Priscilla

Suvir, that is exciting. Best of luck.

I prepared Arborio ($1.99 the vacuum-packed kg at Trader Joe's) this way last evening. What a great texture! As I wrote over in the Dinner! discussion, I stirred in butter and pesto and very finely diced highly flavored tomato after boiling. I'm thinking there's going to be more boiled Arborio appearing on my table, right quick here. (Forgot to say, the nutty flavor of the rice itself is pronounced and delicious, prepared this way. Sometimes gets lost with risotto...)

Chef Blumenthal, how did you come by such a melodious and unusual combination of names?

Wow Wilfrid that sounds good. Got a teeny Otard bottle from a long-ago AF flight among my Christmas tree ornaments. The salad too, she hastens to add. I like gizzards. In the mists of history I can almost make out Popeye's Bucket O'Gizzards, or was that a waking nightmare. I also like sauteed chicken or duck livers on salad, the pan deglazed with, well, something very similar to the aforereferenced Otard, and then hit with a few T. of heavy cream and reduced and then poured over all to wiltinize. Madeleine Kamman's. Last night, pronounced as "bland" by the 11-year-old: supremes au volaille a la creme (sage and a garlic clove kicking around in the saute pan), nice pilaf-type riz, carrots Vichy, no l'eau Vichy but otherwise pretty much on the continuum. I preferred "subtle" to "bland." Gave the short version of Not Everything is Super-Spicy, You Know, and while I do not think I won any hearts or minds to my word choice, the proof's always in the pud and dinner was eaten with alacrity, which is all a cook really needs to see. (Corrected spelling. Well, not really, unless one is of the mind that a typographical error is equivalent to mispelling...or would that be misspelling?)

There's a roadhouse out here that has been there for decades, used to have for patrons a pretty even mix of Marines from a now-closed base, motorcycle gang types, and real rancheros from the remaining land-grant holdings nearby. Was at the time in the middle of nowhere but development has brought it into the fold of Modern Life. Now it is kept alive, more than alive, business-wise, by Rich Urban Bikers, who descend on weekends by the hundreds, if not thousands. The dollar value of the arrayed motorcycles must approach the multi-millions. There's always the one guy who's laid down his bike and has only his $8,000. leathers to thank for his surviving to tell about it. However, weekdays it ain't bad, motley varied clientele, notoriously bad free food on Mondays, and bad-enough food other days one must pay for, although the cheeseburger with the green chili is edible in context. Horseshoe throwing, outside, under the 300-year-old oaks, when the weather is fine, which it often is.

Nice little Niman Ranch pork roast, browned in the old Le Creuset 3.5 L the like of which has been discussed quite a bit except mine is the short-lived grey ombre, ombre grey, whatever. Sliced onion, handful of garlic, handful of sage leaves, three Roma tomatoes from the moribund vine, white wine glug glug glug, s & p, pinch of red pepper flakes. Lid bunged on, into the oven. Later, pot accumulation put through the old food mill, reduced, enriched with heavy cream, served with the way done meat. Pan-fried little potatoes with anchovy. Broccoli gratineed with Mornay sauce.

Don't any of you crazy and latently murderous cooks roast a whole squash in the oven until tender, and THEN cut it--smoothly quietly and all peaceable-like, easily, even, into manageable pieces, gently discarding what we'll euphemistically call the "guts," and then doing what you will with the resultant cooked flesh? Rather than getting the mawl from the woodpile, burnishing it with four-ought steel wool, cleaning it to food-safe standards, and then hacking away like madpeople? Kee-ripes. Just don't forget to pierce the shell several times lest you experience something very much like a sonic boom in yer oven.

Thank you, Toby and Torakris. It was a very plain preparation, like the citations you've provided. Beginning soon after the meal in question, if not the very night I arrived home, I have tried boiling Arborio in lots of water, and seasoning and so forth after, and while I have gotten edible results, I have never achieved the delicacy I recall from Sanremo. Haven't ever boiled the rice in milk; will give that a try, Toby. At the least I am reinspired to revisit the quest. Just another one of the many benefits of eGullet, REinspiration.

CathyL, yes I did mean the supertiny ones...baseball-size on up is fair game, I agree. Regulation-softball size, bowling-ball size, etc. Nerf-ball size. Your dispatching with an axe image is right outta one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books...remember Ma Ingalls hacking up a Hubbard, (Liza-like, we now know), in I forget which volume. The nice really old and spry guy at the farmer's market with the sharply pressed plaid shirt showing a modest triangle of superclean white t-shirt tucked into superclean and pressed vintage Levis has lovely giant squashes...I just might be unable to resist getting one to hack. All peaceable-like, of course.

Sounds like Liza might be able to help a person out in this regard. Liza Liza took an axe and gave CathyL's Hubbard forty whacks? And when she saw what she had done gave my kabocha forty-one? Toby, the pear half in the Hubbard is truly inspired. Reminscent of Paul Prudhomme's Turducken, you know what I mean?

Maybe a corollary over in Off-Topic, Can a Jukebox Be Really Good If It Does NOT Include "Radar Love", I'm thinkin'.

