Peter the eater

That's it exactly, what Klary said. I look forward to more Peter Green: No Reservations!

I find that the President's Choice Blue Menu whole wheat pastas aren't too bad. At least they are no worse than the rest but are often priced attractively, and they come in lots of crazy shapes that I can't pronounce properly. I have come to realize that if one wants pasta plus the benefits of a whole grain then they are better off putting that good stuff in the sauce or in the accompanying bread.

As usual, a pleasure to read. I wish I had a seven-foot folk art Lanny Macdonald.

Around here, the word sweetbreads refers to the pancreas or thymus gland. They come in lamb and calf (never cow or sheep) and both are affordable delicacies in my book. Butchers and cooks don't seem to differentiate between the two organs I suppose because they are so similar from a culinary point of view. I wonder about adult wild game - surely they have and use a pancreas, but does the thymus shrink?

That's it! I could never quite put my finger on it, now I realize the frogged birds look like something from a veterinarian's manual showing how to separate Siamese twin chickens. I bought six fresh two-pounders last week and have been preparing each one differently. I still have two to go - I should have been taking pictures. I like to snip the back out with shears, pare out the hips and then separate by removing the breastbone and cutting through the skin. The two haves can be curled up into a poultry pyramid - very attractive. Another way I tried was to remove all the skin intact and then remove the entire skeleton. I laid out the meat on the skin, seasoned it and then rolled it up into a log. Pretty labor-intensive for an under one kilogram bird, so I think I'll reserve that technique for turkeys. So now I have a spin-off question: What does one call these techniques? So far we have spatchcock, frog and poultry pyramid (although I just made that last one up).

I agree that grit from a can of clams in not acceptable. With fresh littlenecks (or any other size) I typically find very little grit if any - unlike the steamers. Either way, a soak with a bit of cornmeal seems to get them clean from entrance to exit. I've heard that the bivalves which are grown at an aquaculture facility are less likely to be gritty - like they don't need to dig in the sand to feed themselves, they just attach to a vertical substrate and live above the seabed. I'm not sure if thats totally accurate, but I do know that the soak has helped me get the grains out prior to cooking..

I have often wondered if today's extra large eggs would simply have been called large a few decades ago. Others I've discussed this with have agreed - maybe it's a part of your egg conspiracy. I don't have any data to substantiate this claim, and I know as people get bigger/older everything looks smaller than before - but still - I could swear those eggs of my childhood were larger. BTW I agree that the public library is a tremendous source for quality cookbooks. I often grab a pile and then maybe one in twenty will I go out and purchase. I figure it has saved me thousands of dollars over the years and a lot of valuable shelf space at home. They may not have the latest releases right away but this acts like a filter - only market-tested good cookbooks get to the library's collections.

Hell yes. But it's a two-way street. I am lucky to have a spouse who's a gifted baker and just plain excels in the farinaceous arts. I'm more interested in unusual ingredients and tasty creatures so it's fair to say our house is divided right down the sweet versus savory line. Its a win-win situation. I think anyone who cooks with passion is sexy. Even the farmers that make the ingredients can be sexy if they are passionate about it.

I think it sounds like a wonderful combo and that all those adjectives can be achieved with the ingredients listed. I don' think of asparagus as bitter, at least not when I cook it. Unless I've got just the tips or some extremely slender spears I would take a peeler to the stalks.

Good discussion - I recently came across some interesting words about bitters on Chicago Chef Laurent Gras's L.2O blog: click. (the entry is dated January 18, 2008 at the bottom of the page) The recommendation here is to get some bitters recipes and to start simple. Herbs and citrus dissolved in alcohol can add tremendous interest and dimension to a drink. What I want to know is where does one get recipes for bitters to make at home?

Well I can't help but I do look forward to a response, I haven't been to West Lafayette in many years. I actually married a boilermaker (M.Sc.'95). When I visited from Toronto (only a 10 hour drive, including a stop at the Dan Quayle Museum in Huntington, IN) we would typically make corn for dinner then go out for beer and/or a sporty event. I can say I have actually dined at the XXX. All I remember on campus is the ice cream places and good coffee spots. I'll bet there are a lot more options now.

