balmagowry

I suppose orange soda is the only appropriate drink with that kind of matzo ball? Would have thought something by Dr. Brown's more appropriate .... Obviously, my dear, you have never seen the underrated "Joe Versus the Volcano."

Ah - oysters are a different thing entirely. And yes, I'll eat just about any bivalve raw (except for your mutant oversized mya arenarea ). Why is that different? Because when you open the thing you can tell by the smell - or lack thereof - whether it's OK. If it's really bad you'll know by the smell before you get it fully open; and by what you see if you're foolish enough to continue after that point. I am happy to say this has never happened to me with an oyster or a clam. Well, that's the point, for some of us. Since the mussels I get grow neither on ropes nor on stakes, but tucked into, or attached to, the edge of the salt marsh, mud and grit are a distinct possibility. Usually the triage and de-bearding they undergo before being cycled through the MusselMatic is enough to identify the ringers; if not, the centrifugal force of the MusselMatic will generally do the job. But black muck has exceptional suction power, so every once in a while we still get a tare among the wheat. Damn, our local mussels don't have that latter advantage - this may explain why they are often crusted with barnacles (not the edible kind, AFAIK). Hmmmm. :dubious: But how do they TASTE and how is their TEXTURE? The mussels I get here are usually very bright-orange-fleshed - small, tender and sweet. My experience of much larger ones (though admittedly not the Horse variety) has not been pleasant - flabby and less flavorful. I'm also really starting to wonder about the correlation between your "occasional radioactive contaminant" and your HUGE MUTANT shellfish, as discussed both here and on the steamer thread. Coincidence? Hmmm??????

What's that? They look like purple ginger root to me... Soba The Reason. Poor girl - I guess you are allergic. I have a lot of Jerusalem Artichokes in my garden (they're like rabbits, or walking onions - if you have a couple today, tomorrow you will have a field of them - in fact, they are officially an invasive weed), we and our friends and neighbors have all been eating them for 30 years, and none of us has ever had a problem with gas afterward. Not ever. I have a special fondness for them - won't take up a lot of your blog elaborating - but thanks for pointing me to the thread. This is another monograph I have been meaning to write - and BTW, it turns out that in a circuitous way they are distantly related to artichokes after all. Re writing contract - not immediately, but just be aware that when it does happen you will be expected to provide photographs as well, and I suggest you charge a separate fortune for them. No: Now please, children... pay attention! EDIT to add: Hey, balex, I just looked at your chervil link and immediately bookmarked the page. Thank you for an enormously useful reference!

Most open even faster than that - and yes, I too take them out of the pan as soon as they open. Once I've got all the open ones out of the pot, I figure it doesn't much matter what I do to the rest. So I increase the heat and give them a couple of miinutes. If any open, great. I give up once I get impatient - a good rule of thumb. BTW I don't worry much about damaged shells - but again, I'm lucky in the provenance of my shellfish and can tell when the damage has been caused by me. I'm with your SIL on that. Hey - open is open. If it were dead before it went in the pot the heat wouldn't have any effect at all on its adductor. It's valid except for one thing: when I find a mussel that's already open before going into the pot, I gently push it closed. If it stays closed, that means it's alive and responding, so into the pot it goes. If it gapes again - I toss it. Not entirely. They do need air, but they can go a good while without it, as witness the fact that in their natural habitat they spend half of every day under water - they are, of course, able to get some oxygen from the water, but they're not taking big gulping gasps the way we would! So anyway, I wouldn't leave them in a sealed bag for a very long time - but for the amount of time it takes you to get home (assuming you live within reasonable distance), it's probably fine. I'd worry, though, about leaving them sealed for hours. How long is too long? You'll know from the smell when you open the bag....

Must run now - will reply later re adoption criteria; believe you will find my book collection and cocktail qualifications satisfactory. (Glad my animals won't need quarantine.) Meanwhile, three quick things. Navets - turnips Chevrefeuille - a type of honeysuckle WHY ON EARTH don't you like topinambours?

I suppose orange soda is the only appropriate drink with that kind of matzo ball? I believe Orange Crush, in particular, would be the beverage of choice among the Waponi Wu.

