Adam Balic

Have come across various references to "Popovers" in American literature and stupid me, I thought they might be some Indian (eh, sub-continental) type thing, like Sri-lankan hopper. Apparently they are a batter pudding made in muffin tins. Is this correct and what would be the difference between a popover and a Jamie Oliver style individual Yorkshire pudding?

Many Australians that grew up in the 70's/80's will have been raised on a diet of Milo, meat and tinned peaches. Don't know if it was ever popular in the UK, but it seems to be an ex-colonial thing as the Milo sold in Edinburgh is only availble from the Chinese grocer and is made in Kenya. Doesn't taste as good as 20 year old memory of Australian Milo. I liked mine on icecream.

In the last year: One EP silver braising spoon (Victorian) £4 One OK quality tinned copper casserole £5 One good quality tinned copper skillet £4 (tin had bubbled in spots, heated to high?) One large round stoneware pickling crock £5, matches the upright version (same pottery in fact) I paid £40 for in an antique shop. Various Victorian glass jelly moulds One hand coloured Victorian print of a red mullet £5

I never went that deep into the tripe business, but I have friends living near Florence, so I know about the culture of "Trippai" (tripe stalls) and I heard that tripe aficionados have their preferred kind and part of tripe. For them, "tripe" is about as specific as the expression "steak". In that respect, tripe should make for an intertesting horizontal and vertical tasting. Unfortunately, the fixation on lean muscular meat caused already serious difficulties to get such differentiated products at our (Swiss) butchers. Just another area where we have came down from educated gourmands to ignorant "peasants". I think that most people would be thinking of honeycomb tripe (from the reticulum = 2nd stomach) when they think of tripe at all, but carpet tripe (from the rumen = 1st stomach) is just as common (obviously) and in some recipes I think that it is better as it often seems to be more gelatinous then honeycomb tripe. This carpet tripe is often the type that gets served cold. You also get tripe made from the omasum and abomasum (rarely) stomachs.

In Liguria ( and parts of Tuscany) there is a style of cooking known as "Zimino" which used beetroot tops (Swiss chard is a common substitute), sometimes Chefs alter the recipe to use the roots, but the tops are traditional. The most common recipe I have seen is with cuttlefish, but squid or chickpeas etc work well. Recipe

Served precooked in larger pieces (say about 4"x4" size) with a sauce vinaigrette is a Swiss regional dish fromn the north. Another traditional example is a soup called Busecca from northern Italy or the Italian part of Switzerland And there are the different types of tripe as well inter-species and intra-animal (ruminants have four stomachs after all). In Florence there are still a number of street tripe stalls, one item they sell is "lampredotto", which I think is the abomasal stomach (could be intestine, but it smells like abomasum), but unlike most tripe the mucosal layer hasn't been removed. Last week I had braised lampredotto in a bread roll with salsa verde. Deee-lish.

Cooking etc depends on the type of tripe and what you want from it. After preparation it is largely connective tissue, so think 'gelatine'. Tripe à la mode de Caen is cooked for 24 hours or more and it is very tender and in Chianti you can buy cold pre-cooked tripe, which you eat simply by dosing with olive oil.

Just obtained in Florence 'Ricette di Osterie D'Italia' by the Slow Food people. A lovery collection of regional cooking. Especially nice as some of the recipes are from places local to were I am staying in Prato.

Have a meat grinder for forcemeat pre-work, but it is the wrong type. According to a couple of books I have the correct type grinder has internal blabes that slice the meat just before it passes through the perforations. Mine works my more by brute force and this 'crushes' the meat and doesn't give as good a texture. Apparently. Cooking in pastry can be a bitch, but if the pastry is 'water-proofed' (either due to the type of pastry used or from a layer of back fat) it shouldn't go soggy. A poultry liver pate cooked in a brioche shell, filled with sauternes gelly is a fine thing and well worth the effort.

Well I am very glad to hear this as I was starting to feel guility about possibly spreading mis-information via google. Speaking of teganon, I was recently in Lipari where the museum had some outstanding examples of Bronze age Greek pottery. There were even several terracotta teganon, so I was quite possible looking that the original of many of these Arabic dishes.

Tangiers is named after a pot? Who knew. I am getting the feeling that the Mauro-Arabic language group (?) likes this sound. Do they all have a root? I once read that tagine was rooted in Greek for pan/dish, but unfortunately the top google search for "tagine etymology" lists this thread and some comments I made at one point. I may not be that modest, but even I have limits of self-referencing!

Or is it possible that tanjara is derived from tangia? It would seem more logical (if not nessarily correct) that the terracotta pot would proceed the development of the tinned pot?

Yes they have them. Watch out for the one in Gaiole, it tends to snatch the cash back if you are not quick.

