Adam Balic

Oh yes I agree. Actually, this is one recipe that doens't really work well in the UK. The pumpkins availble aren't very flavourful (ie. mostly Butternut squash) and the ricotta isn't great either (no real acid), infact most of it is UHT, which is unsuitable for the dish. One thing that can be done is to roast the punkin to concentate the flavour or use a combination of pumpkin and sweet potato (orange fleshed type).

Well in truth, these pasta are ment to be 'sweet': "The town of Crema in Lombardy is famous for its tortellini stuffed with an extraordinary mixture of dried and candied fruit, amaretti biscuits, dark chocolate, Marsala, and cheese. Throughout the rest of Lombardy, a more home-style pasta stuffed with pumpkin and amaretti is common. Emilia-Romagna has a sweet pastry pie, stuffed with a mixture of macaroni or tortellini dressed with porcini mushrooms, sweetbreads, and chicken livers and bound in béchamel sauce flavoured with cinnamon and cloves. Recipes that are similar to this pie can be traced back to the Renaissance." However, there is some variation in the level of sweetness between different amaretti, so if you were interested you could experient.

Steve - the example is an abstract example for a conferance, and may not actually be based on any really data. But assuming that it is, a critical point would be how they define "Mangrove", are the new mangroves anything like the original (plant and animal compositition, amount of biomass, presence of key species etc etc). It is a fairly common practice for certain industries to use specific scientific jargon to hide the reality of the situation (not that this is nessarily the case in this instance). A paper increase in mangrove area is meaningless without clarification of there definitions. As a consumer of shrimp/prawns, I really would like to know this information, as at the moment I avoid these farmed shrimp, but if I had the correct type of information I would pay a premium for shrimp farmed using non-destructive practices (if there is such a thing).

Well I don't think I think I was "lumping" anything, however, now that you mention it I have yet to see any SE-Asian farmed prawns/shrimp labelled as "Environmentally Friendly" etc. So I would rather avoid them all, until that occurs. What percentage of the total are these SEAFDEC environmentally friendly shrimp that you speak of? 1%? 10% 90? How do I identify these products? Saying "...not as significant as the timber industry" is also meaningless. So something that is a big negative, negates the need to be wary of a something that is not quite as negative, but still pretty negative? Also at the end of the day the most commonly farmed species (Black Tiger Prawn), while having a good texture, they are quite flavourless. Actually, since this is one of the fastest growing and dynamic food websites on the net, it would be of great value to the food community if eGullet could provide a range of accurate information on the topic, so that they can make the informed decisions, rather then generalisations as you mentioned. As a starting point, the information that I have on Thailand shrimp farming is that according to the "National Economic and Social Development Board, 640,000 acres of the country's 960,000 acres of mangrove forests have been destroyed by waste water from shrimp farms and about 24% of shrimp farms are abandoned after a period of two to four yearsbecause the soil has lost its fertility and cannot be used forother purposes.". This is one of the most widely circulated items on the subject, is it accurate what do your sources say?

I have only ever been to the USA twice and I only briefly looked at the flours ( ), but USA cake flour has a low protein content like "00" flour, however it could have other properties that I am un-aware of. Here is a link that mentions a whole bunch of information about various flours. Flour

I'm wary of loss of mangroves, and therefore fish nurseries, due to Prawn/Shrimp farming in SE-Asian.

As the official hogmanay celebrations were called off this year due to bad weather ( ), Burns' Night is likely to be even more drunken this year. Should be fun, although haggis isn't such a once in the year thing here.

"00" is the most refined grade of soft wheat flour in Italy. It has a minumum of 7% protein, which is mostly glutenin and gliadin, which form gluten (eg. protein content of these flours is a rough guide to the amount of potential gluten in the dough). As different brands of "00" flour can have different protein contents, some brands are better then others for making pasta. Less refined Italian soft wheat flours contain more protein ("2" has a minumum of 10% protein), and the texture of the flour isn't as fine. Semolina (durum wheat) flours have ~15% protein. This means that "00" flour produces a finer textured pasta, but it has to be worked longer to develop the gluten content or have egg added to act as a protein substitute.

I can only speak of limited (Scottish) experience of fish and chips, but I prefer the Australian version, prehaps for very parochial reasons: - Lack of choice, in Melbourne you would typically be offered a choice of 5-6 different types of fish, not just Haddock (I assume that haddock only, is a Northen thing?). - Pre-cooked fish. I prefer the fish to be cooked in front on me, rather then sitting around for ages in a warmer. - Soggy pre-cooked chips (see above).

