Smithy

I'm parroting Abra's question, Jack. Is this different that our molasses? Heavier, perhaps? ras malai caught my eye, just because I was pleased to be able to read the label. What is it? What do you use it for? What about dhokla? Abra, you're a brave woman. I'm so glad to see I'm not the only compulsive impulse-buyer who keeps things longer than they should be kept. I confess, I'm so out of my depth with the contents of your cupboard, that I couldn't help figure out what to do with them! I hope some of the others answer your questions, so I can learn along. The menu sounds luscious. I'll be looking forward to seeing how it works out, even though I can't cook along tonight. Has Riley discovered persimmons? Our Mischke did, when we were wandering through pruned orchards last winter. Who knew a husky would like fruit so much? I have to hide persimmons when I have them in the house.

I have absolutely GOT to make that beef soon, never mind our recent vow not to buy any more meat until we've worked our way down through the freezer contents. I have Molto Italiano, and I'd be interested in cooking along, but I couldn't do it today. Doesn't it all look wonderful? You've singled out several recipes I've been ogling with great interest but not tried yet: Chicken Thighs with Saffron, Green Olives and Mint; Chicken with Cooked Wine; Chicken Livers with Balsamic Vinegar, and the porketta-style pork tenderloin. If you do a demo, the pork loin and one of the vegetable dishes at the end of your list would make a smashing combination. If you were to do the cooking tomorrow, I'd be interested in joining you for one of the chicken dishes. With my cooking-and-posting history, the photos might be up before dawn Friday. Abra, you're well on your way to spawning a bunch of new threads! "Clearing out the cupboards" "Cooking with Mario" what's next?

I've cooked a few things out of Mario's new book, and they were terrific even with my meager skills. I'd love to see you do something with those. However, the tours would be good too, as would seeing your personal chef kit. I think my favorite suggestion so far, though nobody else has voted for it yet, is showing us what's in your cupboard and getting suggestions for what to do with them. That's such a great idea that if you don't do it now you should start a thread on it later! Think how much we could all get from such a thread, wondering what to do with those impulse purchases! Your cat looks just like my Gracie Mu. You're right, silver-grey is hard to photograph.

I've been seeing interesting differences in my clay pots - not only vs. metal, but also glazed vs. unglazed, and possibly even Egyptian vs. Moroccan. It's a fascinating line of inquiry, and I thank Paula for opening up this world to me. My question at the moment is, how do you decide whether to cook something in a glazed or an unglazed pot? Which is more common in the southwest of France? Or, perhaps, are pots of a particular shape routinely glazed or left unglazed, so that the finish isn't the determining factor?

Gorgeous!

It's hard to say just what I love best about eGullet, but without a doubt, one of my favorite things about it is that food writers are here! I never know who will pop up next! Anissa, I have Mediterranean Street Food. It's a delight! Welcome to eGullet!

I'll be interested to learn the results of the food pairings with oaky wines. I personally don't like oak in wine if I can detect it; I suspect it's been severely overdone in the wines I've tried, and I've developed an aversion as a result. (It's entirely possible, at my usual price range, that the "oak" has come from wood chips thrown in instead of proper barrel aging.) That being said, I've been under the impression that the heavily oaked chardonnays don't pair well with food because they shout it down. Was that incorrect? Should I be suspicious that the person who says that is also a non-oak person? As to the arm: this part may get too personal, and if so, please accept my apologies and ignore it. I went through something like that last year, and it turned out to be related more to posture and lack of stretching than to heavy lifting. The lifting (more specifically, the heavy briefcase suspended from a shoulder strap) was a contributing factor, but the stretching and muscle strengthening were what helped. Are you satisfied that the chiropractor is giving you sufficient information? I don't know much about persimmons except that they grow readily where I grew up, in central California. Do they grow in your climate?

Hmm. I can't wait to see what you do with the skate, but I've never had it, so I'm no help there! In fact, I have more questions than answers! First: Please, please do the speculaas with the almond paste, instead of the plain! I've been drooling over that recipe, as well as the rest of Chufi's photos and recipes. I'm glad my "Belgian" compromise was well-received, and your selections are all things I've been wanting to try. What do you plan to do with your persimmons? Your photos are GORGEOUS. I noticed that the apple orchard had a lot of fruit on the ground. Do you happen to know whether the orchard had been picked and the stuff on the ground were the culls? Or did that orchard just start dropping its load before the pickers got there? (Don't you love these questions, fired away about something you were just happened to see on the way? )

I'm interested in the way writing about food and cooking changes the writing process, if at all, from writing fiction or essays. It appears that successful writers establish a discipline to get the work done. (Caroline See advises in her fine book, Making a Literary Life, "1000 words a day, or no more than 2 hours editing, plus one charming note, 5 days a week.") Your case is different: you can't just lock yourself in the den with a word processor and research materials. Aside from your field research (oh, happy travels!) you have recipes to test, you have kitchen work (I think of it as lab work) to do. A specific way to ask this question would be to ask, "What's your writing routine? How is it different from your husband's?" However, I'm afraid that question is too personal. I'd be happy with a general answer, if you have one, based on your literary friendships.

