The Hersch

I meant to respond to this earlier. These pickled onions sound very good, but not what I would want in a cocktail. I think fish sauce would sort of obliterate the gin, although I love fish sauce in general. How are these used in the cuisine of your province? As a condiment or relish with a meal? As snacks? I'm assuming not in cocktails. You don't specify the type of onion--little pearl onions like the ones used for cocktail onions in the US, or larger?

Okay, I've made the cocktail onions and I'm very happy . I used the first recipe on the page that Gifted Gourmet linked to, above, although I left out most of the ingredients. I used the general procedure, though. The recipe calls for putting the onions in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them; I boiled water in a large saucepan and dumped the onions in, then drained them in a colander. The recipe calls for cutting off the "root end"; I think the author really meant to say the stem end, which is what I cut off when peeling the onions. This is the only part of the whole process that's any work to speak of. Then I prepared the pickling brine. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup sherry vinegar or white vinegar plus 1/2 cup of cider vinegar. I think it would make more sense to call for 1/2 cup sherry or cider vinegar, plus a 1/2 cup of white. Regardless, I intended to use all distilled white vinegar, because of its straightforward, clean character (it's what I always use in bread-and-butter pickles). However, when I went to the cupboard it was nearly bare of distilled vinegar, and what little I had I needed to reserve for dog-related purposes. I decided to use all white-wine vinegar. The recipe calls for a total of 1 cup of vinegar and 1/2 cup of water. I used a bit less water. The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of salt, which seemed like way too much; I used about 1/4 cup, and at first thought that was still too salty. It turned out to be perfect. I emphatically left out the sugar. In fact, I left out all the other ingredients except the juniper berries and the mustard seed (I used brown). I brought the pickling brine to a boil, added the onions, brought it back to the boil, and turned off the heat. When the whole thing had cooled off a bit, I poured it all into a jar and put it in the fridge. A little while later, I tasted one, and I was really disappointed. It just seemed really tired and limp, not acid enough and a little too salty. That was last night. This evening I came home from the office and made myself a Gibson, skewering one of my home-made cocktail onions on one of these beautiful silver cocktail picks I bought the other week on the Web. After a few gulps of the cocktail, I popped the onion in my mouth. Nirvana! Its 20 hours or so in the fridge made all the difference. It was pleasantly crisp without being tough, nicely acidic, not too salty, just perfect! The only thing I'd do differently next time is boil the pickling brine for a few minutes before adding the onions, in order to bring out more of the flavor of the juniper and mustard, which is sort of missing in action here. But the onions are still terrific. Sorry I can show no pictures.

Some day I shall acquire a nice digital camera so that I can take pictures of onions and post them on eGullet, or perhaps on a blog devoted to cocktail garnishes, but that day is some way off, I'm afraid.If you're interested in ready-made cocktail onions that are really very good, I suggest trying Mezzetta Cocktail Onions. They're the best I've ever found, and they even carry them at a local Safeway. Despite the "small, tender" language on the website, they're fairly large for cocktail onions, and what I love about them is that they're crisp without being tough. They're imported all the way from Canada. Some of the cooking suggestions on the website are...well, let's just say I'm not going to try them.

You would not be correct in assuming I was aware of that. But I think that puts me on the right track. I think the basic procedure is what I want, although I'd leave out some of the ingredients, like the sugar, allspice, rosemary, and vermouth. I like the idea of using juniper berries and mustard seeds. I'm iffy on the peppercorns. Maybe I'll experiment with this in the next couple of days and report back. Thanks!

It appears that your supposition is correct. I just found the most wonderful online etymology dictionary (of English) here. It appears that the English leaf is cognate with Old Norse lauf, Old Frisian laf, Dutch (or is it Flemish?) loof, and German Laub. Very cool. Thanks Klary.

Having just bought a bunch of pearl onions the perfect size and shape for cocktail onions, I thought I'd try to transform them into suitable garnishes for Gibson cocktails. But I'm having trouble finding a recipe. Should I just blanch them, peel them, and soak them in a vinegar-water-salt brine for a few days? Should I cook them briefly in the pickling brine? Or perhaps should I steep them in salt for an hour or two, then rinse them and add them to a hot vinegar-water solution? I'm pretty sure I don't want any sugar in the pickle, since the commercial ones I like don't have any. Any advice?

I've often wondered what "Belgian" endive is called in Belgium (and the Netherlands, and just about anywhere where English isn't the local language). Is it called the local equivalent of "Belgian"?

Serve cold with caviar and champagne.

A zillion people have listed salad dressing. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone buys bottled salad dressing. It's all horrible, and making a vinaigrette, for example, which is really as good as salad dressing gets, takes all of 40 seconds. Or dressing a salad in the Italian manner, just tossing it with olive oil, then some salt, then some vinegar...if the salad greens are good, and the olive oil is good, you can't get better than that. But you people who say you don't buy pre-roasted coffee...really? You buy raw coffee beans and roast them yourself? In what, your ovens? I don't quite understand that. Where do you even find raw coffee beans?