The "select part," oddly enough, is the adductor muscle - oddly because this is a bit which in other bivalves is quite often neglected (not without reason, as it tends to be rather tough in many pf them). No, I want to eat them whenever I get them, with or without their reproductive effluents! Absolutely. In fact, a mussel or clam that hasn't opened shouldn't even be served. The reason they open is that when they die the adductor muscle relaxes and no longer holds them shut; if the shell doesn't open it is best to assume the reason is that the muscle didn't relax because the mussel didn't die. Which, unless it's SuperMussel and is leaping off the plate, probably means it was dead before it went into the pot. I don't cook them if they're open (and refuse to close) while alive; I don't eat them if they're closed (and refuse to open) when cooked. BTW another reason a mussel might not open is that it isn't a mussel; occasionally a pair of mussel shells held together by black mud can convincingly fake its way through preliminary triage and even through the MusselMatic (about which I shall tell you later). When this happens you're damn lucky if they don't open while cooking. Nothing ruins a lovely delicate white mariniere sauce like a nice dollop of black muck. Re the clean waters and safe shellfish, I couldn't agree more; as a result I almost never eat bivalves in restaurants. Not even so much because they might be unsafe (I try not to go to restaurants which have a reputation for unusually high incidence of hepatitis...), but because they will never never be anywhere near as fresh as those I have caught myself. Or as small, or as wild, or as un-overcooked. I don't catch below the legal size limits (well... occasionally a clam or two for eating raw - I just can't resist the really tiny ones), but I almost never find mussels as large as the ones served in restaurants, which I assume are farmed, and which to me seem flabby in texture and uninteresting in flavor, compared to the smaller ones I find at the edges of the salt marsh. [EDIT: I knew I would get mussel and muscle confused sooner or later....]

No marine biologist I, so I can only answer empirically: I have been eating bivalves every summer for virtually my whole life - in fact during the leaner years of my childhood they were sometimes our steady and damn-near only diet - and never had any discernible health problem as a result. Of course, the bivalves in question were always perfectly fresh, and were caught in waters subject to very stringent shellfishing-safety testing, so the odds were pretty favorable to begin with. And I've never heard of anyone who, confronted with a bowl of beautiful steaming mussels, picked each one apart and performed a filterectomy on it before eating it! EDIT to add: unlike us, many Europeans eat the whole scallop, filter and all - and I don't know of any scary statistics on that subject either.

Nobody puts the essence of matzoh ball soup more poetically, more visually appealing, more emotionally charged than you just have ... nobody! May I use this as an epitaph on my matzoh ball's metzaveh (tombstone)?? Takkeh, a proper eulogy to these "little guys" as they float ever so gently into my mouth!! It would be my honor; as long as you don't have to swallow the metzaveh - or as long as the matzoh ball isn't the metzaveh itself, or as heavy as. (Dammit, I'm teetering on the edge of a really great really bad pun here, and can't quite seem to fall the rest of the way into it.) Hmmmm. German and Jewish can overlap, but they ain't necessarily equivalent. Sounds like a case for Captain Etymology! It's just conceivable that you were both right. But if only one of you was... then he was certainly wrong. Shall get back to you on this if I learn anything interesting.... EDIT to add: I didn't have to look very far. Googling up a few dictionary links - turns out that "schmaltz" means liquid animal fat. Most of the definitions do say "especially chicken fat," though in a couple of cases they say "especially goose fat" (!). So your German wasn't wrong about pork fat being schmaltz - he was, however, wrong to deny that the same was true of chicken fat. Though the word is Yiddish it is descended from Old Hochdeutsch, and its Indo-European Roots apparently tie it in with all sorts of other soft and/or melted substances. (I love this stuff!) Also found a link to an explanation of the evolution of its figurative meaning (this always reminds me of a ballet teacher who used to exhort us in class: "Now, do it again, con molto schmalzetto!"); which explanation I take with rather a lot of salt because it refers to schmaltz (goose variety) as being "sticky." Nuh-uh. Furthermore its writer, after describing her grandmother's method of rendering, disparages the whole idea of schmaltz and suggests that it has no place in a modern world. What kind of affectation is that? Who does this ingrate think she is, some kind of a Bay Ridge all-right-nik? Hmph.

