Boris_A

Well, I'm a bit older now and a bit more pragmatic. Once in two months, maybe, or even less. Today, I prefer something like Gnocchi alla Romana, a "polenta" made from wheat grit and slightly roasted in the oven and served with a bit garlic and fried, crunchy sage. It's better accepted by most of my guests. But once a year, I'm the cook for a funfair stand. I take out my huge pot and my giant spatula and I make polenta for 400 servings in three days. Stirred, of course, because I don't own a dozen ovens. I'm using a glove to avoid blisters and I need physiotherapy afterwards to repair my right arm and a shrink to treat my masochistic feelings. And please, oven polenta is exactly as good as a stirred one. I'm just mentally blocked.

Work ethos? But not only. My mother was born in the Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, where people are notorious polenta eaters. Families were bigger then, and stirring the sometimes large amount of polenta was men's work. (Today, in many Ticinese/Lombardian/Piedmontese villages, there is once a year the "Sagrada del Polenta", the "Polenta-Feast", where they cook stirred polenta in huge pots and serve it for free for everyone and every visitor, mostly together with "Luganighe", a kind of boiled salami). The family table polenta was very thick and firm and served like a cake and was cut into pieces with the help of thread or a thin wire. When I was a boy, my mother (though a business woman) took the time and prepared twice a week a thick, stirred polenta. She served it to me as she had it in her youth, hot in a large cup of cold, fresh milk. The milk was not homogenized back then, and large, unbroken fat globules (as described by Harold McGee on page 14) gave a wonderful, creamy taste on the palate. The mix of hot an cold and the toasty, firm polenta with and the creamy milk! I was an addict. Grown with such memories, you can never accept an oven polenta as a true polenta. I mean, those Tuscans have really no idea about cooking

The true Wiener Schnitzerl (always veal) should be beaten to a very thin thickness of about 1/6 inch or even less. Therefore, it's size can easily be 8 inch or more in diameter as shown here. Then it takes a lot of bread crumbs and you dont' need any rice or potatoes. Just salad. If you ever are in a small Austrian restaurant, the beating noise out of the kitchen tells you exactly when a Schnitzel is in process.

I just finished our dinner. I didn't tell Beatrix how I made the polenta and she immediately asked me why the polenta is less firm and sticky as usual. She liked it very much, though. But now I have to admit that a certain "fluffiness" (actually, we would call that something like "looseness" in German. Fluffy seems to be an expression going too far) only the first visual impression when taking out the first spoon. Well, at least for me. But it has definitely some stickiness, more than I believed to remeber, but not the firmness of a stirred one, I think. cakewalk: "In the meantime I like it, but I don't quite get what people think is so great about it." Don't worry. It was really a poor people's dish for decades. Some friends of mine outright refuse to eat this "hen's feed".

Russ, now I'm perplexed. And you don't stir? I have to confess that I didn't do a polenta with this method for two years now, but normally my memory for food is quite intact. It's two o clock in the morning here, so I'll try it tomorrow and I'm really curious. I suspect in the end the specifics of the cornmeal will be the answer. But let's wait and see. At least your observation about the amount is quite in line with mine. I always made the oven polenta with only about two inches level of liquidity max. Thus one (normal) pot will not serve many people indeed.

When I was 16 years old, once I hiked on a road in the Swiss-Italian alps. There were three workmen repairing the road, far from any house or building. They had a very particular, tall wood burner, and there was inserted an about 25 inch long, 8 inch wide, cylindric pot with hot, liquid bitumen to fill the cracks in the asphalt. It was near noon, and just when I arrived there, they replaced the bitumen pot over the fire with a clean, empty copper pot of exactly the same size. They filled in some water, salt and cornmeal, they took a long wooden stick - and ecco, one hour later, they offered a rustic, toasty polenta and a cup of red wine. I'll never forget the dual-use burner and pot!

And in the case of maternity, you do rightly so. Mrs. Johanna Maier ( who got two years ago the top rating in Austria with Gault-Millau) has two or three daughters, I believe. Mrs. Alciati, long time chef of THE leading piemontese restaurant has three sons. Late Mrs. Cantarelli, once chef of the leading restaurant in the Reggio Emilia, has two sons and a daughter. I dont' know the familiar situation of any of the three (mentioned by Francesco) Italian female top chefs, but I think I've read somewhere that two of them are mothers. So the classic argument that a women has to choose between (a great chef) career and maternity seems to be - disproved. Provided she's not working in France. Where obviously even to renounce of maternity doesn't help to make a career as a female chef.

