chromedome

Monica, many seeds have a hard outer sheath which can inhibit germination. Some gardeners, therefore, will nick the sheaths with a paring knife (or, I guess, step on them *gently*) in order to help them sprout. With larger seeds, it also helps to soak them for 3-12 hours before planting them. I generally plant my seeds late in the day, when the soil is at its warmest. Mint is all-but-infallible, though as noted it tends to be invasive...container gardening is a very good idea. My parents have about 100 square feet of it down near the water, and it began as two plants. Mint does like a lot of moisture, though, so in arid climates it's not *quite* as invasive. Coriander is a good choice for a novice, as it grows quite readily. Two more no-brainers are potatoes and ginger. Potatoes can require a lot of garden space, but not necessarily. I tend to plant mine closer together than most people do, in order to keep them small (I do love my fingerlings). My wife's grandparents used to grow potatoes in a stack of old car tires: when the plants were a good foot or so above the tire, they'd add another tire and more soil; repeat as necessary. Eventually you end up with a tower of potatoes. Ginger grows nicely in a large pot or planter; just buy one and stick it in the soil. Give it lots of sun, and it'll grow until you dig it up and cook with it. If my uncle could grow ginger in northern Newfoundland (a climate similar to central Norway) I'm sure you can in the DC area. I'll add some more thoughts as my tired brain comes up with them.

Just found out that one of my classmates from NAIT is working there. Couldn't think at first where I'd heard the name before. Then it hit me (Duh!), where else but the Gullet?

This has been rather interesting for me, up here in Alberta. Back in the early 80's, when the Mulroney government introduced the widely-detested GST (Goods and Services Tax), many Canadians began shopping across the border for items such as milk, gasoline, and cigarettes. As a (then) retail-store manager in a border community, I felt the pinch myself, and so did the other merchants. At that time, in the heart of dairy country (British Columbia's Fraser Valley) I paid approximately double the price of American consumers a few minutes south in Washington state (this is my unsupported memory of those days, so take with a grain of salt, but it was close). Today, in Edmonton, I'm paying anywhere from $3.26-$4.99 CDN for a 4-litre jug of milk; the low being at Safeway or Walmart and the high being at my neighbouring convenience store. At places like the drugstore up the road, or the local IGA, the price seems to usually be $3.99. To provide context for the mental-math challenged, $3.26 CDN equals roughly $2.80 US, depending on the exchange rate. A four-litre jug is somewhat larger than a US gallon, but slightly less than an Imperial gallon.

I've been using canola for years, as it is far less expensive than the others here in Canada (40-60% the price of any other vegetable oil); has a high smoke point; and is relatively neutral. Then in school, I had to taste and describe ten different kinds of oil. What a revalation! Canola tastes like window putty (or at least, like window putty smells). It's detestable. I also tried the cold-pressed-organic-extra-virgin canola oil that some of the local companies are pushing as a premium product. It has a lovely, deep green-gold colour...and tastes *POWERFULLY* of window putty. <sigh> So I've gradually migrating back to olive/EV olive; with hopefully a small bottle of grapeseed oil soon (when budget permits) for deep frying etc. I also have a small bottle of sesame oil in my cupboard, primarily as a flavouring agent. My mustard oil got old and rancid, so I chucked it out. I save my baconfat, always, and rendered pork fat. I haven't saved any chicken fat, but Edna Staebler says in "Food that Really Schmecks" that older Mennonite cooks of her acquaintance reserve rendered chicken fat for making the best cookies. Go figure. BTW, I highly recommend the exercise of tasting your ingredients and comparing them. We did ten oils, ten vinegars, ten cheeses; but you could set up comparisons for yourself on any ingredient you consider important. Butter (to judge from the foregoing) would be an easy choice.

That would be Golden Boy brand, I do believe. That's the one I've got in my cupboard.

I always use the broccoli stems. Sometimes in casseroles, sometimes in soups, sometimes in broccoli salads, but most of all in stirfries. At work I'm becoming recognized as the king of utilization. Overshipped on tomatoes? No problem: I printed Suvir's tomato chutney recipe and brought it in (had to bring a few ingredients from home, but what the heck). Cherries getting tired? Bald guy pits them and makes cherry pie filling for the bakery to make tarts with. Zucchini and summer squash starting to look like your granny's neck? Shred 'em in the RoboCoupe and bake 'em into the coffee cake. Stock boy put two cases of cabbage on top of the flat of raspberries? No problem! Raspberry coulis for the bread puddings I'll soon be making with the leftover bread... On Tuesday, when I go back to work (it's a holiday here in Canada tomorrow) I've got some beef ribs to work with. We had a catering contract involving prime rib for 250 people this weekend, and the meatcutter put aside the ribs for me to do something with. It all appeals to that "east-coast frugality gene" I've inherited from my various grandparents, I think.

