Priscilla

Lovely Lurpak. I am so glad you and Edemuth liked it, Malawry. The strongly cultured flavor is what I like best about it. (At the Persian market where I buy it it's comparable in price to supermarket brands.) Talking the other day with my Danish neighbor about Danish rye bread, well, the continuing dearth of Danish rye bread (Oraklet provided a recipe over on The Bread Thread), I mentioned Lurpak and she got very wistful and said, "Rye bread and Lurpak are very good friends." It became clear she did not know that Lurpak was available in the U.S., so I gave her a package and told her about the Persian market's carrying it. She (and her Icelandic husband) were thrilled. He the husband said when they lived in Denmark he ate salted Lurpak (can you imagine the intensity of flavor that must have?), but she the wife likes unsalted, which is the only type I have seen. The Magic of Butter! Priscilla

Missed your presence. Welcome back, Suvir!

Margarent, the initial meal sounds beautiful, and the bedtime treat just exactly what life should be made of. Hot weather simple dinner indicated. Tostadas. Flour tortillas, fried crisp, homemade refried pinto beans, usual-suspect toppings, grated cheese, diced tomato, crema, chiffonade of escarole (what was in the garden; normally it'd be finely-shredded cabbage, but I do like escarole's pleasant gentle bitterness), and chipotle salsa. Priscilla

Sometimes cook pieces and other preparations, but mostly roast a whole duck, according generally to Madeleine Kamman's lower-heat method, until it is way done. The flavor development is intense, and the skin crisps incomparably. Craig Claiborne recommends, I think, higher heat at the start and then lowering to finish. Toby, sometimes I do the tail-in-the-air resting as per Patricia Wells, too, but worry about the skin remoisturfying, after just having spent all that time assiduously rendering and crisping. Priscilla

Wow fresh pea soup sounds good, Miss J. Saturday hot-weather dinner with some guests. Steaks rubbed with sage and rosemary, cracked black pepper, salt, olive oil, grilled, landed atop what Rene Shepherd's seed packet called "rustic arugula," skinny and especially piquant, dressed beforehand. Saffron risotto, for which I used Carnoroli rice for the first time and I think I do prefer it to Arborio--beautiful individual large grains. Bread. Priscilla

Sounds good, and demonstrates inspiring commitment, your testicle technique, Wilfrid. I have not cooked testicles at home, but in a roadhousey restaurant on the Central California coast once ate them sliced and breaded and deep-fried. Really good! Dense and rich inside, fried and seasoned outside, what's not to like. This place used the Rocky Mountain Oysters euphemism, which I think is kinda silly but I guess I can understand the reasoning. Same evening had sweetbreads from the gargantuan mesquite grill, which were very very good, with really no right to be any good at all. Texture, flavor, everything, good. This place supposedly ran its own cattle on the adjoining pasture and if this was true I imagine freshness had a lot to do with the goodness of the sweetbreads. When I have prepared sweetbreads at home I have soaked and blanched and weighted. I find it hard to believe that the roadhouse went through all that, (certainly could be wrong, though), so I have thought ever since that a really superfresh thymus gland can be thrown on a very hot grill and come up delicious, but have not tried it at home. Renewed interest in seeing for myself, hmmm. My favorite taco at my favorite taco joint is cabeza, beef head, rich dark meat cooked to a fare-thee-well, with minced cilantro and white onion and incendiary green salsa. Mexican lime squeezed over. The Consort will sometimes get buche, pork stomach as aforementioned by Toby, but too too interminably chewy for me. Oh tender delicious lamb liver, sliced and sauteed, and lamb kidneys as per Nero Wolfe, and justly-praised-here fried (and otherwise, too) chicken livers, and so on. I'd rather eat offal than regular cuts, most any day. Priscilla (Replaced an incorrect e with a d.)

1. Liza that sounded like a wonderful birthday meal. Midori has always given me pause, but I am intrigued, so of course cocktailwise that means I'm at least halfway there. 2. I know every single word to every single song in Oklahoma. Priscilla

Is it working?

