Chris Amirault

For that price (works out to well over $20/lb), I'd grab a couple of whole ducks and make duck fat with the extra skin and fat. It's easy: click. Hell, maybe the good folks at DeKalb who are breaking down those ducks could save some extra for you.

This is an idiosyncratic list, with the first small set of items from Whole Foods and the second from Shaw's, a large supermarket chain here on the east coast of the US. Many of these items I buy at other stores (limes are 6-8 for $1 and lemons 3-5 for $1 at area Latino or SE Asian markets, for example), but I included their prices here as examples. I'll try to add more items over the next few weeks. Whole Foods: Rhody Fresh dairy collective milk: $2.59 1/2 gallon (only size) Seven Stars artisanal durum stick bread: $3.29 crimini mushrooms $3.99/lb limes $.50 each lemons $.79 each Shaw's: bananas $.59/lb navel oranges $.66 each lemons $.69 each beets $2.69 bunch of three "pickle" cucumbers $1.69/lb (the little ones) garlic $3.99/lb yellow onions $.49/lb broccoli $.99/lb (sale from $1.79) cantaloupe $2.88 (sale from $3.49) clementines $5.99/box (sale from $6.99) organic carrots $.75/lb (sale from $1.15) acorn squash $.59/lb (sale from $79) Diamond kosher salt 5 lb $2.19 Shaw's black beans $1.39/lb demerara sugar $3.79/lb Rhody Fresh dairy collective milk: $3.29 1/2 gallon (NB more than WF) Cabot extra sharp cheddar cheese $3.59/lb

Following on the Lapine/Seinfeld brouhaha, the NY Times has an interesting article today on two food books with nearly the same name: When I saw this headline, I thought that the article was going to focus on another oddly resonant title: Padma Lakshmi's Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet, which is about as blatant a rip-off of Jeffrey Alford & Naomi Duguid's Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet as can be. Are there any other example of such suspicious similarity out there in the world of cooking and food books?

Whole grains have germs that are still oil-rich, and that oil can go rancid.

Cooking it will intensify that smell, too. Learned the hard way long ago.

Sadly, drinking it out of plastic cups surrounded by scantily clad women in a tropical paradise is not an available option for solving my problem. However, when making a float for a Test Pilot recently, I noticed that the rubber nose was gone and the floral notes were there, so I think I'll break out the plastic cups and dream a little dream later this weekend.

I like yours better.

Soldiering on, I fiddled around with a sour tonight, coming up in the end with this thing that I named the Italian-American Cocktail for reasons that will shortly be obvious: 1 1/2 oz Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy 3/4 oz Averna 3/4 oz lemon 1/2 oz simple two healthy dashes Peychaud's Shake, strain, lemon twist. It's pretty damned tart, and the tang overpowers any interesting Averna notes. Not likely to get me to Palermo.

We're excited to announce the implementation of a new approach to hosting eG Forums. A quick perusal of the main eG Forums page will reveal three hosting teams: the Culinary Culture team, the Kitchen team, and the Regional team, each supported by an eG Forums manager. These hosting teams allow our international volunteer corps to cover all forums around the clock, helping each other out as needs arise. With this new approach, you should see faster and more consistent responses to any forum reports you make. Of course, you'll still see hosts contributing meaty content throughout the forums! The reason we can move in this direction? Our crack volunteer staff, who work hard behind the scenes each and every day to make eG Forums the best destination on the internet for lively, intelligent discussion of food and drink, cooking and eating. We thank them for their fantastic support!

Can you say more about this fest? Is there a contest, or is it just for eatin' and drinkin'?

Looks great! What changes are you hoping for? Do you (or does anyone) have a sense of what particular things you'll want to do during the week?

Great. I'm glad you did not suffer the cruel fate our machine suffered.

That reminds me. Whenever I shop on Federal Hill here in Providence, the Italian food neighborhood, I always grab a couple of stuffed hot cherry peppers as a reward. Oh man.

One of my favorite mussel dishes is from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook. IIRC, it follows the basic steps above but uses onion and garlic, curry powder (I find that a homemade powder with plenty of fenugreek works well here), diced chiles, and cilantro. The acid she uses to finish is lime. It's a fantastic with basmati rice and mustard pickles.

Well, report back when you get there yourself!

Does it make a new noise when you turn it on without attachments? A screechy grindy noise?

...to the point of undermining the entire ridiculous farrago. ← Pray, why no recognition for St John? Can anyone explain it to those of us across the pond?

I had a similar thing happen paddling meat, and the possible problems are myriad: a cracked interior casing, broken gears, misalignment. They'll tell you whether you need to do a quick repair or whether the motor's shot. It's not likely to be pretty, I'll tell you.

All you "shopping is its own reward" people: do you only shop at Whole Foods, farmers markets, and Dean and DeLuca? I agree that shopping in those places is, indeed, its own reward. But an hour at megasupermart Shaw's, deciding whether to put up with mediocre industrial produce or blow the budget on a few potatoes, getting toxic shock from the detergent fragrance, bugging the butchers yet again about stocking decent meat, and adding the rising prices in my addled noggin while waiting fifteen minutes in a checkout lane under the fluorescent lights while serenaded by Kenny G: what reward is this?

It sells only that day, but who knows when people server or eat it! Getting the hang of the Kom-Kom down, btw. It takes a deft touch to produce merely the julienne strands in volume. The temptation to press down too hard when you're zooming through your produce is high, but you can easily produce long waffle-weave slabs if you're not careful.

Because I was surprised to find that I had used up all the duck stock I had in the fridge when I got home from the store tonight, I had to make a quick vegetable stock for my risotto. (Yes, I know: it's not ideal.) I browned mirepoix, added shiitake mushroom stems, a smidge of anchovy paste, S&P, and water, then, just before adding it to the night's risotto, added about 1/2 t of MSG. It added that meatiness without the excessive salt of a bouillon cube, keeping the quick stock pretty clean tasting.

Sorry: let it sit in the ice for a minute. From johnder's post on the topic:

The Microplane itself started out as a woodworking rasp in 1990: click.

While suffering through the third hour of a videotaped workshop, I drew a planning document that I've used for other sorts of projects. You stick the item in question in the middle, draw a circle around it, and then trace out spokes that describe components of the item, then build off of those. I stuck Averna in the central circle and drew three spokes. One says "spice," and it has rye, Angostura, and question marks under it. Another just says, "Campari?" Ofer there. Then I wrote "orange," by which I meant both the fruit and the color, and I started fiddling around with that idea. Thought about Aperol, then Apry, then... I just submitted the AAA Cocktail, first on your list, last on your tongue: 1/2 oz Averna 1/2 oz Aperol 1/2 oz Marie Brizard Apry 1 1/2 oz Plymouth gin orange twist Stir, cook, pour into chilled glass, twist orange over glass, drop in. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Why would it "take all the fun out of buying good ingredients and preparing them with care and skill"? I don't understand why this particular ingredient inspires such a comment. Would you say the same about salt?