balmagowry

It would be desirable that someone should come up a kind of “Library type gourmet selection”: Old & new classics, great hits, public favorites. But will certainly be objections to this based on subjectivity. Who is going to make or who made the first best duck and peaches? … It should be the work of an historian. .... The reproach I am making is denouncing this chronic French “navel gazing” centralized self-satisfaction around the few with a lack of a global and united view. To date, many books have already been written in an effort to provide an inventory of all the gastronomic riches (dishes) of this country. Escoffier's method being the uniting factor of all this for training purposes (as for young chefs in training for their CAP). But, a very positive note here is that in the great culinary challenges like the “Bocuse d’Or” and all MOF competitions, we see that the creativity factor is vital and the judges are the men from the trade. This is a remnant of corporatism. It could be a good idea to ask an international jury of recognized gastronomes to organize such event. What do you think? Yes; it should indeed be the work of an historian! I think Robert's points are well taken and merit further exploration. What still troubles me, however, in these and subsequent posts about revisiting the cuisine of the past, is that the past appears to consist entirely of Escoffier. Granted that Escoffier's work is (and no doubt should be) the standard on which early culinary training is based; still it seems to me terribly important to recognize that - just as music did not begin with Mozart - the traditions of French cuisine go back more than a paltry century. It might not be feasible to extend such historical forays too far into the past; but to cut off the exploration at the late nineteenth century is to dismiss the important innovations, discoveries and writings of Careme and his contemporaries; the men on whose shoulders Escoffier stood. Is it not enormously important to understand the sources and evolution of his work? The culinary sea-changes that produced the cuisine of Escoffier began with the aftermath of the Terror, and they owe much not only to Careme but to intelligent and eccentric gastronomes like Grimod. Not to mention Brillat-Savarin, who was after all only an inspired amateur. Ignoring all this is merely another kind of navel-gazing, which inevitably results in a loss of perspective. And - this may seem a bit extreme to the culinary purist - IMO it is also relevant to understand something of the social/political changes which affected the approaches to food during that same period. These can't legitimately be dissociated, any more than trends in cuisine can be well understood outside the context of contemporary fashions in art and architecture. Robert's point about Beethoven et al is peculiarly relevant here: Beethoven and Careme were contemporaries, and both were equally influenced by the neo-clacissism of their period. Buildings, hairstyles, dresses, painting, music and pastry all bore its unifying mark: my favorite instance being that Beethoven and Careme both executed pieces entitled "The Ruins of Athens" at about the same time. All right, that's a bit far-fetched for the present discussion, but the point, I think, is that none of these events occurs in a vacuum. Escoffier did not spring full-blown from the void: he had a past as well as a future, a past which he studied and revered. And the key to creating and enjoying the gastronomic golden ages of the present lies at least partly in understanding those of the past. :climbs down from soapbox: [Disclaimer: yes, I am biased by my own special interest in Careme and his contemporaries. Someone has to be! ] EDIT - Esprit d'escalier: a frivolous parallel occurs to me - the frequently-heard remark that "young people always seem to think they invented sex." But their parents and grandparents must also have known a thing or two on the subject....

