DickL

I think it's a reaction to what other restaurants have done in the past. As Kat said, it can be a good idea with salad dressing because some places put too much dressing on a salad. Sometimes with a main, a place will slop on gobs of sauce and turn what should have been a pleasant dish into an over-sauced mess. Then there are the sauces that don't quite work-- I hate having to scrape off the sauce when it turns out to be something less that it should have been. (It would be interesting to see how much of the "sauce on the side" comes back versus how much patrons actually use.) And then there are all the dieters who are avoiding the extra calories in sauces, which often are high in calories. Still another reason for "sauce on the side" is that most restaurants serve huge portions, and many of us expect to either waste a lot of food or (more likely) take home the extra beyond what would have been a reasonable portion. In the latter case, some things rewarm better when unsauced, and some sauces don't survive take-home very well. Perhaps it's cultural in that here in North America we don't feel it's discourteous to request the sauce on the side when we're paying for the meal.

I'm with Pierogi-- it's great to have a choice. I like Indian, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, SE Asian, and others, and wouldn't like being confined to one. My wife and I are planning a trip to India this year; on previous month+ trips to India the food has not become boring, or a chore, or whatever. We can do Italian for about two weeks before it gets old, but Indian is easily good for a month or more. If I had to choose one, it would be hard to choose between Indian and Chinese. And growing up in solidly midwestern downstate Illinois with a mother of German extraction, none of those was what I grew up with. (Perhaps that's why I like them. {G})

That thing looks like it might work as a tea bag holder.

While I don't have hot cereal often, I do use dried fruit in muffins. Based on that, I'd suggest you try (if you haven't already) different kinds of raisins ("regular", gold, black (muscat), currants) and cherries (sweet, tart), dried blueberries, dried apples (which may benefit from a brief soak in citrus juice), dried peaches, chopped dates or figs. And when serving, there's the ever-popular sliced banana, which I like with some gold raisins and maybe a drizzle of honey. I've also had oatmeal with butter, raisins and brown sugar. Another approach would be to use an Indian temper of spices and maybe garlic and maybe curry leaves in butter or ghee. Whole cumin, whole fennel, ground cumin, ground coriander, brown/black mustard seeds, chopped fresh coriander, grated coconut, red pepper (ground or flakes), asafoetida, split & hulled dal, and other things are also used-- check some Indian recipes, particularly those for dals, if this sounds like an interesting approach.

Go into Google Images and search on "hot sauce labels". There are dozens and dozens, including "Bernie in Hell", "Ass Murdering Hot Sauce" (showing the four-legged animal belly up with a bottle beside it), "Hog in Heat", "Burning Desire", "Crazy Jerry's Brain Damage & Mind Blowin' Hot Sauce" and lots more. Great fun to look at-- I don't know about actually consuming many of them.

Here's another vote for the "Afghan dish called kaddo bourani". This recipe at Epicurious seems to match what I've had at restaurants. Nice flavor contrasts with the pumpkin, the lightly tomatoey meat sauce, and the minted yogurt. And of course, there's always pumpkin pie...

Just guessing here, but for texture's sake, I think you'd want to use chunk fat trimmed from turkeys or chickens rather than schmaltz. (Sausage recipes don't normally call for lard.) Beef fat might also work. Happy experimenting, and please let the forum know how things turn out.

Fair notice: if you're a tea connoisseur, stop reading now. Call me Mr. Cheap, but I just buy packaged bulk Assam at an Indian grocery. Currently I'm working on a pound (or maybe half-kilo) bag of Nirav brand (Ive also used "Assam CTS Tea" from B&A and from Taj Food & Gifts). I like Assam because I can brew up a pot of it and I don't have to be concerned about it getting bitter as it stands. It's also pretty economical. And in hot weather, it makes good iced tea. Although I don't generally use tea bags at home, I do when I'm traveling. I've found the Brook Bond "Taj Mahal Orange Pekoe" bags (which are some sort of blend of Assam teas) to be reliably good. They're full 2 gram tea bags, and again, pretty economical (about 4 cents apiece).

For years my wife and I have been using a recipe "Cauliflower and Potatoes Cooked with Fenugreek and Fennel Seeds" from Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking which was printed in The Chicago Tribune way back in 1983, and still make it once or twice a month. It appears on many sites on the web, often uncredited. One that acknowledges the source is this one. (It leaves out "1 tsp whole fennel seeds" from the ingredient list, but does refer to them in the instructions.) It doesn't sound quite as elaborate as what you're looking for (no ginger or coriander stems), but it might be a good place to start.

If you're skillful, you can get a pretty good edge with a stone. I kept our knives acceptably sharp for many years with a stone and a steel. But it's hard to get a precise angle freehand, and there's always the possibility of getting a finger in the way if you're not careful. There are a couple of stone sets with angle guides on the market that make getting a consistent angle fairly easy, and produce good edges. I've got a "GATCO Edgemate Professional Knife Sharpening System" kit, which is a somewhat less expensive alternative to the similar Lansky products. They have several stones that work with a clamp for the blade and a reversible angle guide that lets you get the same angle on both sides of the blade. Several angles-- 29°, 25°, 22°, 19°, 15° and 11°-- are provided by the GATCO guide (at least the one I've got); I don't know what the Lansky does, but it's probably similar. Some Googling will turn up information on them, including some videos, which will make it clear how these systems work. But there are many ways to get and keep a good edge on knives, and I wouldn't claim the GATCO kit is the best, only that it works well for me. I found a used set on eBay, so the price was even right.

