russ parsons

do you really think so? as someone who has done this for a story, i'll tell you it's not at all that easy, especially when you get into the upper echelon of industrial pastas (dececco, etc). i found it to be a surprisingly subtle thing. i'm not talking about crap industrial vs. latini, but there is some pretty darned good industrial out there. of course, i do love my latini, too, and think it's worth the extra money.

i think that probably depends on how often and how long you have been eating fresh pasta. if, like a lot of folks in northern italy, you've been eating fresh pasta twice a day for your entire life (and if you've been paying close attention), i'm sure the differences would be very noticeable, perhaps even horrifying. i think for most of us, if we were served the two side-by-side, we could probably tell the difference. i think if we were served one pasta blind in a bowl with sauce, that might be more difficult. edit to explicate: the differences in my experience are an appealing irregularity of surface texture (slightly bumpy), which allows the sauce to stick better, and a slightly more supple interior texture ... it's tender AND springy.

I'll second the recommendation of the Silvia/Rocky combo at a greatly reduced price point, but then I've never owned anything better. For a while, I did have my heart set on a pasquini livia 90, but i just couldn't justify the slightly improvement over the silvia to myself. if you're serious about shopping, there are a couple very good websites. check out www.coffeegeek.com and www.wholelattelove.com. both have lots and lots of information and reviews.

all quibbles aside, i really enjoyed the book. buford is a hell of an observer and he is able to capture his impressions on paper vividly and succinctly. that's no mean trick. but in the end, i agree with eric. i found myself wanting some kind of overarching explanation for why he fell into this obsession with the minutiae of italian cooking. mid-life crisis? pursuit of craftsmanship? what drove him? what did he learn about himself? as it is, we've got a series of extremely entertaining and often revealing segments that stop just short of being a whole. this is certainly not to say you shouldn't read the book. it's really terrific. it's just that its best parts are so good that you wish they added up to a little more.

i had this same experience once, making a fig mascarpone semi-freddo. it was absolutely delicious until i froze it overnight, then it had a bitter flavor, like what i associate with underripe figs. my theory was that it had to do with the ficin enzyme in the fig denaturing the protein in the mascarpone.

i'd agree. if you want rare, not bleu, i'd shoot more for 120. but really, unless you're cooking awfully thick steaks, thermometers are pretty unreliable. they really do best when there's a little more mass (roasts, etc). the best thing to do is learn how to tell by touch. if you'll close your fist without tightening it, the muscle just above your thumb is almost exactly what rare-medium rare feels like.

uhm, call me over-sensitive (go ahead!), but i just wanted to make clear that my tri-tip recipe referred to in the thread title is only cooked to the rare side of medium-rare. i do agree that most traditional central coast tri-tips could do with a gentler hand.

unfortunately, i think there is a tendency among some journalists--even serious ones--to not take seriously the role of food in history. this isn't as bad as it used to be. read waverly root on italy if you want some real howlers, but it continues. if i can offer a self-justifying explanation, until fairly recently food hasn't been taken seriously by real historians either. this left a void that folklore rushed to fill. a lot of what passed for food history was, i think, really nothing more than people without historical knowledge being pressed to provide historical facts and politely struggling to oblige. i think a lot of what passed for food history was actually more or less plausible stories made up by maitre ds.

hiya doc, sorry i missed this. what i meant was the wines were tannic monsters, really dense. if i recall correctly (and i'm sure someone will speak up if i'm not), diamond creek was one of the first places to do single vineyard cabs from hillside vineyards. i think there was a pretty "steep" learning curve ... heh heh. i remember tasting through several of them 10 years after release and they were just beginning to open up. that's not to say that they might not eventually turn into wonderful wines ... i'm just not that patient.

hey, if that's not a description of a dried bean, i don't know what is!

but only in the interest of spreading the greater gospel according to phaseolus, right?

hmmm, i'm not sure what you're saying. but the "push" you get does depend on thickness. it's a matter of retained heat and that depends on mass. big pieces will increase internal temperature longer after removal from the heat than small pieces. that's all i was saying. and boy molto, that is the reddest, "grainiest" pork i've ever seen. if you hadn't told me different, i would have sworn that was beef. amazing stuff.

al was a really good guy, based on my limited time with him, but by god those old diamond creek cabs were tough nuts.

good points pontormo, and for me it crystalized the metaphor at the bottom of this whole thing. for a market like whole foods to deal with individual local farmers rather than wholesalers is the same as if we decided to do all of our marketing at individual produce, butcher, paper goods, fish, bakery, pastry shops rather than at one supermarket. most of us choose to use supermarkets because it is convenient and an economical use of our time and money. that's the same reason supermarkets use wholesalers. perhaps the next step will be re-establishing regional wholesalers who can source local products and still deliver the convenience and savings? that's already happening to an extent in california, but then again, finding fruit and vegetable farmers is a lot easier here than in dc (or most anyplace else).

