Adam Balic

There may have been have been in some cases, but I saw no evidence of it and considering some 'stalls' were simply old men/women selling a handfull from a basket on the side of the street doubt it would be universal. It was a very walrm and dry summer and they had had no rain for a few weeks so it was seen as a bad harvest, but there was no indication of a decline over all.

Yes it is made from the root of the Yellow gentian, which is a true gentian, but looks nothing like the blue ones as it is typically over a metre tall. Tastes mildly herby, but more alcoholic then anything. The flower, from the French Alps. Not to be confused with "Genepi" whixh is yellow/green and very herby, but is made from a variety of high altitude wormwood (Artemisia genipi). I like it a lot.

Bread and beans (including chickpeas). You buy both from the forno. A typical family meal would be: Anti-pasti - melon and ham or figs and ham. maybe soup pasta main salad dessert. mostly this is gelati or fruit or little cakes from a shop. Most nights average evening meals would be: Anti-pasti pasta or main salad dessert If we go out for pizza, the ladies have pizza me and the lads have pasta and pizza. Maybe a dessert (I am not big on desserts). One nice thing is a really runny lemon gelati with some type of wine (forgot the name of this). If we go out for pizza and get really, really drunk (only happens if the ratio of Australians to Italians is high), we go to the all night Forno for doughnuts etc. My brother-in-law weights ~50 kg, I am ~ double this. He can eat much, much more then me. Another popular (in this family) anti-pasti is raw sausage meat spread on bread.

Yes, I have had the Ardbeg Uigeadail, a very nice malt. The 17 YO is about to go of line for a while (I prefer the 10 YO, so not a problem), there is also a 'Very Young' 6 YO cask strength Ardbeg, which is very sweet, but a little coarse. Of the Islay malts Ardbeg is the has the strongest combination of sweet/smoke. Caol Ila was a similar smokey aroma, but always falls short on the taste to me. Laphroaig I find a little boring, but nice enough, Bunnahabhain and Bowmore ditto. Lagavulin and Bruichladdich would be the other two distilleries that I would target, although they are very different in character. Not much smoke in the latter. If you want to stick to smoky/sweet single malts, possibly one of the more similar to Ardbeg isn't from Scotland at all, but is an Irish Whiskey, "Connemara". This is an interesting malt, but can be over priced, so look around for it. There is a 40% and cask strength bottling, the latter is sweeter, but I prefer the former.

You are right, a lot of bread is involved. In general the Tuscans I know have a very slight build, but they can put away huge amounts of bread and beans during a meal. Fried veg are also very popular (during cooler weather), especially zucchini flowers and porcini.

I like panzanella made with, eh, farro rather then bread. No quite so monolithic. Also, this is something that I would only eat in summer....One way on cutting the vinegar is to soak the bread in the tomato pulp (minus the seeds), which is quite acidic Neci look great, what sort of honey did you use? Chestnut is really good.

I would have assumed that energy/fuel has always been an issue? But I guess there is a big difference between solid fuel and gas/electric cooking. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is well worth doing, but I have a personal preference for less liquid, the pressure cooked results in quite a bit being produced. This reminds me of the tagine I have had in France, rather the the ones in Fez. Not that it matters, but I prefer the latter. As the ox tail was so good, I think that another cut of meat that would work would be scrag end of [lamb] neck.

Can't really help you out (my father made ours), but until you do get one you can look at this. Occasionally, 19th C clockwork vertical jacks show up on ebay. Like this one. These are cool as they hang from the mantlepiece, and you can suspend basting fat above the roasting bird, so it basically self bastes. Like this (scroll down).

Thank you very much for this identification. I was pretty sure that it was Amaranth, but the other had me stumped. I have seen that same thing in Italy and close up it looks like a type of sow thistle. Do you know what colour the flowers are, blue or yellow? This is exactly that information that I can not find out from eating in restaurants while traveling, thank you again.

Okay, point taken -- but in terms of modern Moroccan cooking the question remains. If someone is making a tagine... do they use a pressure cooker in their homes? Would the average person own one and use it daily? I was under the impression that the tagine was still a key piece of equipment but perhaps not... ← I've mentioned elsewhere that it's not. Cooking a tagine in a pressure cooker really doesn't take away so much value from the finished that it can be a considered a great loss. Also on weekends, holidays, etc people will still use clay vessels. I'm sorry but sometimes I feel like people want to believe that North Africa is so quaint and cute and we live in huts and cook over an open fire. The history is very long in the Maghreb. This is a part of the world that seems to forget nothing. The monuments, ruins and foot prints of all the great civilizations that inhabited the area are still there. Tagine cooking wil survive, we're just not using it all the time. Modern life and all that. ← OK, tonight I made 'Beef Tagine with Cauliflower' from Paula's "Good Food from Morocco" - in a pressure cooker. I have just bought one of these and I am finding it very useful for cooking during the week in a short amount of time. Anyway the meat used was Ox-tail and Short ribs. Cooking time was approximately 50 minutes. Well the finished product was fine, but there were a few issues. - more liquid is given out, a lot so some reduction has to take place and I sure you loose some of the aromatics during this process. - ox-tail was excellent, short ribs were a little more dried out. Obviously you can't control cooking times of different cuts. Other then that it was fine, but although I am really pleased to be able to make this during the week without any planning, I prefer the longer cooking method in terms of final product.

