jayt90

Some insider info from Costco has told me the following: 1. They design the store as a treasure hunt, so that you find things not seen elsewhere, certainly sooner, and attractively assembled (on skids!). Many of these items will not be repeated, so you must act at once. 2. All items are first rate, not seconds, and marked up minimally so that profit can be made on volume. 3. Staff are not always at hand, to help, as they set up the place between 4 and 10 AM. Shopping late in the day leads to morwe disappointment. 4. The house brand, Kirkland, is meant to provide natioanl staus at a lower price.

There is a large non-stick wok (restaurant grade aluminum) at Costco for $26. I bought one a year ago, and am going back for a second, as it has not degraded at all.

Agreed!...I can hardly wait. But I have a nagging suspicion that junk food, franchises, groceterias, and TV ads will take their toll when the next generation goes out to dine.

Maybe serving poutine with foie gras can be a revival, starting a trend, but I have seen poutine in Chip trucks, fish and chip shops, Costco, and at evry food court with a N.Y. Fries for the last ten to twenty years. I think we need to come up with better trends than this.

Peanuts are legumes, and are harvested beloe the soil. Cashews are not legumes, and harvested above the soil.

When I take a bag of farmed mussels home from the store (usually from P.E.Is., probably 2 days old), the fishmonger puts them in a plastic bag, with ice chips, and advises me not to close the bag, as they cannot breathe, and will surely die. I have tied the bag securely, and found that a very large number of them will open upon steaming, and taste delicious with no ill effects. Is this an old wive's tale, that they must beathe air until cooked?

I work with frozen convenience foods all day long, and I can truly say that the buyers want to save time, and have little or no desire to make something from scratch. Aside from that, I have felt burned every time I tried a frozen convenience product, including PC, because of the fillers, the reliance on cheap flavourings, and the skimpy protein products: shredded chicken, flakes of ground beef, small sized shrimp at big size prices, sloe stuffed with crumbs and a tiny bit of sashimi, etc. etc. These companies , including Weston's, know a good thing when they see it

Frozen convenience foods are designed for lazy people, or busy people who think they can experiment into another genre, without any real effort. The manufacturer, including PC, wants to satisfy this demand, build it up with a lot of hype on the package, and end up selling very cheap ingredients, augmented by salt, sugar, oil, and starches as fillers. Caveat emptor!

'Go West, Yung Man' College St. west of Dufferin has two good spots, near Sheridan; Ossington below Dundas is a hotbed of Viet Activity.

To get genuinely soft yet bright lighting, you need a softbox. This is a tent like affair, with a strobe such as Metz in the centre. It produces a lighting effect like a burst of 'cloudy bright', and the slight soft shadowing is easy to control. The ring light mentioned earlier is easier to use but harsher (it is not flourescent, but a strobe.) A small softlite (say 18"x18") that will accept a flash unit (Metz, Vivitar, Canon, Sunpak, etc) will not be expensive because the unit can be used close to the presentation. Hot lights such as Smith Victor will work well too, but they bring along newe problems, harder to solve.

There is a similar mushroom called 'false morel' in the guide books. It looks like an inside out morel in the pictures, tho' I have never seen one. It is apparently not poisonous but tastes bitter, or unpleasant. Morels have always been considered safe for duffers like me, who are too lazy to take a guide into the field, or take spore prints home to where the guide is!

My smallish Vanadium-Molybdenum SS cleaver cost $25 in Toronto's older Chinatown. It came with 'Sekizo' on the label, and I thought I should take good care of it because it worked so well, and easily took an edge. After a few hand washings, the 'Sekizo' label came off, and I am left with just a very good cleaver...

A fish poacher is a good utensil to get if you like whole fish. The fish can be poached in a simple court bouillon for 10 minutes per inch (measuring top to bottom at the thickest point.) When done, it can easily be lifted out and served, and the liquid can be incorporated into a sauce at the last minute. The 10 minutes per inch fish cooking formula comes from the Canadian government. It applies to most types of cooking (broiling, baking, steaming, poaching, pan frying etc.) Just measure the fish and cook away.

In 1974 My wife and I attended Stonehenge, way up in the hills of Conneticutt. It took a long time to get there from Saw Mill River Parkway, and we were late. The receptionist counterered, "We'll have to feed you!" and they did. We started with thick country soups, followed by veal rouladen, and sauerbraten, accompanied by an unlimited supply of fresh white corn on the cob. The service was imppeccable, and the mere Beaujolais we chose went down perfectly. The chef came out to greet his diners, and we had a fine discussion with Albert Stockli. He had retired to this haven after developing menus for all the famous Restaurant Associates spots in New York and Newark. We went there because he was written up in Esquire by Baron de Groot (the blind critic) as one chef who used and depended on the local produce. I wish more chefs would do the same today, rather than using foods out of season. If you could visit Strockli's Stonehenge, you would know why.

Dave, this is an excellent reply to a lot of questions!. I'll be looking for well marbled, small diameter prime rib end steaks.

With so many folks gathering morels this spring, isn't there a danger of overkill; i.e., plucking them before the spores are spread? I have heard of cultivated morels in the Pacific Northwest, also truffles, but have not seen them for sale as domesticated products.