Liza I can only offer that I do feed my cats canned people tuna. Not all the time, all the time they eat their fahncy dry food, but sometimes. What does that make me, an enabler? Tuna salad is one of my favorite dishes. Olive-oil packed with white beans and so on, regular with mayonnaise and celery and chopped bread and butter pickles. And starting today I'll be stocking cans in the refrigerator, thanks to Mrs. Tommy via Tommy. Priscilla

Hmmm, The Magic of...Wrapped? I think you just might be on to something, Liza. I do love stuffed and, ahem, wrapped, things, you know, God's mysteries being revealed to us bit by bit and all that. (Edited in this: Blue Heron, those small Oregon shrimp are definitely one of your local treasures--so good, such intense flavor.) Priscilla

I am strongly of the "no bad ingredients, only bad preparation" mind. You woulda LOVED Ed LaDou's shrimp-topped pizza, I bet I bet I bet, Blue Heron. Priscilla

That's funny--to me "down in" is 100% leftyspeak, a legacy of MY youth. But then I'm 100% out of it in the contemporary youth culture department. Priscilla

Bread and butter pickles, good ones, are good with liverwurst on rye bread. Priscilla

The provolone was grated, and judiciously applied, as are all toppings on all self-respecting pizzas. Also, may I put in that I am down in solidarity with small disgusting overcooked shrimp being something not good to eat? The shrimp on Mr. Ed LaDou's pizza were big gorgeous ones, Louisiana perhaps, tender and snappy, PERFECTLY cooked, (and I fully agree that this is the sticky wicket...if they the shrimp were not fantastic the dish would NOT be earning its keep). I imagine they the shrimp were swaddled in bacon and broiled and then put on the pizza, and then the squiggles of very good pesto (I emphasize the very good because restaurant pesto is often a watery grainy embarrassment) and then the cheese and then blisterfication in the wood-burning oven. RIP, Caioti--the genuine article. And yes, indeed, talk about parcels of flavor! I lifted the shrimp-wrapping idea (of course) and have used it to good effect here and there, including on pizza. Priscilla

Caramelized onion and Gorgonzola. A little thyme if it's in the garden. Really good! Priscilla

Hope you don't categorically rule out shrimp on pizza, Tommy. For me, one of the best pizzas ever, one of the best THINGS ever, was a pizza at a little place called Caioti in Laurel Canyon with shrimp wrapped in applewood-smoked bacon, (broiled), generous squiggles of really good pesto, provolone. Never matched, to this day. And not for want of trying, neither! (Caioti was run by Ed LaDou, whom I believe had earlier worked for Wolfgang Puck originating all those now-ubiquitous duck sausage and BBQ chicken and whatnot pizzas. Also had Mr. LaDou's BBQ chicken pizza at the source, and it was penultimate in goodness to the shrimp/bacon/pesto.) Priscilla

Bulgarian-style dolma, stuffed grape leaves, outdoor dining after a hot day. Neighborhood grapevines majorly leafing out, not just an aesthetic observation, like this other neighbor says "Stop looking at my rabbit that way!" just because I happened to be talking about mustard-sour cream sauce. Grape leaves I can blithely clip clip clip and nobody screams bloody murder. (Oh I do have permission.) The smell of grape leaves blanching is like the smell of preternaturally juicy delicious grapes. Priscilla

Tee hee, struck me funny, the idea that Wonder Bread is somehow in need of protection, when the usual attitude is more like WE need protection from IT, you know what I mean? And tomato sandwiches (yes, yes, like Harriet, it was a childish source of pride to find out she liked 'em, too) do not EVEN belong here...they belong in the BEST THINGS department. (But on excellent homemade Squishy Bread, as it is called.) Priscilla

