Pontormo

Spinach goes with just about anything. I'd consider serving a simple, complementary risotto--e.g.--mushroom--as a first course as is traditional, then perhaps lamb as your main course with sautéd spinach as a side dish. It's interesting how risotto has replaced Anglo-Americanized pilafs as a side dish. There are some excellent Middle-Eastern and Indian recipes for rice with spinach and onions. Finely chopped (parboiled or thawed frozen) spinach is cooked in either butter (or ghee) or olive oil for a long time until it turns dark and very dry. Then minced onion and rice are added until rice is coated and onion soft. Spices. Hot broth. Cover and simmer till done.

yes, and lining your windows with aluminum foil will keep the cia from reading your mind. tomatoes shouldn't be refrigerated because chilling kills the flavor. that's all. ← Believe you meant Johnson & Wales. Parchment paper for the CIA.

Thanks, everyone. Looked closer at first link to find what I should be aiming for with the gingerroot, too, if with guarded fingers. (Suzy--completely forgot those about those decorating tips found in domestic literature for gals around the time we were first allowed to wear slacks ( ) to school.)

Getting back to the question about shredding and technique: How do you achieve those lovely curled ends on the scallions for the pictures linked above? Thanks for the pictures, BTW. Could I run the tines of a fork down a split and flattened scallion? Also, any pictures to demonstrate what I should be doing with my gingerroot? (I have to leave, but will check back later.)

My recipe is for Huo Tui Dong Gu Zheng Yu. Not sure of regional origins. North? Fish is marinated in ginger-infused rice wine & salt.* Slits in skin are made deep enough to stuff in slivers of ham and reconstituted mushrooms. A tiny bit of soy sauce is poured over fish while it steams. Then only 2 T (heated) sesame oil are poured over the scallions and gingerroot that have been placed on top of plated fish. Are you saying this recipe sounds suspect? *Slivers of ginger are smashed and pinched in bowl for some time until wine takes on bright yellow hue. The fish is scored before marinating so flavor penetrates; the deep slits then accommodate stuffing. I like the idea of stuffing in the gingerroot, though.

Usually, it's just regular peanut oil that's used and not sesame oil ← In this case, the recipe called for the sesame oil as a seasoning. I'm more interested in matters of technique, though.

Coat hangers? I was about to ask what that contraption in the oven is and how I might make/get one myself! Wasn't Fay Choy banned this year? (Everything looks great!)

No, it isn't obvious to neophytes! I just steamed a whole fish in a wok for the first time this weekend. My recipe called for shredded gingerroot & scallions to be placed on the fully cooked fish and then toasted sesame oil to be heated "until nearly smoking" (a little hard to gauge except retrospectively) before being poured over the fish. Needless to say, a little oil poured over a little fish did not frizzle either seasoning or release their flavors. 1. Should I have cooked the gingerroot & scallions in the heated oil for just a few seconds and THEN poured all on top of the fish? 2. Are there any tricks or tips to shredding gingerroot or scallions? I ended up cutting slivers of each, though I did attempt to use a zester for the gingerroot. And Ah Leung, again, thanks for blogging this week. I'll try to return to the Asian cooking threads a bit more reqularly.

Elie, since Judith is off in the hinterlands, Kevin enjoying a holiday, and Klary recovering from a major culinary feat, let me apologize for not seeing this sooner in the day and beaming as is your due. You know, I am not sure I have ever tried making any of the desserts in the Hazan cookbooks, always gravitating towards French or American things instead. Still haven't tried to replicate my beloved little Florentine budini di riso pastries. This, however, truly looks good especially with the personal touch of a honey spiral. The texture's reminiscent of cakes made with ricotta in appearance, though denser I'm sure. The bass, of course, also honor the lunar new year. Can't wait until asparagus is in season; sounds like Texas can't either given the warmth that is heading our way, too.

I'm editing this since I see Abra posted first to explain the first image is of butternut squash. The second photo is delicata squash, really good unadorned. It roasts quickly because the skin is well, delicate, and the flesh, sort of the color of this guy , is also thin. I like to cut it in half, scoop out seeds and bake, cut side down, edges buttered. When softened, turn cut side up, add a little butter if you'd like and let it start to color, though I usually skip this step. Pour on a tiny bit of heavy cream and a pinch of fresh nutmeg.* * * Thank you for answering my questions, Ah Leung. (I made Huo Tui Dong Gu Zheng Yu with a black bass yesterday, thinking the small slices of prosciutto (naturally ) poked into slits of the skin would be appropriate for the Year of the Pig.)

