Priscilla

Wilfrid! I am shocked-comma-all-caps-SHOCKED. You mean, worth alloting reading time to? Tom Wolfe's long-ago essay on British tailors, what of that.

Reading Between Bites just now. While generally unfamiliar with his work, and specifically unfamiliar with Town and Country mag, I have always harbored good feelings about James Villas after he wrote, I forget where, Gourmet, perhaps, an appreciation of Craig Claiborne after his CC's death. And, lots of good stories with just an inordinate number of superultracasual pass-bys of the likes of Tom Wolfe and Princess Grace and so forth. In fact I do keep thinking of Wolfe as I read, what with the Southernness and the blonde hair and the endless parade of bespoke English suits. Would have liked to read Wolfe on Villas, in fact. Can't remember a Wolfe nonfiction piece on the food world, although it seems a tight good fit, doesn't it? Maybe it's yet to come, if he can for a moment take his nose out of those gigantic sprawling ass-kicking novels he's been writing two of.

All right Colonel and CathyL and your smoked cabbage. I SAW that the method specified a STICK of butter tucked inside. You fool NO ONE with all this no-so-thinly-veiled bouillon-cube subterfuge. Yes, Rhea S, that is exactly of which I speak. But (at least here in SoCal) asparagus season has just begun, so I'm trying to maximize use while minimizing asparagus appetite fatigue. And thank you Richard Kilgore, for the Richard Olney specifics. He sure did serve asparagus omelette a lot, and also was respectfully frugal with food, so I can see how he had the leftover asparagus.

Mikey, that's what I mean, it's so good prepared a favorite way it is difficult to convince yourself to deviate, sometimes. I set out to to deviate more often this spring.

Too right, CathyL. I appreciate your sympathy. I also want The French Menu Cookbook, especially after reading how it came about. I have nearly owned both multiple times over the years, including memorably, stupidly, passing up a very good quality first edition FMC years ago at a used bookstore for some reason. You know how it is to be irrationally overtaken by foolishness--"I just have TOO MANY EFFING COOKBOOKS," and put the good-quality, inexpensive first-edition Richard Olney back on the shelf and walk away. I've been tracking them off and on ABE, for instance, and after Olney's death prices really increased. But they are at the top of my list. Perhaps the only person on earth who thinks Reflexions was a great read, I thrilled to his Richard Olney's harvesting wild asparagus off of his Provence hillside to serve to the likes of Elizabeth David. Pretty cool.

Varmint I just read Richard Olney's autobiography Reflexions and he was forever serving omelettes with asparagus as a first course, when he wasn't serving omelettes with black truffles as a first course, to all kinds of nobodies and Somebodies. I don't have his cookbooks and wondered about his method. Wonder if he too roasted it?

One application I'm working on, again tonight, in fact, is asparagus soup. I cut one blue-rubber-band bunch, maybe just over a pound, in small pieces and only just covered with water, a single peeled garlic clove, a little salt, simmered until the asparagus was way done, got in there with the old immersion blender and broke it all down, passed it through a sieve. (I pulled out several good-looking tips before they turned to mush to press into later service as garni.) Corrected texture (don't want it too thick, it'll be stodgy), corrected seasoning, couple tablespoons creme fraiche, stir stir stir. Should be intensely asparagusy. Tiny squiggle or dollop or as-you-like of creme fraiche with a rescued reserved tip floated atop. Served it in cafe au lait-type cups w/saucers, asparagusy green Provencal stuff. Asparagusy green linen napkins with nice faggoted hemstitching, a recent find. It was a green trip.

Hey I know roast is up there, somewheres, Colonel! Anyway that's just what I do, too, olive oil, (sea salt), pepper, roast roast roast. Got it from an old Edward Giobbi cookbook. Where did you first run across the roasting method?

When asparagus is in season, I cook with it a lot, perhaps to the point of testing the limits of appetite among those eating at my table. (I fear.) But we have always gone the distance, maybe exactly because of asparagus, rather than in spite of it. Do you asparagus? Thin, fat, peeled, un? Steam, roast, boil, grill? Hollandaise, mayonnaise, vinaigrette, butter? Let's see what asparagus preparations eGulletaires get up to lo this Spring 2003.

