therese

The print version (that I saw, anyway) of this article unfortunately prefaced the caption to that very nice picture of thinly sliced baked ham with a mention of red eye gravy, the sort of inaccuracy that makes me want to smack people around. You can't get red eye gravy unless you've pan-cooked the ham (and have something to deglaze), so it's not an appropriate caption for the picture. The article does correctly describe the different preps, as well as red eye gravy. It also correctly describes beaten biscuits: "The size of half-dollars, about three-quarters of an inch thick, they have the same jaw-breaking consistency as New England common crackers." I may just order some. But then I'll have to find some baked country ham, not an easy thing to come by in these parts.

Dumpling, generally used in the third person: "Hey, babe, where are the dumplings?" Pumpkin used in first person: "Pumpkin, you need to take out the trash now."

Thanks everybody for the timely and informative replies. Particularly glad to hear from Hiroyuki that my local Japanese grocery stocks a quality product---I guess if you're going to bother to import it it may as well be nice quality. Anyway, I got up this AM and decided to try mochi with cheese on top, as per Helen's suggestion. So a put a piece on a plate, sprinkled it with parmesan, and popped it in the microwave, setting the timer to 90 seconds with some trepidation because this item really didn't seem like it had enough water in it to successfully microwave. But 40 seconds later my kirimochi was blebbing all over the place (explaining a curious illustration on the back of the package that showed precisely this phenomenon) and the previously soap-like block had turned to a very nicely gooey serving of mochi. I added some soy sauce to up the saltiness/flavor aspect of the dish, and ate breakfast. Mmmm. I have access to a microwave at work, so I think I'll be trying some variations for lunch, just cooking it here. Maybe a version in broth, or with any of the bajillion different Japanese condiments/dressings that I keep acquiring. Of course, now I'm going to have to go back to the Japanese grocery, and this is problematic because I'm going to want to buy more daifuku and Pocky and salty snacks and... Or maybe I'll be able to keep to the straight and narrow and just get kirimochi and konnyaku.

Cool. So no hydration step required beforehand, just heat and eat? I'm most definitely not on deadline here, so no hurry with follow-up, but what sort of cheese? And are they pretty much palatable only when hot? Or is the cooled version (that I might pack in my lunch tomorrow, for instance) still edible?

Spent Saturday afternoon running a bit amok at a local Japanese grocery, and picked up an item that looked interesting, kirimochi (as per the not particularly informative added-on English label). The individually wrapped items are firm (very firm) slightly off-white blocks that measure about 10 x 3 x 1 cm. A picture of the package may be seen here if you click on the third button from the left (it's the package in the middle). Clicking on that package brings up an little chef (tossing something in an iron skillet), and clicking on the chef brings up all sorts of interesting preps. So, what's the general idea here? Do I need to rehydrate the blocks in some way? Or does one leap directly to the saute/broil/fry step? The back of the package shows both an oven (conventional? microwave) and a liquid-filled saucepan, presumably alternative methods of cooking. Any and all suggestions helpful.

Guilty, guilty, guilty. I can't eat a whole bagel at once, so if I don't cut it half I either have to go without entirely or throw the other half away. You see my dilemma, right? But I do it cross-wise, such that there's less cut surface exposed and the recipient of the remaining half still has both an intact bottom and an intact top to treat as he will. Turns out there's very little problem with the remaining half bagel in any case---it's snarfed up immediately by one of my co-workers.

Well, she's just exquisite, isn't she? As for Andrea, I'm sorry, but either she has not just delivered a baby or she must look like movie star on a normal day.

Never mind the list, is the food already in the car?

There's a whole lot of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" that goes into the whole labor and delivery picture. During my 20-odd hour party with my first child I ruptured spontaneously (three weeks early), hadn't developed decent contractions 12 hours later, labored on pitocin (hungry and thirsty, despite an IV) for about 6 hours without an epidural, and then another 4 hours with an epidural. The epidural was only partially effective pain-wise, and I ended up with some other post-delivery complications related to all the intervention that don't need to be detailed here. I'd wanted to avoid pitocin and anesthesia, but knew that if I hadn't delivered in 24 hours I was buying myself a C-section. Which would have meant an additional period of starvation. I shudder to think. Anyway, healthy baby and mommy in the end. I must admit to being a bit dismayed that Daddy hadn't pre-packed an emergency stash of champagne, chocolate, and cashews, and maybe some canned pate or smoked fish and crackers. For expecting parents out there you should go out right now and buy these items and put them in your car, all ready to go. I mean it, get up and go shopping.

Congratulations and best wishes to all. Extremely cool name, by the way.

Interesting info re the origin of the name reblochon. I'd never thought about cows having hind milk.

Heh heh. Where fashion and food collide. I'm going to have to remember to take a picture of clafoutis next time I make it. And my deck furniture is due to arrive today, so maybe I'll make one to eat outside this weekend if it's nice.