Critters is fed. Shall resume Sunday's preparations in a minute. First, though, I thought I'd show you this, on the chance that it might alleviate the Gilgo-vs-Gilgo confusion. Or - wait - no, let's do it this way. Here is a link to the Gilgo Heading Tide Table, according to which prime clamming time during the next couple of days will be mid-afternoon, by normal people's standards. No guarantees! If the water is too cold, or I'm too rushed, the clam deal will just have to wait until normal season. Get it? Got it? Good. Anyway, on that page you will also find a Mapquest link which will show you where all this is going on. Of course, the tide is measured at [REAL] Gilgo, not West Gilgo, so that is also where the map coordinates go. But if you look closely you'll see West Gilgo too. And if you zoom out a bit and look Eastward, aye, look Eastward (I have GOT to stop all this obnoxious quoting), you'll see a road that appears to walk on water - yup, that's Robert Moses for ya - but it actually represents the bridge shown in previous post. Sunday night, Part II: Shall you drive in a droshky? Shall you see the Tsar? I'm going to make two traditional Russian dishes: Blinchiki and Kotletkii. I think we've discussed the former somewhere here before, in all its various slavic-nomenclatural permutations... no, maybe that was Golubtsi... but I'm pretty sure I mentioned Blinchiki. As the name suggests, they are a form of blintz, but a highly specialized one. Tonight I'm skipping some of the normal preparation steps because I happen to have some leftover filling in the freezer from the last time I made them (Julia would be proud!); unfortunately this means they'll have to be served without the usual beef bouillon accompaniment - I'll explain further and fill in the blanks as I get there. Otherwise, I seem to have fallen into the habit of this blow-by-blow tutorial format... so you can follow the bouncing ball and cook along with Baba Lisa. Blinchiki first, then Kotletkii. These are sometimes known as Kotletii, or Cutlets, Pojarski; but beware of impostors. There is a recipe circulating on the web for Kotletii Pojarski which is... well, it ain't RIGHT, is all I can tell you. Who or what is right? Got me. But don't believe everything you read. Including this, I guess. Myself, I prefer to trust the real Russian women whom I knew and from whom I am descended. OK, Russia is a big place. And the part of it my people come from is now part of Lithuania anyway. So... let's just say I will show you how you would have made these things if you had been living in Vilna (now Vilnius) a century ago... but had had access to certain American mod cons. Deal? Deal. Anyway, Kotletki has roughly the same etymology as "cutlet" and may well take its name and composition from the heyday of French cookery in Russia. But it's Russian now. (BTW, if you've ever had Chicken Kiev, what you've really had is a Kiev Kotletki - the only type I happen to know that is not made from ground or chopped meat.) The original Kotletkii were made from beef, and that's what we're having tonight; variations can be made with salmon or, greatest luxury of all, chicken. (Greatest luxury because in the old days you couldn't buy ground chicken: you had to either grind it yourself or buy it from an unusually obliging butcher....) But I'm blathering. Let me get started - it's easier to show than to tell. (Caucasian Sketches on the radio. How appropriate. I love all those hyphenated composers. ) First order of priority: make the batter for the blinchiki, so it can rest and chill while I prepare the other things. My mother's scribbled recipe is an adaptation from a Dione Lucas crepe. At the frying stage she says in her notes "don't bother to cook other side." Little did she or I know - until I learned it here on eGullet! - that this isn't about not bothering; indeed it is the very definition of the distinction between a blintz and a crepe. Flour, milk, eggs (one whole and a yolk), oil. What a dingbat I am, not to have taken a picture of the kitchen itself. I have some, though, and can take more in the next day or two. Whisk it all together, thinning with extra milk until the consistency is right. OK, it's right. Put in fridge and start the kotletkii. Here's a kotletkii bowl and chopper. The bowl is just a plain wooden bowl. The chopper - I don't know what else these are ever used for. I don't like that little slit in the middle, nor do I have any idea what it's for. There is a plain chopper somewhere here, but I don't remember where it lives until it's too late. Bummer. Oh well, that should be the worst. Kotletkii are one of three applications that justify, IMO, the existence of el-cheapo Wonder-style cotton white bread. The ratio is eight slices to the pound of meat - we have an extra quarter-pound, so I'm using 10 slices. You cut off the crusts (application #2: dry out the crusts and make bread crumbs out of them). Then you soak each slice in water, squeeze it out mejumishly, and put it in the bowl with the meat. Ah - I see I've already put in the egg. Normal ratio: one egg to two pounds meat. So half an egg to a pound, which always annoys me (and which is why I almost always make at least two pounds' worth). Spose I could be virtuous and creative and use the extra white from the Blinchiki, but the hell with that. After all, there's an extra 1/4-pound of meat here. If I use a whole egg that will be exactly 3/8 more egg than it oughta be, and that is exactly the kind of precision I prefer to eschew. It ain't gonna make them that much heavier! I put in the whole damn egg. After all the bread has been soaked and squoze and put in, season with S&P. (BTW, if you were making salmon kotletkii, at this point you would add some bits of sauteed onion; if it were chicken, you'd have soaked the bread in chicken broth instead of water, and then you'd add chopped parsley at this stage.) Then sit down and start chopping. Kotletkii must always be chopped by hand. It is almost the only process I can think of for which there can be no satisfactory mechanized equivalent. In the spirit of scientific experimentation I have tried it with grinders and food-processors and blenders, and I have proved to my entire satisfaction that chopping by machine always produces a gooey, gummy, unpleasant and ultimately tough texture. Besides, it's such an... Old-Country thing to do.... So I chop them by hand, and glad to do it. It shouldn't be a perfectly homogeneous amalgam... but it should be pretty well-mixed. Very important, perhaps even more so than with hamburger: the meat MUST NOT BE TOO LEAN! This is 80%, I think, and it has done exactly what it ought to do: left a thickish film of soft fat on the blade of the chopper. Good. This is precious stuff. Now use the chopper blade to divide the mixture into equal portions, generally eight per pound of meat. (Again, in this case it's 10, because of that extra 1/4 pound.) With wet hands, scoop up a lump and form it into a rough ball. Poke a deep dimple into the center of the ball. Then take a little of the fat from the chopper, poke it into the dimple, and shove the edges back together, enclosing the fat in the middle of the ball. (Note - this doesn't apply to the salmon or chicken versions, though you can do something similar for the chicken ones with a little dab of butter.) Pat it into a more elongated shape, put it into a pile of breadcrumbs, bread it all over. Then press it flat, lay it on a tray covered with wax paper, and lather/rinse/repeat with the rest of the mixture. If I were making more than would fit on the tray, I'd put another sheet of wax paper over these and start a new layer on top of them. Ooof! Real-time: I was going to post more of this tonight, but though it's only 2:40 AM I'm tired. Tomorrow I have to get up at a normal person's time (7:30 AM! the middle of the night!) because Phyllis is coming to clean. So I'll get an early start to the sequel then - I promise. Title of Sequel: Those Magnificent Foods In Their Frying Machines

