→ December 3, 2019
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Santorini app.

As a very chess-like game with an obvious mathematical underpinning, Santorini, which I reviewed in 2017, was an obvious candidate for a port to digital platforms. Roxley Games did so earlier this year and the adaptation is very successful, so much so, however, that it reminded me of why I stopped playing the tabletop version and dropped it from my top 100.

Santorini is played on a 5×5 grid, and each player gets two workers to move around the board and build towers of up to three levels. On a typical turn, you pick one of your workers, move it to any adjacent space (orthogonally or diagonally), and then build on a space adjacent to the new one. Workers can move up one level at a time, or down any number of levels. You win the game if you get either of your workers to the third level of a tower. You don’t own the towers you build, so you can climb or build further on a tower your opponent started. You can also put a dome on top of the third level of a tower, which makes it impossible for any worker to move there for the rest of the game. In my limited experience, you want to set up a trap of sorts where you have a worker on a two-level tower who is standing between two three-level towers, or who is next to a three-level tower to which your opponent can’t get a worker adjacent to put a dome on it.

That’s the base game, and I think it works quite well in the vein of chess-like two-player games, with zero luck, a fair amount of thinking ahead and envisioning what your opponent will do and how the board will change. However, game and the app both come with a set of “gods” that give players unique powers, creating a huge number of possible combinations to give the game plenty of replay value. The app seems to come with 34 gods up front, which would mean you have 561 combinations in the base game, with 25 more available through in-app purchases of 5 gods apiece for $1 or $2, or all 25 in a pack for $8, giving you 1711 combinations. (Combinations and permutations always gave me fits in school.)

This is about where Santorini loses me: these gods are just not well-balanced, and some feel too close to unbeatable. The fact that the game is so mathematical means the AI players always seem to make the optimal moves, and I’ve had numerous experiences where I quit a game against the AI because I could see that I was 3-5 moves from a guaranteed loss with no way out. And there are god combinations that skew heavily towards one or the other. Pan is the most annoying one I’ve encountered, as he’s one of the gods with a second win condition – in Pan’s case, the player wins if one of its workers can move down two levels, which means you have to prevent their workers from ever getting to the second or third level of any tower, ever.

The app implementation is really strong, though – the variety of gods and the skill levels even of the easier AIs are indicative of the quality of the app itself. The fact that it reminded me that I don’t like the game is probably a sign that the developers did their job. The graphics are bright and mostly clear, while the animations work well and all user moves are intuitive. The board itself relies on the three-dimensional perspective; in the app, you can spin the board around and view it from the top, but I still often find it hard to discern whether there’s one level or two on buildings that I can’t see from the front, and it’s definitely too easy to click the wrong space unless you move from the isometric view to the bird’s-eye one. You can undo a move if you click the undo button within about two seconds, before the AI makes a move, but of course that may be before you realize you erred.

The app comes with local and online options as well as a campaign mode called Odyssey, which is useful for letting you experiment with several of the gods, although the options for working through it are rather limited and that’s where I ran into some of the god matchups I thought were unbalanced. Given how many combinations there are in the game, though, it’s probably a better way to get introduced to some of them than going with trial and error in the local mode.

I’d compare this to Race for the Galaxy, another game I don’t love but that was implemented incredibly well in its app, although I’d take that one over Santorini because I think the game lends itself to more open-ended strategies. I’d recommend this if you like the original Santorini, or enjoy games like chess or Tak or Go that involve very little luck and reward long-term thinking. It’s $4.99 for iOS or Android.

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→ December 2, 2019
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Gift guide for cooks, 2019 edition.

As usual, this is a repost of the previous year’s list, with new items I’ve added clearly marked, and some minor edits to the rest. I’ve added a new paragraph at the time rattling off a few things I’ve gotten in the last year, or that I had already but never thought to include in this post. Enjoy and feel free to ask questions in the comments.

I’ve seen a few “Christmas gift guides for the cooks in your life!” over the last couple of years, but most of them are like this 2014 gem from Grub Street, with recommendations for things that no one could possibly need – a “rosemary stripper” (I have two of those; I call them “hands”); a “banana slicer” (use your paring knife, genius); a $140 toaster (makes toast); and a $1600 set of Thomas Keller-branded pans, which, unless he forged them personally out of pure adamantium, are a colossal fucking waste of money. These are not gifts to by the cook in your life; these are gifts to buy the person in your life who pretends to cook but really just likes playing with toys. Toys don’t make you a better chef; they just make you a less socially responsible one.

I do have a few pricier toys in my kitchen, but aside from one, they’re all highly functional, at the middle to low end of the price range for their jobs, and built to last a long time. I’ve had my chef’s knife for over a decade, my food processor for 17 years (my next upgrade – looking at this Cuisinart model), my Dutch oven for about eight years, and just replaced my 18-year-old stand mixer when I moved in 2013. You are free to call me cheap, but I think I’m just prudent. I’ll spend money in the kitchen if it gets me something I need. I will not spend money to get a famous name, a fancy design, or a paperweight to live at the back of a gadget drawer until I move again. If I can make do with something I already have in the house – binder clips, a (clean) putty knife, a (clean) paintbrush – I’ll gladly do that instead.

Therefore, what I recommend here – for your cheffy friends or for yourself – is largely what I own and use. If what I own isn’t available, or isn’t good value for the price, I recommend something else. I am also willing to answer any and all questions about these or other suggestions; if I include it here, that’s an endorsement that it’ll be money well spent. You can see my list of my recommended cookbooks here.

New stuff in 2019: I finally caved and bought myself a larger stand mixer for bread doughs this year – the 5-quart version I had previously would “walk” across the counter while kneading a full patch of pizza dough, and I would worry about the motor overheating. I bought a renewed model from amazon although the new version of the 6-quart, 600-watt mixer is $329 now unless you get a custom color. It’s more powerful and also easier to use since the motor head doesn’t tilt back – you turn a crank to move the bowl up and down instead. The one downside of the larger model is that you can’t use it for very small jobs, like whipping two egg whites to a foam for a meringue, because the attachment doesn’t quite reach. If you have the quantity, it’s still great for cookie dough, brownie batter, quick breads, whipped cream, and Italian meringues (for macarons). The pasta-maker attachment is overpriced, but it does the job, and the grinder attachment has been good for me in a handful of uses, especially for turning stale bread into bread crumbs.

I’ve had an iSi whipper for years now but my last one broke, and I bought a new 1-pint model last winter; it’s overpriced at $82 right now, but if it goes on sale or you find a better price elsewhere, I’d say it’s worth about $50 for the time and mess it saves when making whipped cream for a party. You can use it to aerate other things but I’ve only used it for cream.

The basics

The most important tool for any cook is a good chef’s knife, and I love my Henckels 8″ chef’s knife, although I have a discontinued model with a different handle. It’s a workhorse, has only needed professional sharpening once, and is a comfortable grip and weight for my rather small hands. Henckels seems to have cut its list prices, so that knife lists at $52 and is on sale now for $42, so while in past years I’ve steered readers towards the $43 Victorinox 8″ chef’s knife, which America’s Test Kitchen has long recommended, there’s no good reason to skip the Henckels when it’s a buck cheaper.

The basic knives any home cook must have are a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a bread (serrated) knife. The bread knife is good for more than just slicing bread – serrated blades are safer for slicing tomatoes, and they’re excellent for chopping chocolate and other hard foods. I have another Henckels four-star model, also eight inches, but the same blade is available with a different handle for just $13. You might look at a 10” blade if you get a lot of large, artisanal loaves. Any strong paring knife will do, such as this Victornix 3.5″ paring knife at just over $7. With a modicum of knife skills, you can tweak and hull strawberries with one of these without any risk to your fingers or waste of fruit. It’s also good for cutting citrus supremes, slicing apples and pears, pitting olives and cherries, and other fine-motor-skills work.

I do have two other knives I use frequently, but they’re not essential for most cooks. One is the santoku, a very sharp knife with a thin edge but wide body that’s ideal for slicing vegetables and hard fruits; I recommend a 7” blade, which you can get in this two-santoku Henckels set for $22 and just … I don’t know, regift the 5” version or something, because I can’t see any use for it. The boning knife I own, from Henckels, appears to be discontinued, but there’s another Henckels 5.5″ boning knife for $26 that looks like it has the same blade. A boning knife is ideal for breaking down a whole chicken – it’s substantially cheaper to buy a whole chicken (sometimes called a broiler-fryer, usually 3-5 pounds total weight) and cut it into parts, and you get the bones to make stock – or for deboning other cuts of meat like short ribs. Some folks recommend a flexible blade instead, but I have never used that kind so I can’t give an opinion.

I finally caved and bought a home knife sharpener in 2015, buying this Chef’s Choice Diamond Hone 3 Stage Sharpener, a manual sharpener that turned out to be both easy to use and very effective; I sharpened every knife I own and even a few pairs of scissors, including the kitchen shears some of you’ve seen me using to spatchcock my Thanksgiving turkeys.