There was a bar in Hollywood, the Firefly, gone now, that was good for a long time and was sorta ruined, as things get, by success, as it became a place for scensters. But it was authentic, and I think authenticness is important. It was never particularly dirty inside, but tiny, and had interesting habitual patrons, um, "interesting" like my Mother would use it. Old-fashionedly LAish, studio employees, nobody higher up than the guy who stacks the film canisters in the warehouse, like, and some melancholy well-dressed gay men, and what passes for regular folks in Los Angeles, a category which would not encompass regular folks elsewhere. Pleasant and cooperative bartend, VERY important, because at that time cooperative meant "will serve girls under 21." And stocked those little Coors bullet bottles, Coors being a beer I didn't then and don't now like, but they were cheap, and cute, and fitting. An accidentally great jukebox, predating hipster-overrunning. My sister, who later lived nearby, used to tell me she'd go in and punch up "Radar Love," just for me.

Is this only NYC? If so I shall diminish to the West. Yes, I think dive need defining. I mean, dirt alone don't make a dive. Drunk patrons, ditto, do not make a dive. Noisomness, yuckers, but, does noisomeness a dive make? I like dives; but then, I'm thinking of what I'M thinking of is a dive. Don't like to drink with skinheads, though. I find them boring conversationalists.

Once in Sanremo for my pasta course I had rice, which was not risottoized but just cooked quite plainly, maybe butter in there, leaves of basil, a whole peeled garlic clove. Gentle and delicate. I don't think there was even cheese involved. So delicious. I've wondered ever since about the cooking method...does such a rice preparation ring a bell with anyone?

Little squash are for the birds, I think, flavor-wise. Cute, I know I know I know, but even cuteness must earn its keep, mustn't it? And what about kabocha, The Best Winter Squash? Although I gotta say those otherworldly icy bluey-greeny Hubbards or whatever they are are arresting.

I am very interested to read Richard Olney's memoir...I don't mind cranky, catty, etc. Flawed--don't mind flawed. Everyone is flawed. Also I know I tend to cut thought leaders I admire loads of slack, so maybe it's a don't-ask-me situation. The only thing that's kept me from Reflexions so far is I have not, in the perhaps-feeble attempts, found it. Can't remember if I checked the library, will do so today. Hard to know, really. Seems to me, for instance, Craig Claiborne's autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter, bespeaks a nice person, as does the rest of his work I've read. And yet, after he died, there were lesser lights giving their thoughts all over the place about how CC was not so "nice."

Rochelle, it was thrilling reading about your event, from earliest plans to completion. Your cucumber-coolness and organization carried the day. Very exciting to see your culinary skills, (some, but not all, newly acquired), being applied in the real world.

CathyL, I am so internalizing those collagen-melting smoking numbers, I cannot tell you. Well, at least I'll pass 'em along to the Consort, who fancies himself the smoker in the house, OUT of the house, in the garden, you know what I mean. But what about the apples? I'm just askin'.

Toby, I'm sorely remiss in being so tardy with this, but I enjoyed what you wrote so much, and look forward to subsequent chapters.

Yes, that was interesting to me, because one thinks of spring lamb as being the teeny-tiny pink impossibly tiny rack, all Frenched and pantied and whatnot to a fare-thee-well, doesn't one. Not a long-cooked braisey-braise sort of thing. Must have tasted very very very good, your Braise o' Goat, that's all I can say.

I do like apples in long-cooked savory things. The whole apple in the pot sounds charming, Wilfrid, but probably was in there for the duration, though, would you say? Also doesn't carbonnade have bacon, the Magic of Bacon, eminently apple-friendly. Bacon, or beer, doesn't carbonnade have. I'm thinking it's the semi-crunchyness specified in Simon's preparation that my mental palate is rejecting. Although I could be convinced. Assuming sufficient citation, can one be convinced of nearly ANYthing? Got these nice Anna apples on my tree, which I'm trying to use in a befitting manner.

And...what did it remind YOU of, L.? Simon's thing with the apples I can almost wrap my mind around, only my mental palate keeps wanting to kick out the apples, every time I run the tape, even if I try to sneak it in catching myself all unawares. Lamb with the apples, for some reason, does not cause the same rejection. Wonder why that is, and if Simon would approve of lamb in this preparation.

Last evening friends to dinner late after everyone'd had a long day already. Radishes, Sungold tomatoes, buttered almonds. Panko-encusted fillets of red snapper (what is sold as red snapper here in Southern California--very nice when quality is good) landed on nice redleaf salad, overall drizzled with savory mayonnaise-based dressing. Big focaccia I'd made earlier, which had crunchy salt on top. Apple tart based on Gayle Ortiz's apple streusel pie from her The Village Baker's Wife, Chantilly whipped cream.

OK, thanks to Mr. Andy Lynes and one of his multitudinous prizewinning recipes I was able to prepare some nice wild Canadian Coho salmon last evening, poached in clarified butter. (Andy specifies goose or duck fat.) So there is the butter-poached salmon fillet with a potato pancake underneath, and then (a brilliant stroke) a thin coverlet of smoked salmon, custom fit, over all. Garni a la concombre. Mayonnaisesque anchovy sauce around. The butter flavor and richness penetrated the salmon entirely. Looking forward to doing it with duck fat at my earliest opportunity. The potato preparation that I used (Andy's is a very elegant individual potato cake) was inspired by a discussion Cabrales and I think Pirate were having over in France about some Parisian place serving a slice of sausage atop a potato cake. Was good. Pommes de terre Macaire, per Larousse. More, shall we say, rustic, than Andy's, but earned its keep. Very thin-sliced garden tomatoes, water-starved and full of flavor here at season's end. Portuguese-type bread. Trinity Oaks 1999 Zinfandel, not zzzzzz but not take-the-top-of-your-head-off, neither.

OK. Over the weekend my local supermarket had Angus London Broil labeled top round, and Angus London Broil labeled top sirloin.