markk

I'd very much like to see them, AND I'd love to know how medical opinion has changed since then as well.

Yes. His is some of the only mention I can find anywhere in print that acknowledges that the paradox stems from the fact that it's the duck fat that's lowering the cholesterol. He also credits that the red wine may be a factor as well. But I'm remembering the London coverage because of one of the side-bars that sticks out in my mind. It was an article that said something like, "In Gascony, the typical farmer awakens at sunrise when the geese start honking, ambles to the kitchen, spreads a slice of last night's bread with congealed duck fat from a crock, pours a tumbler of rustic red wine, calls it breakfast - and lives to an average age of 90." That's a paraphrase, but I've always remembered it. And now I can't find any of the coverage. Two of us are sure we didn't make it up or remember it wrong!

I've been to several libraries. I'm not an idiot, and I wouldn't have thought that the posting of my inquiry the way I did deserved gasps and dots of drama. But your use of the word "limited" hits the nail on the head here. The Tmes lists one article, but it has a word count of 409 (the articles I remember were significantly longer, often multiple coverage with sidebars, etc. in the same paper) and it's from a weekday (20 Nov. 1991) and two of us who were there remember gathering the Sunday papers and comparing (marveling at) the extensive coverage. In any event, we can't get a copy of even that short article here through any library, try as we do. And none of the other London papers has archive indexes that go back to 1991. That's why I posted my question here - in the hopes that somebody might remember this study and be able to help. Egullet was the last place I expected to have somebody come on and post an insulting reply like yours!

This is how Chinese restaurants serve the fish. It works great. As far as the comment about needing practice to serve a "professional" fillet off the fish this way, I never try for that. I'm very happy to get the fish cooked, and if the side comes off in a few scoops, that's just fine with me. I guess I'm used to getting it this way, so a whole fillet in one piece just doesn't matter to me.

I was living in London in November 1991 when I read extensive coverage in most of the newspapers of a study showing that the French rate of death from heart disease was the lowest on earth, and that it was the rate in the Southwest of France that was so low as to pull the national average down to the world's lowest. One paper showed this as a graph with a broken axis. The study, led by Cyril Renaud, explained that of course the people in the region eat tremendous amounts of duck and goose, and not only cook with the fat, but spread it on their bread (and, then, "live well into their 90's"). This was dubbed the "French Paradox". The researchers attributed this to the mono-unsaturated nature of the duck and goose fat, previously unknown. When I returned to the US, friends asked if I'd seen the shows about red wine being heart-healthy, and I didn't know what they were talking about. I pieced together that the famous "60 Minutes" show I had missed was about this same study, only with the conclusion that red wine is responsible for the paradox, with no mention at all of the duck and goose fat at all. I remember extensive coverage in the London papers in November 1991 with sidebars and charts, but can find none of it now. Does anybody in London remember this or have access to the coverage? THANKS.

Any tips on this? I have a million recipes for whole fish I'm dying to try, but am terrified of the subsequent carving and serving. If you're not using a very small fish, or a species with a million little bones, this really isn't as daunting as it seems. Fish, like the ones mentioned here - snapper, sea bass, and certainly tilapia - are really easy to deal with. (I eat them out all the time, usually in a Chinatown, it's cooking them that I'm trying to get into.) Basically, there's a spine, and if you have the fish lying flat on a plate, the spine runs parallel to the plate. So you start by scraping away gently the skin on the top. Then, using a flat utensil (like a cake server, fish server, etc.), you scoop the meat off that's resting on the spine. If you want to start from the center (middle line) of the fish, you can scoop down to the bone, then turn the server and scoop out to the edge. You'll get two fillets, or lots of flaky pieces, it doesn't really matter. Then, you just reach down by the tail end and pick up the spine and lift it out. What's revealed is another half of fish. Some species have other bones, and you have to watch for these when you eat them. But after you do this once, you'll get the hang of it. The other day I saw some very beautiful 1.5 lb. Tilapia in my fish counter at the supermarket, and my local Chinese restaurant agreed to steam them for me with ginger and scallions and soy sauce, just like they do in Chinatown. It was outstanding. This is good fish for easy de-boning and eating. But if anybody has comments on what fish they're finding in the markets whole and how they cook them, please post!

I love fish cooked whole. The flavor is so much better than the (non-existent) flavor in the fillets that all the fish markets and counters sell now. But I find it's hard to find fresh whole fish, and I don't have a lot of experience cooking it. Does anybody buy and cook whole fish? What kinds of fish do you find? How do you cook them?

