Boris_A

Grüezi Moby I never admitted this, as far as I remember, but as I'm going to upload pics (as soon the image server is up again) and not having a Photoshop to eliminate this elegant monster, I'm not denying it.

I'm done with my daily work for today. Thanks for the encouragement. I needed that. I was just overbidden at an auction on two nice Danish mid-century-modern chairs I wanted for my collection. The other guy was prepared to pay a high price. I was not. It has been chairs by Hans Wegner. That's the one who desigend the chairs Kennedy and Nixon have been sitting on during the first TV-campaign duel. Then I learned that the f..[MTV-style-noise]..ng ImageGullet server is down, so for the moment crappy descriptions instead of crappy pictures. If they don't fix it soon, sombody needs to help me with upload space. Otherwise, we are going to be blind. At least sunshine is back and I'm grasping my shopping list to get the stuff for a short cycle Bulgarian Banitsa (and salad) this evening. Tiny countries with tiny villages have some advantages. We are living in the "core" of the village (with some houses going back to 1500 aC) and therefore everything is in walking distance. We have two bakeries, two butchers and two supermarkts (you'd call it a grocery in the US, I suppose), but the remotest is about a 5 minute walk away. I'm not going to cook a lot, because this evening there's Italy (my grandfather) playing aginst Bulgaria (my father) in the Europen Soccer Championship (every 4 yeras only). It's possible that both get eliminated. Yesterday, Switzerland had to leave the tournament. So maybe: "Eliminacion total" of all teams I'm somehow related with, but I don't mind. Usually, I'm not a big soccer fan, but with those European and World Cups, the level of playing is just overwhelming.

Thanks for the welcome. And Good Evening Asia. Yes, we're going to work a bit to enlarge the chiaro share of the chiaroscuro Bleu, I'm living on the lake. Almost "le pied dans l'eau" (the foot in the water). Etivaz got an AOC status recently. (Gruyère missed that). It's a rather small spot up at Col des Mosses. I think they are still about that number of producers. Would be an interesting research once how some families might have different terroir (different soil and meadows influencing flavor), and how the milk possibly changes character when the cows are moving to higher meadows in July/August and how to deal with that. Just picked up my first digicam. I know about my obligations to shoot some crappy pics.

Hello and Good Morning, foodbloggers! For some reasons I was tagged/untagged/tagged again. All within the last 48 hours. Just to give you an idea of the drama. I had no idea about the nature of the foodblog before. Now I'm the one who has to continue after Mongo's blog. Do I need to say more? Oh Gods, what is my sin? Is this a Hiob test? Please note, eGullet is about the only place where I have to deal with writing English language. I'm working part-time as a translator for English/German technical documentations. But writing in an foreign language is a different animal. Forgive in advance. And if anyone is tempted to answer, please translate the coolest, latest slang expression for me. Ok? It's now 7 in the morning here on a gray, rainy summer day in Erlenbach, a village near Zurich, in the German speaking part of Switzerland. That's the place where the blog is going to stop for a week. (Geographically, tiny Switzerland is the watershed of a continent. Within a circle of 50 kilometers, there are the springs of 4 rivers, each one reaching a different sea around Europe. ) I've grown up in this country where I was born about 50 years ago. My mother was of mixed Italian/Swiss origin, my father is a Bulgarian immigrant. For 19 years, I'm together with my beloved Beatrix. We built a home 4 years ago and now, we are living together here. I'm a bit tired today, because yesterday I visited a wine producer working at the majestic lake of Geneva. This producer devoted all his energy to variety called "Chasselas", a variety known to the Aegyptians already. It's cultivated at the border of the Lac Léman (the lake's real name) for some 900 years. This wine is generally not in high estem with the elitistic wine community (and Switzerland doesn't export almost any), but what Pierre-Luc Leyvraz achieved with his tiny production is a truly oustanding apéritif wine. Until now, it's a almost a grassroot evolvement. I have to unload 120 bottles this afternoon. On the way home, I stopped in Gruyére (the town) of course and bought some Gruyère d' Alpage (the deleicious summer, mountian variety of Gruyère, produced on spot by hand. Etivaz as a reperesentant of that Gruyère variety), a piece of Gruyère Surchoix (more mature than regular Gruyère) and some Extra-Vieux (Gruyère matured for 18 months). Now I'going to prepare some coffee and to walk over to my bakery to pick some fresh croissants. Afterwards, I've got some work to do. So again, foodblog community: Hello! We are going to spend an easy, less exciting week (we all need that after Hurricane Mongo, no?) and I try to give you an impression of our food and how we live here.

