MarketStEl

Let me just say that I have thoroughly enjoyed your cook's tour of Hanoi. And the friend who suggested going there instead of Phnom Penh was right -- the food there looks wonderful! Thanks a bunch!

What did Conti have to say?

Oddly enough, I think Chairman Newman's tenure underscores your point. The Chairman's Selection program works as well as it does because Newman was "someone who is truly passionate about wine." Sure, it did lead to some wineries dumping stuff they couldn't sell onto the PLCB, but those cases were the exception to the rule. If -- as is now happening -- someone who is not passionate about wine takes the helm at the PLCB, there will be no in-state alternative for oenophiles if the Chairman's Selections turn into fire sales for plonk because whoever runs the program doesn't know wine. So here's some free advice for the new chairman and for CEO Conti: Create a position of manager of the Chairman's Selection Program and conduct the sort of search that should have been conducted for the CEO position to fill it. The minimum qualification is that the occupant must be knowledgeable about wine. Edited to add: And while I'm sure that price is indeed not the primary consideration for passionate oenophiles, I'm also sure that even they don't mind saving money on the stuff if they have a chance to.

I fail to see any advantages to state-owned liquor stores. All it does is line the state's pockets. Sure, it's gotten somewhat better over the past few years. That doesn't mean it's right and that doesn't mean it's anywhere as good as it should be or is in other states for consumers. Competition is a good thing. We force all the other industries to have it for a reason. ← There is a reason I always inject New Hampshire into the discussion whenever the discussion about the PLCB comes round, as it always does, to whether or not the state should be in the business of selling booze at all. Before I do so for the 7963rd time, let me concede that in principle, Neuronix is correct. Competition almost always results in more choices and better value for the consumer. (But let us note that the competitors are not really all that different from the state in one regard: If they had their way, they would also be the only supplier of the product they make or sell. That way, they could extract profits beyond what they would otherwise be entitled to by taking advantage of artificially produced scarcity. This sort of thing is what the economists call "rent-seeking behavior." Where barriers to entry by rivals are low, as they are, say, in distilling whisky, there will be almost no "rent" for the competitors to seek. Where they are high, as they are, say, in the provision of cable TV service, the lucky providers can rake in the "rent.") However: States all over the world can, and have, maintained monopolies in the provision of certain goods and services. In the US, they usually exist for one or both of the following reasons: 1) To restrict the supply of something. 2) To make buckets of money for the state government without having to resort to broad-based taxation. The PLCB was originally established for the first purpose, and over the years, its mission has grown to embrace the second. Since the early 1980s, when the state made its first halting steps towards making the LCB system consumer-friendly, there has been a growing tension between the two purposes, a tension which Chairman Newman broke by hauling the State Store system firmly away from reason 1. Which brings us back to the Granite State. New Hampshire is unique among the "control" jurisdictions in that its government liquor monopoly was created solely for reason 2. New Hampshire prides itself to this day on being the only one of the 50 states with neither a state income tax nor state sales tax, but maintaining that distinction means the state has to resort to all sorts of nickel-and-dime or beggar-thy-neighbor measures to raise revenue lest local property taxes, already higher in many towns than they otherwise would be, shoot through the roof. One of the easiest beggar-thy-neighbor measures is for the state to coax as much money out of the wallets of Massachusetts residents as it can by selling booze for less than any private retailer in the Bay State could. This it does. And by putting most of the state liquor stores within a short drive of the Massachusetts line--including on the turnpikes that connect Massachusetts with Maine and NH's principal cities--it ensures a high volume of out-of-state traffic to patronize those stores. How does this relate to Pennsylvania? I'm sure it's not escaped the notice of some in Harrisburg that many Pennsylvanians living near the border routinely drive to other states to buy cheaper booze from bigger stores than they could find in Pennsylvania. (It certainly hasn't escaped the notice of the Pennsylvania State Police.) Chairman Newman figured out that since he heads the largest wholesale buyer of wine and spirits in the country, he could meet this challenge head-on by implementing programs that might drive traffic in the opposite direction. And so it is now that while there's still no single store in Pennsylvania as vast as Total Wine & More in Claymont, there are now stores that offer a much better selection of higher quality products -- and, in the case of the Chairman's Selections, offer those products at prices no one else can match. If it weren't for those bundled taxes, I imagine that he could have done the same for distilled spirits--the prices at the "warehouse outlet" stores and the in-store "outlet price" specials at the regular Wine & Spirits shops were actually competitive with prices in neighboring states, and while they weren't low enough to lure Marylanders or Delawareans northward, they were low enough to cause some Pennsylvanians to think twice before heading south. The difference between this approach to running the PLCB and the operating philosophy of the New Hampshire Liquor Commission (note the absence of the word "control" from its name) is one of degree, not kind. Were the PLCB's buying power used the same way Wal-Mart uses its buying power -- which has now happened in the arena of fine wines -- Pennsylvanians would benefit every bit as much as they would from a competitive free-market regime. And so, in all likelihood, would Harrisburg, given that PLCB revenues have climbed smartly upward in each year of the now-departed chairman's tenure.

