Katie Meadow

Do different types of eel need to be prepared differently? We received fresh-caught eel a couple of years ago from an eeler on the northern CA coast. He cleaned, skinned and boned it for us and suggested we do the following: simply dip pieces in egg, then in salted flour, shake off the excess, and saute in butter or oil til just done--as simple as any pan-fried fish could be. It was fabulous. It reminded me of black cod: delicate, moist, mild. It's been a while, but my memory of catfish isn't like that. Both sea-water and fresh-water eel tastes good to me in Japanese restaurants, but I've never had them side-by-side for a comparison and usually they are subjected to substantial sweet/salty treatment. This plain pan-fry eel was a revelation.

Exactly, Chris: a nice glug--meaning more than you might think. As for my butter beans, I cooked them all initially the simplest way possible, in very light stock to cover, with a little onion, salted, til done. Then I divided them in half. The first half I sauteed with onion and garlic and poured over fresh sliced tomatoes (okra on the side.) The second half we had the following night with nothin' but salt and sweet butter and a garnish of roasted green chiles. I can't really think of a way they wouldn't be yummy. Next time a roux, perhaps!

I look forward all year to this small window in late summer/early fall when fresh shell beans are available. I'm thinking cannellini, cranberry bean varieties, butter beans or limas, flageolet, etc., not spring beans like favas. I cook dried beans the rest of the year, but fresh shell beans seem exotic to me. My favorite way to cook fresh cranberry or borlotti beans is to bake them with half an onion, a few sprigs of thyme, a coupla garlic cloves and one or two little dry red chiles. I add water to cover and a very generous amount of olive oil, then cover the pot tightly and bake for an hour or a bit more. I would love to hear what other people like to do with fresh beans. This morning I scored some lovely fresh butter beans. I didn't grow up with lima beans of any kind, so...any ideas? I happen to have some okra on hand and plenty of nice tomatoes. No corn, though. I also have some frozen ham broth with shredded ham from a shank. I'm sure I could come up with something succotash-like, but what are your favorite ways to eat butter beans?

Now you tell me! My mother brought me up to believe a nectarine is a cross between a plum and a peach. And I never had a reason to believe otherwise, despite the many delicious nectarines I have eaten that in fact don't taste anything like plums. Now I know why. She's ninety. Dear Abby--oh, I mean Adam--do you think I should tell her?

Assuming you mean pluot and not pluon, which perhaps exists as a sub-atomic particle, or, god forbid, as a cross between a plum and an onion, I think they happily sub for plums in tarts, cobblers, etc. I had a pluot sorbet once that was great. I do have a wonderful recipe called "Pluot Carpaccio with Ginger Sauce" which is a very easy and very yummy dessert; if you want it I can get it to you. It uses a cooked sauce poured over uncooked paper-thin slices of pluot. I imagine it could be quite good using juicy Santa Rosa plums instead, if those were available. Of all the plum and apricot crosses I like the apriums best; when they are good they are fabulous. They have a very short season here in northern CA and this year I didn't think they were all that great. There are several different types of pluots sold here, and we can get them all summer. When they are unripe they are just about as boring as any unripe plum. The aprium should be about 60% apricot, the pluot 50/50 and the plumcot about 60% plum. I don't see plumcots at the farmers' market very often, or perhaps they are mislabeled as pluots--there are some pretty dark plummy pluots around. When you think about it, it's sort of surprising that crossing plums and apricots is a relatively new thing. After all. nectarines have been around for a long time.

