Carolyn Tillie

I have only ever used the quiche recipe -- but it is now my only quiche recipe (Rose Levy Beranbaum's crust recipe, though).

Aren, welcome to eGullet! Are you going to report back to us on your dinner? We are always looking for alternative and new-blood reviews and members... Cheers!

The musical Gigi was on Turner Classic Movies the other day. There is a great scene where Gaston opens the lid of a pot and smells inside, saying that it smells good. "Just a pork cassoulet..." Mamita Alvarez explains, "It was impossible to get any goose this week." She adds wistfully. Gaston promises to send up a brace from the country. Later, while Gigi and Gaston are playing cards, Gigi asks what he is having for dinner that night. (This is all preceeding the Night They Invented Champagne song). Gaston answer the question, "Oh, the usual.... filet of sole with muscles, for a change. And filet of lamb with truffles. But it can't compare with your Grandmother's cassoulet!" All-in-all, one of my favorite scenes, but the entire movie is studded with foodie bits (Uncle Honore offering him some cheese, the entire Champagne song, teaching Gigi to eat ortolons, etc.)

eGullet contributor Pim has assisted in putting together a blog on the tsunami -- recent updates, where to donate, etc. Tsunami Blog Very, very resourceful site.

eGads, I love this place!

You mean that you don't get the Rancho Gordo dear friends discount on the beans? ← Yeah, well... darling Gordo doesn't carry a Tarbais/Cannellini equivalent! And don't think Wolfert and I haven't asked!!! I even transported one of Wolfert's cooked tarbais to Gordo for him to taste to see if he had anything remotely close, to no avail!

BBquer, consider sitting on it for a while... It will definitely improve with five to ten years of aging (if not 20!)

Synchronicity... I just came in from various markets as I am making Wolfert's cassoulet for a small get-together on Wednesday and wondered what one would do to try and make a Kosher Cassoulet... As an aside, I am terribly irked that I spent $20 on the friggin BEANS and barely $10 bucks on the ALL the pork products (bought 'em at a Latin market). Oh well...

Mongo -- I, for one, see no reason whatsoever for your need to apologize. I've got house guests coming in for the week and I am going to recommend we all forego one of our planned outings and donate. I have a few friends who are travelling in Indonesia and hope to hear from them soon...

Gundlach Bundschu IS a local vintage for me (they are in Sonoma) -- and while they discontinued a Riesling several years ago, I think their Gewurtz was a great choice. Most of the local Rieslings that I know of tend to be considerably sweeter. I am on a huge exploration of German varietals in California (getting ready to write a story on them) and trying to find those that are more complex along the lines of the great Germans. I'd be really interested in anyone pointing me in the direction of any California wineries producing any GREAT German varietals!

Marshall -- great to have anoher Napan! Thanks so much for the positive review... I hope to enjoy it when I get there and I hope you will come back and post often!

Funny you should ask... I opened the Carl Loewen Leiwener Klostergarten Riesling Kabinett to use as the cooking wine but was so taken with just how lovely it was, I didn't want a third of the bottle gone! I also didn't want the acidity of a SauvBlanc or the oakiness of a Chardonnay and was glad I had a bunch of GunBun sitting around. Because it is Alsatian-style (low residual sugar - less than .5), I think it was PERFECT. But to drink WITH the fondue, it was a bit too acidic while the Riesling Kabinett had that perfect amount of sweetness to accentuate the fondue. I never got around to opening the Prum, but did open the Prosecco which was nice, but after the sweetness of the Loewen, seemed wanting and sharp. I also wished I had chilled down a Caymus Conundrum which is a favorite of mine with melty cheese... My 'guests' were my sister and bro-in-law. They are lovely people, but philistines when it comes to wine (my bro-in-law has been known to put an ice cube in a glass of Margaux... ). They really liked the Loewen BECAUSE it was sweeter. I didn't rub the garlic in the pan -- I mortar-and-pestled it into a paste and briefly sauteed it before adding the wine. Because we were waiting for Shawn to get home from work, the garlic infused in the wine for a good hour before I added the cheese. I don't think the nutmeg was missed in that respect. Mascarpone, did you notice the taste of your wine in the fondue? It really surprised me how much I did and in those debates about using a cheap wine in cooking, I would not hesitate to use a better wine in a dish like this. With so few ingredients and the amount of wine being used (in my case, a full two cups), I think a good wine is essential.

OHMIGOD! Shame on me for not remember THAT one! Thank you, Tana.

This is weeeeiiirrrrdddd..... I could SWEAR there 'was' a Lehr's Greenhouse in San Diego 20 years ago. My only mea culpa is that when I went to San Diego State, it was the very year that Playboy named it THE party school of the nation. Does that explain anything???

Mascarpone, I was curious how your's came out. I followed the recipe in The Joy of Cooking using two cups of Gundlach Bundschu's Alsatian-style Gewurtztraminer as the base wine plus the three tablespoons of Kirshwasser. I completely forgot the nutmeg but did paste up four cloves of garlic for my fondue! Thinking that I wanted to serve something besides bread for dipping, I cooked up some tiny potatoes which I had pan-sauteed in a bit of duck fat for extra flavor. What surprised, however, was that the bread worked so much better for a reason I would have never anticipated: While the melted cheese merely adhered to both bread and potatoes, the underlying WINE in the recipe was immediately soaked up by the bread. The potatoes didn't have that ability and I marveled at just how lovely that juicy, winey bread really was with the cheese taste coming at the finish. For cheese, I used equal amounts of Ementhaler, Gruyere, and Comte.