OK, here's some Sunday. (Color balance... inconsistent... sorry... 'nuff said, for now. :sigh:) Did I mention that I seem to have eaten a pear at some point? Well, I must have done. Can't imagine why else I'd have bothered to photograph it. Sunday Evening, Part I: In Which Piglet Is Completely Surrounded By Water [You may remember that I posted, retroactively, a daylight image of the diner we went to on Friday night. I actually stopped to take that picture on my way over to Gilgo to make dinner on Sunday night.] So - it's now Sunday evening. I'm on my way to Gilgo. For some reason I'm in the mood to do something Russian - go back to my roots and cook some of the dishes I learned from my mother, who learned them from hers, who learned them from hers. And so on. Fortunately I happen to have some mushrooms that need to be us... eek! no! I don't! I already used them last night! One quick stop at the Fruitery to grab MUSHROOMS, then, and a couple of other things. But - how can they possibly be out of mushrooms? Oh. Right. It's Sunday night, isn't it. They're probably out of lots of things. And they close early. They're about to do so. NOW. Fine, then, I'll take what I can get. Three or four portobello mushrooms will certainly suffice! Small thing of sour cream. Bunch broccoli rabe. And go, dog, go! (Literally. Luke is waiting in the car. I don't like to leave him there!) We're off. On the way to Gilgo it occurs to me that maybe I can give you some idea what the area looks like. Kids, do not try this at home: setting the camera on Auto (Auto!!!! ha, sometimes I'll keel myself leffing!) I start shooting from the hip, or rather the steering wheel. I SWEAR I do not take my eyes off the road for more than a half-second. Honest. Not surprisingly... not many of the pictures are any good. At any rate, here's a glimpse. Southbound from West Islip on the Robert Moses Causeway, toward the Robert Moses Bridge. On the bridge itself, over the Great South Bay. Those arches over the middle span... in summer I sail under those. Done it once by moonlight. (Go ahead, hate me now - if you didn't already, what on earth have you been waiting for?) Past the arches and headed back down. The land ahead, such as it is, is the northernmost edge of the barrier beach itself. Headed west along Ocean Parkway. Can't get ocean pictures from here due to the blessed dunes, but can and do get one reasonable shot to my right: I realize all this is getting to be awfully Uncle-Ted-coming-round-the-side-of-the-house, but there is method, of a sort, in my madness. The point, such as it is, of this picture and the previous one is to illustrate one of the salient features of the salt marsh: in case you hadn't noticed... it's FLAT! Making the turn into Gilgo itself. (I really should be more careful about calling it Gilgo, which isn't really its name, lest you confuse it with the other place a half-mile away which is named Gilgo... but West Gilgo Beach is such a mouthful, don't you know. So Gilgo it is. If I ever have reason to refer to the other Gilgo I will specify. Confused yet?) The gatehouse. Bloody elitist snobs! Sorry, but that's us, all right. [Real-time pause to feed the animals their supper. Then I'll come back and do Part II.)

No almost about it, keedoh - that much I can vouch for. Oh ma-a-a-an, am I going to have to cop to being a mensch after all? How embarrassing would that be? Sheesh. Nope. Or as Mrs. Yifnif would say... Nup! I love Nize Baby. The cartoons have more than a hint of George Herriman about them... but it's the stories that are priceless. Speaking of which, of course there's a story connected with this. But I'm not gonna tell it right now, or we'll never get to the first course for Sunday.

Either someone beat you to it or you've been very naughty.... publishing elsewhere under a psuedonym and not letting us in on the details (Lisa... couldn't you come up with a better alias than "Doc Love"?). Not to mention that I already have dibs on the name. I give you..... The System But who needs such trickery like that when food can be the fuel that drives the engine of seduction (did you really think I did all that blog work just because I like to cook and eat well?) Dang - looks like I'm going to have to come up with a more original name for it. The pity of it is that calling it The System was a lot more interesting and original than it sounds (like calling someone much prettier than she looks, perhaps?) - it was based on one of the tag lines from Milt Gross's Nize Baby, wherein whenever someone comes up with an idea that works brilliantly for him he is apt to exclaim, "is diss a system!" Oh well. Oh, no doubt about it, I have been rather naughty on occasion - and if I ever do publish a self-help best-seller you may be quite certain I will indeed do it under a pseudonym! - but... er... I do assure you it will not be that best-seller or that pseudonym. <-- me, doing all those press interviews incognita....

i'm sorry, but this is COMPLETELY unacceptable! Couldn't agree more, me boyo - it's driving me nuts!