I've done a brined turkey a couple of times and have sworn off it forever. The drippings are definitely too salty for gravy-making, unless you're a total salt freak. The stuffing isn't so much a problem if you go very light on putting salt in it before you stuff the bird with it. But to me the biggest flaw is the meat. Sure, the breast comes out juicy, but the whole bird has a sort of processed texture that I find really unappealing. By brining you sort of turn the turkey into processed luncheon meat.

Pound the hell out of it with a meat hammer, dredge in seasoned flour, and pan-fry in a little peanut oil. This is what I grew up with as "chicken-fried steak". Adding icky "cream gravy" is the southern approach, which is here deprecated.

Salisbury steak is by definition made with ground beef. Swiss steak, perhaps?

Or boysenberry yoghurt for something even more different. Sorry, I'll go now.

Eat it raw. I don't mean that rudely.

The Chinese restaurant at Eden Center had "Dragon" in the name, I think. I never ate there, but heard it was good. The roast pig at MDH is totally wonderful. At Chinese New Year there's a line out the door of Chinese folks waiting to buy it by the pound to take home. They do an excellent roast pig at Miu Kee, too. Perhaps you weren't aware, IR Chef Salad, that there's an outpost of the Chinatown Full Kee at Bailey's Crossroads? It's pretty much the same menu, but in a much nicer place. The Chinatown place is pretty funky; the Bailey's Crossroads place is actually quite nice. And they have a liquor license, which the DC restaurant doesn't. At either place one dish not to be missed is the Oyster and Spring Onion Casserole (or whatever the exact name is), which is among the best things I've ever eaten anywhere.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. Looking up the thread, I see no praise of the dim sum at Mark's Duck House. ← Perhaps you should read the very first post which indicates "It was ALMOST up to NY standards in our slightly humble opinion!". ← But that wasn't about dim sum. They were there at 4 pm and ordered off the menu: I'm not sure that MDH is less clean than other restaurants, although as I say it certainly has a grungy appearance. But even fancy places have to struggle with cockroaches. I was at the bar at Kinkead's for lunch a few weeks ago when a cockroach scurried by. A Chinese place that is far less funky than MDH and not far away is Miu Kee, out Rt. 50 just before Annandale Road (in the little strip with the IHOP). They don't do dim sum, but they have some very tasty Cantonese food.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. Looking up the thread, I see no praise of the dim sum at Mark's Duck House. All the praise seems to be for the Peking Duck at Peking Gourmet. That said, I've had some fairly tasty things off the carts at Mark's, although I haven't been there for dim sum in a couple of years. What I have always liked there are the big bowls of Cantonese soup with noodles and wontons and such. The place is kind of grungy, but so is my kitchen. The dim sum buffet at Lucky Three on Rt. 7 (weekday lunch only) is pretty good. Have you tried that?

Yeah, me too.

Thanks for the references. In the Lowell Edmunds article you link to, Fisher is quoted as saying that in France, to get a martini you must ask for "Martini-gin". Since in Europe generally "martini" means vermouth (in my observation), perhaps she changed this to "vermouth-gin" in her book about Aix in order not to confuse her American readers. If that was her intent, I think she failed (although I hold her writing in extravagantly high regard otherwise). I must say that I'm left with less than high regard for Lowell Edmunds. When you quote someone's article, tell us the name of the article and where it appeared, for pity's sake. On the subject of room-temperature drinks: You're forgetting the English! If English television is any guide, the English drink room-temperature gin-and-tonic. You can see Judi Dench do it repeatedly on "As Time Goes By".

Understood, but I wish I knew exactly what MFK Fisher was drinking.

Room temperature? On ice? Stirred with ice and strained into a chilled cocktail glass?

Mark's Duck House has dim sum on carts every day at lunch time. I guess 4 pm is well past lunch time. You can also order from their two extensive menus and I suppose from the many things posted on the walls. If you have a taste for "roast pig", order it from the menu and not from the dim sum cart, where it mysteriously costs about twice as much.

I've just been visiting Aix-en-Provence and simultaneously reading MFK Fisher's beautiful memoir of the town (A Map of Another Town). In her book, Fisher repeatedly refers to a drink she calls a "vermouth-gin", which she apparently drank quite a lot of. I don't believe she ever uses the term "martini". When I had a drink at Les Deux Garçons, where she had some of these "vermouth-gins", I was too chicken to try to order one, but I have a feeling if I had done so they wouldn't have known what I was talking about (Fisher was writing about her time there in the 1950s). Is anyone familiar with this "vermouth-gin" term, and how it might differ from a martini? 50-50, perhaps?

I don't see how this procedure is workable. How could the meat possibly brown using this technique? On the other hand, I don't think that browning the meat is traditional in Hungarian goulash.

"Fois" is "faith"; hence the churches.