I don't htink so and I would be wary of an open thread, due to the toxic nature of some mushrooms etc. Of all the mushrooms I saw on sale, I was happy with buying chanterelle and the Boletes, as these are the unlikely to cause problems. I would love to try some of the others I saw, but I am really wussy about death.

Apart from the large one in the middle, these are all Slippery Jacks Suillus luteus (in Italian Pinarello, Pinarolo or Pinuzzo), so not amazing eating. So you win. But I have my memories.

Come and spend a winter in Edinburgh, then you may not be so jealous. But 6 weeks annual holiday isn't bad at all. One reason for not moving to the USA. Seasonal is very good description of the food I saw in Lithuania. The food was great, I really wish I could spend much more time there and really document much more of the food, especially in other regions and cities. Lithuania is particularly rich in mushrooms, with over 400 harvested. The Dzukija region in the SE is very famous for the mushrooms, it is 70% forest with a sandy soil, so perfect for many mushroom types. I was told it was a very bad year for mushrooms (in other words an excellent summer), but one walk in a forest and I saw more mushrroms then the enire rest of my life put together - and I come from a family that would go out hunting for them. I bought several kilos while I wa there, they are now cooked down and in the freezer. These are a varied group of boletes, which cost ~ 40 p.

I wouldn't even entertain eating blood. ← Why not? I'm just curious. ← Can't put my finger on it. Same reason I wouldn't drink pee, I guess. I know their both sterile and all. It's just a bit revolting. Now when I eat meat it must have _some_ blood in there, so maybe it's an ill-founded emotion-based preference. Would you drink a small cup of blood? That's what's happening if you eat dinuguan or a civet sauce. ← I wouldn't eat a cup of raw chcicken meat, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't eat a cooked chicken.

I imagine that there are various groups within the USA that consume quite a bit of lamb/hogget/mutton. For the rest that don't eat it it is because the USA doen't seem to have a huge tradition of sheep farming, in comparison to the UK, Australia and NZ. From that point it is a matter of being wary of something different. I have heard North Americans comment on its 'gamey' flavour. I can really see that myself, but it has an assertive flavour that could be off putting to poeple not use to it. I would rather have a rack of lamb then a beef steak in general though.

This would be fairly easy to do using a sous vide technique. I've cooked short ribs for around 30-36 hours sous vide at 60C. It's good, but nothing like a traditionally braised short rib. So I don't think a stew with tender, medium rare chunks of meat would be very "stew like." One trick might be to cook it LTLT and then, just before serving, take it quickly up to a simmer. ← So what makes stew meat tender? Is it the moisture or the fat or something else? If the meat is over 65C, then how does it keep moist? And I'm unconvinced "gentle simmering" has much to do with anything. Using my probe thermometer, a "gentle simmer" reads about 98C and a rolling boil reads 100C. It seems to me that simmering probably does something (although I haven't actually tested) but I can't think of any mechanism that would cause it. ← Water boils at 100C at sea level, so a gentle simmer or hard boil will not differ much in actual temperature. But the amount of energy that you are pumping into the system is very different. Put two identical pots with the same amoiunt of water in each on the stove, one at a hard boil, the other at a gentle simmer. They will not boil dry at the same rate, so temperture alone doen't describe all the reactions. The problem is that I don't have much of an idea of how this affects cooking chunks of meat though. I think that there are lots of factors that effect 'tenderness', as this is not an exact term and can describe different things. A raw piece of fillet steak can be tender and so can a well cooked piece of beef brisket. What I look for in a stew is a conbination of "tender" (meat fibres seperate with out two much resistance) and "succulence", this means that the meat doen't doesn't have a dry , cottonwool mouthfeel. I guess this could be retained moisture through gentle cooking, but my impression is that is due to an inital high collagen content, which upon conversion to gelatin gives a non-dry mouthfeel. I imagine that gelatin retains water well also (jelly/gello for instance). I have a temperature probe and I know from experience that some cuts of meat will never become tender and succulent not matter how long or short a time they are cooked at ~65C, even if they are a cut that should - supermarket brisket for some reason. It maybe that all collagens are not equal (beef v fish for instance) or that other factors are involved (age of amimal, age of meat cut post-mortem). Still getting to grips with this. So if I sellect a cut of meat for a stew it tends to have a high conective tisse content, rather then being about selecting a cut with a high fat content. But, fat contains a great deal of flavour so this is another, if seperate issue.

