balmagowry

Yes! and everything you ever needed to know about table-manners and -setting, in I Try To Behave Myself!

Well, you could always use the blush one. Like this: Thanks, Maggie.

And thank you both for saying so. It all felt very natural to me, including the degree to which I overdid it and wiped myself out... :small wry grimace: .... BTW Anna, it's an awfully long time ago, but I don't think that knife or indeed any of my cleavers had the hangy hole when I got them; I'm pretty sure those were added (or do I mean subtracted...?) after purchase! Otherwise how does one store them? Too big & heavy for a magnet; a drawer would blunt them in no time. In Gilgo the two big ones fortuitously happen to fit in the tiny gap between the counter and the fridge, held up by the thickness of their handles - but one can't hope for that in most places.

Humboldt Fog isn't really that stinky - just tastes as though it ought to be. I think I still have to put Stinking Bishop at the top of my list. Though I've just spent a couple of days absorbing a nicely fragrant hunk of St. Albray.... EDIT to add: Taleggio Taleggio Taleggio Taleggio! EDIT AGAIN to add: every once in a while I hear a rumor that someone preserved a little of the true Liederkranz culture from before the big fire, and has taken it to Australia, there to get it back into production.... It's too obscure to be an Urban Legend, thinks I, so though the years roll by and nothing happens I still can't help hoping against hope that it may be true....

Oh oh - please look if you haven't yet. I can't really add this to the tally (though there are a few new purchases, once I figure out which were and which weren't tallied when I ordered them), since I guess it should be counted as one of the estimated 80-odd inherited from my mother; but it's such a marvelous thing that you should see it anyway: the Time Life Picture Cook Book as shown in several pictures in the antepenultimate post of my Glob.

Hi, Doc! Good to see you break the surface for a moment! I too have been buried, though not as deep as you - a week of submersion in the Blog that Ate Babylon. Not much about beverages there, except that at least I have been remembering to pick the violets as they bloom here, and am saving them off in a little jar of vodka, against furture... er, need. Welcome, Scott! I don't have much to add here, except to repeat my side of the burnt-sugar argument up-thread - to the effect that there's more than one interpretation of "burnt sugar" out there, and the only kind I've used is the one that has no flavor and is used only for color. You don't say exactly what you have in your formula or what it is that makes it orange (did I miss a mention of orange peel?), but you are right in saying that dilution will make it less so; I remember being pretty excited about the orange color of mine and commensurately disappointed with the effect of dilution. But burnt sugar (again, the dark flavorless kind) gives it a much more authoritative look. I haven't experimented with sweeteners at all yet, since I always figured bitters should be bitter. Interesting question, though. I wonder whether a good organic honey would be worth considering - might add an interesting note to some types of fruit-based bitters; and of course it certainly lends itself to fermentation. I don't know anywhere near as much about all this as Doc, but my instinct chimes with yours and his re using distilled water. I didn't bother, on past batches... but I've changed my thinking since then and will certainly do so in future.

Judging from the picture in your avatar, Soba, it might mean you! It's just an affectionate and/or approving diminutive. Sort of like "laddie," I guess. On hearing I was about to be married, I'll never forget the Orchard Street shopkeeper asking "and is he a nize boychikel?" - much the same as an auld Scots guidwife asking if he is "a douce laddie?" You're both, aren't you...?

NEWS FLASH of a sort! had I but known. I am just catching up on a week's worth of missed newspapers (thanks to The Glob That Ate Babylon), and only now do I discover that Ed Lowe, the quintessential Long Island writer, used his column from a week ago today to talk about the rebuilding of LI downtowns, especially Babylon - and in the process referred specifically to quite a few of the establishments in my Collage du Village, soon to be expanded on a web page near you. I don't know whether you can still even get this piece now if you're not a Newsday Premium Member, but if you want to try it's at this link. And please tell me if you try and can't get it; I have taken a copy of the text and am writing to Mr. Lowe about getting permission to reproduce it, or at least quote it heftily, on the Out-and-About page. It is just too fortuitous.