Isn't it funny how the more determined I get to catch up, the farther behind I get? Here it is Thursday, and I'm just getting started on Sunday's pictures. Sigh. Well, at any rate, here's Sunday's lunch, which will have to hold you until I'm ready to post dinner. (And there's a lot of dinner.) Sandwiches from Saturday night's leftovers: skirt steak, sliced and warmed up a bit; on toasted Portuguese bread, buttered; with lettuce, S&P. I appreciate fancy stuff as much as the next gastronome, but oh how I love good simple food. These sandwiches were almost achingly good. I must apologize for the problems with color balance. I know, for instance, that this picture is way too red - it must be; but I can't see it, owing to my monitor still being wacko. We re-calibrated it, but it still displays things a little dark and a little blue; I think it's gotten worse; I'm afraid there's nothing for it but to get a new monitor. The thing is, I know my flash adds slightly more of a blue cast than it should, and conversely that most of my indoor shots taken with available light come out a little too warm, but at the moment I have to guess at how much to compensate. This is one of many reasons I'm keeping the images off-site - I'm hoping one day to get a chance to adjust the worst of the pictures retroactively. Meanwhile, bear with me. [EDIT an hour later to add: Have now changed it, and I think this is a lot better - will check on other machine.] Quick rundown on today. You saw what happened when I went to get my coffee. (Boy says: yes, I did try to clean off the bottom but couldn't get that stuff to come off. You did what? Wet it? Aren't you clever!) After that - I fed myself brunch, sort of, I guess: nice hunk of toasted Portuguese bread, buttered. Red grapes. Oh, and who was it said I needed more snacks? Toliver? Not to worry. Today I used the high vantage point gained during my microwave-cleaning activities to spot in its hiding place a partial bag of... POTATO CHIPS! Huzzah! Immediately snarfed them. Then for my sins, ran off to Pilates class. Not really for my sins - I love the class, always look forward to it; and the teacher is a friend, even though she's (gasp) a vegan. I can't easily cook for her, but I can teach her stuff about gardening, so there's enough common ground to be getting on with. The ultra-observant may have wondered why I'm posting now when I'm supposed to be at Grand Szechuan; alack, I PM'd Stone this afternoon that I would have to cancel. Logistics; complicated; having to do mostly with the comings and goings of The Boy, and various work-related stuff too dreary to contemplate. Instead, Wednesday's leftover fried rice (there was quite a lot) will warmly furnish forth the Thursday table - and maybe I'll get it together to make the dessert I blew off last night. I bet The Boy could be persuaded to go out and get some heavy cream....

Oooh! Ooooooh! I have a story! I have a story! :jumps up and down, waving frantically: I have a story all about this, and I've just been telling it over on my foodblog: Water to Cover

Thank you! (OMG, was that the winter you found L&SD in the library? If so - I'm honored.) A few months ago I went to sit shiva with a very dear friend whose sister (one of the 16) had died after a long and draining illness. He told us that on the day she died the whole family was sitting around the dinner table doing the kind of perpetual figuring-stuff-out that people inevitably have to do when something like that is happening. The phone rang. The sister's daughter went to answer it. They could all hear her end of the conversation. "Oh, hi. Thanks. Yeah... no, actually, she's been better; she's not doing so great at all; in fact... she's dead." By the time she came back into the room the matter-of-fact absurdity of that bit of dialogue had hit them all, and they all burst into big belly laughter. Funny (heh heh) how something like that will dissipate tension. Surreal? So what! Life is. Hey - full disclosure, warts and all. I trust it will be clear that the only reason I set that section aside as such is so that those who Don't Want to Go There (if any such there be) could avoid having it inflicted on them.