Ah Leung, thank you for blogging this week! A sinologist friend (not Chinese) now lives in your city, so I hope to learn something I can report. Sorry to read there are no outstanding Chinese restaurants nearby. If you've already listed your favorite local places to shop for ingredients or drive to for meals on special occasions, please point me in the right direction. So far, I've really enjoyed your demonstration of making soy milk. I have one question about the big family meal: I was told that dumplings were traditional for New Year's and noodles were more frequently served for birthdays. Is this simply not a set rule and different families and regions pass on different traditions? Second, are there any convenient outdoor markets worth visiting at this time of year?

I vowed I would not return to this thread, but had to peek. This is from Jacques Rivette's Julie and Céline Go Boating in which the heroines find themselves ejected from a mysterious house with a piece of hard candy in their mouths. They cannot recall what happened there, but the candy provides a kind of emotional residue of the experience--and ultimately an aid to solving the mystery. N'est-ce pas?

Has anyone tried using the Britta water filter with calcium=rich well water? If it works to get heirloom the beans cooked to perfection in 90 minutes, I'll convert . ← First, thanks, Anne, for mentioning how hard water might contribute to the time it takes for my soaked beans to cook in the oven & Andie, for seconding the suspicion. I live in an Art Deco-era building in a city where Britta does brisk business. Using a filter hasn't helped me, but I am not using dried heirloom beans. Since one other poster singled out black beans as problematic, perhaps I'll try cooking a recent purchase of pinto beans without soaking them and report back. I still wonder if there's less turn-around in inventories of dried beans nowadays, especially given all the recipes that call for 15-oz. cans of beans and the number of articles tauting the healthfulness of a diet that includes legumes and whole grains.

Shaya, welcome back! Gorgeous as usual, as well as charming. There is a string of skillful photography on this page, including Ann's, Chryz's, and Peter Green's stunning glossy jet-black squid ink strands. (PG, look for Hathor's posts when she gets back to NYC. I think she has the same tablecloth.) Shalmanese, of course you have a following! Great Southern dinner, sort of like another one appearing in a different location in Seattle some time soon. Have you found yourself cooking differently since you've moved to the States?

Here's another trick for you that I learned from a book by Carol Field--or Lynne Rossetto Kasper: 1) Cut through the onion, stem to root, removing peel, stem and root. 2) Pick up one half of your onion and look at one of the short ends (stem or root) you just cut through. See how the half of the onion is built up in layers of half circles, or "C"s, all nestled around a small, backwards "D" (the straight line of the "D" being the smallest, integral part of the flat side of the onion)? If you had the patience to read and grasp fully the content of the two preceding sentences, your response should be "Well....Duh!" Sorry, but I don't have a diagram to demonstrate the procedure. 3) With your little paring knife, extract that "D" and maybe one of the "C"s that snuggly hugs it. Place the half onion on your cutting board so that you now have an inverted "U", if rounder, like a Japanese bridge in an orientalizing garden at Monet's house. Push that little, elongated "D" aside on the cutting board for now. 4) Holding the onion securely on the cutting board, take a very sharp small knife--a thin blade is more important than size-- in your other hand. Slice your onion now. Don't separate the onion as you do so. If these instructions are clear and you're following them as intended, you should find that with that little extracted piece missing, all your slices remain upright and the shape of the onion-half remains intact. 5) Take your large chef's knife, and while still holding the onion half securely on the board, turn the onion 90 degrees to cut through all the slices in the opposite direction, like a grid. In other words, you're dicing the onion. 6) Then chop up the little piece you extracted to make steps 3-5 possible. The advantage of this method--much simpler to do than to describe--is that the halves of the onion stay together, so it's quicker to perform than carefully scoring your cut onion and then slicing through it when chopping or dicing.

