Katie Meadow

I finally took the plunge and made my first batch. I used the recipe for swiss chard malfatti in Amanda Hesser's NYT book, but, being me, I couldn't help tinkering with it. Frankly the specified amounts of butter and eggs were frightening. I used the basic ingredients and technique. My first problem was that the chard purveyer at the farmers' market didn't have a scale, and the recipe specified 4 lbs. I went away with two enormous bunches, which I figured might weight close to 3 lbs. I don't have a scale at home either, so I just winged it and used it all; when it was well drained and chopped it seemed like a fair amount. I used almost the amount of ricotta and flour specified, but literally half the butter and half the egg yolks. The end result was far better than I expected for a first try. They were not stiff but rather delicate, but they did just hold their shape sitting on a board for a couple of hours before cooking. They were very chardy, which I liked, light and tasty. I served them as suggested, with a brown butter sage drizzle. Next time I might try them with a fresh tomato butter sauce, or a cooked tomato sauce in the winter. I checked a few other recipes and it seems that they all are wildly different. Some use bread instead of flour, some use no eggs, some use lots of whole eggs, others mostly yolks. And they also differ as to cooking time, even allowing for the fact that the size of the dumplings varies somewhat. Most all recipes say they are done when they float; some recipes say that will take about 3 minutes. Amanda says 8-10 minutes. Mine floated at about 2 minutes, so I left them in to simmer another 5 minutes, which seemed fine. What's your experience making malfatti? Are the quantities of ingredients as flexible as they seem or was I just lucky? Gnocchi seem much less forgiving.

Serious planner. This is probably easier to accomplish (or necessary) if you don't often eat out. And I happen to be in the camp that loves to have leftovers, not only because I have no objection to eating the same entree two days in a row, but because I have an anxiety attack when I look at wasted food and because leftovers is, well, a free lunch. This does not mean that I only shop once a week. We do one main grocery shopping and one supplemental farmers' market trip each week, but I often make some stops on other days for things that need to be fresh, such as meat and seafood or baguettes, etc. And I've developed some quirky attachments to certain edibles and ingredients that I can only get at specialty shops or ethnic markets and that my regular stops don't carry. This doesn't mean that if I see something unexpected that looks great or that I can't resist I don't go for it and figure out how or when to use it later.

I have my share of hardware store Pyrex: pie dish, standard 8 x 8 and 9 x 12, a loaf pan, measuring cups etc. Everything is at least 15 to possibly 40 years old. Two weeks ago we were having dinner and heard a scary noise. My trusty 2-qt pyrex measuring cup that was sitting quietly on its shelf simply cracked into three pieces with no help from anyone. There were no previously visible cracks or flaws in it that I'd noticed. This got heavy use, primarily as a mixing bowl. It was typically hand washed, drain dried and put away. I certainly hadn't used it any differently recently than I have in the last two decades. Poltergeists? I bought a new one; we'll see how long it lasts.

I used to like making a dish called "Cauliflower Pizza Flavor." It consisted of roasting large florets under a layer of pizza sauce and then a topping of grated mozz. It was easy, especially if you had some leftover home-made pizza sauce. And it was a good way to dispense with a lot of cauliflower. And of course it eliminated having to make a pizza dough, so it's questionable that it can be called a true non-pizza pizza, but it satisfied the pizza urge, included a healthy serving of cruciferous vegetable, tasted good and was relatively fast to produce. Chez moi, BYOR.

My best guess is that this is pretty close to the truth. When wings became popular as pub food and were served with blue cheese or ranchy type dressing perhaps the beer soaked people at the table who were having pizza instead of wings saw their opportunity with all those dips at the table. Then maybe it became a requested thing, and pizza joints started to offer dips even if they weren't offering wings. I'm winging it here, and haven't done a stitch of research; clearly I don't care enough to do so, since I wouldn't dip pizza in any kind of dressing unless I was paid. Okay, it must be my age that is the reason I never heard of this. During the nineties I was busy shuttling my kid back and forth from school and after-school activities while happy hour at the pubs was in full swing. By the time I got home I was wasted and needed something stronger than beer. Plus I had to make something for dinner. Somehow I don't see pizza dipped in ranch as the ideal foil for a martini or a straight shot of scotch, do you?