Oh oh oh andiesenji, you just reminded me of something silly. The verse habit runs strong in my family, and it doesn't always default to the elegantly Shakespearian, though it does try to pay proper attention to rhythm, rhyme and scansion. My uncle Blair (he of the Blair & Cookie story upthread) lives in Denver, but misses certain things you can (or could, some years ago) only get in New York. My mother once sent him a whole pastrami for Christmas, with a verse containing among other things this implied admonition to the express shipper: I must have been thinking of this some 10 years ago when I sent him (in the wake of a divorcing wife who had taken much of his batterie de cuisine with her when she left town) a new wooden bowl and Kotletkii chopper. Don't have the whole thing handy, but it was this sort of thing: ... and so on. Silly times. EDIT to add: I don't sit for anything but this one operation, but it's a tradition I've never seen reason to break, especially as it gives me good control over the bowl. My dog can always be closed into another room for the few minutes it takes...!

And thank YOU. What could be more warming than an enthusiastic audience? (Only a big pot of rich soup, maybe, but that I can make myself! )

A brilliant solution, even if one didn't have arthritis! And thank you for reminding me of the mezzaluna - I have a marvelous old one of those too, somewhere here. (Ahhhh, garage sales!) EDIT to add: Funny, about putting chopping bowl on counter - I nver thought of that. The tradition for Kotletkii (at least, the only way I've ever done it or seen it done) is to sit and hold the chopping bowl in one's lap. Now I see why.

The slit on the chopper is for slicing. Usually used for potatoes and onions. I collect antique kitchen gadgets and utensils. I have quite a few choppers, single, double and triple, various types of handles. This one was made in the late thirties for people who had limited means and small kitchens to combine two implements in one. It is difficult to sharpen the slicer blade, some of the ones I have seen have been hammered flat. It can be sharpened with one of the diamond nail files but it really isn't worth the trouble. Thank you! I always figured it had to be for some kind of slicing; I just never figured out the relationship between that and its primary purpose, only knew that it was a pain because of stuff getting caught in it. I have a total of four such choppers, all the same shape and handle type, and thisis the only one with a slit. Since in my life the sole purpose of the implement is the one I showed up-thread, I think I grew up assuming that it had been invented for Kotletkii only. Funny the ideas you get, the inferences you draw, when you're little.... I also have a wonderful antique chopper - single blade, comfortably thick wooden handle, bigger than these - that I've never thought to use for this purpose. I should try it. I should post a picture; maybe you'll be able to identify it.

Ouch ouch ouch I feel your pain - from the grease, I mean. But other than that I'm enthralled; glued to the blog! May one ask, how old is the boychick? The toothpaste is not exclusively a Trini thing; I've been using it for years, though not so much for pain as for things that itch, like mosquito bites (and mix in some meat tenderizer so the papain can work on the venom, especially if it's from jellyfish). I love the shoji-like screen. (BTW, in real time you got the torch when you got the torch, i.e. last night; anything before that was just negotiation and preparation. I don't know whether anyone ever refuses the torch, but it must be possible to do so. So a couple of days' warning is both a courtesy to the next blogger and a chance for the present blogger to secure the succession, as it were. Perhaps Soba - or previous bloggers - can tell us whether it's customary. I only know that Lucy gave me the heads-up two days beforehand, so I wanted to do the same for you.) Hmmmm. Lucy was right about those Chee-tos....

All right, my dears... this is the penultimate post of the Glob. I almost almost almost made my last self-imposed modified and re-modified deadline. Here's how close I came. Behold, I shall show you the Collage du Village - my ode to some of the eateries and provideries of Babylon. And below it I shall place an open doorway, like the door to Sherry's from last Saturday's adventure. And as of now that doorway shall not yet be live - or rather, it shall be live, but it shall not lead anywhere. Because although according to my bizarre body clock it ain't midnight yet, y'know what? I'm tired. So for now I'm going to leave it at that, because I want to leave a clear field for my successor. But if anyone is really dying to see any of the detail behind the collage... then come back here quietly in a day or two and try clicking the doorway again. I'm not going to mess with this post after it's up (and after I have then come back to edit the inevitable typos ), but as soon as I can (i.e., tomorrow, I hope, because it won't take long at all) I will finish the Babylon out-and-about page, off-site... just in case.... Here, then, I give you and here, the doorway which will lead you to the answer... to the age-old question... How many miles to Babylon.... .

