russ parsons

i've still got an old donvier i got 20 years ago as a partial payment on a cooking class i was teaching. problem is: the thing has never worked right. it never froze completely. it would get thick and slushy, but then i'd have to switch it to the freezer to "ripen" to get it hard. anyone else have any experience with this machine? are other "freezer compartment" machines any different? (the ones that you put hte chemical sleeve in the freezer to provide chill).

the bread consultant is mark furstenburg of washington dc's bread line. they have a separate pastry consultant as well. old thomas doesn't spare the brainpower.

uh, when was the last time you tried to find somehting to eat in bakersfield? there are actually a couple of basque places, which are, well, hearty and rustic. culturally interesting but not really great food.

my man pete siracusa. he and his dad run the trucks. i've been buying fish from him for years. when he has them, killer white sea bass; great sand dabs; tuna, ahi, shark, sword, etc. he's also at the friday and sunday long beach markets.

harris ranch begins to look like lutece when you've been on the 5 for five or six hours. it's certainlyworth a visit. one of my favorite restaurants in california is actually located in fresno: a place called echo. really fabulous, even for a big city eater. it's only an hour north.

i think raspberries are especially hard (no, STRAWBERRIES are especially hard). my ratios are somewhat different. i usually use sugar in the amount of 80% of the weight of the fruit. acidity is very important, but you'll have to figure that out. the real trick i love is cooking in repeated small batches--no more than 2 1/2 cups at a time). do it in a nonstick skillet. you can easily tell when the jam jells and it happens all at the same time, as opposed to large-batch cooking, where it seems the stuff at the bottom is overcooked before the stuff in the center and at the top has set. i've had great response from even the most frustrated home-jammers when i've written about this. give it a shot.

Because the train has already left the station on that issue. The context of the debate in the media, the way it has been framed by advocates, etc . . . all these things demand comparison and a winner. The person who only eats a top-caliber steak once a year doesn't want to hear, "Each is wonderful in its own way, like Lafite and Romanee-Conti." That person wants to hear, and should be told, "Yes, grass-fed beef can be nice and is an interesting change-of-pace for those who eat premium beef all the time, but if you're only going to have one steak you're crazy if you don't choose American Western corn/grain/whatever-fed." i'm not sure i buy that. first of all, as a member of the media who has contributed his share of words to the issue (and read far more before writing them), i think most of the debate over grass-fed beef has been framed in ecological and "conscious eating" terms, for better or worse. in fact, proponents have been largely reticent to make taste claims because they recognize that the beef is so different from what most americans are used to. furthermore, grass-fed beef is still so hard to find that it's not really a burning consumer issue, certainly not rising to the level of "do i buy hdtv". most of the grass-fed growers i talked to only sell quarters. i couldn't find a restaurant in southern california that regularly uses it and even in the bay area there are only a couple. this is still very much a case of "hey, here's something new," and, of course, newer is not always better. sometimes its just different (and sometimes it's just "new").