Just heard a promo for NBC10's (WCAU, Philadelphia) morning chatfest, "10!", and the promo said that Chris Cognac is one of today's guests. What brought you back to town, Chris? Or was this segment taped months ago? And if you were back in town, where did you eat this time? (For those of you who receive Philadelphia TV, "10!" airs on NBC10 at 10 a.m.)

Actually, I wonder whether the biggest French import to Vietnam wasn't the Roman alphabet. As far as I can tell, Vietnamese is the only East Asian language written using Roman letters; all the others either use ideograms or their own distinct alphabets. You teach languages; care to speculate on why this is the case?

Make that www.widmerscheese.com.

One more thing: What's a farl?

It's more likely that the new PLCB Chairman will continue Chairman Newman's improvements than that what you hope for will happen. As this turn of events illustrates, the state liquor monopoly is useful in more ways than one to the boys in Harrisburg. You can't park a defeated legislator at the home office of a chain of privately run liquor stores. As for Chris Holst's question: You do have a point that in this case, the difference between taxes and profits is basically one of bookkeeping, but in theory, it's non-trivial. Let's say for sake of argument that the state finally did as Neuronix wished, abolished the Liquor Control Board in favor of a licensing and regulatory agency, and sold the PLCB's assets to private enterprise(s). Those taxes could, and most likely would, remain in place; the only difference would likely be that the private retailers would not fold them into the shelf price of the products they sold, the way the PLCB does with every tax it collects save the state sales tax. The end result might well be that the Pennsylvania electorate rises up in righteous indignation to demand that some of these archaic taxes (insert everyone's favorite example here) be repealed at long last. Neither party in Harrisburg really desires this outcome. Having the state run the liquor stores is a convenient way for both parties to hide revenue-raisers they would have a difficult time getting passed by the usual process.

We can hope that new PLCB Chairman Patrick Stapleton is serious about continuing the Chairman's Selection program, as he was quoted as saying in this morning's Inquirer. And while it may well be the case that the LCB really did need a chief executive officer to oversee operations and that the three-member board should be relegated to a policy-setting role, I also agree with the outgoing chairman that the way in which the post was created and filled smells. However, there was one item I did not see in the Inquirer story that did appear in today's Daily Times, and that item might shed some additional light on why Newman's boss made the move he did: Now if profits are falling on increased revenues, that's usually a sign that management or operations are slipping in some way. One of the usual responses that a corporate CEO might make in such a situation is to reshuffle top executives or managers. If a corporate board of directors becomes alarmed by the situation, it might ask for the head of the CEO on a platter. If the passage above accurately describes the PLCB's fiscal performance this past year, it might explain why the Governor felt it necessary to implement a quick management change. This does not, however, invalidate Chairman Newman's criticism about the way the change was implemented.

For what? This is Gov. Rendell's second term. He cannot seek a third under the state Constitution.

I'm dismayed, but not at all surprised, given the signal the Governor and legislative leaders sent last month. The fear I have is that now that Chairman Newman has gone a long way to fix what was broken about our state liquor monopoly, the new CEO will try to fix things that no longer need fixing or needlessly tinker with some very successful programs. Newman's an oenophile; Conti's a restaurateur. While the two categories have some overlap, they are vastly different in what they focus on. For example, one possibility might be that instead of incredible bargains on outstanding wines from small, distinguished wineries, future Chairman's Selections might veer more towards products that could be sold in huge quantities, perhaps to institutional customers and licensees. Right now, we can only hope that the new CEO won't mess with success where it has occurred.

While they occupy adjacent spots on the supermarket shelves in the United States, and most of the companies that manufacture products in one category also make products in the other, crackers and cookies are considered distinct categories by most Americans. For starters, cookies are always sweet, and crackers almost always savory -- graham crackers, being more like cookies in their sweetness, are an exception. But thanks for confirming my suspicion that what we in the US call biscuits don't exist in the UK.

Thank you, Suzy! I've enjoyed my virtual visit to Honolulu and tour of your favorite foods. And Happy New Year!

I note more US and European brands than I expected to see here. Coca-Cola and Heinz are both global brands, so it's no surprise to see either of those in your fridge, but Ortega salsa? Planters peanut butter? Président Brie cheese (French, IIRC)? All of these are available locally? Or do you have these shipped/smuggled in or buy them when you head out of the country?