This is almost it - the antepenultimate post of the Glob, as my father calls it. Before moving on to the pen- and the -ultimate, I want to shift gears for a moment and tell you about a few exciting events that occurred during the week, which was racing by so fast that I didn't then dare take the time to report on them. One day around the beginning of the week, The Boy called me from his house in CT, and asked me, in an elaborately nonchalant manner, how to hard-boil an egg. Mindful of recent eGCI courses (which I hadn't actually had a chance to study yet) as well as certain scholarly discussions on that subject, I was more wary about my reply than I would ordinarily have been. Took it far enough to establish that what he considers hard-boiled and what I consider hard-boiled are by no means the same thing. Left it at that. That was the last I heard about it until I received an e-mail from him under the subject heading "Those EGulleteers who have no faith in television." What th'? Attached without comment to the e-mail was this picture: I still had no idea what he was on about, and I'm afraid I dismissed the whole thing from my mind as "another of The Boy's wacko notions" and didn't give it another thought. Until... ... he got home a couple of days later and said, "Well? Did you get my e-mail? Did you send my message to those eGullet people?" I of course looked him in the eye and told him he was off his rocker. He is used to this. He didn't bat an eye. Instead, he beckoned me into the dining room and proudly displayed the following items spread out on the table: I'm a little dense, sometimes. I still didn't quite make the connection. I had to go up and look at his e-mail again, and even then he had to explain that not only had he ordered the Eggstractor (!) - which I did know, though I had forgotten about it - he had ordered two of them, one for CT and one for here, and all those other jobbies had... wait a minute, did they come with it? no, they didn't, he had been tempted into ordering them at some wonderful discount (YOURS for only x.99 if you order two Eggstractors NOW!), and here they were, and... uh-oh, I don't even remember what the shiny-topped one is, but the white one is a miniature rice cooker, and the main thing is, The Boy's message to YOU is: (yes, I know I already said it above, but apparently it bears repeating) - and he also says, "Oh ye of little faith, it does work... if you do it right!" Thus The Boy, in great glee. (Once upon a time, someone said to The Boy, "You don't go shopping; you go buying." She was right.) That is Event # 1. Event # 2 was the arrival of River Road II - the second volume of the cookbook of the Junior League of Baton Rouge. This is important because it contains one of the supposedly definitive recipes for Red Velvet Cake. (I shall have more to say on that subject, one of these days....) So important that I feel a bit guilty for lumping it in, photographically, with Event # 3. Event # 3 took place in Gilgo. Event # 3 was the discovery of something I had never before seen, didn't know my mother had. It turned up at the bottom of a pile of things on a shelf and was an astonishment to all present. I don't know enough about the history of the Time-Life Cooking series to be certain (I have most of 'em, but I still can't tell for sure), but I wonder whether this might not have been their forerunner. It dates from 1958, the year after I was born, and it's like them in many ways, but bigger, thicker, more ostentatious, more technicolor, more encyclopedic. (America's answer to the Larousse Gastronomique, almost.) And instead of the little spiral-bound recipe books comes this fabulous thing which is nothing more or less than hundreds and hundreds of pre-perforated index file cards with duplicates of all the recipes (the salmon-colored protruberance at the right is some of the alphabetized dividers, which have come loose over the years). There is an explanation on the inside cover, ending with the discreet remark, "if you prefer some other method of organization, you can always write on the backs of the index cards." Just look at the '50s opulence of the thing: It's so... so innocent. So sincere. In a way, it reminds me of the diner.

I make my own, and I love it - in fact, I have to admit it is my favorite by a pretty long chalk. It does have a lot of bite, but I guess that's one of the things I like about it. OTOH, when I want something milder and smoother and more refined... well, guess what - it seems The Boy can teach me a thing or two. When I started spending a lot of time up at his house in CT, the first thing I did (of course) was stock his pantry with some of the stuff I like to have around when I cook; and before anything else this meant ingredients for a good vinaigrette. Colman's Dry Mustard; Tellicherry Pepper; a piece of my vinegar mother, and instructions on its care and feeding. (He already had good olive oil, I'll say that for him. ) Next thing I know, we've created a monster: in no time at all, it seems, he had that mother multiplying like crazy in a huge jar containing about a gallon of first-class red wine vinegar, and he was hunting up decorative bottles for Christmas presents. Enterprising fellow. Anyway, one day he came up to me with two liqueur glasses, in each of which was a small amount of ruby/amber liquid. "Taste," said he. I tasted. One was a very, very good vinegar. The other was the smoothest, most delicate vinegar I'd ever tasted. And it turned out that the first was some fancy-schmancy brand that someone had given him, but the second was our own vinegar from the mother, which he had then triple-filtered. I'm no chemist, so I don't know exactly what effect the filtering had (other than to eliminate the visible particles of mother) - and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the taste was at least partly attributable to his having fed it with better-quality dregs than I usually give mine - but that vinegar was so good, and it went down so smooth, I finished the glass, neat. This mother has been going for about 30 years in my family. I don't know where we got it originally - Sylvia Weinstock, maybe? - but it's never failed me. We had a white one going too, but that was feeble by comparison and I'm afraid I finally let it die out, since the red was the one I really used. And used and used and used and used. And still use.

