Pontormo

Franci, that strudel, especially the stretched dough, is so impressive! I have to add that you offer stiff competition to Andieseij (sp?). She's a long-time eGullet member who colllects kitchen appliances and equipment. However, I have to say that your specialized mechanized polenta pot and the tigelliera win the prize for fascinating culinary toys! * * * I also appreciate all the comments about polenta. Unfortunately, the grains I use are a standard-issue bulk item that Whole Foods used to sell as polenta, but now has decided to call grits. At least it has large grains and results in a more satisfying texture than the finer-grained meal that Northern Americans use for cornbread. I also use the trickle-through-the-fingers method, mrbigjas, but my teacher was Marcella. This time I won't stop when it begins to stick to the bottom of the pot. I'll let it form a crust.

Wendy, so I guess you do like greens! Klary, lovely dinner party! I am always looking for new ways to dress salads, so I'm interested especially in your recommendation here. And might I second a request made earlier? Daniel, I really was intrigued by your decision to switch to a vegan diet for a couple of months, albeit modified by your cool, new dining club. I'd love it if you'd post here. I imagine that your creativity with beet ravioli, bacon and sea urchins extends into the world of eggplant and grains.

Party? Chevre Kiwis on fruit tarts. Any kind of tart, including savory ones, those with blue cheese or nuts in crust. I can't tell you how many tart pans and spring-form pans I bought in that era despite budgetary constraints. Seafood quiche Wasn't that the era of croissant sandwiches? I'd go to your local library or any second hand bookstore and look for The Silver Palate or Perla Meyer's The Seasonal Kitchen (a 70s book, slightly before its time). Salmon! Salmon was big, too Carbonara was fairly new Vegetarian lasagna ETA: phyllo is excellent idea. I had a party to introduce my new kitten, Cato, to society and we all had phyllo triangles (Silver Palette) stuffed with PINENUTS, spinach, mushrooms, fresh herbs, sun-dried tomatoes, etc. Mushroom caps stuffed with prosciutto? Not sure if that's era-specific. SMOKED salmon is, though. It kind of eclipsed cavier on blinis for a while. Make sure you find something with shoulder pads to wear, electric blue and shiny, belted, with a strand of beads, big clip-on earrings, bright red high heels and poofy hair. P.S. Are deep-fried calamari 80s or 90s?

Dag--in the interest of economizing on space, I won't reproduce your photo, but, no. I haven't seen that particular type around here, though I believe you guys in PA belong to the same large WF region as we do in D.C.; headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland. The higher price and label are not the same. You should ask the Team Leader in the Meat Department. The chicken with "air-chilled" on the label and lower prices are Bell & Evans. Same with beef; you no longer see Colman's on the label, but the ground beef is Colman's. I'm not sure if WF did the same thing with Niman Ranch and pork, but I think that's the case. I just ranted over at my local foodboard about the quality of the chicken leg quarters, i.e. in terms of sloppy butchering. Cautionary note: you're paying for the unsaleable backs, sometimes the entire backbone, tail, etc., and clinging bits of gutsy goo. They're not a bargain on sale and I have to wonder if this is not a matter of poor quality control, but a consumer-unfriendly way to increase the profit margin in an industry that is not associated with wealth. * * * It's great to have insights from a poultry farmer. Sounds a bit like things Pollan was saying, though I don't recall the companies and sites of farms he surveyed.

What productivity, you all! First, Mrbigjas, it's great to see you cooking again in addition to an update on the happy baby. I always enjoy a vicarious peek at other people's bookshelves, so thanks for enough focus to see Leaves of Grass AND Rock Til You Drop behind said baby. On the other side of the kid, I hope the open volume is NOT a cookbook! Kevin, and Franci, how wonderful!!! I suppose it would be an act of kindness not to eat much pork once The Year of the Fire Boar begins on February 18. Or is the other way around? And Chem, please consider this a warm welcome to both eGullet and this forum! * * * Mrbj: How long did you cook your polenta? Buford got pretty huffy about the way a REAL polenta takes hour(s?) of cooking and constant attention despite all the shortcuts, the unattended pots and slow-oven methods touted in English-language books these days. If you do figure out what may have made it so good, please pipe up before dinnertime tomorrow. I'm sure your source and the colder weather both helped.