My pizza joint doesn't deliver. Fortunately, they are only a few hundred metres away. The idea is for people to call in orders on the way home from work. It has become very popular since opening a year or so ago. We don't have the urban benefits of density and choice but I don't mind since our local pizza is quite good for what it is. When they first opened I told him the sauce was a little on the sweet side. Never tell an Italian-born pizza maker that his sauce is a little on the sweet side.

If I may butt in . . . I use artificial sausage casings made from collagen. They're really easy to store and use, plus you can choose to eat them or not. There are several other synthetic casings out there, I'd guess cellulose is the next most common (and it's a vegetarian option). There are also some non-edible plastic casings that are really just disposable cylindrical storage units.

Sure. If it means I can weigh objects that are orders of magnitude apart without compromising accuracy then why not. One scale to measure out 1g of salt or 10 kg of potatoes to three significant figures. I think the digital scale I mentioned had more than one gizmo inside - like small, medium and large. I'm sure it was still an analytical scale meaning it is essentially a balance beam inside, but with more than one size of "constant force" applied to the beam. It was a long time ago but I'll see if I can find a model or a make. So getting back to the original question, I'd want a dream scale for the kitchen to handle a few grams of powder up to a big 50lb bucket of potatoes.

Fascinating. Olive curing is definitely going on my to-do list. A couple of questions or the experts: does fruit size affect flavor? what are the pros/cons of storing a cured oil in oil?

Thanks Rob. I love this place, lazy people like me can ask easy questions about food without fear of humiliation.

I have a real weakness for Diana sauce.

What can my dream scale do? What a question! I use three scales: there's a small digital one for tiny weights like grams and milligrams, a spring-style scale for things that are up to several pounds, and then we have a an old beam scale from a hospital which is obviously best for whole human-sized weights. I don't plan on buying a new scale, but if there was a three-in-one for me I'd consider it. My understanding is that the first two scales (load sensor and spring) measure force but the beam compares masses, meaning it will work on the moon without calibration. I can't image that's much of a selling feature. Years ago I had a summer job in a pharmaceutical lab and we had scales with an "attenuation button" that allowed the user to switch weighing zones by a factor of ten. This means you could maintain super accuracy whether the object was one, ten, a hundred or a thousand grams. My dream scale has an attenuation button.

I saw green unprocessed rock-hard olives in my grocery store a few years ago. Naturally I bought a few for research purposes and took them home. I tried to eat a few as is - highly unpalatable is a big understatement. So why are they sold this way? That's the question I'd like answered given I am not dead. Are people pressing their own oil? Do folks cure them at home?

Thank you Janet, I was hoping for your always well-researched input. I hope you weren't alarmed by the topic title. I like mouthician, although it makes me think of a dentist . . . or worse.

I drove through St. Pete's yesterday, it was very hot. I had a week of food exploration but I was a bit farther down in the Sarasota area. The fish market highlights for me were: blue crabs (pricey but worth it), stone crabs (sweet regenerating claws), grouper (becoming rare), shrimp (buy from the boat for major savings), mullet (always good) and conch (still looking for a home recipe). I'll add that alligator is nice but I don't know where you would buy it. Lets wait for the real Floridians native or otherwise to weigh in.

That is an interesting observation. I think of turduken as a dish that went from regional delicacy to international oddity in the 1990's but I hadn't considered the skid back into retro kitch nor the fashionable ways to keep it relevant or hip or whatever. I think it will be around for a long time in the most traditional forms. Plus, the farther you are from New Orleans (or wherever the beast was born) the fresher the idea is. I can tell you that there were many pre-assembled turduckens-in-a-box in the freezer section of my grocery store as recently as 2007. And for the record I have been working on my own highly unglamorous seafood turducken. When the time is right . . .

What a divisive topic! We call them garburators - and I don't really care for them. I spent last week at a place with one and was reminded just how loud and unnecessary they really are. I understand the convenience in an urban setting, and hooking one up with a dishwater is pretty nice. But for me it's a misuse of electricity and deprives the compost bin.

I received some good ideas from Society members after posing a similar question. Check out this thread.

We have a nearby red abalone aquaculture operation and I think the demand for product is escalating. Whenever I see the vendors at the market they are sold out so I have yet to even get a sample. All I have is a business card - not too tasty! This thread has reminded me to phone in an order. Needless to say I have zero experience handling abalone but look forward to doing so in the near future. The guys here say raw is best, like a fresh scallop. In my opinion, a little butter, garlic and heat will enhance just about anything.