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What would be the point? Isn't vanilla all about flavour? ← Yes, exactly. How do you make a recipe that calls for vanilla to not have that vanilla flavor? Beats the hell out of me.

I've been holding back. I don't want to overwhelm the board with my epiphanies. And I did try ranking my epiphanies, but they all went to 11. At least at the time. But Kings Pork Pie... I see I have yet uncharted epiphanies to conquer!

I have the same trouble with vanilla. I hate vanilla, but it seems every recipe in the world calls for vanilla. The thing I hate about vanilla is the flavor. I have noticed that whenever I use vanilla in a recipe, it imparts that vanilla flavor to whatever I am cooking. Oh, I have tried vanilla substitutes -- every vanilla substitute I can get my hands on. But the damndest thing -- that vanilla flavor gets imparted by the vanilla substitutes as well! Why, I might as well be using full-bore vanilla! If someone develops a vanilla substitute that does not have that vanilla flavor, I'll buy a case of it.

Yes, I know, but "Bovine TB" does not rhyme with "hysteria", so I took some creative licence. For the record, let it be known that in the context of this thread whenever I say "listeria" I mean, in fact, "Bovine TB".

Hey, I'd like some attribution here! I"M THE ONE who came up with "The French Epiphany"! I made it up out of my own head just yesterday, and I want some credit! Here is my post in full: click. By the way, I had a similar epiphany some time later when eating tapas-like platelets of indescribably wonderful bits of veg and such at a wine bar in Venice, rubbing elbows with world-weary Venecians taking what appeared to be a habitual wine-break at 10 o'clock in the morning. That's the "Itallian Epiphany", to coin yet another ego-fortifying catchphrase -- the realization that "yes, life is just... life. Another glass of flinty wine as clear as spring water, if you please my good sir... And another plate of that chard. Grazi." Of the two epiphanies, I hope some day to repeat the French one, but endeavor to live on a daily basis the Italian one.

One line is drawn like this: if the wine has a bad taste, it will impart that bad taste to whatever you pour it into. Any wine that tastes bad should be poured down a drain, not into a stew. Another line is drawn like this: if a recipe calls for wine, then add wine. "Cooking Wine" is not wine.

Cook's is not Champagne, no matter what they print on the label. If it's really going to be poured over your head, I would definitely choose something that comes in super-extra-brut -- the sugar in a sweet wine will cause your eyelids to stick.

At $100 per bottle, the vinegar is the dish, and the steak is the condiment.

Hysteria or listeria -- take your pick.

To paraphrase A. Bourdain, if not for the French, our idea of cuisine would be ham steaks with pineapple rings. To expand on that, I dare say without the French we'd have nothing worthwhile to discuss in these forums. We owe the French for the very idea that food is more than merely fuel. From that aspect, whenever you attempt to elevate anything you cook above the category of "grub", you are cooking French. This is difficult to understand unless you've had a "French Epiphany", that moment when you realize the Zen of food. This is why French cuisine is often misunderstood, maligned, shunned and feared. Without the French Epiphany, there is a persistant and ingrained notion that there exist recipes, magical combinations of ingredients and cooking times, that will produce a transcendent eating experience. We get tangled up in the mechanics; we study knife techniques and meticulously measure out ingredients; we squirt squiggles and use toothpicks to achieve height, we roam from restaurant to restaurant. Not to say that such activities disappear in the wake of the French Epiphany, but they become secondary to the true essence of cooking. This was my French Epiphany: Oeufs dur Mayonnaise at the original Laduree, almost 20 years ago. Just a plate of hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise, crusty bread and a glass of the house rose. It was all so good it made me weep. I still weep when I think about it. This simple dish is so stripped down, every aspect is layed bare. It is a dish that thwarts any attempt to compensate for inferior ingredients; it is a celebration of the ingredients. To have transcendent Oeufs dur Mayonnaise you must understand and give attention to each element of the dish, which means you actually begin preparing the dish when you go to the market and harrass the egg vendor to get the freshest eggs, and select the best-tasting mustard and oil for the mayonnaise, and conduct exhaustive taste-tests to find the perfect salt; in fact, you had begun to prepare this and every other dish when you first took spatula in hand and decided to cook something. Therein lies the French Epiphany: each dish, no matter the cuisine, has a soul, a platonic essence that can be revealed to the world. Whether you're making an ommelette, or stir-frying some greens, or baking some enchiladas, or grilling a burger -- if you honor the soul of what you are cooking, then you are cooking French.