I had missed the connection with minced pies, so used to considering them a mix of fruit, spices and nuts, that I hadn't thought about them at all. There's quite a bit of meat in these though. I have a recipe from Bonajuto published on a Slow Food book (which I clearly cannot copy here for copyright reasons) which calls for 500 grams of beef tenderloin for every 2.5 kg of stuffing. According to one story we heard in Modica the 'mpanatigghi were one of the tricks used by nuns to get around the prohibition to consume meat during Lent. Once mixed with enough spices and chocolate nobody would notice the nuns were eating meat. I have some doubts on its veridicality, but I like the story anyway. I wonder, is the origin of the word sweetmeats connected to the same concept? British mince pies typically had a very high meat content (40-60% although this varied from recipe to recipe. From Gervase Markham The English Housewife, (London: 1615) Take a Legge of Mutton, and cut the best of the flesh from the bone, and parboyl it well then put to it three pound of the best Mutton suet & shred it very small; then spread it abroad, and fashion it with Salt Cloves and Mace: then put in good store of Currants, great Raisins and Prunes clean washed and picked a few Dates sliced, and some Orenge-pils sliced ; then being all well mixt together, put it into a coffin, or into divers coffins, and so bake them and when they are served up, open the lids and strow store of Sugar on the top of the meat and upon the lid. And in this sort you may also bake Beef or Veal, onely the Beef would not be parboyld, and the Veal will ask a double quantity of Suet. As for "meat" in "sweetmeat". I think that this is using the now defunct meaning of meat (= solid food, rather then liquid food). Hence nut-meat, white-meat (cheese) etc. I have the Slow Food trattoria book, is the recipe in this as I would be interested in gettting a copy :hint:.

Yep, when I am choking to death on a bone, I often think to suck on a slice of lemon.

No, it's done to enhance the flavour, as simple as that. The is actually quite good quality fish in some parts of the West, without fishy taste. Not all Western cultures do this either and in the UK were citrus fruit do not grow on trees, malt vinegar is used. Interesting to know that there may be a cultural preference for this, I would have thought a preference for an acid with food was quite universal.

I have not problem with blood or guts, so it would be an issue for me. When I was 5 or 6 I was given the job of bashing bunnies brains out, when the shooters hadn't killed them, so possibly it is a conditioning thing. I don't think that it is such a big deal that you don't care to prepare an animal that could be your pet, but I have little tolerance for a friend that can deal with the heads left on a fish. What is more of an issue is that I couldn't get hare this fresh. The hare I can get (two different species infact) is well hung and this has caused an issue when cooking it in the house as it has a fairly potent aroma.

Actually, all it proves is that the the people in China at the time had noodles. Nothing more nothing more nothing less. But I think that this was already know from other sources. The important part of the article is the identification of the starch source used - several types of millet. It is quite possible to people to develop similar technologies independently and having to pin down a particular culture as the 'origin' in such cases is a little pointless. It will be quite interesting to find out when the Chinese largely replaced these native millet noodles with soft wheat originating in the “Fertile Crescent” (present day Iran). Although I am aware of a number of different grains (and other starch/protein sources) that are made into noodles, I haven't heard of millet noodles. I know that several millet types are grown in the region, but I imagine that these various millets are a pain in the arse to mill in comparison to wheat, and the starch/gluten contents will be different. Does anybody know if any of the present day Chinese peoples make millet noodles and are these an everyday thing of a special occasion dish? The latter would be particularly interesting.

Kevin - if it makes you feel any better the last time I made this it took over a year to set correctly. I was too lazy to boil the honey/sugar until the soft crack stage . I agree with anzu, when you take it out of the oven it is still quite soft to the touch, and firms up on cooling.

Cool. In Britain they are called 'Minced Pies', although most of the meat content is not included now. I had no idea that any other culture had retained these. Mostly beef tongue or veal was used, but beef was also common. "To equal proportions of roast-beef:, raisins, currants, suet, candied citron, orange, lemon, spices and sugar, add a proportionate weight of stewed pears and preserved ginger, the grated rind of three dozen oranges and lemons, and also their juice, one bottle of old rum, one bottle of brandy, and two of old port." God that mulberry granita looks wonderful. My grandparents had a tree and I ate my self sick on them during the summers. I wish I had a bowl of them now.

He should really grouse then. From what I can gather there is about 1000 wild animals spread around several countries, so I imagine Lithuania's re-introduced wild population must be in the dozen to hundreds range. A "modest cull" would be a couple of steaks in this case. Damn I really want to eat this endangered species now.

From a culinary point of view it would be intersting to compare the taste of the American and European species of Bison as while the former is a plains grazer, the latter lives in forests and feeds on deciduous trees. I have seen both species side by side in Barcelona, the Wisent lacks the hump of the American species and looks a little more fine boned. The Spanish weren't passing out free samples though. The species has actually increased in numbers, as there were only 54 bison alive in parks and zoos after the last wild animals were shot in the early 20th century. There are now a few thousand. I'm pretty sure they didn't shoot one for Schama's pleasure alone. There a few famous pieces of Lithuanian literature that have the Bison in a star role. Hence the lack of Bison I guess.