Sandra Levine

I like pie and Tommy. Whoops, it's Jinmyo who likes pie. But I do like Tommy. I don't see why this (or any other thread, for that matter) need descend into personal attacks, especially of funny and informative posters like Tommy. Give it a rest, Dodge. :wow:

I used to make a great duck dish that called for a brief roasting, then cutting off the leg-thigh pieces, removing the skin, coating with mustrad and bread crumbs and baking them in the oven while the sliced breast finished poaching in port on top of the stove and the skin was turned into "gribenes" see other threads" to be tossed into the salad. This was a dish from Julia Child and Company. I served it, per Julia's suggestion, with pureed parsnips. Once, I preceded this with gravlax that I had made myself. Strawberry or blueberry tart never fails to impress. I make my tarts with a rich, buttery, sugar crust crumbles at the touch of the fork and melts in the mouth, courtesy of Paul Peck, The Art of Fine Baking. Or, in winter, orange tart! I'll bring one to the next pot luck.

Steve, I think what you are describing as urban and contemporary is really, "fashionable," no pejorative intended. What is in style usually seems better until the fashion wheel turns again. You see this in clothes, archtiecture, music...and food. Oops, I think we may have been over this ground before.

I'm still puzzled. Mrs. Singh's recipe for rabri sounds exactly like what you have described as khoya, with the addition only of flavoring. Khoya sounds exactly like kaymak, but I believe that the kaymak did not have any sugar added at all.

Can you compare strawberries and oranges? While variety has its points, the idea here, as I understand it, is a comparative tasting -- revealing the answer to the popular question: which strawberry jam is the best? How do others feel?

Yes, I agree. I am planning to use Ronnybrook whole milk.

I'm in. Mustards.

I plan to make Mrs. Balbir Singh's rabri over the weekend and will report back. When I had kaymak at the Balkan Armenian restaurant thirty years ago, I loved it so much they told me how it was made. The method they used for the kaymak was very similar to that outlined by Mrs. Singh. It was not at all like whipped cream, but much denser and more luscious. It wasn't like ice cream, either. I remeber being told that the milk had to be reduced until all the water was evaporated. It was served cool, not as cold as ice cream, as a topping on the sweet, bready pudding. It was good enough for me to remember all this time and although the flavorings are different, it sounds very much to me like rabri. Mrs. Singh calls for kewra or ruh kewra, which I will try to find for flavoring. Are there other flavors that would be appropriate if I do not succeed?

What shop is that, Steve, Kitchen Arts and Letters? or some place else. I am also very interested in the Turkish book.

What are you complaining about? You have a window. You should see my kitchen. No, never mind.

From what both you and Mrs. Balbir Singh describe, it sounds very much like (and I don't really know how to spell this) Kaymak. I've had an Armenian dessert called ekmek with kaymak. The ekmek was, as I recall, a honey or sugar-soaked bread-like pudding, or maybe just a piece of specially prepared bread, with a topping of kaymark, a cooked-down milk substance. This description is totally inadequate. I adored this dessert, especially the topping. I may even have the ekmek and kaymak mixed up with each other. This was all a long time ago. Anyway, the milk=y substance was fabulous, much denser and richer than even the heaviest cream. Does this sound anything like rabri?

I believe this fish has been on the manu at Balthazar.

Suvir, could you describe what it is supposed to be like? When using a cookbook to prepare a dish that one has not eaten, it is sometimes difficult to know if you've succeeded! What exactly, is the relationship between rabri and ras malai?

H & H in this context means Horn & Hardart, a now-defunct chain that deserves a thread of its own.

There was a drugstore with a soda fountain a few doors away from the library. On a hot summer day, I would walk to the library, choose a book, take it to the soda fountain and read in air-conditioned comfort while I sipped my five-cent (yes) vanilla soda -- just vanilla syrup and seltzer, cream soda, really, but so much better.

Thank you for starting this wonderful thread, Blue Heron.

On another thread about restaurants that are gone, someone mentioned Dugan's, the bakery that sold its wares from a truck that trawled throuigh the neighborhood. I grew up in Trenton, N.J., and we had Dugan's, which was a chain, but also coming to the house were a fish truck and a vegetable truck. Of course, milk was also delivered, in glass bottles, and the man who sharpened knives came around on his bicycle contraption twice a year or so. The fish man came on Tuesday, so, everyone on the whole block ate fish on Tuesday. My grandmother learned how to fry scallops for us, although she wouldn't eat them herself. The caps for the milk bottles were made of heavy waxed paper and were pleated and pressed around the outseide edge. They were fun to undo. Most of the milk was unhomogenzied and had to be shaken to distribute the fat globules. There was a pale blue skim milk available, but no one I knew bought it. All of this was pre-school and ended in the early 50s. I can't believe I'm old enough to have memories like this, but I'm glad I got to see a little bit of what is now a lost world, where women really did wear gingham housedresses and wiated for the milkman. BTW, I loved the Dugan's applesauce cupcakes.

I hope PETA doesn't see this thread. :wow:

Yes, I know what you mean and I feel the same way about feta. I'm careful about overuse, though.

Small black olives are a good addition to the orange, lettuce, radish, pine nut mix.

I loathe celery so much that I will pick it out of any dish it is in that is set before me if I can't send it back altogether.

I serve mixed green salad in a cobalt blue bowl, strictly for the visiual appeal. That bowl is not large enough, however for main course salads. I prefer in that case, to use a round, white, flattish pasta bowl and take pains to arrange the ingredients to form a pattern, either concentric circles, or a clock-liek pattern, or stripes, depending on the ingredients. I always present the salad to the table for admiration before tossing with dressing. This kind of preserntation gets as many "oohs," and "aahhs," as dessert. Well, almost as many, It's important to select ingredients that contrast in color and shape as well as taste good together.

Helena, are you familiar with The Art of Russian Cuisine, by Anna Volokh? The book jacket says that she was the Sunday food writer for Izvestia for seven years before emigrating to the U.S. I don't know if that would constitute good credentials or bad. The book has 500 recipes and many descriptive essays about food history and culture. My volume was copyrighted in 1983 and I haven't used it in quite a while, but I made quite a few things from it when I was cooking more than I do now and liked reading and using it. The recipes are adapted for the American kitchen, so I can't vouch for the authenticity.

It was a very long time ago, in Florence at very simple restaurant. The experience was a vivid demonstration to me of the importance of the quality of ingredients. Nothing had to be done to that peach, and in fact, and anything done to it would more likely have diminished rather than enhanced it. I feel that way only about certain foods -- Maine lobster and blue crabs spring to mind. These are not foods that one eats raw (maybe lobster, as sushi) but any preparation should be as simple as possible. There just is no way of making them better than they are.

:wow: