Chris Amirault

Here's the direct link to the English language edition ($60). I sniff a run in the making....

Welcome, Ellestad, to the foodblogs and hosting both! More info, if you please.

I just want to support many of the ideas above that move past recipe and technique. As an expat, I'd be most interested in coming to understand the broader cultural context for dishes and practices. It's often the stuff that you don't even know you know that's most interesting to people trying to figure out the social and cultural complexities of food, eating, and cooking.

Since the event for this planning topic has come and gone, we're closing the topic. Thanks to all who made this event a success!

Huh. There are quite a few sources (click here for a few) that debunk the notion of "cooking off the alcohol." I'm not sure that two hours of simmering the wine before marinating is a step I'd want to add....

Do you mean the handle of the pot, or the knob on the lid?

Paula Wolfert sent me this photo for us to check out of a Provencal daubiere:

I've always used chuck. I mentioned to Susan that there's a good civet of venison in the Saveur book mentioned in the first post above, and, unlike a traditional civet, it lacks the blood. It's more like a daube in that way than not.... The steps in that recipe are all worth doing, I must say -- and they take time. I urge those folks who are doing her recipe to carve out a good chunk of time for it. Single sentences require pretty involved procedures. So, when I read this, I thought, maybe stick to the daube first time around!

Cook-Off XXVII: Daube.

In re the pork substitutes, my concern would be less about the smoke -- it would add a dimension that would recall, I'd think, the ancient roots of the wood-oven cooking -- but the salt.

Every now and then since December 2004, a good number of us have been getting together at the eGullet Recipe Cook-Off. Click here for the Cook-Off index. With the weather turning cold in the northern hemispere and the Cook-Off having avoided French cuisine for a little while, it's time to dabble with daubes. There are few things as restoring as a daube, the classic French braised meat stew (usually beef, though not always) that has as many recipes as adults in France. It also helps to develop several crucial braising techniques that will come in handy over the next few months for many of us, and if you develop a lovely relationship with your butcher in preparation for same, all the better. I've found two daube recipes quite wonderful: a fairly straightforward one from Saveur Cooks Authentic French and the other, "Daube of Beef in the Style of Gascony," from our own redoubtable Paula Wolfert and her Cooking of Southwest France. That multiday recipe was the cooking highlight of my holidays last year, and the best beef that my guests had ever eaten. (click here for the link to a discussion of my experience with that recipe.) Wolfert also kindly placed this recipe for oxtail daube into RecipeGullet; you can also click here for snowangel's prep and execution of the dish. There aren't hundreds of posts on daube around here, but there are quite a few interesting topics, such as one that considers Catalan Tuna Daube and another that asks the question, "Daube with veal?" Variationson the traditional beef daube can be found here and there, including in this topic on Daube de Gardian.

Ok, let me try this again. What if you had a plate of beans, sausage, and duck confit. Would everything have to be on its own? And -- this is the clincher for me -- what would happen if those ingredients were all found in cassoulet?

I noticed a topic in NE on Boston fish markets and I thought we could stand for one on Providence. Back in the day, there were several small places throughout town, but many have gone the way of the dodo. Take, for example, the remarkable RI Fish Company, once a haven of the freshest fish (some caught by sport fishers unloading at the dock near the hurricane barrier and the Hot Club) and now a bar filled with high school girls with fake ids flirting with men working through midlife crises. But I digress. My current favorite store by a wide margin is Freedom Seafood, on Rolfe St in Cranston. They stock only what's available, so on a given day, you might find four or five different sized clams, lobsters, crabs, and eels in the tanks, a few coolers with sea bass and flounder, and quality shrimp and scallops in the case. The staff will clean fish for you if you'd like, and when the supply is gone, it's gone. I have had only excellent experiences at Freedom, and the prices run 20-40% cheaper than most other stores on this list. I also have gotten some good fish at Captain's Catch, specifically the one in Warwick (Click here for their website), Whole Foods on N Main and Waterman both (though their reliance on farmed crap annoys me), and -- when in a pinch -- Hemingway's, which in my experience tends to have outstanding lobster and oysters in particular. I've also bought some really terrible stuff all over the place, which means I'm constantly looking for new ideas. So... have you got any?

