chromedome

You would be referring to Glen Breton Rare, produced in Nova Scotia's Highlands in the style of a Scotch whisky. They are currently importing peated malt from Scotland, but have run a test batch with Alberta barley and are awaiting the result. They are currently marketing a ten-year-old whisky, with plans to add more-aged bottlings as the passage of time permits. For more information, you may wish to check out the website of the Glenora Distillery. There is a very decent restaurant onsite, and good lodgings available in the area.

These two are related. In a perfect world, we could gather our dough "until just mixed" and the gluten chains would not form. In practice, unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Even if you are using pastry flour, the gluten will form strands; if you are using all-purpose flour you will see even more gluten develop. Resting the dough, before and after rolling, allows the strands to relax. Rolling the dough after refrigeration, you should see the dough "bouncing back" less as you roll it (though as McDuff says, it's easier to roll when it's a little warmer). Giving a second rest after you've put the dough in your pans will give you less shrinkage in your finished product, as it allows the gluten developed in the rolling process to relax. All of the other points are valid too, though, to a greater or lesser extent.

In Iranian cooking, apricots are considered to be the natural accompaniment to lamb (just like that grotty mint sauce is in England). Try them stewed with the lamb; or in a rice pilaf served with a mild curry. Both are excellent.

My father-in-law is a Crown Royal man. I find it a titch too sweet (which tells you I'm not a keen bourbon drinker, either); I prefer Gibson's Finest (the gold label, not the silver) which I find dryer. I used to really enjoy the Hudson's Bay Company whisky (remember those stoneware bottles?) but I haven't seen it anywhere for some time.

It occurs to me that I've overlooked what should have been an obvious recommendation...my school's restaurant. Cleverly known as "The Dining Room at NAIT", this is a large and recently-renovated facility with very decent food and aggressive pricing, for what it is. There is a three-course lunch special for about $25, IIRC. I won't be cooking there that week, but some of my classmates will be; and between us almost all of the city's leading restaurants are represented. The #9 bus will get you there from the downtown quite easily (about 15 minutes).

Sorrentino's is a family-owned local mini-chain, and reputed to be very good at what they do. I haven't eaten there myself, but I know people who have and they don't really have much dirt to dish. Essentially, "what they do they do well." I have a couple of classmates cooking at l'Attitude, right now. I'll sound them out about the decor, food, etc and see what sort of feedback they have for me. Harvest Room is still mining the East Coast-meets-prairies dynamic introduced by former chef Roary MacPherson. Again, like Sorrentino's, I know people who have worked there and I can't recall hearing anything bad about it. Back-of-the-house "dirt" is my most trusted guide...

I'm a piker. A mere 20 or so. God, I love the library.

A $30 limit pretty much rules out Hardware Grill and the Harvest Room; probably l'Attitude/Chance/Boulevard as well. You might do it, but you'd be picking from half the menu or less, from what I can recall of their menus. The other choices listed are pretty viable, I think...I'm sure between us we can get you geared up.

Generations of my forefathers fished until they fell over dead, or until their boat didn't come back one day. My father decided he didn't want that, and broke the cycle. In times past, it was a rare chef who could count on more than a local reputation. Today, people from all corners of the globe can get together in a forum like this to debate, praise, or condemn a chef who is thousands of miles away from any of us. Chefs today benefit from the communications and transportation revolutions which have made "franchises" (in the literal or metaphorical sense) possible for them, as for other businesses. More to the point, though, people in our generation expect more and want more from life. Keller sees a need on some level to either "extend his brand", or to seek out new challenges, or to build a legacy, or whatever. I say more power to him...he's earned our respect by his commitment to excellence, and until that commitment is visibly tarnished I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

One pie pan? One? I have a large and deep 10" pie pan for when I'm expecting company, two 9" (one for tonight and one for the freezer), and two 8" for making pies to take to potlucks etc (I put the pie in a foil pan, then the foil pan into the "real" one, which I find makes the crust work a little better). You may also want to get one or two of the "tart" pans with the removeable bottom. The 11" size is the most common, commercially, though others are available. Many of the stylish recipes you see in magazines will call for these, and there is an added bonus: the bottoms are a great tool for lifting and moving layers as you assemble your layer cakes. I would also vouch for the utility of a scale. More cookbooks are (finally!) beginning to include weight measurements, and with the wealth of recipes on the Internet there is a greater likelihood that you'll want one (since recipes from outside the US will be more likely to use weight).

I find whetting my blades on a stone to be curiously relaxing and soothing, so I tend to do my own rather than taking them to a professional. Also, I think that the mechanical sharpening done by the pros tends to wear away the blade more quickly, and that just tweaks my East Coast frugality gene. Project, I know a few other people with treasured carbon-steel blades of similar vintage. You're right, the steel is softer to a significant degree, and can be kept at a pretty fine edge by a steel in skilled hands. Of course, by the same token, they require a LOT of sharpening in high-volume use. That requirement for TLC (frequent sharpening, and rust prevention) is probably what ensured the emergence of the contemporary knives with their "high-carbon stainless" formulation. That being said, I live in hope of finding one in a bin at a thrift store or yard sale some day.

When are you going to be in Edmonton? I'm relatively new to the city myself, but between the food geeks at my work (a "posh" place on Whyte Ave, but outside the trendy Old Strathcona area) and the food geeks at my school, I can probably come up with a few choices for you. Happy to exchange info here or in PM.