If you went from table to table sampling people's Zins, you'd be drunk too.

Here's a handy mnemonic: Sweetened Wine Is Less Legit.

Last night, a brief discussion of this topic caught my young progeny's ear, and he suggested we simply "pulverize it with a mallet". Of course, that's his solution to most of life's conundrums.

It helps to use thin chocolate bars, too.

Theoretically, if you start out with identically shaped dough dollops, the resulting cookies will also look similar. Since most dough melts and spreads to some degree, the height and circumference of each dollop is critical. Also, naturally, the consistency of the dough is important -- an imperfectly blended mixture will result in dollops of differing properties. Further, the beginning temperature is a factor: if you fill half a cookie sheet with dollops made from chilled dough, then get distracted by something for several minutes before filling the balance of the cookie sheet, the dollops formed earllier will be much warmer that the dollops formed later, and will result in cookies of a different shape. One approach is to emulate, as much as possible, production-line techniques of large-scale cookie manufacturers. I've achieved good results by doing the following: when the dough is thoroughly mixed, roll it into a long cylinder of uniform width and freeze it. After it is frozen solid, slice the cylinder into lozenges of equal size. The diameter of the cylinder and the thickness (or height) of each lozenge determines the diameter and thickness of the cookie. Working quickly, place the lozenges on a cookie sheet and bake. The rest is up to the vagaries of Chaos Theory and the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Upon removing the cookie tray from the oven, your heart may sink at the realization that despite your very best efforts, the cookies are all quite different from each other. If so, take comfort in the fact that corporate cookie behemoths have spent millions on R&D to get their cookies to be unidentical for that "home-baked" look.

How, when and with what I plan to use it does not worry me, but how to distinguish the good stuff from the not-so-good stuff does. I have put off buying many a fancy-looking bottle until such day that I can identify a high-quality source. Fancyness of bottle is not an indication -- that much I learned from buying wine: the stuff in the bottles shaped like naked women or assault weapons is never as good as the stuff in regular shaped bottles. Nor is price an indication: just the other week, I held in my hands a $40 vial of " Balsamic Vinegar of Modena" that had, as an ingredient, caramel coloring. This, then, is the challenge: these days, every upscale market has a wall devoted to balsamic vinegars, but easily nine tenths of the nice-looking bottles contain swill.

When I Googled "Vancouver Terrabianca Wine" (excluding the quotes), only the first hit was for eGullet. In any case, you can use "Advanced Search" and exlcude words from your search. For example, typing "egullet" in the exclude box will return all hits that do not have "egullet" as part of their text.

There's a fairly famous restaurant around the corner on Harbor called Belisles. It has steadfastly preserved a 50s family restaurant atmosphere. Their distinction is copious amounts of food for not too much money. Whatever you do, don't eat there.