It's not hard at all. Just remember to have the pan really hot, and remember not to overcook. For health reasons I eat and cook a lot of duck. Remember that the publication in 1991 of the"French Paradox" studies in Europe concluded that it was the mono-unsaturated nature of the duck and goose fat that was lowering the rate of heart disease - unbelievably lowering it- of the people in the Southwest of France; only in America was it said that the conclusion was that red wine had an effect - in Europe, where wine drinking is a given, nobody thought of that as a factor. But they did want to know why the death rate from heart disease in that region was so incredibly low as to pull the entire French rate to the rank of lowest on earth, and that's how they discovered the nature of the fat. The "paradox" is that it's saturated fat, yet it lowers bad cholesterol and raises the good. You can see my most recent all-duck dinner here: My own all-duck dinner For sides, I like something dark and leafy green. I find it goes well with the fatiness of the fattiness of the duck. I like one of those salad mixtures (the organic ones at Whole Foods are superb and nicely bitter) with lots of strong flavors, and make a dressing with shallots, walnut oil, mustard, sherry vinegar, and a touch of something sweet like the teeniest hint of apricot preserves - it's a nice counterpoint to the greens and the duck. And I also like a baked yam with this meal - nothing candied, just a nice organic yam or sweet potato, simply baked in the oven. Of course, the traditional side is potatoes cooked in the duck fat, but with so many duck parts in the meal, I like things that offset them. Hope this helps.

Last night... To start, pan-seared foie gras with a sauce of preserved shallots, port wine, aged sherry vinegar, and apricot preserves and to follow, rare duck breast with Truffle-Potato galette (with very disappointing canned truffles, cooked in duck fat), and chickory and escarole salad with horseradish-orange dressing.

That was my point. If people are making this with the intention of keeping it for long periods of time, then the questions they ask about cooking methods and times would be of rather crucial importance, and of course they'd have to follow the proper canning procedures for a food with the acidity of onions. If they're making it for short term use, then I think that it's entirely a matter of preference how you cook it, how long, etc.

Tuesday, some very beautiful Tilefish fillets, cut from a 6 lb. Tilefish before my very eyes (most of the fish fillets I find come in already cut). Put some Arbequina olive oil (Spain) in the bottom of a roasting pan, layered in sliced organic Meyer lemons, organic garlic, and organic fresh Oregano, added the fish and sprinkled some Fleur de Sel, and repeated the lemon, garlic and oregano with more oil. Topped with parchment paper and baked in the oven. Came out just as I had hoped (very delicious indeed) and confirmed my committment to try to find whole fish, which gets just harder and harder. Thursday, Swordfish steaks, seared on a hot griddle and cooked through, dressed with a condiment of olive oil infused with fresh garlic, fresh mint leaves, and white vinegar, a dish I ate a lot of in Italy. Accompanied by some baked white-fleshed yams which were plain and outstanding on the side.

"Confit" is the French word for "preserved". Aside from fruit preserves, we are most familiar with the dish "duck confit", in which the process of slow cooking under fat or oil is just one more way to preserve the meat. Other methods of preserving meat are salting and air-curing, and the purpose there is to dry the meat - rid it of its moisture content so that the water will not support the growth of any bacteria. But dried foods are, well, dry and chewy, and salted foods usually have to be reconstituted. But duck, by its high fat content, lends itself to another method. The fat liquifies and surrounds the duck in the cooking pot. The slow cooking allows all the water in the meat to evaporate slowly and thoroughly, rising through the oil; when the steam is done rising, there's just no more water left in the meat. Then, when the pot of duck pieces covered in fat cools, the fat congeals and forms an airtight seal. This is the technique usually applied to a "confit", at least the onion variety. (The fruit preserves have something to do the sugar content, and I'm not a chemist and don't really understand it.) Anyway, I've always thought that the onion preserves that we make by slowly cooking them in oil are a condiment, more than a traditional method of preserving them (besides, onions keep anyway under the right conditions by themsleves I believe), and so the degree to which you cook them, whether or not the sugars caramelize before the moisture evaporates - I've always thought that was just a matter of preference.

Ever since I worked in a Chinese restaurant as a teenager and ate with the family, I've been a great fan of Blue Crab cooked Cantonese style with ginger and scallion. (I'd actually never had crab before - that was back in the 60's). I've had another type of Blue Crab in Chinatown (much bigger - one to the order instead of a half dozen, let's say), and I've had Dungeness, but never actually King Crab, and I'm curious about this because I see them on sale this week fresh for $19.95 a pound. I know that this thing that's called "snow crab" is not even remotely edible - what's the deal on King Crab though? Do people have experiences and opinions about the various crab varieties? Also, if anyone actually can explain when Blue Crab season is, that would be great - we're getting them now (and they're great) and I didn't think this was the season.