I think of it as black rather than green - anyway, it's just the mussel's stomach. They all have it - it's just that in the ones that aren't split you don't see it because the flesh around it is relatively opaque (whereas a clam's flesh is relatively translucent, so the stomach shows through more).

Cool! If you were expecting me to be bowed down with remorse, expect again. Nothing is more satisfying than wickedly influencing people into doing what they want to do anyway. Especially when it's acquiring more delicious juicy books! (And wasn't the store wonderful? Didn't you just love the smell of it? Didn't you just want to inhale the whole inventory? Oooh - you're in NY aren't you? So... which store?)

I do! I do! Adopt me! If I come out there right away I can be there in time for l'Aillee, which has had me drooling almost constantly ever since you posted about it! (Also, it's perfect: I have an adopted son who is older than I am; I in turn am older than you are; so by adopting me you will acquire a grandson who is nearly twice your age. How can you resist?) BTW, aren't ground cherries also called tomatillos? I knew someone who used to make jam out of them - very good.

The proportions should furnish a clue. I'm betting that Cream Powder is baking powder - probably a non-aluminized type like Bakewell Cream.

Too big and tasteless, and too heavy. I'm not sure why they're tasteless either, but would hazard a guess that they inherit that quality from the equally tasteless soup in which they've been cooked. I make mine on the small side - actually a good bit smaller than a golf ball, I guess. Not that, um, size matters all that much - but that's the way we always had them, the way my grandmother and her cook made them, the way my mother made them, the way I make them. Also, at Pesach we break out the very very serious china, and the matzoh ball soup - which on that occasion consists only of the matzoh balls in an intensely flavored clear chicken broth, with a few bits of carrot (Jewish elegance, I guess) - gets served in Tiffany bouillon cups, which probably wouldn't even hold an industrial-size deli matzoh ball. (On other occasions, however, matzoh balls are a supporting player in a chicken soup loaded with STUFF.) Anyway, what matters most to me in a matzoh ball is flavor and texture - I don't really care how big it is as long as it's light, fluffy, and chickeny as hell. Matzoh meal, egg, good oniony schmaltz, parsley, a little salt & pepper. Well-chilled so you can shape it with as little handling as possible. Cooked in the boilingest chickeniest of chicken stock (till it floats to the surface) so it trumpets "CHICKEN!" at your nose on the way up and murmurs "chicken..." throughout your gullet on the way down and softly rumbles "chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken" in your gut on arrival. Now THAT's takke a matzoh ball. Hmmm. On second thought, size does matter in one respect. A matzoh ball, like an iceberg, should float at the surface but stay mostly submerged. So the bowl/soup/ball ratio should always be such that the matzoh ball can be true to its nature, thus also staying warm until you eat it. The shallower the bowl, the shallower the soup, the smaller the matzoh ball must be in order to preserve this order of nature. More to the point, what I find unacceptable is a huge deli matzoh ball plunked in the middle of a shallow plate of soup, protruding from it like a volcanic island (look - is that Abe Vigoda dancing on top?) and getting colder and colder while I work my way around it. No, no, no. This is supposed to be comfort food! The matzoh balls - lots of 'em - must be lovingly cradled by the soup, warmly enveloped by it, gently rocked whenever the spoon makes a wavelet.

All the more reason to be even more highly selective in one's choice of guests and/or topics ... why is there no smiley emoticon for nauseous?? Oh, there is - just use the green one under the posting window. Eeeeeeeeewwwwww! Oh, Pan, so diplomatic... what I actually said was that it could be fun. And that was one of them. Probably just as well .. why do we all automatically assume that our parents have nothing to add to our personal wealth of knowledge on this subject? Probably because in many cases they don't. My mother and I used to talk about it occasionally, and I could always make her jaw drop and her eyes pop - and that was when I was being discreet about tailoring my experiences for her unaccustomed ears. And Carolyn, your wonderful supply of cannibal jokes is almost enough to make up for Florence & Sanders, if by that you mean who I think you mean....

Oy, so dun't esk! it shouldn't heppen to mine woist enemy, pfui pfui pfui. And Pickles - in some company - the safely non-proselytizing kind, I mean - it can be kind of fun talking about religion....

