russ parsons

actually, judging from my avocado tree, that little nub doesn't really help the avocado ripen in any way. but what it does do is prevent spoiling while the avocado is ripening. if it is gone, there's usually a rotten spot there by the time the avocado is ready.

i hate to point out the obvious, but there's not a lot to see at an oyster farm. it's under water. that said, Taylor Shellfish in Shelton has a company store at their plant where you can sample whatever they're pulling that particular day. pretty much everywhere you look as you're driving along the water there, you're looking at oyster beds.

but the chioggia's are so pretty! (for ag freaks: that bullseye striping is caused by alternating vascular material, which is red, and the material that stores the sugar, which is white).

i agree. i think we are way beyond "de-skilling" the home provisioner. they are already there. anything that can be done to increase the odds of them getting better fruit is a benefit and should not be sneered at just because we may not need it ourselves. besides, maybe some people will eventually make the connection that the stuff with the good sticker smells better and has a certain feel. as for the argument that stores would be reluctant to use it, I find that pretty cynical. i think most groceries would welcome the opportunity to make sure their customers get a better product (particularly if they could figure a way to get an extra dime or two a pound for it). the reason most fruit in the produce section is under-ripe is not because of some evil conspiracy to deprive of us pleasure. it's under-ripe because the stores are operating on razor-thin profit margins (typically 1% to 2%) and stocking really ripe fruit dramatically increases "shrinkage" (the amount of food that needs to be thrown away as spoiled). a mature but underripe peach can wait 5 to 7 days for someone to buy it (and still be a pretty good piece of fruit if handled correctly). a peach that is fully ripe will be rotten within 2 days. furthermore, the most common complaint i hear from produce managers is the amount of fruit that has to be thrown away because of bruising caused by ham-fisted shoppers squeezing them to see whether they're ripe. "gentle pressure" people, "gentle pressure."

1) "heirloom" refers to variety, not quality. just because a variety has been around for a long time (or even just because it has the potential to be great) doesn't mean that the tomato will be great. farming is a talent. fruits and vegetables are grown, not manufactured. 2) re: grassfed beef. "grassfed" is not the bovine equivalent of "free-range." It simply means the cattle have been fed on grass, not on grain. It does not differentiate between whether that grass is green and growing on a sun-dappled hillside, or dried and cut in bales (indeed, there are few places in the world where green grass grows year-round). 3) rabbit has been considered poultry for centuries. it probably dates back to original growing conditions--just like chickens, in backyard pens.

i agree with andrea about roasting. another way to do it is to wrap them in a double layer of aluminum foil, seal tightly, then put on a jellyroll pan in a 400-degree oven. it'll take about an hour. they're done when they can be pierced easily with a knife. don't peel beforehand or trim too close, or they'll leach pigment. after cooking, the peel will slip off with your fingers.

in my experience, the differences in sweetness have more to do with farming than with variety, though in general i think the red beets tend to be earthier while the vari-colored (yellow, pink, chioggia) tend to be somewhat lighter in flavor, so the sweetness stands out more.

i actually did that in front of a cooking class i was teaching. i was finishing a sauce and realized i didn't have enough butter. i reached into the freezer for more, then tried to slice it, forgetting that frozen butter doesn't slice but shatters. bam. there went the tip of my thumb. i wrapped my thumb in a kitchen towel, used direct pressure from two other fingers, and finished the class. there's still a little dent there, but it does grow back.

i've got some riedel vinums and they're ok. i've got lots of spiegelau wine glasses (not flutes, though), and i think you'd have to be a pretty discerning consumer of crystal to tell the difference. and considering the price difference (and breakage: i'm very careful, but i think i've got about a 15% breakage rate when washing), i would definitely go with the cheaper glasses. edit to add: I have also used riedel sommelier flutes and if i ever make a billion or so dollars, that's what i'm buying. they are exquisite.

i'm going to assume you're being ironic about all this indiscernible raving, right?

