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Do you know if these are the same type of truffles as the ones from Alba? They certainly look similar, but I wonder why they're so much cheaper. Can't wait to see what you do with them for dinner! Are the truffles allowed to touch any of the other food?

Are the cinghiale stuffed in the culinary sense? (Somehow I'm thinking more like taxidermy). Is there a particular season when the boar are hunted? Loving your blog, Judith. Your photos are beautiful.

Not banned outright, but the New York health authorities now require businesses to file an approved HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control point) plan. I'm not sure how many restaurants have bothered to do this, or how many have simply stopped using sous vide techniques. Of course there are probably some that continue cooking sous-vide and simply hope they won't get fined by the Health Department. How strict are the authorities in the UK? Do they have special policies regarding sous vide?

Peanut oil for me. They sell big cans of Lion & Globe peanut oil in the Asian grocery in Cleveland for a fairly reasonable price. The peanut oil seems to stand up well to the high heat of the wok.

Use the drier-hose attachment for your iRoast. It works! It does change the heating characterisitcs, so you may have to adjust your profiles. Still, better that than setting off the smoke detector.

Resuming the experiment I started infusing some cinchona bark in hot water tonight. I'm trying to be a bit more methodical this time. Rather than measuring the cinchona by volume, I weighed it on the gram scale. The cinchona powder. Note the medium-brown color. Five grams for 450 mL of hot water. The infusion is much darker than the dry powder.

I started obsessing over home-made tonic back when I spotted this in a discussion of Per Se - The Cocktail I searched for recipes and came up blank. More than a year later there was a Washington Post piece linked from the made my own vanilla lemon soda thread, which I found when searching again for info on tonic recipes. WaPo story on Restaurant Eve. The bartender at Eve said that Yuzu turned out to be the key to getting the right citrus notes in their house-made tonic. I've never seen fresh yuzu in the U.S., and all of the asian groceries here in "the Heartland" seem to have only yuzu-flavored marinades and such. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and order some bottled yuzu over the web if I want to play with it. In the mean time, I'll probably stick with (regular old) lemon and lime, and maybe some Boyajian Pure Citrus Oils which I already have on hand. I've got a Buchner vacuum filter rig on order, so at least I'll be able to get the sludge out of the infusion!

*bump* So, johnder's foodblog post about Gramercy Tavern's house-made tonic got me thinking (again) about trying to make some myself. I bought some of the cinchona powder from rain-tree back in June, hoping to make some tonic for the Heartland gathering. My first attempts were pretty nasty tasting, and the color was not too attractive either. I'm going to try again, this time increasing the citrus component in relation to the cinchona. I'm also wondering if there are other bitter components used in the commercial tonic waters.

Any chance we could get the tonic recipe?

The sous-vide belly looks incredible. You mentioned the cooking time, but what temperature did you use?

The Drinkboy main site is up, but the bitters recipe is on another site that's down right now. The Google cache shows a recipe with some of the same ingredients listed, but somewhat different proportions. The recipe that Erik (eje) used has more gentian than the one in the cache, so it's interesting that he thought the gentian should be upped in relation to the spices. Please report how your batch turned out. Drinkblog Edit: Cross-posted with Erik! There are some interesting comments in that post. particularly this, re. the Pegu Club: Great. Now I have to find some oak casks and wait two years for the results.

All I can say is, that chitarra better get put to good use during this blog. BTW, what the heck does the leg say? Can't believe I'm trying to read somebody's leg on eGullet.

That buchner filter funnel is so cool! (yeah, I just ordered one for myself). I had to search for Hess House Bitters to see what it was that you were filtering. Did you use the same recipe that eje posted in the bitters thread? Off to shop for gentian...

Cool! Does the sichuan pepper give it that tongue-numbing weird and wonderful heat? I take it the Lauda didn't burn the house down. It took me months to start trusting mine unattended for more than a few minutes... Loving your blog.

Last but not least, Dessert! Pastry chef Cory Barrett has his own kitchen separate from the open kitchen on the main floor. He's clearly been having fun coming up with playful desserts in sync with the Lola "vibe". Before our dessert order arrived we got a special treat: Banana Pana Cotta and Blueberry Sorbet Since this was off-the-menu, I may get the description wrong. I think there was a burnt butter / hazelnut nougat (or something like that) beneath the sorbet, and I think the herb sprig on top was lemon verbena. Whatever the components, this was delicious. From the dessert menu we had: Lemon Meringue Lemon curd between layers of crisp meringue, with fresh berries and Sangria sauce Piña Colada Coupe Coconut panna cotta, vanilla-rum Pineapple, Malibu granitée (Wish I had a picture of this - it's served in a curvy heavy glass "sculpture". It really does taste like Piña Colada!) "6 a.m. Special" . French toast, maple-bacon Ice cream, caramelized apple Had to try this one! The bacon is salty and crunchy - quite a novelty in a dessert. Very cool. "Dark Day in Cleveland" . Chocolate cake, blackberries, Blackout Stout ice cream, Malted anglaise This one was too dark to photograph. Everyone raved about the chocolate cake. It's absolutely intense. One last little touch: Our checks were accompanied by a little pegboard festooned with "Lola-pops". Dark chocolate, some sort of nuts (sheesh, my mind is going!), and crunchy sea salt.

The main course: Grouper with corn, chilies, citrus, and crab Smoked Berkshire Pork Chop with chilies, cheesy polenta, and BBQ onions (No picture - the fries looked cool in their paper-lined metal container.) Beef Rib Eye with Lola Fries Veal 3 Sweetbreads, Tongue & cheek with mushroom broth (two of us had this) I sampled everything but the Rib Eye (which looked marvelous). Everything was perfectly cooked and very flavorful. The veal dish in particular was incredibly rich (I couldn't quite finish mine). The tongue provided a nice contrast to the buttery sweetbreads and the falling-apart tender cheek. The wine was a Franciscan Magnificat from Napa. It's a nicely balanced "meritage" style red that held up well with the robust food flavors. No wimpy wines for us! Save room for dessert!

A group of us went to Lola last night. Our reservations were for 8:00 but we went a bit early to have drinks at the bar. The initial impression walking into the restaurant is a definite "Wow!" - They've done a marvelous job of fitting a modern, elegant design into the shell of an early-20th-century building. The new Lola is much more spacious than the old space in Tremont (now occupied by Lolita). High coffered ceilings, dark richly-textured walls, a large bar with an alabaster stone surface lit from below and an impressive glass-encased wine collection above and behind the bar. The dining areas are split onto multiple levels. We sat at an oval table with a nice view of the open kitchen. Seating was a curved banquette on one side and comfortable chairs on the other. We started out with an amuse: salmon parfait with horseradish crème fraîche served in a shot glass. That was followed by appetizers: Smoked Walleye Croquettes with corn chowder and ramps Beef Cheek Pierogi with wild mushrooms and horseradish crème fraîche Foie Gras Sausage with cheddar & beer soup shooter, brioche, and pickled shallot Heirloom Tomato Salad with feta and kalamatas Arugula Salad with dried cherries, walnuts, and goat cheese Our waiter was kind enough to supply us with extra bread plates so we could pass samples of our food around the table. (more to follow) Edit to correct descriptions and add blurry pictures

The Plain Dealer blurb I quoted the other day made it sound like getting reservations was going to be really tough. I kind of assumed that myself, but fortunately didn't talk myself out of even trying to get in. I was able to get reservations for Wednesday evening, and some friends are going on Saturday. As word gets out that Lola has opened I'm sure that they'll go through a burst of heavy bookings. Especially after the PD does a full review, which John Long implied is coming soon. In the mean time, give 'em a call, and don't be discouraged by a busy signal. This ain't el bulli or The French Laundry. edit to fix broken italics

At long last, the new Lola is opening. They're doing the "soft opening" this week and taking reservations for evenings starting on Sept. 25. In a few weeks Lola will also be open for lunch/brunch. Here's a blurb from the Plain Dealer: A year late, Lola Bistro arrives edit to add link

That explains why your skillet is so shiny! I'm going to try your microwave roux trick tonight. Loving the blog, and especially your house!

Tammy, not much to say here except that I really enjoy your posts about your community meals. You may not get many responses on this thread, but that doesn't mean that no-one is paying attention. Those of us who have attended the eG Heartland gatherings know that kitchen well. It's certainly well equipped , but the reference to the 9x13 sheet pans reminded me of one slight shortcoming. You've got professional grade dishwashing equipment, and powerful gas burners, but your oven doesn't accommodate full-width sheet pans! When I went rummaging through the equipment pantry looking for a full-sized sheet pan to support my Silpat (for slow-drying the Michigan cherries for the beef dish that NancyH and Bob were making), it eventually dawned on me that there weren't any full-sized sheet pans because the ovens don't accommodate them . I think that Palladion may have taken a snapshot of my Silpat curled up on the edges to fit in that oven. Many (many! ) years ago I cooked for a coop community at Oberlin College. There were "issues" around the various eating preferences (disorders?*) of various members, but my overriding memory is of the joy that came from cooking a meal for and with people who actually pay attention to what they're eating. My big claim-to-fame (at least amongst the menu planners), was that I could properly clean and cook short-grain brown rice without rendering it into library paste. That's a talent in certain quarters. The folks I met from your community seem like really cool people. Thank you for sharing your cooking experience. * Nina Planck could probably shed some light on this aspect of OC life.

Don't forget Jack Lang's (Jackal10) eCGI The Potato Primer. The section on pureed (mashed) potatoes runs down the whole "starch retrogradation" thang. It seems weird to cook the potatoes, then cool them, then heat them again. McGee explains it all in detail, but Jack's strictly practical here. Step by step. (Yes it's worth it. Just ask Steingarten).

I need to hit my McGee. ← McGee is a great general reference on cooking times/temperatures, but the Joan Roca book is more specific to Sous Vide.

I'm pleased to see you citing Bertoli's book. The chapter on cured meats is just a small portion of the book, but I find it to be both informative and inspirational. The Ruhlman/Polcyn book is a great resource, but I'm glad that Bertoli devoted so much of his book to the art of hand-cured meat. FWI: As I type this, John T. Edge is being interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered regarding Armandino Batali's Salumi in Seattle. I think that charcuterie is going mainstream.

I've had the Citterio prosciutto from Costco. I thought the package was labeled "imported", but I guess it could be domestic. It's pretty decent for the price, but since it's pre-sliced and packaged there's a limit to just how good it can be. Comparing it to imported prosciutto sliced to order at the deli counter, it falls a bit short. The prosciutto served at Michael Symon's Lolita in Cleveland comes from Iowa (maybe these folks?). Whoever produces it, it's absolutely superb. Dominic Cerino (also in Cleveland) serves really great domestic prosciutto at his restaurant. I thought that he gets his from Armandino Batali, but I don't see prosciutto offered on the salumicuredmeats site. Maybe he gets it from the same source as Symon.... My advice would be to find a really great deli or specialty grocer that stocks a variety of dry-cured hams. You can get imported and domestic prosciutto sliced to order. Soon we'll even be able to buy Jamón ibérico here. Try a bit of each and see what you think.