Abra

I got to have a fantasy fulfilled: desserts by FWED, Chefpeon, and Ling, all on one plate! FWED's Exotic Orange mini, Chefpeon's Milk Chocolate Caramel ice cream, and Ling's Date Butter Tart. There was also a delicious peppermint stick ice cream from Chefpeon, and these beautiful treats filled with a pineapple mint ganache from FWED. Boy, do I feel lucky!

I want to add my vote for doing this cake in mini format. The extra sprayed surface gave a crisp edge in practically every bite that was just wonderful, and the additional orange was a good enhancement. Here's the finished presentation Beautiful and delicious. Thank you, FWED!

Absolutely beautiful, Lorna. It was a gorgeous touch to use the two different types of figs.

Wow, that was quite a project! Those look beautiful and sound delicious. I'm having a hard time choosing between geranium-rose and ancho-honey.

Franci, that's interesting how the meat is wrapped in the casing, not stuffed into it like we do for sausage. Since you already have the net in place, I wonder what the purpose of the casing is. I've never seen anything like that before. I've only used caul fat to wrap up awkward pieces of meat.

Yum, vinegret! That was one of my favorite food discoveries in Russia. And I too have emergency pelmenyi in the freezer, but I really like them with vinegar and hot pepper, which is how I was first shown to eat them. Alinka, do you work for an American company? That cafeteria could have been transplanted directly from the U.S. Welcome, Elena!

I'm thinking that a macadamia shortbread cookie would be good, so that you can do individual servings without having to worry about the cut, and oozy goo all over. I think chestnut honey would be good with those flavors, so maybe a macadamia cookie base topped with a quartered port-poached fig, sprinkled with crumbs of Stilton or filled with a piped Stilton mousse, and drizzled with chestnut honey? I know that's too probably simple for you, but it sounds good to me. Wait, we're talking about fresh figs here, right? I realize that I'm visualizing the ones that are green outside and ruby inside. In that case it wouldn't really be poached, more brushed with a port reduction glaze.

I am longing for those recipes. That borek looks better than any I've seen, but I have no idea where to get the pastry. Is it like feuilles de brik? Not that I know where to get that either, but at least I've heard it's available online. What a beautiful dinner!

Beautiful eggplant dishes, Franci. I too could eat eggplant every day, even for breakfast, much to my husband's horror. I do know about separating the meat from the pasta. My stepfather was born in Frascati, so I got some education, although he wasn't much of a cook, even when he was younger. But somehow, at home in the U.S., it seems normal to combine them. I find the different plating system to be fascinating. I think Italians are much more rigorous about "pure" flavor, whereas we're quite casual about combining flavors.

Nope, no y sound in there, no oooo either. The sound doesn't exist in English, I'm pretty sure. Don't we have some new audio capacity here? I could record it. Wait, listen here! audio file Baveux is the word we'd use for "runny" as in "I'd like my omelette runny." The eux sound is the same as in cremeux.

It's bah-var-waz, with a slight emphasis on the last syllable. Cremeux is harder to explain. It's crehm----the eux has no exact equivalent in English. In fact, I can't think of a single example - help me out here, someone!

What a lot of nice-looking food! That focaccia seems destined to be a hit dish. I'm almost embarrassed to post this, but I'm sucking it up. I made versions of two recipes from the La Terra di Puglia site. This is how it looked But this is what it started out to be: the orecchiete con cime di rapa and the meatballs in tomato sauce. I had always planned to use Russian kale instead of rapini, but then I didn't leave myself time to make the orecchiete, and ended up using a dried pasta that we call Long Curly Blond Hair pasta, but cooking it all in the style of the original recipe. Then, the meatballs. Failing to read the recipe all the way through, I added the onion to the meatballs, and in fact, I pureed it and everything except the meat in the food processer, then added it to the beef and kneaded it by hand. So naturally there was extra liquid from the onion, and thus I used more than double the breadcrumbs, which were fresh and flavorful. Bottom line? Those are some addictive meatballs, light, a bit fluffy, juicy, and richly flavored. I urge you to try this recipe - my husband thinks my variation should become our house meatball. The sauce for the pasta, with anchovies and garlic and a hot chile, went gorgeously with the greens and pasta. And the two dishes were excellent together. Is this where you guys kick me off the thread? A Pugliese would probably faint at my rendition, and Franci, I beg your forgiveness in advance. I don't know how strict this thread is about authenticity, so if I'm over the line here, just let me know.