I love all the pix, Steve Martin, Jason, Awbrig, the occasional Tommy, everybody! GordonCooks: Was the 1995 Duckhorn really really really good? Last evening, asparagus soup to start, chicken thighs sauteed with sage and a little garlic, cream finishing the sauce, rice with a teeny bit of curry powder and a little onion and a handful of peas. Lovely redleaf salad with toasted walnuts, crumbled goat cheese, and walnut oil and mild red wine vinegar to dress. Pain Italien after Bernard Clayton's recipe. (Forgot about dessert, which was another permutation of--you'll remember the first was pears with Parmigiano Reggiano--Margaret Pilgrim's fruit gratin: bananas/gorgonzola. So good! Really wildly good, beyond all expectation.)

Yes, Poulet de. Orleans in the Quartier de Orleans. Right past a dangerously wicked curve in which you gotta accelerate uphill or your car stalls. Great restaurant, we went there twice when we took our vacation there last year. We ended up doing the kids Spanish and Geography homework while we ate! Jason, did you have that stuffed conch dish? Very appealing.

Nice Angus strip steaks grilled over mesquite, nice little pat o' Lurpak on top when plating. Asparagus, peeled, blanched, shocked, sauteed in butter and grapeseed oil which had had a bunch of anchovy filets melted in first, and then salt & pepper at the end. The sauteed asparagus served over thick slices of sourdough made stripey on the grill and then rubbed with garlic. (Asparagus season burgeons! Am I the only one who uses it so frequently in season that it is sort of a race against appetite to see how long before the eaters at my table tire of it? Usually we outlast the season, however. Good asparagus suggests a lot of different preparations -- like Gknl's soup up there e.g.)

The St. Marten episode was great. The restaurant where he had conch and Creole chicken looked sososo wonderful. Look forward to the New Orleans installment. I think I'll make vodka gimlets and old fashioneds and serve 'em in plastic takeaway glasses with a big old pile of boiled crawfish or shrimp.

Awbrig, great pix! I think this $450. bill is the new Trader Joe's benchmark. Let's see if somebody can beat it.

Bolognese sauce as per Marcella Hazan, on self-styled handmade-in-Italy putatively artisanal tagliatelle from Trader Joe's, the only shape from the range remotely suitable. Very very thick, hearty noodles. Too thick, too hearty. The pasta cooking water was nearly opaque from offloaded starch. Hmmm. It's just that I hadn't tried it and it keeps being there on the end cap as I pass on the way to the King Arthur Flour and the Cline Zinfandel and other staples. So, I tried it. Done and done. Bag o' baby red Romaine for salad, LBB baguette. The aforementioned Zinfandel. A TJ meal (except for the sauce), A-B-C-D.

The carrot dish I had was a room-temp veg salad, one of a range available at the (now closed) restaurant. Not a dip, in the way of hummus or baba ganouj. Carrots sliced thinly on the bias, cooked not too quickly in olive oil with garlic, thick yogurt added. Salt. Really something, it was, especially with the Mrs. Owner's puffy flatbread.

Used to visit a Turkish restaurant which called itself Mediterranean that featured a carrot dish named something like havuc, pronounced with an -sh on the end, carrots cooked in olive oil with garlic and finally yogurt added, that I've never seen in other pan-Mediterranean-identified places. Rich and refined. Took carrots to a whole new level. The waiter, who was the son of the owner, told us it was very Turkish. Their bread, made in house, was a pointed oval flatbread, quite puffy, for a flatbread. Charles Perry, whom we are lucky to have in the LA Times Food section, (only not nearly enough) has written extensively on the differences and similarities of the cuisines in question, and others too.

Priscilla, those cookies sound divine. Would you mind sharing the recipe or quoting its source? Thank you. Ditto nerissa's request, if you don't mind! Those cookies do indeed sound like keepers!! Cookies cookies cookies benighted cookies. Thank you for your interest! I don't even much like to bake, but it behooves one to be able to field a full team, doesn't it. These were from a basic recipe from Time-Life's Cookies & Crackers volume from The Good Cook series (edited by the estimable Richard Olney, and it shows, plus, TWO ribbon placeholders per volume). Basic Creamed Dough (it's called; use 2 c. flour and omit the cocoa for plain butter cookies) 14 T. (7 oz.) butter 1 c. sugar (I use vanilla sugar) 1 egg (1 t. vanilla extract, for those not using vanilla sugar) 1 3/4 c. flour 1/2 c. cocoa (I always use Dutch-process; dunno if natural cocoa would make them as dark) 1/2 t. salt Sift together the flour, cocoa, and salt. Cream butter, sugar. Beat in egg and extract. Stir in flour mixture. Divide in two or three or four, wrap in plastic, refrigerate until firm. Don't be afraid to roll 'em quite thin. Parchment-lined baking sheets. 350 degrees, I suppose, maybe 12 minutes, but do pay attention because I find they are done when I begin to detect a burny-cocoa aroma. Remove to cooling racks.

