Jinmyo

In case it hasn't been made clear enough by everyone: Oven: HOT HOT HOT. Can it go hotter? No? Sure? Then preheat for an hour. Basically, the toppings need to cook through and brown befoire the crust becomes a big round dumb old cracker.

Good for you, tommy. I'm not so hot with dough. I roll it into the basic shape, let it rest, then pick it up and let it hang over my fingers, hands, forearms and work it around. Slap it down on the peel with a bit of semolina, finish shaping it there. Betcha Steve Klc will be helpful.

Certainly if you show an interest and ask questions, allowing yourself to be educated, the French get all paternal over you.

Consuming more than a "medicinal" dose leads to head-aches, vomiting involuntary evacuation of the bowels, foaming at the mouth and other side effects. The psychoactive ingredient is thujone, which is structurally similiar to THC. Good luck, LML.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Here in Ottawa in July our favourite spectator sport is watching Mounties throw penguins to the polar bears. Sometimes the grizzlies get them though and we have to go into overtime. The penguins just hate that.

Oh. That's a rock. No wonder my back hurts. Watching people...drive...cars?

I just thought I'd put a plug in for a great book: Barcelona by Robert Hughes. Very nice post, Wilfrid.

Do tell.

I agree with Fat Guy about aceto balsamico tradizionale. This is not vinegar. It is not an ingredient. While I might put a few drops on a slice of parmesan or pecorino, I tend to just put a few drops in spoon and set them out along with other courses. (Or I just take a furtive swig from the bottle.) It really is that good. I've never tasted any over 25 years old but I was just promised some. Which is how it is I came upon this old thread.

A Romanian friend who left in the early 1980s told me that back then when you went to the shop to buy a pound of meat, you got a pound of meat. It might be chicken, pork, beef, horse and from any part of the animal. When you bought a knife you got a knife. For boning, carving, slicing bread whatever. She was amazed that there were so many different kinds of knives in Israel.

I was just given a bottle of Rao's olive oil. I had asked for an Umbrian oil because I've had Tuscan and Sicilian up to here. (gestures) Not that I'm that knowledgeable, I just wanted to try something else. Um. I'm not so sure about this. It kind of feels like buying a restaurant's pre-made sauces or salad dressing or something. My mouth is all soaked with strong tea right now so I'm not going to try it until later. Has anyone else tasted this?

Let's hear it for Waverly Root and The Food of Italy and The Food of France.

Yes. If you're going to spring for a stone you'd might as well get a peel or two.

A very interesting and well-done review by Malawry. Yes, I gathered from Food Arts that he at one time had 12 restaurants and that even though he's done to two, people never think he's in town. So the Lab is one way of showing that he is. Look. Over there. Behind the glass.

It's definitely worth the pittance it costs. Just crank the oven up to 475 F or higher. If you don't have a wooden peel, just slide the pizza or flatbread or whatever from a cutting board with a quick snap. 7 to 10 minutes. Again, if no peel use a large offset spatula. Now tommy's eating gooood pizza. [edit:] Oh. What would and wouldn't be on a tommy's pizza? Thin crust?

I've read a few articles on Roberto Donna's restaurant (the "Laboratorio" or "workplace") within a restaurant (Galileo). The most recent is in the January/February issue of Food Arts. Just curious to hear views.

Catseye, making a raft of egg white and ground meat to capture impurities is a standard, hallowed, and proven technique. I don't find cheesecloth as effective as a wet paper towl lining a double mesh strainer or a coffe filter lining a chinoise. And of course one never pours but instead decants with a ladle.

I have never eaten at Craft or CraftBar and hesitate to drift between the Two Steves in titanic struggle. Nonetheless, hear my yowp. I am interested in the point about the five kinds of mushrooms and choosing arias etc. I don`t go to concerts because I much prefer the deviltry I can get up to with recordings. I will often choose five different versions of a work, for example the 2nd movement of Bruckner`s 9th, load up the CD player, and listen to one after the other. This is my idea of fun. I would appreciate being able to do the same thing in a culinary setting. Of course I run my own little taste tests of shoyu, of olive oil, of a range of similiar cheeses. But that`s nothing compared to the ease of being able to sit down and have five different kinds of mushrooms on five different plates brought at once.

I love that two pan method for sandwiches too. Iève tried it on a rib eye steak and wasn't that thrilled.

Katherine, sorry for the tardiness of my reply but this is one of the few boards I don't look on very often. Yes, pickles are much easier. As I remember, I got 16 1.5 litre bottles of sake. They were uneven. Some I made into a kind of vinegar, the others were fine but not great. Or even good if I applied the standards I would bring to sake made by someone else. ;)

Re: step 4. I generally whip the eggs in a rice bowl with the tips of hashi. Hashi are Japanese style "chopsticks" which are slender and come to a point, unlike the blunt ends of Chinese "chopstricks". The opening the ends of the hashi slighlty, I gently pour the egg from the bowl between the hashi in a thin stream, moving the bowl and hashi simultaneously.

cabrales, what an excellent post. For further on meinjin, do check out the links she supplied here: http://www.egullet.com/cgi-bin....start=0 Scroll waaaay down. But then go back and read the thread from the beginning.

Ground soy can sometimes be a reasonable alternative to ground meats. TVP (kibbles 'n bits) take much more work to make edible than is worth it. The best vegetarian "mock" meat product is meinjin (in Chinese, in Japanese could it be... seitan?). This is derived from washing the starches away from the gluten in wheat. Meinjin literally means "the marrow of wheat or noddles". It can be found at health food stores for around ů for a few ounces or in cans in Chinatown for about ũ.75. The health food store stuff is as wan, pale and unhealthy as the employees usually are. The stuff from Chinatown is usually labelled "mock pork" "mock duck", or "mock chicken". They need to be thoroughly rinsed of can gack and then seasoned. A mixture of Dijon, olive oil, ancho chile powder and so on does the trick. Roast it at around 375 for half an hour and it will get kind of crispy at the edges. Generally, I think it best to not think of stuff like this as meat substitutes but as alternatives. They can in no way approximate the flavour profiles of meats. But they can be good sources of protein. The Chinese excel at mock meats, though. Chinese Buddhism was heavily influenced by a vegetarian strand of thought in some Indian texts, particularly chapter 6 of the Lankavatara sutra so they've been doing fake meat for a long long time. Buddhism arrived there in 80 C.E., the Lankavatara in the 400s. A meal a long time ago at a restaurant in Hong Kong whose name I forget provides a great example. They had mock everything. Mock duck involved: layers of yuba (soy milk skin) deep-fried until crispy for the skin soft silken tofu for the fat meinjin for the meat, moulded around... wooden bones. Tasted nothing like duck of course but a great deal of fun. Oh, the tinned mock duck stuff has a stippling on some of the pieces to represent skin. indiagirl, might I suggest you buy a few u10 shrimp (really big bugs), split their shells, extract the colon-thread thing, grill them and have them with your favourite curry and rice? (You can save the shells to make stock or deep-fry them until they are crunchy, salt them, and eat them like chips.) (Edited by Jinmyo at 9:54 pm on Feb. 5, 2002)

300 bowls of ramen? That is truly exceptional, BON. Do you like soba and udon as well? Korean food is wonderful, isn't it? Elements of Chinese cuisine but heavily influenced by Japanese but with chiles! I have several huge jars of different kinds of kimchee in the refrigerator. I think I might just go and munch on a kimchee baby daikon.