Maybe a close second would be using ranch dressing instead of mayo on a BLT. That way you would get your cured pork, tomato and ranch in one bite.

Thanks to all for these ideas...keep 'em coming! I'm starting to regret we will only be there for two lunches and two dinners. Manuel's sounds like it may be right up my daughter's alley.

Personally I like a mix of approx 2 eggs to 3/4c milk, with a dash of vanilla or other extract. My experience is that the type of bread you use has a major impact on soaking time, so that is one of the variables that matters. I like to cut my bread about 3/4 inch to 1 inch thick. My current favorite bread to use is a sweet rustic batard-like bread. For some reason I find it crisps up on the exterior more readily than challah. The more you soak the bread, and the higher the heat, the more chance of sogginess I think. I saute my slices over a medium to medium-low flame in a modest amount of butter. For some reason I find that challah is prone to curling, thus creating areas that don't brown well. I don't seem to have that problem with a sweet batard, but I have no idea what really causes some breads to stay flat and get evenly crispy and other breads not. Using this type of bread I would say I get about 6 slices of french toast from the amount of custard above. Perhaps the sweet batards I buy don't require as much liquid for absorption as some other breads might.

You might ask your friend what dietary restrictions his surgeon has suggested, if any. You don't want to waste time cooking something your friend shouldn't be eating.

Right you are, and I apologize. I would still be curious to know where this pizza-dipping habit originated, as it's a new one on me. Clearly I don't hang out anywhere that it's practiced.

Is this still a pizza thread? Did I take a wrong turn down to Hades? Who dunks pizza in anything, let alone salad dressing? At first I thought the posters were kidding, but now I'm not so sure. Pizza with ranch, russian or any kind of dressing is one of the weirdest things I can imagine. I'm not a big fan of cold pizza (yes, there are those times in life when it is unavoidable or preferable to nothing at all) but even cold pizza deserves better than dunking. I grew up in New York. I lived in New Mexico for a few years, and then moved to CA. I have never seen or heard of anyone in these three places dunking a slice of pizza. If this means I've lived a sheltered existence I admit I'm glad. Where in America is this custom practiced? And as for eating the middle of the pizza but not the edges, eating only the middle of anything is kinda creepy, whether it be pizza or a sandwich. And wasteful. If you don't appreciate the crust, you must be eating lousy pizza. In which case I'm guessing it isn't so great in the middle, either.

About to make my first visit to Atlanta, and it will be a short one. (In fact it will be my first visit to the Southeast.) The only thing I'm sure of about Atlanta is that it's bigger than I think. We will rent a car for our two night stay, but I don't really want to spend all my time driving around and probably getting lost. I've read over some of the Atlanta threads and I'm guessing the food at Empire State South, JCT or Eugene would please me totally, but the three strikes against them are: price, location and my daughter's contempt for destination dining and consumer excess. We will be staying near Emory, about halfway between the school and downtown Decatur, and I would be fine with some places that are located in East Atlanta/Decatur area. I'm expecting a trip to the Brick Store, since my daughter has become a beer lover recently and has already checked that out, along with some other bars in Decatur. Some places that at least sound promising in the area are: Taqueria del Sol (not that I need to go to Atl for Mexican food), Leon's Full Service, Fox Bros BBQ, Fat Matt's. Any other suggestions for mid price dining or funky neighborhood joints that have good food and fun atmosphere? Local gems? Southern style? Fresh vegetables? Nor do I want to eat Vietnamese or Ethiopian food away from home, but my daughter might appreciate recommendations, as she is missing Berkeley a bit.

EN, fascinating blog, I'm really enjoying it. A question about Oliver's markets: do all three have grills and serve up cooked ribs and corn? I've never been. When we go to Dillon Beach (as we will be this month) we usually take our own food up but use Petaluma for supplemental shopping; by default that means Petaluma market, partly because we can pop in on my SIL, who works two doors down. But Oliver's sounds intriguing, and Cotati isn't too far out of the way. Could you elaborate on the elote preparado? Do you make your own with takeaway grilled corn or does Oliver's do the whole number to go? One more question: do you make your own cajeta or do you buy the stuff in the plastic bottle? If you can get your hands on fresh corn ice cream, cajeta and a bit of salt makes an amazing topping! And of course, happy anniv.

