Adam Balic

Right, the Iranian term for dried lime seems to be limu omani and obviously the words for lemon and lime have the same root, so maybe no distinction is made in some areas, but I would assume that the Egyptian pickled limes must be grown locally?

I often buy jars of pickled Egyptian "Lemons", from their appearance aroma and flavour I would say that these are almost certainly limes. Is this simply a mistranslation of 'limun' (lime).

I like the Culinaria series (some more then others), but in many instances I have noticed that things have been mis-identified (especially fish), so I would always check with a secondary source to comfirm any suspect information.

Some larding that I did last year. A haunch of Roe deer A chunk of beef of Ragu. The needles are hard to come by, but Nisbets in the UK sell them, but these are a little large IMO. Some more information on larding from Ivan Day's excellent site. Major reasons why it isn't done any more: -Lack of domestic staff (takes up a lot of time) -People rare roast meat anymore, they bake it. -The meat used now is not the same as 100-200 years ago. - Fashion, as you can see from Ivan Day's site, the larding was ment to look good as well as have a practical purpose. It is a grea way of introducing flavours though. I supsect that larding doesn't actualy 'keep meat moist' directly, what it does is cool the surface of the meat though evaporation and crisps it as well (the lard strips contain quite a bit of water as well as fat). As you can see most of the lard was inserved in a shallow manner, rather then deep into the meat. In my experience fat that is placed deep into the meat does not get warm enough to melt.

This is most likely Radicchio di Castelfranco, the finger like one is actually the same as type of radicchio as Treviso, but is cultivated differently. After the first crop is harvested the tap root is left in furrows (excluding light) and these develop into the form you saw. Hence, you see these types with a bit of tap root attached, but rarely in Treviso. They are often called "Tardivo" or even "Fiori d'Inverno". I like them grilled.

Hey, that is the drink of my ancestors you are talking about! . Yes it isn't really a fresh plum tasting eau-de-vie, if it made well it should taste of the plum kernals, with some rich spicy flavours similar to what you get from prunes, which is the type of plum they are made from. Bad examples are rough, full of methanol and taste oxidized. You may notice the similarity of 'Slivo' and 'Sloe', shared Indo-European roots apparently.

I was interested to see that halva was very popular in Vilnius (Lithuania), where it is called "chalva". Does anybody know of the history (if there is one) of Halva in Northern/Central Europe? Vilnius was a great Jewish centre, is there a connection here?

I haven't seen much discussion on the types of sweet potato around, which is surprising as there is some much variation in colour, form and especially flavour. Here are two similar types that are both of the purple skinned, pale fleshed type, yes, so they must taste the same. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The one on the right is by far the better type. It tastes of butter and sweet chestnuts with a non-mealy texture. It comes from New Zealand and is known as a "kumara", it can be identified by the violet colour of the skin (rather then dull purple), which you can see when you scratch it with a fingernail. For those in the UK, it can from Sainsburys of all places.

Andie - here are some candied sweet potatoes I made for the mexican day of the dead, as a substitute for candied pumpkin. I used a basic technique for making candied veg or fruit. Chop up the sweet potato and mix with an equal amount sugar. Leave overnight for the juices to be drawn out. Heat very gently until the sugar is disolved, then increase heat until boiling, boil for 5 minute, then allow to cool overnight. The next day take the sweet potatoes out of the syrup, bring the syrup to boil and boil for five minutes. Repeat this process for five days. The sweet potato chunks can now be removed an allowed to dry or rolled in more sugar to coat, at which point that can be briefly grilled to glaze and brown. This is a basic English preparation for making candied roots (sweet potatoes were thought to be deeply sexual itemes when prepared in this manner when first introduced). In Mexicon the candied pumpkin would be soak overnight in lye water to set them an produce a more toothsome texture, so you could try this also.

I can't talk about Piemont specifically, but Aborio is more a class of rice, rather then a specific strain (although this was not always the case). As such it seems to be the least consistant. Valone Nano is more of a Venato rice is it not? Regarding the other common Superfino rice (Arborio, Volano, Roma, Baldo, Carnaroli, Silla, Bonni). I think that it is very interesting that there is a preference for Roma over Carnaroli, I wonder what the origin for this preference is.

In Scotland they also deep fry pizza (and pretty much everything else).

