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eG member NancyH and others have commented about how difficult it can be to convince the staff of some restaurants that you're interested in the "real" food, not the dumbed-down version. It helps if you speak at least a few words of the language. Sometimes there's an entirely separate menu, which may or may not have English translations, that features more authentic fare than the standard menu. Also, in dim sum places there may be carts with stuff like chicken feet or jellyfish that might be considered too exotic for the more timid diner.

Laura Taxel gave Sun Luck Garden a very favorable review in her Cleveland Ethnic Eats guide. Taxel's review put Sun Luck Garden on my "short list" of places to try, but the Heights isn't close to where I live or work. Sounds like I need to go out of my way to check it out...BTW, what's the research for? Are you writing a study of Heartland Asian restaurants? Have you hit Saint Paul yet?

Kris, you can add another Thai restaurant to your list of Asian restaurants to try. Ty Fun is in Tremont, right across the street from Fahrenheit. I met up with some friends on Tuesday night to check it out. After cocktails at VTR we headed for Ty Fun. The restaurant is small, decor is charming, and the mood is sort of "relaxed upscale". The banquettes against the wall have big piles of silk pillows, the tables are set with woven place mats and Thai bronze flatware, and there are Thai paintings on the walls. We started with some appetizers shared around the table. The Mee Grob (crispy rice noodles, shrimp, sweet-and-sour sauce) was excellent. Someone said it reminded them of a caramel popcorn ball , but it wasn't too sweet - just kind of sticky and yummy. We also had Tod Mun Pla, little fish cakes with chili, cucumber, and peanuts. Interesting, but didn't knock me out. Everyone had soup - either Tom Yum or Tom Kha Gai. Nice balance of coconut, lemon grass, and lime in the Tom Kha Gai. Ped Grob Boneless roast duck on a bed of crispy noodles Chili, garlic, tamarind sauce A noodle dish (I missed which one it was) Steamed shrimp with vegetables Pla Chu Chee Whole Red Snapper Red Currie and Coconut Milk Kai Ma Mung Chicken breast, Cashew, Pineapple, Chili Hot Plate Jumbo Shrimp, Squid, Scallop, Mussel Crystal Noodle, Mixed Vegetable and "spicy sauce" This was served on a sizzle-platter (kind of like fajitas). We split a piece of mango cheesecake, which was light and subtly flavored (not overly sweet), and topped with toasted coconut. Then we rambled up the street to Lolita for coffee, cheese boards, and "small plate" desserts.

Does that mean that this is just about the worst time of year to be buying olive oil from Italy? When does the 2006 harvest start showing up in the U.S.?

Interesting to see an academic view of all this. I'd never heard of the Belasco book - sounds like it could be an interesting read. Since this appears to be a survey (of sorts) of food-related books from a political point-of-view, I'm dissapointed that she overlooked Nina Planck's Real Food: What to Eat and Why (excerpts in the Daily Gullet here and here). EDIT: Corrected spelling of Planck's name.

Thanks for the info on the dual-zone freezer, Steve. I've done some more snooping around and found a PDF Brochure on the frix-air. It appears to operate on the same principal as the Pacojet, with one interesting difference: I wonder how noisy it is, having a compressor in addition to the cutting blade motor.

I've been busy lately, but did continue the experiments a bit further. I'm still working on the "baseline" recipe, which is kind of boring but will hopefully give me a reference point for further experimentation. I got some bottled yuzu juice to try out. It's interesting, but tastes a bit salty. Wish I could find some fresh yuzu. I'm still working mainly with fresh lemon and/or lime juice for the citrus component, and simple syrup for the sweetener (I did try some agave nekcar and may play some more with that). John, how much citric acid did you use? I have some citric acid powder but have no clue how much to start out with.

Ah, I should have recognized the bricks as splits. I was thinking that you (I) could place one layer on the bottom of the oven, and another on the rack. The idea is to get enough thermal mass to keep the temperature from dropping when the dough is placed in the oven, but without the risk of placing too much mass on either the oven bottom or the rack. I'm with you on the "I want pizza now" thing. Every strategy for making real pizza requires a long heat-up time for the oven. Makes me long for an Aga Cooker that stays on all the time. Not sure it's hot enough for pizza, though... I'll PM ya about the Cleveland dinners. Since this is posted in the Pastry & Baking forum, I'd like to point out that Cory Barrett's desserts at Lolita and Lola totally rock. See the Heartland forum.

Further thoughts regarding the half-bricks ("splits"). What if you lined the bottom of the oven with one layer of "splits", and placed an additional layer on the rack to receive the pizza dough? The combination should provide the heat retention without buckling the rack (or the bottom of the oven) with excessive weight. Hmmmmmm...