Ditto on the bowls and multiple "all-but-disposable" cutting boards. I bought a ton of each at the local dollar stores during my first year at school, and they've become stalwarts of my kitchen. So, also, are silicon spatulas. I really like those, and use them for a lot of things I used to use wooden spoons for. I like 'em for things like hollandaise or creme anglaise, so that I can make a nice clean sweep along the bottom of the bowl. Saves straining later (I alternate, of course, with the whisk). As for the KitchenAid mixer, I am not wholly satisfied with mine...I find it useless for anything larger than a single loaf of yeast dough...but still wouldn't be without it now. I have tendonitis in both elbows and a significant amount of arthritis, and while I can still challenge all comers in whisking a mayonnaise I'd sooner not bother. Meringues, especially Italian; nice light buttercreams, choux paste, genoises, and similar preparations: all are much easier in the KA. And let's not forget brioche! I sometimes appreciate the emotional therapy of a lengthy kneading session, but usually I just want the finished product. I know there are several savoury items I use it for too, but they are eluding my sleep-deprived brain at the moment. I'll come back to this, when I can think of them. I know I use it for pureeing beans, because I don't have a food processor and my mortar and pestle are too small. On a semi-related note, I found an offbeat appliance at a garage sale last week. It is a Moulinex "Jeanette"; essentially a light-duty meat grinder with attachments for shredding, grating, and slicing vegetables (a motorized box grater, if you will). I can see potato pancakes and kartoffel-kloesse being more frequent in my household, this fall and winter! It's kind of an odd little thing, but I think Jeanette and I will have some fun together. At least until I get a food processor.

You've inadvertantly hit on one of my pet peeves, JP. For some reason which I can't quite define, the exclusion of the southern shore from our understanding of what is "Mediterranean" irritates the hell out of me. When you think of it, there's a real continuum of overlapping influences, isn't there? I'd second the Tess Mallos recommendation, btw...good sound recipes, and lots of background information for the interested newbie. And all of Najmieh Batmanglij's books are worth looking at.

I'm with Varmint. Mrs. 'Dome (Leslie to those who know her, "who's that wacko?" to those who don't) is still my favourite reason to cook. She's patient with infinitely-extended mealtimes, ill-thought-out experiments, and my transient enthusiasms. And she really, really loves good food. REALLY loves good food. Think Thumper from "Bambi." When I hear her foot going thup-thup-thup under the table I know I've hit on a "keeper." I can't think of anything more appealing than the notion of a whole day, just us, to go out and pick the ingredients and prep a meal to enjoy together. No phone, no kids (dearly though we love 'em), no neighbours, just us. <sigh> Been a lot of 60-80hr work weeks, these last few years. Alone time is hard to come by.

Montreal is definitely Gallic, but SPM is France. Both are great places to visit, of course.

I'm not an utter novice, Monica, but I've accumulated things here and there haphazardly over the years. I'd certainly be interested in an orderly exposition of basic principles, combinations, etc. I'm also (he says modestly) one king-hell proofreader.

Like any other city with a booming scene, in those days, there were a great many local bands who would not have become known elsewhere. And that's not counting the various ad-hoc side projects of established bands' members. Vancouver at that time had a lot of so-called "fuck bands" (because they were just "fucking around", you understand). I remember, for example, the Flunkees (punked up Monkees covers) and the Themester's Union (punked up retro TV themes) with great affection. Popular local alt-rockers The Reptiles had a country incarnation called Tex Tiles and the True Moral Fibres of the South: they did old-school country tunes with a great deal of affection and something of a poke in the ribs. In their version of "Ring of Fire", for example, they pulled out kazoos to do the horn parts; their take on Jack Scott's "My True Love" was an outright spoof called "My Tree Love"...("I Cedar in the bar...she was obviously quite Poplar..."). ==================================================== Okay, that was OT. But I did mention ribs.

BTW, if you can free up the time (and it sounds like you're already somewhat loaded up with things to do) you can get to St Pierre et Miquelon quickly and easily from Newfoundland. SP&M is France's last North American colony; picturesque and appealing in its own right, and also an opportunity to visit France on the cheap-and-easy. SPM website Necessary documents

Hmmmm.... I was part of the punk scene in Vancouver in the early-mid 80's. Which band did Martin front? Anyone know?

I'm getting word back from my family that nobody there is really that much "into" restaurants; and therefore can't advise on what's good these days. Into round two, I'm now checking with friends and friends-of-friends.

