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I made the Kastanienscnitten (Chestnut Slices) mentioned above and posted the results in this thread on Hungarian Chestnut Cream Torte. I thought I would include the post here as well for fans of desserts from this tradition.

Dear Dorie, It would be interesting to hear your comments on how you personally developed over time from a baker who was able to execute recipes to one who creates them. I guess this might include your thoughts on the relative contributions that technical training, experimentation, reading, or other means provided in your development. Did your development proceed in a methodical manner or did it develop in a less structured fashion that you did not necessarily plan or expect? Thank you in advance for your thoughts. It is a fascinating topic for an amateur but enthusiastic baker who primarily "clings" to the recipe for dear life when dealing with the actual cake or pastry dough besides trying simple substitutions or additions.

Dear Dorie, While you mentioned in a previous response that your mother was definately not a baker, did you have favorite baked goods when you were growing up that may have come from other relatives or family friends or from bakeries? If you had some favorite treats from bakeries, are they still available or have some of them disappeared or changed? I suspect that some of these desserts might also have found there way in to your new book! Thank you!

We encountered this frequently in Florence as well and were charmed by it--the complimentary limoncello or grappa at the end of the meal. Please do tell some of your favorite gelato flavors that you found on the trip... (I sure hope you got to Carabe on Via Ricasoli (north of the Duomo) for gelato. I've mentioned this previously, but we made a daily trip there once we discovered it.) Also, it would be great to know some of the restaurant names if you can recall or recorded them. Thank you for sharing your trip with us; exquisite photos so far!

Dear Dorie, Thank you for your always generious and informative participation on eGullet--and for the wonderful collection of cookbooks you have given us already. In a general way, do you perceive a difference in what people bake at home or how much they bake at home between the France and the US? Would you say what and how the French bake at home has changed in the years you are familiar with or have learned of through speaking with natives there? I know sometimes my relatives and friends in Austria are bemused (or amused?) at some of the Austrian tortes and pastries I make at home because there they can buy excellent versions from bakeries in Austria or order them in restaurants. I, of course, generally need to make them if I want to eat them in the US! I suspect there is a similar dynamic at work in France although I'm not sure how much it would vary between larger cities and the countryside or if it has changed over the years. Maybe it is too difficult to generalize, but I would be intrigued to hear your thoughts. As an aside, are any of your cookbooks published in French? Thank you!

Interesting to think about riffs on traditional rum balls-- ground almonds and limoncello, ground almonds and triple sec, bourbon and pecans, hazelnuts and chocolate. coated or non-coated. If coating one could use different ideas here as well--caramel frosting for pecan balls, lemon icing, white chocolate. One could tuck a piece of fruit like a cherry or a piece of pineapple inside or a piece of marzipan or ganache. Spice flavors... A nice holiday 'cake truffle' could be to add chopped dried fruit to the cake crumbs and make a type of fruitcake ball; fill with a button of marzipan, soak or not soak in rum or bourbon.

Punschtorte does indeed use cake scraps. It's a delcious, traditional Viennese torte with flavorings of rum, orange and lemon. It typicallly has a pink covering--marzipan, fondant or icing. Some recipes also incorporate ground walnuts. There is also a recipe for this in Rick Rodger's Kaffehaus. Here is a link to a photo: click