Turnips are called "Rova" in Sweden, Swedish Turnips are called "Kalrot", although they were once called "rotabagge" in some areas and hence the US name. Roman authors refered to the beet family as "rapa" (still in use in Italy today) or "Napus" from this derives the Anglo-Saxon Nepe/Naep (and the Scots "Neep"). At some point Nepe/Naep was combined with "Turn" (= made round or round) and hence you get "Turnip" = Round rooted Neep, to distiguish it from Neeps that you ate the leaves not the roots I guess. Swedes/neeps were introduced into Scotland as a gift from the Swedish King, you can see the jeweled snuff-box the seeds came in in the British Museum. Swedish turnips are actually a hybrid between a turnip and a cabbage family member (maybe rape/canola), due to a chromosomal doubling even you get fertile seeds and a new species. In the USA Rutabaga were also known as "Turnip rooted cabbage", which they also are.

Rutabagas = Swedish Turnip. In England = "Swede", in Scotland = Turnip ("Neep"). Mashed with cream with a pinch of powdered ginger is very good.

I'm afraid that the powdered form can taste a little like freeze dried fish food. I have eaten it by the slice with some port (trying to recreate some Olde English drunkeness), and also with pasta. Cook spaghetti/linguine etc, make a bread crumb dressing with chilli, garlic and lemon zest, mix through pasta, add Bottarga and some parsley. Have plenty of chilled white wine on hand.

See above my original post re: Skimming the surface of the sauce and frying off to bring out the fats that will be added to the pasta. I mostly use the pork as a source of the fat, but you can use butter/cream. Olive oil if you must. Lardo is good, if not authentic.

Although I can vouch for the tediousness of it's market (the large market with the butchers, the smaller one with the spice stalls, mounds of olives and preserved lemon is good).

I still think that this is fairly meaningless analysis. Like I said before, French cuisine has dominated upper end dining for the last 150 years in the Western world. So why wouldn't French dominate? It would be damn suprising if it didn't.

Considering that Tuscany is a relatively large region (by Italian standards) and it's history of incorporating neighboring lands and its geography (Mountains to coasts), it isn't that surprising to see the diversity in the cooking in the region. Tuscan relatives of mine will drive four an hour to eat a dish that they can get in there own village, if they think the former version is better. They will also bitch and complain about how "wrong" it is to put almonds on certain cakes like the do in Florence as everybody [in Siena] knows it should have pinenuts.

Thank you Bill, that is very kind. My impression was that as a item of food writing is that it needed pictures. . Time and work constraints prevented this, but it was an interesting thing to learn.

Since the top restaurants in the Western world have been dominated by French inspired cuisine for the last 150 years, why is it such a surprise that this is still the case?

Navarin D'Agneau is also an excellent turnip stew. Recipe

Thinly slice turnips layer in a gratin dish with a cheese (wich cooks well etc), season with pepper, salt nutmeg and cinnamon. Moisten (not to the swimming stage) with stock and bake in the oven. Original recipe (~AD 1500?) also uses some sugar.

Still quite a popular tradition amounghst the middle-classes in Edinburgh. The first time it occured I had no idea what these (mostly English) people were doing.

Oh yeah, I always add a few scrapes of nutmeg to the sauce, about 20 minutes before serving. Some ragu don't contain tomato at all.

I'm not really sure if I understand what is ment by "limitations in Italian food in Italy"? "Italian food" is a useful interlectual construct, but in reality while there is 'food found in Italy', I can't see any, other then very superficial (all that pasta dude), demonstation of a pan-Italian cuisine. The food tends to be very regional. Villages in the same region may have variations on similar recipes, but even in this case there are noticable differences in food preparations, for those that can be bothered to find them. No idea about Italian restuarants in the USA, but if they are anything like Australia they will be un-representative of Italian food (as found in Italy). Apart from Rissoto, Polenta and Osso Bucco, Food north of Rome is not represented. Regions like Friuli and Marche are still relatively unknown in terms of food, which is stagering considering the amount of visitors to Italy each year.

Tell what your expectations are and I will tell you how they are wrong. Didn't you go to Italy recently? What did you think of the Ragu there?

Tasty! Am I the only one who likes the ragù of chicken livers, chicken gizzards and other unmentionables that goes into the Marchegiano specialty Vicigrassi? 99% of Vicigrassi lack all the interesting bits and end up being an anemic version of Lasagne al Forno. One version of the basic recipe uses Vin Santo in the pasta, which is good, but better used in the sauce.