My pots and pans aren’t a single set any more; I have some remnants from an All-Clad anodized aluminum set I got with rewards points in 2001, but have swapped out certain pieces to get better nonstick (coated) skillets. What you really should get for your loved one (you may include yourself in that category) is a a 12″ Lodge cast-iron skillet, an absolute workhorse that can handle about 90% of what I need from a skillet or a saute pan. I still use a nonstick skillet for egg dishes, and a saucier (sadly one that’s no longer made) for sauces or custards, but the Lodge skillet is past a decade old and just keeps getting better. The work of seasoning them is nowhere near as arduous as you’ve heard.

I got a Lodge 10″ carbon steel skillet for Christmas in 2015, and I love it. It’s not as nonstick as the cast-iron one, which I’ve had for years and thus has built up more of a coating, but for getting a pan rocket-hot quickly and working fast on something small, it’s great. I’ve found that the more I use it, the more resistant the surface becomes to sticking – even eggs – and it is the ideal skillet for making the dramatic, puffy pancake known as a Dutch baby.

If you want to splurge on something, get an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, great for soups, stews, braises, deep-frying, jam-making, and caramelizing huge batches of onions. Cast-iron doesn’t distribute heat well, but it holds heat for a long time. These pots are heavy, but I use mine for every saucepan duty that doesn’t involve boiling water or cooking grains on their own. They go stove to oven (as do the skillets) and can take the hours of low heating required for a proper braise. I own a Le Creuset that I got on sale at an outlet store because the color was discontinued; if you’re not quite that fortunate, try the 7.5 quart Lodge model for $80.

I upgraded my stockpot last year with this $36 Excelsteel 16 Quart Stainless Steel Stockpot. I make stock constantly throughout the year; I buy whole chickens, break them down myself, and freeze the carcasses and necks for future stocks. I also made a turkey stock after Thanksgiving with the backbone, neck, and the picked-clean roasted carcass, and the result was so full of gelatin that it was solid at room temperature. (It made an unbelievably rich turkey and soba noodle soup.) I needed a good stockpot since my previous one’s pseudo-nonstick finish had started to fade; this pot is also taller and heavier so it holds the heat in more effectively and I can do a double batch with two chicken carcasses and plenty of aromatics. I usually have to get at the interior bottom with a little Bon Ami, though. It’s also been my go-to pot for sous-vide cooking, since it’s deep enough to hold my circulator.

I don’t own a proper mandolin slicer, but I do pretty well with a handheld mandolin for under $20 that works great for things like root-vegetable chips or thinly slicing onions. I use my digital instant-read thermometer almost every night, and I’ve run through at least three of them over the last ten years. Amazon tells me that I bought my Microplane classic grater in November of 2003, and I’ve had their coarse grater for almost that long. The former is great for zesting citrus fruits or grating nutmeg; the latter is ideal for creating a snowfall of hard cheese over a pasta dish. I now own four silicone baking mats, two of which are amazon brand, now listed at two for $14 but which I got cheaper on Prime Day a few years ago – but I find I’m using them less and parchment paper more, especially for cookies, where the silicone seems to retard browning.

I own two scales – a chef I’m friends with on Twitter made fun of me for this – one, this AWS Digital Pocket Scale for weights up to about 2 kg, which is ideal for precise measurements like grams of coffee (more on that in a moment), and a larger scale that’s long discontinued. I picked up this $13 Ozeri scale for weighing larger quantities, measuring up to 12 kg; I rarely need to measure more than about two pounds of anything, maybe a little more for some large-batch baking but that’s about it. You need at least one good scale if you’re serious about baking, though; the best bread and pastry recipes all use grams, not cups or liters. I finally killed my digital candy/frying thermometer this year, replacing it with an old-fashioned, $7.50 analog frying thermometer. I use it for jam, macarons, and my various deep-frying experiments (see the sous-vide discussion below). You absolutely must have one of these to make caramel, any kind of jam or preserves, or true buttercream frosting.

I haven’t included this on past lists, but I do use my OXO potato ricer for mashed potatoes – it’s much better than a so-called “masher,” which is otherwise useful for guacamole or for crushing fruits while making jam but makes lumpy mashed potatoes.

Other things I always appreciate getting or often end up buying for myself: Wooden spatulas (not spoons), silicone spatulas, good (not decorative) metal measuring spoons, Pyrex or similar measuring cups for liquids (never measure liquids in a plastic cup designed for measuring solids).

I don’t have this exact brand/model, but I love having a few silicone ingredient cups in the kitchen. I use one for measuring and pouring out coffee grounds, and I often have another one next to the stove with salt or freshly ground pepper or toasted sesame seeds to add to something right before serving.

About two years ago, I picked up this $18 bamboo cutting board and have used pretty much nothing else since then. It’s safe for any knife, easy to clean, and just requires occasional oiling (use mineral oil) to keep it smooth. Wood is better than plastic for several reasons, one of which is that bacteria like the grooves that knives put into plastic boards … I’ve actually owned a Rabbit corkscrew for years, but never thought to put it on this list. It’s the easiest way to open a bottle of wine short of sabrage, using leverage rather than requiring you to twist while applying downward force. … I own this OXO stainless steel bench scraper/pastry cutter and use it all the time, both for cutting doughs and for cleaning countertops of anything fine or that might have stuck to the surface – such as flour left on the counter after you kneaded dough or shaped cookies. … I use this amazon basics electric kettle several times a day, boiling water for tea, coffee, and often for cooking… And finally, I received one heck of a gift for my birthday in 2018 from a longtime friend: A santoku by Yu Kurosaki, made in Echizen, Japan. It is by far the sharpest thing I’ve ever owned, which means I have to cut more carefully than before, but can also make smaller cuts (mincing, julienning) and can use less force when cutting. I’ve seen his knives on specialty sites for varying prices.

The expensive stuff

* In 2017, I finally caved and upgraded my food processor to this 14-cup Cuisinart model, although mine is black and has a slightly different model number (which I can’t find on amazon). You can get a 7-cup model for $100, and it will probably be fine for most home cooks. I have a few recipes I make regularly that require the larger capacity. But you kind of need a food processor for things like pesto, hummus, mayonnaise, pie or biscuit doughs (if you don’t want to or can’t do them by hand), and my favorite pumpkin pie recipe. The blade on this is extremely thin and sharp, so wash it very carefully; the manual recommends putting it on the top rack of the dishwasher so you don’t risk your fingers.

* I’ve gone full geek, getting an Anova sous-vide immersion circulator (pot not included) and using it frequently for cooking chicken legs, chicken breasts, steak, and pork. Serious Eats has many recipes for it, and I’ve used their chicken thighs recipe many times, often cooking entire chicken legs that way. (I’ve discovered that, if you can handle some spattering, you can take the drumsticks, pat them dry, then bread and deep-fry them for some of the juiciest fried chicken you’ll ever taste.) I’ve cooked skirt steak, which can be tough even when cooked medium-rare, sous-vide and it melted in our mouths. Sous-vide cooking takes time, and some up-front investment – I caved and bought a FoodSaver vacuum-sealer, although you can do it with zip-top bags too – but once you use it you’ll find it indispensable.

* I have this Vitamix 1782 TurboBlend “food preparing machine” (it’s a blender, stupid), and it’s amazing. I can make smooth vegetable soups with it, no cream required; don’t toss those broccoli stalks, just peel, quarter, and roast them, then blend them with some vegetable stock and season to taste, maybe with some basil oil and toasted pumpkin seeds on top. I used it at Thanksgiving 2015 to make the carrot soup in Hugh Acheson’s The Broad Fork. The blender is down to $328 (from four bills), but that’s too much if you’re just making milkshakes and smoothies (and there is nothing wrong with just making milkshakes and smoothies). You’ll probably be fine with just a basic blender and the food processor.

* Coffee is my big kitchen weakness, at least when it comes to spending money; I’m fortunate to have a few friends in the industry (whom I met through social media) who work for direct-trade roasters and have tipped me off to good sources of coffee and helped me pay for the gear I own, which is wonderful but expensive. The Baratza Virtuoso burr grinder is the least expensive grinder of its kind and caliber; when my first one had an issue with the motor, I sent a quick video of it jamming to Baratza and had a new machine within two weeks. I do make pour-over coffee at home using this Hario V60 ceramic dripper, but my preference is espresso, for which I use a Rancilio Silvia machine that is a wonder. The boiler is huge, so it bounces back quickly between shots and you can heat up the steam wand before your shots go cold. (You can probably beat that price by $30-40 if you shop around.) If you get your ratios right – for me it’s 17.5 to 19 grams per double shot, depending on the bean and roast – you’ll get great crema, 30-32 grams of output in 25-30 seconds, with almost no bad pulls. I use it every morning and I miss it when I travel. I weigh the beans, grounds, and output on the AWS digital scale I mentioned above, which came recommended by a barista at Lord Windsor Roasters in Long Beach, California.

