gfweb

Stayed at the Grand Hotel du Bordeaux. A really first class joint with some charming quirks eg my room was up an elevator then a flight of (grand) stairs then down a long hall then another elevator down a half floor. There's a Mich 1 star in the hotel I was told, but never had the chance to eat there Things livened up a lot after dark... Dinner the first night was at a bistro a few blocks away. Some jamon iberico waiting to be shaved...it was excellent A small tin of a country pate at each place along with lots baguette. The fat on top looks gross, but it did taste very good. Second (third?) round of appetizers. Big local oysters. I had a few and they were good, but I can't shake my respect for the hepatitis virus so intake was limited. Main dish...steak frites. Was supposed to have an au poivre sauce which eventually arrived. It was a nice piece of meat for France. Lots of local vin rouge was consumed and a good time was had by all. Cheese course. The comte was particularly nice. I suggested that it reminded me a bit of aged gouda which pleasantly pissed off my French friends in a humorous way.

I had business in Bordeaux a few weeks before Christmas and managed to eat well and see a bit. Preflight at the USAir club in Philly "Sparking wine?" Yes please I've settled in to a rut I believe A quite competent shrimp appetizer from USAir Nicely cooked chicken with a spiced bread stuffing After landing at deGaulle and the usual CF trying to connect to Bordeaux. What a disaster that airport is for connections. One must take multiple buses which arrive irregularly...allow at least 2 hours...crazy place. But arriving is Bordeaux all is calm and French. To me the place looks more like Paris than Paris. It is a UNESCO-protected place, which means that all construction has to conform to style standards. It also appears that store signs etc must be restrained. There is none of the garishness of Paris. Charming foggy afternoon. The Opera House

In the beginning I was surprised about odors that escape during SV. Apparently some smells get through intact plastic; allspice for example or the smoke smell in smoked meat. Not so surprising, small non-polar molecules could get through plastic I suppose...and it doesn't take many to be a detectable smell. I forget the threshold of olfaction for stuff, but it can be very low eg a few ppm (IIRC). I've never seen the plastic flakes.

I cook daily on a propane stove x 20 years . So long as the stove is adjusted/designed for propane there is no discernible difference between LP and natural gas. The only real issue is whether the propane people keep the tank filled.

I really wouldn't worry about blowing-up. Doesn't happen.

The standard is to have propane tanks above ground in the US. I don't know if this is code or just the way things are done. A buried tank would be hard to check for leaks and would have to be more corrosion resistant than the usual type. I live in the land of tank propane and have never heard of an explosion. If the hunters were firing incendiary rounds...perhaps. The biggest danger to a tank is a nick from a snowplow, but this is easily prevented by proper placement.

Me.But by default...no competition really. Parents/aunts cooked 1950s overdone meat and limp veg well into the 80s. Lots of canned/frozen food. They liked it fine, I never did. I grew up in a loving family with yucky food.

You can use a old fashioned thermos with a glass liner SO LONG AS YOU DRILL A VENT HOLE IN THE CAP TO PREVENT EXPLOSIONS. I have done this for years quite safely. The only downside is the small volume of most thermoses. You could probably use a insulated plastic drink carboy like you see at picnics or construction sites to get a larger volume. SO LONG AS YOU DRILL A VENT HOLE IN THE CAP TO PREVENT EXPLOSIONS. Don't forget the vent.

I say no. It is bread-like in consistency and made with yeast. It is a roll and rolls are bread.

Mundane issue but at the same time critical. Burned hands are no fun. One is kept dry for hot handles and one is for wiping. I like blue striped fairly thick cotton ones.

Do you preheat the popover pan, if so when does it go in the oven? I'd put in the shortening and preheat it while mixing the batter. Wait ten minutes then ladle in the batter

Toast is for people older than I.

I'd like to see a head to head comparison. Did he cite any data? I'm willing to believe if it was tested.

you might throw a chunk of cheddar or gruyere into the YP cup. not authentic, but better.

Good point, maybe a pre-SV for the meat, then again with everything in the basin for a second time? Looking at Nigella's recipe, I think this might work well

Popover pans give a taller product than a muffin pan, but both are great. Getting the pan and oil screaming hot before pouring in the batter give a nice outcome.

I think that this is right. The thing wouldn't rise at all. But the essence of steaming a pudding (and the pain in the ass of it) is controlling the heat by having a constant level of steam. For constant, don't worry about it heat; SV is the thing. Why not just plop your vessel into the SV so it is ~ 50% immersed and cover with the traditional towel. I'd pick a higher temp...90C? so as to get close to steam and keep your times the same. I'm very interested in your expt. This year we abandoned the steamed persimmon pud because of the PITA factor and made individual sticky toffee puddings (which were great BTW).

Good point. Sometimes premade is more efficient, as Annabelle cites re making a little bit of soup. Sometimes premade tastes better because the producer has access to ingredients and techniques that we don't. Sometimes premade is speedy when speed is required (eg dinner for a bunch of kids who don't notice the difference between home made mac and cheese and the crap in the Kraft box.) But sometimes its just dumb IMHO, like Lunchables which might save all of 30 seconds in prep time and cost about 10X home made school lunches. Or even worse, Uncrustables (which always sound more like a kids underwear than food).

