The Hersch

Um, mayonnaise. Egg yolks, mustard (prepared Dijon), salt, lemon juice, oil. The only variations: sometimes a bit of white pepper, sometimes not, sometimes white wine vinegar instead of the lemon juice, but not usually.

I see that the Punt e Mes bottle no longer carries the name Carpano. Is there a story behind this?

I bet they're made in China.

Hm. Thanks for the info. These were certainly about the size of lamb chops.

I love goat too, but I was on a Quest for Mutton.The Falls Church area definitely has a lot going for it in the ethnic food department. To add to your list, a bunch of excellent Chinese restaurants (Mark's Duck House, Fortune, Miu Kee, Full Kee, others), Peruvian chicken places, pho houses everywhere.

You might be surprised what collectible cast-iron pans can bring. I think Griswold tends to be more valuable than Wagner (not sure why). Check out this website. There are Griswold skillets going for hundreds of dollars apiece. A #8 Spider Logo (pre 1890) is on offer for $1495. Whether anyone will really pay that is questionable, but still. I bought a machined Griswold skillet used (I think it's a number 8, and I think I paid about $30 for it about 3 years ago, and I think it's 1920s-1930s vintage) from some online seller, can't remember which. There's gazillions of these things out there. Unfortunately, they don't necessarily tell you on websites whether the pan is machined or not. I actually don't really like the smooth surface as well as the rough; it doesn't seem to hold seasoning half as well.

I don't think Wagner has been manufacturing anything for a long time. However, this article says that some incarnation of the company plans to begin commercial production of cast-iron cookware this year.Of course, there's a TON of Wagner and Griswold stuff still available used, since, as noted, it lasts forever.

Hm...are you sure this isn't an April Fools joke? The date is prominently featured.

Update: I visited the Lebanese Butcher in Falls Church VA on Sunday. Very nice people. I was certainly the only non-Arabic speaker among the customers and staff while I was there, but though I felt sort of like I was in a foreign country, I also felt totally welcome, which was very nice. For those of you in the Washington area, I certainly recommend this place. As soon as I approached the meat counter, I was very nicely asked what I'd like, and I asked "do you have mutton?" Yes, they said. What do you have available, I asked. Anything you'd like, they said--leg, shoulder, chops, whatever you want. I said I'd like some chops, about two pounds. One of the butchers got to work cutting them. After a moment, he showed me one, which was a beautiful little rib chop, and said like this? I said great. Once he had fixed the chops, he said what else? I said could I have some shoulder. He asked, for soup? I said stew. He said you want me to cut it up for stew? I said yes, two or three pounds. So then he cut up some shoulder for stew. It was at this point that I noticed the large white-board over my head that had their meats and prices listed. There was beef, veal, lamb, and goat, but no mutton. However, I later noticed that the price I was charged for mutton chops and shoulder were the same as were listed for lamb. So I'm wondering did I really get mutton, or is this lamb? I'm still not sure. Last night I had four of the beautiful rib chops pan-broiled. Wonderful. Still not sure if they're lamb or mutton, since I've never had mutton. A little chewy for lamb, but about the same size chops, with a wonderful flavor. I dressed them with a little butter and lemon, and salt and pepper. They were just delicious, and at $6.99 a pound less than half what I would expect to pay for similar lamb chops at Whole Foods. (Accompanied by boiled potatoes browned in butter, and a salad of roast beets, Belgian endive, goat cheese, and toasted pine nuts.) I also braised the shoulder for a navarin, which I finished this evening with carrots, potatoes, turnips, and green peas, largely following Julia Child's recipe in Volume I of Mastering. Also pretty delicious, and here the meat seemed definitely stronger in flavor than I'd expect for lamb. I read on some web-site something from a long-ago Fannie Farmer cookbook that says you can distinguish lamb from mutton by the color of the bones--red in lamb, white in mutton. But it didn't say whether that applied to the raw or the cooked article. The raw rib-chop bones were kind of pink, and the cooked shoulder bones were certainly white. So-whatever I got, at $6.99 for rib chops and $3.99 for shoulder, whether it was really mutton or really lamb, it was excellent, and a bargain. I don't think I'll ever buy lamb chops anywhere else.

I know if I had to stick to a bland diet, I would eat a lot of eggs, which is not a hardship. Scrambled, poached, fried, coddled, omelettes, quiche, savory custards. I'm making me hungry.

I see on CocktailDB that the Fin de Siècle cockail is gin, sweet vermouth, Amer Picon, and organge bitters. Do you have a source for Amer Picon? That you could share? Or did you substitute, and if so what?