Mackeral? Only one way to do it. When you hear they've started running, you go set your nets. Then you go home and cut up strong white onions into thick rings, and set them to macerate overnight in white vinegar. Next day, go pull your nets. When you drop your mackeral at the fish plant, you keep a dozen or so that are still flopping in the bottom of the boat, and bring them home. Gut them, and give the pigs a treat. Then fillet them and dredge them in flour. Fry them in a hot cast-iron pan, with just a quick rub of salt pork to start off. Serve them with the macerated onions, and drizzle the oniony vinegar over the fillets. Sides? Who needs 'em. A loaf of fresh-baked bread, maybe, to soak up the juices from your plate; and perhaps a cold beer if you've got any room left for one. That's how it's done in northern Newfoundland, at any rate.

Up here in the Great White North, my beans are at least three-four weeks away from kitchen-ready (just beginning to see one or two blossoms...but hey! we don't plant most things until the May long weekend). However, I'm now entirely geared up for when they come through. Gotta love a vegetable that *everybody* in the family likes.

Worked my part-time job tonight, so I ate well. We didn't get many orders for salmon this week so I had last-of-the-old-batch salmon fillet, done precisely as we do it for the customers: brandy-cream sauce; saffron rice with capers, peppers, shallots, & tomatoes; cpl spears of asparagus, broccoli, baby carrots, snap peas. Oh, and a "spiked" icy lemonade from FOH (we eat after service, I hasten to point out).

Andy, most of the caribou served in western restaurants comes from our northern territory of Nunavut. Nunavut is 1,900,000 square kilometres in size and has only 29,000 people, so there is lots of room for caribou! At the restaurant where I work part-time, we serve caribou and muskox tenderloins from Nunavut producers. Most of the bison comes from here in Alberta. Nunavut website Nunavut's Parks

Flipper pie is definitely an old-timer's thing. A very rich meat pie, is the short version. Seal in general is very dark and gamey-tasting, but the flippers are milder in flavour and do make a very good pie. Personally, I think the liver is the best part of the seal. Cod tongues are one of those foods that are rather off-putting, to those who aren't accustomed to them, but they are surprisingly good. A cod tongue consists of two tight balls of muscle, enclosed in a rather gelatinous pouch. Generally, they are simply dredged in flour and panfried (in rendered salt pork, traditionally!); and really they require nothing more elaborate in the way of preparation. The interest lies in the difference between the textures of the muscular portion and the softer enclosure. The flavour is, well...cod. <sigh> Haven't had a feed of cheeks and tongues in a long time. Oh well.

I own the Dr. Oetker book, and it's reasonably good. Haven't made much from it as yet, mind you. It seems to be at about the level of a Time-Life or similar cookbook. There are plentiful illustrations, and the translation is well done. In another thread, on the subject of Dobos Torte, there is mention of a highly-respected book about the pastries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I don't recall the title and am too tired to search for it right now, but it's out there somewhere. The recent "Eurodelices" series of books, from Konemann, include a volume on Pastries (ISBN 3-8290-1131-8) which features recipes from a number of leading German and Austrian pastrychefs. Unfortunately, these come largely without any historic/cultural context. ...it's a start, anyway. I'm going to be looking for similar books (for my own interest) over the next little while, so if I come up with any gems I'll let you know.

Gee, I have two bags of cashews on hand from the little Punjabi store down in the South End. And a couple of litres of egg whites in my freezer. Hmmm.....

A quick question. At my school, we piped financiers into small dome-shaped flexipan molds (about the size of a Muppet's eyeball, or half a ping-pong ball) and then piped a fruit filling into them. These were a nice little petit-four for the Friday buffet, but I know this is not the traditional way to make them. So...what is the traditional "form factor"? What kind of pans or molds are normally used? (PS: like Neil's school, we refrigerated our batter overnight)

The books you're referring to would be his "Professional Pastry Chef" and "Advanced Professional Pastry Chef." We used the former as our text at my school, for the patisserie module of the Culinary Arts program. As you've observed, his recipes are very reliable (they've been honed through his decades of teaching). If I had a complaint, it would be that some of the recipes have been manipulated to make them more "foolproof." His brioche, for example, works out to be only about 20% butter by weight, which (to me) can hardly be called brioche. I'll grant you it's easy to work with, but the result is not quite what I'm looking for. His laminated doughs, similarly, reduce the butter to a level that I'm not quite happy with. That being said, though, his books are an excellent starting point for anyone interested in pastry. I've used my copy a lot, and expect to wear it out over the next couple of decades. I see from his website that the "Advanced Professional Pastry Chef" won a 2004 IACP award. Really should start shopping around for that, I suppose...<sighs, checks bank account, sighs again...>

Freezing products within a bag of water is thought to provide an impermeable seal, extending the usable life of the product and avoiding freezer burn. Not owning a deep freeze I can't vouch for that personally, but I know several people who follow that practice. I've eaten venison from one person's freezer which had been kept that way for three years, and it was absolutely fine. Go figure.