I believe the Valtellino "Sfurzat" (pure nebbiolo, "Sfurzat" literally meaning "fortified") is made by the same method, where the grapes get dried the same way on straw mats for a concentrated, dry red wine.

cakewalk, just saw here that some eGulleteers have problems on a very high level. Therefore another suggestion: maybe the most classic Northern-Italian polenta condiment is "Funghi porcini trifolati" (literally "truffeled porcinis"). You sautee some fresh, roughly cut porcinis with a generous spoon of butter and with one or two chopped garlic cloves for about 10-15 minutes and add some parsley and pepper at the end. That's it. Serve with freshly prepared polenta (stirred, not shaked ). Open a bottle of a hearty red wine and enjoy. (BTW, these days we pay 25 (twentyfive) bucks for 1 (one) pound of porcinis. They know hoe to squeeze the adicts).

Essentially, the militaristic brigade system is an invention by Escoffier, when Haute Cuisine was more of a Hotel activity. In Londons Ritz, Escoffier had sometimes to serve 500+ guests, so there was a lot of discipline needed. I'm more and more convinced that the absence of female chefs has a lot to do with the position the French cuisine got in the world and the copying of it's system than with food itself. A classic implementation of a taboo, I believe. No wonder David Rogov found such nonsense explanations for the absence of female great chefs. Luckily, we can change what other people think if we talk seriously about what we believe. And being a man, I really don't fear "empowered" female great chefs (in fact, I enjoyed their great dishes a lot in my life). Additionally, I prefer a more balanced (and thus more manifold) society any time over a disbalanced one. And to eat a great dish which is not necessarily a question of life or dead for the cook. For me, the "fire in the belly" thing has not much to do with spectacular, publicity friendly results. To use an analogy, when visiting a spectacular building, I'm always interested in the service rooms of the building and their functionality. Here you can easily see if the architect has "fire in the belly" or if he's just producing spectacular, visualization friendly stuff that can be nicely presented in a mag to a bored public that has some 30 seconds of attention span to study the result. I know a male architect (now quite famous here) who creates in a one man show unspectacular, but great simple buildings in rural villages. He doesn't talk a lot and is not much present in popular magazines (his buildings look too simple), but I know from a very good source that he has a lot of "fire in his belly". You have to study his buildings for a while to notice that. Is it spectacular architecture? No. Is it great architcture? I believe so.

I'm familiar with that method of preparation. Actually, I learned it by an old woman. (And I wonder where Paulal Wolfert learned it). If you don't stir at all, you get a fluffy kind of polenta, right? I prefer the stirred polenta, but I have guests who prefer this kind. Thus I'm applying both methods. BTW, I'm using a lid. There's absoluely no heresy, but as I'm originating from a region where polenta is a signature dish, to call this a polenta is something like calling a piece of boiled beef breast a brisket. . For my taste, it lacks the stickiness of a "true" polenta. Fifi, as a side note, "I have always thought of polenta as grits with a class attitude", interestingly in many regions in northern Europe, for centuries corn was considered to be an animal feed and was estimated very low compared with grits. Today, polenta entered the menu list of high end restaurants. So gold turns to lead and re-turns to gold over time. A variant for kids (especially if you add some sugar when stirring with butter during the second phase) is this old recipe.

Hello Doc! We are just back from some days spent in the Cilento south of Paestum (though we were't precisely in Seliano, but that doesn't matter), and I can sign every word you've written here. And somewhere, in a relatively mediocre resaturant, we had a plate of a "frittura di gamberetti e legume" which was so great that I was immediately reminded of a recipe by great French cook, who included a most simple recipe for a "friture" of young fish in his book. When we made our tours along the Cilento coast, I'd liked to spend a kingdom for a stove. Just to cook with some of the tomatoes and small melanzanes offered by peasants at their small stands along the coast road. And to buy some fresh fish and shellfish from the small boats returning in the morning. And many thanks for your reports from the Iberian peninsula, BTW!

