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I use it, it works fine. The oven is a GE electric. All the gunk turns to ash, which is easy to wipe off. There's a latch on the door, so you can't open it, but the fumes still ventilate out from it. I keep a window open and I make sure I'm home to watch it. The cycle does take a few hours. Keep your pet out of the kitchen, especially any pet birds, and in another well-ventilated room. They should be fine. Jeffrey Steingarten once wrote a memorable article about how he hacked his self-cleaning oven to make pizza. He messed with it so it would override the temperature safety controls. As I recall, the excessive heat created a vacuum in the oven, and he couldn't open the oven door when the pizza was done. When the oven finally cooled down enough to unlatch, his pizza was a lump of coal. Not to mention, his apt building neighbors probably did not appreciate his efforts when they read about them in Vogue.

I think it's an ambiguity of translation. I've encountered a couple chef-teachers who instructed their students to "toast" the rice for risotto. It only meant heating the rice in oil for a minute or so until the rice is hot and covered with oil. (One teacher said, "almost popping.") The rice is not supposed to be browned. This frying step was supposed to help prevent the rice from turning mushy during cooking. ETA: The "toasting" step is done after cooking the aromatic base, in the same pan. Not so different from the traditional method.

That's how I make it now, in a skillet for easier evaporation. I first learned the classic method which requires constant stirring. It was such a bore that I never made risotto. Then later, in two different cooking demos, I observed the chefs do other cooking in the kitchen, and only give the pot a stir when it seemed to need it. Aha! I don't think cream is traditional but I wouldn't be offended if someone put it in. I'd even eat it if you put a plateful in front of me. However, traditional risotto is not about cheese, cream, or even rice--at least as I understand it. It's about showcasing great homemade chicken stock. Vincent Schiavelli, in his memoir-cookbook Papa Andrea's Sicilian Table, tells the wonderful story of his grandfather looking out at a gray, rainy morning, and saying, "Today I will make risotto." His grandfather's first step in making risotto was to hustle to the market for a fresh chicken for the broth. Papa Andrea's non-traditional recipe for risotto included two beaten eggs stirred in at the end of cooking time. I've tried it, and it does make the risotto richer. But I prefer non-egg risotto myself. Joanne Weir teaches a risotto-cooking method that involves one last ladleful of stock, then letting the mixture sit off the heat, covered, for 5 mins before service. I've had mixed results with this method (sometimes I've wondered, Why bother?). I'll throw it out there as another variation on cooking risotto: http://www.joanneweir.com/recipes/mains/risotto-with-zinfandel-and-radicchio.html I suspect the let-it-sit method works better with carnaroli or vialone nano rices, which I find tougher and chewier than arborio, and less inclined to mushiness. BTW, I've tried that zinfindel-radicchio risotto, it's unusual and showy (with that reddish color) and tasty too.

Have you been cleaning them in the dishwasher? Someone I know with a Wolf stove had that problem. The best we could figure out, it was the dishwasher detergent. Dishwasher detergent (I was told) is not a conventional soap, but an acid. Acid reacts with iron to create rust.

Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do!! I like them, Sam-I-am! I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you! Thank you! And I'll have some of that gnocchi, too. (Quoted with a nod to Dr. Suess.)

There comes a time when an ingredient is so outlandish that I reject the recipe as "authentic." Ketchup in a pad thai recipe, for example. But that boundary line is flexible for me. I know it when I see it. A few months ago I took a cooking class with an Ethiopian woman who has begun to teach around here. She taught a menu based on her family's recipes. Some of her ingredients: Red wine, olive oil, rosemary, and oregano. Huh? I didn't say anything during the class, but did some research afterwards. Italy tried to colonize Ethiopia several times beginning in the 19th century. The Ethiopians rejected their Italian overlords, but kept some of their wine and food influences. (Good choice.) After more than a hundred years, are those ingredients "authentic" to Ethiopian cooking? Not to purists maybe, but surely to some Ethiopian families who have cooked with those ingredients for generations.

"The Best Apples To Buy and Grow," by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (2005) says McGowen.

He was just being dramatic. I use that method to separate garlic cloves all the time, with all varieties of garlic, fresh or well-aged. Even hard-neck garlic? If I tried that with the garlic I have right now, I'd be afraid of piercing my hand! A hard neck bulb of garlic. I think. Anyway, there's a stiff central stem on it. Pull off the stem and peel off some of the outer skin, so that the cloves are exposed. How you usually prep garlic, right? Turn the garlic bulb upside-down. Place your palm on the root end of the bulb. Ideally, your palm is parallel to the tabletop. Use your other hand to position the bulb so you can apply maximum pressure on the bulb. Press your palm against the root end of the garlic bulb. SPLAT. The garlic bulb breaks apart. (Below)The little nubbin in the left-hand corner is the garlic bulb base. Notice how cleanly the cloves separate. I can't believe you guys. Are you going to let a girl beat you at this?