Hokay, kiddlies, gather round; the sun is over the yardarm, and it's story time. Nize baby, itt anodder spoon oatmill, and Momma'll gonna tall you a sturry from de tcheeken what flooded. This is related to, and triggered by, the Absurdly Stupidly Simple Questions thread, but it also connects to the testing kitchen in a way - so I'll tell it here and link to it there. Wance oppona time.... Anyway, when you've been in my family even a tenth as long as I have (literally: ask The Boy and he'll corroborate), one of the things you'll have heard a lot of are childhood stories about Cookie (my mother) and her naughty brother Blair. Blair, three years Cookie's senior, was the leader in everything, and where he led, the adoring Cookie followed, whether the adventure at hand was within the scope of her abilities or not. One day when Blair was about 12 and Cookie about 9, Blair decided that they had to run away from home. Actually, they were running from home to home. Home was on the Upper West Side in NYC; country house was in Ridgefield, CT. If memory serves, on this occasion Blair felt hard done by because the family was staying in town for Thanksgiving instead of going to Ridgefield, so he decided that he and Cookie were going to spend their Thanksgiving in Ridgefield anyway. It's a little unclear to me how they managed this, but somehow they got themselves on and off a train and as far as the village. The house was on a dirt road some 10 miles outside Ridgefield itself, but fortunately they met up with a neighbor who offered them a ride. On the way Cookie mentioned that Blair had a cold and that she wanted to make him some chicken soup. On finding that she had nothing but good-will to work with, the accommodating neighbor proceeded to lend them a chicken, a package of frozen vegetables, and some instruction: Put these in a pot with water to cover, bring to a boil, simmer a couple of hours, and you'll have soup. Blair and Cookie let themselves into the house and Cookie went straight to the kitchen, where she took the biggest pot she could find and proceeded to follow orders. Chicken in pot; check. Vegetables in pot; check. Water to cover; not so easy. No matter how much water she put in, it didn't seem to be enough to cover that chicken. You never saw such a chicken - it kept floating to the top. The more water she put in, the higher floated that chicken. She kept adding water; the chicken kept floating. Finally the pot was almost full, and the chicken still wasn't covered. Not knowing what else to do, she lit a fire under it and waited for it to come to the boil. It took a long, long time. And then there were the couple hours' simmering. All in all, it was pretty late before the two of them sat down to the wateriest chicken soup either of them had ever had. I think it was in the morning that their parents arrived, on wings of fear and fury. (NB I believe the neighbor had contacted and reassured them the previous afternoon, so the fury had by now had ample opportunity to trump the fear.) Dire consequences flashed from their every feature as they confronted their idiot offspring. Chotzie (my grandfather) took Blair aside and no doubt proceeded to apply his best arguments where they would do most good; Cookie meanwhile led Pauline into the kitchen, there to attempt an explanation. My grandmother, to her eternal credit, took one look at that poor little chicken floating atop all those GALLONS of watery broth, and simply dissolved into howls of laughter, all anger forgotten in the ludicrousness of the spectacle. Chotzie too saw the joke, of course. Being a man of principle, however, he reluctantly insisted that it was still necessary to administer some memorable punishment. I don't know what Blair's punishment was - he was so perpetually in trouble that it seems to have melded into the greater mass of remembered injustices. Cookie, however, who always fell for his bright ideas and always took the consequences, was deprived of her opera privileges for the following week. I must explain that my grandfather, being a music critic, had press passes for every important musical event in town; and Saturday matinees at the Met were Cookie's special perq in those days, especially since the evening performances all started after her bedtime. So she missed seeing "Norma" - then and until the end of her life. Never saw it. Not ever. Meanwhile, cut to some 57 years later. Cookie and I have just published L&SD and are on a tour of signings/tastings which will take us to Chicago, among other places, there to meet for the first time several O'Brian fans who have already become dear friends via - what else? - the Internet; in this case the O'Brian listserv. We are staying with one of them and he is throwing a sort of period pot-luck party in our honor - we, of course, are making the eponymous Spotted Dog and the rosewater-perfumed Creme Anglaise which is its inevitable accompaniment. One of the guests, a most distinguished lawyer in his 60s, arrives with a highly impressive Plum Duff - the more impressive in that he is not an experienced cook and has boldly made the attempt after one reading of L&SD, probably the first cookbook he has ever even opened. Later in the evening, he takes me discreetly aside, and somewhat diffidently tells me that he thinks there is a small mistake in our recipe. "I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but thought you might want to know about it for future editions. You said 'water to cover,'" he says, "and I guess maybe by the time you wrote the recipe down you didn't remember from your testing that water doesn't cover it... because it floats." By this point, of course, all of poor dear John's discretion and delicacy have gone right out the window because, like my grandmother before me, I am simply HOWLING with helpless laughter. It is a long time before I can control it enough even to let my mother in on the joke; of course all I have to say is "water to cover" and the howling starts again, both of us this time. At last we pull ourselves together enough to tell the assembled multitude the story of the chicken and "Norma." More howling ensues. Loudest howling of all from John - at himself. As if he could have been expected to be familiar with such a term! And that is how "water to cover" became a favorite standing joke in our circles. Ooooh such a dollink baby, et up all de oatmill!

This.... is a plan that really works. It may be a cliche but "keep it simple" has been saving my butt for awhile now.... You think that works - wait'll I tell you about The System. I've refined and formalized it down to an art form(ula) - thinking maybe I should hold off on this food-writing racket until after I throw together a best-selling self-help book.

Oh, it's happening everywhere, all right. And what I just can't get over is that no one seems to be making the cause-and-effect connection: one of the main reasons it's happening is that the government shut down Monsanto's production of synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone because of irregularities in the labs. Meanwhile, after the dairy industry at large discovered it could double their output they promptly killed off half their cows - cheaper, don't you know - thus becoming entirely dependent on the stuff. So now that it isn't available - demand up, supply down. You'd think someone would have done the math.