Jack: I know close to nothing about 17th-C England and presume your friend has seen plenty of archival documents, but I wonder how the word "vestrie" became a term denoting a mixture of different types of grains. Is this because of the phenomenon addressed in The Stripping of Altars, a study of the way Protestants in England destroyed signs of the "old" Christian religion to bring in the new, and the vestries used to store the liturgical garments of the old religion were turned over to secular use and they became granaries? Again, I plead ignorance, but I also wonder why you're having so much trouble with the word "sidnes". Could this be an abbreviation--or misspelling if Adam's logical explanation doesn't apply to your case? In Italy, at least, the 17th-century is a time when ecclesiastical and civic documents get very, very sloppy. Hand-writing is very difficult to read and lots and lots of words are abbreviated or transcribed in haste and in error. That's why so many professional archivists manage to get gigs when less experienced people try to decipher them. I doubt the Anglo-Saxon word "sidnes" (wide) has anything to do with your word, but you might find someone used to reading this kind of thing in historical studies to guide you. As for the word "ottes" a quick google confirmed the fact that there were fields of ottes surrounding early English villages and they made their appearance in wills (Yates). Sounds silly, but another association of mine is an old song that Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing about going around asking for soul cakes. These are in exchange for prayers to be said for the dead around All Soul's Day, but might there be another culinary tradiition connected to oatcakes for penance at Lent? There are all sorts of Easter breads and cakes, though the one early tradition I know about Lent concerns alms to pay for huge Lentan candles at church since wax was expensive.

S/he is. I am. Fact not impression.

You may also want to drag an Italian proscuitto and perhaps other foreign charcuterie that no longer meets their specs. I'm not sure if the Italian proscuitto missed snuff b/c of nitrates or other issues. There is a thread on it; but I'm not sure if a consensus was arrived at why they discontinued carrying it... ← There was. Decisions were left up to regional managers who in my area discontinued true Parma ham because some members of the Italian consortium for Prosciutto di Parma used hormones during the first 30 days of the pigs's lives. One distributor for San Daniele promised not to do so. So, Whole Foods agreed to carry San Daniele, a Friulian product as opposed to one from Emilia-Romagna. Different pigs, different region. As good as San Daniele is, it's not Parmese Prosciutto. Bell and Evans agreed to be incorporated, i.e., to have WF stamp its company's name on B & E chicken. B & E claims its chickens are free-range which techniquely speaking means the farmers can let them out of their coop for the last 30 days of their lives to qualify, something they're hesitant to do at this late point in their lives according to Michael Pollan in "Omnivore's Dilemma". They're not pumped up with water and are "natural". Eberly always costs more than B & E because their birds are truly organic*. I tend not shy away from the higher price, but bought them now and again, because the company actually sells little birds, less than the 4 lbs or higher that is the norm nowadays when everything bigger is supposed to be better. (Thus, the emu and ostrich eggs in a brand-new WF being discussed on donrockwell.com, my area's local "foodie" site.) This fall I got a small Eberly bird to roast a la Zuni Cafe when a friend was in town. So, so good! *Edited to acknowledge this term is still as slippery as the word "natural". Edited second time to clarify by filling in the blanks on sentences written in haste.

Heather, your original request may be the oldest of its nature here, but there was a fairly recent one on the topic. Try the new forum devoted to cookbooks. However, the punchline is this: Marcella Hazan's, Essentials of Italian Cooking. It remains the classic in English, a wonderful overview of some of the most important dishes, though many unfamiliar when first published are probably standards in a household where a pig's head gets sawed through in the kitchen sink. The major glaring flaw in the revised single-volume text is that it does not respond to an important recent trend that NYC Mike mentions in a Cooking thread on Essentials. That is, Hazan is good about mentioning regional origins of many of the dishes. However, she does not dwell on the original context in which certain recipes were first created, their connection to that part of the country, and so forth. Sometimes the information is overlooked even though the dish is not as "universal" as a simple tomato sauce. The index doesn't provide further assistance. More recently, a number of very good publications have been devoted to single regions of Italy. Lynne Rossetto Kasper sets the standard with The Splendid Table and Emilia-Romagna. David Downie's Cooking the Roman Way is something many of us in the Italian forum appreciate. However, they are more specialized, so they won't suit your purposes. I also like Lidia Matticchio Bastianich who writes well not only about her own Friulian roots. Jamie Oliver's new book, tied to a television series, seems closer to a "real" Italian cookbook than Molto Mario might appear to be. Unlike Hazan's classic survey, it's copiously illustrated, dwells on regionality and is governed by a different kind of authorial voice. (See what Maggie says up thread about Marcella who is known as a gruff chain-smoker; I've never found it off-putting, though.) He's not really worried about what you can and cannot get in the UK or US or Oz, I don't think. I'm making only a slightly informed judgment having looked through the book once, thoroughly. I know Foodman likes it, and his opinion is one I trust. I own MM and like it, but authentic dishes are intersperced with Mario's fabrications and in some cases, the recipes can be rather sloppy. You'll hear quite a few voices of admiration raised for The Silver Spoon, however, the English edition is not a direct translation from the Italian. The original cookbook is kind of a Betty Crocker/Joy of Cooking, a compilation of recipes published to give to women when get married. The recipes are brief and also lacking in much information, let alone instruction, based on the supposition that the bride--or husband--grew up eating such food. There is little if any attention paid to regionality, and as implied, the English edition is less than authentic, altered to appeal to the general American public in a misguided, at times patronizing fashion. It therefore fails for many serious home cooks. I still think Marcella Hazan would serve you best. You'll find more lenghthy discussion and perhaps further sources of inspiration in the Italian forum. Kevin72, the specialist for the region, has a year-long thread for 2005 with both an index and bibliography. He moves from region to region in Italy over the course of the year, cooking dishes specific to each, and mentioning the sources of published recipes as he goes. During 2006, a number of us began cooking dishes from specific regions, one month at a time. Those threads begin, "The Cooking and Cuisine of..." and continue with "Piemonte" or "Siciliy"... This month, as we continue, we're rather uninspired by Trentino Alto-Adige, but you may be interested in some of the earlier ones and might find a place to ask additional questions there. P.S. Read what we have to say about carbonara in the cooking thread on Lazio. I think I paraphrase David Downie's recipe--or somebody does. It will convert you for life.

