ludja

Another place you may want to check out is 1550 Hyde--- here's a link to their menu. They also have seasonal menus using local, sustainable produce and have a great wine list as well. Re: price; they have a fixed price menu each day before 6:30 for $26... Delfina's has great Italian food with top notch ingredients.

Thanks for asking. I log in at a screaming 46K or so, but I'm not having any problems so far! Thank you for blogging again, jackal10. For Yankees like me that were weaned, in part, on British literature, it is very evocative to see your little slice of life in England with a beautiful garden and tales of Cambridge traditions. And the food is pretty good too... I adore picnics and am looking forward to yours at the end of the blog; I'll have to see if I can come up with any ideas to add.

If you're willing and able to deep-fry, it would be very memorable to make homemade cannoli. Also, it's relatively interactive and simple to make. If you don't have them you would have to purchase cannoli forms (hollow metal tubes). The dough is easy to make, as is the filling. I would fry them up before eating dinner; then fill them fresh afterwards. If you can get sheep's milk ricotta so much the better. Garnish one end with roasted pistachios, the other with grated bittersweet chocolate. I would be tempted to make the whole dinner Sicilian/Sardinian. Lots of great dishes based on summer vegetables and it would be fun to work off a theme.

Wow Malik, thanks for the tip re: Ozone Thai and Thai House Express and for the additional info re: eating at some of the local Thai temples. Duck salad, yum... A long time ago we used to eat at the Khan Toke on Geary (liked it then but haven't been in a while). They had an excellent duck salad. Has anyone been there recently? Just remembered the name of this, one of my favorite Thai dishes... Miang Kam

Here's a recent thread on non-oaked CA Sauvignon Blancs...click

Here's a thread on Thai cookbooks. I've cooked from a number of different ones, including: "True Thai", "The Original Thai Cookbook" and "Practical Thai Cooking". I've heard good things about Thompson's book and "Hot Sour Salty Sweet" on various threads on egullet. For an unfamiliar cuisine, I found it helpful to see different versions of a given recipe sometime. Libraries are good before you decide which ones you might want at home! Also here's a good thread on Thai cooking at home.

Nice photo ScorchedPalate ! And thanks for the encouragement to try making it at home. I have made some forays into Thai cooking but haven't made this yet. I remember having a very similar experience to what alcyemoy described above shortly after I first tasted Thai cuisine, about 15 years ago. I bought a bunch of cookbooks and once I starting reading them was disappointed that many of the dishes weren't listed on Thai restaurant menus--in English anway. So I started cooking... not a bad thing. Still glad to hear of peoples local rec's though...

For Austrian/Viennese style pastries and cakes make sure to stop by Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Gallerie ((Upper East Side) 1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th St. 212-288-0665). The cafe also has a beautifully authentic atmosphere that will transport you to Vienna. The last time I was there I had an excellent chestnut, whipped cream and meringue torte. edited to add link to menu

Eager to hear people's favorites. I can't vouch for authenticity, but one of the best Thai restaurants we've been to so far is Marnee Thai in SF in the Sunset (First location on Irving, the second on Ninth Ave.). They do have some dishes that one doesn't see in some Thai restaurants: Hor Mok (sic; seafood cooked in a spicy coconut custard and stuffed into a banana leaf), green papaya salad, ginger corn cake appetizer, spicy noodles with cooked egg and crab and the appetizer in which each diner puts a bit of sauce, roasted coconut, dried shrimp, lime, ginger, peanut etc in a green leaf before rolling it up and eating it. The flavors are also more bright and intense in the dishes that are found in other Thai restaurants: Thai Beef Salad, Thai Squid Salad, etc. Any more details on the Peninsula restaurant Melkor? I couldn't find it with a preliminary Google search. Thanks. I'm sure Pim would also have suggestions if she sees this thread.

I haven't made cream cheese doughs, but for other apps I have definately found it worthwhile, in terms of taste, to search out a source for cream cheese without gum in it. I'm not sure if the difference would show up in a recipe using the cream cheese as a dough ingredient though... That being said though, I've never encountered gritty cream cheese.

Thanks for the update simdelish and good luck with your big last push for this weekend. Sending some good wishes your way.

Ok, I'll be a smartass and answer: "schadenfreude"... Sounds like a show that will be a great source of entertainment for people here and elsewhere. Do you know if it is on cable or not? edited to add: Good question Soba; for some reason I assumed it was on tv...

I do wonder how one can tell if ones sense of taste or smell has changed--unless it was a very dramatic change because how would one quantitate it? If one's taste/smell had degraded and you tasted a new wine, it would just be lacking in aroma to your senses. Someone else with a stronger sense of smell/taste might think otherwise... The example of your mom is at least is quantitated against other professionals so that would seem to give some independent measure. Without outside comparison though, I don't know how someone could say their taste has not changed--be it from smoking, age, illness, etc. (Keeping the above caveat regarding large differences in taste or smell still in place).

