Adam Balic

Sadly no. Chardonnay genetics have been well characterised in the last few years and it seems that it is a ‘Pinot’ and ‘Gouais blanc’ cross, most likely originating in Burgundy.

It is at the end of my road. Excellent produce.

Mostly they are just tossed in the hot fat, but I have seen plenty of kids ask for them to be battered. With a few exceptions, Edinburgh has the worst Italian food I have come across. I think that Scottishness dilutes out Italianess.

Come to Edinburgh and live the urban myth.

The waters around southern Liguria are famously poor in fish. No major rivers dumping nutrients etc. Having swam there, I can vouch for the anchovies. Nothing quite like swimming in a school of anchovies. From the cliff paths around Cinque Terra, you can see the anchovies being chased by preditory fish. Another famous (but now restricted item) is the date shell. This looks like a date pit (duh), but actually lives inside rocks that it bores into. You eat them raw. I think that tourism has increased the seafood consumption in restaurants (at least in decade that I have visited). People see the water and want to eat seafood, so I have seen the local fish van selling fish from the Indo-Pacific.

Not really, it is a legume and looks like this.

Some more green Ligurian food from last year.

Article about pesto and basil by Colman Andrew's

Well, this is what the now common dried form looks like, but the orginal fresh pasta was more like a small thin gnoccho with twisted ends. Colman Andrews has a good description of making them the traditioanl way. Bits of dough are rolled forward with the hand, which is held in some way that makes the one end of the pasta curl a little, then rolled back which completes the twist along the length and the other end. Sounds like sort of technically demanding task that looks easy once you have done it for decades, but near impossible for a novice. edit "dried" not "fried" - idiot.

A Rock Lobster is a Langoust (Fr)/Langosta (Sp), hence "langoustine" for the smaller guys we are taking about here.

Norsk Hummer? Norwegian lobster is a pretty old fashioned term for the bug, most people would recognise "Langoustine", "Scampi" would be better for the Italians, but confusing for everybody else.

Is tea different from 'high-tea'? Or is high-tea something that only sad foreigners do? ← Tea - a drink with jam and bread High tea - a former working/ lower middle class evening main meal, quite substantial, contains meat, kippers, beans all that working class stuff. Afternoon tea - is more poncy and has little cakes and sandwiches with crusts cut off on Multitiered plates. Not a main meal.

5 pints of Cider is not supper. ← Not even with ice in it? ← Magner's drinking class traitor.

The Ligurian's have this woderful sauce called "Pesto", which I think could really catch on. We make it maybe once a month - almost certainly not to an authentic recipe. I use: Basil*, olive oil, garlic, salt, pine nuts. In theory, a pestle and mortar should be used as this is how the sauce got it's name after all. There are various reasons for using the mortar, rather then a food processor: it is mire gentle, the sauce doesn't heat up, the texture is better. OK, for those that are interested here is an authentic Ligurian mortar and pestle. You can see from it's design the echo of a old roman capitals that were hollowed out and used, once the Vandals, Goths, Longbards et al had moved in an declared themselves Italian. Also note my food processor. The food processor doesn't quite give the same creamy texture of the mortar. Another inauthentic Ligurian product is sold in a large supermarket chain in the UK. This type of trofie are sold by the ton in many stores in the Cinque Terra. However, the original pasta are more like smal fine dumpling (still twisted like this) often made with chestnut flour. In the Cinque terra I have had excellent trofie made with a scampi sauce(langoustines, not the USA sauce). Cheese. I don't add cheese to my pesto. My favourite pesto tasted in Liguria also didn't contain cheese. It is a personal preference, I find the cheese deadens the freshness of the pesto. This may have to do with the basil I can get here, which is a lot more 'minty' in flavour profile then the Ligurian basil I have had. I add cheese later. This is Sardo (Pecorino). My Tuscan relatives pooh-pooh this, but it is a good product (although stupidly expensive in Edinburgh, $75 a kilo). Dinner - note cherry tomatoes. Not authentic in any way at all.

5 pints of Cider is not supper.

Supper is super ( OF. soper, super). It is just the last meal of the day. Dinner is was the most substantial meal of the day. Once it was: Breakfast, dinner, supper. As meal began to be served later (18th century say), lunch was squeezed in. Lunch was as much as you can hold in you hand (see. S. Johnson "Dictionary"). Eventually, lunch became more substantial as dinner was served later. Supper remained the last meal of the day, but in general became much lighter. Variations ocur with location and socio-economic class. So if your three year olds meal was the last meal of the day and not as substantial as the mid-day meal then it was supper and they have you over a barrel. The British class identity thing, is something I truely don't pretend to understand (sounds like your family was common though). According to This article in a recent report three out of 10 bank managers say they are working class and 36% of builders regard themselves as middle class. I don't mind supper, the other night I had jam on toast for the 8:00 pm meal, this was supper, not dinner. Dinner was a fish-supper (that's what you ask for in Scotland if you want fish and chips for tea). In fact, now that I think about it, this whole anti-supper stance of yours is clearly another example of English cultural imperialism. Bastard.