But wait a sec. Aren't most foods combinations of ingredients?

I finally bought a bottle of green Chartreuse tonight so that I could make a Last Word, and, using Tanqueray as the gin, it has lived up to its billing. I think Sam nailed it here: This prompts the question: has anyone dropped a dash of Pernod in there? I'm thinking that this might get elevated in the way that the Pernod lifts the Corpse Reviver #2....

I have no comparisons to make, unfortunately, but the Great Northern beans I used worked very well, I thought. Like most things, I'd imagine that using precisely the right bean is a true benefit, a matter of deep conflict, and something that the first-time cassoulet cook is unlikely to appreciate. Cooking the beans correctly (not too long to avoid mush and loss of form; not too short to avoid crunch), however, seems crucial.

I'd urge you to try it with a good cooking shaoxing. And, honestly, I'd bet that if you asked the shopkeeper, you might find that some of the good stuff behind the counter, so to speak. Ahem. White. Interesting thought about a dark(er) sugar, though....

Abra, I use the Pearl River Bridge light and dark soy. I wouldn't use mushroom soy in this recipe; it'd likely cloud up the flavors in a way I wouldn't like.

What a fantastic excerpt to what seems to be a fantastic book. The narrative is great and your introductory pieces to the recipes are wonderful, but your recipe instructions are what really drew my attention. This has to be the best paragraph on caramelization ever written: Can you talk a bit about your recipe writing technique?

It has been tweaked: click!

Nope. You have to cut it off when you prepare it. I usually slice it so that I can render the fat off of it at the start of whatever dish I'm making.

This looks remarkable, more a multimedia presentation than a book. Has anyone had a chance to check out this DVD? And (gulp) 600 photos in the book? Yeesh!

Chef Andres, I've just returned from ten days in Barcelona, and while I may be spouting the tourist council line, the joie de vivre that suffuses the culinary community seems remarkable to this Yankee. In particular, having been edified by Robert Hughes's Barcelona and Colman Andrew's Catalan Cuisine, both of which stress this theme, I was fascinated by the melange of ancient and avant garde that characterizes the food scene there. My time there makes me think that the "new Catalan cuisine" is grounded in a centuries-old reverence for good food, prepared well, and shared in the spirit of camaraderie -- a fundamental point that the US food media, with its fetishization of hypermodern technology and technique, doesn't seem to get. Enjoying my dinner at Hisop, munching on Escriba and Rovira treats, and just walking through the city, I found new and old stuck together inseparably. Here's one moment: ten minutes after overhearing Albert Asim, the chef at Bar Pinotxo, waxing ebullient about his most recent meal at El Bulli while plating some transcendent garbanzos with sofregit, I walked by a restaurant display window from which Adria's mug beamed above his messy snail bib. Reading this Spotlight Conversation (and remembering the alarmingly good and unpretentious kibbeh I enjoyed at Zantinya last fall), I'm wondering how the old Catalan cuisine informs or influences your own very new cooking. Thanks in advance.

I just returned from Barcelona yesterday and had an experience that prompts the following question. While I was checking out the back room of a local charcutier who was taking care of the hams and sausages, I saw him grab a link of the dry-cured sobresada that was covered with the infamous green mold, grease up his hands with some olive oil, and rub the thing down with the oil. He then wiped it off a bit with a paper towel and put the sausage back in the display case. He proceded to do the same thing to the other sausages, most of which were just white-mold-y. When I asked the only person there who was fluent in English what was up, he shrugged and said, basically, that that's what's done. No muss, no fuss. Thoughts?

Yep. Click for the full ProJo story: Apparently Kingsford (a swell guy from whom I got access to Al Forno's kitchen for my food blog) is looking for funding for his own place.