From what I understand, relations between the Vietnamese and US governments have become downright cordial in the decades since the fall of South Vietnam; it's almost as if the war had never happened. Given that the Vietnamese government is still officially Communist IIRC, I wonder if there's that same sort of weird juxtaposition of freewheeling free-market economics and restrictions on free speech that we find in China there. I think the foodblogger who did the dulce de leche lab experiment beat you to this. We've got researchers working on this question. The jumbled, chaotic streetscape I see here looks quite inviting -- and is completely alien to the typical American sensibility, even among urbanophiles. Again, did this take some getting used to, Canadians being more like Americans than unlike them in this regard? Pardon the off-topic questions, but this is a window into a whole culture as well as an exploration of its culinary traditions.

Wading through this thread anew, I realized that this observation is reinforced somewhat by a bus-shelter ad I saw early last year (I had to correct myself from saying "earlier this year") that is one of the most inadvertently hilarious ads I've ever run across. The ad promotes a new housing development in Brewerytown, a somewhat rundown neighborhood about half a mile north of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that is experiencing significant stirrings of gentrification, this new development being one of them. The ad shows a beaming black couple (significant because the developer's first ads for this project in a mostly black neighborhood had pictures of youngish white folks and the legend "It's your turn now," which many black Brewerytown residents took as a sign that they were to be driven out of the neighborhood) standing in the spiffy new kitchen of their (presumably equally spiffy) new home, with text quoting them as saying: "We've started watching cooking shows!" I nearly doubled over with laughter when I first saw this. It struck me as a perfect encapsulation of the transformation of cooking into a status symbol: In order to cook, one must have a sufficiently fashionable kitchen, or else it's pointless. Even now, the thought of this ad brings a smile to my face.

This isn't a discussion of how to prepare biscuits (spoon, rolled or beaten) or crackers (or flatbread or matzo...). Rather, it's a usage discussion, prompted by an exchange in the "Aspiring Food Writers" topic over in Food Literature. But since topics like this one, food-related though they are, don't seem to fit neatly into any of the new boxes in the eGullet Forums hierarchy--a discussion of this type probably belongs as much in one of the Food Media & Arts groups as here--I'm starting the discussion here and hoping for guidance as well as conversation. On to the subject: What we in the United States call "crackers," the British still call "biscuits." Yet there was a time when we called those thin, unleavened snack breads "biscuits" too. The former use of the word survives in attenuated form in the name of the country's leading cracker and cookie baker--Nabisco (nee the NAtional BIScuit COmpany). I think they even still manufacture the first mass-marketed snack cracker, the "Uneeda Biscuit," under that name. Meanwhile, I don't think that across the pond, they have any sort of quick breads like the ones that often accompany breakfasts in the US--the baking-powder discs that are either flaky or crumbly and fluffier than English scones. What I'd like to know is: How did "biscuit" cease to be associated with saltines and their ilk in the US and come to refer only to those quick-rising soda breads? And why don't these breads exist in Britain -- or do they? And how did the term "biscuit," meaning "cracker," persist there? Take it away, folks...

Righty-O. Let's do. Let me continue this minor posting frenzy by starting yet another topic. Will do. Seek and ye shall find. This one might be a real puzzler, Sandy. ← Not: 1) seeing a post on this subject anywhere else, and 2) knowing where this topic would fit in the new eG Forums hierarchy, I'm going to post a topic-starter in "Ready to Eat" ("biscuits"/"crackers" being snack foods, I think that might be the closest fit) and hope a moderator or forum host can issue further guidance on where this topic about food terminology really belongs.

That raises an interesting subject. Wisconsin is "America's Dairyland," and that's not just a license plate slogan; I believe the state still leads the nation in milk and cheese production. Wisconsin produces tons and tons of cheese annually, including the first all-American variety*, Colby (a softer, milder, creamier variant of Cheddar), and some really fine domestic variants of well-known European varieties--not to mention some interesting new varieties like the Rofumo I mentioned above. And yet I can't recall ever eating what I'd call a truly outstanding Cheddar cheese from Wisconsin. No Wisconsin Cheddar I've yet encountered is better than commercial quality--and I've had better commercial-quality Cheddars from New York State, Vermont and Oregon. The A&P store brand of New York State extra sharp Cheddar is IMO superior to anything I've had yet from Wisconsin. Why is this, given the extensive cheesemaking expertise represented by Wisconsin's dairy farmers and cheesemakers collectively? *(Alta) California was still part of Mexico when Monterrey Jack cheese was first produced.

