oraklet

jaymes, i think that my mother, given her background, was not joyless about cooking. but she was certainly frustrated at not being able to use her capabilities to the full extent. and of course, we're talking about a generation to whom the sense of doing their duty was very important. the duties of husband and wife, of an officer, of children, of being a good neighbour etc. - this leaves very little room for experimenting.

human bean, was that watercolour made by you? very nice, really. funny thing is, i only knew the "whitish" kind of ginger. very good fine-coarse chopped and stirfried with carrot batonnets and chopped garlic.

a kind of summing up: getting a stretchable dough seems to be a recurring problem. i think the solution is to remember that it should be quite "wet", even though this is not the way our mothers told us to make a dough. a good dough is rather sticky, really, and can only be worked if sprinkled with flour. the right structure and good taste will be achieved with little yeast/slow resting, high proteine flour and high baking temperature. bricks or a pizza stone helps a lot, too. a biga is good and easy, sourdough even better and not so easy...

cakewalk, "And why do you suppose it became a lunch tradition rather than a dinner tradition? Does your regular workday have a long lunch break mid-day? " well, lunch both because of smörrebröd being what you could bring with you, and because as in many agricultures, feasts were often mid day... i think. we've got half an hour for lunch. i'm a slow eater, so often it's a bit too little time. must be for many.

i only know about my own machine, an atlas. it's fine for making "plain" pasta (better than hand rolled) but catastrofal for ravioli. it's very cheap.

"The Spanish have never marketed their brandy as a luxury product like the French cognac or Scottish malts" but then, 30 years ago, only few knew of malts. even most scots thought it too challenging and strange, didn't they?

danish smörrebröd - or perhaps rather: traditional great christmas lunch: it has developed from the smörrebröd workers brougt with them to the fields or whereever. it would sometimes be enriched with leftovers. this "peasant lunch" (ahem) has merged with the traditional "leftovers" from christmas butchering of the pig(s) to become what it is today. also it has been formalized in the "3 course manner" we know from the rest of the european cuisine. you must imagine a good schnaps like bröndum, and fine beer, with it. most of this is eaten on sourdough rye bread (the danish kind with no sugar or spices). only weaklings have white bread with anything but the salmon. lots of butter on bread. so, you start off with, say, gravad salmon with a sour-sweet sauce, smoked salmon with scrambled eggs or perhaps a fried skate. eel sometimes, and perhaps a teeny bit of green salad... then on to the sour-sweet marinated herrings of diverse strenghts and spices (cloves, among many other), with more or less of raw onion in it. at this time the angels start singing. bones have dissolved, and meat is succulent(?). it's so beatifull. next come the sausages. these are for the most part smoked and made from pork, of course, and now you change from butter to pork's fat. also, you put pork jelly(?) on top, with raw onion rings. "rullepölse" (sausage "roll") is not smoked. again, a leeetle green salad may sneak in. cold meat. pork. with cucumbers (the small sour ones). perhaps there will be pig's toes. and sylte, which is a variant of confit, only with less fat. potato salad. though quite heavy, taste-wise this part of the meal can be seen as a kind of break allowing your tastebuds to calm down. crowning it all: cheese. sharp, bitter, stinky, with raw onion rings, and rum sprinkled, plus the jelly. though this seems repetetive of the sausage, it works fine cause you've had the meat in between. french gourmets have been known to sing its praise... at christmas time, dessert will be a kind of rice pudding mixed with whipped cream, chopped almonds and vanilla plus amarena cherries. very, very nice indeed. the rest of the year you finish with good strong coffee. i have probably forgotten a lot in this resume, but at least you now have an idea of what it's about, though it probably doesn't convey the power and richness. to most danes this is the ultimate comfort food. the greatest danish author of the 20. century has written a splendid poem of it, alluding of course to all the taste associations you can imagine. i wish i could translate it.

leffe. belgian beer is SOOO overrated. plzen rules.

a spaniard once told me that carlos primera is supposed to be their best brandy, and i think that it is really fine. it's a good deal sweeter than a french brandy, though - at least that's how i remember it from 10 years ago. gran duque is even sweeter, but develops lots of very nice aromas as it is slowly warmed in the hand. it is all in all "bigger" than carlos. spanish waiters pour brandy very liberally. i remember having to be almost carried home to our hotel by my wife. and there was some drilling next day.

work days i "dutyfully consume rations"; though the bread is homemade, and i do make a little effort to put something interesting on it. but have you guys ever tried traditional danish lunch? now that is "A different animal altogether". as wonderful as danish dinner traditions are shitty. it's called "smörrebröd" (buttered bread). swedish smorgasbord is a pale version of the real, powerful thing. in the old days it was a spinoff from christmas, but today it's a year-round thing. i think that some of the best danish restaurants are the ones serving this kind of lunch.

