Adam Balic

Actually it's quite easy to find, at least in the US. If you read the fine print on certain labels, you'll find oils from Tunisia/Greece/Spain, & perhaps even Italy, that have been blended & bottled in Italy. Given what's been happening to olive harvests in recent years, this trend isn't surprising. ← Much to my surprise and education, superior quality olive oils in the UK are extensively label in regards origin and process. In the cheaper catagorie of extra virgin oli oils I have yet to see any information regarding ultimate origin of the olives/oil in Tunisia. Most likely this is my fault, but how does one read the label in the UK to determine origin?

Yes, I think that this is a case of the individual fish not being great, rather then the type of fish itself.

Poor weather has ment that the local (UK) fish have not been common on the slab this week. So I went for this fellow from Oman. This is a Reef Grouper (Plectropomus sp., most likely P. leopardus, the Leopard Reef Grouper). Members of this genus are highly prized and have a fairly global distribution. Good flavour and they are quite pretty as you can see. This was prepared Sichuan fashion (slits cut in flesh, mushroom, dried shrimp and ham pushed in, steamed over ginger and spring onions, along with some rice wine). A really great recipe unfortunately, the fish was terrible. A horrible muddy flavour to the flesh, not very pleasant at all. Bugger. Will have to look into the possibility that this is a farmed fish.

this is not correct if you would apply strong sheer forces to a gelatin aka "jello" it would simply melt and reset. this doesnt happen with gellan, once set you can only remelt it with large amounts of heat ;-) ← Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most people here, Nathan included, understand the impact of shear on gelatin. Nathan's statement inherently implies that it's a 'form of' jello put in a blender. A form of jello comprised of gelling agents that produce fluid gels when exposed to shear. At least that's how I read it ← Just to restate what Heston told me - he doesn't want a high velocity bamix or blender precisely because it begins to incorporate air into the mix. That's why he uses a slower overhead mixer to shear the cells without adding air. Otherwise you're making a foam, rather than a fluid gell. ← When the victorians were scoffing down moulded jellies like crack cocaine, to produce an opaque effect (say if you were making a layered jelly) a semi-solid jelly would be very vigorously whipped, to incorporate tiny air bubbles, then re-set.

Russ I come from a farming background, but left the country as farming is too much work for too little gain. Maybe I am naive (actually, yes I am naive), but setting up as an small scale organic type farmer is a great deal of work for a small amount of finacial gain, therefore 'lifestyle choice' (starting to hate this sound byte) has to be a factor, along with pride in the produce produced from an honest days toil - or is everybody a cynical 30-something like my good self? I think that this has been covered on the 'French Market Thread', OK a given that everybody from the soil up is grasping, cynical and out to screw a buck when they can, yet I know some farmers who do produce excellent (dare I say, 'heirloom') fruit and veg. These people I can understand, what I can't understand is all the hard work and stress without a good product. Maybe talent is the key as you say. I am now British, so I understand that most people don't care that much about food, however nobody likes being screwed over and as far as I can tell everybody hates elsanta strawberries, but why they then continue to buy the buggers eludes me.

OK back from the supermarket and guess what all the 'extra virgin olive oil' bottles were marked with "superior category olive oil obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means"

Again, not my field, but I imagine it comes down to enforceability pressure from the consumer base (in the UK, which lacks producers). I will look at some supermarket olive oil to find out more.

The legalsitic side of this is not my area, but the main enforcement body in the UK (see DEFRA above) follows 'COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1019/2002of 13 June 2002 on marketing standards for olive oil and the wording in the definitions are very similar, but significantly different. Extra virgin olive oil: virgin olive oil which has a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams, and the other characteristics of which correspond to those fixed for this category in this standard v Extra virgin olive oil: ‘superior category olive oil obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means;’ 'indication of the acidity or maximum acidity may appear only if it is accompanied by an indication, in lettering of the same size and in the same visual field, of the peroxide value, the wax content and the ultraviolet absorption, determined in accordance with Regulation (EEC) No 2568/91. "Reference to acidity in isolation wrongly suggests a scale of absolute quality which is misleading for consumers since this factor represents a qualitative value only in relation to the other characteristics of the olive oil concerned. Consequently, in view of the proliferation of certain indications and of their economic significance objective criteria for their uses should be established in order to introduce clarity into the olive oil market." I think that there is plenty room for dodgy practices to occur. For instance with "Tuscan extra virgin olive oil" Designation of origin labelling only applies to Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) sites, I'm not sure that "Tuscan" would qualify ("Toscano" has a PGI).

Not "better", but "different". A pressure cooker also works very well and seems to be used my many people in Morocco, but whether it is needed or not is a different question.

Different cooking vessels that do different things and produce different results, but as to if you 'need' them both, well no I guess.

From the DEFRA site for olive oil marketing standards. Obviously, these are quite wishy-washy definitions ("superior"?). The site also lays down labelling requirements regarding the origin of the olives and blends of oils. In practice I have yet to see a bottle of 'Italian' olive oil that has the word "Tunisia (et al.)" on it.