Daniel, I checked a bit my data. In Italy, there seem to be three Michelin *** rated kitchens lead by female chefs: Sorriso, Pescatore, Pinchiorri. That's unique, I think. And it has a tradition, as I tried to demonstrate. I've no idea when the last French female chef had a three star rating, but I believe that woman is dead long time ago. Further, I checked some random choosen Michelin one star establishment with my Gambero Rosso, and about 20% are clearly indicated with female chefs. With others, there's written "family", which in Italy mostly means that the mama is in the kitchen. I don't insist in my 50% number, but I'm willing to bet a bottle of fine wine (preferably consumed in my kitchen ) that when choosen a statistically reasonable sample of Italian "better" restaurants ("Michelin starred"), we get a number at around 30% at least. How's that compared with France? What's the reason? (BTW, we find a female chef as on of the leading chefs in Austria, and in Switzerland there are not many, but at least several females among the best cooks) Then I'd like to remember that in France at the time before Bocuse et. al. (and the mediatisation of the Restaurant Haute Cuisine, as opposed to the Hotel Haute Cuisine), we had several great female chefs in France. George Blanc (whose mother was a famous cook) together with Coco Jobard edited a recipe book about the famous French "Mères" (the mères Adrienne, Allard, Barale, Blanc, Brazier, Bourgeois, Castaing, Crouzier, Léa, Poulard, all between ca. 1920-1960). I don't know how many Michelin stars the mères had all together, but as I mentioned, mère Brazier alone had 6 (litteraly: six!). Now why did the French women stop with great cuisine? Is it only a sum of individual decisions? Ot are there more complex reasons for this out-revolvement of the females out of the kitchen of the best restaurants? (capital intensive, risky haute cuisine, media contacts, network, mostly male gastro critique writers?) Frankly, about the last thing I'd consider to examinate is a "systemic difference" in the quality of the food produced by male or female chefs. And in the end, it's not so much the question of "arrival" of the great female chef, but more of the reinvention of the great (French) female chef.

Hello Daniel I' ve read the "close to 50%" number somewhere some years ago, but I wouldn't be too much surprised if the number was bogus and simply burnt in my memory. So unfortunately, I'm unable to indicate a data source now. But I'm going to try. The fact that you found only 11 female chefs out of roughly 280 chefs of the leading restaurants in Italy, that's a huge surprise for me. Well, at least Italy has (the only one?) a three star female chef in Canneto. When I freqented Italian luxury restaurants more often, among the best (all two stars by then), at least three female chefs of that time instantly come to my mind: Signora Alciati of "Da Guido", Signora Cantarelli and the one of the Pinchiorri (can't remember the name). Obviously, there is a change. Let's not forget that in France, we had several three star female chefs at the time of F. Point, notably Mère Brazier running in parallel two restaurants with three stars (like A. Ducasse). In the region I'm somewhat familiar with (Piedmont), I still see many female chefs in the kitchen of the good restaurants (starred or not). But admittedly, I never started to count. The rise of the successful male chefs to Italian TV stars (like Vissani) doesn't make the situation easier for women, I believe. As for the "lacking creativity" in Italian cuisine, I aimed more at the public perception than at the real situation. Personally, I was never very much interested in this issue.

Sorry for being a bit late here. For Zürich, I gave some recommendations: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=45589 and all those are still valid for Basel, I think: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=33465 As for the "Therme Vals" masterpiece, architect Peter Zumthor desigend two or three smaller, yet very interesting buildings in or near the Canton of Graubünden (Haus Gugalun, his atelier in Haldenstein and the chapel of Sogn Benedetg). Not to be missed are are a whole serie of simple, almost traditional wooden buildings of Gion A. Caminada in Vrin and maybe a utility building by Conradin Clavulot in Seewis and one by Stürm/Wolf in Domat Ems.

Maybe it's worth noting here that Italy has the highest number of Michelin star-rated women chefs. At the one star level, it's around 50%, I believe to remember. Maybe because Italian cuisine (or cookery, for the "Frenchies") in general does not fit in the paradigma of "creativity" and "innovation", which is so much heralded in our times. The role of the chef is simply not that attractive that males tend to develop that amount of ambition there, I suppose. Other explanations?