whoa. not pretty. the "pleasures" of going on the wire. they took a 2,000-word piece plus sidebar, whacked it to an abridged version of the sidebar, slapped a silly hed on it and left my name on it! i couldn't find an active link to the story, so in the interest of maintaining my good name, here is the mainbar. nobody tell our lawyers: By Russ Parsons, Times Staff Writer MEMORIAL Day arrives: Break out the barbecue grill and give it a good cleaning. Run to the grocery for a couple of steaks. Light the fire and start the meat. Smell the smoke. But then comes the downfall -- the steaks are dry and flavorless. An anguished cry erupts all across the nation, "Whatever happened to beef?" But fear not: The world of meat is changing. Just as grocery-store tomatoes have expanded from a few dull, standard types to a bright rainbow of choices, so too is the selection of beef beginning to blossom today. Call it the boutique-ing of beef. You can find meat that is branded by a single company, such as Coalinga's Harris Ranch. There is beef like that from niche meat pioneer Coleman in Colorado, which is billed as "natural" -- a phrase that is popular but legally means only that it has been "minimally processed" with no artificial coloring added. There is organic beef, which not only has been certified to have had no hormone or antibiotic treatments but also has been fed only on grasses and grains that have been raised organically. There is American beef from imported breeds, such as French Limousin, Italian Piedmontese and Japanese Wagyu. And there is good old American Certified Angus. Boutique giant Niman Ranch has made its reputation by harvesting beef that is more mature. At the same time, other places are trying for better beef by going back to their roots -- selling prime grades that have been dry-aged. And then there's the new carnivorous cutting edge, the most extreme beef -- grass-fed, which has a flavor that is so different it might even be shocking to traditional meat lovers. A steak test The taste of the meat -- and the best approach to grilling it -- varies with the philosophy behind it. At Niman Ranch, the cattle are slaughtered as much as a full year later than is customary. This results in meat that makes no compromises. A Niman flank steak purchased at Trader Joe's had a deep, beefy flavor and a texture that was dense and chewy, which is not to say tough. On the other hand, a dry-aged prime New York strip from Bristol Farms could not have been more different. The strip was a paragon of old-fashioned steak values: so tender it cut like butter with a flavor that was subtle but complex. When grilled over moderate direct heat to medium-rare, it developed a crust so lovely and evenly browned that it almost looked as if it had been fried. Wagyu, the variety of cattle used for Japan's famed Kobe beef, is so richly marbled that every cow must be the bovine equivalent of a sumo wrestler. A Wagyu chuck steak purchased at Torrance's bustling Mitsuwa Marketplace had a mouth-filling flavor that seemed to last forever. Even cut three-quarters of an inch thick and cooked over a fairly hot fire to medium-rare, it was somewhat chewy. That is to be expected: Chuck is not the best cut for grilling. At Mitsuwa, it is usually sold sliced either medium-thin for quickly grilled yakitori or extremely thin so it will cook with only a quick swish in the hot broth of shabu-shabu. Wagyu also developed a better crust during cooking than anything but the dry-aged prime. Mitsuwa also carries Certified Angus. A Spencer steak had the cut's characteristically loose and somewhat chewy texture and was clearly not as well marbled as either the Wagyu or the prime. Consequently, the flavor, although deep and beefy, didn't linger on the palate the way the other steaks did. Far and away the most distinctive steak of all was a New Zealand grass-fed rib-eye from Whole Foods Market. It tasted almost as if it came from another animal -- the intense gamy character of lamb married to the deep bottom notes of beef. It was very lean, with almost no marbling, so it required careful cooking. At Whole Foods, the rib-eyes were cut what seemed to be ludicrously thick -- between 1 1/2 and 2 inches. But this turned out to be perfect. Cooked over indirect heat (most of the coals pulled to the opposite side of the grill), this grass-fed steak took about 20 minutes longer to get done, but it stayed moist despite its lack of marbling. However, it still didn't have the long finish of the other steaks. As you might suspect, none of these boutique steaks is inexpensive. Expect to pay around $12.99 to $13.99 a pound for most and as much as $25.99 for the dry-aged prime. Rise of the small rancher In addition to the search for flavor, there's another reason for the explosion of interest in boutique beef -- economics. It turns out that the only people more dissatisfied with the state of the modern beef industry than meat lovers are meat ranchers. After decades of consolidation, four companies sell more than 80% of the beef in America. This has created an economic trickle-down effect that has resulted in tighter prices and less profit all the way down the line. According to a study by Roger Ingram, a UC Cooperative Extension agent in Placer County who specializes in livestock, ranchers in his area receive 32% less in inflation-adjusted dollars for their products than they did in 1969. It is only by raising something different and going outside the normal commodity chain that they can hope to make more money. Mac Magruder is one rancher who is seeking an alternative. He raises 600 head of cattle in eastern Mendocino County's Potter Valley. A conventional rancher for most of his career, Magruder sold 25 grass-fed cattle last year and is increasing that to 40 this year. "The money is just so much better," he says. "I'll gross $1,000 an animal on grass-fed. The same animal, if I sent it to the conventional feedlot situation, it'd be more like $650." Guinness McFadden, an experienced organics entrepreneur, agrees. McFadden, who is one of the largest grape growers in Mendocino County, also grows herbs that are dried and packaged at his ranch for sale at Williams-Sonoma stores. He says he had always run cattle on the hillsides that were too steep to cultivate, but he didn't begin to take the beef business seriously until a couple of years ago when Chez Panisse's Alice Waters began buying meat from him. Now he runs 25 head of Black Baldie cattle and sells the organically raised meat only at a natural foods co-op in nearby Ukiah. "The closer the farmer gets to the consumer, the better off he is," says McFadden, who holds an MBA from Stanford University. "Selling your product yourself takes time and effort and you have to be involved. But you will be repaid if you do a good job." Still, Magruder says, most conventional growers in his beef-heavy area are reluctant to even think about making any kind of change. "People get very defensive about it," he says. "They'll laugh at you for trying something different, then tell you how bad the cattle market is. They don't see the connection." That is changing. Placer County's Ingram sponsored a two-day workshop this spring that attracted 100 ranchers interested in marketing niche meat. Ingram himself is part of a group looking at forming a six-county cooperative that would sell California "natural" beef along the lines of Colorado's Coleman. As part of its feasibility study, his group is conducting a series of consumer interviews focused on selling specialty beef. Although the survey is not yet completed, he says one aspect has become clear. "What we're finding is the really big thing is the quality of the meat -- flavor, consistency and tenderness," he says. "Things like it being produced locally, being healthful, and the food safety issues are not unimportant, but they don't score nearly as high as flavor. "The message is that if you're going to grab people with your beef, it's got to be the quality. Then, if they like it, you can really get them by telling them, 'Hey, this is really healthy,' or 'Hey, you're helping some small farmer.' Those are added benefits only after you've established you have a great product." *