He was just being dramatic. I use that method to separate garlic cloves all the time, with all varieties of garlic, fresh or well-aged. You don't have to use your hand like a mallet, for chrissakes. First, remove the top stem if necessary so that the cloves are exposed and can spread out. Invert the garlic head, put your palm on the root end, and press on it. I lean on it with the weight of my arm. The garlic head will break apart into cloves.

I'm salivating over the foie gras gnocchi and the dim sum. I'll have to make it out to that restaurant. At first I googled "East Ocean restaurant" which took me to some place in Alameda, and that made no sense with your pic of the view. Then I looked again at the pix, oh...Hong Kong East Ocean restaurant, in Emeryville. That makes sense. The pic is worth a close look, too. The Port of Oakland on the left (container apparatus), and a very famous bridge on the right side of the pic (two little uprights visible, the right-side upright partly obscured by the hill, which must be...the Marin headlands). The big bridge is the Bay Bridge, leading to San Francisco across the water.

Pix of my favorite supermarket. I am so pleased. Yes, I have shopped at the Bowl a long time too, even during its "bowling alley" days. For people who wonder what that means, the "old location" that ScottyBoy mentioned was the original location for this store (now closed), and it was a revamped bowling alley. The very first Berkeley Bowl was about pins, not food. When the supermarket owners bought the place, they didn't bother changing the name. I like the new store, Berkeley Bowl West, too.

That sounds like the Pizza Al Crudo I tried recently, and it was a knockout. It was a fresh-baked hot pizza crust, topped with a cherry tomato salad, arugula, prosciutto, and curls of parmigiano-reggiano. For the lunchbox version, you could bake a mini-pizza crust the night before, and pack it with the toppings in separate containers: cherry tomato salad (with olive oil and basil), arugula or other salad greens, parmigiano curls or other grated cheese, any other toppings. At school your son can distribute the toppings on the pizza crust and munch away. It's fresh, it's healthy, and there's no congealed cheese issue to divide you.

I've passed Wood Tavern a bunch of times, but never eaten there. Now I will have to go. Scottyboy, thanks for a great blog.

Norm Matthews, congrats to your son for a good-looking sandwich. For dinner here, Roast Duck and Asian Pear Tostadas. Crisped roast duck slices, thin slices of Asian pear (aka apple-pear), cole slaw with a spicy sweet and sour dressing, and a drizzle of hoisin sauce.

Great food, everyone. Paul Bacino, I like the Greek burger. JMahl, you've reminded me that it's been awhile since I cooked stuffed peppers, and I should get on it. Kim Shook, I liked the football feast. Looks like you're ready for the season. Tonight's dinner here, a sandwich of homemade Calabrian sausage and spicy peperonata, and side dish of sun-dried zucchini. For dessert, homemade chocolate gelato. The recipes are from Rosetta Costantino's My Calabria. The sausage is a pork sausage with fennel seed, sweet paprika, and ground hot pepper--very good! For the peperonata, I stewed onions, garlic, tomatoes, and various colored gypsy peppers, along with some spicy padron peppers. The chocolate gelato is supposed to have a spicy kick from ground hot pepper, but I decided to go for a milder spice of ground cinnamon. The gelato is intense and chocolate-y, made from cocoa, and straightforward to cook. To make the zucchini side dish, I started with a pile of sliced zucchini that I sun-dried myself. You have to use the big, tasteless, mature zucchini that nobody else wants. Baby zucchini (I'm told) will fall apart during drying. The sun-drying process concentrates the sweet flavor of those big zucchini, and gives them a pleasant crunchy texture. Usually I loathe zucchini (I'm always giving away the zucchini from my CSA box), but I'm a fan of this dish. After the dried zucchini are boiled briefly to tenderize them, they're sauteed with garlic, olive oil, sweet paprika, and ground hot pepper. The method and recipe for sun-dried zucchini are in My Calabria.

June 24 (St John's Day) in Italy, to make nocino. Gravenstein apple festival in Sonoma County, California, around mid-August. The best of the heirloom apples, IMO. Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico, late Oct-early Nov. Feast foods at the markets, housewives lined up at mills to grind their special blends of mole. Go there for some great mole. Dungeness crab season opens in San Francisco, sometime in November. Get the local crabs while you can, it's a short season.

