russ parsons

if you want to do the loin, ask for the piece that's closest to the blade. and get it with the ribs on. makes a really nice roast.

easiest and best way to cook salmon (thanks to the divine paula w): lay fillets on a cookie sheet. bake at 300 degrees with a pan of boiling water on the floor of the oven. serve it with a little herbal mayonnaise.

hey glenn, that looks pretty good. but i think you're still trying to make it a little too much of a sauce. the yolks shouldn't be blended in so much. the sauce should be chunky, with little bits of green, gold, white, etc. try just folding everything together.

i do think the new garmins come with the option of adding fodors ... depending on what you mean by "good editorial". i agree that in three years all of this will be even more amazing. remember how you felt the first time you mapquested something? Also, it should be pointed out that those traffic features require a pretty spendy monthly subscription fee. If I was commuting a lot, i'm sure it would be worth it.

that is so funny! sometimes, convinced of her own unerring sense of direction, she will dispute the Garmin at every turn, only to be greatly disappointed when we actually arrive at exactly the right spot. sometimes i think she wishes we'd get really good and lost just to validate her own directional problems.

i haven't gotten to the bottom of this yet, but there is no comparison between the anaheim chiles i buy in my local grocery and new mexican chiles. the anaheims are about as mild as a bell pepper. the new mexican will burn your hair off (see my scalp sometime). i'm sure this is mostly varietal and probably partly climactic. a column for another day.

ahem: i do feel obliged to admonish that eggplants are a late summer ingredient. so unless you're in teh southern hemisphere, naughty naughty.

i've got a garmin nuvi that does much the same thing. i do believe there's an option for a fodor's update. the nuvi is about the size of a deck of cards; has about 8 hours battery time so it can be used away from the car; has all of north america already loaded on it; and has memory cards available for Europe and most of Asia. It maps by address (like mapquest), or wherever you are you can push a button for nearby gas stations, restaurants, stores, museums, etc. totally cool. this is one of the more revolutionary bits of technology i've come across. i'm sure for some people it won't be that big a deal, but the closest times my wife and i have come to divorce has usually been about her trying to read a map and give me directions while i'm driving (her faultless reasoning: it's my fault because after 25 years of marriage i still insist on believing that she'll learn how to do it). by my calculation, this $600 gadget (I think they're now under $500) has already saved four major fights in a little more than three months. I was so impressed with it that i immediately bought stock in Garmin, which probably ensures that the company will collapse shortly.

this is something that has long puzzled/aggravated me. here in southern california, santa fe is a favorite vacation spot. but there isn't a single new mexican restaurant worthy of the name in the entire area. honestly, i know 3 different couples with vacation houses there and it seems like every time i turn around someone is asking me about the area. but not one restaurant.

this is interesting. have you ever compared diamond crystal and morton's kosher salts? there is a big difference in the size of the flake, but perhaps that difference is more of degree. i don't recall morton's being quite as fine as table salt, but nearly so (i haven't bought it in several years, so i'm going by memory).

this is true, but that says nothing about how finely it is milled, which is the operative factor in the different measures. coarse salt occupies more space per weight than fine salt.

ludja, i don't know where you live, but in southern california, my neighborhood albertson's has started carrying bueno red and green! you can't imagine my delight. granted, it's not as good as a single-field special from chimayo or belen, but it's right down the street. you might want to check and see if it's available in your city.

this is something i deal with a lot. it's also important to note that "kosher" and "coarse" are not synonymous, though i think most people assume something like diamond crystal. there are fine kosher salts, too. so it's more like "table salt" and "coarse salt".

no, i like it cut into pieces. for round eggplant, cube them; for long eggplant, cut them in lengthwise quarters. as for asian eggplant being less bitter--the one exception to my "not bitter" rule is a tiny eggplant you find in southeast asian markets. it looks like a bunch of very small, green grapes, still on stems. it's not truly an eggplant, but it is truly bitter. Thais use it in curries (the reason you sometimes find english peas in curries--they are trying to reproduce the look of these little eggplants).

actually, i'm afraid that's one of those old cooking myths, like soaking beans to remove the gas. there are several other competing claims, equally invalid: seedy eggplants are bitter; male eggplants are bitter (actually, of course, they're fruit, neither male nor female); eggplants with protuding tips are bitter ... eggplant gets bitter when it starts to go over the hill (don't we all?). the thing most people forget is that eggplant is, technically, a tropical fruit and so, despite its appearance, it is fairly tender. technically, eggplant shouldn't even be refrigerated (leave it in the fridge a couple of days and you'll start to see soft spots--that's chill damage). salting removes moisture and if you taste that moisture, it is bitter. but that's not the same thing as removing bitternes (there's plenty more left behind).