Matt, This is a great topic - it's got me thinking (again) about how to get the best "pizza oven" effect in my home oven. If your bricks didn't soak in water for a prolonged period, I think you can use them right away. I'd bring up the temp incrementally, just to be sure. The "shrapnel" syndrome is unlikely unless there's a lot of moisture trapped inside the bricks. My oven (a GE "large oven" range) has a thin bottom sheet (enameled steel?) that looks dubious for supporting heavy weights. The kiln supports look like a better option. p.s. - if you want some sourdough starter samples to try out, I've got several. There's an eG member who comes up from Columbus to Cleveland frequently to join us for dinner at various cool restaurants. I bet she'd be willing to shuttle some starter to you. Better yet, you should tag along for dinner some time. If you want to see a magnificent wood-fired oven in action, check out Lolita in Cleveland.

Scott, I knew I'd seen some references to strategies for supporting firebricks in a conventional oven. (n.b. my mention of the "real risk" above). So some googling located this post about the kiln supports. I'm going to look for some of those. For a pizza recipe, try Jeff Varazano's rather obsessive persuit of the perfect pizza (currently mirrored on the Slice NY site due to excessive server load on the original). I haven't violated the safety interlocks on my self-cleaning oven. Yet.

If they're really firebricks, I don't think you need to worry about seasoning them. They're designed for a high-heat environment. The first time you use them, maybe you could raise the temperature incrementally, say in 200 degree steps, letting them stabilize for twenty minutes or so before moving to the next temperature. Honestly, I don't know whether that's even necessary, but since you're nervous about it, take the cautious approach. It looks like you already covered the real risk with these things. The stack of bricks supporting the rack should do the job. What are you planning to bake in there? Bread? Pizza?

Thanks for the CO2 info, Chris. I think I'll stick to using bottled soda water for the time being, but maybe there's a keg and a CO2 rig in my future. I tried out the cinchona-lime-sugar mix with bottled soda today. Now that the weird CO2 cartridge flavor is gone, it tastes pretty good. The biggest advantage over bottled tonic is that I can adjust the sweetness way down - the commercial stuff is always too sweet for my taste. The citrus is fresh, which is always a good thing. And the cinchona flavor is bitter and medicinal (as it's supposed to be). The color is only slightly off-white. The cinchona infusion is quite dark, but it gets diluted way down in the drink. I used a couple of teaspoons of cinchona "tea" in a six-ounce glass. Since I started out with 50 g. of cinchona bark powder in 450 mL of water, the drink winds up with a tiny fraction of the "recommended" dosage from the Raintree site. I'm playing it safe on the cinchona quantity for now.

The Frix-Air is available in the U.S. from J. B. Prince. I was wondering whether it was really comparable to the Paco Jet. I'd love to hear from someone who has worked with both. Also, is there a small freezer (suitable for home use) that gets cold enough to prep the ingredients? The Paco Jet site says you need a freezer that goes to -20°C (-4°F). Do regular domestic freezers get that cold?

Aidan, I think that several people here have used the oven to do the initial cure. That's what I plan to do when I get around to doing dry-cured sausages. The Bactoferm LHP application notes specify both temperature and humidity: I think a pan of warm water in the oven should help keep the humidity up, and the thermal mass should help hold the temperature steady. I pizza stone or some bricks would also help hold the heat. The F-RM-52 instructions don't specify humidity for the fermentation stage, but the temperature range is fairly broad: As long as you stay within those bounds you should be fine. The important thing is not to get the meat so hot it kills the bacteria. Better to err on the cool side of the range.Good luck, and report back.

I'm sure John has made more progress than I. My filter arrived a week ago Friday. The filtered quinine "tea" is still very dark but no longer cloudy. A drop on the tongue is extremely bitter, sort of like the taste of tonic without the citrus notes. I didn't use any other aromatics at this point, because I want to establish a baseline of what the quinine itself tastes like. I mixed a small amount of the quinine with some lime juice (also filtered), simple sirup, and water in the siphon. Charged it with a CO2 cartridge, and that's where I hit the first snag. The CO2-charged stuff just tastes funny, but it's a characteristic taste of the CO2. Has anyone found a way to use a soda siphon without the weird-tasting cartridges? Can you just add sodium bicarbonate to the siphon before sealing it (and skip the cartridge)? I picked up some plain soda so the experiment can continue without the siphon issue.

Search the Heartland forum for "Shapiro's". It's a deli that won't win any style points (cafeteria style), but the corned beef is excellent. They're downown on South Meridian (South of the train station, West of Eli Lilly headquarters), but they've got a branch in the 'burbs in Carmel. For the best pastrami in the "Heartland", you'll have to come to the next eG gathering and hope that Ronnie makes some more of his awesome wagyu pastrami. See the Heartland Gathering 2006 thread for an idea of what we enjoyed this year. Since next year's eG Heartland Gathering may be happening in Cleveland, maybe we can persuade Mr Ruhlman to attend.

Good for you! Home-made is always better, even if it isn't "cost efficient". BTW, you can get some pretty decent corned beef in Indianapolis. Ronnie can attest to this....