I've also had good success with many recipes in Kaffehaus and would second rickster's recommendation for the book as well as his specific comments on having a big table and a tablecloth to use for making strudel! I think the book is particularly good as an introduction to desserts of Vienna, Austria and of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There are many photos and the recipes are quite explicit and use up to date ingredients and technigues. I think this would be the best single book to buy, in English, at least initially. I used it just this weekend to make Chesnut Slcies. click I'm particularly interested in Austrian desserts so I have fair number of other books as well. Some of them are: Viennese Cooking by O. and A. Hess Classic Austrian Cooking by Gretel Beer and East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube by David Bouley Viennese Cooking is a classic book with not only desserts. This is an older cookbook, no photos or introductory paragraphs and sparse instructions but may be helpful after becoming familiar with desserts in Kaffeehaus and if you are particularly interested in classic recipes. I like the Gretel Beer book; many wonderful classic recipes and good instructions. The sweet section comprises half of the 400 pages so you can see where Austrian's priorities lie in the culinary spectrum! East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube has primarily classic dishes among its dessert recipes. There are also photos, so you may enjoy it as an additional but limited resource. I say limited because the book is not specific to desserts. This is a restaurant cookbook from the high end restaurant, Danube, in NYC. While most of the savory dishes are rather involved and are more interpretive of classic dishes, the dessert dishes stay closer to traditional versions. The pastry, torte, cookie and dessert repertoire is so vast and diverse for patisserie and home desserts from Vienna, Austria and the former empire that many recipes in these books and the dozen or so other books I have only show up in one of the books. There are also many variations for particular dishes. For strudel in particular, I use a recipe from my Austrian grandmother, but I haven't made it recently enough to confidently pass it on. I hope to try it soon and if all works out well I'll take notes and post about it somewhere. Rickster's personal experience with the recipe in Kaffehaus sounds like a great recommendation though and a good place to start. Lidia Bastianich who grew up in Istria, formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, also has some very detailed instructions with photos on making strudel dough in some of her books including Lidia's Family Table. Here's a thread in the "Elsewhere in Europe" forum where people have shared some of their favorite desserts from this tradition: click

Hey, glad you went and look forward to your comments when you do have a chance!

Last year I made a soup which may not be considered classically traditional for Thanksgivng in most parts of the country but which I think worked well--cream of green chile soup. Partially, I made it as a nod to a guest from New Mexico but I also liked that it used a traditinanl "new world" food although not one that the Pilgrims had access to! I served it in small portions since it is a cream-based soup before a huge meal. It works well in small portions because the soup is very flavorful. While I do like squash and pumpkin soups I don't like to serve them before Thanksgiving dinner as I have a squash or sweet potato sidedish with the turkey and often serve sweet potato pie as one of the desserts. I'm not sure I would like to start off with sweetness either although the chilled pear soup that dockhl mentions above sounds good. Chilled soup is an interesting idea--one less burner to use on the stove and somehow chilled soups seems lighter on the palate. I also prefer to typically have a lighter bodied soup, my cream of green chile example above notwithstanding! edited to add: This thread brings me back in time. I found eGullet while googling for some soup recipes a week before Thanksgiving that year. I joined up and started this thread as my first post!

This looks wonderful; thank you for sharing it with us. These sweet poppyseed noodle dishes are very popular in Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. I love the idea of serving it with a vanilla sauce. I don't know if you'll have a chance to answer this, but were the noodles made with potato? Some versions use a handmade potato dough. Thank you for a wonderful blogging week!

It's raining chestnuts... Tis the season, I guess, although I did use canned French chesnut puree in this application. Kastanienschnitten (Chestnut Slice) More info in the Chestnut Cream Torte thread.

Hey, it looks great! Maybe it is trick of lighting or a difference in the chestnut puree type, but did you both use the recipe for the filling? To have a more pronounced chestnut flavor I wonder if the filling recipe would work with the omission of the 3 oz of melted chocolate. One could then cover the frosting with grated chocolate for a more subtle incorporation of chocolate in the dish. Well, inspired by this thread I did go ahead and make the Kastanienschnitten (Chestnut Slices) that I mentioned above. They are popular in Austria and Hungary. I used a recipe from Rick Rodger's Kaffeehaus. His basic recipe is a sponge cake layer which also has some chestnut puree folded into the batter. The cake layer is soaked with brandy syrup and is topped with a chestnut cream made from chestnut puree, confectionary sugar, vanilla and whipped cream. The slices are topped with grated chocolate. I modified the recipe by adding in a baked almond meringue layer. It is a very creamy dessert and there is a very nice chestnut flavor. I got the idea of using a dacquoise layer from a chestnut slice I had at Cafe Sabarsky in NYC. I think I recall that their meringue layer still had some crispness to it. I assembled my dessert about 8 hrs before we ate it and the meringue layer was of course soft. The ground almonds added a nice textural element to the dessert though in addition to adding some height. I used a canned chestnut puree from France -- Clement Faugier. (This is the only brand I've seen in shops out here.) Here is a photo:

