StevenC

Try Amazon marketplace or Powells. You should be able to find the Culinaria books for much less.

Do you have any recipes for the okra leaves, though, or do you only use the pods?

I just bought a bundle of okra greens at a farmers' market, and I have no idea how to use them. From what I've read, they apparently have incredible thickening power (not surprising), but recipes on the Internet seem sparse. Does anyone have a recipe? I was thinking of substituting them for moloukhiya in an Egyptian soup recipe.

The texture is difficult to describe. It's not the same texture as dried durum pasta cooked al dente, but it does offer much more resistance to the bite than, say, floppy pappardelle in meat sauce. I've only really found it in Emilia-Romagna. Maybe the effect is the sum of several little differences--more extensive kneading to develop the gluten, less time in boiling water, less time in a saute pan with the sauce.

Anytime I've eaten flat pasta like tagliatelle in Emilia-Romagna, I've noticed--and enjoyed--that they manage to cook it very al dente. The preparation seems to be almost ubiquitous in Emilia-Romagna, and even in some overseas restaurants specializing in authentic cucina emiliana. (There is/was a place on Park Ave South in New York called Via Emilia that served pasta with the same texture.) But you don't often see the same texture with egg pasta in other regions of northern Italy. For example, you don't find it at all with pappardelle in nearby Tuscany, where the noodles, though tasty, are much softer to the bite. How do they do it? Do they use durum flour instead of the usual doppio-zero? Do they knead the dough for a much longer time? Do they always allow the pasta to dry before boiling? Do they shorten the boiling time?

Precisely. It's an attention thing. Tell her if she's not happy with what you're serving, she should bring her own food.

I've found the same thing--probably because the animals have been raised on a farm. Even the venison I get in restaurants is disappointing. It has nothing like the flavor of a wild deer. By comparison, the horse I used to buy in Italy was usually more flavorful than even the best dry-aged, grass-fed beef I've bought in the U.S. Again, it's probably because most of the horsemeat sold in Europe comes from wild American herds.

I think you're definitely on to something. Add to the equation the desire for standard, predictable products that look nice under cellophane, the homogenization of taste brought about by fast food, the fact of limited shelf space, and a supermarket model that has become highly successful by catering to the most common denominators across a national market.

I've always just bought the stuff in butcher shops, where it already seemed absolutely white. I'm not sure if it's possible to buy it fresh out of the steere, so to speak--doesn't seem quite hygenic. Unless, of course, you live on a farm. The first time I made tripe the smell and the taste were overwhelming, and not at all in a pleasant way. My grandmother taught me that adding some torn celery and spoonful of vinegar to the boiling liquid eliminates the problem. I'm not sure why it works, but it does.

Fascinating. I wonder how they taste with the garum made a couple hours north in Cetara.

I'm not too sure. While I enjoyed the NY Times articles tremendously this morning--I always found the anti-fat partisans in America to be ridiculous and annoying--I'm equally skeptical about the new anti-carb camp. And it's always problematic to argue on the basis of what our ancestors supposedly ate, since they also most likely worked in the fields for twelve hours a day, lived on cheap staple crops like potatoes, drank a few liters of coarse homemade wine or beer every day (literally), and died at the ripe old age of 40. If they weren't fat, it was because they were starving or disease-ridden. It seems clear that the American obesity epidemic started around 1980. True, the USDA food pyramid came out around then. But think back to that time--1980 was a nexus for many different developments, probably all of which have caused waistlines to expand. Before 1980, there were few or no VCRs, no MTV, no cable movie channels, no home video games. If you wanted to watch TV, your choices were pretty much limited to the three networks, PBS, and a couple of static-clogged UHF stations. Widespread use of the Internet was fifteen years away, and even home computers were still a rarity. There were far fewer options for eating out--even the major fast-food chains like McDonalds and Burger King had a fraction of the outlets they have today. There were also very few of the feedbag sit-down chains, with their deep-fried globe onions, 32-ounce steaks and triple-decker chocolate brownie sundaes for dessert. I don't even remember 2-liter soda bottles being too prevalent at the time. All of that changed drastically over the 1980s and 1990s. Granted, I'm sure that the anti-fat message had something to do with obesity. But I think it's dubious to argue that the onset of low-fat, high-carb processed foods caused the obesity epidemic. Americans weren't getting fat because they were eating sweetened zero-fat yogurt thickened with seaweed gel. They were getting fat because they were eating more than they ever had before, and they were spending more and more time sitting on their expanding butts in front of the TV or at a computer.

