Chris Amirault

I thought that was going to lead to a recipe. But it's a lovely photo. ← Sorry about that, but I don't have it -- it's a secret at the level of the formulas for Coke or WD-40!

Just to add some commodities to this list: a "pound" of some pasta products regularly consists of less than a pound. I bought some Pennsylvania egg noodles last week and the package advertised that it was 33% more than competitors. Sure enough, most other "pounds" were 12 oz.

My very limited (one time!) experience, which was marked by various problems, would seem to suggest that both cooking it in the fat and aging it make a difference. My confit was tender and wonderful, especially the thighs... but it definitely lacked the uber-tender succulence of confit I've had that others made.

(This is a bit off topic -- but I started the thread, so....) I read somewhere recently that the only wineries that made it through Prohibition were the ones that shifted to making sacramental wines, particularly for Catholic mass, and grapes for home winemaking (not illegal, apparently, which I also just learned). That's how Mirassou stayed afloat; check out the "Third Generation" page at their website.

Ditto johhnyd. The frames and the little legs (particulary those from eaters in too big a hurry to poke out their luscious meat pockets) are crucial.

You got it -- but in a new thread called "International Drink and Ritual." Hope it's interesting to y'all!

On the Etiquette Shmetiquette thread, in response to comments I wrote about drinking in Saudi Arabia, Pan wrote, So I thought I'd start up this thread. What is your international drinking experience? I mean "international" relatively; I'd be very interested to hear someone from outside the US talk about drinking schnapps and weiss at Von Trier Pub in Milwaukee (a grad school haunt), for example!My sole serious drinking experience in Tokyo was predictably typical, involving beer and sake at a tempura restaurant that ended with me staggering out to the street at 11 pm to find it filled with stumbling-drunk businessmen pouring into the subways for their two-hour commute home -- quite a sight. But since I imagine several people can say more interesting things about Tokyo than I can, I'll comment more extensively on my drinking in Saudi, where I made about a dozen two-week-long trips from 1999 through 2003. (That span included a trip that I started on September 19, 2001 -- a trip that included much soothing libation for me jangled nerves, let me tell you -- ) Save for water, soda (including the horrific Coke Lite, which includes a carcinogenic sweetener not found in our Diet Coke), and fruit juices, Saudis tend to drink three things: Saudi coffee, "Saudi champagne," and "what the guy brought." Saudi coffee consists of roughly ground green coffee boiled with cardamom pods for a really, really, really long time. Much debate ensues around time and proportions, and perhaps someone else can provide a decent recipe. It's meant to be very intense and unsweetened, nearly always served with dates to soften the jolt. The stuff is fantastic, one of the many things (roasted whole lamb, kibbeh, tabbouleh, and the greatest dates in the world) that I miss a great deal from those trips. You get served Saudi coffee basically everywhere: friendly meetings here or there, more formal affairs, and dinners at people's homes. It's sort of the cocktail for the late night meals I used to enjoy with my friends there, meals that started at 9 pm and usually ended around 2 am; we'd be served that with dates, nuts, and maybe a block of cheese for the American touch. Saudi hospitality is legend, and it involves serving astonishing amounts of food at every meal, the idea being that guests should never feel that their appetite is making a dent on the largesse of the hosts. Many Saudis who do not serve alcohol before or with a meal serve instead "the famous Saudi champagne," a strange sort of compensatory but bracing and slightly sweet beverage that goes well with food and isn't as overpowering as having, say, mango nectar with your hummous. It consists of sparkling apple cider, a slice of lemon or orange or two, and a few sprigs of mint, sort of like a Lillet aperitif with bubbles but without alcohol. Much ado about Saudi champagne is often made by strict Muslim hosts on behalf of the hooch-deprived Western guest, whose innards, presumed to be pickled by alcohol, must surely be screaming for a fix; effusive compliments of the beverage by same are the only way to avoid extended jokes at one's expense. Less strict Muslim hosts, on the other hand, are very happy to contribute to the pickling of your and their own innards. I didn't make it into any wine cellars, but I did spend a good deal of time with professional class Saudis who were interested in the progressive school reform project I ran, most of whom had been to college and/or grad school outside of the Kingdom. You can't buy alcohol in stores due to the Kingdom-wide ban, but there is a thriving black market (run, apparently, by "the Germans" -- ) that folks who have the money and desire to do so can buy booze. Unfortunately, that's exactly what they do: they buy booze, understood in the broadest possible terms. Because the supply chain is unreliable, placing an order isn't very practical, so Saudis give their Man some money and hope for the best, insh'Allah. Although there is a constrained set of choices (wine, scotch, gin, and a few other things), one never knows what one gets until one opens the box at home. So, on any given evening, as you settle into the start of your wonderful three or four hour pre-dinner conversation, your host will offer you a drink, and if you ask what's available, he'll say, "Why, we have what the guy brought!" And you laugh along and accept a nice Johnny Walker Black double, say, or a glass of a strange Chilean red you've never seen before, or a Tanqueray and tonic. And it tastes really, really good, let me tell you.