Y'know, I disagree. If W.F. is willing to decentralize some of the decision-making process, and simply take a review role, I think they could be very successful in this. ← i'm not disagreeing that they could be successful. i'm just saying that implementing institutional change on that level is ALWAYS difficult. And that there are far more headaches involved in dealing with thousands of small farmers rather than a dozen or so big wholesalers, which is the normal model for chains of that size. if they can pull it off, and if they can pull it off in a way that results in better products for their customers, and if the customers will respond to that despite the somewhat higher prices that will inevitably follow, this could become THE model for high-end groceries in the next decade. and since the supermarket business is splitting between the warehouse and high-end stores, it could be very, very big.

i don't want to sound like a goody two-shoes here, because the devil will be in the details. but i do think that if they pull it off whole foods deserves credit for doing something pretty damned amazing. there are only a couple of local chains in the nation that are doing this and certainly nothing approaching this scale. this is going to be a major pain in the a** to manage, but, if realized, it will be momentous.

exactly! very good pizzas. very popular among the winemakers.

this really depends on the cut. while you can count on a 10-degree "push" with thicker cuts, say a loin, with thinner cuts, like most chops and the tenderloin, you'll be more likely to get 5 degrees. in the end, the only solution is to pay attention when you're cooking pork and see what temp you prefer it at. for me, 155 to 160 is perfect: still moist but with fully developed flavor.

if you like that one-touch, you'll love this one: clickety i've owned both. the difference is not just the ash catcher (which really is a HUGE convenience--no more lifting the barbecue to dump it or shoveling it out with a garden trowel). This model is built much sturdier and after two years shows not a bit of age.

here is the response from our own archestratus, aka, Clifford Wright: In pre-Columbian times the Italian zucca could refer to the following as well as to certain melons. (You can read more in my Mediterranean Vegetables if you have it.) Bottle gourd, (also called calabash gourd) Lagenaria siceria (Mol.) Standl. (syn. L. leucantha Rusby; L. vulgaris Ser.) Loofah Luffa acutangula (L.) Roxb.(smooth loofah) and Luffa aegyptiaca Miller (syn. L. cylindrica) (angled loofah) Colocynth (Citrullis colocynthis (L.) O. Kuntze)

just found this very funny blog on the pollan situation, thanks to bruce cole at saute wednesday: a real omnivore's dilemma

gack! misplaced.

i really don't think trichinosis is a threat anymore. but i also disagree with what seems to me to be a modern fad for under-cooked pork. sure, it should have a pink glisten, but i've seen recipes calling for pork cooked to 140 to 145. Below about 150 to 155, pork has a metallic taste that is unpleasant to me (technically, this is called "serum-y". hit it at 150 to 155, take the 5 to 10-degree push and the meat will be moist and sweet ... and slightly pink though not medium-rare by beef standards. edit: this reminded me of a funny story. i had just finished "french fry" and was still deeply immersed in meat temperature. i went out to eat with a friend and, for the first time i can recall, the waiter asked me how i wanted my pork done. i was so flummoxed i said "oh, about 155 with a 5-degree push." it wasn't until i looked at my dining companion's face that i realized i had definitely gone over to the dark side of food geekery.

i think the pre-Colombian exchange zucca was probably a kind of gourd, like a calabash. it's important to recognize that though "fruttivendola" was painted only 100 years later, that was an important century, especially as regards cucurbits. zucchini, oddly enough, is almost certainly a modern invention. the first recorded mention of it is in a 1902 seed manual. before that there were marrow squashes and cocozelle squashes that resembled zucchini, but weren't. edit: to keep this on the topic of the buford book, i really, really enjoyed the book. he's a terrific writer. but he does play fast and loose with historical interpretations (the "sounds true" school). in particular, he really seems to gloss over the historical implications of some italian dishes, mistaking foods eaten out of desperation for culinary inventions. italy, too, has had a very busy century (even half-century). it's important for context to remember that even 60 years ago, the majority of tuscany was populated by sharecroppers, not british vacationers.

i've always been deeply suspicious of blanching the basil for pesto, though i have to admit i've never tasted them side-by-side. it seem so ... french. no, really, it seems so restaurant--a trick to keep pesto looking fresh longer. in a home setting, there's no reason not to prepare the pesto just before dressing the pasta ... it takes like 30 seconds to make (ok, a minute and a half if you're using a mortar and pestle). when i started making pesto (back in the ice age), i had problems with bitterness. i realized this was because i was using way too much basil for the amount of oil (more basil, better, right?). it was a good lesson about the necessity of balance.