I think I explained all this toward the beginning, but in case I didn't (I'm ADD myself, so sympathize with anyone else who acknowledges same even if in jest), Gilgo is short for West Gilgo Beach, the place on the barrier beach of Long Island where my family's Ancestral Cottage stands. Though, weirdly, it is in fact mine now, I haven't yet kicked my father out of it (joke, Daddy, if you're reading this, funny ha ha!), so I don't live there, but across the bay in Babylon. My paring knife lives with me, but its twin still graces the kitchen in Gilgo, where I often use it. As for "the main one" - thank you for reminding me that I've been meaning to talk about this, though I don't have time right at this moment; the short version is that Gilgo, being some 20 minutes' drive from the nearest store, is a place where auxiliary freezers and refrigerators are as common as... as... oh damn, why can't I think of a stupid simile? Because I'm in a hurry, that's why. Anyway, in our house there we have one fridge in the kitchen (the "main one") and two more belowdecks in the basement, plus a big freezer. More later on that subject, and water to cover, and stocking up for living in a remote area. Gotta fly -

Why, no, Mongo dear, what makes you think that? it's just a walk in the park, la-di-da, dum-de-dum-dum, the merest little bagatelle, could do half a dozen of 'em before breakfast... RIGHT, FELLOW BLOGGERS? EDIT to add: Piece of cake. EDIT AGAIN to add: Nothin' to it. EDIT YET AGAIN to add: Convinced yet? Be very careful, Mongo. I do believe B is thinking about where she should pass the Blogger Torch. that would be a silly mistake indeed, and one our current blogger is too smart to make. Thank you, Mongo... I think. Seriously, though, no matter whom I may have in my sights for the next stint, I'm sure you can understand that I might not want to scare them away. How well I remember the barrage of I-Feel-Sorry-For-The-Next-Blogger during the latter stages of Lucy's blog...!

OMG, Magnalite is back!!!! Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! I don't know when I've heard better news! Actually, I already own most of the pieces from the original collection - and in duplicate, counting my mother's - but I may just have to get the omelette pan, and I've always lusted after the BIG stock pot. And who knew they made anything non-stick? (Well, Suzanne did, obviously, but who else? I didn't.) Maybe there's hope for the world after all.

I deduce then that the conference was in either Baltimore or London. Which?

Why, no, Mongo dear, what makes you think that? it's just a walk in the park, la-di-da, dum-de-dum-dum, the merest little bagatelle, could do half a dozen of 'em before breakfast... RIGHT, FELLOW BLOGGERS? EDIT to add: Piece of cake. EDIT AGAIN to add: Nothin' to it. EDIT YET AGAIN to add: Convinced yet? Be very careful, Mongo. I do believe B is thinking about where she should pass the Blogger Torch. Why, my dear Lady T, what ever could have given you such an idea? BTW, though, I may as well mention now: after some discussion with the Powers that Be, we are going to fudge the transition into the next blog over the weekend, so as to get the whole business back on its normal schedule; the next vict... uh, blogger will take over on Sunday. Ulterior motive in suggesting it, me? Absolutely - it's the only way I stand a chance of catching up with the back-blog of stuff I still need to post!

Thank you. But, um, isn't that how it's supposed to be? Early on I felt bad that I hadn't read all the other blogs, but now I'm starting to think it's a good thing to have come to this one with so few pre-conceived notions. Lucy's - one hell of an act to follow - is still the only one I've actually read, and though I can't match its lyricism I can't do less than emulate its honesty and openness. I just assumed that the blog was supposed to reflect one's real food-life, warts and all. And real life for most of us often centers around creative use of leftovers, doesn't it? Even at that, this blog makes my cooking life look more organized than it's been lately. I used to cook this often, and I hope to get back to that, but it hasn't been my typical pattern for the past - oh, couple of years, I'd have to say. Why? Well, this goes back to the generally chaotic quality of my life, as discussed in my introductory post. I said I'd say more about that, and this seems to be a natural segue into it, so here goes. Not just real food and real kitchen (though mind you, I am in fact doing some editing, and not showing you the worst horrors there...) - real person, too. <possibly embarrassing personal stuff> An incredible amount of upheaval. I've already posted about my mother's death, and that of course is the biggie; that, and its many aftermaths, and the many months of hope and fear and exertion leading up to it. And the subsequent utter denial which still frequently - emphatically - surfaces in my dreams. But there's also been a lot of insult added to that injury. A long string of deaths, starting with a cousin a couple of years earlier; then a close dear friend, only a few months before my mother; then, beginning only three weeks later, a bewildering and relentless succession of relatives, friends, pivotal acquaintances, dear animals. I counted 'em up recently: not including the cousin mentioned above, the tally comes to 15 in the past two years. Wait - make that 16 - another old friend died last month. Add to all that my divorce (a supremely Good Thing in itself, but both it and the 15-year marriage it terminated left considerable trauma in their wake), some health problems, and various professional contretemps - not in my writing world, I hasten to add, but in the ones I am doing my best to put behind me - bear in mind also that before this run of crappiness began I was in many ways on top of the world, more so than I'd ever been before; and what do you get? A mess, that's what. Not to put too fine a point on it, I've been depressed. Clinically, I mean, but clearly not in a vacuum either: it ain't exactly a coincidence. And at a certain point I ran out of steam for playing the hero for everyone else, and then it all went kaflooey. The worst of that is long past, but it turns out that coming back to life is also a messy, hairy, and unpredictable process. All in all, a lot of stuff has been allowed to go to hell. And now I'm having to clean it up, and it's taking time. And ertia, which I don't have a lot of. Yet. So anyway. Here I am. Living with The Boy is in itself a factor, because The Boy is a chaotic system - he's also naturally nocturnal, always has been. Then for a number of reasons I stopped commuting, which I had been doing about three days a week - and that sent any vestige of structure out the window. (And children NEED structure, rules, boundaries... right?) Of course one of the well-known aspects of depression is sleep-dep, or at any rate erratic sleep patterns. So you can see where under the circumstances any semblance of normalcy in my schedule and habits just didn't stand a chance! Get through the day, get through the week. Meet the essential deadlines (IRS, mortgage, etc.). Eat some. Sleep some. Don't be so hard on yourself. Don't expect too much. Do what's achievable and congratulate yourself for it. It finally got kind of twelve-steppish: one day, and one miracle, at a time. Prime directive: retain sense of humor. So there you have it: for the past year or two I haven't been cooking every day and baking every week! </possibly embarrassing personal stuff> Don't I know it! I haven't had the excuse to select a new fridge yet, but mine has exactly that problem (and it occurs to me that the main one in Gilgo doesn't). There is one drawer I try not to open too often. IOW, at all, if I can help it....