I have never had a decent fresh apricot, other then those I have picked off the tree myself. I think that this comes down to what Russ was speaking of before, but another issue is that I think that in some case (like the apricot) that most consumers just don't know what a good version of the fruit tastes like and therefore their ability to judge good from mediocre is off. The end result of this is that market is driven by people with low expectations. I think that once this cycle is established that it is also self-perpetuating. One of my favourite fruits is the various types of white peaches. These are very fragile and the ripe fruit don't transport well at all. In Australia I would rarely buy these, even though they are grown locally as they were nearly always picked to early. In Scotland these fruit are imported from Australia and sold in supermarkets in quantity. They are some of the most hard, green and flavourless fruits that you will ever see. But somebody is buying them and there is a demand that means a profit can be gained from shipping them around the planet. In the UK, "variety of choice" seems to me much more of an important market force then "quality" (note: quality in this case ="flavour and texture", rather then "appearance and shelf-life"). And to strawberries, peaches and apricots you could add most fruit types to the list I think. Another issue is that while some of the seasonal farmer's market produce is good and often better then the commercial items, often they seem to be the same varieties. If want to shell out my cash on organic free-range seasonal strawberries, I don't want them to be bloody elsanta's.

Admin: posts merged in from a thread on balasmic vinegar. In the UK "Extra Virgin Olive Oil" is also a meaningless appellation, the same in the USA?

Farmed mussels still spawn, this depends on water temperature mostly. Based on various PEI sites, spawning begins in mid-May tpically for this region. Slap your fishmonger. Not sure about the black bile thing, it could be the sorting stomach I guess, but it is really the sperm (white fleshed mussels) and eggs (orange fleshed mussels), which are the tasty bits, so during spawning they are not so great for the lack of these.

Whelks (Buccinum undatum) for dinner. These are an increasingly harvested species in the UK (especially Wales), while there is a domestic market, most now get exported to Korea. Tonight will be a vague Vietnamese meal, based on a treatment for land snails. The flavours are pork fat, lemon grass, shallots, chilli, ginger, fish sauce and coriander. After steaming for 5 minutes the animal is extracted and the fleshy foot is seperated from the yucky brown bits (Canadians eat it all it seems). Also cooked was some local mussels (Mytilus edulis), which the fishmonger told me would be the last worth eating for a while as they are spawning at this time of the year. These were cooked in a cataplana, which isn't Vietnamese, but is a brilliant bit of cooking kit for shellfish. The finished 'meal', eaten with crusty bread. All well and good, but sadly the mussels were not very good at all, very flabby and frankly unpleasant. So pork and leek sausages with apple for dinner instead I'm afraid. Flabby mussel meat. Dinner mark II.

Oddly, many sites like this describe 'elsanta' as having excellent flavour. I find it very dull. I wonder if the decline in strawberry flavour has more to do with a change in production methods rather then the the variety. Scottish strawberries are quite good, but they only have to travel from Perthshire, compared to Spain for much of the supermarket crop.

Maybe because there is a perception that they are too 'heavy' for todays groovy young hipsters or technically challenging. I mean you have to get a cloth and everything.

I had some great strawberries in Australia, that were imported from Japan (or a japanese variety, I forget), very pale in colour, but very soft and aromatic. Pity I don't recall the variety. I think that it is the texture of varieties like el santa which I don't like. Very crunchy, almost like and apple. When they are cooked they are quite aromatic (if too acid), so I wonder if a lot of the flavour and aromatic properties are in some what influenced by the texture. The supermarkets here (Scotland) are selling a Spanish strawberry called 'Ventana', which is quite odd look as it is very dark and the majority still have the petals attached to the fruit. Like Russ said, everything is in the hands of the consumer and at least in the UK, cheap food is much important the tasty or healthy food.

They are very traditional based on This site. The trick is to pre-boil the cloth just before using it and flouring it well before putting the dough in.

Sweet eh? So have the started Sapa/Saba in USA supermarkets yet?

Based on the thickness (even if given in an anchronistic measure), I would say squid, rather then cuttlefish then.

Potentially they are cuttlefish, how thick are they?

I haven't got a feeling for how influential Hazan is in the USA in terms of being able to shift a product, but is a TV figure is likely to be (for a period in the 90's any product mentionaed by Delia Smith was immediately popular in the UK). Any names fit the bill?

I am really time poor at the moment and quite pissed off as I cannot cook for the next week to any great extent. So here is one I made before. These seem to be quite common in the region, the version I want to make is stuffed with raddicio. I think that raddicio and walnuts would make a good combination.

Luciano was already a huge star in the 1970s (he made his Italian debut in 1961 and made a huge splash in the US singing La fille du régiment with the (in)famous "nine high Cs" aria in 1971). So I think we can call that myth busted. I'm not sure I quite get this, although it's very possible that I'm just too dense to see what you're getting at. As far as I know, the traditional Italian product has always been called aceto balsamico (aceto meaning "vinegar" in Italian). Certainly it's been called that a lot longer than it has been popular outside of Italy. ← No, my post was just confusing since - which I put down to having about 2 jours sleep in the last 36. Right it seems that the modern trational product (known as “traditional balsamic vinegar of Reggio Emilia” etc) is made from concentrated grape must. This has developed from a technique that became widespread after the 1860's. Prior to this it seems to have been made with wine,- according to multiple google searchs etc. I was trying to suggest that if you look in the literature for the "Balsamic vinegar", rather then "Aceto Balsamico" this will help determine when it bacame popular in the English speaking world. For instance, why does Ada Boni call it in the 'Regional Italian Cooking' or older versions of Marcella Hazen's compared to modern printings?