To complete the info here, let me just add that carrot cake is a highly traditional "signature dish" of the Swiss canton of Argovia. The name is "Aargauer Rüeblitorte". It's a rather straightforward recipe. The cake should be on the moist side. Here's a recipe.

1) I use 1 cup of milk and 2 cups of water per 1 cup of cornmeal to attain a pretty firm polenta. 2) When using middle or coarse milled cornmeal, cooking time (with constant stirring) is between 30 min and 1 our. There's considerbale evaporation. Maybe you need to add some water during the cooking process. 3) "Salt to taste": you have to try. Depending on you cooking time, the polenta tends to get saltier. If you intend to fry it, (another loss of water) you need to stay at the very low limit. I use to replace one third of the salt with broth or chicken stock. If you intend to add parmigiano, you have to adjust the amount of salt to the lower side again. Sorry, experience is everything here. If in doubt, stay "undersalted" and add a bit of hot, extremely salty water at the end of cooking/stirring time to adjust for you taste, if needed. 4) If you ever are cooking large amounts (6-8 pounds of cornmeal), you shouldn't wait until the water is boiling. It's too dangerous for the buil up of lumps. Add the cornmeal when the liquidity is lukewarm or hot. Then stir relentlessly and with considerable effort until the liquidity starts to boil and the mix thickens.

It's simplicistic or outright primitive. We oven roast and peel red peppers and slice them in to sticks (myabe 1/2 inch in diameter). Then we poach them in mild EVOO (with some garlic and basil or rosemary) very slowly for an extendended time on very low heat. We choose a sauté pan, so there's some "free" juice which gets slightly caramlized over time. From time to time, we add some liquidity (water or a mix of wine and wine) in order to avoid dryness. In the end (after 1-2 hours), we get very "tired", slightly concentrated, caramlized pepper pieces. They make a great color on a plate and have sometimes a really wonderful flavour. Originally, we started with this way of preparation because so many people have difficulties to digest peppers.

In a ** or ***, I'd explain my desire and rely on their recommendations. At home, I'd serve something like Sanbitter or Crodino with a slice of a carefully choosen lemon. Another option (especially in summertime) is Airan, a mix of 1/1 yoghourt and ice water, with a bit salt and some basil as a extravagant variant. A moscato raisin juice - maybe with some fruits (like a bowle) - could be an allusion to the Languedocien habit of drinking sweet Muscat or Ambré as aperitif.

Sometimes, I prefer to EVOO-poach some peeled peppers on very low heat for 2 hours. They develop different aromatic profile, as all airy components are gone by then. The texture is out of discussion (though I had varieties with very good resistance to overcooking), but their taste is different fom peppers with a shorter cooking time. I've done similar things with celery root and vinegar or sour wine to achieve a natural sweet/sour taste. I believe that to a certain extent, the pure "al dente" style goes back to the 70ies, when cooking of vegetables seemed to be focused on preservance of vitamines and "overcooking" was strictly verboten.

Andrea! Thank you so much for your hints. I'll try to sample some of these wines. And I thank you immensly for all your thougthful responses here. What a pleasure to read through your posts! Salutoni!

First, let the number speak: Switzerland ranks 5th with production of Emmental, and at about 14% of the French production. Switzerland would be completely unable to satisfy even a minimal demand for true Emmental. As far as I understand the process by now, they want to have the control over the name (why should the producers in the Bernese "Emmental" be in a less protected situation as "Parmigiano" or "Champagne" or "Napa"). In the interviews, the Swiss producer association talked about having more control over the stuff that's selled under the name Emmental. I think this is a legitimate approach to protect "common goods" from overexploiting by careless producers. A name like "Swiss Emmental " wouldn't be enough to avoid a quality dilution of Emmental. It would be an insult for all the thenthousand of quality conscious people, who helped to develop this great product to watch Emmental produced by some highly industrialized process working with synthetic milk composed by some lactose, lecithin and vegetable fat. And in the end, I see the whole thing correlated with the expanding claims of intellectual property. Of course, the French with by far the largets production quotas are a bit nervous, but after prosecuting every mouse in this world for any name containing "Champ...", I'm sure they unterstand the issue.

"Switzerland’s biggest cheese export, Emmental, is set to be awarded the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) label." News article

This is the one between Canelli and Calamandrana with the "stincos"? What place would you suggest for me to finally have my first "Financiera"?