i hadn't seen this thread before, but i did a piece on grass-fed about 6 weeks ago. imho, there's no comparison in the flavor between grass-fed and grain-fed. i mean that literally. it's like comparing lamb and beef. two different things. to me, grass-fed has a wild, gamy side that is very nice. on the other hand, grain-fed is pure luxury, mouth-filling and fatty. i can't really see making a daily diet of grass-fed, but it is a very nice new flavor to have. why do we have to choose one as "best"?

interesting point hotle. let me take it one step further .... and maybe too far. are our expectations for american wines artificially high? here's where i'm going with this: go to italy and drink the local wines and you rarely hear anyone complain that they're not petrus or cheval blanc (same, in fact, in france). we love village level wines of other countries for their forwardness, their fruitiness, their "simple rustic charm" (veering off into peter mayles land here). we don't seem to cut american wines the same slack. of course, there is the whole character thing as well....

julia child (b, pasadena). helen evans brown (l, pasadena). goat cheese pizza. chino ranch. abalone. sushi. tuna tartare. santa maria bbq. fish tacos (point of entry, anyway). vella special select. niman ranch. most every peach, plum, nectarine, strawberry, artichoke, and tomato you'll eat this summer. all for better or worse, except sts. julia and helen.

i took about 10 years off of napa, too, but started going regularly again about 4 or 5 years ago. much to my surprise, i loved it. and there are MUCH better places than mustards or tra vigne. i'm not much of one for tasting rooms, but definitely go to phelps. definitely go to sinskey. definitely plan a dinner at bouchon, if you aren't going to FL (or even if you are ... just allow a day in between). i sent one of my pickiest, slow-foodiest friends there a couple of weekends ago and he said he had the best blood sausage he'd ever had. and this is a guy who knows from blood sausage. hit the outlet stores in napa, especially the barneys. for fun, continue north on 29 through knight's valley. imagine you were going to stop at peter michael, if they only had a tasting room. as far as restaurants are concerned, one of the great hidden delights of the valley is gordon's in yountville (just down washington from FL). great breakfasts and a real who's who of the valley. in napa proper, also stop at cafe zuza for a meal. great med food.