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→ November 30, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 11/30/19.

I had one ESPN+ post this week, covering the Luis Urias/Trent Grisham trade with a note on the Kyle Gibson signing. No Klawchat due to the holiday, but I did do my annual Periscope live chat where I spatchcocked the turkey.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, comes out on April 21st, and you can pre-order it now through that link or anywhere fine books are sold. Also, I’m trying to be more diligent about my free email newsletter now that we’re in the offseason.

I’ll be at PAX Unplugged here in Philadelphia next weekend, and if you’ll be there and are up for a game, just drop me a line. I have some publisher meetings, but my goal is to check out as many games in the First Look section as I can, and I may bring a game or two from my review queue as well.

And now, the links…

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→ November 29, 2019
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Cookbook recommendations, 2019.

I’ve streamlined this post a bit this year, as I’m using certain new books more and have set some older ones aside, and also I’d rather focus on the books I think you’re most likely to enjoy.

New for 2019

The new cookbook I’ve used the most this year is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple, which mostly lives up to its name. The majority of the recipes I’ve tried from the book can be executed start to finish in well under an hour, often closer to 30 minutes, as long as you ignore the utterly ridiculous quantities of chopped fresh herbs it calls for. The gigli pasta with chickpeas and spinach is a huge winner that I make at least once every two weeks. The mustard-marinated kale salad is a great platform for lots of dishes and as a side salad on its own even without the grilled asparagus it includes. The zucchini-feta fritters are excellent. The bulk of the recipes are vegetable-forward, like his other books, but not strictly vegetarian. It’s such a great go-to for weeknight dinners and many of them will provide you with leftovers if you’re cooking for fewer than four people.

I got an Ooni outdoor pizza oven last offseason and then got Marc Vetri’s Mastering Pizza to help me make better use of it; Vetri’s Neapolitan dough recipe is easily the best I’ve found, and it works every time. There are actually two versions: one that you ferment slowly over about 48 hours, and another you can start when you get up in the morning and use that night for dinner. His focaccia recipe is excellent as well, and I use his very basic tomato sauce for margherita pizzas. There are lots of other pizza dough styles in here, like the roman pizza al taglio, but I love the Neapolitan version so much I haven’t tried any of the alternatives.

I’ve just started to dive into two newish cookbooks, Yasmin Khan’s Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen and Nik Sharma’s Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food. I’ve made a couple of recipes from each with success, including the za’atar crusted salmon from Zaitoun and the spicy sautéed Brussels sprouts from Season.

I introduced this book in last year’s post, but I can give a much stronger recommendation now to Brave Tart, from Stella Parks. Brave Tart‘s real emphasis is homemade recreations of popular American dessert items, especially branded ones – Parks’ versions of Oreos, Thin Mints and Trefoils from the Girl Scouts, Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies, and so on. Parks also writes for Serious Eats, and their ethos of testing the hell out of every recipe, using weight rather than volume, and offering concise explanations for anything that deviates from the norm carries over into the book. Her basic chocolate chip cookie recipe is the best I’ve ever made. Her shortbread cookies are excellent. I didn’t love the Oreos, but the filling recipe is excellent.

Essentials

There are two cookbooks that I insist any home cook have. One is the venerable Joy of Cooking, revised and altered through many editions (I own the 1997, now out of print), but still the go-to book for almost any common dish you’re likely to want to make. The recipes take a very easy-to-follow format, and the book assumes little to no experience or advanced technique. I still use it all the time, including their basic bread stuffing (dressing) recipe every Thanksgiving, altered just with the addition of a diced red bell pepper.

The other indisputable must-have cookbook is, of course, Ruhlman’s Twenty, by the best food writer going today, Michael Ruhlman. The book comprises twenty chapters, each on a technique or core ingredient, with a hundred recipes, lots of essays to explain key concepts or methods, and photographs to help you understand what you’re cooking. It’s my most-used cookbook, the first cookbook gift I give to anyone looking to start a collection, and an absolute pleasure to read and re-read. Favorite recipes include the seared pork tenderloin with butter and more butter; the cured salmon; the homemade mayonnaise (forget the stuff in the jar, it’s a pale imitation); the pulled pork; all three duck recipes; the scrambled eggs with goat cheese (using a modified double-boiler method, so you get something more like custard than rubber); and the homemade bacon. Many of these recipes appear again in his more recent book, Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient, along with more egg basics and a lot of great dessert recipes; and Twenty itself builds on Ruhlman’s Ratio, which shows you master formulas for things like doughs and sauces so you can understand the fundamentals of each recipe and extend as you see fit.

I’ve long recommended Baking Illustrated as the perfect one-book kitchen reference for all things baked – cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and more. It’s full of standards, tested to ensure that they will work the first time. You’ll need a scale to get maximum use from the book. I use their pie crust recipe, their peach pie recipe, their snickerdoodles recipe (kids love it, but moms seem to love it even more…), and I use their pumpkin pie recipe every Thanksgiving. The prose can be a little cloying, but I skip most of that and go right to the recipes because I know they’ll succeed the first time. That link will get you the original book from the secondary market; it has been rewritten from scratch and titled The Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book, but I can’t vouch for it as I haven’t seen the new text.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s mammoth The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, named for Kenji’s acclaimed and indispensable column over at Serious Eats, is a must for any advanced or aspiring home cook. Unlike many of the books here, The Food Lab is a better resource for its text than its recipes – I’ve made a bunch of dishes from the book, with a few that just didn’t work out (e.g., the pork shoulder ragout), but every page seems to have something to teach you. His marinated kale salad recipe changed my view on how to do those at home. The one caution I’ll offer is that it doesn’t include any sous-vide recipes, which is something Kenji does a lot on Serious Eats’ site, although he does have a section on replicating the sous-vide technique using cheaper materials like a portable cooler.

If I know someone already has Ruhlman’s Twenty, my next gift choice for them is Nigel Slater’s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, a book about vegetables but not strictly vegetarian. (There’s a lot of bacon here.) Each vegetable gets its own section, with explanations on how to grow it, how to choose it at the market, a half-dozen or more basic ways to cook it, and then a bunch of specific recipes, some of which are just a paragraph and some of which are a full page with glorious pictures accompanying them. The stuffed peppers with ground pork is a near-weekly occurrence in this house, and the warm pumpkin scone is the only good reason to buy and cook an actual pumpkin. I own but have barely cooked from his sequel on fruit, Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard, because it’s more focused on desserts than savory applications.

Another essential if you want to cook more vegetables is Hugh Acheson’s 2015 book The Broad Fork, which has become the first book I consult when I have a vegetable and am not sure what I want to do with it. Acheson conceived the book in response to a neighbor’s question about what the hell to do with the kohlrabi he got in a CSA box, and the whole book works like that: You have acquired some Vegetable and need to know where to start. Organized by season and then by plant, with plenty of fruits and a few nuts mixed in for good measure, the book gives you recipes and ideas by showing off each subject in various preparations – raw, in salads, in soups, roasted, grilled, pureed, whatever. There are main course ideas in here as well, some with meat or fish, others vegetarian or vegan, and many of the multi-part dishes are easy to deconstruct, like the charred-onion vinaigrette in the cantaloupe/prosciutto recipe that made a fantastic steak sauce. Most of us need to eat more plants anyway; Acheson’s book helps make that a tastier goal. It’s also witty, as you’d expect from the slightly sardonic Canadian if you’ve seen him on TV. He has a brand-new cookbook out called Sous Vide: Better Home Cooking, that I’ll pick up shortly. I also really like his podcast Hugh Acheson Stirs the Pot.

You know, a lot of people will tell you go get Julia Child’s classic books on French cuisine, but I find the one I have (Mastering the Art) to be dated and maddeningly unspecific. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom is a slimmer, much more useful book that focuses on the basics – her explanation of vinaigrettes is still the gold standard, and her gift for distilling recipes and techniques into simple little explanations shines here without the fuss of three-day recipes for coq au vin. Oh, that’s in here too, but she does it in two and a half hours.

Experts

The The Flavor Bible isn’t actually a cookbook, but a giant cross-referencing guide where each ingredient comes with a list of complementary ingredients or flavors, as selected by a wide range of chefs the authors interviewed to assemble the book. It’s the book you want to pull out when your neighbor gives you a few handfuls of kale or your local grocery store puts zucchini on sale and you don’t know what to do with them. Or maybe you’re just tired of making salmon the same way and need some fresh ideas. The book doesn’t tell you how to cook anything, just what else to put on the plate. Spoiler: Bacon and butter go with just about everything.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty is an outstanding vegetable-focused cookbook that uses no meat ingredients (but does use dairy and eggs), although Ottolenghi’s restaurant uses meats and he offers a few suggestions on pairing his recipes with meat dishes. The recipes here are longer and require a higher skill level than those in Tender, but they’re restaurant-quality in flavor and presentation, including a mushroom ragout that I love as a main course over pappardelle with a poached egg (or two) on top and my favorite recipe for preparing Belgian endives (a pinch of sugar goes a long way).

Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery cookbook ($11 for Kindle right now) has long been my standby for high-end dessert recipes, but unlike Baking Illustrated, the recipes are written for people who are more skilled and incredibly serious about baking. Ingredients are measured to the gram, and the recipes assume a full range of techniques. It has the best macaron recipe I’ve ever found – close second is I Love Macarons – and the Bouchon book has also the homemade Oreo recipe I made for Halloween a few years ago (but you need black cocoa to do it right, and I use buttercream as the filling instead of their unstable white-chocolate ganache).

For the really hardcore, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is an essential kitchen reference, full of explanations of the chemistry of cooking that will make you a smarter cook and help you troubleshoot many problems at the stove. I haven’t read it straight through – it’s 700-plus pages – but I’ll go to the index and pull out some wisdom as needed. It also explains why some people (coughmecough) never acquired the taste for strongly-flavored cheeses.

I can sort of recommend Flour + Water: Pasta, a cookbook from the chef/owner of flour + water in San Francisco, although it’s not for everyone. The restaurant is nationally renowned for its fresh pasta dishes, and this cookbook is a grand tour of regional Italian cooking, with just about any style of pasta you can imagine, and the best directions on how to form, knead, and shape the pasta that I’ve come across. Every pasta dish I’ve made from this book has come out great the first time. There’s a catch, however: the non-pasta aspects of the recipes are poorly written and were clearly never tested by any non-professionals. One recipe calls for starting a sauce by cooking onions over high heat … for eight minutes, which is fine if you want to burn them (you don’t). Times and temperatures are off throughout, so if you’re a novice in the kitchen, this isn’t the book for you. If you’ve cooked a lot, especially Italian sauces, then you’ll spot the errant directions and make adjustments as you go. And the pasta is truly spectacular, enough that you might do as I did and spring for a garganelli board (used to shape a specific hand-rolled noodle).

Richard Blais’ Try This at Home has become a staple in my kitchen both for about a half-dozen specific recipes in here that we love (sweet potato gnocchi, lemon curd chicken, arroz con pollo, sous-vide chicken breast) and for the creativity it inspires. Blais has lots of asides on techniques and ingredients, and if you actually read the text instead of just blindly following the recipes, you’ll get a sense of the extensibility of the basic formulas within the book, even though he isn’t as explicit about it as Ruhlman is. His second book, So Good, came out in May 2017; I’ve tried four recipes so far, with the chicken thighs adobo and spicy green pozole both hits. I make that adobo recipe, which uses lots of ginger and garlic, a bit of brown sugar, and some vinegar (he recommends pineapple vinegar, but I haven’t found that in any stores yet) for a unique flavor profile.

Bread

I’ve owned and given away or sold a lot of bread-baking books, because nothing has been able to beat the two masterworks by baker/instructor Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and Whole Grain Breads. Reinhart’s books teach you how to make artisan or old-world breads using various starters, from overnight bigas to wild-yeast starters you can grow and culture on your countertop. If that seems like a little much, his Artisan Breads Every Day takes it down a notch for the novice baker, with a lot of the same recipes presented in a simpler manner, without so much emphasis on baker’s formulas, and is a good value at $24.

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→ November 27, 2019
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Bring Up the Bodies.

Hilary Mantel was the first author to win the Booker Prize for two novels in the same series, and the first woman to win the award twice, taking the 2009 honor for Wolf Hall, then winning again three years later for the sequel Bring Up the Bodies. (The third book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is due out in March.) While Wolf Hall was long and a bit arduous to read, it was full of plot and intrigue, and ultimately rewarded the effort required to get through it. Bring Up the Bodies, however, is just as tough to get through, without the plot rewards, with really just one thread through the book, and that one not a terribly compelling one.

Thomas Cromwell remains the protagonist, and Henry VIII is still the king, but now Anne Boleyn is the queen and Katherine, her predecessor, is in exile in the country. Henry still doesn’t have a male heir, however, and his patience grows thin just as his ardor grows for Jane Seymour, Medicine Woman. It falls to Cromwell, as always, to find a solution, but this one is far bloodier than the one he cooked up to help depose Katherine from the throne. Anne was eventually accused of adultery, including sleeping with her own brother, and beheaded, although the charges are poorly substantiated in historians’ view and in Mantel’s retelling, where it seems clear that she thinks it was all cooked up by Cromwell at the king’s behest.

The fundamental problem with Bring Up the Bodies is that that is the entire plot. There’s the same backbiting from the first novel, but the development of additional characters is gone. Cromwell’s son Gregory and ward Rafe Sadler are barely here. The members of the royal retinue are all replacement level, simpering and obsequious with one face, vindictive and Machiavellian with the other. Anne’s character is also not interesting enough to work as the primary antagonist; she’s very one-dimensional, less flirtatious than in Wolf Hall and more plotting and desperate as she realizes her place is slipping. She, too, fails to provide Henry with an heir – maybe his boys can’t swim? – and miscarries more than once in the course of this novel, which would explain the deterioration of her character but also makes her far less interesting in the retelling. Cromwell himself is also less three-dimensional here now that he’s widowed and his daughters are gone, all dead of the “sweating sickness” that affected London in the 1400s and 1500s.

Mantel’s habit of referring to Cromwell merely as “he,” only clarifying that she means him when it would be impossible to discern to whom “he” referred, grated on me in Wolf Hall and here it’s just exhausting. There are still lots of men running around, many of them with similar enough names and variable jobs, so that it’s not easy to keep them straight; I know Mantel didn’t make up the names, but a Cranmer and a Cromwell who is sometimes called “Cremuel” by the Francophone characters, plus a bunch of Henrys and Harrys and Thomases, is a mental burden not justified by the story around them all.

This won the Booker Prize because, in the words of the chairman of that year’s judging panel, Mantel “has rewritten the rules of historical fiction.” That may be true – it seems like Mantel works to stay within what we do know of the era and its personalities, creating a story with plausible details and a compromise in the dialogue that makes it readable – but it doesn’t make the story gripping, and I’m not clear on whether she rewrote those rules of historical fiction in this book or the first time she won the prize.

Next up: Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser, his first novel in six years.

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→ November 26, 2019
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7 Wonders Duel app.

7 Wonders Duel is my #2 pure two-player game, just behind Jaipur, and that makes it perfect for a port to the digital space – apps are great for pass-and-play or for playing against a single AI opponent. The 7 Wonders app, released about two years ago, turned out to be quite good, just a little tough to follow because of the size of the cards and the speed (which you could adjust) of the AI’s moves. The 7 Wonders Duel app has all of that, pro and con, although with just one opponent to track it’s much easier to follow, and some non-intuitive features that made it a bit harder for me to learn, but the AI seems fairly strong and outside of one crash the first time I used the app both on my phone and my iPad it’s been quite stable.

7 Wonders Duel is a real reimagining of the original game, which plays 3 to 7 and is best with at least 4, ditching the card-drafting mechanic for card tableaux where some cards are face-up and some face-down at the start of each round, with players alternating choosing cards. You may buy a card or, if available, take one for free because it has no cost or because you have a precursor card; you may take a card and discard it for 3 coins; or you may take a card, discard it, and build one of your four wonders. Once the seventh wonder has been built between the two players, the eighth one is destroyed. There are three rounds called eras, with cards becoming more expensive and more valuable as the game progresses, and there are purple guild cards worth variable bonuses in the third era just as in the original game. It’s a model for taking a multiplayer game and turning it into a two-player experience that forces direct interaction between the two players.

For straight play, the app is solid. There’s only one AI level, but it’s good enough for me; I’ve played the original game maybe a dozen times but wouldn’t say I’m particularly good at it. One of the most important strategies in 7 Wonders Duel is to choose cards that limit your opponent’s choices on their next turn, and it’s frequently possible to set up a move that forces your opponent to pick a specific card that makes two other cards available to you on the next turn. The AI player is programmed to do this, possibly above all else, and knowing that makes planning a counterstrategy a bit easier.

Using the app is much easier if you know how to play and what the icons on the tops of the cards mean; they’re clear enough to see even on the phone, although I find spotting the symbols on the side that tell you what precursor card might get you that card for free isn’t easy even on the larger screen. I found the way you choose to build a wonder so non-intuitive – you have to click on your wonders to pull up a separate box, then drag a card from the tableau over the wonder you wish to build. Since you play a card to your space by dragging it there, and discard one for coins by dragging it to your money pouch, dragging it to your wonders should give you the choice to build.

