nakji

After being a valuable member of the host team for several years, Phyllis Flick (Felice) has announced she is stepping down from her duties to pursue other projects. We regret her departure and will miss her contributions to keeping the forums running smoothly. Please join me in thanking her for her service here.

It's with regret we announce that longtime contributor Phyllis Flick (Felice) is stepping down as host of the eGullet Forums. The French countryside in the summer has lured her away, and while we'll miss her hard work and expertise as part of our hosting team, we understand completely and wish her well. Our hope is that this will leave her more time to post about the amazing food she encounters there. Phyllis has always answered my questions kindly and graciously, and I can only think with envy about the bounty she must encounter in the summer in France. Merci, Felice!

This is what I grew up calling "eggs in a basket". My husband calls it "toad in hole". We were both raised in Nova Scotia, but I was raised by a British father, which may account for the difference. I know toad in hole as sausages in a Yorkshire pudding.

If they were already kind of wilted, they might make okay pickles, like Marcella Hazan's pickled eggplants. They're great on a sandwich, or with a plate of bread and cheese before dinner, since they're quite garlicky.

I did a cooking lesson in Phuket about six years ago - at Pum' Restaurant. When I went, she was just starting out, and we were able to design our own full-day class, where we did what I wanted to do. Now it looks like they have a more formal system of morning/afternoon classes - and they're probably just for beginners as well. But the owner was friendly and helpful - it would be worth going in and having a chat, anyway, and see if they couldn't work something out for you.

I almost always use the basic absorption method in a steel pot, mainly because I'm too cheap to buy a proper rice cooker. On days when I have created a crispy layer on the bottom, and choose not to eat it in the Korean fashion, I find that returning the lid to the pot and allowing the rice to cool helps with lifting the stuck rice off. I think the condensation in the pot loosens it, and it usually lifts off in one layer - but this only works if you leave about a third the pot of cooked rice in to cool. If you empty the pot, it doesn't work as well.

I'm staying in a cottage in PEI next week, and I'm looking forward to the experience! Our cottages come equipped with a dig-your-own-potato garden, which I'm quite looking forward to. And my father-in-law is threatening to take us clam-digging armed with toilet plungers. There are many Islanders in my extended family, and I have grilled them over the past week for information on the best farm stands. They pleaded ignorance, which makes me feel like there's some sort of Island code at work here, keeping the best stuff for themselves. Like in Nova Scotia, I imagine, if you see anyone selling anything out of the back of a truck, or roadside on a farm stand, it's a good bet it's local and fresh. I always check to see if locals are buying, if I can - I just check the license plates of the cars that are stopping.

Isn't that funny this should come up? We hosted a wedding shower for a cousin this weekend, and one of the gifts was an electric skillet. I hadn't seen one in years, and I didn't think they still made them. My husband was adamant about us not getting one when we got married, since, in his words, "I soon as I saw it sitting on the counter, I knew nothing good would come out of it." Electric fry pans are inextricably linked to "spanish rice" and cheap sausages from his childhood. Of course, it wasn't the skillet's fault - his mum just wasn't a very good cook. But they always make him shudder. I knew someone who swore by using hers to temper chocolate. She used it as a hot water bath and had another pan with chocolate in it set inside. She liked it because she could regulate the temperature.

We had ribs, burgers, an assortment of salads - couscous, beet-and-potato, Vietnamese chicken and cabbage, broccoli, and rotini. Dessert was Dorie Greenspan's Celebration Cake, which was perfectly designed for Canada Day with it's red and white color scheme. That's the great thing about doing a Canada Day cake - no messing around with blueberries with our flag! It was the perfect barbecue that I always imagine when I'm overseas.

With fruit, I think once you cut it, it starts to break down fairly rapidly, especially in heat. I would pick either small fruit that goes a long way, and stores square - like berries in a pint basket; or something really large that can last over several meals, and travels sturdily, like a whole watermelon or a pineapple. I would steer away from bananas, apples, or oranges. I'm going up to my friend's cottage in Ontario at the end of this month, and it will be my first time planning and packing for cottage cooking. There's a full kitchen plus grilling facilities, and a well-packed larder with condiments, etc. But we'll need to bring up all of our veggies and meats for six people in coolers. We're planning to hit the Farmer's Market in Ottawa before making the trek out, and it has a great guide to what will be in season then. Any shopping and packing suggestions for a cottage newbie?

She was the one that said they were better! She thought your sticky sauce worked better than the Canadian Living version, which she has always found to be too oily - the brown sugar and butter had a habit of separating. I made the lemon poppyseed muffins today for my mother-in-law, and they were another hit, even though I was halfway through making them and found there wasn't a scrap of baking soda in the house, not even deodorizing the fridge. The recipe only calls for a quarter teaspoon, so I held my breath and added double that quantity in baking powder. They seemed to come out fine, with a great flavour and a nice rise, but I'll have to make them again with the right ingredients just to compare some time.

After five years as part of the host team in the eGullet forums, John Talbott is stepping down from his hosting duties. He's been a stalwart member of this team for years, and we'll miss his contributions greatly. His support for the eGullet Society's mission has never wavered, and we're all looking forward to his continuing contributions as a forum member. Please join us in thanking him for his service here.

After five years as part of the host team in the eGullet forums, John Talbott is stepping down from his hosting duties. He's been a stalwart member of this team for years, and we'll miss his contributions greatly. His support for the eGullet Society's mission has never wavered, and we're all looking forward to his continuing contributions as a forum member. John has always graciously and expertly dealt with my questions, especially when I was a new host who didn't know an arrondissement from an atelier. I look forward to learning more from his informative posts in the future!

A tablecloth with a map on it would be most excellently diverting. It might sway me from my placemat preference. That reminds me of those great paper placemats you sometimes get at Chinese restaurants - the ones with the Chinese zodiac on them? I used to love reading those while waiting for the food to come out.