Two eggs. They were a little shy, so they tried to hide behind the bowl of snow-peas - that's probably why you didn't notice them in the second picture. I think the knife is a lot like the one Anna N wrote about in the Cheap Nasty Asian Knife thread - no? IAC, this is what it made me think of. Much more useful and maneuverable, for light cutting like vegetables, than my two big steel Chinese cleavers. And yet it's done all the time. It irritates me so much that I have made a point, in at least two recipes I can think of, of writing "... and do not throw the [whatever] away!..." In our second attempt at Warden Pie, we poached the pears whole in a vinegared ginger syrup, and when they were done we squabbled over who would get the larger "half" of the piece of ginger - it was so good! So of course that went into the instructions for the recipe. "Remove the ginger. Eat it. It is delicious." Because you know that most people would just throw it away without even thinking about it if it isn't actually a component of the finished dish. I think the next time I find myself writing such a recipe I will say something like: "this is too good to share with your guests, no matter how much you may like them; keep it for yourself and enjoy every bite - haven't you earned it?"

Beets. Then and now, beets. I learned to love zucchini and I learned to love string beans (though "love" seems in both cases a pretty feeble term for the way I feel about them now). But not beets. I also hated halvah. Then one day when I was in high school a dear friend persuaded me to try it again... and you know, it wasn't bad, and I ate a good-sized hunk of it. Unfortunately this was less than an hour before my rent-a-brother gave us the great treat of taking us up in his small airplane. ... ... And so much for my short-lived tolerance of halvah.

Kitchen Sink Fried Rice is simplicity itself. As its name (which I think I must have stolen from Kitchen Sink Soup... not to be confused with Cream of Refrigerator Soup, which of course is quite a different thing) implies, it includes a little of everything - that is, everything I happen to feel like putting in. This always includes pork, and when possible it always includes shrimp. Tonight it also includes: onion, celery, cabbage, snow-peas, un-snow-peas, water chestnuts, and whatever sprouts the Fruitery happened to have. And eggs, of course, and ginger. Also some sherry. And soy sauce. I think that's it. And, oh yeah... rice. This is where the infamous antediluvian cooktop stands me in good stead: one of the burners is improperly adjusted, and produces a much higher and more powerful flame than it is supposed to. Every man who has entered my orbit in the past 14 years has kindly offered to fix it for me; to every one of them I have said the same thing: "what are you, CRAZY?!" Not that it quite measures up to those fabulous conflagrations they have to work with in Chinese restaurants - but it's at least a closer approximation than I've been able to squeeze out of any other stove. Out comes the trusty wok (I have two or three of them - four if you count the one downstairs in the bunker - five if you count the leetle one - but this one is my favorite, mostly because of the handle), and the assembly line begins. First, the ginger. Then, the onion, celery, and cabbage... and when those are almost done they are joined, briefly briefly, by the snow-peas and sprouts. Next, the pork. It was already fully cooked, of course (a bit too fully, actually - sorry, Mr. Boy ), but it'll look and feel and taste happier when it's browned. Even I am not quite They-Call-Me-Chief enough to photograph the frying of the rice and the addition of the eggs - though for the record I should like to announce that for the first time in my life I got the eggs exactly right. Anyway, once that's done, the Kitchen Sink gets dumped back in! It all gets smooshed around together and flavored up with sherry and soy, and it spends a short time covered, over a low fire, to make sure everybody is heated through, and then... ... it gets et.