Depends on the country. In a few places I've had business dinners (including Tokyo and Riyadh -- yes, you read that right), it's considered poor manners NOT to have more than one drink at a business dinner. ← What were you drinking at a business dinner in Riyadh? Tea? For those of you who don't know, alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia, and as far as I've understood, the ban isn't widely flouted as in the US during Prohibition. Perhaps the analogy with cocaine in the US today may be more apt. ← Many business meals in Saudi Arabia take place at people's homes, where there are usually large areas designed in houses to allow for social functions around meals. And virtually every meal I had at homes in Riyadh included plenty of alcohol that had been obtained on the black market. Never had, or was offered, a drop in restaurants. As my friend used to say, some of the most astonishing wine cellars in the world lurk below the sands of the Arabian desert.....

Hold on a sec -- let's don't mix apples and ball bearings. If I come to your restaurant and I don't want you sitting at my table with me and the other people with whom I actually have a relationship, how exactly does that make me "condescening"? I'd say it's quite the opposite: you have condescended to judge me based on your sense of superiority involving your belief in "warmer styles of communication," itself a presumption with which I disagree. It seems to me that someone practicing "warmer styles of communication" would seek to make me comfortable, instead of forcing uncomfortable interactions down my throat or showing me the door. But not, say, when they're uncomfortable with your warm servers? Maybe I just don't get it. What kind of establishment do you run, vancanjay?

I've been a big fan of Wray & Nephew for years. It has a clean, fruity nose and taste that I love; the intensity is like grappa. Pretty easy to find in these parts.

Two things: Can you give more info on numbers? When I read, "While I'm not cooking everything..." I about fell over. Just how much cooking are you planning to do? In the run-up to my wedding two years ago, I made one meal for extended family (about a dozen or so) and that was it; the thought of cooking both rehearsal and wedding meals obliterates my consciousness. But, hey, if you're game, I'll happily try to give suggestions!

As usual, I think Busboy hit the nail on the head here, and I share his bewilderment. I'm reminded of the difference between the tourist -- here, the hyper-yuppie, guides in hand, ready to choose the "perfect" thing to do, eat, or experience, so as to produce a commodity called "experience" for future consumption by others -- and the traveller. While I certainly spend a good deal of time trying to figure out what fun things there are to do in advance, I try to embrace the spontaneity and chance opportunities that any kind of travelling presents. This seems important especially if you're interested in food (or any sort of) culture, which is by definition a lived, not merely documented and rated, entity. When last in glorious Paris, we stayed a week in an apartment with a kitchen in Montmartre, and ended up shopping on rue Lepic for most of our meals. Each time I went back to that great rue, I was treated with greater interest by the shopkeepers, got ever more wonderful stuff, and we had spectacular meats, fish, cheeses, wines, breads, and sweets just by taking advantage of our neighborhood. Of course, we could have headed out the door to the Metro station every day with our "To Experience" list and never even gotten over there....

It strikes me that seafood usually comes with a place designation (as well as other terroir sorts of things like farm-raised vs wild, etc.), and that types of shellfish in particular are identified with names that can be related to specific places. Unless you ask the lunk at, of all places, the Whole Foods fish counter who shrugged his shoulders in response to the question, "What kind of oysters are those?"

There are many, many things that high-end restaurants do not do but other restaurants and home hosts do do. Serving cake as a final course is something that my family counts on, particularly when that cake is chocolate, particularly when that chocolate cake is the world-recognized Chocolate Layer Cake from Gregg's here in RI. You want to take that away from me, you'll be tearing it from my cold, stiff fingers, friend.

Now that I hadn't considered! Didn't Tiny Tim die?!?

As in "bangers and mash." I like 'em that way, too.

The odd thing is no, he is very short. ← So... um... what exactly happens when he kneels down near the table? (I assume that your diners sit at a table in chairs; if not, then ignore.) If he's below their line of vision, then it must actually be very strange for the diners. How very odd....

In the world of early childhood education, it is standard procedure to kneel or squat when talking to a child, so as to promote eye contact, model good communication, and so on. Similarly, many disability rights advocates urge those who can stand to sit when talking to people who use wheelchairs. While it may be a "good idea" in the abstract, I do think that one server doing it in the context of a staff that doesn't do it makes that server stand out -- which the server may like and you may not. So... I dunno.

Interesting story this morning on NPR's "Morning Edition" on place-based foods, using Maytag cheese in Iowa as their focal point. What's your sense of local place-based foods? Do you have particular favorites?