It's one of my favorites too, and many years ago I asked the Chinese restaurant that introduced me to it to write it down, and I've scanned it. Indeed, when I show this in Chnese restaurants, they say "ong choy" or "tong choy" and call it Chinese Water Spinach or Hollow Vegetable. I'm also quite fond of Garlic Stems and Pea Tips as well. Where do people like to eat them? I go to New Lok Kee in Flushing.

Well, I tracked them down, and right on the home page of their website (http://www.adegagrill.com/) it says "No smoking in the restaurant." This is EXACTLY what I was hoping to find. Thank you very much for this post.

Hoboken's not entirely a culinary wasteland. There are a few good restaurants. Here are some photos of recent meals at La Isla that alone should serve to dispel that idea. Bear in mind that La Isla is actually 2 restaurants in one. Most of the food is the Cuban "joint" food that everybody's talking about here. But the Daily Specials are high gastronomy indeed. Here are photos of 2 recent meals that included Seared Sea Scallops with Grilled Pineapple and Papaya; Spinach tossed with mango, avocodo, maytag blue cheese, red onion and mandrin orange in a champange viniagrette with toasted macadamia nuts served over roasted beets; Bacon-wrapped Corvina over sauteed pea-shoots and black-bean risotto cake with green-pea sauce; Pan-seared duck breast in a port wine guava sauce. La Isla Dinner Photos

I'm sure this is a very long-shot, but are there any non-smoking Portughese restaurants in Newark (or elsewhere)? I've seen that in lots of New Jersey places there's a ban on smoking even though it's not the law, and so I wonder if anybody has encountered any smoke-free Purtughese restaurants in the Ironbound or elsewhere?

I'm hesitant to tell, because I don't know if he does it as a rule, or only for me as a regular, and I don't know if it's because I usually order a white from his list to start. The first time I brought wines they were the 1979 and 1982 Les Forts de Latour (to accompany his superb rare duck magret and duck leg confit plate), and the owner, staff, and chef wound up sharing the wines with us. (Interstingly, very interestingly, the '79 was the better wine that evening, for those people who may have been curious.) I will ask him his public policy and report back. But on the BYO thread, I've posted some photographs on another thread, (Anthony David's The Dining Room in Hoboken) and a lengthy explanation of why I prefer BYO to support the comments I made and seconded earlier in this thread - that while it's great that many local restaurants take great care with their food and serve great meals, it's almost too much to ask that such a place stock a cellar with the depth and breadth of wines to pair with all the courses, let alone at a reasonable price.

I agree, and can offer you photos of a delicious dinner at Anthony David's last summer. It was the "tasting menu". Dinner at Anthony Davids (© Guyarts, Ltd.) This is also a wonderful example of why BYO restaurants are so great, often a question that's raised on e-gullet. The answer is that a wine collector with a cellar can usually bring much better wines (in terms of quality and variety to accompany the foods) than most restaurants can offer. Thankfully, a lot of local restaurants give great care to the quality of their foods; to expect one to have a vast and reasonable cellar as well might just be too much to ask. What we ate (and what we drank): To start, Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras with cherries, caramelized shallots, and gastrique (accompanied by an Alsace Willm dry Gewurtztraminer). Next, Roasted Beet Salad with goat cheese, candied walnuts, and micro greens (accompanied by a Pouilly-Fume whose name I no longer remember) Then, Maine Lobster with cremini, sweet corn, and potato gnocchi (accompanied, if memory serves me right, by a white Burgundy, which I also don't remember; it might have been a 1985 Chassagne-Montrachet, and in fact, it may have been an Alsace Pinot Gris altogether.) Then, Pan Roasted Black Sea Bass with a white bean asparagus ragout and creamed corn (and to be truthful, memory fails me on the wine again) Followed by Grilled Lamb Chop with arugula, oven dried tomatoes, and favas (accompanied by either a 1985 Sociando-Mallet, or 1983 Chateau Talbot; I broght both but don't remember which we drank). Sorry for the lack of memory of the wines, but I think you can get the idea. Every dish was as delicious as it looks. The only criticisms I had, albeit slight, were that the cherry sauce for the foie gras was too sweet, and that, even with this many courses, the portions were quite (quite) small. I hope you enjoy the photos, and the restaurant.