Gizzard salads (salade de gésiers) shows up often on menus in southwestern France. The gizzards are often ham-like, sliced moderately thin, and fanned out over a green salad, but I suspect there are a lot of variations. If you Google "de gesiers" (with the quotes), you should get lots of hits; when I did it, I got lots of French recipes (okay if you can read French, I guess), but there were a few hits in English and some photo sites that showed a picture of the salad pretty much as I remember it. I also searched the files of the CompuServe "Cooks Online" forum and found a gizzard recipe that might work, fancifully entitled "Gustation de Gesier", for "savory gizzards served over toasted English muffins". (Click on "GIZZD.TXT" to bring up the recipe itself.) It's made with mushrooms and should be pretty good.

Personally, I'd buy another can and open them both when I was ready to do the recipe involved, planning to use the new stuff, of course. But it's a great opportunity to compare the ancient stuff with fresh. If it's the sweetened condensed milk (is there anything else under "Eagle" brand?), it might still be okay, but I'd expect it to be a few shades darker than that from a new can. Let us know if you do the comparison...

I always freeze it. True, it freezes about as well as basil, but since it's an herb that is cooked in the pot with stuff, I don't think that matters. When I buy a bunch, I wash it off, lay it out across a strip of plastic wrap (trimming or cutting larger sprigs to the width of the plastic), and cover it with another layer of plastic wrap, then roll it up and put the roll in a gallon plastic bag. When I need some, I unroll the roll far enough to get what I need, then roll it back up for another time. I suspect (but I haven't run a test to find out) that freezing preserves the characteristic flavor and aroma better than drying. (Think of the difference in flavor between fresh basil and dried basil.) OTOH, it may behave more like rosemary and retain its character pretty well when dried.

I've tried several recipes and variations, and the one I've liked the best (and made quite a few times now) is in a thread "Red Beans and Rice" captured in a file in the venerable CompuServe "Cooks Online" forum back in 1999. There are several recipes and lots of comments in the thread; my favorite is one submitted by Overton Anderson (the second recipe in the file, #883617). I've never had the smoked pork jowl the recipe calls for, but any well-smoked pork product (ham, neck bones, hocks, whatever) should work; I usually use some form of ham. IMO good Cajun andouille sausage is also important. And I usually use red bell pepper, not green. Somehow eating this stuff always makes me feel satisfied-- real comfort food. It freezes well, which makes life easy when I'm feeling the need for some comfort food with minimal effort. The same forum has quite a few more recipes (dating back to 1987) for red beans and rice and lots of chatter about the dish.

//My attempts to cure my own ham...// If you really want a whole (or portion of a whole) ham, I can't help-- I vaguely remember my mother curing one back in the 40s or 50s, but I've never tried it myself. But if you just want pork with the flavor of ham, I can suggest a couple of things to try. A couple of months ago I saw an idea on the Cowgirl's Country Life blog-- slap some cure on boneless pork chops the next time you're running your smoker. It only takes four hours or so for the curing cycle, and then several hours in hot smoke to get delightful smoked pork chops-- as good as any I've had in restaurants or from butcher shops. For a little more meat at one time, get a "boneless pork roast", the kind that is about two inches thick and four or five inches wide (cut, I believe, from one end of the loin). Rub that with your favorite cure and refrigerate it for about a week, then hot smoke it. I was really trying for very lean "buckboard bacon", but didn't realize that that needed to be cold smoked. Serendipity-- the result after several hours of smoking tasted like, and had the texture of, ham. I live in a suburb north of Chicago, where we're fortunate to have a good butcher shop, Schmeissers (Schmeissers Home Made Sausage), that does a wide variety of sausage and other smoked meat products. We love their hams. But that probably doesn't help you much unless you get into the north burbs of Chicago occasionally.

But I haven't seen an answer to the basic question: does it affect the flavor and/or texture of the freshly prepared product? It's all well and good that the quality of something that was prepared several or many hours ago is better, but what is the starting point? Does it improve the fresh flavor and/or texture of anything, other than saving some sauces?

Your blog has been fun to follow, and prompted me to come out of lurk mode to make a couple of comments. We used to enjoy a Lebanese place Kan Zaman up on Clark St., but I see from Centerstage's listings that it's now down on Wells St. And there are several other Lebanese places around-- I'm sure you'll find a new favorite. (centerstage.com, if you haven't run into it, has a good list of restaurants-- and lots of other stuff-- which you can get at alphabetically, by cuisine, or by "style"; you can locate something there, then come back to eGullet to see what food people have to say about it. I don't know what others think about it, but to me it's a great Chicago resource.) Re wine shops: Sam's is one of the best, but also check out Binnys (probably the 3000 N. Clark location would be most convenient for you) and Wine Discount Center (in a non-shopping area on Elston Ave about 1800 or 1900 north). Binnys is a big, full service place, but has good prices, particularly when things are on sale; they have an affinity card which gets you an extra 2% off (eventually, if you buy enough) and gives you access to a few more sale prices. WDC is a very plain place, bottles displayed in cases, no sales or case discounts, just good prices on a somewhat limited and ever-changing inventory. All three have multiple locations, with Binnys being the biggest. The Chicago area has a lot of more or less independent grocery outlets (I see you've found several already), some of which reach supermarket size. A classic (IMO) is Treasure Island. Many are at least nominally ethnic, such as Carniceria Jimenez, which has several locations around the city and burbs. Garden Fresh is a growing local chain, which I presume starrted out as a produce market and expanded from there; they have at least one location in the city and several in the burbs. Fresh Farms is another with city and suburban locations. Garden Fresh and Fresh Farms have lots of ethnic foods, the selection based on the local neighborhood (the GF in Northbrook even has a kosher meat/fish/etc. market). While these places don't specialize in seasonal midwestern produce, they do have some, particularly things like Michigan apples and peaches in season. They sometimes have very fresh stuff, but caveat emptor. Most of them have much better prices on most things than the big supermarket chains.