Interesting post in the Texas forum regarding Iberian pork products at Central Market. It's nice to know that Spanish cured pork (including the legendary Jamón ibérico) is making it to the U.S. now, but I'm curious as to how it compares to carefully crafted products made here. Has anyone compared, say, imported Spanish lomo to cured pork loin made with high-quality (e.g. "Heritage breed") pork and artisinal technique here? I've made the pork confit recipe from Charcuterie, but haven't attempted a dry-cured lomo. I recall dining in a restaurant in San Juan where there were hams hanging from the ceiling, their dainty little black hooves pointing to the ceiling. The ham was incredibly expensive, and was sliced by hand from an elaborate stand that kept it clamped in place. The stand was located in an alcove lit from above. I decided to pass on the ham course. Only later did it dawn on me that those hams looked an awful lot like Jamón ibérico. I could kick myself for not trying some, and asking where it came from. Is Puerto Rico not subject to the food-nanny FDA?

Is that the launch date for the website, or the series? There's no mention of when the shows will actually start to air. Both of the Northeast Ohio PBS stations are listed in the "local listings" on the series site, but the show doesn't appear in the broadcast schedules for either station.

I would have to say that I do care about how animals are treated. I just don't see how the ducks and geese used for producing foie are particularly abused. If anything, they are treated far better than many of the animals that ultimately wind up on our dinner plates. In my youth I spent over ten years as a vegetarian. Not so much in the "poor little moo-cows, poor little duckies" sense. More in response to the industrial food production machine. Actually, it was precisely due to the ethics of the food production industry. Blame Francis Moore Lappé. I eat beef, lamb, duck, goat, bison, and yes foie gras. I do my best to buy from reputable sources - the closer to the farm the better. I'm not going to get all high-and-mighty about my food ethics. Nor am I going to try to force my positions on anyone who disagrees.

Sicilian singer. As I said, many miles (kM) from you, but I thought of you nonetheless. Edit to add: it was Pontormo who first mentioned the NPR piece.

I've been holding my tongue a bit in this thread, perhaps because so much of this has been hashed over again and again. I'd like to weigh in with a few thoughts. I've been buying foie gras and other products from Ariane Daguin's d'Artagnan since before they even had a web presence. I first learned of d'Artagnan's provisons from Ariane's father's cook book "Foie Gras, Magret, and Other Good food from Gascony". (published in 1988). I'm just a small-scale consumer - I don't buy food products on anywhere near the scale that commercial enterprises do. I'm careful about the sources for my food. I try to avoid any suppliers that engage in questionable practices. And yes, that means that I pay more for my food (especially meat and eggs), and I'm OK with that. So here's the thing that really pisses me off. There is just so much disinformation surrounding the production of foie gras. Here's a video on the Humane Society's web site that is absolutely disgraceful. Behold the disinformation. There is absolutely no evidence that any North American producer has *EVER* engaged in these practices. Oh, here's the thing that pins the bullshit-meter: The video ends with the proclamation "There is no humane way to produce foie gras". Oh really?? So if we catch ducks or geese gorging themselves, should we turn them in to the food police? Paul Shapiro should hang his head in shame. This video is utterly irresponsible. I can live without eating foie gras. Honestly, the foie I've been served in restaurants has been hit-or-miss. Some of the best foie I've ever experienced was at the Heartland Gathering (All of Fat Guy's protestations to the contrary). But if foie gras disappeared from menus tomorrow, I wouldn't necessarily mourn from a culinary standpoint. But that's not the point, now is it? Ultimately the only answer to the anti-foie forces is transparency. As far as I know, all of the North American foie producers are operating in an entirely ethical manner. When people start yelling about the "poor little duckies", point out that the ducks are never handled roughly, that their gullets are lined with cartilage, that ducks are not people. I can certainly understand why the foie producers are a bit gun-shy when it comes to opening up there operations to outside scrutiny. It's do-or-die: the producers in New York, California, and Quebec need to show the world that they are not engaging in cruel practices. p.s. to Markk - your "transfat" link is to a *new* "green label" Crisco product introduced a couple of years ago. P&G invented the whole trans-fat hydrogenation process more than a century ago. See Nina Plank's book "Real Food" for a history of the trans-fat industry.

I spotted that little typo/braino but chose to hold my tongue. I'm just waiting to hear someone translate "carpe diem" as "catch of the day". BTW, I caught that NPR spot on the Sicilian singer and somehow thought of your blog, even though you're a very long way from Sicily. Bramo indeed!

I met up with some eG folks (and other friends) last night for dinner at CC. Funny how we always wind up at CC on the first Friday of the month! The big draw right now is Linguini with Clams. Yeah, I know that sounds kind of pedestrian, but the CC version is of course something special. The pasta is house-made (as always), and the sauce is a white clam sauce. Wait! Wait! I know you're thinking of that goopy flour-thickened stuff that's served in so many restaurants. This is different. The "sauce" is simply rendered pancetta, olive oil, parmesan, and romano cheeses mingled with the juices of the clams. No cream. No butter. And definitely no flour. It's amazingly creamy! The dish is ringed with the middle neck clams in their shells. Tom (tino27) figured out the technique for eating this dish: Scoop the clams out of their shells and dump them (with their juices) onto the pasta. Absolutely scrumptious.