1. You can tell more about a man by looking into his fridge than looking into his eyes. Assuming, of course, he's not one of those fellows who doesn't own a fridge -- but even that should tell you something. And this fellow had a fridge, all right -- a beaut. An open book. I'd been on this case for too long. Months too long. It's not my customary style to let things drag on so -- I'm normally a cut-bait-and-move-on kind of guy -- but there was something about her -- her, the dame -- that I couldn't shake from the moment I layed eyes on her. Something about the way she was standing by my office door that morning, her hip cocked just so, eyeing me through the thin silvery cigarette smoke curling up from her expensive-looking coffin nail. She got right under my skin, she did. I'm not saying she had me from "hello". I'm saying she had me from "h". "Hello," she smiled. "Is this your office?" "Depends on who's asking." I don't like pushy dames. But I was willing to make exceptions. "You might want to be nice to me." She blew smoke in my face. "I might be a client." I unlocked the door with my name on it and walked in. Normally I wouldn't turn my back on a stranger like that, but something told me she wasn't here to jump me. I got behind my desk and pulled a bottle of rye out of a drawer. It's all I ever keep in my drawers -- rye. "Want a belt?" I offered. "Sure, why not?" she accepted. I stood and walked toward where I keep some extra glasses, but never made it. Maybe I was clumsy, or maybe I was clever -- I don't know. All I know is I walked smack into her. Just like that. And before either of us realized what was happening, we were in each other's arms, finishing up the most unbelievable kiss I've ever had -- the kind that makes fireworks, the kind that knocks the wind out of your lungs, the kind that punches you in the gut like a pile driver and leaves you for dead. "That was nice," I said, pulling my face back about a quarter of an inch. "Again," she whispered. I obliged. It was some time before she got around to spilling her guts. And boy, did she spill them. She was -- is -- Fiona Wiggums. She was in trouble. She was being followed. Her apartment's been broken into. She was getting postcards with death threats in the mail. She'd been shot at. Knives have whizzed by her ear sticking into nearby telephone poles with a "THWONG!" sound. That's how she pronounced it: "THWONG!" So far it was a story old as the hills. Girl gets in trouble. Girl gets followed. Girl's apartment gets broken into. You know the rest. I gently touched her lips to stop the flow of words. I had some questions. "What's wrong with the police?" "I thought I'd try you first." "Fair enough. Any idea what they want from you?" "It's not a they. It's a he. I've seen him." I raised my eyebrows. "Can you describe him?" "Sure, but it won't help. Average height, average build. No distinguishing features. Keeps his hat pulled down. Gloves." She was right. It didn't help. "Nothing at all unusual about him? His shoes? A cane?" She thought for a moment. "There is one thing. I've only seen him a few times... but he always has a sandwich." "What kind of sandwich?" "Just your ordinary sandwich. Home-made, not commercial. White bread. A little lettuce sticking out. Could be anything inside." "Crusts on or off?" "I... don't know..." She thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. Sorry." "I charge thirty-five an hour plus expenses." "Does that mean you'll take the job?" "Yeah, sure. No guarantees." "Wonderful!" she beamed. "I can't wait to tell my fiance!" Fiance. Great. Now she tells me. I should've charged her forty. 2. We left the building where I hang my shingle and headed north along 6th Avenue -- she walking briskly and confidently, me half a block behind hugging the shadows. The plan was simple. She was to go about her business as usual. The only difference was that now she had a shadow. With any luck, if you want to call it that, Mr. X would take another shot at depriving me of a client. The idea was to spot him before he made his move. As far as ideas go, it wasn't the brightest. But it was all I had. You play this game long enough, you develop a sort of sixth sense. I can tell when my target is about to turn, or hail a cab, or duck into a doorway. But I didn't need my sixth sense for this one. I knew where she was going: to meet up with her fiance at the Times Warner Center near Central Park. All I had to do was keep a careful eye on her. Just a routine tailing job. Except this time the view was better. Much better. When we got to Columbus Circle, she ran up to a palooka in a pricey-looking overcoat and started talking. For a fiance, he wasn't showing a lot of spark. I saw him nod a few times before he turned and steered her by the elbow through the Center's glass doors. She had told me where they were going -- lunch at a place called Per Se, a fancy joint, much too rich for my blood. Word on the street was you could easily drop a couple of Cs per person just for what they called a tasting menu. At those prices, at least one of our lovebirds had to be loaded. I should've charged forty-five. It was cold, for Spring, and I was glad of three things as I settled in against a nearby wall for a long wait: my pack of Shermans, my snub-nosed .38, and my silver-lined flask of rye. Three things I was never without, if I could help it. 3. This routine continued for months. Fiona divided her time between sleeping, lounging in her Manhattan penthouse apartment, and eating lunch and dinner with Jacob Snodberry, her beloved fiance. They almost always ate in one of the Time Warner Center joints, with occasional excursions to other pricey restaurants run by the kind of world-famous overpaid hashslingers you might catch on Food TV, if you were