My preferred is red wine vinegar by "Ardoino", a producer of excellent EVOO from the Ligurian coast. I had to buy it in Italy, because all space in the stores is occupied by Balsamico, which I like, but only on rare occasions. The 0.5 liter at $3, I bought a dozen of bottles. It 's gettin "tired" over years and I love that. Sometimes I blend my vinegar with Jerez vinegar and a little bit of water. Several years ago, I had my vine vinegar from a little Italian fruit and veggie importer. No name and at $2 per bottle, it was really delicious and an incredible bargain. The best I ever had was a direct import from a traditional, luxury Italian restaurant, where the owner and my parents had been friends. After dinner, sometimes they filled a wine bottle with this vinegar and gave it to us. So we left the restaurant with one or two wine bottles under the arm. You can imagine the strange smile people had when seeing us in the tramway with those bottles in our hands. But the vinegar was really divine. I made several blind tastings with wine vinegar and found price and quality pretty uncorrelating. My 2 c.

Here in Switzerland, I can get it at $11. Should be no more than $14 over there. As for the Gruner Vinotheken, you're really a lucky one to have some more bottles. They are extremely difficult to get here, as the Austrians know what's inside of these bottles. Congrats!

Maybe "Marc Kreydenweiss, Riesling d'Alsace"? He produces some climat Rieslings (vineyards and GrandCrus subappellations) as well. An excellent Alsatian producer. And Zweigelt is the correct spelling of this red variety, which is quite popular in Austria. It yields rather soft, smooth wines, not unlike Gamay. Knoll' s Vintothekenabfüllung are indeed a more concentrated selection of his regular Grüner Veltliner, which is already at the top end. Regards, Boris

1) As an ingnorant, lazy peasant, I decant rarely. 2) I have 3 decanters. In extremis, I use all of them and go as I decribed it: I'm placing them below my window. Actually, I never measured, but usually the glas feels like a cellar temperature. I should add that very near of this window, there's an air intake for my rather strong ventilation (to avoid under-pressure). So it's pretty cool there. But if you have a room angle with adjacent windows, you'll find also lower temps there. On the rare occasions I served decanted wine during summer time, I did the decanting in the cellar and left it there. When I hastily read you article this morning, I overlooked that you mentioned the problem of the warming in the glas. You're the first wine writer I saw caring about this problem, which most people (else meticulous about the right serving temeprature) seem not to grasp in it's dimension. Probably, we all tend to overlook rather slow dynamic processes and are mostly judging things by perception of the statics, I think.

I have very limited knowledge of Spain, but I immediately considered it being more like a continent. Ever since my first travel, when I hear "Spain", I'm always muttering to myself: "But Spain doesn't exist". Very funny that the Portuguese think it's even bigger than a continent. Regards (FUTBOL? Fingers crossed for Portugal )

It's not unlike when Port got fashionable again in the mi 90s. They charged up to $100 for a parkerized Taylor Vinatge 1994 infant. You could buy 1963 for the same price back then. Incredible.

Two little remarks: 1) The famous "room temperature" (actually 17 degrees C ) is rather a reference to old day room temperature in the days of ovens, not central heating. 2) In our generally overheated homes (20-22 C), the wine (especially in the "prewarmed" glass) gets up in temperature rather quick. So if you slowly sip your great Barolo/Napa during a meal, I'd bet the last drops are at 20 C or more. That's why I store my wines (the last hours before opening) under a window where there's always a cooler air stream in winter time, or I leave the bottle in the cellar at 15-16 until the last moment in summer time. That way, I serve it slightly "chilled" to compensate for the effect.

As a side note, this happened in European wine countries over the last decades. For instance, France had once a record consumption of 115 liters per year and capita. (30 gallones; all kids, women and abstinents included!) Today, the are "down" to roughly 85 liters, but the average price (and quality) is considerably higher. You'll find the same pattern in Italy and other countries with high consumption levels.

Maybe the should split like in stock market and create 3 oz flacons. Generally, prices are on the rise these days here in Switzerland. One of the big en primeur dealers cranked up the price for Montrose twice since the first release. It's correlating with stock market recovery, I believe. I knew bankers who bought Bordelais 2000 for more than $ 500'000. They have been abstinent for 3 years. I suspect these buyers are back again. Interestingly they still don't seem to understand the difference between value and price.

NewScientist: New test marks out a true champagne Interesting times ahead, maybe.

I'm not sure about that. I'm collecting chairs, and I'm still most impressed by the work of Hans J. Wegner, a Danish designer. I have no doubt about his intellectual weight behind his work, but I know he started as a carpenter, and almost all of his designs have this craftman breath. And I'm sure he would refuse the notion of his chairs being art. In the contrary - I think the craftman (in a sense of Tao or Kai-Zen) requires considerably more intellectual work than art. Because those objects are mainly intended to be used or consumed. Hence they express functionality, and this functionality requires much more understanding (in the process of creation) than art. Art can be considered isolated from function. Food (or furniture) not. With Ducasse, I believe we are impressed by the combination of function and aesthetics. In the other thread (about Ducasse's "Grand Livre de Cuisine"), I confessed that these building blocks are the most interesting part for me. And when I read the "Tomato Rougaille" recipe, I noticed exactly the same concept of building blocks, leading to a universe of possible combinations. Like writing a piece for an orchestra. Ducasse delivres the instruments. And for the first time, a master does ist so clear and detailed that even an amateur can try to emulate a bit the art of composing.