The tutorial in the app is really not very good, and there’s no way (that I can find) to directly access the rules within the app. Some of the card descriptions look unfinished; if you click on a science card, for example, it just says it counts for the symbol shown, without explaining how science cards score. There are three victory conditions in the game – more points at game-end, advancing to your opponent’s end of the military track, and collecting six different science icons (there are 7, two of each in the deck, although you omit three cards from each game) – and the app at least labels the first two differently as Defeat and Supremacy, but I lost to the AI once without any indication of why. It wasn’t military supremacy and the game wasn’t over; if it was the science icons, nothing told me so and I don’t think that was true from what I saw on screen. There’s also no undo function, although in this game it might not make sense, since so many card choices will reveal at least one face-down card.

I’m picking the app apart a little bit, but the underlying game is really great, and the app does work – it’s more that it’s rough around the edges, and maybe the AI could be a little smarter about its choices of cards. I’m still playing it a lot, though, and would recommend it at the $4.99 list price.

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→ November 25, 2019
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Palm Island.

Palm Island is a solitaire game with one of the most clever gimmicks – I use that term with endearment – I’ve seen in a while: You hold the entire game in your hand, hence the name “Palm Island.” It manages to sneak in some resource management and ‘building’ concepts while forcing choices by setting up the cards so you can’t do everything you want to do. You’ll cycle through a small deck of cards eight times, trying to gain as many points as possible by using the cards with resources on them to upgrade the cards worth victory points.

The base game comprises a deck of 17 cards, one of which is just the round marker, while the others are double-sided and have different abilities depending on which side is pointing up. After shuffling the other 16, all in their starting orientation, you look at the top two cards and choose your actions. You can rotate some cards 90 degrees clockwise to make a resource (fish, wood, stone) available, often for free but sometimes at the cost of other resources. When you use a resource card to pay for something else, you rotate it back 90 degrees counterclockwise. You may also spend resources to turn some cards 180 degrees, unlocking more powerful abilities/more resources/more points, or to flip them over, unlocking even more of the same. The base deck has two housing cards that you can upgrade three times (turn 180, flip over, turn 180 again) to get to 6 victory points, and two temples that you can upgrade three times to get to 10 victory points, but I don’t think it’s possible to hit all four of those maximum figures with the original deck, and the order in which those cards appear affects your ideal strategy.

There are a handful (pun intended) of other restrictions on how you use these cards. You can only have four resource cards rotated to the right at any time; to rotate a fifth one you must discard one of the others by rotating it counterclockwise back into place. When you rotate a card 90 degrees to make its resource(s) available, you place it at the back of the deck; if that card returns to the top before you’ve used it, you lose that resource, rotating the card back 90 degrees counterclockwise and also placing it at the back of the deck. You can keep the top card in place and keep using or discarding (to the back) the second card, but once you reach the round marker card, you have to use or discard that top card as well – you can’t roll it over into the next round.

Palm Island card play

Some of the resource cards can be worth points if fully upgraded as well, although it can be at the cost of some of its resource powers – the Logger cards, which give you one wood at the start and two wood if upgraded twice, are worth five points if upgraded all three times but don’t give you any wood in that state. You have to upgrade at least some of the resource cards to be able to max out the housing or temple cards, the latter of which requires eleven total resources to go from its 2x state to its 3x state. This combination of features means you have to make a series of choices that will be determined by the order of the cards in the deck. The rules say you can look through the entire deck once before you start, but once you’ve started you can only look at the top three cards.

The game comes with Feat cards you can gain by hitting certain milestones in your games, starting with scoring 30 points, which I did in my first game and do almost every game now, up to some more difficult goals – it took me several plays and a bit of luck with card order to finally hit 40 points – or more specific ones, like upgrading all your Logger cards three times. Those Feat cards are nearly always useful, some more than others, but getting them at the wrong time can mess with your card sequencing.

There are two base decks in the game, so you can play competitively or cooperatively with someone else, although it’s a bit of a kludge for a game that was clearly designed with the solo player in mind. I’ve timed myself and none of my games has taken more than 13 minutes to play. For a novel solo experience it’s worth the price, maybe not as clever or challenging as my favorite solo game, Coffee Roaster, but cheaper and much more portable.

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→ November 23, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 11/23/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers, I discussed the baseball case for trading Mookie Betts, and looked at the Yasmani Grandal and Will Smith signings. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Watergate, a great and well-timed new two-player game where you play either as Nixon or as the journalists trying to uncover the scandal. For Ars Technica, I reviewed the social deduction game Game of Thrones Oathbreaker, a game with team & individual components that I think is too unbalanced.

My new book, The Inside Game, will be out on April 21, 2020, and you can pre-order it now. Stand by for news on store events, including Politics & Prose in DC and Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg.

I’ll send out the latest edition of my free email newsletter later today, talking a little about the philosophical debates I’m having with myself over this year’s Hall of Fame ballot.

My friend Jessica Scarane is mounting a primary challenge to Delaware Senator Chris Coons; Coons is a centrist Democrat who, among other things, thought Nats fans were wrong to boo President Trump, and who regularly works with the GOP. You can donate to Jess’s campaign on her website.

And now, the links…

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→ November 21, 2019
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Klawchat 11/21/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers, I wrote about the baseball argument for trading Mookie Betts, even though the Red Sox can certainly afford to keep him. Over at Paste, I reviewed the great two-player game Watergate, which whoa boy is that hitting the market at the right time.

Keith Law: Don’t you wish you knew better by now? Klawchat.

Merkle: Groshans future position? You like him or Bohm better as a hitter? Thanks Keith!
Keith Law: Any reason to think he can’t play third base? Bohm’s pure bat is better, especially since he’s ~3 years older and probably major-league ready in 2020. Would like to see Groshans go around the league twice.

JRussell: Hi Keith, do the Mets have a realistic package to offer for Betts? Would Dom Smith, Diaz and one of their better prospects (Baty, Jiminez) be enough? Figure Brodie may as well go all in even if the Kelenic/Cano trade was a fiasco?
Keith Law: The Mets should go all in but that package doesn’t get you close.

Jim: I’m shocked, yes shocked, to discover an MLB team recognizing the concept of sunk costs with the Yankees cutting Ellsbury!
Keith Law: If anything they’re a year late. Also, seeing media slagging Ellsbury on his way out the door is gross.

Mangle: Lucas Erceg will be 25 on May 1st. He hasn’t progressed much in Brewers system, but has shown glimpses. Maybe a change of scenery will do the trick. Good or bad lottery ticket for Rule 5 Draft?
Keith Law: I’d pass. .306 OBP over two years in AA and probably has to play 1b.

TomBruno23: Is there a resource that you recommend using to tell the story of the real Thanksgiving to my 8/6/4 year olds?
Keith Law: Yeah, that’s a tough one. This might get you started.

TomBruno23: White Castle Impossible Slider Stuffing. Are you in or out?
Keith Law: That sounds unpleasant. Is it with the Impossible meat substitute? I do like that as a burger but I don’t think I want any food product connected to White Castle.

addoeh: For whomever is the Democratic nominee, what percentage of their campaign time would you want to see them devote to talking about issues (healthcare, taxes, etc) vs. reminding voters of the current administration’s corruption? 80/20? 90/10?
Keith Law: I’m not plugged into that at all … what are voters most concerned about? Clinton basically won in 1992 because the economy was slowing and he talked about it constantly. If it’s health care now, the candidates should talk health care.

Jeremy: I’m leery of the Braves investing so much money in the bullpen. Individually, I don’t think the contracts are terrible…Smith’s isn’t my favorite, but do you think this is a good approach to the offseason?
Keith Law: Just posted an ESPN+ column that included that … I thought Smith was the best LHR on the market and would give him three years. Martin’s deal was pretty expensive especially given his age.

addoeh: If found guilty, do you see the MLB handing down stiffer penalties for the Astros pitch-tipping than the Braves international signing violations or the Cardinals hacking?
Keith Law: I’d say in between, closer to the Cardinals’ hacking. If the investigation finds that Luhnow knew and/or approved of the use of technology to steal signs, he might end up in durance vile like Coppolella did.

Hinkie: Haven’t had a chance to ask your opinion on the Phillies hiring of Brian Barber as amateur scouting director. Good hire, or could they have done better? Yankees drafts haven’t been great lately.
Keith Law: Good hire. Yankees’ drafts have been pretty good – not sure why you say that – and their process is one of the best at integrating traditional scouting with analytics.

Aaron G: 4/$73MM for Grandal? That seems…off.
Keith Law: Also in today’s column. Feels about right to me.

Jeff: If Gerrit Cole signs with the Angels (or the Yankees believe that he will), which starter do you think the Yankees should attempt to sign as a free agent?
Keith Law: Strasburg, Wheeler, Ryu … just work right on down the list. They need a good starter, and while Cole is the best, it’s not as if he’s the only viable choice for them.