I also searched on PubMed a bit, with key words like: exogenous enzymes digestion (exogenous means derived from outside the organism, i.e. exogenous enzymes or proteins that are in food that is eaten as opposed to those enzyme that are produced within our body) Did not come up with many relevant hits, as judged by perusing the titles and abstracts. Per what jsolomon just mentioned above, there are some papers that mention "bioactive peptides", i.e. chewed up bits of exogenous protein or enzyme that may have some activity in the stomach. There were also a bunch of papers dealing with the effects of adding exogenous enzyme to poultry feed and watching the effects. I got no hits under 'papain exogenous digestion'

I love that idea. It also has the benefit of being easily scalable for the number of guests -- I've seen displays where the cupcake tree is the center of the table, and there are additional cupcakes fanned out on the table itself. ← The other cool aspect of chefpeon's suggestion is that with three months time, you have plenty of opportunities to try different recipes, frostings, decorations, etc. (if you want to!). Rather than spending the time to figure out how to make fondant or how to support cake layers, etc. you can focus on achieving a great tasting cupcake and on achieving the overall "look" that you want.

I was researching a cookbook article and looked up the circulation stats-- Gourmet 975,216 Food & Wine 943,710 Cooking Light 1,661,386 I was surprised :) Julie the Librarian source: Bacon's Magazine Directory 2005 ← Interesting info. I was wondering what Saveur's circulation was and found this info from 2003: (link) Saveur 381,000 Bon Appetit 1,300,000 Wine Spectator 346,781 Vegetarian Times 242,774 Fine Cooking 221,108 (numbers for Gourmet, Cooking Light, etc are similar to those from 2005 above)

Congrats on the wedding, ambyre; and welcome to egullet. I wonder if one of Martha Stewarts books might be good in this situation. I have not cooked from her books or mags much, but many people (including on egullet) mention her recipes as a good resource for baking projects. Assuming you find a cake of hers that you like, you would have the benefit of detailed instructions--which of course you could supplement with other questions here.. Just an idea, maybe someone else will have specific feedback re: using her wedding cake recipes... Here's a link to one of them.. (If I hadn't baked much this would probably be the approach I would take--i.e. rather than trying to build up a concept from scratch. If you can make one of those cakes to your satisfaction, maybe you would then be able to modify it based on suggestions, etc.)

This doesnt' help re: vegetarian dining in Paris, but... One person in our group was a vegetarian during a two week trip to Brittany, ~ 3 years ago. He did actually find it pretty difficult to find vegetarian dishes--crepes, salads, eggs, being the main alternatives. Perhaps it would have helped to call the "finer dining" restaurants in advance. Later on in the trip he actually chose to do some other things when we went out for a special 'higher end' meal. He just thought it would be easier and preferred to do this rather than hassle with special arrangements. (He and his wife lived in Southern France for several years; not sure if his experience was different then and there). And dont' worry, we had lots of great meals together that we cooked at the house of our friend we were visiting! edited to add: Time to focus on great cheese plates!

Looks great... I'm intrigued by the long meringues that are in the bottom of the first photo; with a pale yellow or green filling along the top.. Also, any idea what the patisserie is in the forth photo? (a row of rectangular pastries with a glazed/caramelized top and small piece of chocolate? Did you end up picking out a cake? If so, what kind? Thanks for the eye candy!

It's not too difficult to those in Italy so I never made a serious attempt to candy fruit myself. Cherries, pineapple, oranges and citruses can be found almost everywhere. Others, like figs, mandarins, apricots or even better chinotti (the bitter citruis fruits used to make the same named soft drink) often need to be ordered way in advance. That, or you can order from a good s(but expensive) source like Romanengo in Genova, who makes some of the best candied fruits I've ever had. BTW I did not make the cake, it's my younger brother's work. ← Yeah, I figured you would have good sources; it is more difficult here to just buy quality candied fruit. I must study andiesenji's great posts and get around to making some of my own sometime.

That looks very nice. Can you buy the nice candied fruit you have on the cake or do you candy them yourselves?

Thanks for the recipes and description Almass, all interesting twists for me--browned butter, ricotta, pistachios... sounds good.

And in its most elaborate incarnations Sicilian Cassata can also be covered with a thin layer of green-tinted pasta reale (marzipan). Dark chocolate bits may also be folded into the ricotta cream along with the candied fruit. And sometimes the rum (if liquor is being used) is replaced with maraschino. Yum, These are the types of cassata cake I grew up with in the northeast. Funny though, a friend of mine from Cleveland had the "Cleveland" version as a wedding cake awhile back. An interesting regional specialty.

I know some German but don't think I've had this. My best guess is a farina (Cream of Wheat) pudding? Is this close? Do you have a recipe that you like to make? Thanks, ludja

Usually a good addition to me; else just heavy cream (not whipped), but then an earlier sigline for me was "immer mit schlag"... Depending on the recipe I might just like heavy cream, no added sugar. The contrast of warm pudding and cold cream is very good.