Right, new baby in the home is taking up more time then I thought was possible, so not as much cooking as I would like is being done. However, here is my Lombard effort. Some regional dishes, some completely made up stuff using regional produce. Salad of baby spinach, comice pear, procuitto and Taleggio Vecchia cheese. The later being one of my very favourite cheeses. So I made some Luganega di Monza sausages, these were very good in flavour, but next time I will add more fat as my pork was a little dry. This was served with Risotto alla Milanese. As you can see it isn't exactly 'risotto giallo'. The recipe I use is from Anna Del Conte's book book, she says it is her family recipe. It uses beef marrow, beef stock and red wine, so the colour is always a lot more muddy they seen in most images of this dish. It has great flavour though and it is well worth getting bone marrow to use as the cooking fat. Dessert was something I made up using mascarpone and making something similar to a tiramisu, except I layered in vanilla roasted strawberries as instead of coffee.

Well you know how much I enjoy a good debate about 'authentic' (see Ragu thread), but in Anna's defense her recipe for Osso Bucco is incredibly good, even though the ingredient list is very limited. I may be bias though as her book was the second cookbook I ever bought and I have very happy memories of cooking recipes from it, unlike anything I had eaten before, and all the meals turning out wonderful. 10 years later and a cookbook with wow factor is much more rare. 'Traditional' is fine, but 'Authenitic' should be dragged into the street and shot for the rabid dog that it is, a'la "To Kill a Mockingbird".

Oddly enough I assumed it would be Ceylon cinnamon, but on a recent trip all the quills I came across were cassia. This is from one sample only.

Obviously there are Mexican savoury dishes, but the also exist in Spain and Italy. In Tuscany there is a famous Cinghiale in Agrodolce (wild boar in a sweet and sour sauce) which is very delicious. This is normally a large braised chunk of meat, but it can be adapted as shown below. It contains chocolate in the sauce, but it doesn't dominate, which I think is the danger of a themed dinner like this.

To be pedantic, 'The Cook's and Housewife's Manual', which was written by Christian Isobel Johnstone (first published in 1826). She chose to do so under a pseudonym of "Meg Dods" who was a minor character from a Walter Scott novel. Johnstone was the wife of Scott's publisher. It's my favourite cookbook, but the one I would go for is F Marian MacNeill's 'The Scots Kitchen', which is specifically Scottish recipes and lots of folk lore and history also.

Some very traditional (some extinct) things are: Cloutie Dumpling: A light fruit and spice pudding boiled in a clout (the pudding cloth). Left overs are sometimes fried with bacon for breakfast. There are also variations on this type of pudding. Scottish/Edinburgh Flan (puff pastry with preserved fruit and frangipane), there are also other old variations on this theme. A more modern pie/flan is 'banoffe pie' which is bananas, cream and carmel and loads of sugar. There are some traditional baked stuff as well. Butteries (or Buttery Rowies)- are like a deformed salty croissant (very good). Forfar Bridie - are flaky pastry folded over a meat and onion filling. Morning rolls - are small flat rolls (morning rolls), breakfast bacon, black pudding etc is served in when on the go. Potato scones are a flat griddle bread (most often cut into quarters from a round), these are fried for breakfast. There are many variations on bannocks and scones, oat cakes and other griddle breads. In terms of cakes there are many, some interesting ones are: Dundee cake - a rich fruit cake with almonds det into the top. Black Bun - is a festive cake served at Hogmanay, it is an extremely rich dried fruit filling enclosed in a crisp pastry casing. There are many variations on gingerbread/spice biscuits - Edinburgh gingerbread, Fochabers gingerbread, 'Broonie', 'Parlies'. There are also numerous variations on shortbread and some other biscuits, like Abernethy biscuits which are good. Due to the Scottish sweet tooth there are any recipes for 'sweeties', including Tablet, which is similar to the fudge described above, but more crisp and sugary then soft.

And has three legs etc - bloody tourists. My butcher showed me how to sex a haggis (depending on what portion of the stomach is used, there will be one or two openings on an individual haggis).

Almost an exact replica, Adam....my thanks! Of course, now I'm hungry... The owners are ex-pat Scots and have taken great pains to keep things authentic to satisfy the ex-pat clientele. Frank apparently makes his own Ayrshire bacon for sandwiches as well. ← Ayrshire bacon is very good in a Morning roll. Haggis is one of those funny things that lots of people have opinions on, even if they have never seen one. There is a lot of issues involved, general squeamishness, classism, racism etc and the Scots should take some responsibility for some of this, but at the end of the day it is a mild sausage which is mostly grain (as you can see in the picture). The defining think about it is that it was cooked in a stomach, but this is often not the case now and there are completey vegan versions. So the imagery associated with the haggis is more of an issue then what actually is in it. I'd rather eat a haggis from my butcher then eat a pizza with mechanically rendered and formed meat on it.