Saturday night had asked some neighbors around, served beef Stroganoff from the Consort's family recipe from pre-revolutionary Former Soviet Union. What I have brought to this dish (besides beef broth, which was such an obviousity I really cannot claim it) is cremini mushrooms, the most dependably good-quality Stroganoff-suitable mushrooms available to me. I love the flavor of creminis -- lesserly as they inexorably traverse their continuum toward Portabelladom. But, have enjoyed Portabellas in that Nigel Slater snail-butter sandwich on what I believe was a bap. ANYway, the family tradition is potatoes to accompany -- frites, really, only not so militantly crisp, perhaps, as state-of-the-art frites. So, dareIsay somewhat flaccid-on-purpose (!) skinny frites, and a big old redleaf salad, and bread from the aforementioned Bernard Clayton recipe for pain Italien yet again. Everybody ate and ate -- it was great. Cline 2000 Zinfandel. Dessert was small chocolate heart-shaped cookies, very very dark very very thin, and crisp, and homemade chocolate ice cream, scooped with the small-but-not-teensy scoop, the same dark dark color as the cookies -- a monochromatic trip. I like monochromany, probably more than most people.

Simple, yet brilliant. This is why it is crucial to have at least one smug scientific bastard on your site. yeah, but we stoopid americans don't know what he means. big words and all. Oh, I think one hasta go a bit beyond a coupla a-tion suffixes to cross over into Big Word territory. Even for Americans. As we have seen, for the same reason antidisestablishmentarianism is not really, truly, a Big Word. Regards, Sesquipedalian Police

Yes! A great sauce for pork is to sear your meat in a saute pan. Remove to a warm platter. Add shallots to the pan and soften. Add a few green peppercorns. Add Makers Mark (watch the flame!) , deglaze and scrape up all the brown bits from the pork, add Tbsp of dijon, lower heat, finish with cream. This makes a luscious sauce for any type of pork. Yes, Ron (excepting the Maker's Mark part -- YET). A method, a model for us all.

I resent and protest that the David Thompson book does not have the much-vaunted pink cover in its U.S. edition. This crime continues to keep me from owning it. FoodMan, bet that clam/mahi mahi broth tasted good. Last night, TV Dinner. Croque Monsieurs, goodly smear of mustard under there, sensible application of the aforementioned pain Italien getting to just the right stage for optimum toastage. French green olives, French black olives, cornichons. Ravenswood 2000 VB Zinfandel. Jaaaymaaay making a super-squishy tiramisu, for those who like that sort of thing.

This discussion has made very interesting reading, and also provided me the right idea for Valentine's Day -- I'll be getting a bottle of Maker's Mark, which I know he hasn't tried, for the Consort, who relies on bourbon in his repertoire of late-night drinkies. Thank you, all. I only very occasionally drink Bourbon, but I love to cook with it. It is so good for deglazing and making a little pan sauce. Trader Joe's here in Southern California often has Rebel Yell astonishingly cheaply. It's what I often have in the cabinet, and I suppose price and proximity have something to do with that, but it also has the Best Bourbon Name, too good to be true, really.

There is so much to Russian cuisine (Helena, I wish you'd weigh in here!). Two good books are Anne Volokh's Art of Russian Cuisine and Darra Goldstein's Taste of Russia. Also, Please to the Table by Anya Von Bremzen and John Welchman. A lot of refinement, and a lot of soul. Good stuff.

Dreaming of melty crisp schweinhaxen on the spit, making do with long-time-braised hocks. Not the same, good in fact. But not the same! Nice hocks from the pan-Asian supermarket, skin scored, bunch of sliced onions under, coupla spoons of light chicken stock from the fridge, sage leaves tucked in each little hock's fleshy crenelations, nice hit of salt (but holding off on the pepper as per LML's admonitions elsewhere). A two-day dish, expectedly. Bunged into the fridge overnight. Next day, stovetop, another hit of chicken stock, slow heat turned everything gelatinously tender. Skin removed, cut into strips (also per LML's admonitions), back into the oven with that. Didn't get crispilicious, not enough fat on these little hocks for that, but nice enough, especially when restirred into the braise for a short time before service. Pepper added too. Potato gratin with chicken stock and cream and nutmeg. Nice big bowl of redleaf salad with red-wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Cline 2000 Zinfandel. A old fave Bernard Clayton bread, so-called pain Italien, nice to revisit. Homely. In a good way.