Marie-Louise, you took the words from my mouth! I also started at SDSU and Lehr's was the one place I could have my folks take me to when they visited. And another big welcome to Krys! Keep up the good work and help all of us ex-San Diegans remember the lovelies that town has to offer! Cheers.

A girl after my own heart... You know, there are dozens of restaurants who specialize in Truffle Menus and Game Menus.. I would drive far and wide for a restaurant that showcased hard-to-find mushrooms. There are SO MANY I've never had that seem so illusive. I adore fresh Morels because they are so rare here on the west coast. But we get Lobster mushrooms on occasion that are pretty amazing. Also, 99 Ranch Market gets a pretty fabulous array of Oriental Mushrooms which I always have to try. For those of you in the midwest who get fresh morels very easily, I heartily recommend Saveur's Pheasant and Morel Pie. I have only made it once and it was divine. (I'm sorry I can't provide a link right now - I've got this hideously huge grey cat in my lap who is barely letting me type!)

I'm also using Gruyere and Emmenthaler and every recipe I looked at had cornstarch (I also haven't made fondue in... well.... I think Bux and I might be tied there!). I think the idea of some cornstarch makes sense when you think that a ton of melted cheese has a tendancy towards being oily. I don't know if McGee covers it or not, but I have a feeling that the cornstarch keeps the Grand Meltedness cohesive, instead of separating. To accompany our fondue, I've got a Dr. F. Weins-Prum '03 Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese ($23.99) and an 03 Carl Loewen Leiwener Klostergarten Riesling Kabinett ($16.99). Okay, it was the addition of a Processo and a Loring Pinot that put my wine tab so high...

I'm terribly sorry that Martha didn't plea bargain -- despite the ease at which we bash that woman, she is the Julia of our age, getting folks (men AND women!) to actually cook food instead of heating up TV Dinners. Had she plea bargained when there was an opportunity, she would have served no time. I am still perpetually pissed at my inability to locate Lu's Pear Pims cookies. They market and sell the Orange, the Raspberry, and that hideous Chocolate Mousse, but no Pear to be found. In questioning the company personally, they assured me that they are still made (even though you won't find a picture of it on any of the OTHER Pims products), but alas, alack, no Pear... The entire low-carb industry. Piffle, I say. Piffle! In five or ten years, doctors will have determined yet another disease du jour from the years worth of non-carb consumption. Then the DEA will have to start a whole new round of tests on drugs to counteract the years of carb deprivation... I have a slight grievance against those folks with blogs who utilize chat lists like eG as their personal advertising space. If you are a blogger, great! Put a link to your blog in your signature and, if you feel your latest entry is especially interesting for some reason or another, start a new topic with a link towards that topic and what it contains. Please don't simply re-post the exact same, lengthy entry from your blog over and over and over.... I hardly find Rocco a grievance, but one of the most fabulous examples of a living piece of morphing Conceptual Art there is in our age today. Watch him crumble! Relish in his kaleidoscope of bumbles and foibles at recreating himself! Thrill at Momma's reactionary attempts to maintain a sad sense of normalcy! Think of Andres Serrano's Piss Christ. What about Damien Hirst's Sliced Cow in Formaldehyde? Can a post-modernistic train wreck like Rocco be any less artistic and fascinating? Nay, my friends! I see an NEA grant there... Any other grievences? Yeah... but no sense beating a dead horse, huh?

Since we are all too overwhelmed this holidays with crap and whatnot, it was decided literally this very morning, that a small gathering would take place at my house on XMas eve with me serving fondue and foie gras terrine. I picked up a nice blue enamel fondue pot at Target for about $15.00. The German wines I bought to accompany the gathering put me back over a $100...

I was in a quandry where to post this topic... Media? Wine? I thought it best here, among the Fine Spirits. My third printed article in the Napa Register was titled Some Like It Hot. I was really thrilled to get this assignment as I got to pull from my Victorian research. The article offers a brief (very brief! I was limited to 800 words!) history on Syllabub, Egg Nog, Wassail, and Glogg. Associated recipes were provided by Copia in conjunction to a month-long event they are providing. Note -- I would have posted this earlier, but I honestly thought they didn't run the story as they printed my name as 'Caroline' so when I searched for it online, I couldn't find it. Boy, was I ever surprised when I got the actual paper and saw that my article is really beautifully presented on almost the whole front page of the Wine Business section with a large picture of a snowman mug with a thermometer protruding from it!

The Fine Living Network was just added to my cable line up -- now I am finally seeing more of these shows! Opening Soon is on now and the Thirsty Traveler is on next. Also, our local NPR radio station is started to advertise this channel's existence. We been really enjoying the various wine shows that have been on this new cable channel as well. What a breath fresh air from The Food Network!

Detroit is considered the West Coast?

As always, continue to paint me green with envy and terribly impressed. Keep it up!

I missed this thread earlier and would also like to welcome MaxH -- as a member of Copia, I enjoy it often and like taking visiting guests. I think I am one of the few that don't mind eating at Julia's Kitchen and the artist in me appreciates the different exhibits. I'm getting over the fact that they never hired me... ... but only because I really like my job at Ladera and appreciate what Copia is trying to do.