Lapin d'Argent

I must have been composing my post when you posted this. I have the juicer. And I also have a very classy Ice-O-Mat from the same era. It is an unusual color too. Will post a photo later if I can remember where I put the thing... Sometimes the classics simply can't be improved upon. I have lusted after both these items for a very, very long time. When you look that beautiful, who cares if you can do more than one thing really well? I think that's kind of a general rule of life.

Have you ever tried using the lemon brine? I've been wondering about a dash in a gin Martini with old-skool Noilly Prat.... I haven't...I figured it would be more briny than lemony. I'd be more inclined to muddle the pulp. But feel free to take one for the team. Brilliant! Thanks for that idea! Another great idea -- thank you Andie!

I might seed them, which is pretty quick to do, but I almost never skin them. Fiber is good!

I now find myself putting preserved lemons in just about everything. Certainly any steamed or boiled vegetables. Fish. Most pasta dishes that aren't tomato based. Risotto. Anything with olives or artichokes or flavors of that sort. Rice. Couscous. Beans. Omelets. Sometimes my glass of white wine gets a sliver. Certainly my gin and tonic does. We don't really cook much meat, but if I made chicken, most of those dishes would get some. Also a good pizza topping, with goat cheese, carmelized onions, braised mushrooms, and rosemary, for example. Basically anything vaguely Mediterranean.

Oh my gosh -- you have my cabinets...even the same hardware. Only mine are NOT in pristine condition. You cannot imagine how foul that plywood can get. But we just haven't had the money to replace them, and they seem impossible to paint or upgrade. Your kitchen looks much bigger and better designed than ours. Of course, ours was built in 1963, when cooking was all about convenience foods. Love the ovens!

I don't understand. Why would including a service charge in the price of the meal be less than honest? Don't get me wrong, I prefer traditional tipping methods - I'm just curious. One never sees other costs broken out on a guest check (so much for the cooks, so much for overhead, so much for the food cost, dish breakage, utilities, etc). Why should service be different if an all-inclusive bill was to be presented? That's an excellent point. Unfortunately, one doesn't normally tip various line cooks for a particularly good salad or app, for instance. Why does only the front of the house get the bounty, when we're there for the food, not just the service?

Now see, we could all have perfect compost, if we just had Lovely Assistants!

I'm trying to analyze my feelings about this, which are complex. On the one hand, I am annoyed at having the option to, let's face it, punish truly bad service, removed from my control. On the other hand, I realize that service has to be paid for somehow, and it will either be reflected in the cost of a meal, or more honestly passed on as a service charge. I think its the 18% number that annoys me -- there's an assumption that the service is going to be -- or damn well should have been -- at least somewhat above average, which I find immediately triggers my skeptical-resistance circuit. But really, most of the time they just took your order, brought your food, and eventually brought your check when you finally managed to flag them down at the end of the meal. Nothing special. Seldom (in my experience in these hotel restaurants) does the waitstaff know anything about the wine list, or the ingredients in the various dishes. And if there's a breakfast buffet -- there's not a lot of interaction with your waiter that could possibly justify 18% on top of an already overpriced meal. The other problem with the 18% charge is that I seldom bother to tip higher, because it's too complicated, so it removes the incentive to provide better service. I guess from now on if I see a notice about an 18% service charge on the menu, I'm not going to let poor service pass anymore. If the waiter doesn't know what ingredients are in a dish, they better go find someone who does know, and I'll explain why. And if they don't know anything about the wines on the list, they're going to have to go find the manager, and I'm going to explain exactly why I expect better service. And let me say that I seldom ever tip below 20% when I dine out. I usually consider 15% a devastating blow. But somehow, this just gets to me. Maybe because I seldom eat in these places unless I'm stuck there -- I'm a captive audience. Does anyone else have this reaction? [edited to fix poor word choice]

Todd English gets on my nerves. He's one of the few local chefs that I really don't have much respect for. Maybe I'm just a crotchety Yankee, but he seems to showboat more than is considered seemly in these parts. I see the statement as just another flip comment, not even taken seriously by the speaker, designed to catch yet more media attention. Because it's all about Me. Uh, Him. But like I said, I'm just a crotchety old Yankee.