The closest thing I've been able to find has been the unrefined expeller-pressed corn oil made by Spectrum. (www.spectrumorganics.com) I think that Whole Foods carries most of their product line. I'm fascinated to hear, though, if anyone can find truly cold-pressed corn oil.

My grandmother taught me a trick for drying pasta filling--when it seems too watery, form it into a ball, wrap it in several layers of paper towel, and place it into a strainer. I tried the technique when I made pear ravioli a couple of years ago, and it worked beautifully. (The pears were very ripe and mushy.) A couple of other ideas: A persimmon "cotognata" to serve with cheese (I would try simmering fresh puree with a cinnamon stick or maybe even some fresh ginger until much of the water evaporated. I might also add a few crushed lemon wedges for the pectin and a touch of bitterness and acidity to accentuate the sweetness of the persimmon.) Also, a strudel di cachi--Alto Adige--stuffed with persimmons and maybe Quark. The same concept might work in a burek (Istrian influence here), with slightly sour curds. I'll look through my Sicilian cookbooks tonight for more ideas--I'm continually fascinated by the North African influence on Sicilian cuisine, and it seems particularly apt here, given the fruit-meat combinations of Maghrebi cooking.

The trick to everything, of course, is that a ripe persimmon very quickly turns into a puree on its own. (At least the ones I always seem to buy.) How about a Friuliano dish, maybe gnocchi stuffed with persimmon instead susine (plums), tossed with some cinnamon, a little sugar, and some fresh curds? Or, moving to the west, tortelli stuffed with a little crescenza and some persimmon--perhaps even gorgonzola--in a brown-butter sauce with parmigiano? You could also try a fruit-based risotto--I have a few recipes in my Valdostano cookbooks for things like risotto with fontina, apples and juniper berries, as well as a risotto with wild strawberries--but I've never had much luck with these dishes. The fruit flavors always seem overwhelmed by the saltiness. I also wonder what persimmons would do to a dish that uses fresh or barely cooked tomatoes. I mention it because I find a little pineapple juice has a surprising effect on tomatoes.

My favorite standby is spaghetti cacio e pepe, a dish I first had in Rome years ago and have loved ever since... nothing but spaghetti, grated pecorino, some salt if necessary, a ton of black pepper, and maybe a drizzle of olive oil. Goes beautifully with a tumbler of Frascati or Orvieto.

The website of the Raw Milk Cheesemakers Association cites a number of studies showing the possibility of making cheese with raw milk safely. If the FDA does go the full extent and bans all raw-milk cheese, including Parmigiano-Reggiano and Roquefort, one hopes that the EU would file suit at the World Trade Organization, the same method that the United States used to force Europeans to swallow our hormone-laced beef.

Interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle today: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...6/FD8RS54I4.DTL At least it seems that the latest FDA push isn't catching producers of raw-milk cheese off guard...

I did some checking, and you're totally right that the original Eastern European version didn't use bowties. Joan Nathan, in her book Jewish Cooking in America, talks about how the original recipe for kasha varnishkes involved "a kreplach-type noodle stuffed with kasha, buckwheat groats, and gribenes"--the packaged bow-tie noodles were an American adaptation. Also, Robert Sternberg's recipe for kasha varnishkes in Yiddish Cuisine calls for medium or wide egg noodles... Accordingly, if I may be so bold, you might consider something other than the usual bow-tie. You're apparently looking to do a higher-quality, surprising spin on a traditional recipe. If you need to sacrifice the freshness of the noodles by making them ahead of time, though, look for another way to introduce quality back into the equation. For example, try making flat noodles, but use all yolks, or use duck eggs or goose eggs if you can find them. The flat noodles will suffer less from storage, and both the taste and color will be a nice improvement.