thanks a lot for the kind words, both for our section and for me. and i know that my cousins across the continent don't need me to defend them (nor would i in every case), but i do want to repeat that editing a newspaper food section is a pretty tough tightrope to walk. unlike food magazines (and, certainly, websites), newspaper food sections are specialty publications that run in the context of general interest publications. this means that we need to satisfy readers who are intensely interested and well-versed on the subject, but also those who may never have cooked anything in their lives, but whose wife just happens to have claimed the sports section first on this particular wednesday morning. it's a tricky balance and i don't know of anyone who gets it right all the time, though some have a higher batting average than others. That said, as someone who covers food and ag a lot, i will say that i found kim severson's piece on the greenmarket situation really interesting. she's a very good reporter.

As is so often the case, both. and neither. i'm afraid they took what is a very murky subject (ethically, anyway) and in trying to make a succinct story, oversimplified it somewhat. i stand by my original point: the "creativity" in a recipe book is the devising of the dishes, not the quantifying of the ingredients and techniques. and i think that is the understanding that most book buyers have when they make the purchase. That said, i do think the honorable thing to do is to give credit to the "clerk" who did the quantifying and typing. But there is a wide range of ways this happens, beginning co-billing and ending with none at all. in the middle, you run into a bunch of "withs", a few "ands" and a whole lot of "with grateful thanks" in the acknowledgements. contrary to the author's argument, i think this is about the same as most other areas of ghosting, and i hardly think any of them rise to the level of "deception." now, if the "ghosts" were creating the recipes and the "chefs" were the ones who were just typing them up, than that would be another matter.

it depends on what you mean by "write". the way the process usually works is that the "writer" sits down with the chef, gets working copies of the recipes, talks about the dishes, then goes home and polishes them into presentable form. this can include everything from scaling the recipes down to domestic portions and testing them to make sure they work to making the chef's comments sound gramatically correct. there's no fraud involved here: the dishes are the chefs' and all the ghost is doing is typing them up and polishing them--kind of a combination of executive secretary and copy editor. c'mon folks, these are instructions, not poetry. the only thing i find objectionable is when ghosts aren't credited for their work.

in fact, i think i had posted a thread about acetone in vinegar a couple of years ago. It goes away. One trick I learned from a winemaker friend: if you dilute the vinegar somewhat, it helps get rid of the acetone (don't ask me to explain, it has something to do with the pH IIRC). You're probably going to have to dilute anyway ... alcohol converts to acidity at roughly 2 to 1, so a 14% wine (which is the norm), fully converted will still be a 7% vinegar (the commercial norm, I believe, is 5%). I use sun tea jugs for my vinegar, one for fermenting, one for holding and aging until I dispense. I cover them with some really horrible (but tightly woven!) cotton napkins my mother in law gave me, fastened with the thick rubber bands that come wrapped around asparagus.

i've got a slightly different take (now THAT'S different!). I would no more expect a chef to have written every recipe in his book than I would expect him to have cooked every dish in his restaurant. it's called delegation and I applaud it. a couple of points: 1) who is the author of a recipe, the person who created teh dish, or the person who transcribed and perhaps even translated ingredients and technique onto paper? and 2) if you have ever seen recipes that chefs write, you would thank god that they have the good sense to hire ghost writers. cooking and writing are two separate and very different skills.

that's an interesting comparison doc. and a corrolary to that would be my observation than when it comes to "technique" restaurants, generally new york has it all over us in california (with a few quite notable exceptions). but technique is most necessary where ingredients sometimes come up short.

personally, for stuffing, i prefer the male flowers that don't have the fruit attached. it seems by the time the squash is cooked through, the flowers are dead. with the female flowers, i like to chop them, cook them briefly with some long-cooked onions and a little mexican crema and then use them to stuff a quesadilla, with a little jack or something.

i'm afraid i'm not much help. don't know much about no tunisian apricots. but i do know about american apricots. pretty simple: not much point. there are two really terrific apricots grown here: blenheims (sometimes called royals, sometimes called royal blenheims) and moorpark. but you'll almost never see them fresh except at farmers markets, and then only rarely. the industry has been almost completely taken over by really mediocre fresh 'cots like castlebrite and patterson. the good ones are complete pains in the asses to grow (so most folks can't stay in business farming them) and they are small and imperfect cosmetically (so most folks don't want to buy them.