I have found the Asian approach to vegetables particularly rewarding. Often, vegetables are prepared simply to contrast with a more highly-seasoned main course. Quickly seared with garlic, ginger, and/or chilies, and doused in umami-laden seasonings such as fish sauce and/or fermented bean paste, veggies have a satisfying meaty/smoky flavor. Hmm, I'm not sure that I addressed your question. Can you clarify? ← No need. What I meant was that I'd like to see demonstrations of your cooking process and an inventory of the (for me, often) unfamiliar ingredients you're using--in other words, more than the lovely finished dish you document in the Dinner thread. Your shrimp demonstration is exactly the kind of thing I meant!!! Well, since I am a creature of habit, on to oatmeal! Marion Nestle (Nutrition prof at Columbia) says we make too big a deal out of breakfast. If all you want in the morning is coffee, that's fine. ET correct spelling, sorry docsconz.

Rachel, you're creative. Wanna add a few of your own?

First, I hope you recover soon. When you are up and about again, I'd be interested in learning more basics from you about using the Asian ingredients you buy, whether in dishes gleaned from recipes or meals you invent, based on what's at hand. Thinking back to what you said about eG members inspiring each other's cooking, I am looking for a few lessons and new sources for different kinds of meals. Second, I've been out to Frederick only once, but I recall brown, harvested fields passed along the way. While it has become a bedroom community for Washington, D.C. and has long been the home to a small liberal arts college that has recently gone co-ed, it's also still a place for farmers, no? So, if there's anything you can share about the agricultural nature of your spot in Maryland... Finally, breakfast habits. Omnivore?

Anne, thank you for fiercely facing down the Woolf! (Virginia Woolf is perhaps the most famous of The Bloomsbury Group. Roger Fry, the art critic, was another significant member. Eight Treasures is an example of a stir-FRY dish, ergo... )

How come there's no blushing emoticon for the rest of us? Kevin and Elie, you are doing all the work this month while the rest of us are chattering about wine or squeezing limes. While we lack your Texan ice storms, we finally have some recognizably winter weather here on the east coast and there is a little bit of some extraordinary buttermilk left in the fridge, so.... Meanwhile, thanks for being so conscientious and sharing what you produce with us.

Thrilling solution, I might add I'm glad, especially, that it was based on knowledge of Toni Morrison who's one of the most impressive people I met as a young thing working in D.C. FYI to show we made some of the same connections: 1. Toni Morrison wrote a novel called The Bluest Eye 2. Frank Sinatra is called Old Blue Eyes 3. Mia Farrow was married to Frank Sinatra & starred in Rosemary's Baby 4. Paul Simon sang "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" 5. Mario Batali uses thyme in his all-purpose tomato sauce 6. Bill Buford wrote Heat about working for Mario Batali, and in so doing, masters a really good version of polenta. * * * So, Anne, what was your reason for pairing Neruda and the sundae? * * * NEW: Sigmund Freud and strawberries

Delete to correct myself. There are recipes for polenta, still, not just ancient, with semolina, so we do have a winner!

I just removed one. To make life easier for Anne & Janet, perhaps solutions should include something eye-catching. Cf. the red bold font used to highlight my solution to the Neruda puzzle in a post I edited to draw attention to the solution. NEW Hieronymous Bosch and Olive Oil Bon bons P.S. Toliver, Judiu and others: It's my understanding that if a solution is logical it is correct. Period. All of us perceive connections based on our own experiences, knowledge and quirks, especially if we're not relying solely on googling the terms of the comparison. As Anne said a while back, it's always interesting for someone who created a pair to see how differently a poster solving one of these puzzles arrives at an answer.