It is worth noting, btw, that most military establishments do maintain some very capable chefs for their VIP-entertaining. On larger bases the base commander may have a chef assigned for wining and dining visiting dignitaries; and the chefs assigned to travelling government officials and heads of state are often military. Military chefs have their own version of the Culinary Olympics. One of my former instructors spent several years at one of the Canadian bases in Germany which were part of our NATO commitment. It was a transformative experience for him. He later became the "road" chef to senior government officials and visiting royalty, among others. And you know he didn't serve the Queen Mum chipped beef on toast...

Invariably "pop" in Canada, AFAIK. "Soda" is the expensive Italian-style stuff they serve in coffee bars.

I dunno about Starbucks...I'm no fan, but they're not the worst. Just expensive and mediocre. Here in Canada, the dominant chain is not Starbucks but Tim Horton's...yeah, the doughnut shop named after the dead hockey player (I remember watching him play. Suddenly I feel old...). Heretical though it is for anyone from the East Coast to say, I truly detest the coffee at Tim's. If we opt to focus on fresh-brewed/not held too long/not overcooked/"yes ma'am this is how it's supposed to taste" awfulness, that's Tim's IMHO.

No shit. Have you seen the video segments of the "California Raisins" thingie on the CIA website? Compared to Keller, Keanu Reeves looks like Robin Williams. But really, folks, come on. He's been doing the French Laundry for how many years? Anybody with that much talent has to be looking for a new outlet. Or perhaps, a new order of magnitude.

If you have a fair quantity of whole berries left, you may want to add a few of them to the mix. Whiz 'em in your food processor, then add them to the juice before you reduce it. The seeds are high in pectin, and will thicken your reduction naturally and give it some nice body and mouthfeel. They'll also put some tartness back into it. Before finishing your sauce with the butter and port (I'm totally on board with MGLloyd's suggestion...very similar to things we do at my work) just strain out the seeds through some cheesecloth, or a chinois if you have one.

Bread is beyond food, and into the realm of the magical and the spiritual. Honestly. I left home for university at 15, and the thing I missed most was my mother's (perfectly ordinary, but always fresh) home-baked bread. Of course, at a distance of some hundreds of miles, I couldn't count on her for my supply any more; so I decided to bake my own. This was northern Newfoundland in 1979, so artisanal bakeries were not an option! I'd never baked bread, never really helped my mom, and was too stubborn to try and "get it" from a cookbook (and I'd been told that you can't really do that very successfully anyway) so I ran by memory. "What did she start with? What did she do next?" Even with these handicaps, I think in retrospect that I did fairly well. The only thing I had a real problem with was the shortening...I couldn't remember how much she put into her bread. So I decided that a quarter-pound should do nicely. That bread was well and truly shortened, let me tell you. It was edible, though, if dense, and the flavour was not bad. I was pretty pleased, and hooked, and I've been baking my own bread ever since (about 25 years, now). I think my fresh bread may have been one of the things that helped my now-wife decide that I was a "keeper."

The Digby scallops hold up well...don't know about the Black Tower wine, though...

With our first, my wife was so sick in the first trimester that she nearly died. Given my genetic heritage, I always thought I'd lose my hair before I got any gray (see username...) but I was wrong. I sprouted a bunch, at age 23. I don't remember any cravings specifically from the first pregnancy (and I won't wake up the missus to ask her...I'm a little loopy, but I'm not CRAZY). I do remember that during the second pregnancy, she ate a lot of garlic, and our daughter as a toddler showed a bizarre predilection for raw garlic. She also had to have a lot of nuts. Oh, yes...she had a big thing for really garlicky dill pickles. And although she'd always enjoyed ice cream in a desultory way, she really REALLY had to have it all the time. And then when she'd had the ice cream, she'd have a pickle. Or when she'd had a pickle, she'd almost immediately want ice cream. She was so mortified when she made the connection. We always thought it was just one of those silly made-up things... Pregnancy really does change the way your body deals with certain foods. My wife was never a milk drinker until the first pregnancy. And she was indifferent to chocolate until the second; at which point it became almost a physical necessity.

When I was in basic training (Canadian Armed Forces) back in '81, the food was pretty much standard-issue cafeteria food. Not bad, not good, notable primarily for quantity (hundreds of 17-year-olds, working harder than they'd ever done in their lives...you'd better keep it coming!). A lot of the guys complained about the food, but I didn't. I'd eaten cafeteria food at university...I'd seen the dark side. However improbable, some of my platoon insisted that it was better than they'd eaten at home.

Admittedly this is an area where my experience is limited...I've been baking for decades, but (not being fond of most icings) have tended to cover my cakes with nothing more elaborate than whipped cream. I have two kids and a wife with a sweet tooth, so keeping qualities have always been a low priority. Having said that, I currently favour a ganache of roughly 1:1 proportions of cream and dark chocolate; with a small amount of butter added for sheen. Still playing with the proportions, though. At work, we use something my boss calls "Vienna icing" on the sachertorte we make. That's made with unsweetened chocolate, lots of egg yolks, butter, and some other things which elude me at the moment (I have it written down somewhere). It makes a beautifully glossy finish, like ganache, and is resilient and dry to the touch. It can also be refrigerated and then softened for re-use, with only a slight loss of sheen.

YES! Unfortunately, the rest of my household comprises three unequivocal NO votes. Yet another thing I have to send the family away to enjoy.

Damn. Guess I'll have to work on my boss about that bottle of '85 Dom she got for Christmas...

The explanation I am familiar with is that the word is derived from the Latin "Quatuor Tempora" (literally "four days"); sometimes referred to as the "Ember Days." These were times of fasting and abstinence set out in the Church calendar to mark the beginnings of the four seasons. During these days, red meat was forbidden, and therefore the Portuguese would have favoured fish dishes. See the Catholic Encyclopedia for more detail.