That event involved my standing KA grinding and stuffing attachment, which NulloModo doesn't have or want to buy for this. So I'll harken back to the olden days.... Let's be honest: as bleudauvergne said while I was writing this tome, people did make sausages before the arrival of counter-top appliances. All you need to make sausage save the ingredients is a way to cut them up and a way to stuff those ingredients into casings. You can do these two things with, respectively, a knife and cutting board, and a decent canvas pastry/sausage bag with a stuffing nozzle. I'll bet you've got most of these things right now, and the bag and nozzle can be had pretty much anywhere. It is a pain in the neck, however, to use a bag to stuff sausages: having too many moving parts around makes the squishy filling and the slippery casings hard to manage unless you're equipped with an extra set of hands somehow. If you think you'll get the jones (and, my friend, it sounds like you have it), I'd urge you to take the plunge and get a cheap machine a la andiesenji's suggestions. (I also believe that everyone should have a standing mixer, too, but that's another issue.) A few other tips, in case they're useful. I find that lower end grocery stores often have better ingredients for pork sausage; I can find salted pork anywhere but unsalted pork fat is hard to find at Whole Foods. Last time I got a whole shoulder at Stop and Shop and used every bit of it (the bone went into the bean liquid for cassoulet, and the scraps went to Zeke -- on the left up there). That's also where I found, after a long search, hog casings. They're typically packed in salt, and you need to rinse then soak them in multiple changes of water for a few hours, so build that time into your planning. I also read long ago that the enzymes in papaya help to break down tougher casings, which is useful if you're making, say, lobster and scallop sausages. You will be tempted to snip the casings into smaller pieces instead of untangling them, but this is an error: you'll be happy to have long strands when you're stuffing. The warnings about overseasoning the meat are worth noting; it's very easy to wind up with unpleasantly salty links or unbalanced ones that taste too much of an herb or spice. (However, I think that there is no such thing as too much garlic.) Until you have a sense of balance, you will want to have a pan on the heat into which you can toss seasoned filling, which will enable you to taste the cooked meat and adjust. When you stuff, remember that you want as little air as possible, but some won't be a problem. However, you really do need to be careful to understuff the sausages a little bit. You can test the width of the casings by tieing one end, stuffing some filling in, and then squeezing the open end until you reach the limit at the tied end. You want each link to be filled about 70-80% max. Keep us posted. Are you planning to show us your results?

That is my feel good read for the day. I love butter and I loved that you were saved by it! ← If you stop and think about it, doesn't butter save you every time it passes through your lips? [Homer]Mmmmmm...... Butterrrr.......[/Homer]

As a kid whose mother regularly cooked Cream of Wheat to the inedible but highly scuptural superball stage, I fell in love with the nearly indestructable Maltex, which is now very hard to find in stores. It was supremely nutty and very malted; I can't abide Malt-o-Meal as a result. In college I fell in love with McCann's Irish Oatmeal, a love that burns to this day.

Depends on the country. In a few places I've had business dinners (including Tokyo and Riyadh -- yes, you read that right), it's considered poor manners NOT to have more than one drink at a business dinner.

Sounds pretty avant garde to me. I could be wrong, but wasn't Ferran Adria working on a blendered foam of cottage cheese and ricotta and stainless steel leaf?

So, yesterday, after an additional four hours in the oven (and several ceremonial breakings of the crust), I served the following: It was a howling success. The beans were velvety and creamy, suffused with the flavors of the meats. Meanwhile, the meats had all been braised to the point of a miraculous tenderness, particularly the sausage, which crumbled deliciously in my mouth. Some notes: -- It seems to be a truly multi-generational dish. As LaurieA-B said, it's perfect baby food: our 18 month old friend, Chloe, loved every bite. But even my seven year old, Lulu, kept going back for more. (The adults swooned -- mais oui!) -- If I would make one particular change chosen among many (including getting the right cuts of pork, confiting the duck more effectively, and confiting the right kind of duck), I would add more liquid, particularly toward the end of the first baking and then throughout the second. It wasn't really dry, but it was just this side of less-than-moist; I was so afraid of making soupy baked beans (born and raised in suburban Boston, I know what those are like) that I think I erred a tad. -- Whither bread crumbs? I cannot imagine why you'd want or need them. Does anyone have a recipe with bread crumbs? -- Bourdain is right about fat: it undergoes an amazing transformation in this dish, as do the beans because of it. A bite with a bit of confit, a wee pile of beans, and a small clot of pork fat back (no longer distinguishable as such) was absolutely heavenly. Leftovers remain, of course! Tonight we larbed to regain some semblance of gastronomical balance, but I think cassoulet is on tap for the morrow.