Cool! I'm so glad. (As the wolf moves 1/4" farther from the door....) I do hope you enjoy it. Ah - another wonderful straight-man! Actually, as I may have confessed before, when I started this blog I foolishly thought I'd be spending most of the week telling such tales - whereas it turns out I'll barely have time to churn out my real-time experiences. Well, as JohnnyD says, there's a certain amount of stuff on the Norton web page; before I do a real production on the subject here I will have to go back and look at what's there. For a while there we were doing a sort of Illustrated Recipe of the Month thing as a pre-publication teaser, and I think those are all still up. Of course I've promised you Floating Archipelago, and Floating Archipelago you shall have - but it may have to wait and become a separate thread, post-blog. I'd also love to do a spread on Raising a Coffin, as this is something of a lost art. Most godawful/disastrous? Well, those things come under several different categories and in several distinct shades of disastrous. At the mild end of the spectrum would be our first attempt at Warden Pie, in which, as Lord Peter would put it, we committed the fatal error of theorizing ahead of our data. A very mild error, as the result was perfectly delicious - the only problem, as we realized once we'd researched it more thoroughly, was that it was quite inauthentic. Disgusting: well, Boiled Shit, to begin with. That was the one thing we couldn't bring ourselves even to taste, not even in the name of research. I was determined to, but once we'd made it (and we did make it!) the smell was so much worse than I expected that I just had to back down. A close second, in the preparation: Haggis. My oft-repeated wisdom on that subject: those who have made haggis will never willingly eat it; those who willingly eat it have obviously never made it. Now I realize there's a whole culture and history out there ready to prove me wrong; don't these people recognize an epigram when they see one? The point is, the sights and sounds and smells of haggis in progress are as disturbingly fascinating as they are revolting. I'm glad I did it - once. Took me three days to fumigate the house afterward. There were the Little Balls of Tripe - sorry, but tripe just does not do it for me. Then there's the cultural leap of faith involved in making Millers in Onion Sauce. Millers, for the uninitiated, is a period nautical term for rats. Can't call that a disaster, though - it had its surreal moments, but it was a big success. There was one raised pie where we tried to vary the pastry formula - can't remember exactly how or why (though I'm sure I have detailed notes in the file) - and the whole thing simply melted down and collapsed in the oven. Damn, I hate wasting stuff. But on that occasion I was awfully glad that for insurance's sake we baked our pies with a paella pan or a roasting pan under them instead of just placing them on a baking sheet. At least we didn't commit mayhem on my oven! There was the Digesting Machine Disaster. There was the unutterable (and vocabulary-enhancing) B-movie effect of the pulsating Sago Pudding in the toilet. Anyone remember "Donovan's Brain"? There was the Haunting Tale of the Black and White Puddings. There was that pig's skull. Stories... yeah, I've got a few.