into that sort of thing. And I was her constant companion -- at 20 paces. Mr. X made several more attempts in that time, usually late at night as she was returning home after a night on the town with Snodberry. Some shots would ring out from a dark alley, bullets whizzing by our ears, Fiona screaming, me pushing her around a corner out of harm's way. Sometimes I'd catch sight of him, and sometimes I'd run after him, but I could never get close enough to get a good shot. The few times I saw him, he had a sandwich clutched in his left hand, just like Fiona described. Other times, I'd run after him and find nothing but a small pile of bread crumbs where he'd been standing, waiting for Fiona. And one time I found a half-eaten sandwich, white bread, lettuce, cold cuts, mayo, mustard, pickles. Crusts on. I dropped my handkerchief over it, carefully picked it up and dropped it into a plastic zip-lock baggie. But aside from these brief moments of excitement, it was a monotonous routine. I suppose Fiona felt sorry for me, standing out in the cold while she and her beau swilled $35 martinis at bars where you either had to know someone or kill someone to get in. She must've put the pressure on Jacob, because one day, out of the blue, she waved me over to where they were standing in front of the Time Warner Center's glass doors. "Come on," Fiona said, smiling sweetly. "Jacob's buying you lunch today." I followed them inside, and up four flights of escalators past fancy shops and restaurants. As we approached our destination -- a place I had vaguely heard of called Masa -- Jacob explained that it had taken him months of hard work and staggering amounts of cash to establish himself as a regular. We had to pass through a few security checkpoints to get in, with Jacob showing his picture ID a few times, and, finally, undergoing a retinal scan. The three of us were then fingerprinted, photographed, and ushered into a smallish room with some tables, plants, waterfalls, and a big bar behind which I saw several knife-wielding bald guys in pajamas. As we sat down at the bar, Fiona was whispering to me excitedly. "That's Masa over there -- he's the owner, and the best sushi chef in the world. But these other guys are great, too. The main thing is to get them to respect you. That's how you get the best sushi. Also, you don't want your fellow diners to think you're a slob. Start out by asking for fresh wasabi, that's a sure sign that you are an advanced sushi aficionado. And use the Japanese names for everything you order. After a few orders, buy the chef a beer. Don't do that with your chopsticks -- here, let me show you. Lay them down pointing this way. That towel is for your fingers. Don't call it soy sauce -- call it shoyu. Now, pay attention and do what me and Jacob do. Don't you dare embarrass me, or I'll never speak to you again!" Well, I tried, but I'm not cut out for this kind of thing. I'm sure I breached protocol in hundreds of ways. I asked the chef if the wasabi was stale, thinking there was no need to ask for fresh if it already was, but that turned out to be the wrong approach. I couldn't get a good grip on some of the more slippery offerings with my chopsticks, so I dropped a few things in my lap. The sushi chef who kept handing me things could barely disguise his disdain, even after I bought him a beer. At one point, he handed me a plate of raw fish slices arranged like a big flower. I just couldn't do it. I got the chef's attention and handed back the plate, saying, in a low tone so as not to embarrass Fiona, "Be a good man and take this over to yonder hibachi and lay a few stripes on this sardine. There's another beer in it for you if you do. And if you don't..." I pulled open my jacket a tad -- just enough to expose the butt of my snubnose .38. The chef's eyes widened with understanding, and he did what I asked. Fiona was right -- you have to gain their respect before they give you the good stuff. All in all, it wasn't the worst meal I've ever had, even if the fish was undercooked. But I got a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach when Jacob let it slip that the bill for our little lunch was well over a grand. That just didn't make sense to me. There is a lot you can do with a grand that would have a lasting effect and maybe even change someone's life. What were people really buying here? I still can't work it out. Self-esteem? Hardly. Prestige? Maybe, but at best it's fleeting. A unique epicurean experience? Perhaps for some. But if you ask me, there wasn't a thing I ate that afternoon that couldn't have been improved by a bottle of ketchup and a fork. It was a gloomy fall afternoon. Fiona and I walked slowly toward her apartment building. I didn't bother with the shadow routine. I was through with that. I was sick of the routine. I was having a bad day. "Fiona," I said, stopping. "I gotta get out of here. Out of the city. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the bums and the fancy restaurants, I'm sick of the flop-houses and the overpriced hotels, the people, the dogs, the pigeons... I'm sick of it all. I want to go somewhere else." Fiona's eyes lit up. "Maybe you can take me with you! We can leave this two-bit town for good, and make a life together, just you and me -- the two of us! We can have kids, start a family..." She broke off, her voice cracking. "Aw, who am I kidding... It would never work. We're from different worlds. I'm Park Avenue, you're the Bronx. I'm champagne cocktails, you're a fifth of rye. I'm hamachi handrolls, you're frozen fish sticks. I'm croissants, you're Italian subs. I'm..." "Ok!" I broke in. "I get the picture. You think we're too different. And I say, opposites attract. We compliment each other. We make each other whole..." "No." She smiled sadly. "No. It just won't work. Besides, I already promised Jacob... I know he's not exciting and virile, like you, but we come from the same background. And say what you will about Jacob, the man loves me. I can't turn my back on that. This is goodby, Ivan." She kissed me on a cheek, turned and walked away without looking back. My bad day had just gotten a whole lot worse. 