Priscilla

Wow I just read everything to catch up, and am beyond impressed, Colonel. So inspiring, not just the finished product, which is of course inspiration in itself, but your dedication and enthusiasm. And Grace is such a pretty girl.

As for a glossary, I think (as Cabrales and Jinmyo said up there) the distinction between cut (maki) and hand (temaki) rolls is an important one. Also, the no-chopsticks thing...in my experience, one sees a range of conveyance practices, from no-chopsticks to chopsticks-only. Common sense often seems to dictate--a good thing, I think.

Tommy, what did you do if anything with the roast residue in the pan?

I always do the press test and also trying to break the seal gently. I remove the outer screw top and try pulling gently on the lid, if it does not detach, the seal is fine. That also gives me an opportunity to clean the lid and the bottle. But I do this only the morning after I made the chutney or jam. Me too, Suvir. Whatever I've canned I let cool all night. Then next day remove the rings, re-check the seal, wash and dry before putting on labels. OK guess I'm making some more chutney this week. Or, marmalade--winter citrus is very inspiring, and I was lax in this regard last year. I resolve to improve.

Pinging times are all over the board, always, for me. I sometimes imagine it is the differential between the hot jar and the ambient room temps, but this is just idle musing. Some jars in a batch make nearly no audible ping, but get the press test to assure all is well.

Lessee...the other evening friends over two nice pieces of CAB top sirloin whose cooking residue then browned shallots and then was deglazed with red wine and then was enriched with butter. Big pile o' twice-cooked frites, mayonnaise. Salad of surprisingly inspiringly nice red leaf, and as you know, red leaf ain't themost inspiring of veg. Baguette from a Vietnamese French baker.

Oh my yes I ascribe to this Important Crab Tip, D. If they're not going in a pot to make Simon Majumdar's Bengali Fish Soup, they must go out, out out out, right away. No exceptions.

I found the scurvy symptoms in Chapter 2 fascinating and also macabre, which I think our author means for us to be flogged with--but more interesting was how quickly sufferers improved upon ingesting Vitamin C-rich foods. But, and I keep thinking this and it's keeping me from ripping through the book at my normal pace, why is this shoehorned in under the rubric The Meaning of Eating? More later when I've got time and collected thoughts.

Last evening prepared Simon Majumdar's Bengali Fish Soup, which started with his mentioning in this Dungeness crab discussion a soup based on reserved crab shells, simmered with tomato and seasonings and strained. Which I did. What a heavenly smell during, too. (It also came up a little later in the tomato chutney discussion over in India.) As per Simon, I used mackeral, and loads of fresh chopped cilantro at the end, as he indicates. Sizzled tadka/tarka garnish, chopped shallot, cloves, cardamom, red chili, stirred in right before serving. I added a timbale-shaped cone of cooked basmati in the middle of the soup plates, in the way Paul Prudhomme serves gumbo. Just an incredible incredible dish, one of the best ever. Subtle seeming, but with ongoing, unfolding, neverending flavors. Without making too many too facile connections, this also puts me in mind of the best Louisianan cookery...every bite tastes different, and better, making one want to go on and on. Flavor layering, ingredients and seasonings added at different points along the way in the dish's preparation, is also a Paul Prudhommeism. Can't wait to have another cracked crab dinner here during the season and start all over again.

Haven't got the gear in place for online photos yet...although it is in the works, it won't be ready for tonight!

Suvir, Simon mentioned in the Dungeness crab discussion a soup based on the reserved crab shells simmered with tomato and spices, strained, and then fish, preferably mackeral, added to cook. (Simon also said the fish can be coated in turmeric and fried and THEN added to the soup, which sounds perfectly mind-blowing and is how I plan to proceed tonight. Also said a tarka/tadka is optional, cloves, cardamom, a dried chili, and a chopped shallot, fried and stirred in before the eyes and noses of those assembled. I do not consider this optional, once hearing of it.) I also plan to take off on a Paul Prudhomme plating technique for gumbo, and place a timbale-shaped cone of cooked basmati in the center of the soup plates.

Suvir, I made two batches, with my garden tomatoes, and I am jealously guarding my 10 or so (or fewer, now) jars. CathyL's using unlovely tomatoes here this a.m. has got me inspired to make more, however, and some of my farmer's market growers still have tomatoes, even. Not difficult to make. A real pleasure, in fact, as we were discussing earlier on up there, somewheres. I've canned things before so I was hip to that, but never anything so just plain exotic. It is, I swear, exotic enough for Marlon Brando to marry. People who taste it have their minds blown. (A good thing.) Mostly it has been something the Consort and I have enjoyed with drinkies, as in the aforementioned Papadum Rescue. However, and timely this is, indeed, tonight I'll be making Simon Majumdar's Bengali Fish Soup, and maybe there'll be a role for tomato chutney.

CathyL I'm glad you brought this back to the fore if to say that is not mutually exclusive--yikers better get out the Macrosanian Thought Italics--hope I'm using that belabored hackneyed unclear-from-the-get-go phrase correctly not at all sure. The other week-end I was rooting around on my pantry shelf and knocked off a cute little tubular package of papadums from the Indian store and it came open and strewed itself like so many (yikers) little daal-based Pringles across the kitchen floor which seemed clean enough so I collected 'em and crisped 'em to eat later with cream cheese and World-Famous Tomato Chutney. I think topping papadums is somewhat heretical but it was in the privacy of my own home, well, in the garden, actually, and John Ashcroft hasn't sent anybody around as yet.

