Kevin72

Thanks for the reply! I'm really getting pumped about this trip. Puglia seems to be very much on the verge of being the next "in" spot in Italy. I love the cuisine. I don't think we'll make it to the Gargano peninsula though I've heard nothing but good things including about that restaurant you mentioned. We won't have a car though and everything I've read says that's the best way to get around on the Gargano.

I know there's already a Puglia thread out there, but it was more focused on wineries. I'm trying to get a feel more for where to go, town-wise. I'm thinking 4-5 days there (coming from Rome), so a day or so in each place. No car. It will be early-mid March. Definites at this point are Alberobello and Lecce. Possibles are Bari and Monopoli. Which of those last two is more preferable? Foggia doesn't seem too likely. Restaurant recommendations in any of those towns? I'm looking for something that truly reflect Pugliese cooking. I'm already pumped about Casareccia in Lecce. Also would anyone happen to know or have an estimate of the length of a train ride from Rome-Bari. My wife suggested we get an overnight train ride but I don't think it will be long enough. I don't mind if this gets merged with the other Puglia thread.

Oreos. And, by that extension, cookies-n-cream ice cream.

Ah, the W&D of old. You're right, how irritating. Should I write in and tell them I object to them reviewing Mexican restaurants because they give me heartburn? We should do a contest to write the most pointless, fussy letter of complaint and see if W&D will publish it.

Sure did.

Ugh. I'm happy for anything that gets Tony the attention he's due, but not promising. I worry it'll get Melrose Place on us, with Fox's track record. I liked the previous incarnation it was rumored to have as a feature film with David Fincher directing.

I was completely taken aback when I realized who he was(I missed their announcing the panel). I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt since he was so cartoonishly over the top, but hopefully he'll tone it down.

This is so passing-a-bad-car-wreck fascinating to me. Did the Restaurant actually turn people on Union Pacific too, I wonder?

It'll probably do well and then FTV will oversaturate it on the air. I like Steingarten's writing, but I thought he acted like an ass as a judge. Maybe he was doing the Simon Cowell thing, but it really rubbed me wrong.

Is is it a faux pas to keep responding to these? What was your family food culture when you were growing up? Midwest background, grew up in the '70's. Lotsa casseroles! Was meal time important? Yes. I was something of an anomaly later on in high school when I would go home for dinner. Most of my friends just ate whenever >shudders<. Was cooking important? Looking back, it seems that it was. To me, especially. I'm the culinary "keeper of memories" in our family: my Mom comes to me on Holidays to help her remember the "must have" dishes, desserts, etc. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? None, except when my grandmother was looking after us one time and instituted this rule. Who cooked in the family? My mom entirely. My Dad couldn't even be trusted to put condiments on his sandwich if left to his own. We'd come home and see him eating bread with some meat in it. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? As a kid they were special occasions. My parents say I had a knack for ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, maybe that was why! Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Yes, much my teenaged chagrin later on. When did you get that first sip of wine? Dad would give me a sip of beer all the time as a kid. My first "wine experience" was when my mom spilled her white wine on my hard-won corner piece of the birthday cake. I ate that bastard anyways. Needless to say I didn't think much of the wine. Was there a pre-meal prayer? No. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? Not really, but there were favorite dishes I'd get pushy about if we hadn't had them in a while. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? My interest and philosophies on cooking come directly from my mom. She baked all our bread and I'm getting to be that way too. I try to cook as much at home as possible, minimize going out. No kids yet but my wife and I are planning on implementing the eating together rule.

I watched that and got increasingly frustrated at their audacity to air a tribute to her when they are at the same time rapidly distancing themselves from cooking shows.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have grown increasingly disenchanted with FTV. In the late '90's, I could turn Food TV on and leave it on literally all day. This is when there was a much richer depth of cooking shows on: East Meets West, Cooking Live, the vegetarian show, Melting Pot, Two Hot Tamales, etc. This also coincided with when I was really getting into cooking as a passion and so I learned exponentially. All are now gone; and as of next month, my guru, Molto Mario, gets bumped to a mid-morning slot. I figure it will be off the air entirely in the next 6 months to a year after it is progressively bumped to earlier and earlier time slots. And to replace it will be, no doubt, another assembly-line, how is such and such prepackaged food made? show or another "X travelling and tasting America!" show. I'm obviously not who FTV is catering to, but there has to be some kind of balance that appeases both sides. Their strategy is to find what hits and then repeat it ad infinitum throughout the day (I love Good Eats but on Wednesday evenings it was on four times in a three-hour span) or clone it. The new cooking shows are getting more and more gimicky and trend and product-driven. I actually never had a problem with 30 Minute meals but it did lead to shows like Good Food Fast and Semi-Homemade which curdles my blood. I liked the idea someone here pitched of having a Food TV2 that was all cooking-driven; they have a 5-year backlog of Cooking Live and all their other shows that they can dig back up and keep a few of their staples on to make new shows (cough-Molto Mario-cough). Til then I guess I'm going to get re-aquainted with PBS' admirable Saturday afternoon cooking block and hope that Ming Tsai and Lidia Bastianich can talk Mario into joining them. Grumpy Old Man mode off.