Joe: Any idea why Didi didn’t get a QO? Seems like the team did him a favor.
Keith Law: I’m not sure either … I think he’s one of the best free agents on the market.

TP: Agree with you on Austin’s potential as an MLB city. But if the MLS stadium fight is any indication, there will be no public subsidies for an MLB stadium, and it won’t be built on public land within the city limits. You could build something between Austin and San Antonio, but it would be out in the country and require significant infrastructure upgrades just to get there. Not impossible, but hard to see it happening in Austin given local politics and current challenges related to growth, traffic, and gentrification.
Keith Law: Fair points, and in reality, MLB isn’t expanding to any city that doesn’t hand them a big publicly-funded stadium. That said, Orlando is a terrible market, even if the free stadium is there. MLB would just end up propping it up with revenue-sharing, and I can’t imagine the owners of the high-payroll franchises would be OK with that.

xxx(yyy): just found out wife may be lactose intolerant – any standout recipes you make that would work here?

(assume that vegan cheese tastes about as bad as sounds like it does)
Keith Law: I use lactose-free milk everywhere. You can make homemade ricotta from LF whole milk and it’s better than regular store-bought.

greggu: Do you come across restaurants that add 15-20 percent to the bill who also claim that it is NOT a tip that goes to the wait staff? We have a few of those here in Hawaii that simply pocket the service charge and put the burden on diners to give up an additional 20-25 percent for the workers.

I always accepted the service charge and added whatever additional amount was necessary to make it to 20 percent. Now I see this at a few of my favorite restaurants. I don’t think it’s fair for me to cough up to 40 percent of the bill so I just stopped going to these places, although some peeps at Yelp insisted I should feel free to add zero tip with a clear conscience. What would you do at a restaurant with such a practice?
Keith Law: I’ve never heard of this in the United States.

Tim Robinson: Home/road splits for OPS and wRC+ don’t show much difference for the Astros the past few years. Their scheme was elaborate but did it actually matter?
Keith Law: That is hardly exculpatory.

Jason: I know you’re a big proponent of compensating collegiate athletes. My question is do you think the ‘likeness’ issue being resolved goes far enough, or do you think the university/NCAA should directly compensate the athletes? Also, do you compensate wrestling, crew, T&F, and other non-revenue generating sports, or just MBB and FB… and maybe a few WBB and BB who do generate a profit… Just curious as to your opinions. Thanks.
Keith Law: Let the market determine who gets paid and how much. Players whose sports don’t generate revenue probably wouldn’t be paid, but the objection I have and many others do as well – that coaches and administrators, nearly all of them white men, are profiting off the free labor of student-athletes who are a far more diverse group – isn’t an issue when the sport doesn’t bring in the cash.

Joe: What happens to players not selected in the rule 5 draft? Do they stay with their original teams? Do they become free agents?
Keith Law: They stay with their original teams, and are just not on the 40-man roster, so to be recalled to the majors they must first have their contracts purchased so they are added to the 40-man.

The Sloth: Any surprises among those left exposed to the Rule 5 Draft?
Keith Law: No, not really. The rule 5 draft is a huge waste of time.

Heater: Byron Buxton is now 25 yrs old. Has his prospect of becoming a star faded and he is what he is? Or will there be more?
Keith Law: He’s been very good when healthy – worth about 3 WAR in half a season last year. I’m not sure why so many fans want to give up on him given how good he’s been when he can take the field. The concern is that he’s on the IL too often, not about his ability.

Aaron C.: 2020 A’s rotation is high on potential, but light innings/dependability past Fiers, I guess. What’s the best way to address this?
Keith Law: They should fish in the lower end of the starter market … I see a few good innings-eater types out there this year. And of course they know to target guys who fit that ballpark.

JRussell: Hey Keith, I See the Mets left Shervyen Newton unprotected in the Rule 5 and he has been on at least one top 10 list for them? Any chance he is selected and was leaving him unprotected a mistake?
Keith Law: He struck out (32.8% of his PA) more often than he got on base (28.3%) in low-A last year.
Keith Law: I don’t even see the issue. If someone wants to burn a 25-man spot most of the year and a 40-man spot all year on a player who has roughly a 0.0% chance to hit, go for it. It’s not even clear if he’s much of a prospect at this point.

Aaron C.: Been to enough new spots to possibly update your pizza rankings in the near future? Can I interest you in creating a new food ranking list like “best desserts” or something?
Keith Law: I have a list of dish projects for the offseason and that’s on it, but first I have to complete the first round of edits on The Inside Game and do some of the regular year-end posts (cookbooks, music). The top 100 board games post went up this week.

DEAN M: There’s alot of helium on Alek Thomas in the prospect circles recently of him becoming a 5 too all-star. Buy in? Too early to tell?
Keith Law: If someone talks about him as a 5-tool All-Star you shouldn’t listen to anything else they say, because they are clearly bullshitting. And I like Thomas a lot, had him on my midseason top 50.

Jason: Any interesting names that were not protected in the Rule 5 draft? I know the extra year has eliminated much of the value in it, but last year pundits were at least talking about Richie Martin
Keith Law: And then Martin was worth -0.6 WAR with a .260 OBP. The rule 5 draft is really bad. MLB ruined it to exert further control over players, and because those players were minor leaguers, the MLBPA didn’t stop it.

Moe Mentum: Lance Berkman finished in the top 20 for league MVP voting 7 different times in his career, but didn’t even get enough Hall of Fame votes to stay on the ballot after his first year of eligibility. Surprised? Bad news for Adrian Gonzalez (8 times) and Matt Holliday (7 times)?
Keith Law: He’s not a HoFer in any sense, and I don’t think the other guys are too. Top 20 in the voting is hardly an achievement with 10 spots on the ballot.

Aaron C.: Been listening to the “Slow Burn” podcast and wondering where you stand on the most divisive question of our time: Biggie or Tupac?
Keith Law: Tupac.

Nate: Why do you think cherington said yes to the pirates but not others?
Keith Law: Good opportunity for a player development guy to enact his own system without the win-now pressure of a Boston.
Keith Law: That’s my guess. I haven’t asked him.

Rob: What are your thoughts on the Jose De Leon trade by the Reds and Rays? Can he fill the fifth rotation spot or is he more of a middle reliever at this point?
Keith Law: I like De Leon as a back-end starter but he seems like a dubious fit for Cincinnati’s home park.

Frank: I read your piece on Mookie. To me the real question for any team interested is do your really want to give up top pieces in your farm system for undoubtedly a great player but one who is going to make 25-30M from arbitration and have no guarantee you can keep him next year. So it’s one year, a lot of money and a couple of high level prospects to get him. When teams trade for players of that caliber at least 1 of those 3 criteria should be in the acquiring teams favor. None are here. Seems like way too much of a risk for me and in turn Boston shouldn’t trade him unless they get that kind of return. I don’t see how a deal gets done.
Keith Law: Sure, all deals like that are unlikely unless the selling team has decided they just can’t (won’t) pay the player, which is clearly not true here. I just wanted to point out that there is a valid baseball reason for the Sox to trade him, beyond just treating the luxury tax like a hard cap.

John: No question but thanks for recommending Homegrown by Alex Speier, I’ve been tearing through it!
Keith Law: Great! Alex is a longtime friend and a fantastic writer.

JR: Torkelson the clear shot pick for the Tigers?
Keith Law: No.

Alan: Next move for the White Sox is?
Keith Law: It should be a starting pitcher.

Kip: Are the Braves still active in the international market with sanctions finally gone in the ’21-’22 class? I don’t really read them being “in” on any player and they’ve had lots of turnover in their scouting department.
Keith Law: They have to be involved now, since those guys agree to terms 2-3 years out, but it might be quiet because they’re trying not to get in trouble.

Todd Boss: Are you ready for another Hall of Fame season? I write this mostly tongue-in-cheek, but there seems like a real chance to get some backlog cleared out with just one sure-fire new candidate on the ballot this year.
Keith Law: I have contemplated my ballot and there’s a good chance I won’t vote for ten players. I think there are ~8 clearly worthy guys, then maybe 4 bubble guys, players I wouldn’t say *don’t* belong in but about whom you could have a good argument.

Ryan: How do you interpret Atlanta’s offseason so far? I would’ve put 3B/cOF/SP/C all ahead of RP as needs.
Keith Law: Signing RP first doesn’t mean the front office thought it was the biggest need.

Mike: How long will the MLB lockout of 2022 go on for?
Keith Law: With as much revenue as there is, I wonder if the owners would shoot themselves in the foot like that for an extended period … the goose still lays golden eggs, and I’m sorry if they’re not all 24 karats.

Mark: can you give a a few thoughts about the Giants GM and manager hirings? I know you like Kapler, any thoughts on Harris?
Keith Law: Heard nothing but good things on Harris from Cubs folks, but I don’t know him personally. Kapler I think is a great hire, especially since they’re likely to run some young rosters the next few years.