Swiss chard is the same species as beetroot (and sugar beet for that matter) and a lot of the colour variations have been obtained by crossing regular chard with beetroot. So there tends to be some variation in the qualtity of the stems in comparision to the White strains and the leaves can be slightly more tough. I prefer the white types as they tend to be sold in better condition then the coloured types, however if you grew your own this would obviously not be a problem

I think that looking for a rustic ancestor of risotto may be slightly off track. Rice was a high end product and the early riziculture in Northern Italy was dominated by the fact that the workers were virtual slaves, often starving according to contempory sources. I'm not sure that these unfortunate people would have had an oppertunity to develope the rich dishes that characterise 'risotto' although I'm sure that they ate rice dishes of some sort. Also, although the rice we buy is a relatively uniform product, this has not always been the case and I would imagine that the top grades would be sent off to the wealthy and the poor grades are what would be consumed by the growers. So of all the rice dishes in Italy, many most likely do not have rustic roots at all. There is a recipe collection by Martino of Como (mid-15th century, worded for a powerful cardinal ), this book was extensively copied in various forms for the next few hundred years. In this collection there is a recipe for 'Riso con brodo di carne'. This is rice cooked with capon/chicken broth, flavoured with spices, coloured with saffron and thicken with eggs. The recipe also says you can leave out the eggs, as some people do not like them with rice. Obviously, this most likely represents a class of high status dishes and while it may not be a direct ancestor of risotto Milanese, I imagine that rich rice dishes, that contain expensive ingredients most likely come from this high end cooking and represent trickle down, rather then refinement of a peasant dish (although I am sure that these exist as well). I hope to cook something soon BTW - am a bit busy at the moment.

I have made them, but never had the originals. The recipe I have is from Anna del Conte, who says she collected the recipe from the Crema restuarant 'Pia Triassi' which had the best reputation at the time for them. She suggests that they should be made fairly small, rather then large and that it traditionally the pasta is 'poor mans pasta, made with eggs and water, but you should do make the pasta from what is best for you. Ingredients for the filling. Sultanas, candied citron, marsala, amaretti di saronna, dark chocolate, parmesan, eggs, breadcrumbs, marscapone, pepper, salt. They are really interesting and well worth making. I think that there is a temptation in English language cookbooks to transfer these into a 'dessert' pasta, but I think that this is wrong. People that seem fine with eating sweet Asian foods as a savory, so it shouldn't matter that there is an occasional dish that is similar in the European tradition as well.

If it is anything like the Scottish version, it most likely looks a little like this.

That is really nice looking pasta, love the texture I can see. I haven't seen this type of pasta before, but from what I can see they look quite thin and delicate in cross-section, so I would be less inclined to use a rich meat based sauce on them. Some types of mafalde are cut into similar shapes, but these are a much thicker pasta, so I don't think they are interchangeable. Maybe, something cream based as suggested, but their shape reminds me of some very delicate pasta squares I have had in Liguria, served with pesto sauce. No the most exciting suggestion I know, but it was a really nice dish.

I was wondering the same thing. I couldn't find much but per Mary Taylor Simeti's "Pomp and Sustenance" the Superfino rices are all 20th c. hybrids which have mostly replaced the riso originario which was previously used. (A short grained Japonica rice) I'm highly tempted to order some riso originario and see how it compares. ← As far as I am aware the original Italian rices varieties are of the Japonica type (although, I am sure that there has been much hybridization with the Indica type to produce new strains). Rice culture in Italy (Lom. & Pied) was relatively late (15th century), but rice appears in various earlier recipes, and was most likely a high end trade item. The Romans knew of rice, but used it medicinally, rather then as a culinary item (based on extant records). According to Cliff. Wright large scale trade of rice in the Europe had to wait for the establishment of riziculture by the Arabs. There are many different types of rice in Italy, even if the three most common risotto types dominate the mental map of 'Italian rice'. Basically, they are classified on size of the grain and cross section into various groups, but there is a lot of overlap. Originario rice (Cripto, Auro, Rubino, Balilla, Ticinese). Semifino rice (Italico, Vialone Nano, Maratelli, Neretto, Monticelli, Padano, Lido, R. Marchetti). Fino rice (Ribe, R.B., Ringo, Europa, P. Marchetti, S. Andrea, Veneria, Europa). Superfino rice (Arborio, Volano, Roma, Baldo, Carnaroli, Razza 77, Silla, Bonni). I have read at some point that the Arborio rice that we have now is not the same as the original rice of this name, but have been unable to chase this up. But, 'Arborio' refers to a variety of rice and is also a market name for a wide range to risotto type rices, so of all the 'Italian' (it is grown in the USA and Australia), it is most likely going to be the most variable in terms of the product. These rices have different properties etc, but as for the Originario types, they are very small grained and are very good for deep fried balls of rice and soup, but I'm not sure that I would use them for risotto, as I like the 'creamy' texture of risotto. Not that I can make risotto.