Top with toasted, buttered breadcrumbs. ETA: I should clarify. Fresh breadcrumbs, not the breadcrumbs in cans. Make fresh bread crumbs in a food processor, toss with melted butter, S&P. Spread out on a parchment- or foil-lined sheet pan, and brown in a 350 degree oven until they are golden brown. Occasionally stir them around, and watch they don't burn. They will add buttery crunchiness to your dish.

I've made this dish of seared tuna, & it was well-liked: Prepare a salad of arugula, cukes, and radishes. Make a shallot vinaigrette of olive oil, champagne vinegar, minced shallots, S&P. Dress the salad with some of the vinaigrette, and reserve the rest. In a hot pan with olive oil, sear a thick steak of the tuna on both sides; then slice thinly. Arrange the tuna slices on the salad. Spoon the reserved vinaigrette on the tuna. Garnish with chopped, oil-cured olives.

I'll say upfront that I know little of European food history. However, this recipe makes sense to me if those "tender plants" are tender leaves of lettuce (or any other tender, big leaves). Young grape leaves? People could scoop up the mixture with lettuce, roll up the leaf (cochlea?), and chow down. Or perhaps the mixture was more soupy, and the leaves were dipped into it and eaten. The recipe comes from a physician. Was he advocating eating more veggies for good health? I've encountered this kind of dish in Asian cooking, specifically Thai cooking. Savory bits and dips are placed on a platter with various kinds of raw leaves and young vegetables. People are supposed to use the leaves and vegetables to pick up or dip into the other foods, and eat the whole thing. No utensils.

Freezing any piecrust beforehand helps with the sliding problem. I learned to make those little tartlets with pate sablee in lemon curd tartlets. Because it's a different pastry, maybe these suggestions are inapplicable. Anyway, here goes. At least the method is simple. I used regular 4" tartlet pans, not springform, and I buttered them. After rolling out the pastry, I cut circles with a biscuit cutter and inserted the pastry into the pans. You can mess around with the pastry so it fits the pans; I've found small tartlets more forgiving than regular-sized tarts if you do this. All the tartlets go onto a half-sheet pan, then into the fridge (for well-chilled), or better, the freezer, until they're solid. Pop the tartlets from fridge/freezer into a preheated hot oven and bake. To remove, upend the pan, rap sharply against a tabletop and the pastry should fall out. good luck...if you have a chance, let us know how it goes.

I appreciate what people are saying, that not all disabilities are readily apparent. Your point is well-taken. Nevertheless, I have observed service dogs that are behaving badly in supermarkets, raising public health issues. What, if anything, should be done about that? The Customer Service Rep yesterday said that she had received other complaints of service dogs nosing food within their reach. She wasn't at all surprised by what I was telling her. Lights19, thank you for the information. That explains what I've observed. My neighbors have a dog that is a "service dog" for schools. The dog is a big, strong dog with a nervous disposition (looks like a labrador-boxer mix). He barks at everybody and everything that goes past their house. I went out of my way to approach the dog, let him take my scent, then pet him. Now he doesn't bark at me. He still barks at everybody else, though. I've watched this dog walking with my neighbor. The dog lunges on his leash, away from his owner, at anything that distracts or antagonizes him. His owner admits the dog is difficult to control. I've wondered, how could this dog be a service dog? Yet he is. His owners could take him into a supermarket if they wanted to. Fortunately they have the sense not to do that. So far. Some people mention Seeing Eye Dogs. I've known people who have trained Seeing Eye Dogs and observed some training myself. Those dogs are taught to ignore all distractions and stay close to their owners. In supermarkets and other public places, Seeing Eye Dogs are no problem--they behave better than some people! But when I compare Seeing Eye Dogs with some service dogs I've observed, the "service dogs" appear far less trained and less able to handle public places. The service dog owners are inattentive to their animals, also. A couple weeks ago I was traveling on the BART commuter train. A young woman with a small dog, wearing the "service dog" collar, sat next to me. That woman did not need that service dog in order to ride the train. Why? Because it wasn't her dog. In conversation she told me that it was a service dog for her boyfriend. Why she was riding the train with the dog, I don't know. My point is, people are allowed to take service dogs into supermarkets and other public places, whether or not the dog is needed there, and personnel are forbidden by law to ask some pertinent questions. As I understand it, the person only has to show the dog is certified as a service dog. Anybody can take a "service dog" anywhere that service dogs are permitted, no other questions asked. IMO, that's causing some problems.