Also, very common in Italy. When swimming in the Med., the clicking sounds that cane be heard everwhere are thought to be mantis shrimp.

I think so. Maybe not so much in cookbooks specifically , but in books about food culture. The world is opening up in many ways and a lot of food cultures (new additions to the EU for instance) will change dramatically in the next decade or so. My hope would be that the present focus in food will broaden from the present celeb-restaurant driven domain and tap in on his. If this occurs I can see food culture books that are more visually inspired, "Food Markets of Europe/Asian etc", travelogues, "regional cooking of X" (where X is not France or Italy). It could be really interesting times ahead.

Actually, I very much like food photgraphy, but in cook books I rarely see much of interest. To be honest I tend to buy cookbooks that specifically do not have photographs. Exceptions are: - Exceptionally good or interesting phtography (eg. Robert Freson's work, over head dining shots in the first edition of "Nose to Tail Eating" by Fergus Henderson). - Ingredient shots. Especially of more unusual veg/fruit/fish etc. - Some recipes were the the final appearance is not a apparent from the recipe. - Technical or presentation focused cook books.

Any idea if the crawfish/crayfish farmed or caught in US Gulf Coast states are related to the Dublin Bay Prawn? ← Related, but not that closely. Also, there is a fresh v salt water difference and the flavours are very different. In Australia there are numerous different types of closely related fresh water crayfish and they taste quite different. N Yabbies and Marron are very different in quantity of meat and flavour for instance.

I'm not so sure that that is true in the US - I've always taken prawn to refer to the larger species. I have the impression that I picked up this usage on childhood trips to San Francisco in the early 1960s. ← That is interesting, I haven't heard an American use the term prawn very often. Do you think that this is an east v west coast thing?

Scampi (Italian) and Langoustine (Franch) refer to the same species Nephrops norvegicus, also known as "Dublin Bay Prawns" or just prawns in parts of Scotland. Scampi are at the back, note the claws which distinguishes them from the Shrimp/Prawns. Scampi don't occur in North American waters (or are not fished if they do), so "scampi" has evolved to mean a class of food preparation, rather then the animal itself. In the UK a similar situation exists, the same species (and similar species) coated in industrial breadcrumbs and served in pubs and fish shops around the country are called "Scampi" (not matter how many), where as the whole beast is refered to as a "Langoustine". I would have thought that most people would know the relationship between the two, but ecently I found out that many of my British (and American) friends didn't realise that butter was made from cream...so who knows. Shrimp and Prawn are interchangeable terms, although there are geographic preferences for the use of the terms. "Shrimp" is used in the US English for all sizes of similar decapod crustaceans, where as in British English, shrimp would refer to the smaller species, prawns to the larger species. Australians say use the British preferance.

A monkfish, a type of Anglerfish. Mostly sold as fillets, due to it's extreme ugliness.

Me too, Adam. I was told by an editor who worked on Freson's "A Taste of France" that the way it was compiled gave the pictures their remarkable angle. Freson was initially commissioned by The Sunday Times Magazine to spend a year simply photographing what he felt was remarkable, or typical, or endangered aspects of French food and dining, and only after the photographs taken and edited were the writers assigned to explain with essays what was shown the in photographs. Dan ← Thanks very much for this information, it has really made my day. These photographs are 30 odd years old, but still look incredibly fresh. The information you have given has solved a minor mystery for me. The food images in this book are never secondary to the text or recipes, but also never out of place also. I rarely see this level of intergration in a cookbook, so maybe the way it was developed explains this. Pity not more of this is done.

Genoese Buridda for supper tonight (along with wilted wild garlic and chard greens, steamed new potatoes). This is a chunky fish soup/stew, as I have never seen it made, I have no idea what it really looks like, but in this case I went for 'rustic' chunks. This recipe is based on the one given by Colman Andrews in "Flavours of the Riviera". The other famous soup/stew from Genoa is Ciuppin (which the San Francisco Cioppino is thought to derive from). Andrews describes 'Ciuppin' as a smooth soup and Buridda chunky soup, where as Anna Del Conte describes 'il Ciuppin' as a chunky soup and 'Brodino' as a smooth soup. Odd. The fish: Monkfish, two different gurnards, a small cod and a John Dory. OK, the cod is out of place - but historically the dish was made from preserved cod, so there you go. Onions, garlic, carrot and celery are cooked until translucent, then porcini (some recipes don't add these) and anchovy are added. This is cooked unitl softened, then diced tomato, fish stock and white wine are added. This is cooked until the veg are done (at this point I guess you puree it etc). Fish is added and allowed to cook through.