Oh, I have a bread machine, a Zojirushi, hideous white-plastic-encased machine roosting on the counter. I tuck it way over in the corner so I don’t notice it so much. But I can’t hide it away, because it would get to be such a major drag hauling it out over and over and over. Because, with very rare exceptions, it gets used EVERY DAY. I, too, have made many sorts of bread over the years (as I said in The Bread Thread, not sourdough, though), often by hand, especially at the beginning, or, allowing the KitchenAid to do its thing. There is some element of pleasure and discovery to this cooking task, of course. But decent bread, daily, is the motivator. The bread machine, and my digital scale, make this possible. Truly, as JD describes, bunging the ingredients into the pan takes seconds. Yeast activity, as Elizabeth David quoted somebody, needs no supervision--something like “bread can be trusted alone in the house.” And then however much later there’s lovely proofed dough, and it’s practically a-b-c-d Bob’s yer uncle, all that. Practically. Priscilla

It is curious that Oki Dog was part of your ACT Southern California itinerary. Why was this? Was it a place you'd heard about and wanted to include?

Last night pizza, one BLT, and one with sauteed escarole and Pecorino Romano, and a nice arugula salad with plenty of blooms included, now that I'm hip to that concept. Priscilla

Well, I've got some new questions for Ken the Sushi Chef, haven't I? I assumed the giant clam I like to eat was raw, but it could have been blanched for skin removal, I suppose. Was it in Helen Evans Brown's The West Coast Cook Book where I read that female Oregon settlers did not gather geoducks due to their indelicate visual associations? Have to check. Priscilla

Helena, I have Please to the Table and The Georgian Feast...I like the color plate you provided! Do you have Darra Goldstein's great first book, originally called A La Russe, later reissued as A Taste of Russia, (I believe)? Tremendously useful, historically and cooking-wise, is Anne Volokh's The Art of Russian Cuisine, probably my favorite, almost certainly out of print but shouldn't be. Of historical interest, Classic Russian Cooking, translated by Joyce Toomre, originally published way pre-Soviet (1800s) as A Gift to Young Housewives. And somewhat uneven but not without value, (plus typically great photography), the Time-Life Foods of the World volume Russian Cooking. (There is a bit on Romanian and Bulgarian in T-L's FotW Quintet of Cuisines, too.) A few others...! Priscilla

Classic, or Most-Used? Definite differences! I would like to put a word in (as CathyL has already) for Madeleine Kamman, whose books are filled with useful information and history. I rely upon The Making of a Cook (the original version, although I do also have the updated one), but find something important in all her books. She's especially good at demonstrating how European cuisines relate to each other, ARE related to each other. Also Craig Claiborne, in particular his collected NYT columns (C.C.'s Favorites, four volumes), which give a very good, journalistic, feeling for how fast American cuisine began to move in the 1970s, and his Southern cookbook, a good companion to his autobiography. I think Claiborne's influence--positive influence--cannot be underestimated. Most often consulted, I suppose, besides Madeleine Kamman, is Elizabeth David, but I certainly also depend upon Marcella Hazan, (whose influence on contemporary American cuisine in general is undeniable). Time-Life's The Good Cook series is very useful, surprisingly so, and is beautifully bound, to boot. And this is not even to address particularities, whole categories, really: Japanese, UK, Russian, baking, Middle Eastern--which are just mine. Everyone will have his or her own, with its attendant cookbook needs. Priscilla (Edit: Yvonne, The Good Cook volumes each have two place-holding ribbons, too, part of the surprising usefulness, I have thought.)

Hi Anthony, Do you see any congruence between cooking and rock music? The two seem to intersect at least conceptually in KC and CT, unless, in my quest for relevancy, I'm reading too much in there. Could happen. The nuts-and-bolts Les Halles cookbook you describe in the Cookbook topic sounds beyond fantastic. I'm imagining, I'm hoping for, an elaboration of the short list in KC about how to restaurantify one's home cookery, which included e.g. not stinting on the use of butter, and the importance of shallots. Priscilla