Fruit Loops on cherry yogurt. I've loved that for years, but never as a dessert - more of a snack. Now that I think of it, that would be really good with dark chocolate melted over....

I also wonder if the frozen blueberries from Costco weren't a smaller berry - I know a lot of frozen berries are the smaller ones that look more like wild berries. I expect they produce a drier filling than the big ones you've used.

Wow, and I complain about the weight of the book! I can't imagine what hauling flour and butter across the Atlantic do to your weight allowance My husband has been quiet about the book, anyway, since I stuffed his mouth full of brioche I made for the first time from your recipe. I made half brioche and half sticky pecan muffins for Father's Day, which were as I expected them to be - divine. I substituted raisins for pecans since my Dad is not a Nut Person, and they were great - they beat out my mother's vaunted Canadian Living recipe, which has been the last word in sticky bun recipes in our house for several years - it was the brioche dough that tipped it over the edge, I know it.

I'm living between my parents' and my in-laws' houses this summer, and dining at both. My parents have always had placemats on the table - a varying collection over the years. My earliest memory is of a collection of kelly green acrylic wool ones that my mum had crocheted, changing to a set of hard plastic and cork mats featuring scenes of country inns in the Lake District in the UK, souvenirs of a trip - those ones were around for a while, owing to their sturdy nature, and ability to entertain. I enjoyed the lottery-like nature of the way they were distributed, and always wanted "The Swan at Grasmere." They've been downgraded to trivets now, replaced with a random cloth set that I have my suspicions were sourced from a sale bin somewhere. My mother owns two tablecloths - I know they're there, because every time I try to take dish towels out of the linen drawer in the kitchen, they wad up and prevent it from closing. I've never actually seen my mum use one, however; and I know it's not because they were lovingly embroidered by my grandmother with scenes from a seal and a whale hunt; no - it's because she can't bear to iron them. My in-laws, on the other hand, have only ever had tablecloths. I've never seen a hint of a placemat anywhere near their table, which is always spread with a perfectly ironed, tasteful taupe, blue or beige cloth to match the dining room. I once, while searching for the crystal pickle plate in the china cabinet, found a set of cork and plastic placemats featuring scenes from English country gardens - obviously received as a gift and stored unused, and never seriously considered as an option. Recently, my in-laws decided to throw a clear plastic sheet over the tablecloth, for the convenience, I guess, as the other day I found my Father-in-law rubbing the plastic between his fingers, murmuring, "I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner." I have a motley collection of both - some silk and bamboo placemats from Vietnam, a dyed and embroidered tablecloth from China. I never use them, since I don't actually have a table, but if I had one, I think I'd favour the placemats. I like how they say, "This space is for you". They also don't seem to attract violent spots and stains like tablecloths do. And, of course, they don't need to be ironed. What do you like to use?

Ooh. Ooh. ooh. That's excellent. I'd forgotten that condiment. I'll be making that for my Dad for Father's Day, I think. I use a little rice vinegar and fresh grated ginger on my cukes usually, but it's also fun to add a teaspoon or so of sesame oil and Korean chili flakes for interest.

Once more I have lugged my copy across the Pacific and back into range of an oven. I always take it with me to Asia in the hopes that I'll end up with an oven, but I'm usually disappointed. (Then my husband complains, because the book weighs 1.5 kilos, which eats into our precious weight allowance ) I'm making up for lost time, now, though. Three hits this week - I made the French yogurt cake, which was pretty much perfect. I used limes to make a simple syrup for the glaze, as I didn't have any marmalade to hand, and it's just gorgeous with a cup of tea. Last night I made the chocolate bread pudding, which was scarfled down by an appreciative dinner crew. Next time I might split the chocolate half and half between the custard and leaving it in chunks mixed in with the bread - I've had chocolate bread pudding before like this, and I love the contrast of the hits of dark chocolate and the eggy custard. I used some stale raisin bread we had, rather than brioche tossed with raisins, as is called for in the recipe, and I think it worked fine. Then this evening I made the ginger-jazzed brownies for my Dad, who is a big ginger fan from way back, and they were excellent. I have lost my taste for most North American sweets - I find them too sweet, I guess. But Dorie's recipes really strike a nice balance between interesting flavours and more traditional ones.

Those look exactly perfect. And you can hardly go wrong with fresh Digby scallops. I've got a kilo or so of fresh Nova Scotia mussels in the fridge that I don't know what to do with - garlic, butter, and white wine is pretty standard for Nova Scotia, which is pretty close to moules mariniere. Do we get our love of mussels from the Acadiens, or are they a more recent development?

Over in the Cambodian/Khmer Cooking topic, I posted a pictorial on fried banana flower fritters. They're a nice change if you want to do something other than a salad, and they look quite striking when they're sliced up.

Todd, I know how much work is involved in hosting - thanks for your dedication and time! We'll miss your contributions as a host, but look forward to seeing your contributions as a member. Thanks again.

I was labouring under similar misconceptions until I picked up a copy of one of Marcella Hazan's books in a used book store and cooking through it. I haven't tried butter with tomatoes yet, but I made her version with tomatoes and olive oil only the day after I broke my arm - that's how easy it was. But you really do need to have excellent tomatoes and good olive oil. Something you really like the taste of, since she calls for a third cup of it. But butter makes everything better, so I think I'll be making the butter version tonight to see for myself.

Oh, wow. Do they taste anything like gianduja? That has to be my favourite flavour profile for sweets. They look spectacular, however. Please let us know if the 60 hour one tasted any different after you've tried it. And if you need any taste testers.... Ah, I'm not a fan of crisp at all when it comes to chocolate chip cookies. I always try to maximize the cakey/gooey centre factor.