4. My client may have walked out on me, but she didn't exactly fire me. I felt I owed her one more shot before sending her my bill. So, that night, I followed up on the only lead I hadn't covered. I knew generally where the house was, and it didn't take me long to spot it. Breaking in was a cinch. A quick look around told me I had the place to myself. I found the office on the second floor, a tidy mahogany-paneled room with a big desk and some filing cabinets. I rifled through the drawers and files, but didn't turn anything up. I started tapping the walls, looking for a safe, when something caught my eye at the far end of the room. A wet bar, complete with hot and cold running water, some cabinets, and a refrigerator. I walked over and pulled the refrigerator door open. You can tell more about a man by looking into his 'fridge than looking into his eyes. I had looked in the man's eyes a hundred times, maybe, and never once saw a hint of malice. But what I saw in the little 'fridge told me as sure as day that evil intentions filled the bastard's heart to overflowing. It was all there. Hellman's Mayonnaise. French's Mustard. Underwood Deviled Ham. Oscar Meyer Bologna. Iceberg lettuce. Sweet bread and butter pickles. Wonder Bread. A voice, icy with suppressed rage, came from behind me. "What the hell are you doing in my house?" I whirled and found myself staring down the business end of a Browning 9mm. "Well, Jacob," I sneered. "So this is your dirty little secret. I should have known. So tell me, is Fiona the first, or just the latest in a series of impressionable starry-eyed dames? Very clever. First you make a few threatening moves, make them think their life's in danger, then... what? Drop a few hints? Plant a suggestion or two about taking out some life insurance? And then you follow through, don't you. Tell me, Jacob, how many times have you collected on the policies of the dames who fell in love with you?" Jacob was breathing heavily. Sweat glistened on his forehead. "You can't prove a thing," he hissed. "Can't I? Take a look in that refrigerator. All the makings of the exact kind of sandwich you dropped the last time you took a shot at Fiona. The exact kind of sandwich you've been seen holding every time you've been spotted. What do you think will happen when the CSI boys get hold of this stuff? It's like you left your fingerprints all over town!" I was yelling now. "Tell, me, Jacob: what's with the sandwiches, anyway? All those tasting menus and exquisite canapes and perfectly crafted tidbits just don't stick to your ribs like honest grub, do they? Do they?" Jacob made a sound between a growl and a gurgle. He was looking green around the gills. His mouth contorted as he spat, "You sonofabitch! You think you have it all figured out! Well, let me tell you..." He never finished. With a yelp, he doubled over, clutching his stomach with one hand, and his throat with the other. The Browning dropped to the floor, and I kicked it across the room. Jacob, eyes bugging impossibly outward, crumpled, his legs jerking, foam bubbling up from his purple lips. A moment later, he was still. I felt for a pulse and couldn't find one. Leaning over, I sniffed the foam on his lips. I recognized the smell from a case I worked a couple of years ago for the Tokyo cops. It was fugu. Talk about your bad sushi. 5. As I expected, the boys in blue made quick work of it. Jacob Snodberry of Long Island was actually Sammy "Killer" Cahill of Philadelphia. The snake was guilty, all right, and Fiona wasn't his first mark. A long list of dead girls had kept Sammy in the black, living the life of the privileged. And through it all, he was a phony. He never stopped being the pissant con artist from South Philly. He had the glitz and polish of a man born to the manor, yet all a girl had to do was look in the man's refrigerator to see the true story. In the end, Jacob's relentless pursuit of epicurean wonders and foody brownie points did him in. They never found where he ate the deadly blowfish -- probably some shady back-alley operation with unsterilized knives and plastic chopsticks. It bothered me that Jacob cheated the hangman, but I had to admit that whatever criminally inept sushi chef gave Jacob his last thrill also probably saved my life. Seven hours after I had called the cops, they were finally done asking me questions, and I was told I could go home. But home wasn't where I intended to go. There was a certain dame with whom I needed to discuss a thing or two. This time, I was determined the conversation would end differently. I made my way up Seventh Avenue as dawn broke over Manhattan. I breathed in the city air. It smelled sweet. It would be an hour or two before she'd be waking up. I was passing by Joe's 24-Hour Subs, a place where I was a regular -- and I didn't have to bribe or threaten anyone to get that way. I realized I hadn't eaten anything in what seemed like days. I went in and took my usual seat at the counter. "Coffee, Joe." I said. Joe poured. "Rough night?" "Glad it's over," I nodded. "Usual?" asked Joe. "Sure," I replied. Then, on impulse, I raised a palm. "Wait. I'll have one of them croissant sandwiches." Joe raised his brows. I knew what he was thinking, but it didn't matter. Sometimes a man needs to take things in hand and better himself. I've tried it before, so I knew it wasn't going to be easy. But this time, I was motivated.

