oraklet

in denmark, gevalia is known for great advertising and poor coffee. they have this never-ending-campaign "which coffee will you serve unexpected guests?" and one of the ads showed the ussr submarine that got caught on a reef in the swedish skjärgård near a naval base. personally i'd reserve the coffee for unwelcome guests.

the theoretical apparatuses of music or the visual arts are, as far as i know, pretty well advanced compared to that of food and wine. so, when trying to describe what's going on in a fine meal, it's tempting to use the vocabulary of music or visual art. it's never the less inadequate, and probably wrong. gastronomy will have to find it's own ways of theorizing - without analogies. it will perhaps be developed, now that accademia seems to have finally discovered it.

"Same with the old tupperware. If it's stained with tomato and the lid no longer fits well, if at all, then throw it AWAY. When my stash begins to overflow the cabinet it's in, then I know it's time to reduce the stock. " right, and there'll always be 2 lids with no matching container, and 3 containers without lids.

anna, i've never made gravad laks myself, but at least i can tell you that your procedure is in accordance with my danish cook book (your husband will know it: "frøken jensens"). no acid. no liquor. two filets, head end on tail end. salt, white pepper, sugar and dill. pressure. c. 48 hours. the traditional sauce is an emulsion of mustard, sugar, vinegar and oil, with lots of dill. i'll see if i can find a swedish recipe. after all, it's a swedish word, "gravad" meaning "buried", i think. edit: found some recipes. only difference is that they say to put the filets, skin punctured with a knife, on top of 1/4 of the curing(?), with 1/2 between the filets and the rest on top, and let rest at room temp for 2 hours before putting in fridge. one recipe actually mentions brandy...

as if food wasn't produced in a manner to be too cheap already.

"Of course the processor would toughen the dough if you left it in there" i'm not sure i get this. i let the machine work the dough until it comes together, and at that time it should be taken out, (cause if it's worked any further, the machine will probably blow a fuse...) but by then it's fine, and don't need any further handling. well, perhaps a little pushing together. i don't even let it rest, just take it to the working table, cut slices, roll them out a bit and then: through the old atlas. perhaps this very plain method works well because i only use eggs and durum semolina. never tried anything else... but "toughen the dough", what does that mean? gluten development?

i've got a henckel's ceramic rod. it sure sharpens. almost grinds. i used it a lot before i bought a good stone.

craig, "This demand means there is a lot of lousy Amarone out there to avoid." what kind of lousyness can one expect in a lousy amarone?

claire, "Place pizza on a cutting board; let stand 5 minutes." why? sparrowgrass, 1) sounds like a great deal. perhaps marble is best as it is more porous - and 2) yes, i'd heat it slowly. (i once removed a very hot pizza stone from the oven, and 2 minutes later it was 2 smaller pizza stones. the thicker the stone, the greater the tension when heated)

there's our very own bouland / peter hertzman: http://www.hertzmann.com/index.php?xref= lots of classical french stuff.

"Danish Ris a l'amande - our Christmas dessert: Long-grain rice cooked with1/2 vanilla pod and sugar until tender. Fold in stiffly-whipped cream and finely chopped almonds. Serve with a cherry sauce. One whole almond is folded in and the lucky finder gets a prize. But the secret is to hide the almond under your tongue and let everyone else continue to hope it's in their serving!" and alas, for some reason most of my fellow danes think that it should only be served at christmas time! but for anybody trying to make this dessert, (and it's highly recommendable) please remember to let the rice cool before folding in the whipped cream. my mother in law, who is definitely not the greatest of cooks and had never made it before i appeared on the scene, never thought of the problems connected with forgetting it... and it should not be just cherry sauce. try amarena cherries (italian, in case you shouldn't know).

"Is anybody here (a) a typographer or book designer and (b) familiar with Lynne Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Table? It contains a typographical in-joke that took me years to notice. The bulk of the book is set in Simoncini Garamond, but the yields are set in Stempel Garamond and the sidenotes in Monotype Garamond. Somehow it looks great." i used to think i was a graphic designer. not anymore, as i realize i wouldn't have noticed...still, garamond, though a beautiful thing, was never any good in poster size. too many little "ideosyncratic" caracteristica that work well in small type but tend to be distracting in large type. anyway, the most beautiful cook book i know is the danish edition of verge's "cuisine de soleil" (and perhaps it's made the same way in the original french edition, i don't know). two colours of text is used with exquisite effect.

this is weird: i remember project (?) posting a detailed and very credible pie crust recipe in a thread called "things they say are easy but they aren't" or something like that, but i cant find it when searching. anyway, that's a very convincing recipe. perhaps somebody else can find it from this description?