Oh dear oh dear, what a choice! Both French and Dutch sound good, particularly in light of the current threads. Could you, er, do a bit of both and claim it's a Belgian meal?

The other reason it's good to post photos to ImageGullet is that some firewalls refuse access to some web sites. Case in point: my computer's firewall won't allow me to connect to anything at Geocities. But you're right: ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Wot he said. I thoroughly enjoyed your first blog, and am looking forward to this one, as well. What a setup! Unfortunately my computer time is limited right now, but I look forward to popping in from time to time and seeing how the story unfolds.

If you're willing to discuss your relationship with and attitude toward editor(s) over the years, I'd be curious to know whether and how it's changed. As you have gained stature in the world of culinary writing, do you find editors more willing to leave your style alone? Did you have to fight to maintain or develop your own style, early in your career?

I've made the Evening Garlic Soup once now, and even though I misread the directions and put in too much vinegar, it was still good. I plan to make it again, this time properly. May I ask a question about the mechanics of a recipe? I think I'll learn some kitchen chemistry from the answer. What purpose does the vinegar serve in this soup? I'd have assumed it was simply for seasoning, except for the way in which it's added. Why add it to the broken egg yolks, then add that mixture to the soup, instead of adding them in separately?

Hi, Paula - At last, I understand the hedgehog reference! I thank Lucy for posting that lovely introduction, and I thank you for making yourself available to all of us for this spotlight. I'd like to know how, if you're willing to discuss it, the use of recipe testers affected your writing experience. If I understand correctly, this was the first time you'd used outside help testing recipes because you usually do all of it yourself. How did the testers' comments and viewpoints affect your working procedure? Did you get any surprises? What insights, if any, did you gain by having many people work through recipes and comment on them before the revisions were sent in? The real test, of course, is whether it worked well enough that you'll do it again.

One thing you could do with the ground meat is to make kofta - basically, a Middle Eastern treatment where the ground meat mixture is wrapped around skewers and grilled, then served with good sauces. I'm pretty sure there's discussion about kofta over on the Middle Eastern forum. Chili con carne, and spaghetti sauce with ground game, are two other standard ground meat treatments. I don't think they do anything to show off the flavor, necessarily, but they use the meat well. As for the un-ground meat (you still have some of that left too, yes?0 I've had good success with venison stroganoff, using my favorite recipe for beef stroganoff and substituting deer meat instead. I also am very fond of marinading the venison using my mother's shish-ka-bob recipe then grilling the meat (this works for kebabs or steaks) or searing the meat in a pan and then building a pilaf around it. I haven't had antelope in ages, but as I recall the recipe worked just as well on antelope.

I have that pan, and it works well enough when I need a pan that size, which isn't often. It has 2 drawbacks, both of which you've identified: 1. It overhangs my largest electric coil just the same way as it does your flat-top burner. I can tell that the the heating isn't as even as I'd like despite the clad bottom. By the way: by "flat-top" do you mean "glass top"? If so, having the pan overhang onto the glass nonburner surface may be an issue for your stovetop. 2. It's HUGE. That makes it more difficult to wield (and to clean) than my other pans. Unless there's a lot of food to cook at once I don't use it, so it is one of the less-used pieces in my kitchen. That being said, there are times when I need to saute or sear a lot of meat at the same time, and this is the only pan I have big enough to do the job without crowding or having to rotate pieces in and out. It has plenty of surface area to make a lot of sauce from the pan juices. It does the job well enough. Why get rid of it, since it's a freebie for you? I paid beaucoup bucks for mine! Unless you have a glass stovetop, that is.

One use seems to be just using it as a cooking fat - instead of butter, for instance, for sweating or sauteeing something. A lot of recipes in Paula Wolfert's new edition of The Cooking of Southwest France call for duck fat, goose fat or unsalted butter as the cooking fat for onions and garlic. Edited to add: I'm still hoarding duck fat to make a confit, so I don't know much about this. I hope someone else chimes in with better uses.