Good morning. Oh that Boy - sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Quite often I do both. Last night, as usual, somehow it got to be well after 3:00 AM before I really, actually crashed. The Boy had said "you go ahead up - I'll clean up here" and of course I was delighted to comply. But I know that The Boy can be even more absent-minded than I when he gets caught up in something or distracted - or when he's in a hurry, as frequently occurs because he's been absent-minded or caught up in something or distracted. So I actually reminded him of his offer, and I could tell from the answering grunt that he'd forgotten all about it. Of course he said he'd do it. Of course I figured it was a toss-up at best. He had to leave early this morning for an appointment in town (early, by our standards, being in this case something like 10:30ish), so he was gone by the time I dragged myself forth to "do the ozone act for Lovey" and deal with other critter matters. Coming into the kitchen then for my coffee, I had to gasp. As good as or better than his word, he really had cleaned the place to within an inch of its life; dishwasher emptied and re-filled, pots washed, ingredients and debris taken care of. He sometimes does this sort of job in such a narrow-focused and compartmentalized way that he will make the counters into a sea of shining perfection and simply not notice the greasy pots on the stove. (There's another quotation lurking in my brain for this, something from L.P. Hartley, but I'll have to look it up to get it right.) Not this time. I am so delighted that I don't even give a damn that he didn't take out the garbage. Luke hasn't had a chance to get near it yet, so no harm done. Then I go to the newly pristine microwave to heat up my milk. "What's... that... SMELL," I don't have to ask, because this time I know. Stop microwave. Take out milk. Get step-stool, knowing full well that this must be the one "step" The Boy didn't take when he cleaned it out yesterday. Sure enough: See, even if you're taller than I am, you can't see the floor of the microwave if you're standing on the floor of the kitchen. Of course, you could logically assume that yesterday's episode would leave a trace like this, but you know that The Boy got distracted by something and therefore took what he saw at face value. Out of sight, out of mind. There are times - like when it gets in my way and I'm in a hurry - when I find this incredibly frustrating. Today is not one of those times; today I find it endearing. That is what it is to live with a Mad Scientist. Before anything else I must do my duty by the Gullet; I run upstairs, download last night's pictures (I like to start each day with a clean slate in that respect if no other), come back down and immortalize the spectacle for posterity. The mortal remains of the charred paper towel are of course plastered in place - it will take more than a mere scrubbing to remove them. For starters I wet them down and leave them to stew in their own disgusting juices. I hope I, ahem, remember to attend to them later. By now I want my coffee too much to wait any longer, so I ain't gonna bother getting out a pan to heat the millk. For once, slightly lukewarm milk in my coffee won't do me any harm. I compensate myself with a healthy slug of Coffee Syrup. Whew.

Nah. But I play one on TV.

True enough, and the mess was really not all that bad compared to some I've seen (or made!) - it was only insidiously recidivist. Hmmm. Maybe I need to learn to think more like you. Here I was so busy being relieved it wasn't worse, it never occurred to me to think of it that way. Well, he was ready to run out and replace the microwave immediately - and when it began to look like that wouldn't be necessary he did a damn good job of cleaning it. You know, I really hate to sound like a goody-goody - you've no idea how I hate it! - but the fact is, he's a through-thick-and-thin kind of guy (and believe me, I've put him through a lot of both!); he has salvaged my sanity on more than one occasion, and he already does pretty well by me in the nice-meal-out department. Nope, I can't in conscience say he owes me. Damn. Guess I need to work on my gold-digger schtick.

Well, here's the thing: tonight, I was making Shrimp and Grits with Red-Eye Gravy. The recipe I favor uses Madeira. Decent Marsala is cheaper than decent Madeira -- not to mention that I almost always have some sort of Marsala on hand, and almost never have Madeira. I subbed half sweet Marsala (which was close to hand) and half dry sherry. It was pretty good -- maybe better than when I use Madeira, if the truth be told. But in another situation, do you have any advice? Is the preference always dry for savory dishes? 'Fraid there isn't really a rule, as far as that goes - if it isn't specified, then it's a question of taste. Mine generally tends to run to drier wines for savory dishes; in the case of veal marsala it's not so much a matter of principle as that to my palate a sweet marsala clashes with the veal - there's something jarring about it, almost harsh. I wouldn't dare use sweet marsala with, say, sweetbreads (actually, where sweetbreads are concerned I've been totally spoiled since I discovered that it is still possible to get Malmsey ). But for most dishes I think you can be your own law on this. You just said it yourself: when you used dry sherry and sweet marsala the dish was better than when you use Madeira. Great! so use dry sherry and sweet marsala. In your shoes that's certainly what I'd have tried if I'd needed to approximate the effect of Madeira. And it worked. It ain't broke, don't fix it.

I rarely use Marsala for anything other than Veal Marsala, and for that you want the driest Marsala you can get.

Why, no, Mongo dear, what makes you think that? it's just a walk in the park, la-di-da, dum-de-dum-dum, the merest little bagatelle, could do half a dozen of 'em before breakfast... RIGHT, FELLOW BLOGGERS? EDIT to add: Piece of cake. EDIT AGAIN to add: Nothin' to it. EDIT YET AGAIN to add: Convinced yet?