Jennifer Brizzi

I found a few things on amigofoods.com out of Miami: carne seca, manioc meal for farofa, malagueta peppers in a jar and Brazilian black beans. Now if it comes in in time, I'm good to go!

Thanks, that's very helpful, especially your list of what you use, like corned beef brisket--great idea! Two hundred bucks is a bit steep for farofa, though! Thanks much.

I'm making a mess of feijoada for a dinner party next week--a nearly lifelong ambition of mine--and I'd love to find an online source for carne seca, corned ribs, manioc meal, malageta peppers or sauce, etc. I live 100 miles north of New York City but a trip there is not feasible before the party. Any advice or help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

My favorite of the ones I have is Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz by Howard Mitcham. It's silly, irreverent, full of character and a real education in Louisiana seafood and jazz music. I just adore this book. My second favorite looks cheesey from the outside but is excellent: The New Cajun-Creole Cooking by Terry Thompson (now Terry Thompson -Anderson). Don't have any Prudhomme ones yet but will keep a lookout. Has anyone read Susan Spicer's Crescent City?

Steve, glad you enjoyed IACP and glad to hear you'll be joining. You will be a great addition to the ranks! I've been a member for about twelve years but this was only my second conference--it surpassed my expectations in many ways. Glad you got a lot out of it, and I really enjoyed your blogging talk on Judith's panel--funny and very informative. Re, the oysters, I agreed with what you said about the ones at the reception--blandish--and I had some charbroiled ones at Drago's that were bland, too (on the inside, anyway, away from the garlic, butter and cheese), and I've heard from some sources that the gulf oysters are watery and lackluster now, and from some that they are especially good. My last night in New Orleans I had a half-dozen at the French Market Cafe on Decatur that were exceptional, so I guess they vary. I did about four blog entries on various aspects of the conference, one while there (dinner for one at Cochon) and three since I got back--namedropping for food writers, post-Katrina for residents, and What I Ate.

I adore lamb and am forever bemoaning that it's not more popular, to drive up the demand and availability and the prices down. Fortunately my spouse is just as mad about it as I am or I'd have to order it every single time I go out to dinner. We eat so much lamb that a lamb-loathing friend used to stop by so often when we were having it she thought we ate it seven nights a week! I don't buy rib chops much as they are too expensive for me, as are whole legs usually. Most often I buy neck meat on the bone to make into Indian, Middle Eastern, Spanish or French stews, or I get round bone shoulder chops (which are usually pretty cheap and not hard to find where I live) to marinate in garlic, cumin, marjoram, mint, red wine and then grill. As I found out when I started this thread a couple years back, there are lots of other lamb lovers out there, so we just have to spread the word.

Yay is right about the goat!! I only have one local store that has it occasionally, frozen, but I'm a big fan. It's milder and leaner than lamb and way underrated in this country, except by some immigrants who know better. I usually just make it Jamaican curry style when I can find it, which is absolutely heavenly, but I'm looking for new ways to cook it. Maybe I need to start a new thread on goat!

I hope it's not against the rules to revive a two-year-old topic that I started. Please let me know if it is. I just wanted to share the latest scrumptious lamb dish I discovered. I researched and cooked some Welsh cawl, a divine lamb, leek, and root veg stew. I put the recipe on my blog here. The whole house smelled so good just when I was doing the simple first step, simmering the lamb shoulder in water and onion. I will just never stop loving this stuff--lamb--and discovering new (to me) ways of cooking it.

I'm loving this thread, as many, many of my many cookbooks look like the ones pictured. (Love that duct tape--will have to try it!) I love spattered, worn cookbooks, well-loved as the Velveteen rabbit, and my problem is that when I replace a worn-out cookbook, I can't bring myself to toss the old one. So I have two copies each of Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook, Fannie Farmer (actually four if you count different year's editions), Moosewood and Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and Jessica Harris's Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking. The prize for homeliest, however, goes to my James Beard's American Cookery (LB 1972)--a delightfully opinionated, encyclopedic, divine classic. If you find any in good condition, buy two and send me one of them. My mother once cooked from it, until I stole it, and I don't cook from it much but use it for research constantly, so that it has lost is spine and threatens to dissolve any minute.

Here's where I get mine, worth every penny and every minute of waiting. Szechuan Peppercorns from Penzeys

I like it a lot. Plenty of short, pithy, really well-written pieces, great way to while away some time when procrastinating work!

Thank you, Shalmanese, for your sensible explanation of the no-cheese-with-seafood rule! I have long pondered the reason and could never find any satisfactory answer. My husband is second generation Italian and insists on the no-cheese thing when we have pasta with shrimp, squid, clams, octopus, or any kind of seafood, but he has never been able to tell me the reason behind the rule. Now it makes sense!--thanks Shalmanese, you've solved an old question for me.

Wow!! Thanks so much for the tips. Abra, I love your pigicide tales, highly entertaining, and they have thoroughly convinced me not to make the blood sausage this time, although I too am entirely nuts. I think I'll do bun bo hue or another Asian dish. I do have a bunch of bun bo hue recipes, plus the two y'all have so kindly given me. My husband says he remembers having soup with pig blood cubes when we were in Vietnam a few years ago, and he didn't like them that much, too livery, he said. I have absolutely no memory of that at all, so will have to make some. Thanks for all the helpful advice!

Thanks, Busboy, I did find a recipe for a simple dish from the Phillippines with pork meat and pork blood (Jeff Smith's Immigrant Ancestors), and I do have some venison on hand...And where is Paula Wolfert's civet recipe? I don't see it in my old Cooking of Southwest France.