just got a response from the inimitable jeremiah: he is in cozumel diving and restoring colonial mansions. he says he was fired from the examiner after quoting edith wharton in his lead (paraphrase: "what do italian gardens have to do with food?"). he is truly one of a kind.

i hesitate to offer too much career and life advice (it makes me feel even older than i am ... and i get enough of that at home with my daughter), but i'd also ask you to remember that one of the best ways to get started is to work for free. in my career, patchwork and crazed as it has been, i can trace almost every good thing back to having done something just because i was fascinated by it, hang the money. don't get caught up in getting your dream job right out of the chute. get a job that enables you to pay whatever rent you have, then find your dream job and do it for free in your spare time. pretty soon, i think, the two will begin to merge (either that, or you'll find your dream job wasn't what you thought it would be and you'll feel doubly free to dump it because you're not getting paid anyway).

my two candidates would be ai do mori for the wine bar experience and fiaschetteria toscana for the high-end ... but tell them specifically you want to eat alla veneziana

here's the recipe out of my file: Ultimate tri-tip 4 to 6 servings 6 cloves garlic, chopped 1/4 cup oil 4 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns 1 (2- to 2 1/2-pound) tri-tip roast In a blender, grind the garlic, oil, salt and black peppercorns to a coarse paste. Pat the tri-tip dry with a paper towel and score the fat layer with a sharp knife, cutting through the fat, but not through the meat. Place the meat in a sealable plastic bag, scrape in the garlic paste, press out the air and seal tightly. Massage the meat with the garlic paste until it is evenly coated. Set aside at room temperature for at least 1 hour. If you are going to marinate more than 2 hours, refrigerate the meat but remove it 1 hour before cooking to allow it to come to room temperature. About 1 hour before serving, start a fire on the grill using 1 chimney full of charcoal briquettes, about 50. Put 1/4 pound of oak or hickory chips in a bowl and cover them with water. Place an inverted plate on top of the chips to keep them submerged. When the flames have subsided and the coals are covered with white ash, dump the chimney into a mound on one side of the grill. Drain the wood chips and scatter them across the top of the coals. Sear the fat side of the tri-tip, cooking directly over the flames with the lid off. This will only take 3 or 4 minutes. Don’t worry if there is a little char; that is almost necessary in order to get a good crust. When the fat side is seared, turn the tri-tip and sear the lean side directly over the coals. This will take another 3 or 4 minutes; again, don’t worry about a little char. When the lean side is seared, move the tri-tip to the cool side of the grill and replace the lid, with the vents open. Cook to the desired doneness, checking the temperature of the meat every 4 or 5 minutes. It will take 20 to 25 minutes for 120 degrees, 25 to 30 minutes for 130 degrees. Remove the roast to a platter and set aside for 10 minutes to finish cooking and for the juices to settle. Carve tri-tip fairly thinly (at most 1/4 inch thick), against the grain and with the knife held at an angle to give wide slices. Collect the carving juices and spoon them over the meat.

well, you've probably also heard that the first job is the hardest one to get. that's probably true, but in my experience, they were all pretty tough, or so it seemed at the time. it's just a matter of keeping knocking on doors, then when one opens, proving you deserve to be there. and then after a little while, you start knocking again.

copy editing is among the easiest ways to break into journalism simply because there's usually less competition (most people want bylines) and also because really good copy editors are worth their weight in gold (writers are a dime a dozen). it's been a long time since i've been in the job market and don't know anything about the value of mediabistro. if you're specifically interested in food, i do recommend toni allegra's food writing workshop at the greenbrier. a little pricey, but there are scholarships available and i think people generally find it worthwhile. (obligatory note: while i teach regularly at greenbrier, i have no financial interest in teh program and volunteer my time there.)

here in southern california, i can often find them at mexican groceries (and even better, from mexican farmers at the farmers market, where a big quart bag of them goes for like $2).