I think that they certainly do not. I can't speak for Pastis, but I recently ate dinner at Balthazar. I wasn't put off by all the hype - it had only served to heighten my anticipation of a "great" bistro meal. But I got a meal that reminded me of the food served years ago by Restaurant Associates in New York, food that tasted like it had been cooked earlier in the day in central kitchens, and sent to the restaurants to recreate that "airline meal" experience right at your table. At Balthazar a few days after Christmas, two of started with Salades Lyonnaise, which were simply unremarkable, and whatever was taking the place of bacon was not at all enjoyable. We split a Foie Gras Mousse that had seen better days (I hope) and had to be sent back. And then we had the Confit de Canard, again an unremarkable version, which certainly tasted as if it had been dunked in the deep fryer to crisp it up. At the other end of the spectrum of bistro experiences would be the much-touted Tournesol in Long Island City. The food there is bright and crisp when it's supposed to be, and moist and juicy when it's supposed to be, and tastes not only like it was cooked on the spot, but by a great chef at that. But it's not surprising. The owners are French, the chef is French, and the place is small enough that they can manage the meals they serve with great care. In a sense I hate to send more people to this tiny, already crowded place, but this is what really good bistro food tastes like in France. And the experience - warm, friendly, jovial, generous people who cook for you, serve you, and care about your enjoyment of your meal with them! It's like a quick trip to France minus the airfare and jet-lag.

They certainly do not! I can't speak for Pastis, but I recently ate at Balthazar and had a meal reminiscent of the old Restaurant Associates - the people who were able to recreate the airline dining experience at your table in a restaurant.

Well, this is exactly what I was going to post myself, and now that I've seen it posted, I'd like to second it. I too have an extensive cellar. But I also enjoy finding good wines at a reasonable price. As I explain it to people, for $8.99 in a wine store you can find a really good Alsace white (for example), or a hideously undrinkable white for the same price. (This would be true as well for most of the Robet Parker best value wines, may of which are indeed superb.) But since most restaurants don't take the time (and it does take time and effort to locate these wines), you wind up paying $27 (let's say) for the undrinkable wine. I go exclusively to BYO places locally for most of my meals, and then am very happy to go to fine restaurants where the wines are well chosen, and happy to pay for those. Indicentally, would somebody please identify "Lou" or his restaurant and give the website that is mentioned? Thanks. Lastly, I know some restaurants that do waive the corkage fee when I go, I think because they realize that I can bring better wines than they have. In one place, I always buy a white from their list and brng a red from my cellar, and there's no corkage charge.

I've eaten here twice. The first time, I started with the excellent terrine of Foie Gras, and had the cassoulet, which was also excellent. The duck confit in it was especially superb, and when I inquired if it was ever served crisped, not in cassoulet, I was told that it sometimes appeared as a special with grilled duck magret, and they offered to let me know when this would be, which turned out to be a few Wednesdays later. And so I returned. Again we started with the excellent Foie Gras terrine. The "duo of duck" as they called it, was just sublime. The magret was flavorful and perfectly cooked, and the confit was formidable - large, flavorful, tender as could be, and crisped to perfection - a significantly better confit than most places serve. But the surprise was the sauce, or rather lack of it! Sliced duck breast almost always comes with a sauce, but this did not. Instead, it was flavored only with the accompaniment of some superb, garlicky shitaake mushrooms, and it was a winning combination. The other items on the plate - a potato cake and strewing of somthing crispy and frizzled (I assumed it was leek) all contributed to the winningness of the dish. And a fine Tarte Tatin followed. This was a superb meal!

This past summer we had the Tasting Menu at Anthony David's, and it was delicious - foie gras, roasted beets with goat cheese, a lobster dish, a sea bass dish, and lamb. Photos of all the courses (along with descriptions) can be found here: Anthony David's Tasting Menu Photos The portions were small, though, which was especially problematic considering how good everything was. The fact that it's BYO only enhanced the experience, because we brought a wine for every course, indlucing a dry Alsatian Gewurztraminer for the Foie Gras, a Pouilly-Fume for the beets and goat cheese, a white Burgundy for the fish, and a Bordeaux (1985 Chateau Talbot) for the lamb. It's my experience that except for the great, great (and very expensive restaurants), you usually don't find a really good wine experience (either in quality or variety) as often as you find great meals such as the one at Anthony David's, and BYO is the perfect solution. Incidentally, another great Hoboken BYO is La Isla, with photos here: La Isla photos And for more Hoboken comments and photos, you can always check out Dine Hoboken

Well, perhaps everydoby didn't need to jump down your throat like that. But... this is perhaps the last region in France (maybe the last region on earth) to think of a "healthy" cookbook for - what made you ask that? I have a number of cookbooks on Alsace cooking that I buy in Alsace, and if you take away the butter, cups of heavy cream, pints of goose fat, and slabs of bacon, you'd be left with blank pages. I've never seen any Alsace cookbooks here. If you're curious to see what's avaiable in the traditional books, go to www.alapage.com, and search for things like "Alsace Cuisine". This excellent site will sell the books to you on-line, and they arrive in the states in about a week with just the standard shipping - a credit card and an ability to read some French are all that's needed.