The second interview today, "The Tube Burger," with Michael Specter (after the banana guy) had my husband and me in stitches. Every time Specter opens his mouth to defend the potential upside of growing meat in a test tube he digs his hole a little deeper. By the end of the interview you are utterly convinced that this is an exceptionally bad idea. And Terry asks some of the funniest questions I've ever heard. The description of how to get the baby blob of meat to exercise a muscle on its petri dish is priceless.

Of course it's Italian food, Norm. You are making pizza from traditional ingredients: tomato, flour for a crust, mozz. If I pick up lemongrass, cilantro, little hot red peppers, thai basil and fresh rice noodles I believe I am making a Thai noodle dish. None of the ingredients come from Thailand. Okay, so what's the pizza I made last week? The crust was a basic flour crust. Then went a thin layer of sauce that I made from DOP SM canned imported Italian tomatoes. Over that was a modest amount of good quality cow milk mozz, not imported. The topping was sliced locally grown heirloom tomatoes drained of excessive juice, chunks of fresh Dole pineapple and the finish was a scatter of Thai basil, most likely grown within 50 miles of my house. Given the combination of ingredients (tomato, pineapple and Thai basil) I would say this a sort of Thai pizza. But some might take a quick glance and call it a Hawaiian pizza. The technique was invented in Italy. The ingredients were easily purchased without going too far from home; clearly the canned tomatoes and the pineapple were anything but local and neither was the KA flour. It tasted great. It was pizza. Presumably home cooking is about making yummy food using the best ingredients you can find--given time and budget and location. Surely Italians were growing tomatoes and making pizza before canning was invented, and surely they were making tomato sauce from whatever local tomatoes they grew best, San Marzano or not. I have a friend who is buying locally grown San Marzanos and she is making sauce from them. More power to her if she has the time and enjoys the process. I'm pretty happy with the canned ones. Prices of fresh tomatoes at the farmers' markets around here are anything but a deal; it's possible that her sauce will cost about as much as the sauce I make from the imported DOP. Oh, one more thing. SLK, what is the definition of a trade name? Maybe I don't quite understand what you were saying. Having some first-hand experience with Walla Walla onions, I can tell you that any onion that calls itself a Walla Walla (as some farmers' market vendors in Berkeley call their sweet onions) but which is grown here in northern CA doesn't taste the same as one that comes out the dirt in eastern WA. It may be good and it may be organic, but it isn't a WW onion. And the so-called Vidalia onions that I have bought here in CA don't taste like a fresh WW either. I'm looking forward to trying a real GA Vidalia now that my daughter has moved from WW to Atlanta.

Considering the price of food generally, quality ingredients in particular, the fact that many of us don't have a back yard garden bursting with Italian tomatoes, an average price of about $7 for pizza for two to three people--the bonus being that it's made to order just the way you like it--is a pretty good deal, no? If every home-cooked dinner for two cost that modest amount my food budget would be a lot lower than it is. That pizza oven looks fab, Raoul. Clearly you need to get your own buffalo to really bring down the cost per pie.

We make pizza using KA flour (mostly AP, sometimes a mix of AP and bread flour), a little corn meal, mid-level mozz (not buffalo) and sauce we make at home using San Marzano canned tomatoes. Agreed, those tomatoes are pricey, and the sauce gets cooked down, but I'm guessing that I make enough sauce to do about seven or eight 13-inch pizzas with two 28oz cans. I can't say I figure in the cost of the flour, since flour is just a part of life and we always have it, but a bag of KA flour can make a lot of pizzas. Toppings range from caramelized onions, fresh tomatoes, artichokes, chard, radicchio and yes (go ahead, snicker) pineapple. No meat, we just prefer vegetarian pizza. I'm thinking one large pizza costs us between $6 and $8, depending on toppings. And with only two of us, we end up with a couple of slices left over for lunch the next day.