The clafoutis was lukewarm or cool-- as it should be. It didn't harm the fabric, but thanks for asking. Bux: Pictures tell a lot and Therese picked up on the fact that the clafoutis was on valuable threads. Do you think explaining the temperature clafoutis is best served is an ok post on this thread? ← Cooled to room temp our usual practice. Clafoutis makes a nice brunch dish, and nice weather's here already for us. But how did your jacket get on under the dish, room temp or no?

Unlike listeria, risk of disease from bovine TB is not confined to the immunocompromised or pregnant. The magnitude of the risk is not appreciated because we have been largely free of it for many decades now precisely because of those hotheads at the FDA and their like abroad.

Not just loose, but sturdy. Why, exactly, is your jacket doing double duty as a tablecloth in this picture? An interesting backdrop to be sure, but weren't you concerned about potential scorch marks, etc?

One of the cool and possibly adaptive things about pregnancy is morning sickness. True, it's only in retrospect that I characterize this period as even remotely cool, but it did mean that I was altogether less adventurous than normal, and so foregoing sushi and rare beef and spicy foods was not really a problem. Let's face it, I lived on plain baked potatoes and chicken broth for the first five months of my second pregnancy,explaining the fact that I was still wearing a U.S. size six at that point. Bovine TB probably not a big risk to the unborn fetus, actually.

Well? Hope things are proceeding apace. Or possibly even over, with champagne toasts all around.

Don't look now, but you might well see a mango version of clafoutis on a French restaurant (in France, I mean) sometime soon. But this reminds me of one of the things that really does just piss me off no end: when a souffle isn't a souffle (sorry, no accents, you know what I mean). I'm going to go start a thread about this, that's how incensed I am. Not on the France forum, though, because at least in France when they say something is a souffle they mean it.

Hey, somebody's got to do it.

Me too (vide supra). You've also likely been immunized with BCG (bacille Calmette Guerin), an attenuated M. bovis that may have afforded you some protection in childhood, probably none now. The decision to drink unpasteurized dairy is akin to the decision to have unprotected sex: it comes down to the "of uncertain provenance" thing.

Well, I use kirsch in clafoutis (the traditional sort), so maybe I'm safe. As for it being blasphemous to use apricots or prunes in clafoutis, well, they're delicious, so I guess I'm just gonna have to be the happy blasphemer. Or we could come up with another name for these desserts and then have a really long and tortured conversation about whether or not that's blasphemy. Internet recipes for non-cherry clafoutis (in French) abound, but maybe it's a clever plot by the French to screw up all those francophone Americans.

Exactly. But they used to, at least of bovine TB. Good thing Louis Pasteur was looking out for his countrymen. Cows (and people in many parts of the world but not the U.S.) are immunized against bovine TB (in the hopes that there's some cross immunity to to human TB). I've still not been able to come up with a cool rhyme, but I did recall a cool factoid about TB that's, um, food-related. TB infections produce a characteristic type of inflammatory response called a granuloma, little walled-off blobs that are sometimes filled with necrotic ick, with the necrotic ick being particularly characteristic of TB. This type of granuloma is called "caseating" because, well, it looks like cheese. Smells like it, too.

Heh heh. Let's see... tuberculosis/halitosis? Scrofula/shmofula? Oh, hold it, shmofula isn't a word. This medical rhyming thing's harder than it sounds. I'm actually a proponent of raw milk and raw milk products, having grown up producing and using them on my grandparents' farm. It's the "of uncertain provenance" part that's problematic. Bovine TB is no longer a huge risk in the U.S., but non-pasteurized milk from other parts of the world is another issue altogether. As Bux points out, a healthy adult doesn't have much to worry about when it comes to listeria, and I'm happy to consume raw milk cheeses from regulated sources (or small farms with which I'm personally familiar). He's also correct when he points out that listeria outbreaks in the U.S. aren't necessarily associated with raw milk products but rather with other sorts of foods like pasteurized dairy and deli meats and potato salad and so forth.

So you can really taste the difference in versions with/without pits? I'm reluctant to put my teeth to the test in the interest of an appropriately controlled experiment (which would have to wait until later in the year for cherries in any case). I also don't recall ever having it in a restaurant, and when I make it at home it's often a last minute decision and so I use frozen sweet black cherries that have already been pitted (but are otherwise still whole). No excessive leakage of juice out of the cherries, and no need to thaw them ahead of time---frozen cherries go directly into the baking dish, batter on top, and directly into the oven. Anyway, doesn't sound like anybody will do too much eye rolling if served pitless clafoutis. Oh, and I have to ask: the true recipe of tartiflette?

Right. But the recent FDA advisory, which was prompted by the recent TB cases in New York, pointed that TB is only one of several food-borne illness that can be transmitted via raw milk products, so I would think that discussion of those other illnesses --such as listeria-- is appropriate. ← True. I point out the distinction because the press (in the U.S. at least) tends to consider listeria and salmonella rather than TB, largely because TB's no longer very common in U.S. milk cow herds.