jayt90

Is it a coincidence that this cheese is brought toour attention on Aprol 1st?

A lot of the excellent suggestions above can be preserved in a Food Saver or sous vide bag, and reheated by boiling in bag, rather than microwaving. I recently made four hailbut entrees, by stuffing each bag with cooked rice, raw halibut steak, and a mornay sauce on top. They were shrink wrapped and reheated when needed in boiling water for about ten minutes. The low pressure boiling produced great results. One portion done one a microwave was not nearly as good.

I have a DMT pocket folding stone (it folds up like a Leatherman) and a DMT steel, both from Lee Valley. Most of my knives came from the same same place, when they had a one time sale of old Sabatier carbon steel. The ham and salmon slicers date back to 1920. I have one 7" laminated Japanese knife, and I'll be looking for two or three larger ones, although they are too fragile for a diamond stone. The DMT stones and steels are aggressive and quick. I like them, but they have to be used carefully.

A Grimsby distiller, Otto Rieder, used to make a raspberry eaux de vie. His company was sold, and I don't know if they still do this. But some small distillers in Ontario or Quebec might be interested. It takes a lot of berries to make a little eaux de vie.

Anna, when I saw this easily assembled mise en place, I decided to make a Manhattan clam chowder, as I had a can of Gold Seal (Thailand) clams, and most of the rest. I used Utopia canned tomatoes, Campbells's broth, and a bit of leftover Clamato juice. The chowder was great, but the poor Gold Seal clams were overwhelmed, just another blended ingredient. I have had better luck with Arctic Surf canned clams (Clearwater, Nova Scotia) from the A&P Dominion group. They are about $6/can but well worth it.

My other half has prohibited me from bringing my knife kit EVERYWHERE we go ←

I'm surpised that many of us expect smoked salmon to sold thinly sliced. We all have a salmon slicer or ham slicing knife in the kit, and can ask for a chunk of SS if they offer the usual machine sliced or too-thick hand-sliced product.

The sobey's ad we get only shows the steaks for 7.99lb. I wish they had the fillets, I like those so much better. How will you prepare yours? ← Hi, Randi, The ad I saw yesterday showed steaks only, but the fillets were on display too. My Sobey's, in Pickering, is big enough to have a fish specialist, and she prepares the display, so the fillets are available as long as the supply lasts. I wouldn't expect as much in Exeter, but then you have fresh items from Lake Huron such as pickerel and smelt that I can't get from Lake Ont. I'll prepare mine by placing each over cooked rice and topped with mornay, then shrink-wrapped for sous vide boil-in-bag. This is good for me because I'll have a ready lunch bag for a day or two.

Thanks for this, Rob. I'll defintely try making some this spring, in central Canada. But I am wondering what the best Japanese sake may have to make it superior? I'm sure there is a long tradition that I might be blissfully ignoring, and probably unable to duplicate.

Really? I don't think of cast iron or enamel as good conductors of heat, as, for example copper or aluminum. There is a tremendous difference in the reaction of copper to a heat source, compared to LC.

There is a good halibut sale at Sobey's, starting today. They have Pacific halibut, $8/lb. steaks, $11/lb. fillet, cut from 30 lb. fish, delivered today (Sat.) and next Tuesday. Not bad for a supermarket fish counter.

Turn the ENTIRE foil and cap until loosened. Then just turn the bottom portion of the foil. When the seal breaks the cap is taken up about a half turn. Gently flip the now freely turning cap with your thumb until removed. Voila! ← OK, now I get it, Katie! I've never had a problem with screw cap wines, and I actually look for them in $20 whites. But I am really annoyed when I find plastic corks under the foil. They are usually very tight and hard to remove. And I haven't seen any way to predict which bottle will have one, but fortunately there are very few.

That would be a silly performance to pay for, but if the the wine was sound, as hoped for, does it matter? Does it really matter at all in that upper echelon? Most of us are buying and enjoying mid-range value wines, and if a screw cap or Stelvin avoids problems and keeps costs down, why should we quibble about ceremony?

