks, Food & Wine, Cooking Education & Reference?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Frog Commissary Cookbook'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Frog Commissary Cookbook
  I had not always wanted to cook and run restaurants. I grew up in Yonkers, New York in a fairly prosperous and sheltered setting. I came to Philadelphia in 1964 as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania with a strong desire to be an architect. Fairly early in my undergraduate training I encountered difficulty in a freehand drawing class and concluded that I was not cut out to be an architect. In the very socially conscious period of the mid-sixties, I concluded that my interests lay more in people and the cities they inhabited than in buildings per se, so a change in career direction made some sense.
  My love of cooking and a vision of contributing to urban life was coming together as an idea for a restaurant that could serve the same role as Jane Jacobs's neighborhood candy store. It would be the sort of restaurant where people would come together over good food and wine and discuss the great issues of the day. The restaurant would provide a sense of place for people. I would do the cooking.
  I knew that I needed experience before I could open a restaurant, so after a brief stint in the Peace Corps and peace movement, I answered a newspaper advertisement for a busboy. I was offered the job if I agreed to cut off my beard. I did. For the next six months, I was the busboy and glass polisher at La Panetière, then Philadelphia's most elegant French restaurant.
  Much of what I had been cooking, both at La Panetière and at home on my one night off, was very conventional with familiar Western flavors and ingredients. Though my parents' parents were Eastern European Jews, my real culinary heritage was a curiously neutral result of growing up suburban in the postwar assimilationist era of the fifties and sixties. La Panetière's approach to cooking was classic French. The experimentation of Bocuse, Gérard, and the brothers Troisgros that would soon explode as Nouvelle Cuisine and open French cooking to broader influences, was taking place in the isolation of their French kitchens.
  The Vietnam War was going on and there were a number of young men from Thailand working in La Panetière's kitchen. The exposure to the exotic tastes of Thailand while sharing the staff dinners that they prepared was a revelation: sweet and fiery, red, green, blue and orange curries; pickled vegetables and preserved radish; lemongrass and fish sauce. The Thais with whom I worked and slurped noodles introduced me to the Orient... and a particularly exotic corner of it, at that.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is three more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: By all means, feel free to substitute smoked turkey, ham, or regular cooked chicken or turkey for the smoked chicken.
  With this dish, Frog made its first excursion into the style of cooking that would become known as a "quixotic blend of French, Asian, and American cuisines." Frog was still quite young at the time. The Thai members of the kitchen staff often brought to work with them packets of curry paste which they used to flavor the stir-fries, soups, and cold meat salads that they made for staff meals. The larder yielded the rest of the ingredients: chicken, broccoli, and some all-American salted peanuts. The dish has been a staple at Frog ever since; its occasional vacations from the menu have always been cut short by cries of distress from long-time customers. So indigenous is Siamese Chicken Curry to Frog that it was chosen to star at a luncheon for James Beard at the restaurant in the spring of 1980.
  Both smooth and crunchy, spicy with a touch of fire and hint of sweetness, intriguing in its mysterious tangle of flavors and at the same time very soothing, Siamese Chicken Curry is absolutely delicious! It translates beautifully to the home kitchen, too, as it is quick and easy to prepare, and relatively inexpensive.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about Steven, French, Béchamel, intrigued, experimenting, stirred, sautéed.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: By all means, feel free to substitute smoked turkey, ham, or regular cooked chicken or turkey for the smoked chicken. 
  With this dish, Frog made its first excursion into the style of cooking that would become known as a "quixotic blend of French, Asian, and American cuisines. " Frog was still quite young at the time. The Thai members of the kitchen staff often brought to work with them packets of curry paste which they used to flavor the stir-fries, soups, and cold meat salads that they made for staff meals. Steven was intrigued by these curry pastes, and one day, while experimenting in the kitchen, he stirred some basic French Béchamel sauce into a bit of curry paste that he had sautéed in oil. The larder yielded the rest of the ingredients: chicken, broccoli, and some all-American salted peanuts. The dish has been a staple at Frog ever since; its occasional vacations from the menu have always been cut short by cries of distress from long-time customers. So indigenous is Siamese Chicken Curry to Frog that it was chosen to star at a luncheon for James Beard at the restaurant in the spring of 1980. 
  Both smooth and crunchy, spicy with a touch of fire and hint of sweetness, intriguing in its mysterious tangle of flavors and at the same time very soothing, Siamese Chicken Curry is absolutely delicious! It translates beautifully to the home kitchen, too, as it is quick and easy to prepare, and relatively inexpensive.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'Turn it into a decadent summer drink by whizzing several scoops in a blender with a liberal dose of rum'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Turn it into a decadent summer drink by whizzing several scoops in a blender with a liberal dose of rum.
  This is a heavenly dessert, redolent of pears at their peak of ripeness. It is best made and served the same day, because the alcoholic liquid, which has a lower freezing point than the rest of the ingredients, tends to separate out with time. For the Riesling, we use a medium-dry Alsatian brand, but you can do just as well with a California or German Riesling as long as you are aware that you may have to adjust the amount of sugar since some Rieslings are much sweeter than others. Pears, too, vary in sweetness, so it is a good idea in general with this recipe to be careful to taste it as you go and adjust when necessary.
  Peel, core, and slice the pears. Put them in a saucepan with the wine and sugar and poach until very tender. Allow to cool fully. Purée in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add the lemon juice and freeze in an electric ice cream machine according to the directions.
  Top with a splash of Pear Williams, Lillet, or Framboise, sauce with raspberry purée, or decorate with lightly sweetened raspberries.
  Make a simple syrup of equal parts sugar and water by boiling until the sugar has dissolved. Let cool. Juice or purée and strain the fruit(s) of your choice and add simple syrup until it tastes good to you. Add a little lemon juice to counter act the sweetness of the simple syrup. Citrus sorbet bases may need to have water added to them. If a sorbet separates after being frozen, that could mean too much sugar. If it is rock-hard, it probably has too little sugar.  Proportions for Raspberry Sorbet, for example, are as follows: 3 quarts raspberries puréed and sieved for 5 cups of purée, 3 cups cold simple syrup, and ½ cup lemon juice. Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions for your ice cream machine.