I find that freezing fresh egg pasta gives it a gummy texture. If you refrigerate it, the dough becomes soggy and the shapes stick to one another and to whatever surface they're resting on. You can try dusting them with cornmeal, but (a) it doesn't always work and (b) the cornmeal adds an unpleasant film of starch to the cooked pasta. If you really want to make your own egg pasta and you absolutely need to make it ahead of time, choose a less complicated flat shape and let the pasta sit out in a single layer on a floured tablecloth. (Be care not to stack the shapes.) In a couple of hours they will be completely dry, and you can store them in a paper bag. The texture will not be the same as when you boil fresh pasta, and if your kitchen is too humid and hot the pasta might develop off flavors as it dries. Usually, drying works fine for simple tagliatelle, pappardelle and the like, although special shapes can sometimes crack as they dry. There's another reason why I wouldn't recommend making bow ties/farfalle ahead of time. If you freeze or dry them, the pinched middle is going to take longer to cook than the flat edges. When the pasta is fresh, I find this doesn't present too much of a problem, but if you freeze or dry them, you're going to end up either with a hard knot at the center, or overcooked edges. Just talking from experience here.

I don't think so... a couple of Pakistani restaurants here in SF serve an incredible lamb-brain masala. I would find the nearest halal market and ask. I'd suggest calling farms, but I doubt anyone raises sheep in southern Florida. Alternatively, try looking on the Internet for a mail-order source and work out a deal with the supplier. I imagine they'd be happy to sell you one, two, or fifteen--heads aren't too popular in the U.S., yet every lamb seems to have one.

I know I need one... I just can't decide which one!! While it would be great to save money, paper-thin slicing is essential.

Apart from maybe Bugialli's book, I'm not aware of an English-language book on Tuscan cuisine that's in the same league as Coleman Andrew's or Paula Wolfert's compendia. (There are, of course, similarly thorough books on the cuisine of other Italian regions--Fred Plotkin's books on Liguria and Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Lynne Rossetto Kasper's volume on the cooking of Emilia-Romagna come to mind immediately.) It's difficult to say why this is. I think part of the reason is that, despite (as Steingarten says) the "plague of restaurants calling themselves Tuscan" in the English-speaking world, real cucina toscana, with its painfully simple preparations, its saltless bread, and its love of game and offal, might not actually appeal to a broad Anglophone audience, above all in the U.S. But that's just my conjecture. If you're looking for armchair reading rather than recipes, you might take a look at travel books that specialize in food, some of which are quite thorough. If you happen to read Italian, I can recommend "Il Grande Libro della Vera Cucina Toscana", which will cost you 36 euros plus shipping on www.internetbookshop.it. Also, there is a huge volume on Tuscan cooking in Newton & Compton's Quest'Italia series... I bought mine in the late 1990s; I don't know whether it's still in print, as today you seem to find that series mainly in secondhand shops. I can also recommend the books on subregional Tuscan cuisines by Muzzio Editore.

I'm shopping around for a meat slicer, and the choice has come down to two: the Chef's Choice Model 640 or, for twice the money, the Berkel Model 825E. Can anyone give me advice? It's strictly for occasional home use--prosciutto, salami, and such. I'm wondering if there's a significant difference in their ability to slice thinly without mangling the meat, or if the Berkel is more expensive simply because it's designed for heavier use in restaurants. Thanks in advance!

Thank you both for your suggestions. I'm going to try a few ideas this weekend, including a sweet dish. I was thinking of making a rice custard with the riso nero and some candied orange peel, cutting it up into squares and deep-frying them.

I'm similarly stumped, but just talking off the top of my head... Maybe a slightly oaked, richer example of a Chardonnay from a warm-weather climate, perhaps from Sicily or (be careful about too much oak) California or Australia, or even the Maconnais? The grilled sea bass would be rich, and (I'm assuming) the oatmeal would be creamy from starch; the butteriness of the Chardonnay might complement both. As for flavors, the slight oakiness would help the wine to stand up to the smoke from the grill, and the vanilla and tropical fruit flavors might go well with the oatmeal. Again, just a shot in the dark...