I don't understand how Kobe beef can come from Alberta or Idaho. Are there really ranches or farms that raise and finish beef the same way as in Kobe? It is is prohibitively expensive in Japan, and would be unmarketable here.

I believe Kates is a CB grad not GB. THe fact that a severe critic may come in, unannounced, and prepared for perfection should put restaurant workers on their toes, ready to make every plate well prepared, close to the menu, on time, and served perfunctorily. If some of our restautants differ from the excellence attained in Montreal and Vancouver, perhaps that difference is merely attitude.

I am a fan of salt cod, but I have not had it prepared well in ethnic restaurants in Toronto. My first encounter was in a Portuguese restatant, Dundas near Dufferin, with George Chuvalo. The slab of fish was so salty that it could not be eaten. Maybe the cook was inexperienced, but it was definitely under soaked. The second was a Caribbean spot on Lawrence near Warden. I ordered salt cod with ackee (a vegetable similar to scrambled eggs), but again I was disappointed. It was served with all bones intact, and I found it difficult to eat, if not unpleasureable. I understand that Caribbean natives, and Orientals, have no difficulty with these bones, but it is not easy for a native Canadian. I am still looking for an authentic brandade de morue, or salt cod cakes east coast style.

Dundas Street west of Keele is a good source of new ethnicity: I have seen Albanian and Bosnian there; Bloor and Landsdowne , over to Christie, is worth checking out, too.

I happened to see Costco Canada's internal reply to the Science article and the hoopla it raised. The company claims its farmed Atlantic fillets are trimmed of all skin and fat , and measure 2 ppb (parts per billion of PCB's) while the gov't allows up to 2000 ppb PCB. What is the methodology used in the Science article (I haven't seen it)? The company also states that the colouring agent in farmed Atlantic is derived from shrimp and other shellfish, and they state that antibiotics are used only under veterinary care, followed by a specific detox period in the penned waters. It's good to know that the standards are high, but we know very little about how they are followed by the commercial industry.

Our supermarkets and specialty shops all have farmed shrimp for sale in frozen bags, or thawed on ice. The origin is usually Viet Nam, Thailand, or China. Last year a CBC-1 radio program on food described the production techniques: Rice paddies are converted to shrimp ponds because the selling price is higher. The baby shrimp are fed high protein pellets (similar to farmed salmon) and harvested when the right size is attained. After a few years the pond is drained and abandoned because it will no longer sustain growth. At this time the paddy cannot even be changed to rice prosuction, because there is too much pollution in the soil. The shrimp expert went on to recommend small shrimp from Newfoundland, or larger sgrimp from Vancouver Island, although the latter goes almost entirely to Japan. I suspect we should be wary of frozen Asian shrimp for the usual reasons, such as PCB's from the trash fish used in the pellets, but also from the shrimp waste that bukids up in the paddies over a period of time. Those nice tiger shrimps sold on ice at the fishmonger's are generally out of the same bag!

There are many good recommendations here, but no mention of Elizabeth David, who wrote a fine series of superbly researched books on both sides of the Mediterranean, plus France and the U.K. My series of E.D.'s Penguins are badly stained, and broken now, and sadly out of print. But if I ever find 'French Provincial Cooking' or Mediterranean Cooking' or 'French Country Cooking', I''ll be very happy!

There are Bayonne style hams in Quebec. I have found small packages (sliced) in my local Costco (in Ontario); they seem to carry it when they don't have Westphalian, or Prosciutto. In any event, I'll bet one can find a good Bayonne hanging in a charcuterie in Montreal or Quebec City!

Yes, that's also where I got mine for $160. It was the full kit including the machine, 2 11-inch wide rolls, 2 8-inch wide rolls, three plastic canisters, an adapter for sealing mason jars, a demonstration video, and a bunch of coupons. You can also get them at Fred Meyers, Target, K-Mart (are they still around?). I think they're around $30 a box for 6 rolls (4 11-inch, 2 8-inch). I use the canisters for storing coffee, cereals, grains... I've sealed whole chickens, IQF (individually quick frozen) fruit and vegetables at the height of the season, individual slices of foie gras, steaks, duck breasts... you name it. I also like to take a beef brisket, seal it, and then age it in the fridge for about three weeks. It comes out more tender. There's a thread on cooking lamb and mjmchef says that he used to use a cryo vac (which is what this is) to seal the meat and cook it in the bag. I'd like to try this, but I don't know what the high-end temperature range is this plastic. Since you can boil it, I assume it's okay to at least 225F. I'd have to say that I can't live without mine. Edit to add: Regarding clothes. If you go camping, sealing socks and a wool sweater is a lifesaver when the rains come. Some professional chefs are using vacuum sealed bags of fish to cook it at a lower temperature. Any liquid in the bag will boil at 160-170 degrees, because of the low air pressure, and the food will seem to be piping hot but not overcooked. I have also heard that a small confit of duck can be slowly "boiled in bag" because of the lower atmosphereic pressure. Anyone have experience with low pressure cooking?