russ parsons

i've got a portable, too. my house was built in the '30s and the kitchen cabinets aren't deep enough to install a built-in (so my contractor told me). it's kind of a pain, loading it and rolling it over. and it's noisy as all get out. and the cycles take forever (something i understand is common to most home dishwashers). but i bought a kenmore, i've had it for probably 10 years and it's never been serviced. it does a fine job, especially considering the price.

i second the cowgirl creamery recommendation: particularly red hawk and mt. tam. both are extremely good and quite complex in flavor. mozzarella (or fior di latte) is a little tough. we've got a guy here in socal making buffalo milk mozz (bubalus bubalus) and it's really good if you get it fresh. we've also got a guy making really terrific burrata, which when it's really good i'd put up against any mozzarella i've tasted anywhere. if you get a chance, you should also check out the soft cheeses made by andante. they're very limited in distribution but quite wonderful. and redwood hill makes a very, very good goats milk camembert. we definitely are at the beginning of the growing curve, though.

i'm with fatty on this one. there's probably as much or more manipulation in the average bottle of inexpensive wine as in truffle oil. by the time you've added the color, the sugar, the acid, the wood chips and adjusted the alcohol either up or down ... you probably could have started with water. It's perfectly fine to cook with, but you'd never compare it to a good burgundy (though, come to think of it, the embarrassment over having done just that might be what drives a lot of chefs' anti-truffle oil sentiment). again, my main problem with it is that too often it is over-used. but in small, occasional doses, i think it's an interesting ingredient and i say the heck with it.

i really like the gourmet show: it is really smart and well-edited, like a good story brought to camera. I also really like something called "New Dotch Cooking Show" that shows up Sunday nights on our Japanese channel (subtitled). it's ostensibly an "iron chef" type competition between two cooks, but there's a lot more emphasis on off-site videos on where ingredients come from and things like that. the last show was on ramen and it was quite an education, including a trip to some mountainous rain forest area where they went hunting wild young bamboo tips.

thanks all. i've been staying out of this partly because i've been on book tour the last week and a half. smithy, what is that new variety you're talking about? is it the albion? i mentioned it in another context in the book as a new variety plant breeders had high hopes for. i just sampled my first ones last night in santa cruz (hi tana!). they had really terrific flavor, though the texture was a little crunchy. still, a marked improvement over the camarosa, which was bland but crunchy. and yes, strawberries are fruits ... well, it's a little complicated ... the fruit is the little dried "seed" on the outside, so strawberries are actually "aggregate fruits", just like raspberries. And the history of the internment is definitely complicated. Just like any other traumatic event, it brought out the best and the worst in people, though i'm afraid there was more of the latter than the former. Heroes are always in short supply. Anyway, I hope you all like the book. Let me know what you think.

i just finished it and found it a curious book. i read it in galleys, so it might have changed some into the final edition (there were LOTS of typos, even for a rough copy). the first 80% of teh book read to me as a self-justification and almost an apologia to everyone he'd banged up during his career. Then it took this abrupt right-hand turn and became unbelievably mean-spirited and petty. started when he was talking about the libel suit against the NYT for saying he'd had a history of drinking and drugs (funny, the first half of the book he always seems to be talking about how he was "cut" and therefore not responsible--maybe i'm mistaking the jargon). but then, as if the door has been opened, he goes off on a whole list of people. i had been feeling interested and somewhat sympathetic, but i wound up really detesting the guy. he may be a good cook, but he seems to be a totally f**ed up human being.

sounds like you're shopping at one of those supermarkets with overactive misters. The advice to store things in plastic bags in the crisper is good. but you need to make sure the stuff isn't waterlogged when you get it home. if there is a lot of moisture on the surface, stick a dry paper towel in the bag. it sounds contradictory, but you want moisture INSIDE the vegetable, not OUTSIDE (on the outside it quickly leads to breakdown, as you have found).

hmmm, i'm assuming you're excluding fresh goat cheeses from this argument. because we're up to our udders in really good quality goat cheeses.

there's certainly no disputing taste, so I won't try to argue the point, but just to say that FOR ME, i find that a couple of drops--literally around a teaspoon--of a high-quality truffle oil really works magic on things like mushroom risottos. hey, if it's good enough for thomas k, it's good enough for me. remember: as they say in another context, it's the dose that makes the poison. (edited to reduce argumentation: perhaps an e-gullet first)

i'm with the doc on this one. the thing i find curious is that so many of the chefs who now so vocally abstain from truffle oil really liked the flavor until they found out it was artificial. sorry, but if it tastes good, it tastes good. This is not to say that it should be thrown on like hai karate.