i like the analogy to chardonnay but for completely different reasons. it's just somethign people say because they need to feel hip. and the way to feel hip is to have a reflex prejudice, whether it's a band or a grape. tasting for yourself is so scary! what if i'm wrong! saying you hate chardonnay is every bit as stupid as saying you hate pinot noir. some of the world's greatest wines are chardonnays. just because some of them are bad, it became hip to diss them (and who remembers those california pinots from the 70s? like port). same with merlot. i'm with mark s. on this (as always ... ever since he poured that chateau rayas ....). people who say they hate merlot are often the same ones who pay $250 a bottle for petrus. one of the most impressive california wines i've had recently was the sinskey vineyards merlot from carneros. amazing how elegant that wine is from a coolish-weather climate (carneros, in my opinion, not really being cool enough for pn).

it depends. i predict a firestorm in teh bay area. it's an odd book in that some of it is SO well written, but the overall effect is something different. i guess it depends on how much stomach you have for gossip. personally, i've got quite a lot, but this book tried my limits. and i'm saying that as someone who likes jeremiah a lot.

it will be interesting to see how the new book is received. it is a memoir with recipes, not a cookbook. there is some truly amazing writing in it. and it is probably the most scandalous food book ever written. makes craig claiborne look like a shrinking violet.

that's funny. i just opened that this weekend, too. i was surprised at how much it had evolved. very lush but still with enough backbone to match food. i had tried the 2001 a couple of weeks ago and was not very impressed ... go figure. as long as we're chipping in on sangiovese, my all-time benchmark is castello della paneretta. that's the only chianti i buy every year, both regular and riserva. ps: re: sono magnifico, if you were talking about yourself, that would be correct (sono is either first person or third person plural). if you were talking about the wines, it would be magnifici. i don't know you so i won't presume to judge either the intent or the accuracy of the statement.

check with ellen rose at the cook's library in west los angeles (don't have the fone). i understand she just got 50 copies in.

i think the real story there was more of a wine glut thing than anything else. with an expensive new winery to pay for and tough times ahead for the business, i think richard thought he needed a more national sales force than an independent could afford.

that's something i'd noticed lately. i had dabbled with hardwood charcoal over the last couple of years ... oddly enough, it's hard for me to find a regular supply close. i picked up some from whole foods this week ... looked like it was a lot of construction scraps ... and it burned so fast that a full bag lasted just under an hour. whoosh. hot, too. melted the heat-proof (ha!) handle on my chimney.

for so many things. anyone who hasn't been to the new Sanford winery ought to try to arrange a tour. and this from someone who has looked at way too many bottling lines. it is really a thing of beauty, both practically and architecturally.

"where" is always the question with pinot, but i've seen no indication that any is being ripped out or grafted, merely more coming on board. of course, a lot of the places pinot is doing well now, it had at one time been "common knowledge" that it would never work. i'm thinking of monterey and santa rita, in particular. the latter, it took more than 20 years for someone to follow up on sanford & benedict. go figure.

i was talking to a winemaker a couple of months ago who pointed out that in the last crush report, half of all the pinot noir acreage in california is nonbearing. essentially that means it was planted in the last three years and will be coming online probably next year and the year after. that is a truly scary statistic if you're in the business of selling wine.

so nice, she said it twice!

i'm down with old school weber, too (my daughter gets so embarrassed when i talk like that). the one thing i'd love to have is the one-touch ash-catcher. cleaning otherwise is a complete pain in the ass. initially, i resented the set-height grill, but i to have learned to bank my coals and move stuff around. it's just like cooking on an electric stove. the one must-have accessory i'd add (beside an efficient charcoal chimney for starting), is the rotisserie. this is usually about $100: it's a metal collar that fits above the grill, a long skewer and an electric motor. you can make the most amazing chicken on it. i do one at least once a week. buy an extra set of prongs and you can easily to two at a time. i find 2 soaked hickory chunks add just the right amount of smoke.

funny thing is, every writer i've talked to who has to assign some kind of numerical value, be it stars or points, thinks it's pretty much worthless, except the readers demand it.