Since it's getting towards that season: menus that describe a dish as having "wild mushrooms" and you get it and it's portabellos or cremini . . .

Great pics and write-up. For the love of God, someone talk the powers that be at Spec's into opening a Dallas branch, stat!

This one's even better! And as in the other review he still manages to give an evenhanded appraisal and even recommend the place. After the egulleters hit up Portofino for 30 osso buccos we should stop by this place and each take out a notebook . . .

Hi-larious. To be a fly on the wall when the owner realized who Walsh was and/or saw this article . . . I was honestly waiting for the veal board to tell him it was actually pork.

To be fair that's instant espresso which seems to garner some legitmacy, particularly when you don't want to add much water content to a dessert (e.g., coffee-flavored gelato).

Yes, zapping them in a food processor should work relatively well in place of a blender. Though with seeds in there you may end up with a trace bitter flavor if they get ground up in the process, and I'd pass them through a strainer a few times to make absolutely sure you get the seed particles out.

Very strong coffee should be fine.

Fall is my favorite time of year, which is saying something when you live in Dallas and the trees don't lose their leaves until two weeks before Christmas. Like alot of responses here, I'm eager to get back to braising and roasting. Looking forward to cooking with apples, pumpkins and mushrooms the most.

I find that once I get a little booze in me I usually leave out a key ingredient and/or garnish at the end of the dish. So before cocktails get passed at my dinner parties I make sure everything is laid out in sight of the pot it should go into. I get uneasy even thinking about cooking an entire meal from the get-go under the influence. "Why are you petting that raw chicken? And where's the cat?"

Here's my question, something that has perplexed me: Why is that you can both braise a leg of lamb or roast it? Which method is better? With roasts or grilling I understand that the meat ideal for it has only the marbling kind of fat to melt and keep the meat tender. Meats for braising need to have alot of connective tissue. Seems to me that leg of lamb has that in abundance, yet it is more often that you see it roasted or grilled? I did do a roasted leg of lamb last spring and that fact occured to me with all the fat and connective tissue evident when I had it laying opened up for stuffing. I cooked it medium rare (actually more towards rare) and while the meat was delicious there was, I thought, alot of "waste" in the form of chewy bits and fat that otherwise would have broken down nicely with a few hours in a covered pot wimmering away with white wine. But I liked that medium rare meat! Any tips/thoughts on how to get around this?

Another factor might be how soon out of the oven you cut the lasagna. Let it set up for 15-30 minutes after you remove it from the oven. I'd go light on the bechamel but that's a personal preference: I find too much and everything does get gluey. Plus with all that cheese you have a good binding. Heck now that I think about it you could forgo the bechamel altogether and use a simple tomato sauce!

I went with my family this weekend. Incredible. I got to try two Italian ingredients that had intrigued me for a while: burratta (a mozzarella like cheese with an unformed wheylike interior) and bottarga--dried pressed mullet roe. The burratta (in a salad with arugula and heirloom tomatoes) was intriguing, vaguely sour and delicate and yet rich all at once. I really hope it catches on and gets more commonly available. I had bottarga on my spaghetti with clams and it didn't really come through. I had for a main course the rombo, a flatfish, with mandarin oranges and it was damn near perfection. I horned my way into other family member's meals and got to try the roast duck ravioli with montasio sauce and their braised lamb dish. The duck ravioli might be one of the best single dishes I've ever tasted, I wanted to hurt someone it was so good. The lamb too was that perfect combination of the richness of a braise and the caramelized goodness of a roast. Price-wise I can't really comment since I didn't pay. I wouldn't hesitate to go back on my dime with the wife but it would be a lean month around the house! I'm a pretty avid Italian cook and found it to be one of the best Italian meals I've had outside of Italy itself. The creativity on the menu, the Venetian touch to a lot of their dishes, and the nearly perfect execution of their dishes just blew me away.

While I normally would agree that no self-respecting Italian restaurant would carry French Onion soup (there are plenty of onion soups in Italy), note that the name of the restaurant is Frenchie's Italian Restaurant. Perhaps its a misprint on the writer's part or W&D's and the actual menu item is "Frenchie's Onion Soup" . . . ? Or the dish is a play on the restaurant's name?