"You mean my Mom's family weren't the only ones to do this? Where did the practice originate, do you think? I can't eat "toasted cheese" (that's what we called it) without jam to this day. It's just missing something." i think that as a child, upon telling my family about having experienced this strange mixture at a friend's home, my mother told me it was a lower middle class thing. actually 50% of all danes do it, only it's not roasted. i still feel it's

the food culture? hard to tell, really. my mother's family are francophiles, experimenting, and easy going, my father's are more related to some sort of thomas mann'esque traditional work and life ethic (and he was an officer of the royal guards). as my father is also a very picky eater, the choice was limited to traditional danish food. very little salad or green stuff, lots of potatoes, with flour based sauce, and lots of minced meat. all of it, though, well prepared and with a french touch... things changed slowly for the better over the years as my mother got a job and we had more money. but as you can guess, my father still doesn't hardly know how to cook an egg. good formal manners were thought very important. meal time, too, with lively, and sometimes heated, discussions of just about everything. no prayers. atheists. kiddy table at parties, which tended to be of the luxurious and formal style, with very fine wines that we were allowed to taste at a very tender age . i can't recall us kids being brought at one single dining out. sadly, my mother was not very good at letting us participate in preparing meals, perhaps because it is rather time consuming, but also because my father is so picky...i have brought with me rather the general belief in having the best ingredients that can be afforded, and doing the best you can with them. a basic sense of quality, you could say. but only slowly i've come to believe that i may one day become a decent cook. i think i've become much better at balancing tastes, not least thanx to egullet. for a period of time, i tried having a rotating menu, but even with about 25 different things on the list, it became boring. except that once a week we have either pizza or lasagne! oh, and we make a lot more salad and greens and curries and pasta and fish, now, involving the big boys whenever there's time. we're very unformal, but we think eating together is important, so we're all collected at breakfast and dinner, and keep up the tradition of lively debate. of course, the general rules of behaviour are still there.

snowangel, " When this was breakfast, my sister and I thought we were royalty." very, very nice.

steve, you are being so beautifully scientific about this issue that i don't quite kow how to put this. anyway, i'll try: espresso exprts tell us that a cup of espresso should be made in 20-25 seconds. now, even with the right grind for press or if you pour the water manually for drip, won't the coffee be exposed to hot water for too long with methods other than espresso? i'm really just an amateur (in the negative sense of the word... ) who luckily has access to espressos made by a former world champion barista working at my favourite cafe ("europa" in copenhagen)

i guess that in writing in a foreign language, i have over-simplified what i meant to say. the frenchmen i've known who cooked well tend to be either professionals or housewives. housewives (a la "mme. maigret") are dying out in france as they are in the rest of europe and usa - though perhaps slower. what seems to remain with the french (as with the italians) is the general idea that to be food-aware is important, but now more as an ideal than as practice. they do dine out, and you tell me they take courses. of course some will try to keep up with their grandmothers' art or get a better grasp of how haute cuisine is really done - but the funny thing is, that most of the french yuppies i know (by now not so young any more), when in the kitchen with me, will be able to tell me "i think you should add a little more of this" or "i think it should be taken off the fire now", even though they hardly ever cook. all this is of course an urban phenomenon. france is one of the most agrarian cultures of western europe, and i still remember with gratitude the cooking of the mothers of our friends in pay basque 20 years ago - which probably hasn't changed a lot - as well as other, elderly, french housewives. there may be more supermarkets, but i also remember being very impressed by those supermarkets - as i am today. and being impressed by the supermarkets - even in paris - well, that tells me that a lot of frenchmen still know how to cook, with good ingredients. only, not nearly as many as there used to be, 'cause a lot of people just don't have the time.

it has been suggested before on this thread that the french don't buy that many "fancy cooking" cook books because they don't cook that way at home. also, that they don't often dine at high end restaurants. from what i know, this is true. i think that they don't even do very much cuisine grande mere these days. they are, on the other hand, tremendously proud of their grands chefs, they like to discuss their merits, often pretending to know more than they probably do, and of course this is why those chefs keep appearing in the media. national ikons, they are. "after all, gastronomy is france", as said the guy at lejeune who sold me my sabatier. in the rest of europe and usa, we still tend to dream of la france des grand'meres. oh, were we only french! we admire and like both this cuisine and haute cuisine, we strive to be better home cooks, and we read and buy a lot of cook books to learn the noble art. (and to boost ourselves, the occasional coffee table book) in doing this, we will probably end up having a higher percentage of the population cooking well than in france! but still it will never be a part of our national identities as it is to the french.