Mmmmmmm.... Long Pig.... "'Nice. Nubbly, but nice,' said the little 'Stute Fish." EDIT because I just can't resist piling quotation upon Ossa: "Choo-a Choo-a Choo-Tooth, Muntch, Muntch, Nicey!" and of course: "Roast leg of insurance salesman! A chorus of yums ran round the table." followed closely by: "If the Juju had meant us NOT to eat people, He wouldn't have made us of meat!" OK, I'll be good now... maybe... and try to stay on topic from now on. I'd offer a prize to the first person who can name the sources of all four (no Googling!), only I haven't thought of a prize to offer. But it's negotiable, if anyone would care to try....

You might want to check out this thread over on the Cooking forum: Yogurt-Making @ Home - the subject has been discussed at considerable length, and there are some useful links to yogurt-making info, both scientific and anecdotal.

Missed that on first scrolling. My bad. Actually - I have had 'em, and loved 'em, fried, grilled, sandwiched, un-, dry-fried, stir-fried with asparagus and garlic sauce, etc... and it's hard to say how I like 'em best - but I'm just realizing I've never given any real thought to cooking them, because I don't think I've ever had more than one at a time to play with, and when you're throwing a dozen or so crabs into the pot you kind of don't bother with special treatment for one little shedder. This is wrong, of course, and I promise I shall mend my ways this season - but there's no hiding from the ugly truth: my perspective on this has always been a bit skewed. I've never actually bought crabs, so what I cook is what I get. This is also why I don't try things like she-crab soup - we do get females sometimes, but if they're small or gravid we throw them back. The catch is that the catch is the catch. Or something like that.

Oh, well put. I'm glad you said that - I wanted to say something sort of analogous in relation to patents but it didn't fit there. Hmmmm. I wonder about the trade secret argument, supposing they had not published it but only continued to use it. Could they really claim exclusive rights to its use? I still think you'd have to be bound by a pretty stringent work-for-hire NDA for that to stand - but maybe it actually is implicit in the working relationship. In that case the best tactical advantage of the chef is that of having invented it and being able to develop it a bit further after the fact - change the name and just enough of the recipe to make it demonstrably distinct from the original, and I don't see what they could do. That and the fact that the chef's successor will undoubtedly change it in the execution because no two people follow a recipe exactly the same way (um... do they?), and if the new chef has any pride at all he will surely want to set some stamp of his own on the territory. Damn right! Or indeed, where possible even in a restaurant setting, supposing one were really honorable. But I think it's pretty clear ex hypothesi that that is not a salient attribute of the people lala has described! EDIT: NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement - but actually I think in that context it would have to be something more like a Non-Compete Clause. Do restaurants have 'em?

Hmmmm... are we beating a dead horse here? Sorry - had to say that. Oh, Toasted, I feel for you - for the predicament as much as the cat, though at 17 that has to have been hard to take. In a way maybe it's good you had something to keep the adrenaline going at that moment. (Um... dare I ask... when you say "into the field" was that burial? or did you have to retrieve him afterward and deal with it then?) FWIW, it wouldn't have made any difference. I've done that bit with lobsters, and I've followed up immediately by separating them into their component parts; and I'm here to tell ya, the neural activity just doesn't quit, no matter how dismembered the critters may be. I'll never forget those tails continuing to spasm into locomotion (or rather loco motion) a la caterpillar, the claws continuing to snap at nothing - for a good hour after they were severed from the thorax. Even after they went into the pan they were the Energizer Bunny of lobster tails: they kept going... and going... and going...! EDIT to add: oh Bleu, thank you for pulling all the quotes I wanted to single out for various giggles! Only wanted to add re Suzanne's all-white dinner - Suzanne, how Norwegian of you! But... why no lutefisk?

Man, that's heroic fortitude. I don't think I could have held it together to do the dishes. Hope there were a few leftovers you could eat the next day after things subsided....

Yeah. And hire me. Flute. Piccolo. Is there a woodwind instrument you don't play? (Shhhhh... I think he's asleep.) Prolly anything with a reed - or two. But most flutists double on piccolo... if they're smart....

Well... it is in a modern, politically correct feminist world, I guess. But it used to mean "miller's wife."

Yeah. And hire me. Yeah, that'd really give new meaning to "hold the piccolo," wouldn't it....