I'm bumping this up because I've never had much success with frittate and I've not liked most of the ones I've eaten, whether I made them or not. The op presented the question (wow, 10 years ago!) that's always been a stumbling block for me: that is baking vs broiling for the finish. I'm usually turned off by the rubbery quality of frittate. Plus I prefer more stuff and less egg. And I'm not partial to cold eggs, and most people seem to serve these things either room temp or cold, as if there is some tacit understanding that a frittata is the perfect dish for a potluck and benefits from sitting around for a few hours before serving. It's one of those things that I never touch at a potluck. Today I needed to use up some interesting dried pasta that's been sitting around too long because it isn't really enough for two regular portions, a bunch of sweet walla walla onions with a short shelf life, a large bunch of chives, and plenty of eggs. I looked in a variety of books and wasn't too happy with any of the recipes. Then I found Amanda Hesser's pick in her latest NYT doorstop. That doorstop has actually been very useful as a cookbook. In it she has a Lidia recipe for a frittata that includes a new twist. Half the egg gets put in the pan on top of the stove to start it setting, and then the rest gets mixed with the cooked ingredients/veggies etc. and added on top. It continues to cook on top of the stove for a few minutes and then gets placed in the oven to finish. No stirring was involved at any point during cooking. Lidia says 350 degrees and everyone else who does the oven method instead of the broiler says 400. I compromised and set it at 375 and the frittata went in for about 12-15 minutes, until just set, but not golden on the top. I removed it from the oven, flipped it over onto a plate and we ate it hot. It was great. The egg was cooked through but not hard or rubbery, still delicate. I don't know if this extra step is important, or if the oven method is simply better than the broiler, but this was the best frittata I ever ate.

My preferred places to shop in the East Bay are a 20 minute drive from home. We now have one car for the two of us and try to be as efficient as possible. The Berkeley Bowl and the Berkeley Farmers' market are within blocks of each other, so we do that combined shopping once a week. In summer I admit we go to a second farmers' market a different day; the quantity of tomatoes, corn and fresh fruit we consume wouldn't last a week. Besides, ripe tomatoes and peaches and avocados can't sit around for more than a few days before they melt into the counter. I infill as needed for fish or meats, or a change of plans. I'm kind of neurotic about keeping meat in the fridge for any length of time. And there are a couple of specialty shops I go to once a week on average for my cheeses and my ethnic supplies. But it would drive me nuts to shop every day. I've gotten pretty good at long-term menu planning, and even like the challenge of a practically empty fridge for "kitchen sink" night and using up weird left-overs.

Okay, Scotty, being generous and never having met your dad, who otherwise might be quite a sensible person, I'll venture to say that drinking Dr. Pepper that has been thickened by a sludge of white bread and mayo must be an acquired taste.

Without fail I used to request ice cream cake for my birthday. I have no idea where my mother bought it on the upper west side. Never disappointing. Of course I haven't had it in about forty or fifty years.

Mjx, Zoey's is probably the one you remember. I don't know of any other big ice cream parlor on the main drag. It's always busy. One place not worth the hype in Ashland for breakfast: Morning Glory. Waffles were soggy, food uninspired. Popular with theater-goers, it looked like, corny cottage decor. But then, breakfast has to be pretty outstanding for me to be into it. Last month we drove through and had dinner at Thai Pepper, knowing nothing about it. It was late, we needed to eat, and it was crowded. The outdoor space is downstairs by the creek, very pleasant and out of the wind, if there is any. Food was pretty good, a couple of dishes excellent. Cocktails are generous but tend toward the too-sweet and silly.

We made what may be our last visit to WW at the end of July. We were rushed and busy packing up our daughter, so there were not too many opportunities to try new places, and one of our two nights there was a Monday; note that just about everything is closed on Monday in WW. You can, however, go to Jimgermanbar in Waitsburg on Monday night. Last time we did that though Jim and Claire took the day off and the food wasn't as good. For our last celebratory night we went with several of our daughter's friends to the Green Lantern. I'm totally sorry we didn't discover it before. It's a terrific pub, and perfect for a warm evening. They have what is really just a very large back yard with picnic tables, umbrellas and a ping pong table in the middle. The beers on tap are excellent and interesting. And they have a dynamite hard cider. Food was just okay, but the crowd was a great mix of local people, including a couple of business sponsored baseball teams, and there was a rousing game of beer pong going on. Friendly and happy, great send-off.

Check out the WW food thread and the two or three WW wine threads!

Good Umeboshi plums will last for years. How do you tell a good one from a bad one?