a little late - and anyway you're probably feeling better already with all the nice advice. a bloody mary. (works well for hangovers, too)

not quite the same thing, but nice: melt butter, add cocoa and sugar, stir and mix, add hot milk, slowly. perhaps a wee bit of vanilla in the milk.

steve, your description of how a fine thing becomes fahionable is very good. it still leaves the question (wilfrid's): how does crap become fashionable?

"Gee I didn't notice any difficulty sitting in that $200,000 Pierre Chareau chair. Nor did I notice that my haute cuisine dish that included truffles and foie gras tasted bad." one thing at a time, so 1) most chairs recognizable as chairs can be used for sitting. question is: how well do they perform? now, if the effort is put in impressive presentation, often function will suffer. this i find the case with much french design (from c. 1600-2002). but there is more to it than that. many of the 20th cent. scandinavian designers were pragmatic socialists who were driven by a wish to be honest with whichever material they were working. the elegance in their work is very rarely flashy. it isn't obvious, but the more exquisite for that. a variant of "less is more". and damn cheap compared to your chareau! 2) truffles and foie gras is out of the place with, say, vanilla ice cream, at least in my experience with vanilla ice cream, foie gras and truffles. i'll admit that i can imagine a dish composed of all three, and that i might find it interesting as an intellectual happening, but as part of a meal supposed to be enjoyed? i doubt it. now, that seems to be exactly the kind of experiments going on in some modern haute cuisine, perhaps driven by a wish to make "art". i'm still not sure how relevant this is...

art deco is, as it suggests, more deco than applique, if you see what i mean. thus it is more liable to produce collectors' pieces of quasi-art. but do you remember the prices of 25 years ago? most of it couldn't be sold! scandinavian pieces from that era, on the other hand, tended to be less "arty", less outrees, and more to the point (to be used as furniture, that is...) and therefore would sell better. after all, a chair is for sitting, and a meal is supposed to be eaten.

i think he's spelled alvar aalto. but market value does not in itself tell you the quality of the thing. it may be under-estimated, after all. and i've seen so much ridiculous arty crap being sold at very high prices. besides: what do you want? an expensive, silly gadget meant to impress, or something to live with or in, which you can pass on to your kids and enjoy every time you see or use it? i'll admit, my point of view on this is very far from what i've come to know outside of scandinavia...but please take a look at wegner's wooden chairs or tables: you would have to go to ancient chinese furniture to find a thing more exquisite and yet useful. and danish empire furniture was far better than their french counterpart - actually so well made that this country is still loaded with it. but enough for now. i'd better stop being irrelevant.

"As far as every day decorative arts after WWII, the Italians have it all over the French: Gavina, Allessi, Memphis, Mulino, Gio Ponti. In architecture, Renzo Piano, Aldo Rossi,etc." (robert brown) that's a kind of blind alley, really. i mean, for the last 200 years or more, the finest furniture in the european culture has been scandinavian, as has the architecture for the last 100 years. but our food is mostly crap.

in the past, bechamel was supposed to cook for hours - at least that's what i think e. david says somewhere? - and this would make sure that it is very creamy, with no taste of flour. but who has the time these days? home made pasta is the best for most dishes, but not, i think, for lasagne, as it tends to cause a lack of structure. or perhaps i should let it dry prior to using it? try the bolognese version with a topping of both parmesan and mozzarella. this will keep the parmesan from getting bitter. try also a version that substitutes the bolognese ragu with a no-meat ragu plus a sauce of finely chopped spinach and champignons. lots of layers! it's one of the few things i still cook from my vegetarian youth. that, and a pesto lasagne served with a salsa cruda.

for cucumbers, i've found that if you cut at a slight angle, they will (mostly) fall off the knife on the right side, so that you don't cut them twice. but the knife size may matter, too. when cutting potatoes in cubes, i use a boning knife (yes!), drawing it through the potatos in stead of the usual cutting motion. the cuts stay in place, and it's pretty fast work! this is a bit tough on the edge, though, and will demand some honing if you do a lot of potatoes.