There exist blue variants also. Hence sometime it's called "la Bleue". Which made nice headlines in the press yesterday: "Green light for La Bleue". Coloring in the name of marekting is maybe the oldest and most successful marketing method in food history

In February 2002, I had a financially good month and decided to buy the Grand Livre at 200 € after I read a review. The frist edition was sold out, so I had to wait 3 months. There are mostly pretty complicated recipes on about 1000 pages. It's a huge recipe collection aiming at professionals working in the haute cuisine metier. But ... within many recipes, there are sub-recipes for sauces, jus, extracts, garniture, whatever. These numerous sub-recipes have been very interesting wrt. my limited possibilities. From time to time, I scan this behemoth of cookbooks, choose one ot two of those sub-recipes and try to incorporate it in a composition of my own. Alain, forgive! For sure, it's not the cookbook I can't live wihtout. But I wouldn't give it away now it found a place on my (reenforced) kitchen bookshelf.

Absinthe is made from 5-10 different ingredients. The famous narcotic effect is due to "thuyone", coming from a root. In high doses, it can lead to neuronal effects similar to epilepsis, I learned. Absinth was forbidden due to this. Or better: this was the official justification. I heard that some of the old Absinth had considerable methanol level, something that helped to increase and alterate the effect of aethanol, but can be highly dangerous (getting blind, for example). Today, concentration of thuyone is limited to 35 mg/l. I have no idea how much the threshold dose needs to be for a narcotic effect, but I guess after consuming 1 liter of absinthe your'e going to have about the same narcotic effect like after drinkin 1 liter of bourbon. Many times when a drug becomes fashionable, there are a lot of stories. If you read the first reports about the narcotic effect of coffee, you think they consumed something like LSD. BTW, I tasted it once (illegal absinthe from the original place) and it was like the aforementioned Ouzo, Pernod, Ricard or Pastis.

Interestingly, about 20-30 years ago many people simply bought en primeur their preferred labels. In better vintages maybe some cases more. Bordeaux was the finest wine anyway, so who cared. For example, Las Cases was at roughly $150 a case. Picking "the best" was no big issue. And if, you bought some Latour or Lafite. That was it. "Life was so much simpler then when I was young."

Unforgetable the little scandal when President Mitterand visited Switzerland in 1985 and a dish called " Soufflé à la Fée" (fée verte = Absinth) was served during the official dinner. A nice symbolic insubordination. It seems that back in 1910, there was a coalition of absinth-unwilling: anti-alcoholics together with competing producers of spirits. A rarely outspoken motive was the fact that absinth was very popular among women, something the bougeoisie of 1900 couldn't accept. Unfortunately, Swiss parliament missed a chance yesterday to open a debate about legalizing marijuhana. Seems that this prohibition (introduced around 1960, before nobody cared much, it was poor peoples booze in earlier times) will last as much as long. Ahhhh, the high standards of morality (one likes to impose on others).

I never went that deep into the tripe business, but I have friends living near Florence, so I know about the culture of "Trippai" (tripe stalls) and I heard that tripe aficionados have their preferred kind and part of tripe. For them, "tripe" is about as specific as the expression "steak". In that respect, tripe should make for an intertesting horizontal and vertical tasting. Unfortunately, the fixation on lean muscular meat caused already serious difficulties to get such differentiated products at our (Swiss) butchers. Just another area where we have came down from educated gourmands to ignorant "peasants". I wouldn't recommend buying green tripe despite I've not much "contact fear" with many nowadays unusual ingredients. Washing and pre-cooking "green" tripe is a somewhat malodorous work.

Another interesting variant would be old-style Rioja as made by Lopez de Heredia. Sometimes, they release their Tondonia Gran Riservas only after 10-20 years of cask cellaring. I tasted of these several times and they remind of a matured Burgundies preferred by the Brits decades ago. I'm not SFJoe of course, but I'd like to comment: I didn't hear that term before, but immediately, the word of the architect Mies van der Rohe was coming to my mind: "Less is more". I don't know about what exactly this "cuisine of subtraction"is, but my signature (an Albert Einstein quote derivate) is surely aiming at the same circle of ideas and the remarkable complexity of trying to reduce something to the essential.

Served precooked in larger pieces (say about 4"x4" size) with a sauce vinaigrette is a Swiss regional dish fromn the north. Another traditional example is a soup called Busecca from northern Italy or the Italian part of Switzerland

Statistically seen, it's more like the great physiologist Aastrand said: "In order to win an Olympic gold medal, you should carefully choose your parents."

My 2c: 1) I use grape seed oil for wood care (boards, handles). It's pretty inert (and recommended for high temperatures). It takes a long time until it gets rancid. In comparison with mineral oil, it's a matter of taste I guess. 2) I make the cutting board sufficiently wet before cutting. I learned that from a Japanese. For onions/garlic, I'd recommend a separate cutting board, if you intend to cut delicate ingredients.