If you're in the mood for casual Mexican food (burritos, tacos, etc) stop in at Tres Amigos on Hwy 1 at the junction with Hwy 92. They have wonderful carnitas and al pastor meats. There is also a wonderful little tacqueria in Pescadero although if you're in Pescardero for one day, I'd go to Duartes. (My favorite there, the green chile soup.) The tacqueria is on the northwest corner of the main intersection in Pescadero and is also a gas station and convenience shop. This recently made a list of top tacqerias along the CA coast. Well, you're probablly not looking for tacquerias, but I thought I would add these recs to a dedicated HMB thread. Has anyone heard of a newish bbq place in Half Moon Bay? I may heard about on it eGullet to good reviews. edited to add: Have a good trip, jon777! Please report back to this thread if you have a chance. It would be helpful to hear your feedback.

Scott Peacock doesn't have a regular column .. articles on food appear in the AJC (online too, of course) on Thursdays ... ← Is there a weekly eGullet digest of the food section for the AJC? Sounds lt would be interesting.

Can you describe the pecan crescents? Are the nuts ground up and in the dough like a Vanillekipferl or are they a filling inside a little pastry? Other flavorings? Thank you! ← Pecan Crescents recipe ← Interesting; in their use of pecans they are a "new world" riff off of Vanillekipferl or Vanilla crescent made with almonds or walnuts.. The chopped nuts on the outside sound like they would add a lot as well. Thank you for linking to the recipe; I may try these out sometime!

Can you describe the pecan crescents? Are the nuts ground up and in the dough like a Vanillekipferl or are they a filling inside a little pastry? Other flavorings? Thank you!

Check out this interesting prospect discussed in this thread on Keyah Grande It is boutique hotel with cutting edge cuisine located on a mountaintop in Pagosa Springs, Colorado a town of about 1500 people! This is about a 3-4 hr drive from Albuquerque and 6 hrs from Denver in southern Colorado. The closet town of any size is Durango I think. The thread has a link to the hotel and restaurant menu and to the husband/wife team's foodblog. The husband chef is an eGullet member, twodogs. I've heard discussion that compared going there to seeking out remotely located starred retaurants in Europe. I think an eGullet member has been there. I also remember Ulteriour Epicure reporting on a visit to a 2 or 3 starred restaurant in a small mountain village a significant distance outside of Salzburg... I guess the most remote place I've had a star quality meal was at a town in western coastal Brittany. I need to check my notes, but it may have been in Locarneau. We were touring other parts of Brittany but made a point to plan our day long expedition to be there for dinner. Our friend who lives in Brittany for part of the year knew of the restaurant and recommended it to us. One of the most remote places in the US that I had an above average quality meal although it is not innovative star cuisine was at The Cloudcroft Inn in Cloudcroft, NM. I guess mountains are a theme here. The hotel and restaurant are located on top of a 10,000 foot mountain and the town has about 300 people. Alamagordo, not big in its own right is the closest town. Located in southeastern NM, both are a 3 hr drive from either El Paso or Allbuquerque so it is quite remote. We didn't travel there to only visit the hotel/restaurant but it was a relatively big focus of the trip. Here's a description of the meal: click

Thank you for sharing your Bavarian pork roast recipe, yunnymeier! One thing that is interesting is the use of cumin---I'm not as familiar with German as Austrian food, but I'm wondering if that cumin is really meant to be "caraway seed". (I'm sure it is delcious with the cumin, in any case.) In any of my cookbooks from Germany or Austria I've not seen mention or use of cumin, but I have quite often seen recipes on line for German pork dishes or sauerkraut that mention cumin... As far as I know, typically, these recipes would use caraway seeds if they use a spice like that . I found this link, but would be curious if any Germans have a comment on this! (Maybe I'll start a separate thread...) Germany Caraway In any case, thank you very much for your fun blog! edited to add: That is so cool that you made those small jellie. I've never seen anything quite like that.