I tried to google He Cai Dai Mao and came up empty. It kept giving me Chairman Mao's articles. ← Sorry, I was going for obscure, but not that obscure! How about Virginia Woolf and Ba Bao La Jiang, instead?

Pablo Neruda and the ice cream sundae: Neruda wrote a famous political poem entitled "The United Fruit Company" that condemned the formation of banana republics. Banana splits are ice cream sundaes, are they not? * * * I hope this kind of challenge is allowed: while I cannot dictate how you solve the following, I would love to see you do this in six different steps with six different people named each time you reach the finale, i.e. five names beyond the first I provide. If you are able to use two that I used in when coming up with my six degrees of separation, perhaps Janet* would award you a bonus point? It's up to her. Obviously, you don't have to guess how I made the associations. Since there are two fairly well known Americans who share one of the names I'm about to offer, either is fine, too. So, the challenge: Toni Morrison and polenta. Potential bonus point: include in your degrees Paul Simon and Mia Farrow. *I am sending her the solution in a PM.

I am bumping this thread up since I just finished the last of the second spaghetti sauce & mushroom gratin I've ever baked, this time with a mixture of shitake and crimini, the last of a container of heavy cream and grated parmesan. No ham or breadcrumbs since I'm supposed to be losing weight. Anyway, I still have half of the 3 1/2 pound monster shredded and waiting in the fridge. I was planning on doing something similar to a suggestion that Petit Tete offers, only stuffing a red bell pepper, split length-wise in two, mixing it with egg, some of tonight's braised chard and maybe a little ground meat. However, a combination of Melissa's linked fritters and Karen's advice sounds perfect, too. Hope the thread inspires someone else, too.

Franci, welcome back! Great suggestions. Klary, I think the idea of making 1-2 large impanatoni would work, too, if you cut them in wedges. It's just that it would be kind of fun to hold the individual impanatini. Hathor, your photo got me into the mood for Sicilian fish this weekend when I was surprised by fresh sardines sitting on ice at Whole Foods. One of my favorite dishes during the Sicilian month was pasta with fennel and sardines... I ended up making something Venetian, so I will have to wait to report.

Do you believe that those deliberate methods of appropriation were for the most part a conceptual process that was planned... ← Yes. That's what I meant by both the words "deliberate" and "appropriation". All these quibbles are veering from the focus. The only reasons I started musing about fusion today was to make a point about the status of French cuisine, thinking back to the subject of Tim's article.

Don't worry about me. I'm just here for the frolic from time to time. No need to start all over.

My initial comments on this page are redundant, I see. This quote is lifted from a larger discussion. Not an expert, either, but Menon's perspective reflects my own understanding, though "fusion cooking" now has broader connotations even if it's wrapped up with Asian ingredients and technque as well as California. I do believe deliberate methods of appropriation were involved, though now, that aspect of fusion cooking may no longer be relevant given the factor of assimilation. Cf. this week's cooking blog by c. sapidus. At any rate, I don't think French cuisine is as relevant to the concept any more, if it had been initially. ETA: Ming represents this trend best in reruns on PBS. The Californian aspect of fusion shines through in that Northern Italian AND French cuisines merge with Asian in the dishes he prepares.

When I logged in again to post I was sent all the way back to page 7, so excuse me if this has been said already. HOWEVER: Strictly speaking, wasn't the term "fusion" coined to recognize how French and Asian (specific European and generalized Asian terms deliberately chosen) ingredients and methods were being integrated in professional kitchens? Of course, there are hybrid cuisines in just about every period of history and every geographical area in which travel, invasion, conquest, war, inter-marriage, trade, im & emigration occur. Thus, what Karen & Charles have said about Italian food. Same goes for French. However, one of the essential aspects of fusion food rests on culinary hegemony. I'm saying it without judgment (this time), but French cuisine dominates what foudeez how you say zink about when they think about standards of excellence and sophistication in professional kitchens where it has already been said, French language is central to cooking terms and the make-up of the kitchen staff (sous-chef, etc.). Introducing Asian to an established French repertoire concomitantly promotes Asian food as Excellent and Sophisticated while de-stablizing the position of French cooking as Exclusive Top Dog. Moreover, it questions the value placed on Authenticity, proclaiming a prestigious place for Mongrels. This type of cooking depends on the rise of the chef to a higher social status. If accomplished successfully, fusion cooking is an inventive category that celebrates the creativity, or artistry of the chef. He or she is not judged simply by an ability to execute a recognized dish properly. There's a mind attached to the hand that holds the knife.