Was it Tuesday that I was BAD? Must have been. And Wednesday was the day of the Microwave Misadventure. Also on Wednesday, BTW, I made a small Expotition downstairs to the bunker where I hoard all my hedges against obsolescence. Here, for instance, are my extra MiniChops! One NIB, one Nw/oB, and one spare bowl/blade, also new. And here is my spare Mixmaster; identical to the one I actually use - if a bit grubbier. I keep the beaters upstairs - if I'm in a hurry and making several different things, it's often much more convenient to switch to a second set than to wash the first - but the rest of it lives down here for spare parts... Just In Case. Somewhere around here I also have a duplicate of my Singer Featherlight sewing machine. Hey, don't look at me like that! What am I supposed to do? I go to garage sales and I see these things for $5 or $10 (a mere $3, in the case of the MiniChops!), and I should, what, ignore them and walk away? Who else appreciates or needs them as I do? Well, OK - you guys, a lot of you. But you're not here, and I am, and I have room for them, and there's nothing wrong with having an extra... or two... or three... of anything you love and may never find again. So there. Blessings on that Boy and his leftovers! Thanks to him I eat a nice substantial lunch. Also thanks to him, we come to a decision about dinner: there's definitely enough pork to do Kitchen Sink Fried Rice tonight. (And those potatoes will be sure to come in handy for... something.... )

Now I'm starting to work up some momentum... now that it's almost too late. Here, then, is Monday. Lunch should be hauntingly familiar: Sunday night's leftovers. If I'd been The Boy I would have warmed these up - but I'm not The Boy. I can never decide whether I like them better warmed or cold... and greed and impatience tend to be the deciding factor! BTW, a cold or lukewarm Kotletki makes a marvelous sandwich. Plain. On good rye bread. Also BTW... back in the days when I was occasionally practical and efficient... I would sometimes make up a BI-I-I-I-IG batch of Kotletkii, but only cook 4-8 of them. I would put the tray in the freezer, then take it out when the raw Kotletkii were nicely flash-frozen, and decant them into a ziploc bag. They keep in the freezer for ages and ages and defrost really well; take out two, put 'em in the microwave for maybe half a minute, and they're ready to fry. Convenience food! Not very long after lunch, into town I go for the Toscanini event. There's a reception afterward, but by the time we're done with schmoozing and catching up (only one member of the orchestra is actually there, but there are also several of the singers and several generations of descendants and a lot of relatives and associates) and negotiating the narrow aisles of the tiny hall - well, I never really even find out what there is to eat and drink, though I do snag the last of some particularly wonderful Muscatel grapes. Oh, I've told you that already, haven't I. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, a few of us soon duck out into the rain and make our way up to the Cinema Cafe, where I must say I think we end up doing rather well. We are so caught up in conversation and stories stories stories stories that it takes a while before we can really focus on the menu - meanwhile there are chunks of a rather nice flattish bread, a ciabatta sort of thing, with little dishes of (I think) a mild baba ghanouj-ish dip. I make an absent-minded pig of myself over these.... At last we get our acts together to order. We aren't interested in a complicated meal, but after all our recent discussion of blue-claw crabs I am much attracted by the description of an appetizer of blue-claw crab cakes with remoulade. I ask the adorable Adriana (no, she hasn't volunteered this information, but the place is quiet and she so charming that in the course of the evening we spend a little time drawing her out) about portion sizes and it becomes clear that the appetizer as such won't be sufficient to make a full meal; I am just about to enter into negotiations about expanding the appetizer to a double order or some such, when Adriana directs my attention to an item on the menu that I somehow hadn't noticed: the crab "burger" - clearly a larger version of the same sort of treatment. Sold! So here's the rundown: Byron has the Penne with Chicken and Roasted Garlic Broth; Maria has the Angel Hair Primavera; Herb has the Pizza Margherita; Sylvia and Giuliana split the Pizza con Funghi and a garden salad. I'm afraid I don't remember all the varieties of funghi this pizza actually sported - crimini, shiitake and at least four others. (Truth to tell, I think it's a bit of a waste - the individual flavors of the mushrooms kind of get lost in the shuffle; still, the idea is rather attractive and the pizza is very good, though not the explosion of flavors one might hope from the menu description....) Can you see how incredibly paper-thin those pizza crusts are? Here is my lovely crab burger, accompanied by fries which I have to admit put even those of the Delphi Diner to shame. (Unpeeled, but only at the tips.) It is not, as advertised, on a brioche. Just as well - I don't think a brioche would have suited it at all. The bun is rather ordinary... but I don't care. It's very very good, and exactly what I'm in the mood for. I'm happy. The evening wears on amid story after story after story, and by the time it's reasonable for Adriana to offer us coffee (which we don't want) it is too late to order dessert, the kitchen having closed. Byron looks her in the eye and says "... not even sorbet?" Adriana quickly reconnoiters, and comes back with an offer of mango sorbet. Those of us who were not interested in dessert are suddenly intrigued. Four of us order the sorbet: I gather the presentation is all Adriana's doing. Skilful as well as adorable. (I do, er, hope we gave her a fat tip. Damn, wish I'd taken a picture of her. Maybe I'll just have to go back there some time.... ) And the sorbet itself is delicious.