This was not the first time I've encountered a poorly behaved service dog. On another occasion, I noticed a woman had brought her chihuahua into a supermarket. Again, the dog had that "service dog" collar. The woman was holding the dog in her arms as she leaned over some baked goods. Then, when she straightened up, without her noticing, the dog swiveled his head to a nearby shelf that held "hearth breads" in open wrappers and started sniffing around. On another occasion, I was crossing a park when a small dog came running out from a nearby children's playground. No leash on him. He came right at me, barking, and started snapping at my heels. His owner showed up at a trot and said, "Don't worry! Don't worry! He's a service dog!" ???!!!!?? I'm willing to believe that dogs that have been specifically trained for disabilities are well-trained and behave well in public situations. They receive a lot of training--and so do their owners, in what is appropriate for their dogs. However, not all service dogs are the same. There appear to be some service dogs not well-trained and/or not intended to treat disabilities, and they are showing up where they shouldn't be, and behaving badly.

Today while I was at the supermarket, a middle-aged woman with a dog passed by me. The dog was on a leash and had a "service dog" collar. The dog was not a seeing eye dog. More importantly, his owner appeared to have no physical disability whatsoever. The dog routinely wandered away from his owner, jerking at the leash because he was curious about the food bins. When his owner stopped to talk to someone, oblivious to what her dog was doing, the dog stuck his head into a low-lying bin of meat products and sniffed around. After I finished shopping, I went to the Customer Service Desk to complain that the store had allowed a dog like that inside. To my surprise, the Customer Service Rep was angrier about the situation than I was. She said that owners regularly brought in these "Service Dogs," especially lap dogs, and the store personnel were pissed off (her words) that they couldn't do anything about it. Apparently the law permits any kind of service dog into supermarkets and restaurants, and personnel can't even ask what kind of service dog it is. I'm guessing that the owner I saw today was not disabled at all, and her dog was one of those service dogs that visit schools and senior centers--not trained anywhere as well as seeing eye dogs, for instance. I was also angry that the woman appeared not to need the dog to do her shopping. If a person has a disability, of course he or she should have the dog inside. But from what the Customer Service Rep was telling me, too many service dog owners are abusing the law--which was intended to help disabled people--and they're bringing their pets into grocery stores for their own convenience. Have you encountered this "service dog" situation in your supermarket or restaurant? Your thoughts?

I did a quick check of my kitchen cabinets, fridge, and freezer, and came up with the fats in use at my house. (I also realized that it's time to clean out my cabinets again. But I digress.) * butter -- sweet unsalted for general use; Europ style cultured for making ghee, because it has less water in it. * olive oil -- everyday quality for frying; sprinkling quality for salads, pizza topping, etc. * peanut oil -- for stirfries * heavy cream -- usually for coffee or desserts; but then, cream can be the principal fat in cream scones (like this recipe, which is very rich and delicious http://pghtasted.blogspot.com/2008/09/cream-scones-with-chocolate-chunks.html ). * sesame oil -- for drizzling on some Asian dishes * coconut oil -- the thick white stuff in the jar, for some Southern Indian dishes And also * coconut milk--remember the layer of coconut cream at the top of the can fries the spices in a Thai curry * mayonnaise, too, but maybe this is just a variation on salad oil, a condiment. Though a former neighbor used to spread mayo on hot dog rolls and grill 'em, and people loved those rolls. A few weeks ago I was making Thai rotis with a group of people, and we used palm oil for griddling. I don't recommend it. It's neutral-tasting, that's good; it's somewhat indigestible, that's not good. Next time I'm going to try ghee. Then there's lard. There's lard and there's leaf lard. I'm picking up some leaf lard tomorrow for pie crust, so add that to the list. I guessing that any "best" criteria and guidelines will be strictly personal. People gravitate to certain fats for certain uses because they like it. That means eating a fair amount of fat in different applications over the years to figure out what you like--not exactly what you're aiming for (less fat). Oh well.

Sardines, fresh anchovies, mackerel, and possibly bluefish might belong to a class in themselves--not only are they dark-fleshed and oily, but also somewhat liver-ish in their taste. At least to me, anyway. The other kinds of fish could pair well with an acidic or tart fruit like mango, a citrus, or tomatoes. Going back to your original dish, you could substitute another kind of fish, either a white fish or salmon, lose the cantaloupe and substitute a fruit with sharper acidity (nectarines? tomatoes?) and you probably would have something good. Recently I tried this sardine dish at a restaurant: crispy fried sardines over cooked chickpeas and tender-crisp (lightly sauteed) onions, with a dressing of good olive oil, a dab of vinegar, and a drop of lemon oil. It was a variation on the classic tuna and beans combo. Very good! A possibility if you want to play more with sardines.