I agree; it is just perfect. I love the crumbled chocolate wafers for the dirt. It's probably the first 'novelty' type cake that I've been tempted to make. And--it sounds like a delcious cake to boot! edited to add: Love the photoessay on pumpkin field to pie, parmhero! Consider adding the post to one of the threads below. I'm sure people would enjoy them in the future as a resource when they are searching threads for info on pumpkin pie! How to process fresh pumpkin http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...5592&hl=pumpkin Pumpkin Pie: Beyond the can http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...6071&hl=pumpkin

Thank you for an interesting and very informatiive article and discussion, Craig. For people that live in Philly, NYC, Delaware and NJ they also have some great champions of this sort--The Moore Brothers. They also include Italy and Germany in their sourcing pool, but it is their passion to bring in distinctive wines from small, artisanal European wineries at a good price point. The wines are wonderful values. The location near Philly anyways, carries few US wines. One winery whose wine they carry a bit is Storrs Winery in Santa Cruz. I visit their wine tasting room quite a bit out here. They are a small-ish producer that makes wines from an intereresting variety of grapes. The wines are a little more expensive now compared to the great value they were 5 or more years ago, but they are still reasonable.

Is that mustard in there with the carrots and onions? Can you give a brief overview of the ingredients and prep? I sometimes add a little sour cream into the final gravy; other flavorings for the meat are garlic, paprika and caraway seeds. This is just for one type of Austrian pork roast I learned from my Mom. The little jellies are very pretty. Are these sold in a refrigerated section of the store as is?

Most of the cookies are in "Viennese Cooking" by O. and A. Hess. It is an older cookbook so some of the recipes can be kind of cryptic if you don't bake a lot or not familiar with the cookies a bit. I've started trying some of the recipes in Kaffehaus by Rick Rodgers and have had good success with them so far. The recipes in Kafeehaus are much more explicit and are more up to date in terms of the methods and some of the ingredients but they are quite true to the originals in the final result. Smoked turkey sounds like a very nice alternative to the regular roast.

Yum... we add a glug of brandy and sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg as well. Just picturinig the taste and smell of that instantly invokes Christmas time. We have it the first time when decorating the tree a day or so before Christmas Eve.

Actually, Carolyn gave them a good notice in a recent writeup in her "Discovering San Francisco" thread: Oct 16 2006 But, likewise, I haven't been there for years, and would probably go to any of the restaurants melkor lists, L'Osteria del Forno or Antica Trattoria, (on my list to try, haven't been there, yet,) before returning to Rose Pistola. ← A close friend had a business dinner recently at Rose Pistola and felt it was quite good. I haven't been to Rose Pistola in awhile. My friend and I have both been to Quince, A16 and Delfina multiple times. If I was looking for Italian anywhere in the city I would likely go to one of the aforementioned places first, but based on my memories and my friend's latest report, I'd go to Rose Pistola if I was in North Beach and wanted Italian food. Their menu is not as "artisanal" as the other places but I the menu is still well chosen to my tastes with plenty of emphasis on seafood and Ligurian specialties. One nice touch, two of us went to meet our friend at Pistola while he was still finishing he dinner. We hung out at the bar and were deciding which wines to order off their pretty extensive wine list of Italian wines by the glass. The bartender offered us a tasting of the two wines we were considering. The space still looks nice--generously-sized bar and bar area and nice looking room that is lively and on the casual/elegant side with an open kitchen and wood ovens. In North Beach it would be one of my top Italian choices; I haven't eaten at any "newer" Italian places there in about the last 4 years though.