I have yet to encounter definitions of triple sec and curaçao that are both unambiguous and authoritative--that is, definitive. Do they exist?

I disregard the dictum that you must discard the germ in a garlic clove (usually said to be bitter). There's nothing wrong with it at all. If it's turned green, I might not include it in a dish where the color is important, but that's about it.

Well, just calling it "pork" wouldn't indicate which part of the hog it came from. The thigh of the hind leg of a hog is called a "ham", but modern usage of that word generally assumes the cured article, so they call an uncured hind leg a "fresh ham". I find this neither puzzling nor annoying.Now why is the foreleg called a picnic?

And it depends on what part of the US you happen to be in. Here in Washington (DC), we have a wealth of Ethiopian restaurants, all generally teeming with Ethiopian customers, presumably eating fairly authentic (or "little-adapted") Ethiopian food. So I'd say that for Washington the answer would have to be Ethiopian. But in most of the US, there aren't any Ethiopian restaurants at all. Then if you leave the city and cross the river into Virginia, there are scores, maybe even hundreds, of Vietnamese eateries, many of them pho houses but many not, catering to the huge Vietnamese population of Northern Virginia, and to cultural/gastronomic tourists like me. I have to assume that these places serve largely authentic (or unadapted) Vietnamese cuisine or they wouldn't have their Vietnamese clientele very long. I don't know of any Ethiopian restaurants in Virginia. So for Northern Virginia (but not the rest of Virginia), the answer would have to be Vietnamese. But in most of the US, there aren't any Vietnamese restaurants either, although they're more common than Ethiopian.

Indeed. As to Middle Eastern markets, it was my impression that they carried lamb (perhaps the older lamb you refer to) and not mutton. As it happens, I live in Washington (the city), which is surrounded by suburbs brimming with Arab and other middle eastern and halal butcher shops. There's a place called the Lebanese Butcher in Virginia that I've been meaning to check out for ages, but for whatever reason I never thought to connect that intention with my desire to find mutton. Perhaps I'll pay them a visit this weekend.As to cooking mutton, I imagine that, as with beef, the shoulder and breast cuts (and perhaps the rump) would be good in braises, perhaps highly seasoned ones, and the loin would be good simply roasted or grilled?

Thanks for the detailed response. I have to confess I wasn't looking to put a lot of work into finding mutton, and I certainly have no way of using a whole animal, even a smallish one. What I was hoping for is something like "sure, just click this link and order up a few pounds of mutton chops!" I love lamb, and I gather that mutton is like lamb only more so; I don't think I've ever knowingly had any. It seems odd that there's so utterly not any market for it in the US.

I've had three different brands of rotatry graters. The all-metal Mouli is a hopeless piece of crap, flimsy and nearly impossible to use, which went fairly quickly into the trash. The Oxo worked very well, but only held up for a couple of months before the handle broke off. The Zyliss is a workhorse that lasts forever and does the job. (The Oxo actually produced a bit more output per turn of the crank, but lasting a couple of months is not really acceptable.)

I used to love that place, which wasn't actually next to the Dancing Crab, but several doors to the north of it (the Dancing Crab has since moved one door closer to where the mediterranean place used to be). I used to work around the corner on Brandywine Street (the AU building that houses WAMU). I seem to recall that the place was called the Lebanese Cafe, but I could certainly be wrong. Their shawarma was terrific. And the turnip pickles.

Does anyone know of a US source for mutton?

Needs bacon.

A bloody mary with horseradish is like a glass of cocktail sauce. Ick. My bloody mary: in a double old fashioned or similar glass, pour two ounces of gin, the juice of half a lemon, a good glug of Worcestershire sauce, about seven shakes of the Tabasco bottle, a couple of shakes of the salt shaker, a few twists of the pepper mill. Put the glass in the freezer for ten or fifteen minutes. Add six ounces or so of tomato juice, stir, and put back in the freezer until ready to drink, preferably with scrambled eggs, toast, and smoked salmon. Caviar optional.

Beets.

While I wrote above complaining of cloudiness (is yours cloudy too?), I made the Lemon Pledge connection too. At least it smells like Lemon Pledge; I've never tasted furniture polish. I think if you added the lemon bitters to a drink with another citrus element and a liqueur, like a Pegu Club or Aviation, they might work fine. Perhaps I'll try that this evening.

Well, I ended up adding a dash to a martini, and boy was that a mistake. The stuff is cloudy! Milky, almost! What's with that? Is it supposed to be that way, or is there something wrong with what I received?