I have a set of willow ware stamped Enoch Wood & Sons, which I believe dates from before 1846. But the oldest verifiable items is a copy of "The Cook and Confectioner" printed in 1849. I also have a copy of Mrs Putnam's New Receipt Book, the 1867 edition, and The Ladies' Own cook Book from 1891. These were all from my Grandfather's library; no idea how he acquired them. But my favorite item in daily use is the original Westinghouse double oven, with stainless steel, side-opening doors (!), installed when our house was built around 1963. (We're not the original owners -- only had the house about 18 years.) Imagine -- stainless steel in 1963. And I wouldn't give up those side-opening doors if you paid me.

My favorite -- the best of both worlds. Sometimes I rinse the rind first, sometimes I don't.

There is some hope. Our town (Harvard, MA) has a school food program run by Paul Correnty, known locally as "Chef Paul" whose food is so good that he sells his soups at the local farmers market and now at the General Store in the center of town. He's known for including produce from local farmers in his school menus. He also collaborates with a local fish market, The Quarterdeck, run by Chris Basile, another Harvard resident (and a neighbor of mine) to host special evenings at a beautiful local museum, Fruitlands. The most recent graduating class of seniors dedicated their yearbook to Chef Paul, for teaching them what "real" food tastes like. We are very, very fortunate -- but it proves that kids -- and adults -- can get the message and learn healthy eating habits through a school meal program.

Wonderful report, Kim -- thanks so much for sharing your experience! Brings back wonderful memories, and makes me long even more for another visit. - L.

We often add arugula to our basic butter-cream-parmesan sauce for pasta, so any basic butter, cream, and cheese type sause would be delicious!

Alas, I am headed out to dinner with my family at an unknown restaurant in West Springfield, MA. I think it might be Italian. What I wouldn't give to be putting a real ham in the oven, to serve with potatoes and carrots and whatever green vegetables look best at the market. But my brother has to be picked up at North Station in the middle of Saturday afternoon, and hubby leaves next Friday for Asia, so none of that is going to work out this year. Next year, I swear, I am ordering that ham. It's going into my "seasonal notebook" right now. The rest of you: eat up, and post photos, please!

Now I'm hungry. Keep it coming...

Ah, yes...welcome to the infinitely multiplying compost bins... All gardeners start out this way. First one small bin or two, then suddenly three much larger ones, then one of those fancy rolling or spinning kinds...then comes the chipper/shredder... Now you need some holding pens. These will not be so pretty; probably just large circles of fencing. The thing is, nature takes its own time, and you can only rush it so much. Smaller pieces break down quicker. A proper mix of green to brown breaks down faster. A reasonable amount of moisture and turning helps to break down faster. Heat breaks down faster. But unless you want another full-time job, having enough space to hold stuff while nature does the work for you is usually much easier. We are fortunate in that the previous owners of our property had a semi-sunken above-ground pool behind the stone wall in the woods. We just keep filling that with the large scale stuff. The kitchen waste goes into three "infinite" plastic bins by the garage that I haven't turned in more years than I can remember. On the other hand, it sprouts some beautiful wild hyssop in the summer, and I never have to deal with it. When I need compost, my garden is on the scale that I order it by the half-truck load. But I am happy to be able to dispose of all our green waste safely and with a minimum of fuss. And somebody is going to strike it rich someday... - L.

Only slightly off-topic, but for a truly fascinating overview of all sorts of pigs and hogs and boars in general, in their varied natural habitats, I highly recommend The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs, by Lyall Watson. It may not exactly answer your question, Chris, but it will make you even more in awe of pigs in general (if such a thing is possible). Pigs are very, very cool.

Egale -- I just call this choosing my weeds. After all, you're going to have weeds no matter what you do, you might as well have weeds you like. My favorite self-sowers that reliably come back are wild arugula, fennel (green and bronze), and red perilla. On the other hand, I can't get dill to grow for me for love or money, and cilantro is a challenge. Parsley is a biennial, so it doesn't usually survive our winters after the first year to flower the second year. And what I wouldn't give to have baby onion plants without all the fuss of ordering them by mail! Maybe I'll try to get some sort of OP variety and nurse it along through the end of the season in case it flowers before the frost. After all, I can always move them to where I want them...and they're guaranteed hardy.