This really confused me for a while. I'm ok now.

In the immortal words of the inimitable Tommy: I'm in.

I tried to make some mead, and promised to post progress reports in this here eG thread some eons ago. Well, the upshot is this: after 2-3 months of steady, fairly robust and very encouraging fermentation, we tried a glass. Clearly, it had a ways to go yet -- it needed to be drier and rounder -- but it had tremendous potential! So I shoved the carboy back under the ol' blanket and forgot about it for... I don't know... 6-8 more months. Well, truthfully, I did check on it occassionally, and all the signs of fermentation were there every time I checked until one day... they weren't. With sinking heart, I siphoned off a few drops, tasted them, and ceremoniously poured the contents into the compost heap. Now, I know a million things can go wrong -- errant bacteria, damaging temperature fluctuations -- but that's the first time any fermenting project has ever gone south on me (well, except for my ill-begotten attempt to ferment an alcoholic sparkling orange beverage using the skins from 50lbs of oranges, yeast and water -- but that doesn't count). I was wondering whether honey wine is especially fragile, but don't really believe it -- the ancients had no problems with it in much less antiseptic and controlled environments. I WILL TRY AGAIN!

"Longarm" and "I Can't Make Love" were both better than "Mexican Radio", but came out before MTV, so had no cool video to propel them into the mainstream. Also, WoV's version of Cash's "Ring of Fire" was interesting. To sum up, I think if Stan Ridgeway were to eat at "Mexican Radio", he would give it a fair chance despite his distancing himself from the WoV years.

Randall Grahm blazed this trail, bless his soul. And they don't even mention him by name.

I'm proud to say that I passed through my Jamie-hating stage and have emerged purified and serene on the other side of the debate, and will state with vim and certitude that he is a positive force in England's food world whether England's food world and Jamie-bashers worldwide see it or not. He embodies what is best about the English culinary spirit (and thus does wonders to dispell the "English food sucks" stereotype): boundless enthusiasm for both local and exotic ingredients and dishes, a can-do populism, and a sincerely generous spirit. Plus, his recepies work. Plus, he has a kick-ass theme song. Plus, cute sticky-up hair that chicks dig. Sure, sometimes I catch an episode from his first series, and remember why I hated his living guts -- I was reacting viscerally to the MTV-isation of cookery. But there's more to Jamie than that, and, really, the only possible reason I would have for hating even MTV-chef Jamie of the first season is simply an underlying fear that the world is being overrun by kids with scrap-metal in their nostrils.