Well, I'm not sure what your family might have thought of my bastardized soup, but I was working with what I had on hand and the fact that I am trying to lose weight, if not on your wife's strict system. So no coconut milk.Base was Italian, actually, since I made what I had hoped would be a month's supply of brodo which is disappearing rapidly. Instead of using one meat, you use a combination of turkey (wings) and beef, the latter shanks which I roasted first. After both meats simmer for one hour in water, you add the usual mirepoix, a crushed garlic clove, bay leaves, parsley and salt. Simmer in oven 8 more hours. I made it first at Christmas from Lynne Rosetto Kasper's recipe, possibly online, and find it really is versatile in that it suits recipes calling for chicken or beef stock. Buy extra beef and fish out some of it early in the process, leaving the bones behind (as Malawry suggests elsewhere) and you have even more possibilities. I read the beginning of cook-off thread on Asian noodle soups (great resource which I intend to finish!) and ended up using a linked recipe for pho, charring an onion and adding it along with star anise, etc. to broth which simmered as I put together the rest of my ingredients. Tai element? Bruised, chopped lemongrass, lime juice & Kaffir lime leaves. In bowl: rice noodles, thin slices of beef, red chilies, cilantro, scallions and mint. No basil at home. Very good, followed by warmed persimmon cake surrounded by applesauce made with cider, topped by (light) sour cream. The only thing I might have done differently with what was on hand was eliminate the star anise. I adore the aroma it contributes, especially, but it is so assertive, it interferes with the more delicate scent of lemongrass. Most likely, I'll be using the same broth to make a modified caldo verde tonight. Okay, I filled in the details. Your turn, Hathor. P.S. Everyone's Valentine's dinners are just lovely!

What wonderful husbands you two are! The beet ravioli are especially romantic, though the it's the scallops that appeal the most. (Bravo on the squab, Kevin. Next thing you know, you'll be out in the backyard with a hatchet, like April in one of our earliest threads.) Of course Elie's bread is stunning. Those rolls are perfect for lunchtime, as is the frittata, to be sandwiched within. The complementary pairing of cookies and rich chocolate looks really good, too.

Pan, usage is a matter of temporal change: history and dates vs. region in this case. "Rocket" remains part of American English vocabulary even though it is not as current as "arugula"' is. It used to be the only available word. How "arugula" developed as a word is a mystery to Elizabeth Schneider, the vegetable guru, not just me. You'll find a series of posts about the word throughout this site, and I suspect, much more, including perhaps a solution in the new book on the United States of Arugula. I am guessing marketing is behind the invention of the word that sounds Italian. "Rocket" sounds like the real word, "rucola" to some degree--certainly as much if not more than "Florence" sounds like "Firenze".

This may astonish some, but a single word often has more than one meaning. "Arugula" has unfortunately become American English, but "rocket" is still a perfectly usable word for the salad green. Our English cousins manage to use the word in both the blast-off and the salad sense, without becoming hopelessly confused. "Arugula" isn't even proper Italian; why should we accept it as good English?[...] ← Because, regardless of origin, it is standard American English. And for whatever it's worth, I didn't know that it was called "rocket" in British English until I started reading food websites, so that should bring you some pleasure in regard to the usefulness of sites like this in bridging the divide in our common language. But if anyone wants to continue with this tangent, they should probably take it to the alt.usage.english newsgroup on USENET. ← Pan, man, The Hersch does not stand alone. It's a matter of usage, perhaps, since times have indeed changed. The first time I found bunches of arugula in a fancy supermarket was in Wild Oats in St. Louis ca. 1996, I believe, so not so long ago, but certainly before ordinary grocery chains began selling bags of salad. Many trace the ubiquity of the peppery green to Alice Waters, who, as you know, persuaded farmers to grow all those interesting little leaves for her salads. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook contains a tomato and rocket salad, not as an affectation, but because "rocket" was the only word in English available at that time. Date of the book? 1982. * * * And I will raise a glass to that winningly conceived pile of chicken skins. Since I am not allowing myself such treats these days, let me thank Bruce the Blue Crab for inspiration for many of my recent dinners, including a kind of Thai pho this evening. Lemongrass is my new favorite ingredient. I've just started to read the Cook-Off on Asian Noodle Soups and I think I'll be moving on to Marco Polo's wonders among others during the weeks ahead. * * * Oh, Wendy, love that salad! I used to HATE celery, especially since I've had too many salads prepared by chopping up huge, thick, hard chunks of every vegetable in the fridge along with spongy raw button mushrooms and the celery was always the worse. Then, one terribly muggy summer, I stepped into an air-conditioned little place and ordered a huge gorgonzola salad with the customary toasted walnuts and Romaine. It was studded with thin, tight c's of celery and was it good. The purity of yours is brilliant. Tomorrow. Have you and TDoW checked out Foodman's recent meal in the Venetian cooking thread? Look for the cocktail.