It looks like you have about as much counter space as I do. I take it the table under the pumpkin is your main prep area? Your dining room is lovely! I wish we had a dining room - but then, we like having an eat-in kitchen, too. The cabinet under the sink makes me laugh. Does Cashew like to explore when he isn't sleeping?

Too late, we polished it all off last night anyway. It was that good.

Dear Stephanie, Our evening Sunday night was so much fun, I thought you’d like to know the Monday night epilogue. As you’ll recall, we feasted on the Roast Chicken Stuffed with Garlic Croutons in the Style of the Corrèze from Paula Wolfert’s new cookbook, The Cooking of Southwest France, and all of us agreed it was wonderful. What you didn’t know was that I’d considered serving our group the Evening Garlic Soup in the Manner of the Corrèze, from the same cookbook. I’d decided against the soup at the last minute, partly for fear of overdosing us on garlic (some people think that’s possible) and partly because I realized that the soup stands almost as a meal in itself. Last night I cooked the soup for our family. It isn’t a difficult recipe: take some finely chopped onion and thinly sliced garlic, sweat it, add flour and cook until it’s starting to brown, then add beef broth. As that simmers, separate the yolks and whites of two eggs. Beat the whites until frothy, and whisk in cool broth. Break up the yolks and stir in some red wine vinegar. Add the yolks and whites at separate stages near the end of the cooking, and serve. I’m omitting some seasonings, but you get the idea. This recipe has gotten rave reviews both for its simplicity and flavor from some of the eGulleteers, so I was expecting great things from it. I was a little surprised at the vinegar in the egg yolks: what was that supposed to accomplish? I wondered to myself. The mixture was pretty pungent. Still…others have loved this soup, and I don’t know much about French cookery. Something interesting would happen. I added the eggs as instructed, finished heating the soup, and served. It looked lovely. Russ took his first sip before I sat. “What do you think?” I inquired. He replied, “You first.” Uh-oh. That usually means he’s not keen on something but doesn’t want to say so if I really like it. I sipped. Not bad. Pretty darned tart, though. I kept sipping. We started adjusting – maybe it needed Worcesterhire sauce? Soy sauce? Cream? The flavors were pretty good, but it was a very vinegary recipe. Hmm. Is this Southwest French cookery? I looked at the recipe again. It said “4 tsp red wine vinegar”…not “4 tbsp red wine vinegar” as I’d read the first 5 times, and had done. Be very glad we had the chicken instead! When I serve you this soup, I'll be able to do it properly. Cheers, Nancy

Welcome to the world of blogging, Maggie! How cool that you and Wendy live in the same 'burb but didn't realize it until now! I read and reread until I found out that the arancini coating was risotto, and that the whole thing is fried. That sounds wonderful. Do you know if this is something one would do with leftover risotto? Have you ever tried to make arancini from scratch? Of course, when I saw Cashew, I said "awww" Edited for speling

So, Mr. Foodblog Czar, now that you've done it, what do you think of blogging? I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did, and as much as I enjoyed reading yours! Well done, Stash. Edited to add: I just went back to the beginning and realized this wasn't your first time; I was thinking of another blogger. Any new insights this time around?

Stroopwaffeln! I want to know how to make stoopwaffeln! Great thread idea, Chufi. I know little about Dutch foods except stroopwaffeln and the odd bits I can get when I stroll up the road from the main train station. Some of the sauces for pomme fritje (sorry, don't remember how it's spelled there) are worth the trip alone, but there are a couple of bistros along there with nice fare. How typical it is of Dutch food is another question, and I look forward to learning more. MelissaH, Chufi will have a better answer for you, but I'll start with what I think makes me stand out when I'm there: running shoes/sneakers/whatever you want to call the Nike/New Balance/Converse sort of sporty footwear, and colored Goretex or other synthetic jackets. Stands us out as Yanks every time. Solid-color coats and leather footwear blend in much more. Chufi, would you agree? (Sorry if this is too OT.)

Hmm. I didn't remove the wingtips, but I did have them tucked under the armpits, so to speak, to keep them from cooking too much faster than the rest of the bird, and then the elbows tied to the birds' sides. The legs were trussed so the drumsticks came close together enough to keep the stuffing in. I may not have trussed the bird tightly enough. I'm sure I have a book or three at home that show me how I should have done it. I'll check tonight if I get a chance. I like the wooden-handle-in-the-cavity idea, and it might work even with a bird stuffed tightly as I had it. I'll try it next time. As it was, I was trying to use a wooden spoon and a nylon spatula to turn the bird by gripping the outside, and as I noted upthread it tended to be more an affair of tipping it up than of picking it up. Thanks, folks, for the tips. Do be sure to try the recipe!