wattacetti

Catena Zapata is available in a couple of shops in Calgary (Canada), but you'd have to go since they can't ship outside of the province. I have a few of these, but very few other Argentine wines (higher-end stuff is difficult to find). For Chile, I have some Almaviva, Casa Lapostolle's Clos Apalta and some stuff from Montes (Folly and a micro-vertical of Alpha M).

It's been a while, but I went to Catch the last time I was in town. Okay, but somewhat noisy due to the echo chamber that they pass off as an upper dining room. Teatro has been chatted up by other people I know in the city, and Muse got a thumbs up in en Route's 2003 review of dining.

Cheddar and gouda are not the traditional curds; it's fresh cheese curds (they squeak when you bite into them). Don't blame the hangover when you're sorry.

The accumulation of infectious prions occurs in the brain, but the preliminary detection of the infectious isoform can be first seen in splenocytes. I doubt that the wording chosen by the authors have anything to do with protecting the food supply; the nature.com bit reads like the typical simplified announcement that it's intended to be. I've asked my admin to pull Heikenwalder's article so that I can read it.

None, though I have caught the arm candy of dinner invitees attempting to lift a bottle of 2000 Château Clinet. He and my invitee were asked to leave immediately.

So that means that I can have your portion, right? When we doing prion work in the lab, we knew that in the hamster model the infectious agent would first show up in the spleen before being detectable in the brain. Nothing of note in the thymus with respect to up-regulation. As well, we know that there's a normal (non-infectious) isoform on the surfaces of T-cells; it could have a role in T cell activation but apart from a couple of papers that hinted at a couple of things, nothing could definitely be identified. I'm still having beef. Won't eat brain but that has more to do with potentially avoiding MS-like conditions (mice get EAE when they're immunized with brain preps) and other things than vCJD.

I was in Calgary. Great selection, but it's your responsibility once you take possession of the bottle.

I have saved a couple of bottles that way; didn't break anything but I came up limping afterwards. A rescued Margaux or a broken foot: seems like a moot point since Canada is a land with socialized medicine.

1997 Penfolds Grange. Didn't even get out of the wine shop with it; slipped out of my grasp as I attemped to transferred my purchase into the satchel. After having everyone around me turn crimson following my tirade, they offered me a discount on my next purchase as a consolation prize.

Clam Guy at the Haymarket may not necessarily be the one for you - it's all raw at his stand. However, if there's a place in Boston with good fried clams, I'm interested - meeting coming up next month.

So far, a nice navel orange (busy day). I have confit de canard waiting when I finish.

Fresh shucked cherrystones, but only available on the week-ends (something about a day job). Toppings were available (variety of hot sauces and some lemon wedges) but I just sucked them back plain. Last time I was there, they were 12/$5 USD; I think I handed over a couple of Andrew Jacksons before I was dragged away.

Tighe, Thanks for the information. Don't suppose you've tried it?

I used to do Big Macs more often until I tried that NCEP III diet that they suggest for people who are in danger of oh, keeling over from congestive heart failure. 30 grams of fibre/day while keeping fat under 30% of total caloric intake really screws up your ability to eat them. Taco Time didn't last for more than a year in Quebec, and I don't think we've ever had a Taco Bell though we do get all the commercials. Last time I had something from Taco Bell, I was stranded by NWA at O'Hare and they were the only thing open. Can't do Krispy Kreme either but I know two grad students who lined up when the first one opened here, ate their freebies and then left (it's not like they earned enough money to purchase luxuries like food).

Wow, I made it to 100 posts. Jacques Pépin's mentioned near the end of his memoirs (The Apprentice) that his daughter Claudine was marrying a chef and was preparing to open a restaurant of her own in Oregon(?). Does anyone know if this ever happened, and if so, where's the restaurant? Just being curious…

Unfortunately, CharityCase is correct: provincial SAQ workers are now into their ninth week of the strike and have since associated themselves with an even bigger union to keep going. Hope it'll end soon, as it hurts everyone. Before the holidays you could either stand in line for hours or make a run for the Ontario border; I couldn't get to Calgary but found good BC wines in Winnipeg of all places. It's less hectic now, but there are only 8 outlets open on the island of Montreal (perhaps 50 province-wide) and for only a few hours a day. Selection? Oh well. I would suspect that whatever would serve as an army would be pouring over the Hawkesbury border pretty fast. Well, you can have my poutine. I've eaten a lot of weird things in my life (e.g. frog ribs) but could never cotton onto the look or smell of poutine. Big problems with the mouth feel too.