That'd be Angel Heart. You thought it was that bad? Hmm. Not as good as the original book but it didn't (as my favorite movie critic once wrote) "do for movies what the Jonestown cool aid did for kids' drinks." ← I didn't hate it as much as Bill Cosby did (he kicked one of the actresses off his then-popular sit-com as a result of his displeasure), and De Niro cum Satan sure did peel that egg menacingly with his long, long nails. Just not my cup of tea.

While I can't find an online reference to a recent interview with Jeffrey M. Pilcher on NPR, his research on Mexican food and national identity sounds fascinating. I did find evidence that his work looks at Mexican food in Texas, too and that he is now looking more globally. Someone with greater knowledge of Mexican culinary history can fill in the blanks, but he explained how a national cuisine is formed by a comprehensive survey of regional dishes, mentioning the ground-breaking early work of a woman who journeyed from town to village collecting recipes for what was to become a multi-volumed book on Mexican regional cooking. By virtue of uniting these disparate traditions, her work had political implications. I think the discussion of this pioneering cookbook was presented in the context of what Pilcher has to say about tamales. (I don't know how to format the Amazon link to help eGullet.) Also click on the author's name since more recent publications may be of interest, especially a more generalized study that also treats Italian and Chinese immigrants to the United States in terms of culinary history. Here's Hidden Kitchen with Pilcher, discussing The Chili Queens of San Antonio

You know, I can boil water real good but I have never had success with cooking dried beans without pre-soaking them first. Oven-cooking, yes. I have switched over to this method exclusively since it really does seem to help reduce if not eliminate skin-splitting and breakage. Nonethess, I have tried not pre-soaking only a few times and became disenchanted because the majority of the beans remained hard, many dividing length-wise. Granted, I was using a burner instead of the oven and beans from food co-op bins, though it was in both an era and a town with a large population of bean-eaters. I've had more problems recently than I can recall with beans taking forever to cook even when pre-soaked. I'm not sure if it's because so few people bother to cook dried beans anymore, reaching for cans instead. Is it just because inventories get old as a result, or I'm not cooking replenished supplies fast enough? I live in a city with a large, mixed Latino population and tend to buy packages of Goya's beans if not from bulk at Whole Foods. Just made a great batch of soupy black beans that had pre-soaked for days (not deliberately). It took FOUR hours for all of the beans to soften. Even though some had swollen and cooked through in 1 1/2 hours, most were a little al dente. While many of the beans changed color to a dark reddish brown as they cooked, glossy black ones retained their small size like stubborn, clenched fists. I finally gave up and took them out of the oven at 1 AM and achieved what I wanted after an additional hour of cooking while preparing a meal later in that day.

Based on ICTD's new clue, what REALLY, really bad movie--attended reluctantly because it meant good company for dinner--presents the slow peeling of a hard-boiled egg as a sign of unmitigated evil? ETA: April, I can't believe you solved Karen's clue before I finished this post!

Love the onions draped over perfectly golden fish, Franci. Beautiful. While I realize the stack of squash is not touching the main course, I am quite surprised to see the contorno on the same plate! P.S. Thanks for further information about heron, Judith. Fascinating about the heron. It makes sense that there is a terroir to the taste of wine or that cheese would take on the flavor of grasses and clover eaten by the animals milked, but I had no idea that there is also a meroir ( making up a word here) to gamey birds that feed from the sea. And Elie, I checked out the listings on Food Network, pleased to see there are ten episodes of MM set in the Veneto.

Done, gladly, though I be as much a gentleman as thee! Also, let me add one more request for those offering solutions: Please repeat the full clue as well as the number in the most recent list. It's easier to keep track of that way.