Okay I've been very diligent these past couple of weeks and have been trying out a few curry recipes. Some have been disastrous, a mutton biryani turned out just so bad it was almost inedible - burnt tough meat, salty rice and too much screwpine water! But a couple have just been wonderful. My first eureka moment was an Ox Cheek Vindaloo using Camelia Panjabi's recipe in "50 Great Curries of India" and parathas: It was so good I had to call my mate over to try it and confirm, he was knocked out by it too. The second success was a spiced rack of lamb with saffron cashew gravy and pilau rice inspired by local restarant Lasan's recipe here. The sauce was simply sublime: Very much looking forward to cooking more curries this year. Prawncrackers -- those look amazing! Congratulations!

So today I finally got around to trying the Preserved Lemons which became number 5 on my list by default when I started a batch a while back. I put some chopped in a finished basic risotto with mushrooms & parm, and also in the broccoli served as a side. Yum, yum and more yum! Nothing could be easier or tastier. I doubt there's much you couldn't put these into that wouldn't be improved as a result. Pretty much think of anything that would perk up with the flavor of a little lemon, olive, salt, or pickle, and throw in a bit of preserved lemon. I just took a quarter lemon, scraped off the innards, rinsed off the excess brine, and chopped or minced it up. We're going on vacation to Grenada in a couple weeks, and some of this stuff is definitely going in a vacuum sealed bag as part of our cooking survival kit. In terms of making your own condiments, this and the homemade vanilla extract have been absolute 5-star winners, and I will always have a batch in the fridge from now on. Thank you Canal House Cooking for making it seem so easy!

It's interesting that you bring this up, Chris. I have lately come to think of dried oregano as a "power" herb. Particularly in tomato dishes, a small quantity of good quality dried oregano can add a distinct hit of umami. In a sautee dish, I usually add it to the oil when I add garlic and hot pepper. Lately I've been making Braised Tomatoes & Green Beans from All About Braising, and the main flavor component is oregano. Molly includes a smashed anchovy, but I never have any in the fridge, so I just throw in a teaspoon or so of fish sauce. It's particularly good with fire-roasted diced tomatoes from Muir Glen. But the oregano makes the whole dish -- it ties all the other flavors together. I don't have any experience with oregano in frozen foods yet, but now that we are the proud owners of a SnorkelVac, I'll have to try freezing something. What I want to know is how you have the patience to brown 10lbs of meatballs! I think I would jump off the roof before I was halfway finished....

Go easy on the citric acid -- it is definitely an acid. In metalworking, we mix it with water and heat it in a crock pot to make a "pickle," to remove carbon oxides and flux residue after soldering or annealing non-ferrous metals (silver, gold, copper, bronze). We buy it in big 50lb bags from a restaurant supply place to use at the studio, and if you get the powder on your skin, it definitely burns. And between years of gardening and metalworking, my skin is pretty much impervious to anything.... I think it's main use in the home kitchen might be for adjusting the PH of canning recipes. (For which you probably do NOT need a 50lb bag!) Congratulations, Fat Guy, on getting through such a difficult week, and thanks for educating us all about the wonders of iodine.

Well, I don't know about "interesting"... My DH insisted on going retro with the snacks: he was craving Lipton's Onion Soup Sour Cream dip with Ruffle's Potato Chips, and some token veggies on the side. However, since we're rooting for the Saints, I'm just about to make a batch of Shrimp Etouffee, recipe from Saveur. What else is everyone eating? Come on...it's cold out there, and people have to eat regardless!

OK...turns out #5 is going to be...Preserved Lemons! I followed the instructions from Canal House Cooking, which basically says to slit the lemons, pack them with Kosher salt, stuff them into a sterilized container, squeeze in some more lemon juice, and refrigerate. Why the heck did I wait so long? I did wait until I found nice organic lemons at Whole Foods, so I didn't have to worry about pesticides on the rind. This was definitely a happy thing to do on one of the coldest days we've had so far this winter. And the temperature in our mud room means this big container won't have to take up space in our fridge for a while. If you've been thinking about making some, even a small batch: do it! - L.