Poutine? Pass (the bucket). However, Au Pied De Cochon in Montreal serves a version topped with a sizeable quantity of foie gras. Now, if it was Taiwanese street vendor squidsickles with the big slightly charred tentacles we'd be singing a different story. Or the Clam Guy's stall at the Boston Haymarket. I do Big Macs once a year, same with Klik sandwiches though the latter is more of a childhood reminder thing. Red Lobsters and their cheese biscuits have disappeared from Quebec (we have to drive to Ontario to get some; sort of like what we're doing for alcohol right now).

As a friend of mine came in from Vancouver to escape the cold, we went to a new place (for me) Tuesday night (yes, the -22ºC evening). La Montée De Lait (371 Villeneuve est; 514-289-9921) has been around for about 10 months and is essentially a hole in the wall on the north-east corner of Villeneuve and Drolet. It's a narrow room with a bar (with seating) occupying a quarter of the space at the right; banquettes and chairs for all the other tables. I didn't do an accurate count but they might be able to seat perhaps 30-35. On a frozen Tuesday in the middle of January, I counted 18 people including ourselves (pretty good traffic). It's a small plate format listed as four choices for $40. Any four. Four desserts or four meats - they don't comment on what four you pick though they will attempt to order things so that everyone at the table has some consistency in sequencing. The price goes down if you pick fewer than four, though the final tally will depend on the combination chosen. The other twist is that every dish has a dairy element (cream, cheese, yogurt etc) to play off the restaurant's name. No tuna or pork available that night, but we wound up ordering: - "Fish and chips" - salt marinated salmon cooked as a lightly-battered tempura served on a bed of marinated celery and fresh tartar sauce. - Seared scallops on a small bed of lentils and chorizo with a spoon of fresh yogurt (I liked this dish but skipped the yogurt). - Warm fresh goat cheese on an aubergine galette with onion confit. - Veal sweetbreads wrapped in Bayonne ham on yellow and orange bell peppers. - Chocolate pudding (no comments; didn't try it myself). - Roasted pineapple with a spiked ice cream (nice caramelization on a very sweet pineapple; smelled a bit like pineapple upside down cake when it first came to the table). Didn't have any of the cheese offerings because my dining companions got pretty full, but there was about 20 mostly raw-milk varieties: a significant number from France though some Quebec producers were represented. They have a very interesting wine list with predominantly French offerings (all reasonably priced), and a fairly sizeable by-the-glass selection paired with menu options. Some apologies made as to the availability of certain bottles due to the SAQ strike but we chose a very nice Sancerre from Jean Paul Balland. Service was done by the owner and a solo waitress. I found them attentive and unobtrusive and both gave accurate detailed descriptions of the plates and he made interesting suggestions for wine pairings outside of their per glass list. They were also very proud of what they were producing, and rightly so. The Vancouverite found it quite nice, though she had a quizzical look when I told her the translation of the restaurant's name. Only two quirks with the evening: 1. This place needs to install a second door. I can understand that they're trying to build up clientele and keep up the wine and food quality without breaking the bank, but those plastic freezer room strips don't quite cut it. 2. Totally out of the restaurant's control, but the couple sitting next to us kept getting up every 20 minutes to go outside to smoke special cigarettes (pretty odd way to stimulate an appetite). There's always some entertainment value on the Plateau. So, would I go back? Definitely. It's a charming place that's trying hard to do something fun. Would I bring people there? Sure, except maybe the lactose-intolerant ones. If you elect to go in the coming weeks, either sit in the back of the room or wear something heavy.

Ah! someone knows about the surprise at The Glass House, but cream?