eggplant definitely needs to be cooked thoroughly. in my experience, though, salting is only necessary when you're going to be frying them. seems the salt draws out moisture, collapsing cells, which then absorb oil nicely (this is just my take, based only on observation, not on electron microscopes). sauteed, salted eggplant has a much "plusher" texture. when i grilled eggplant salted and unsalted side-by-side, i really couldn't tell the difference. salting also takes more time than you might expect. i found that it needed at least a good 60 minutes and preferably 90 minutes. be sure to do it in a colander, too, so the liquid can drain rather than collect and be reabsorbed. the good news is that there's an incredibly easy way to make really spectacular eggplant that few people seem to have thought about: steaming. it had never occurred to me, but when i was writing about all the different varieties of eggplant, i did a taste test and steamed them in order to get the most neutral cooking method. i was amazed--they all tasted great (and, more or less, they all tasted like eggplant; varietal differences are more about texture and seed ratio). try this: steam eggplant until quite soft and then toss it in a fairly garlicky vinaigrette. sprinkle with herbs. it's really delicious.

definitely easier to peel. also, the pigment in beets is water soluble and when they start to cook it leaks like a son of a gun. leaving the peel on cuts down on that.

just for the record, soaking does next to nothing for gassiness. that's caused by the modern human gut not being engineered a) to digest certain complex sugars in the beans; and b) to digest foods that are high in fiber. soaking doesn't draw out an appreciable amount of the sugars for the simple reason that beans are designed NOT to leach out those sugars since they are what the seed would need to grow a plant (and soaking is the first stage of germinating, right?). hot soaking does a little better, but only about 10% of the sugars are removed. beano does work a lot better on this specific problem--it's the enzyme that dissolves those sugars--but it does nothing for the second issue, fiber. the only cure for that is eating more beans--your gut will adapt.

actually, they're starting to pull asparagus out of the sacramento delta right now. that's the largest plot of asparagus in the us. first asparagus tend to be the biggest and thickest--the size is a function of plant vigor, not of variety or growing area. so plants that have overwintered have the most energy stored for throwing up spears.

i think this is missing the point. most people have no concept of food history. foods that were new to their parents are considered traditional if they themselves grew up eating them. i think the point is that most italians (save a few upper middle class housewives who read "silver spoon") have no interesting in "evolving" their cooking beyond where it is now (unless they happen to see something good at the store and it gives them an idea ... but you know how that goes). In the US, we are passionate about exploring and stretching. i just came back from my favorite ramen place. yesterday it was indian and the day before these killer tacos. in italy, in my experience, "foreign" means something 20 miles away. and while it may be fine for those other people, they just don't care for it themselves. eta: and when italians DO attempt to stretch, the results are usually extremely clunky--enough to make american fusion cuisines look inspired. nothing sends a chill down my spine like the phrase "italian hotel restaurant salmon."

it's the reverse of of the old internet gag: "on the internet, no one knows you're not Italian" Russ Parsoni, 2007

i prefer to think it's mostly a matter of people loving something and wanting to be protective of it. and there is SO much bastardized italian around--stuff made thoughtlessly with horrible ingredients. but there does seem to be something inherently italian about it. i can't even begin to count the number of times i've heard people say that--sometimes even about each other's food. on the other hand, i can't remember ever hearing someone say "that's not french" (except when i was trying to speak it) or certainly "that's not american."

for a really fascinating (and not at all dry) first-hand account of what that life was like, read "War comes to the Val d'Orcia" by Iris Origo. She was an Englishwoman married to a member of an important tuscan family. she tells of visiting the various share-cropping farms on her family's estate during World War II and the matter-of-fact way she describes the absolutely appalling poverty is illuminating (this is not to imply that she is some heartless aristo ... quite the contrary). this is a truly remarkable book, made all the more so when you stop and think that this feudal world she is describing happened during our parents' (and in some cases, our own) lifetimes.

after 15 years as an ardent italo-phile, i can attest that there is no stronger urge (after making a good dinner) than to say: "That's not Italian." I've heard cooks say it about incredibly similar dishes served 20 miles away. the magic of italian cooking is that it resists (maybe refuses) codification. it is an aesthetic, not a set of recipes. the only real question is what would a good Italian cook do when faced with a certain set of ingredients in a certain context. and one thing that's frequently overlooked is how much Italy has changed in the post-war era. It's only 60 years, but in that time much of italy has gone from an economic situation not unlike the American south just after the civil war to booming modernism. it really is nearly unbelievable the level of poverty the mezzadria system involved. people were not living on acorn polenta because it was classic Tuscan cuisine. so when they emigrated to the United States and achieved a relatively high standard of living, perhaps they were a little over-exuberant. but that doesn't mean they were italian.

improvised on it last night for a sauce for the first really fat asparagus of the year--minced hard-cooked eggs, tarragon, shallots, olive oil, meyer lemon juice (with just a little zest). somewhere between gribiche and mimosa.