there are three main families of melons: netted melons (muskmelons and cantaloupes), smooth melons (honeydew), and watermelons (a different species, actually). Each takes its own tips. With watermelon, the best indicators are color (the green should be deep and vibrant); the "couche" (the spot where the melon was resting on the ground; it should be creamy colored, not white); and the old "tap" test (it should sound like a hollow-core door rather than a solid wood one). The last is a little hard to get at first, but it is probably the best: as the melon matures, the seed cavity begins to open up, which produces the hollow sound.

the whole Japanese-American relocation is a very complicated story and very interesting in its nuance. Historically, the Japanese had been relatively recent newcomers to the United States and concentrated in only a few areas. Furthermore, the Japanese who came in the early part of the century traditionally were more like migrant workers who visit an area, then return home rather than become part of the society. indeed, all around Southern California there were Japanese villages that were almost all male, almost all strawberry growers (oddly enough, Compton was one). They held themselves separate from the mainstream community (broadly speaking--there were exceptions). Things had changed by 1941, but certainly not enough. This is not in any way to excuse what happened. It was a shameful chapter in American history. Instead, I think it illustrates the danger of thinking of groups as "others". I remember having a conversation with a farmer about this (I did a long piece for the Times on the history of Japanese Americans in the strawberry business that ended up being that one paragraph in the book). His position was that because of the "relocation", nothing like it could ever happen again. I argued that I could certainly see how it could. That was just before 9/11. [edited to be better written.]

fair enough. but just for the record, there is no crossover between fresh and canning tomato markets. it's not a matter of a selection of which tomato will go to which, they are separate varieties grown, harvested, packed and shipped separately. Also, my cans of Progresso crushed say there is puree added, which is raw juice, not paste, which has been cooked and reduced. You may well object to either. I obviously have no problem with added puree.

There's a lot to what Sam says. My take on it is slightly different. First, since I strain my tomatoes through a food mill, the seeds come out no matter whether they are chopped or whole. As to the best tomatoes going to whole, that's true but only in a cosmetic sense. And since only the firmest tomatoes are likely to remain whole after going through the picking/packing process, I think a lot of what is sorted out as damaged are the riper tomatoes. if you've ever seen a commercial tomato harvest, it's really something--picking a huge skip loader mounded with tomatoes (the way you tell the difference between fresh and canning is that the canning are the only ones that are red). This isn't to say that if you prefer the flavor of the whole tomato brand you're buying, that you shouldn't stick with it. it's just the reasoning. Also, I think we can agree that both crushed and whole are better than tomato puree.

Thanks for your note Pontormo, glad you liked the excerpt. As they say, there's more where that came from. (edit to add: there's also a chapter on apples that focuses on what happened to the Red Delicious.) As far as Driscoll, they don't really dominate the market. They are a grower's cooperative that has its own breeding and marketing programs and probably 60% of the berries grown in California come from non-affiliated growers with UC varieties. But in most cases that is a difference without a distinction. I don't find either group's berries very appealing. As for what consumers can do--it's easy. Just remember that every time you make a purchase, you're casting your vote for what kind of food you want. farmers market quality produce will never become the norm (maybe thankfully, because it would increase the cost of food dramatically). But for those of us who care about flavor and about eating well, we should shop there as often as possible and as discerningly as possible (there are good and bad farmers at farmers markets, too). The best way to encourage the good growers is to show them a little financial love.

Thanks all. The issue of strawberries is complicated (this is just one part of my discussion of it in the book; there's also an essay on plant breeding that addresses lots of the nitty gritty). FG, the reason locally grown berries are usually better is "d) all of the above". A big part of it is varietal--there are several strawberry varieties (though unlike, say, peaches and nectarines, it's a fairly limited stable) and the big strawberry guys, Driscoll and the University of California, are breeding berries that will hold up to shipping. As Melkor points out, California produces almost all of the commercial berries grown in the US, which means those strawberries need to be able to travel to Maine and still look good. Local growers are not so limited. Part of it is ripeness, though probably not as much as you might think. Strawberries do soften some during ripening, but the parameters of how much are varietally based: a Camarosa (still the dominant UC variety) will be firmer at full ripeness than an under-ripe Chandler (the big berry for the 1990s, and, in my humble opinion, one with far superior flavor). I think it's also important to remember that as with any other agricultural product, a big part of the flavor equation is the person growing them. Good growing takes talent and care and the more plants there are to tend, the more thinly that talent and care is spread. A great grower with 20 acres might produce fruit that is only as good as a good grower working 2 acres (for the most part, strawberries take so much handwork that field sizes are much smaller than for most other crops). Of course, what you're looking for is a great grower working 2 acres and what you all to often find is a good grower (or less) working 20. Still another factor is the retail setting in which you're buying the berries. If you're at a supermarket, 9 times out of 10 you're buying commodity berries and the only financial incentive the grower had was growing more berries. At a farmers market or farm stand, the grower actually gets more money for growing berries with more flavor, with predictable results. Size is a function of variety, plant vigor and happenstance. On the same strawberry plant, you'll find small berries and larger berries. If the plant is healthy, the berries will be even bigger, and if it is a variety that was selected for berry size, they'll be bigger still. That said, I find size to be an erratic indicator of quality. Certainly, your "big ass berries" will most often be hard (that's a function of the variety). But small berries are not invariably more tender or more flavorful. In the end, it all comes down to a very simple and very difficult proposition: Find a good farmer and be willing to pay more for quality.