I bought 10 ounces of frozen pork blood in my local Southeast Asian store today and the Thai proprietess asked me what I was going to do with it. I said maybe some kind of blood sausage/boudin and she suggested a Vietnamese dish called bun something, which sounds like it has noodles in it. Not surprisingly, none of my half dozen Vietnamese cookbooks have any pig blood recipes. I was so glad to find such an exotic product that I bought before I thought, and now I don't know what to do with it. Any recipes or ideas from anywhere in the world would be most welcome. Thanks!

Here is a source of barbecued mutton, available sliced or chopped: Moonlite Bar-B-Q. They ship. I can't vouch for this stuff as I haven't ordered it yet, but it sounds delightful and was written up in a food magazine, maybe Chile Pepper, I don't remember.

Thank you! I DID foil it and put it in a cooler, actually for several hours. But I did not keep in mind that the temperature it was cooking at was probably a lot lower than what the thermometer said. Next time I will let the thermometer temp get a little higher, and be saving up for the Weber bullet, which looks handy for smoking all kinds of things.

My very favorite of all my Greek cookbooks is The Food of Greece by Vilma Liacouras Chantiles. It has no photos, just black and white illustrations, but a lot of good writing that really gives you a feel for Greek life and culture. The recipes are clear and well-written, too. Also great for in-depth regional information is The Glorious Foods of Greece by Diane Kochilias.

Wow, what a fine show! I think Anthony and his talented crew created something truly meaningful, funny, sad and beautiful with the Beirut show. For me it brought back the feelings of being stranded in Saigon for four weeks right after 9-11, while US Immigration withheld visas for my daughter and several other newly adopted babies. Of course it was far less frightening and terrible than the experience of the crew of NR (and the Beirutis), but the show reminded me what it felt like to be so out of control of your immediate future, just not knowing when you could go home, yet around great food and people. I think Tony really did show us a lot of the indomitable Beiruti character, too, even if he felt he didn't get to do them justice.

Thanks! Yes, it was a regular old 22 1/2" Weber, and for the thermometer I used a ten buck digital with the probe held in place in one of the top vents with a shaved cork, and it did show a pretty constant temp. Maybe that part of the grill is hotter than where the meat was? Is the bullet the same as the "smokey mountain"? I will have to look into other kinds of Weber.

Friday I tried to slow-smoke a 9.75 picnic shoulder on my Weber grill, western Carolina style was my aim, and I did my research, read every word on it in all the archives of eGullet and many other sources. I kept the smoker between 210 and 250 the whole time, but after reaching that famous "plateau" after about eleven hours of smoking, it never left it and didn't reach the intended 195-200 degrees inside, staying stubbornly at 160 all night. I finally gave up after 19 and 1/2 hours of trying, in need of sleep. The shredded meat was tasty, but a bit dried out after all that time on the fire. After I recuperate I might like to do it again some day and wonder if any of you pros have any idea where I went wrong... If you could possilby need more detail, here is the before and the after from my blog. Thank you so much for any advice.

I was truly saddened to hear about Andrews leaving Saveur. I've always loved the magazine because of its ability to cover the lowbrow/highbrow spectrum of world foods in such an enchanting, intelligent, and real way. I can't imagine how the magazine will be the same without him...surely it won't, and it remains to be seen what path it will take. I agree with Mr. Parsons that Saveur WAS Andrews (and I really miss Hirsheimer's photography). I really admire Andrews in so many ways and am a huge fan. I've always considered him to be a very skilled and funny writer, extremely knowledgable and devoted to his field. And I found him approachable, never haughty or snooty like some food experts can be, and willing to give me advice and encouragenment. I look forward to seeing what he does next. I loved his books Catalan Cuisine, Everything on the Table and Flavors of the Riviera and I hope to see more from him. I wish him the very best of luck.

"A perfect foil" really irks me, for some reason--too cliched, I guess.

Often my many food mags stack up, but the newest Gourmet just came with a sweet little mini-mag full of real food writing by novelists like Jane Smiley and Monique Truong, stories that concern food but are really weightier essays rather than mere odes to various foods or entertainment themes. There is stuff from Jane and Michael Stern, Calvin Trillin and many more, that explores material beyond their usual themes (sorry I can't get at my copy right now to be more specific, because I'd love to tell you all what and who else is in it). I confess that so far I have only had the time to glimpse the table of contents and read the first two or three brief, pithy, delightful stories, but it looks maybe meatier than the usual Gourmet fare, more worldly and broad, and is a great read so far. I like I like. Anyone else seen it yet?

I've been instructed by the non-cook in the family to desist from using the oven or even boiling water for pasta or blanching veggies, for the duration of the heat wave. So last night we ate leftover grilled chicken from my sister's Bastille Day party, leftover Italian potato and green bean salad from Sunday night, then two salads I made just for last night's dinner: one with pink beans, diced jicama, scallions, cilantro, lots of garlic and Penzey's chili powder, the other of julienned raw baby zucchini with a dressing of garlic, full-fat yogurt and lemon juice with fresh mint, basil and parsley. For dessert ripe canteloupe with blueberries. Tonight I'm going to brave standing over the Weber and grill the pork chops I thawed out (the Sweet and Garlicky ones from Raichlen's BBQ Bible), and I'll also sweat over the stove steaming jasmine rice and sauteeing assorted summer squashes. By then I may be dreaming of takeout, but I do actually enjoy the heat when I can get to take breaks from it. Do you think garlic has a cooling effect?