In Croatian cooking, the stuffed squid would be cooked in a sealed vessel (known as a 'bell'), the liquid would come from the squid themselves, first coming out of the tissue then concentrating and re-absorbing. You could do something similar is a sealed cast-iron enamelled casserole.

"le delfina" in Artimino has some very interesting local food and less common Tuscan wine. Also, a wonderful location.

Depends on the variety, but you will see discriptions of the 'true shallot' being the grey variety. In reality they aren't really grey (colour refers to the outer surface of the individual scales), more pinky with a greenish overlay that may be considered as being grey. But there are a number of different types, incuding some quite reddish ones, although these tend to be larger and not as deep red/purple as the SE-asian types. Speaking of which, last year I bought a jar of deep fried shallots from an Asian grocer, the image on the label clearly showed a red shallot type bulb with a flower stalk that looked identical to a 'Purple Tasseled Grape Hyacinth'*. So I grew some of the red shallots out of curiosity. Flowers were nothing like the illustration. * A type of bulb that is found throughout the Med., can be eaten and is very tasty, but is also highly prized by bulb collectors. Anybody that has walk the paths at Cinque Terra (Liguria) in early summer would have passed many of these flowering. Tasseled Grape Hyacinth

And we haven't even mentioned chives. Scallion = no bulb green onion, it would seem. Curious as Calçots are quite large, but are not bulbed. Could be down to the way they are grown as much as variety I guess.

Are you saying that scallions and green onions are different things in the US? The would be in Australia as well, but in the UK Green onions are often very large scallions/spring onions, basically the Calçots of Catalan France. Oh, I forgot to say that I like bananna shallots as they are less of a pain in the arse to peel in quantity.

Neither would I, but most people in NSW, Australia would. As a lot of Australian chefs come out of Sydney I have know numerous occasions where the term has been confused when people from othr regions cook from Australian chef cookbooks. What you and I would call a shallot that use the term "eschallot". Do people in the USA us the term eschallot? And if so what are they refereing to?

I wonder if everybody is talking about the same item as the term "Shallot" can mean different things to different people. In some places "Shallot" = scallion/spring onion which is not the same as the shallot from classic french cooking. Also "eschallot" can also be 'scallion/spring onion/green onion' or 'shallot'. Plus there are Asian shallots which are different again, but often the same thing Welsh Onions. All these things taste very different to me and smell of shallots cooking in butter is one of the great pleasures of cooking.

Just got a well loved, but intact copy of "Nouvelle Cuisine Bourgeoise Pour La Ville et Pour La Campagne" (1878) by Urbain Dubois. Not bad for £5.

In the spirit of friendship I tried a zinfandel last night. 2000 Mother Clone Zinfandel, Pedroncelli, Sonoma, CA. Eh, didn't like it very much. Will try some others.

I proberly prefer pinot noir over cabernet based wines, but my real preference is for anything that decently cellared to its optimum. Apart from Ruby Cabernet, which really does suck. Tell you what, I will come up with a list of Zinfandels that are availble to me and you all can advise on the best choices. I am always ready to change my mind and if I do enjoy it I can always claim it as another triumph for the Croatian race.

Really? I've heard that about Riesling. Although considering the Gewurtz is a hybrid of Riesling and Traminer... Have you a source for this information? I have never heard that gewurztraminer is anything other then an aromatic and pink skinned type/clone/variety of Traminer. Mostly you can taste the wine in the grapes, but it does vary a lot and I have found it much easier with white grape varieties, especially the aromatic types (Muscat, gewurztraminer). Pinot gris grapes are very cute and tend to taste of the wine. Haven't tried chardonnay yet, but I suspect you would have more luck tasting the wine by sucking a plank of oak, then eating the grapes. You can buy a strawberry flavoured American table grape Vitus labrusca in Italy and also the ( mostly illegal. but very common) wine made from it (both called fragolino). Both taste very strongly of strawberry flavoured bubblegum. One obvious difference is that the grapes tend to be sweeter then the wine and that if the wines are aged they resemble the original fruit flavours less as well.

Ah, that sounds more correct, the chap said it was made from tomatos and sun dried, not "sun dried" tomatos. Swordfish pasta with green apple was from Lipari and contained, fennel seeds, pinenuts, mint and chives. Sounds revolting, was delicious. A few capers only. Also at the same restaurant we had Baked Scorpion fish (Scofano or Rascasse) with fennel (leaves), mint, juniper berries, cloves, tomato, pasley and white wine. Was excellent, could have been terrible, but it was done very well. One thing about these dishes it that they were very well done, the ingredients are quite strong flavours, it they had used to much of any one of these ingredients it could have been a disaster.