Sean: Great article on the Red Sox decision with Betts. Would Gonsolin / Gray / Cartaya be enough for you to pull the trigger?
Keith Law: That’s a good offer by value but if you don’t think Gonsolin is a sure starter it probably doesn’t meet the criteria I laid out.
Keith Law: I think he’s a likely starter, not a certain one. Gray is a certain starter.

Jennifer: Toughest part of being divorced?
Keith Law: Not even close – days without my daughter. I doubt I will ever get used to that. Fortunately she’s old enough that we text pretty regularly even if it’s just for me to joke around with her and her to say “ok boomer” to me.

Rob: How does Spiritual Instinct stack up to Kodama in your opinion?
Keith Law: I have to listen to SI more but i think I liked Kodama a little better?

TFT: Is Chatham a good enough hitter to become the Red Sox regular 2nd baseman?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Sean: do you think trent grisham can find 500 ABs for the brewers next year or will he be stuck in the OF4 role?
Keith Law: He’s good enough to be a regular somewhere, although Milwaukee may want more certainty, and he’d be a really valuable trade piece because he’s ready to play right now.

Eric: how enjoyable is it seeing every single hack gop talking point get destroyed in real time by every single witness?
Keith Law: It’s so perfectly timed that someone needs to send the script back for rewrite.

Sean: with jhoan duran added to the 40 man so you think he gets a crack in the majors in 2020?
Keith Law: Yes, in some role.

Todd Boss: I know you hate Rule-5 but the Washington Natsmosphere is kind of surprised we didn’t see a couple more names get protected yesterday; do you have opinion on Sterling Sharp in particular, or lesser candidates like Taylor Gushue, Mario Sanchez and Steven Fuentes?
Keith Law: I could see someone taking Sharp, not the others.

Congress: HEY LET’S ELIMINATE HUNDREDS TO THOUSANDS OF MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL JOBS WHILE ALSO ALLOWING MINOR LEAGUERS TO BE PAID RIDICULOUSLY LOW WAGES!
Keith Law: Hundreds to thousands of minor league jobs? I mean, I know facility with math isn’t a requirement for elected office, but jeez.

Matt: KLaw, when you were with Toronto, was there any truh to the rumors of the Jays positioning men in the outfield bleachers and signaling signs to the home team’s hitters? Do you think any other teams today go as far as Houston does to steal signs?
Keith Law: That rumor was after I left.

Paul (NJ): Trying to cook a deep fried turkey for the first time for Thanksgiving. Have you done it and are you a fan? Any recommendations for someone trying it for the first time?
Keith Law: Keep a large, functioning fire extinguisher nearby. Or roast it.

Larry: Have you ever heard of a band called Wintersun? If so, what do you think?
Keith Law: Songs are a bit long for my taste but I do like that style of metal.

KillMonger: Hi Keith, we’ve had three of the year’s best films come out from Asian filmmakers. Knowing you liked “Parasite”, did you see “The Farewell”? If not, I’d highly recommend that along with “Ms. Purple”.
Keith Law: Not yet but it’s on the list.

addoeh: Hosting Thanksgiving this year? Doing the “traditional” chat while spatchcocking the turkey?
Keith Law: I’ll do the Periscope while hacking up the bird, yes. My girlfriend is hosting and we’ll split the cooking.

Davey: Can Dinelson Lamet last at the top or middle of an MLB rotation with a 4.0 BB/9? People knock him for it but he’s posted a 1.25 WHIP and 11.7 k/9 in 2017 and 2019. Heck his xFIP this year was 3.44.
Keith Law: He doesn’t have the third pitch he’ll need to start.

Ciscoskid: Is the middle/lower class of baseball in the greatest risk with the upcoming labor negotiations? Between platooning/load management, it seems Stars are the only people destined to be everyday players. Makes me think MLB needs a pretty big 21st century overhaul and expecting that from MLB owners seems a bit much. Thoughts?
Keith Law: Yes, I think that’s a real concern, and a good argument for the MLBPA to push for a much higher minimum salary.

Adam: Are the Padres and Red Sox each motivated enough to take on the “risk” of a Myers for Price swap?
Keith Law: Why on earth would Boston do that?

Rog: You interviewed for a job with the Astros, no? What do you think about this mess? Did you get any sense ownership was OK with skirting and/or breaking the rules?
Keith Law: I can’t believe they forgot to ask me in the interview if I’d be willing and able to help them cheat.

Adam: The Padres are reportedly surrounding Jayce Tingler with two Showalter guys, Bobby Dickerson and Wayne Kirby. I’m assuming these moves were made to appease Manny Machado, but what are your thoughts on their coaching/development prowess?
Keith Law: Why would that appease Manny Machado? He wasn’t a Buck fan.

Ollie: How much will the Dbacks regret trading away Chisholm?
Keith Law: It’s not how much, but how likely. If he’s any good, he’ll be great. They think there’s too much of a risk that he’s not any good, that the strikeouts and the slightly out-of-control playing style overwhelm his ridiculous talent.

Adam: How do you feel about the new Padres jerseys?
Keith Law: I really don’t care. I’m sure Fashiongraphs will have an opinion for you.

Joey: Can Alek Thomas or Corbin Carroll develop plus power? Which one is the better bet to stick in center? Thank you!
Keith Law: I like Carroll’s future power more than Thomas’s. Right now I have both staying in CF.

John Coppollela: In light of the pending penalties for HOU’s transgressions, was my lifetime ban a bit too Draconian?
Keith Law: We don’t know the pending penalties for Houston, but I think MLB made an example of Coppolella, and that the penalty didn’t fit the crime (or recognize how many teams did similar stuff because the lawless July 2nd market all but requires it).

Eric: Devin Nunes is clearly not a smart person. How the hell does he keep getting elected?
Keith Law: Matt Gaetz sees you and raises you -$50.

Dylan: Out of all the white sox outfield prospects not named Luis Robert or Steele Walker, who (Luis Basabe, Micker Adolfo, Blake Rutherford, Luis Gonzalez) has the Most realistic chance at making the majors and contributing
Keith Law: Adolfo is going to hit his way to the majors. I’d probably pick him.

Kyle: I have the Disney plus bundle that includes ESPN +. Does that allow me to read your insider stuff?
Keith Law: Yes, you can read my stuff while watching The Rescuers.

Paul: A’s DFAd Jharel Cotton. Are you out on him at this point?
Keith Law: Not at all – just waiting to see him return from TJ.

John Zirinsky: Keith if I recall correctly you were never a big Greg Bird fan, so I would imagine you think the Yanks did the right thing?
Keith Law: My issue was that he was a DH only. I think the reason they cut him was that he was so seldom healthy.

Tom: Does Austin Hays have a shot at being a decent everyday CF?
Keith Law: I don’t think he has any shot at CF.

Marty: What’s up with teams not hiring minorities for managers and GM positions? White privilege alive and well. Writers like you sit on your hands and never question it
Keith Law: Oh fuck right off. I point that out all the time. I even spoke to a high-ranking exec last week who hired a white candidate for one such job to ask which candidates of color he’d interviewed. Someone asked me for suggestions for a director-level position they had open this fall, and I made sure to include candidates of color on that list too. And I am *far* from the only person in the media who has pointed out this issue, or the underlying issue that people of color and women do not get the same initial opportunities or the chances for advancement prior to director-level, manager, or GM positions to create a candidate pool beyond the same old white men. If you think no one is talking about it, you have your fingers in your ears.

Zach D: A well-known national baseball writer said that Albert Belle was “one dimensional player” and that’s why he’s not in the HOF…sigh
Keith Law: I think we know what “dimension” that would be.

Gary: MLB owners shielding media with police force is_____.
Keith Law: Were public funds used for that? I have no idea how that works but if Crane didn’t pay for that out of his own pocket I’d be furious.

Ron: A question for you that most likely never will happen. I own a MLB team and we need a stadium. I have so much money, the land to build on and love the city so much that I will build the stadium myself without tax dollars and work out parking and other logistics with the city. I reserve the right to name said stadium after some baseball icon or whatever and tell them to shove the corporate naming rights because I don’t want their money. Would MLB agree? Would it matter if they did or not?
Keith Law: They would. You just kind of don’t exist.

Ridley: FWIW, any non-discretionary amount, say an automatic 18% for parties of six or more, added to a check in a restaurant is considered a “service charge” and not a tip, and the restaurant has the right to do whatever they want with it. This has been the case since January, 2014 in the U.S. and the restaurant is under no obligation to disclose where the money goes. I’ve been in the restaurant industry for 35 years now and this is one of the shadiest aspects of a very shady business.
Keith Law: I didn’t know that those automatic service charges weren’t guaranteed to go to servers. I’ll ask from now on.