When I run sponges through the dishwasher, which I do, and which I will continue to do, it has never been with the hope that they were being Sanitized for My Protection, but just to get them cleanER, and perhaps extend their life a bit. Just another example of how Cook's Illustrated manages, in spite of what is clearly every good intention, and very gravely applied too, to be the most UNappetizing food-oriented mag on the planet.

Mamster, this is a very important distinction, I think. Letting bread or pizza rest on parchment, for instance, little nonstickness is apparent before baking. But after even a little exposure to heat, movement is easy. Is it because the silicone gets activated when heat is applied? Or is it the dough sealing up or something?

Also the hole in a wine, or other, barrel. Toby, I am certainly one of the worst offenders in using the verb form...please accept my apologies. However I cannot promise to stop.

Does this explain Freud & Fleiss?

OK, Wilfrid, you're on.

Once at a sushi bar a mischevious chef with apparently uncontrollable winking served us what he said was prostate gland of yellowtail. Unusuable, he said, if the fish was broken down carelessly and the hormonic fluid permeated the rest of the flesh.

Definitely is some correlation between cultural origins and regular-eating offal intake. We had boiled pickled tongue occasionally, when I was growing up in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s, and I do believe we were the only family on our block so doing. And gizzards, she would cook for my Dad, who grew up poor in Oklahoma and retained a taste for them. And liver, as in liver & onions, that was quite a normal thing. And a friend with an Italian mother remembers delighting in inviting playmates to stay for dinner and then auspiciously rolling open the oven to reveal lamb's heads, cut in half, each half with its single staring coagulated bulging eyeball, comfortably braising. And of course my beloved cabeza tacos at taquerias, (a fine source of all kinds of well-cooked offal), although it was well into the 1970s if not the 1980s (or was I just of majority and mobile, and seeking, besides?) before they were part of the scene for me. However, interestingly, if you talk to fourth- or fifth-generation Southern Californians, a great deal of admirable, long-standing culinary cross-pollination, including offal and other admirably hardcore dishes, is revealed, and is considered not special or strange but regular if not traditional. In fact, there are hidden pockets of such activity everywhere.

FoodMan, that spiced yogurt sauce for your stuffed grape leaves--is it trad? (I am aware that curry powder is probably not, but seasoning the yogurt at all?) The Bulgarian friend's dolma recipe I use, from his grandmother and HER grandmother and so forth, indicates a little cinnamon in the yogurt sauce, a surprising touch that totally turned me around on cinnamon. Last evening, nice Il Fornaio ciabatta, cube of Lurpak, and some cheeses, including a goat cheese from Wisconsin which is by far the best American goat cheese I've had. Had some finesse, which is just what I too often find lacking in American goat cheeses. Also a sheep's-milk cheese from England, which only says on the label, sheep's-milk cheese, very white and firm and delicious. Runny ripe Camembert, or Canadabert, as we call it, as it's from our friends Up There. Super strong soft Stella Gorgonzola, somewhat past its prime but still having something attractive about it. Peachy Canyon 2001 Paso Robles Zinfandel, really surprisingly good, had a good dose of the aforementioned finesse. Aromatic in a really wonderful, desirable, way, rather than the fumey overripe vapor that some Zinfandels off-load.

Nero Wolfe's cook Fritz cooks deviled kidneys, a very good recipe. Mustard is involved, very important, as Adam Lawrence indicated. At a Vietnamese supermarket the other day I saw goat testes (what the sign said), which was interesting, as pork and beef are far more common.

The idea behind the book I'm writing is that the table of contents will primarily be the lengthy menu from your local Chinese take-out establishment. It will give precise and accessible instructions on how your favorite items can be made at home. It will have the 'A' version of these recipes. There will also be a section on my own personal cooking which has a classical yet modern and evolved point of view What a stupendously perfect format for a Chinese cookbook. Seems almost too good to be true. Can't wait!

Happened across big lively well-priced crabs; bought two; wrote about it in the Dinner discussion. All on account of what I read here!

Last evening, on account of the lovely ongoing Dungeness discussion right here in Cooking, and also on account of being in a Little Saigon supermarket where they do not look askance when a person wants to see her crustacean athletically swimming in the tank and then wildly flailing the air when fished(!) out, two >2 pounders, beautiful things they were, put to death on my stove with the greatest respect. Plus, as well on account of being in Little Saigon, the fantastically Frenchy-French rolls (as for bahn mi, which indeed they are as for), JUST the right soft middle and chewy thin crust. Cube of Lurpak. Lime-juice mayonnaise. Ketchup-horseradish-lemon-Worcestershire cocktail sauce. Little arugula salad from the garden, sprouted from seeds I was certain I'd flooded out in an all-too-common episode of Gardening Ineptitude. Newspaper-covered table, crackers and picks. Argentinian Chardonnay, at least that's what it's says on the label, but if it WAS Chardonnay wouldn't I find it undrinkable? Heavenly cross-pollination--and I am a great believer in the hybrid vigor resulting from cultural cross-pollination. Situationally overlooking, that is, not meaning to gloss over, the crimes of colonialism--contributing to my never taking for granted, not even for a second, the flabbergasting propinquity of small perfect real-butter croissants and 75-cent iced Vietnamese cafe (which starts with whole-bean French roast right there!), cheek-by-jowl with typically mind-blowingly delicious takeaway Vietnamese dishes.