Well, since you raised the subject of dog meat as food -- which is one of the big East-West cultural divides -- in your intro, may I suggest that you might as well run into the breach now that it's open? Did you have any adverse reactions upon seeing dog meat served for the first time? Have you gotten adjusted to it since, or did you need any adjusting in the first place? Do the Vietnamese (as I understand the South Koreans do) make any effort to mollify the sensibilities of Western visitors by not mentioning dog dishes on English-language restaurant menus, but offering them to those in the know anyway? And how is dog meat consumed anyway? Like beef or pork, I assume? (Cue Monty Python sketch.) Looking forward to the rest of this week. --Sandy, born in 1958, the Year of the Dog

Well, we're back, and eagerly awaiting the wrapup, which I suspect will take the form of a posting marathon. Blog on, Suzy!

I had let it sit out for several hours prior to serving. It had gotten that soft by the time I put it on the cheese platter. I provided a knife (shaped like a spreader) anyway. My guess is Somerset (Cheddar), based on the colors of the cheeses that together make up Five Counties (Double Gloucester, Red Leicester, Cheshire, Derby, Somerset Cheddar). How they managed to just whack off the one layer is interesting. Enough people cut it across the layers as you should that the wedge is more like a cube now.

what sort of Dutch cheese is the Rofumo? I'm unfamiliar with it. ← And well you should be. I misclassified it. My apologies. Rofumo is a new variety -- a hickory smoked cheese from Wisconsin that resembles Fontina in texture. Here's what its maker, Roth Käse USA Ltd., has to say about it. They had it next to several Dutch varieties at the Whole Foods cheese counter, so I assumed it too came from the Netherlands. BTW and FWIW, the Buttermilk Blue that I used in the dip (purchased at Salumeria in the Reading Terminal Market) is made by the same company that produces Rofumo. It's an American offshoot of an established Swiss family cheesemaker.

Okay, I had promised Christmas Eve pix. Sorry for the delay. The cheese platter originally had this assortment: Top left: Idiazabal (Spain). Top right: Five Counties (England). Center: Borough Market Stilton (England). Bottom left: Rofumo (Holland). Bottom right: La Serena (Spain). Then I realized that I hadn't allowed the Borough Market Stilton to reach room temperature, so I put it back in the fridge -- where it remains today, unopened -- and substituted a brick of Cabot horseradish Cheddar (process). I also had four cheese spreads: three handmade spreads-- Top left: Alouette (cream cheese with garlic and herbs; the taste is similar to what's sold in the supermarkets as Boursin*); Top right: Abbruzze (Cheddar with herbs and hot peppers--one of my favorites); both from DiBruno Brothers. Bottom: Smoked salmon spread from Da Vinci Cafe and Cheese Court in downtown Swarthmore. (I stumbled across this friendly little cheese shop completely by accident; I had to find a restroom to use before I caught the 5:55 R3 into town, walked over to this cafe, and found a cheese counter in my way. The shop had some interesting varieties that I hadn't seen in town, including the Five Counties in the photo above, and the owner was very friendly. If you're in the western Philly 'burbs and looking for a great little cheese shop, I recommend this place highly.) --and one commercial spread. For my cheesehead friends Vince and Brian, I had bought this as a Christmas present: This is absolutely the best Cheddar-style cheese I have ever eaten. Produced in Kirkwood, Lancaster County, this cave-aged, organic raw milk cheese has a slightly tangy flavor alongside the traditional Cheddar bite and is creamier and less salty than traditional Cheddar. Green Valley Dairy explains that this is because they skip the brining step in the traditional cheddaring process. This cheese is worth every penny of the $20 per pound charged, and you can order it directly from the dairy farm if you don't happen to live within an easy drive of the Reading Terminal Market or Lancaster County. (For now, you will have to communicate with them via e-mail, as their online store is down.) I also had some on hand for the guests. And as usual, I made entirely too much homemade blue cheese dip: It's in the bowl at the upper right of this photo. I use half a pound of blue cheese--this time, it was buttermilk blue--half a pound of softened cream cheese and a pint of sour cream. To this mixture I add about a half tablespoon of onion powder and blend until just about smooth. and, of course, there was cheese for the sandwiches--American, double Gloucester, and Swiss. The guests just about demolished the La Serena, a soft-ripened cheese with a mellow flavor, and made pretty quick work of the Pennsylvania Noble too (I did manage to save some so Vince and Brian could get an idea of the quality of the cheese). They also managed to eliminate one of the Five Counties. On top of all this, I got a Hickory Farms gift set and a wheel of baked Brie from Vince and Brian, and Gary got a Figi's cheese and sausage collection. My doctor won't like what I have to present him on my next checkup. *Edited to add: DiBruno's also has a Boursin spread. It's more garlicky and oniony than the Alouette and tastes nothing like the supermarket Boursin.