Nathan: No question, just wanted to acknowledge your awesome Coldplay reference in your latest article
Keith Law: Tried to keep it subtle, and stick with one of their actual good songs.

Josh : If the White Sox go after Rendon , would moving Moncada to RF make sense?
Keith Law: Or centerfield? Granted Robert’s there too but why couldn’t Moncada play it?

Alex: Is the guy from Vanderbilt who some think is a top 3 pick (name escapes me now), does he have enough arm to remain at SS or 3B? Thanks
Keith Law: Austin Martin, who is definitely a real person and not a knockoff sports car, played ridiculously good 3b when I saw him in May.

Chris: Hey Keith, Do you think Beltran can fix Edwin Diaz?
Keith Law: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Diaz that a de-juiced baseball can’t fix.

Zac: Im surprised the Tigers decided to protect Derek Hill. I know you have always been high on him so has he done enough last year to belive he can be at least a bench piece?
Keith Law: He can definitely play CF in the majors. I don’t think he’s that far away from being a good bench piece but he isn’t there right now.

Black Cat: Not a question, but just wanted to let you know I’m about 40% through The Master and Margarita. It probably wouldn’t have crossed my radar had I not read your Top 100 list. Thanks for the suggestion! I’m enjoying it so far.
Keith Law: Glad you’ve liked it! It’s such a masterwork of imagination and layered meanings.

Brian: Keith, I just finished Exit West based upon your recommendation and absolutely loved it. Any similar books you recommend?
Keith Law: A Tale for the Time Being, Lincoln in the Bardo, Kafka on the Shore.

Georgie: How do some national writers still not understand trade value whatsoever? Saw an article today suggesting Bryant for Fried, Waters, Wilson, and Contreras.
Keith Law: Yikes.

Kyle: If the server says, “No, the restaurant keeps the 18%”, what will you do? Not tip? Tip and tell the owner you’re never coming back?
Keith Law: Tip, absolutely. It’s not the server’s fault. Sure, I’d call out the owner for misleading customers, but the most important thing is to ensure the servers are paid.

Phil: True or False: Irrespective of his playoff miscues, Clayton Kershaw is the finest starting pitcher of his generation.
Keith Law: True. He had some great playoff outings too, but no one wants to remember them.

Matt: It’s starting to get cold which means I love hot stews/soups. Any favorites and what’s the key to making a good stew?
Keith Law: The stock. Use real stock, make your own, and it’s hard to screw it up.

Craig: a person on the chat accused you of being insufficiently woke on MLB minority hiring
Keith Law: I’m sure I could do and say more, but to say that I and other writers like me haven’t done or said anything is nonsense.

Chris: Most underrated Thanksgiving food and most overrated?
Keith Law: Most underrated is a good-quality scratch pumpkin pie. Most overrated is that gloppy mess of green bean casserole.

Buscon Bob: Baltimore hired a female FO member yesterday, so is her rank higher than Kim Ng’s with LA?
Keith Law: I don’t think her rank is higher but I’ve met Eve and this is a great hire. She’s one of three women to leave Houston’s baseball ops department in the last four months, I think.

Chris: Rick Hahn just said that Grandal is “elite at at a premium position.” Agree?
Keith Law: Obviously yes.

Andy: Do you make money on this website? The ads aren’t obtrusive, thanks for that.
Keith Law: I make a little bit, although if you consider the hours I put into writing, it’s a labor of love.

Chris: Thoughts on Carlos Beltran as Mets manager?
Keith Law: Zero experience managing or coaching at any level. I do not favor those hires at all.

Buscon Bob: Have you seen Jo jo Rabbit yet?
Keith Law: No; the reviews by people I trust have been tepid to outright negative. If it gets some nominations I’ll double back to see it but I have other films i want to see (Pain & Glory, Knives Out, The Irishman).

addoeh: “Matt Gaetz sees you and raises you -$50.”

Steve King says “All in!”
Keith Law: King is a whole different breed than the others. Nunes and Gaetz are dunces. King is terrifying.

Snowy: Giants fans overwhelmingly hate Kapler already. Based on what Farhan has done so far, I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Do you think Kapler is a good fit in SF?
Keith Law: Giants fans who hate Kapler are probably basing it off incorrect or incomplete information. That’s a shame.

Aaron: The Angels just added Jamai Jones to the 40 man to protect him from the rule 5 draft. Just looking at the stat line it looks like he’s been disappointing in his development the last couple of years. What have you seen or heard from a scouting perspective? Will he hit enough to start in the majors? How’s his defense developed since moving big to 2B?
Keith Law: He’s been disappointing at the plate when I’ve seen him. Swing is good, swing decisions haven’t been.

Guest: McCammond/Barkley issue – uncalled for by Barkley. But why do people not delete their twitter accounts when they become “famous”. Countless jokes/slurs by McCammond against the Asian and LGBT community. She doesn’t think people won’t find this?
Keith Law: Irrelevant to the issue at hand. What Barkley said should have been enough to get him fired. Any discussion of her is a de facto argument over whether she ‘deserved’ the insult.

Brett: Have you ever tried venison? If so, did you like it?
Keith Law: Yes, I think just once, and now I don’t eat any red meat other than pork.

Craig: Rumor is that Milwaukee wouldn’t guarantee Yaz a 4th year. I am thinking that is an AL vs NL thing — CWS was willing to go there because they could use him at DH to cut down on his wear and tear and to use his bat into his mid 30s; without that kind of option, MIL couldn’t justify the 4th year. Is this thinking valid?
Keith Law: I have no idea if that’s true but it is logical.

Jack: I saw your comments on twitter yesterday about Gladwell and his chapter on Sandusky and Nassar. Just wanted to see if you could provide more details on your thoughts I am curious to hear your full opinion
Keith Law: What I said covered it – he’s a Penn State truther and now has run roughshod over Nassar victims in some weird, misguided attempt to discredit some of their statements. I won’t read his stuff or listen to anything he’s on.
Keith Law: Gotta run to pick up my daughter for a doctor’s appointment. Thank you all for reading & for all of your questions. No Klawchat next week but as mentioned above I’ll do a Periscope while I spatchcock the turkey, either on Tuesday or Wednesday, so stay tuned for that. Enjoy your weekends!

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The Cloven.

I had to finish B. Catling’s Vorrh trilogy, since I’m enough of a completionist that I can’t read the first two parts of a trilogy and not finish it. I really liked The Vorrh, the fever-dream opening novel that builds an incredible, dark, creepy world in a forest at the heart of Africa that is fighting back against German colonizers attempting to plunder its wood. Catling expanded the world in The Erstwhile with the strange maybe-alive creatures of the book’s title, but the story turned dramatically darker and graphically violent, to the point of abject cruelty, without really advancing the plots of the first book enough. The trilogy concludes with The Cloven, and unfortunately my fears from the second book were confirmed: Catling created a mesmerizing world, but he couldn’t resolve any of the plots. None of the various stories he opened up in The Vorrh gets anything close to a conclusion, and by the end of this third book, too much of the dark magic from the first book was gone.

The story in The Cloven mostly takes place in Essenwald, the German city next to the Vorrh, with brief passages back in England. Ghertrude and Cyrena return, as does Meta, while the Limboia – the natives who have had their minds largely wiped clean by the time they’ve spent in the Vorrh, making them something akin to slave labor – have returned to the forest for the time being. The Kin are also still here, and work alongside a character who makes a surprise re-appearance in this novel. All of the Erstwhile characters from the second book appear at least in passing, as do Oneofthewilliams and some form of the character Sidrus.

Catling brings them all back for one more go-round, but none of these storylines seems to go anywhere. Worst of all is how Catling has created this surreal world yet gives no explanation to any of its mysteries, or even a purpose to most of them. Who made the Kin, the so-called “Bakelite people” of the novels, or created the system that gives them power? What exactly was Ishmael, who isn’t quite human but lives in the world of men and is able to sire a child? What exactly is the Orm? What drives the Vorrh, and does it control the creatures within it or is it the other way around?

The first novel was an inventive playground of ideas that seemed to draw on millennia of myths from across the world, opening up numerous storylines that I assumed Catling would eventually draw together over the remainder of the series, but he does nothing of the sort. Many characters meet their ends in The Cloven, but it’s often in some ambiguous way and doesn’t seem to tie to the main story. Sidrus’ fate is especially gruesome and bizarre, deserving more explanation but getting none, and it contributed to my sense that Catling was too enamored of his ability to dream up new desecrations for the human form to focus on wrapping up any of the plot.

This could have been such a great series, a dark fantasy that depicted the horrors and depredations of colonialism through rich metaphor. Catling gave himself so many lanes in which to work, from the living forest and the Limboia who mine it to the use of characters’ vision (or blindness) as a recurrent image and theme. The fertile material of the first book in the trilogy merely makes the failure of the third book that much more disappointing.

Next up: Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.

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