Yes! I love that story! Sorry, that was naughty of me. "Harold in Italy" is a truly marvelous tone poem by Berlioz, based on Byron's "Childe Harold." Representing the Harold character himself, it features a solo viola so prominently (even more so than Rimsky's "Scheherazade" does its solo violin) that it really ought to be called a viola concerto... but it isn't, it's a tone poem. Which is why it works as a viola joke (if you're into that sort of thing, which I confess I am) but not in "transposition" to any other instrument. Trust me... this gets a good laugh among musicians. (And then she found out that he played... the French HORN!) EDIT to add: and I keep forgetting to tell you, I love your sig. Talk about food porn - his description of Brandy Broth would almost qualify, if it weren't so clean and innocent... but it's still orgasmic to read.

Thank you, yes - very clear. As an admitted fanatic, I would be inclined to add "philosophical" to "artistic," because much of what I admire about Careme has to do with his overt passion and commitment, from which I think there is much to be learned even where the content of his cuisine is less relevant in other ways. But that's just me....

Guess I jinxed myself. Pathmark does have a deal on butter (limit 2 per customer), but Waldbaum's doesn't have coffee on sale. The penalty is paying full retail price - I may as well brace myself and do it. OK, this bugs me. There's always a recipe with the flyers, and very often it's something of interest, something to be saved in the so-many-ideas-so-little-time stack. This week it's by Betty Rosbottom, and I like the look of it and will probably do something like it: portobello mushrooms stuffed with spinach and mozzarella. Nothing unexpected about it; it's all Usual Suspects, and I'd be surprised if I couldn't make it without even reading the recipe. You know it's going to include EVOO and parmesan and garlic and probably some nutmeg, you know it's going to need a last-minute stint in a hot overn or maybe under a broiler.... Yup. I'm batting 1000! So anyway, just out of curiosity, I do read the recipe. Almost exactly what I expected from title and picture. And then I see this: "...remove and discard stems. Scoop out and discard the tough inside centers where stems were attached." Discard? Discard? What's with this Discard? Wha... why? Doesn't she know there are children starving in... yes, well, anyway. I just don't get it. Discard - hmph. Well, I never. Sheesh. Trim off the ends, cut 'em up into leetle dice, saute 'em and add 'em (pureed, maybe, if you insist) to the stuffing. Or use them in something else that cries out for a little mushroomy touch. Don't tell me you don't have a use for portobello stems. I just don't want to hear it. It just bugs me. I don't think it's even stinginess, this time - I think it's more the part of me that cries out in indignant frustration when people don't appreciate the best bits of things, when they throw away chicken skin and offal and pope's noses and fat and all those wonderful dark bits of pan drippings and - oh, you know. The Boy, alas, is like that, but at least he's well-trained now and knows that instead of throwing that stuff away he should give it to me. But I don't think he'll ever learn to buy meat. That pork I used in the fried rice, for instance. Leftover roast loin, somewhat overcooked and perfectly lean. (Sorry, Mr. Boy, if you're reading this, but you know it's true!) Lean lean lean lean lean. Not a trace of fat on it; and not a trace of flavor. Dry. :sigh: They Just Don't Get It, do they.... EDIT to add: If I ever get around to making this - it just cries out for little bits of pancetta. Or even just ordinary bacon. As long as there's something cured and porky and salty and yummy. And maybe a little shallot or some of those Walking Onions from the garden - something like that. Yup, this has potential.