It was much cleaner than an Eastern US city. Even the modern areas of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were well-kept. One downside only...street signs are all in Hebrew, so I had to navigate by landmarks eg towers or the ocean. A working GPS would've been nice. (Note to self for next time) On the last evening we went through the Israel museum's special exhibit on Herod. Fabulous! And its coming to a city near you sooner or later. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a US tour. I was a bit unclear in my review of the hotel's breakfast spread. Only the cheeses sucked. Fish, fruit and bread were great. The baked goods were all too sweet for my taste, but looked good if you like that sort of thing.

Just so. Like everything else in life kids need to be taught to cook by example. As the twig is bent etc. Our kids, 22 and 20, don't cook much, but they saw us doing it and sort of know how. Both can and do prepare favorite dishes about weekly while at school. Sausage and peppers for one, pulled pork for the other. And our son just asked for a teflon pan for eggs and fish, because his cheapo pan warped. :-)

Two days of work. Not many photos. This was a bowl of hummus served for lunch one day. Single serving! Looked unappetizing to my US eyes but the Israelis all cleaned their plates. Departure day and a whole day to kill since the flight was about midnight. We went up to Jerusalem, about 50 miles and 2500ft in elevation away. This photo is from the Mt of Olives looking over the Garden of Gethsemane at Old Jerusalem. Now looking back at Mt of O from Jerusalem, with the Wailing Wall and Dome of the Rock in the foreground Baked good for sale. The oval things are called Jersualem Bagels. Lots of narrow and mysterious passages in the old city Our guide all of a sudden dove through a hole in the wall about the size of a fireplace. We followed and ended up in this old style bakery with fresh bagels. Guide said he preferred these to the ones on carts because only one dirty hand has touched them. They were less dense than a NYC bagel, not boiled, and served dipped in a salty spice mixture. Nice. A nice pizza for lunch. Better than those in 3/4 of the US A spice vendor in the Arab quarter The back entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre Back to airport food at Ben Gurion's overseas lounge. Beer, wine and stuff to dip things in. Eh. Capt. Jack is on board. for the flight to PHL Essentially the same meal (my choice) as the flight over, but so much better prepared. Wine was still pretty bad.

Dinner at a beach restaurant. Underexposed but properly cooked bass. Tasty Lunch next day. Decidedly un-kosher Japanese restaurant. Competent , but not "wow" suchi. A few of us wandered around at dinnertime and ended up at a place whose name translates as Benny the Fish Guy. Four of us at at a four seat table. The waiter came over and said, "no no, you must move" and put us at an 8 seat table. Okaaay. Then we saw why. After ordering the entrees, 8 or ten dishes came out that we hadn't ordered. Spicy fish, eggplant, salad, shrimp, potatoes, cod...and others. Then came the entrees... Old Jaffa is an amazing mix of ancient and modern. The plant in the planter on the right is what we'd call Wandering Jew in the US. I asked my Israeli hosts what its name was, expecting a different name...wandering Arab perhaps? Their answer..."Wandering Jew, we wandered a lot" A peace offering left in my room from my hotel. There was a dispute over internet access. I contended that $30/day should get more speed than dial-up. They suggested that the problem resided in my computer (even though internet worked fine if I carried the computer to the bathroom). I didn't eat the fruit, though I should have it since represented $90 worth of internet non-access.

The humongous breakfast buffet at the hotel. All sorts of fruit and bread. Cooked souffle, potatoes, smoked and salted fish, cheeses (but none any good, really) My first breakfast in Israel With some time to kill, I took a cab from my hotel at Herzliya to Tel Aviv ~10 minutes. Tel Aviv really reminds me of San Diego. Same climate and to me, the same feel. I like it. My second breakfast (same day) Breakfast bread selection at a beach restaurant in TA. Nice. A selection of dips for the bread. Sweet, savory, cheesy. All very nice. We would do well to replicate this sort of thing in the US. A fritata of sorts with potatoes and leeks. Very tasty... and a lot of food. The ubiquitous chopped tomato/cucumber/onion salad. Very nice. I will bring this back next summer.

I had business in Tel Aviv just before Thanksgiving. We'll start with the beginning of the trip of Philadelphia to Tel Aviv at the USAir Club with preflight pino grigio and cheese. After boarding we were given the choice of "sparkling wine or water" before take-off. Duh. Jack Daniels, technically bourbon, but inferior stuff I was forced to drink. The appetizer was a cold chicken thing with fried goat cheese on the side. Actually tasty. USAir has upgraded its food and its mostly OK. Sadly, the kitchen at PHL is not great and food on flights originating there isn't as good as from other cities. Salad with a nice garlicky cream dressing "Sideways" on the video thing. What a depressing movie. Unsympathetic main characters with lives of frustration and desperation. I watched the whole thing. Filet and roesti potatoes. Over cooked and limp respectively. Not up to USAir standards Cheese course Breakfast omelet and turkey (?) sausage First mistake of the trip. I arrived on Friday afternoon. Beautiful sunset on the beach at Tel Aviv, but the end of cooked food for a day (at least at my hotel). A last second reprieve at a beach bar. Fried caulilflower with a creamy dilly dip and a sweet fig? dip. Nice with the beer, which kept coming after sundown. Gin and tonic at the hotel bar. If you ever need to know how to spell "tonic water" in Hebrew, there it is. Premade tunafish sandwiches with harissa and olives. I ejected the olives. Tasty, but a little sparse on the tuna.

Good advice!