Beautiful, Alinka. Don't be disconcerted - it's not that change has occurred, it's how fast and thoroughly it seems to have occurred that's astounding. I wonder how far out into the countryside the changes have spread. I love Georgian food. Half of my ancestors were from Georgia, although I didn't know them and so didn't get to taste their cooking. But I do have a great Georgian cookbook, and now that you've posted that khachapuri I'm going to have to whip it out and make some at home. I see that you made a salad at work - so there's a kitchen you can use there? What sort of work are you and your husband doing in Moscow? Anything involving food?

Wow, Elie, that's gorgeous. It makes it look like winter will almost be fun.

Wow, you guys. Just wow. What a great-sounding party. Ronnie, that spread was amazing. You sure do have to pay a lot for blueberries there. Here they're about $5.99 a half flat, as compared to the shot of them for $2.50 a half pint.

Holy cow! I was in Moscow in 1993, and I saw nothing, and I do mean nothing, at all like those shops and malls. Incredible what a transformation can happen in such a short time. In fact, back then when I took the overnight train to Helsinki, I almost fainted on arrival from the amount of food that was available in Finland, as compared to Moscow or even worse, Peterburg, as it was called at that time.

Speaking of weird ingredients, the borsch recipe I brought back with me from Russia calls for Aromat. I brought some home with me at the time, but have never been able to find it since. We have something here called Aromat, but it's not that same mix of green herbs. If you happen to have a packege in the cupboard, would you be so kind as to tell me the ingredients? I notice that your recipe doesn't call for it, but I'd love to recreate the soup Galya made for me in St. Petersburg all those years ago.

Judith, you can make your own merguez without much difficulty. Let me know if you need a recipe. After a soak overnight, and a good rubdown and bake with cherry wood ash and olive oil, my tagine looked...almost exactly the same as it did before! I've got it in the oven again now, a second ash amd oil rub plastered all over it.

Wow, this is really an awesome time for you - a whole new life, all at once. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. I spent a week in Moscow about 12 years ago, and I know that practically everything has changed since then. For one thing, there were virtually no restaurants at that time, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how restaurant culture has developed. I was there at exactly this time of year, and one of the best things I got to do was go for mushroms in the forest. Any chance you'll be doing that?

Mmm, those are some good-sounding ideas. What I did this time was to make a bay leaf-infused syrup and add it to half of the limoncello, then a lavender-infused syrup for the other half. Now they're resting for a week, and then we'll see. I'm planning to take eje's advice and mix them into Prosecco cocktails, if they taste decent.

I'm planning to make orechiette con cime di rape tomorrow, but I have a beautiful bunch of Russian kale in the fridge, and I want to substitute that for the rapini. No self-respecting Pugliese cook would go out and buy cime di rape if she had a beautiful cavolo on hand, would she?

Oh, those aren't my recipes, they were all published by Food and Wine. All I did was assemble a group of folks here to cook through them. It was a great party. Try that cauliflower with Manchego and Marcona almond sauce - it's killer.

I'm looking forward to seeing the answers here, because I have access to a tree full of transparents. I've got to say, though, that uncooked they have virtually no flavor at all, which is why I haven't been picking them.

I know a clean legal answer is what you really need, but I'll just speak to the practical and ethical part of the question. As a practical matter, don't you dare leave them that macaroon recipe! You could make millions with that. Leave them the hippie flax cookie? Ya sure, you betcha. Please do, in fact. I say that if it's a recipe you created before you worked there, and especially if you baked it commercially before you worked there, it's yours. If you developed it for them, most likely there's a good argument for leaving it. But there's nothing to say you can't rewrite a recipe, is there? Since they're all nincompoops, can you just leave the ingredient list, that any real baker could work with without instructions? Or just fill the recipe with percentages and abbreviations, so you can say you left it, but they can't really make it?

Gariotin, if you look at the recipe section of this article I did on a Spanish dinner party in Seattle there's an excellent potato dish with tetilla. Its melting properties are impressive.