I'm pretty straightforward for risottos since I typically use them as the bed that I serve other things on. Basically Arborio rice or pearl barley, minced échalottes, duck fat, chicken broth (chicken and water, no aromatics), white wine, ground pepper, butter and either pecorino or parmigiano to finish. I've taken to using Viognier for the wine, but it'll depend on what whites I have on hand. I have made slight variations of this by also adding: - fresh peas and prosciutto - sautéed wild mushrooms (with Patagonian Toothfish and port reduction) - chives (KISS bison filet) I did try Nick Nairn's razor clam risotto recipe from his "Island Harvest" series and cookbook, but the reception was lukewarm.

We had a winetasting session as the "fun" activity at a departmental meeting. To get people into it, there was the following after the basics were covered: - blind tasting (bottles covered and the wine pre-poured into opaque glasses) - guess the plonk - geography guessing Some people got into a spitting contest (erk), and there was a lively discussion as to who wound up sounding the most pretentious in their descriptions.

Good buffets… there was this place in Taipei that had maguro sashimi, free-range black bone chickens, goose, oysters on the half-shell, fresh bamboo shoots, and shark fin soup among its selection of 175 items. I would also do breakfast buffet at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport or the Inter-Continental Hotel in Montreal or London UK. Fresh pineapple, beautiful smoked salmon (sockeye in YVR, Scottish and Norwegian Atlantic in the other two), smoked sturgeon, and always some guy who can make a decent omelette. What's great about them is that no one nitpicks the expense report afterwards since it's actually one of the affordable breakfast choices. Bad buffets are generally mostly everything else in the US and Canada, though sometimes useful if you: a) are into those cautionary tales sort of things, or b) have to entertain certain American refrigerated products packaging specialists from Pennsylvania (sad but true).

The orange fat was what I wound up with after cooking Batch 1 in a big pot in the oven as I've done in the past. Ditto the goose fat smell. I was quite surprised that one orange slightly smaller than a baseball could tint that much fat to that color. No citrus in the sous vide experiment since I want to compare this to some "standard confit" that I made a couple of weeks back. I have been toying around with the idea of confit d'oie, but goose legs aren't exactly easy to come by (most geese available for sale at this time are solidly frozen).

The Barbary legs were slightly larger and distinctly denser to the touch than the Pékin legs but they are definitely not as large as the moulards. If I do it again, I'd probably cut back by perhaps 30 minutes I'm having a slight problem sourcing moulards but I think there was a thread in the Montreal forum a while back, so it's time to look. As for the sous-vide experiment, it won't start before noon; they need the waterbath for something else. Since they're graciously letting me use it, I guess I can wait.

I've just completed one experiment with confit and have second about to start. Batch 1 Six Barbary duck legs marinated in coarse salt, thyme, garlic, juniper berries, bay leaf and the lemon and orange as per CB's initial post (I was curious) for 16 hours. Actually didn't have enough duck fat, and wound up topping off the pot with goose fat; cooked everything in the oven at about 80ºC/175ºF for 7 hours. Legs were starting to fall apart at this point (a tad bit too far along for me), but I noticed that there's considerably more meat juices/jelly produced than for other batches of confit that I've made. The picked meat was adequate to pack two 500 mL mason jars and have started their aging process. Caveat 1: for me, goose fat was not such as great idea. There's a decided waxy smell to the fat which masks that nice duck smell. Caveat 2: my beautiful creamy white fat is now a pale orange color. First time ever, though I can't bring myself to accept that one orange had enough pigment extracted to do this. Batch 2 Four Pékin (Brome Lake) duck legs marinated in the same salt/aromatics mix (without the citrus) for 12 hours. I decided not to use the orange fat (color, smell) and rendered fat from the two ducks the legs came from. I was curious enough about sous-vide, so I borrowed a friend's FoodSaver. There's been considerable talk about sealing liquids but since this was the start of cooking, I chilled down the rendered fat until it was quite solid and cut butter patty-size chunks to stick into the bag with the duck and aromatics (about 8 patties/leg). The fat has softened enough that I've been able to work it around all of the leg. Next step - cooking. They're supposed to go into an 80ºC circulating water bath some time in the next 20 minutes. Let's see what happens 6 hours from then.