perhaps this will do it: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...he+bread+thread copy/paste. it works for me. (sorry, i can't do the link thing) edit: wow, this is glorious software. it knows what i want to do - so voila! here's your link!

i don't know if this is naive, but "What is the origin of these dislike/disgust reactions, i.e. where the part is acceptable but the whole is not, or one part of the beast is considered tasty and another disgusting?" seems pretty easy: the whole reminds one that there was killing involved in the meal. to many this is at least tabooish. and some parts are connected with "the unclean", like kidneys and urine.

as i've never been to the usa, my ideas of it are rather vague. in my pre-e-gullet days, i would certainly never have gone for the food. i'm not so certain any more. i do think on the other hand, that most europeans will, as pp said, go there for the people and the culture.

claire, the rising should, ideally, be at least 8 hours, as this makes the wheat's taste come out much better. incidentally that's fine, cause you can make it in the morning, and have it ready in the evening when returning from work. it sure will be bubbly, and "thready", though of course you'll have to experiment with amount of yeast and temperature of rising. some will let it rise in the fridge to make it reeeeal slow. only remember to make a "sticky" dough - the rather wet dough makes it easier to work it into the desired shape (working with a generous amount of durum wheat flour on top of the dough...) and has the bonus of making the edge almost explode when it enters the oven. well, perhaps not explode, but it will be very open-structured, like a good italian bread. removing the parchment gives the bread/pizza a better contact with the stone, so that it will finish sooner, with less risk of being soggy. varmint, i think the honey is mostly for "helping" the yeast . in most bread recipes it isn't meant to be detectable (though the norwegians, swedes and germans, adding syrup, make bread that is definitely much sweeter than danish, italian or french bread.) but i'll refer you all to robert schonfeld's "the bread thread", where he offers an amazing well of valuable information on all sorts of leavening methods, among many other things concerning bread.

"There's white and "whole grain" " maybe this opens a way out of my embarressment, as i've found that whole grain makes for a wetter dough. my belief that strong flour holds more water than soft flour ("holds" meaning "needs", really) is based on using varying amounts of durum wheat flour in bread doughs, and what i've been told in baking books. hardly scientific, i'll admit.

marlene, "I bake with spelt all the time, and I tend to use slightly LESS water than a recipe calls for" i stand corrected, then! ok, but this is tricky, apparently, as i believe that more gluten means that a flour will hold more water. am i wrong there, too?

claire, "Transferring your assembled pizza to the blazing hot stone can be tricky. I assemble my pizza on parchment paper and then slide the whole thing -- parchment and all -- onto the stone." good advice - remember to remove the parchment half way through baking, to get the near-full effect of the stone. easy with the silicone "parchment". the recipe you give...hm. i would advice much less yeast, no honey, much longer rise and the addition of c. 1/4 pasta flour (durum wheat) for structure. dont roll the dough! work into shape with hands! please! i'm not sure what 500 F would be in celsius, but the oven should be terribly hot. convection will be useful for adding to the shock effect (i have hardly the time to make a green salad while it bakes).

tiff, i'm not sure if i've got it right, but it seems that spelt has a very high gluten content (somewhere between 35% and 39%)...i've never baked with it, but my very competent breadbaking book tells me that it will give you a tasteful but rather heavy bread, and that preferably the spelt should be mixed with lighter flour (tipo 00, ?). it doesn't give any recipes, though. personally i think i would first try 1/3 spelt, 1/2 tipo 00 and 1/6 duro. very little yeast, lots of water, and a slow rising. perhaps a biga, or sourdough?

without having tasted your sausage - alas - i would guess it's a "slow food" thing: the pigs have probably lived in the woods and fields chewing on acorns and nuts and truffles and all the other things pigs love, slowly growing to the right size. also, probably someone scratched their backs while their throats were cut.

2,25 tbs sugar??????

"my point is that it's much easier to say that you have good taste, and argue that it comes from years of practice and experience, then it is to convince someone that you're a really good nascar driver for example. we're all convinced though." PLEASE! you know well that it is a matter of training one's senses and the vocabulary that goes with it. for instance, steve could analyze two steaks prepared by two different cooks and tell you what makes them different, whereas the average steak eater would tell you only of his preference. what do you think egullet is about? damn, how can it be so hard to understand?

macro-san, that would be a three-year old, wouldn't it? or perhaps two-year old? anyway, i find it interesting that you like danish white breads. in my (fortysix years of) experience they are boring, tasting too much of yeast, with poor textures. VERY hard to find a good quality (which is why i bake bread). now rye bread, that's another story. and right, sadly french baguettes seem to be in decline. and "italian" bread is best outside of italy (judging from my many disappointments in northern italy).