It's usually a surprise. Not always that pleasant, when they are too tight to remove easily. Fortunately, more white wines are screw capped, and that increases the certainty of a good wine, easily handled at the table.

Is pastrami smoked? ← Yes, then it is steamed as is smoked meat. Except for the spicing, I would be hard put to tell the difference. But Montrealers are fanatical about their smoked meat, and you won't really find a lot of pastrami there.

I haven't bought a tagine mainly because the bottom is a fairly shallow saucer, and I can see myself overloading one. Is anyone finding larger capacity tagines? At decent prices?

I've heard this is a bad idea as the pressure seals are not designed to handle the temperatures that hot oil can get up to and can lead to... explosive decompression of very hot oil. You need to buy a special broaster like the ones KFC uses. ← There is not a whole lot to be gained over regular deep fried chicken. I find that 10-12 minutes in deep fat will fry chicken parts, or perhaps 15 minutes in a cast iron skillet. The Colonel's use of a deep fat pressure cooker has advantages in fast food use, however.

As I am relearning the art of home roasted coffee beans, I could use some help in finding a source of green beans. So far, I have purchased Costa Rican green at SLM. At $8-9.00/lb it doesn't go far, since there is a lot of shrinkage in the pan. Someone in the Coffee section gets green beans in the U.S. for $3-4.00/lb. I would like to find a decent price in the Toronto area, and don't mind a fairly large quantity, maybe 20 lb. Anyone know of a reasonable source?

There are privately operated wine stores in B.C., but they are subject to a lot of BC regulations. Alberta wine stores are more independent, but I think they still have to import through the government. Is Summerhill the biggest LCBO? Maybe, but Queen'sQuay has traditionally offered as large a selection of Vintages products as possible. When they rebuild in the adjacent Loblaw lot there will be a notable expansion. Crossroads (Weston Rd at Black Creek ) has built up a rep for clearing odd lots, often from agents unable to connect with a restaurant that promised to buy...

When Canadian beef was banned from export after the first BSE case (was it 2003?) many beef farmers wanted to test all their animals, at their expense, so that the Japanese market could re-open. (There was no hope for the U.S. market until BSE turned up there, and a political settlement was reached). Those western Canadian cattle raisers were turned down, even laughed at, for wanting more testing, in the face of 'science' and the agriculture ministries. In Canada the Federal government, as well as Alberta, takes in much more revenue than can be spent wisely. In Alberta, they give back several hundred dollars to each resident, every year. I don't disagree with your argument, Pat., but there is a healthy distrust of bureaucrats here, and many of us hope we are not surprised ten years down the road.

The pessimist in me says it's three cases that we know of...how many were not reported and quietly buried or ground into some homemade cattle feed? If my math is correct, that works out to be about .07 percent being tested, which is frightening small. What's the statistical minimum of tested animals needed to make testing a valid representation of the whole? Somehow I think it would be a lot more than 20,000 cattle. Any SSB's in the room? ← The incidence of testing is very low in Canada and the U.S., compared to EU or Japan (where every slaughtered animal is tested). We could do better.

What do you think happens to thousands of 10 year old dairy cows when they dry up? Ground beef, stew meat, convenience foods, and sausages.

This may be a useful forum but it has the most unfriendly, nerd-like registration I've seen in some time!

There are small backyard stills in Southwestern Ontario making illegal eaux de vie, from raspberries, cherries, and plums, or whatever fruit is in abundance. It takes an enormous amount of fruit and is typically made by old timers from Europe. It could be a dying trade; there is very little of the legal product available now, and it is expensive.

They will deteriorate if killed and cooked later, just like lobster. Could be harmful to eat. The cooked but frozen product should not be spongy or soggy if thawed slowly in the fridge, and gently reheated in a low oven. If the exposed meat, as in the knuckle joints, is off colour rather than snow white, there may be a quality problem