vengroff

My Coffee House on 28th and Madison just across the street from Cafe Flora used to have H&H bagels FedEx'ed in from NYC. Might want to give them a call and see if they still do.

Great photos and descriptions, Craig. Could you say a little more about the pressing itself, or maybe post some pictures if you have them. I was just out in Walla Walla and saw a couple of rotary presses at work, both with and without pressure applied to the fruit. Do you use those or some other type?

Leonetti, in my limited experience, has been excellent, but high demand and short supply have driven the prices to extreme levels. As an alternative, I'd suggest giving the cabs from Pepper Bridge a try. Their fruit comes from the Pepper Bridge and Seven Hills vineyards in Walla Walla, both of which Leonetti also uses. For Walla Walla Sangiovese, Three Rivers and Russell Creek both produce good examples in the $20-30 range.

The Canlis wine list is an insanely large tome. It is amazing the quantity and quality they have collected over the years. For example, there's damn near a full page of Leonetti Cabs going back to the late '80s. Prices are generally fair given that much of what they have on hand is essentially impossible to find anywhere else.

Steve Smrstik, until recently the Chef de Cuisine at Flying Fish in Belltown.

Armandino told me he will not do another prosciutto program this year, but he may do some shorter, smaller scale classes, perhaps including sausage-making.

I spent the last year on my own meat-curing adventure. Specifically, I made a prosciutto under the guidance of Armandino Batali at Salumi in Seattle. Details and photos are available in this thread.

About how much weight do you think was trimmed off as "rind"? For a second I thought we'd eaten 8.5 lbs of prosciutto ← About 2.5 lbs was rind and extra fat, so we went through 6 lbs. I've saved the fat, basically to be used wherever duck or bacon fat might normally be appropriate. The rind is pretty useless for human consumption, but a friend's dog is wild for the stuff. The bone will go in the stock pot when I get all the meat off. I don't have definite plans beyond that, but would love to hear suggestions.

I've got about 3 lbs of meat and 2 lbs of bone left. It was 13.5 lbs before I started carving. It gets tough to carve once the bulk of the meat is gone and you have to carefully work around the bone, but I think I'll manage. -D

Here is the final product, served with some traditional accompaniments. And finally, a beautiful, if not directly prosciutto-related shot from the same event.

I just spent two hours slicing about 2/3 of the meat. First you have to get through the outer skin layer, which is basically rawhide, and then trim the fat to the thinkness you prefer. I ended up taking off almost a pound of fat, which I will save for other uses. Once you reach the meat and get in a groove, though, the slices just come off one after the other. The holder is a Spanish model purchased from a dealer in Montreal. The knife is a 10" Henkels Grafton slicer.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to actually visit Cafe Besalu. I guess it's because I don't live anywhere near Ballard. But now that I've been, I think I'm going to have to make a drive over there a weekend morning ritual. I'm also not sure why I couldn't find a thread dedicated to it, so I'm starting one. In two visits I've samples croissants, pain chocolate, and quiche loraine, all hot from the stacked pair of convection ovens at the back of the open kitchen. The croissants were flaky and buttery, and the quiche was as fluffy as any I have tasted, with a nice crisp edged crust. I think I'll simply get in the habit of ordering whatever was just pulled from the oven and placed on the top display shelf. That way I'm bound to eventually work my way through the whole menu. The cappuccino I had was topped with a firm dry foam, exactly the way I like it. Owner and baker James Miller exudes calm from behind the main bench in the center of the kitchen. Whether he's weighing out flour, cutting butter, or sorting fresh berries and peaches for his fruit danishes, he's relaxed, confident, and in control, but never to busy to great a guest watching him work or waiting for the first slice of a quiche that just came out of the oven. If I'm not careful, I'm going to have to eitther move to Ballard or convince James to swap leases with the Madison Valley branch of Essential.

Last time I was there I decided to finally move past the pizza and go for the lasagna. Of course it had to be the one night they were sold out. I'll have to try it next time.

I believe the emphasis of the article was on what's new and notable. None of those places is even a year old. Given that criteria, I would have considered Via Tribunali and Elemental for inclusion on the list. Perhaps they did. One of the problems with these articles is you don't know if those are the only four places they ate, or whether they ate at ten and liked those four the best.

It won't last long. At some point soon I'm going to invite a bunch of friends over for an afternoon of bocci, prosciutto, melon, and much prosseco and wine. In the mean time, I'm hanging it in a small wine cellar. Armandino recommends <60 degrees F, and <60% humidity, which is what I'm going to shoot for.

Here's the whole finished product. It went from 19.5lbs a year ago to just 13.5 when it was finished. Of course the first thing you want to to when you get your hands on a prosciutto like that is take a few sample slices off it. If the ham is properly clamped in a stand, its actually quite easy to get a paper thin slice. You just draw the knife slowly towards you through the meat, making sure that at all times you can see the blase through the slice as it comes off. What's left behind on the inside has the deep rich look of fresh tuna. It was a year in the making, but well worth the effort.

I was happy to see the soft-shell crab with brioche, remoulade, butter lettuce, and fresh juicy tomato on the current incarnation of the new menu. It's one of my favorites. It took me a little while to parse the new menu, mainly because my brain kept thinking I could have all the things on the left or none of them. But I eventually got it.

My prosciutto is now ready. The biggest differences between it and the commercial versions I have tasted is that it is creamier and quite a bit less salty. I'll post some pics soon.

Ethan at Union is planning a special seafood dinner in August, served family style to a limited number of guests. Whole fish should feature prominently. All the details haven't been finalized, but it will include paired wines for a prix fixe in the $95 per person range.

In terms of handling, I generally retard the dough in a fairly heavily oiled stainless steel bowl. Shallow ones are better if you have them. To extract it, I first cover the bench with a heavy dusting of flour, then use a stiff plastic spatula--not one or the rubber ones--which has been dipped in ice water. The one I have is curved to match the contour of the inside of the bowl, and does an excellent job of separating it from the bowl without sticking or stretching. If you flip the bowl as you rotate the spatula around, the dough drops right onto the bench. It takes practice, but it works once you get the hang of it, and there is little or no degassing. I've considered shaping before retarding as suggested above, but I've never actually tried it. I'll give it a shot some time soon. On the issue of coming up to room temperature, the blob of dough is usually only a few centimetres thick, so there isn't that much problem with the center still being ice-cold and the outside overproofing. 60-90 minutes seems to be the right amount of time in most cases. Two hours is usually too much, at least in my kitchen.

I've found the key to shaping without degassing is to barely shape at all. Just pinch the dough apart and then the mere act of lifting each baguette onto the peel will stretch it into shape. There are some photos of the look of the dough at each stage in this post.

DeLaurenti in the market may be what you are looking for.

Is there a second seating? 5pm is just to early for me to viably make it up there.

You don't need one. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook that's plenty good enough, plus it has a lot of other uses. Start with a basic lean dough (flour, water, yeast and salt) following a formula from from either a thread here or a good book like Bread Baker's Apprentice, and then work your way up from there.

It's time for soft shell crabs and Union has them. The other night I had a really nice take on the classic soft-shell sandwhich. A crisp crab was served open face atop a thick round of toasted brioche with butter lettuce, roma tomato, thin-sliced onion, and a sauce remoulade. Get them while they last.