i just finished doing a bunch of reporting on this. the Varroa mite is a huge problem--outbreaks in the 1980s just about wiped out the wild honeybee population in the us. But the experts say Varroa mite infestation works differently--that they find dead bees in the hive. In this case, the workers bees have abandoned perfectly sound hives. the BT corn hypothesis is probably shot--the problem has occurred in as many places where corn is not grown as where it is (and bees will visit corn when it is in tassel). The pesticide hypothesis may have some legs. Studies have shown that the pesticides in question are systemic ... they are taken up by the plant and can transfer from seed coating to pollen (pretty amazing!). There are still lots of questions unresolved. The fungus found by the USF researchers seems promising. But my guess is that when it all settles out, there will be multiple causes. The one unifying factor in all of the affected hives so far is that they had suffered severe stress--either climate or food. My guess is the stress weakens the hive and allows the other factors, which might otherwise be survivable, to kill the bees.

my guess is that this is a typical case of "glorified labeling" in seafood, like patagonian toothfish being called chilean seabass. i'm thinking that egyptian perch is actually tilapia. if so, quality varies tremendously according to how it was farmed. it can be a decent, bland fish, or it can be horribly muddy.

i'm pretty picky. i really like progresso crushed--they cook up into a nice thick sauce pretty quickly. i'm not so thrilled with their whole tomatoes. and to tell the truth, after tasting a lot of different "san marzano" canned tomatoes, i haven't found one that has better flavor or texture than the progresso.

the longissimus dorsi is a very long muscle. cutting a steak lengthwise, unless you were doing some kind of scallop cut, would be very difficult.

i use almost exclusively kosher salt in my cooking (diamond crystal), but it certainly has nothing to do with any perceived "impurities" or "additives" in table salt. I use it because of the flake. I find a) i can control it better when i'm sprinkling it, and b) it doesn't seem to melt and be absorbed onto the food as readily as fine grind. though Jeff is a dear friend and i have all the respect in the world for his work, in the case of that story, if i recall correctly, he tasted all of the salts dissolved in water, which would eliminate the issue of texture completely.

a couple of these points came up in an interview with wf's regional boss a couple of weeks ago. i'll try to keep them brief and remember, i'm relaying his points: 1) there are several WF stores that sponsor certified farmers markets in their parking lots. this is separate but complementary to their push for local sourcing. his point is that it is also complementary to WF's marketing: you can buy lots of fruits and vegetables at the farmers market and then come inside to buy everythign else you need for the meal. makes sense to me. 2) the push for local produce is probably in some part related to the Pollan/Mackey dialogue, but mr. WF insists that it is really a return to previous practices and mainly indicates a maturing of the chain. in his version, WF used to source a lot from local farmers, then had to stop when the chain grew too large to be able to consistently source that way. Now, their supply chain is mature enough that they can offer consistency from national sourcing and supplement it with locals. this is in agreement with what several local farmers have told me about their experiences selling to WF. it should be noted that running a full-service grocery is different than running a farmers market and i don't think it's fair to hold them to the same standard. in a grocery situation, customers rely on you for their staples. most people shop farmers markets, on the other hand, for special meals or as a supplement to their weekly marketing. ideally, i think, a hybrid will emerge--a 7-day produce market that sources from good local farmers and where customers don't expect to be able to find everything all the time. i don't think this is far off.

i hate to bring this up, but guys, it was free! what the heck?

in a word: nope. as i said, the wine scene there is pretty dead right now and, as i understand it, for the forseeable future. there are still wineries, but i think they are working mostly from purchased grapes from outside the area.

there are some surprisingly good wines that come from areas we wouldn't think of as stereotypically "wine country." Eastern Washington leaps immediately to mind. And there's a very good sparkling wine made by Gruet from vineyards just outside Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Heat doesn't seem to be a fatal flaw as long as it is balanced by chilly nights, which are common in high desert climates.