Ouch. Click. Ouch. I would love to hear someone define the term "food porn." Pornography, in my old American Collegiate dictionary, is defined as an obscenity. Most of us don't have a very positive reaction to pornography; some percentage of people defend it. Often it is negative because it is exploitive. The exploitive aspects of food photography, however, such as its use in getting us to try a restaurant or buy a book or subscribe to a magazine are not what I think some people on these boards find tiresome or offensive or "obscene" about certain types of food pix. I can't explain my own feelings about this. The last time I took a picture of food (not including pix of markets on various travels) was of the cake my husband and I made for our daughter's first birthday about 19 years ago. We don't bake a lot, but it was a tour de force: dark chocolate glaze with vivid pink and green writing and decorative flowers. It was shot from straight above, showing an ornate plate rim against a background of a riotous mexican plastic tablecloth. Five minutes later most of that cake was either on the floor or my daughter's face. We made a thing of beauty and then we made a beautiful picture of it. Whenever I look at that picture I'm blown away. And yet I have no interest in photographing anything else I cook and absolutely none in photographing anything I eat when dining out. I very much like the dinner thread and the baking thread. I love to see what people make; I love that, "Look Ma! I made this all by myself!" devotion. I think many of the tutorials are wonderful and helpful. That said, I admit to emotions that vary from discomfort, boredom and revulsion when faced with picture after picture of high-end restaurant food. Is it because I don't eat at those restaurants? Is it because it makes the food look so precious? It would be hard to argue that it isn't a labor of love for someone, albeit a professional. Is it because sometimes those apps that cost 20 euros for four bites look so silly they no longer even look like food? Does it become offensive at the point I start finding the politics of it overtakes whatever part of it was a labor of love?

Thanks for all the suggestions. I tried the tomato watermelon salad tonight in the most minimalist incarnation I could imagine. We were having a very simply dinner of rattlesnake beans and rice with roasted poblano chiles, so I hit on the idea of making the salad Mexican style by using lime juice instead of vinegar. I had mint and no basil, so I went with mint, and barely a drizzle of olive oil. It was really good. I kept thinking I wasn't sure about it, but then a large platter of it disappeared in the first 60 seconds. The watermelon was a particularly good, sweet one. If we had been eating the salad with blander food I might have shaken a little ground red chile or cayenne on. Next I am going to try it with basil. Thai basil might work well too, alongside an Asian dish. I think this salad benefits from contrasting colors: red tomatoes with yellow watermelon or orange tomatoes with red watermelon. Yummy.

Emily, how was the Saveur/your salad dressed?

My new local bistro is serving a salad composed of sliced red ripe tomatoes, sliced peaches and a yummy little lump of goat cheese custard. I didn't know if the peach-tomato thing would work but it did. It was delicious, and was dressed with restraint--a little salt and olive oil, and probably something else, but I couldn't figure out what. Maybe balsamic vinegar would work to knit them together; I like a few drops of balsamic on my peaches sometimes. And of course, for some of us, tomato and pineapple is tried and true. There's pineapple pizza made with a tomato sauce, and there are some Asian soups that cash in that sweet/sour acid combination. I've been making a great Charles Phan variation on Shaking Beef in which flank steak and fresh pineapple are stir-fried and served on a bed of watercress and, of course, tomatoes. So recently I tried putting together sliced tomato and watermelon. I tried it with just a little salt, and then with a light drizzle of olive oil. Pretty good, both ways, but I liked it best without the oil. Of course I admit that I belong to the camp that salts watermelon anyway. Anyone else have ideas for combining tomato and fruit?

No help from me about high end dining, but if you haven't read Calvin Trillin's wonderful piece in the Sept 3 '07 New Yorker about Singapore street food, do so! Double treat! The variety of foods sounds completely amazing and his descriptions will make your mouth water. I was ready to get on the first plane and make a bee-line for those food courts. Recently I saw a physical therapist who grew up in Singapore and somehow our chatter during every session came back around to how much she missed that food.

Ruth Reichl was a standout critic. She knew food the way a real home cook knows food and she could write circles around Bruni. Her warmth engendered trust in her opinions. I can never tell if Bruni is actually having fun when he is eating or writing. Besides his evaluation of the dishes and the service, there's not much else of interest going on, so there isn't much a reader can learn. Bring on the digressions, the rants, the obscure facts, the sentimental touches and the dining experience that brings tears to the eyes for whatever reason. I don't think Bruni brings much of himself to the table. Ruth Reichl could write a novella about a cardboard box and you'd be right there with her. Jeffrey Steingarten, Bill Buford, Amanda Hesser, Laurie Colwin...they aren't primarily reviewers but when they write about great, good or dreadful encounters with food the pleasure shows. Of course being a really good critic is a special talent and takes more than that, but without that, it's hard to care too much what anyone says, and it's even harder to read all the way to the end.

This is a great time to use caramelized onion on pizza because fresh sweet onions are at the farmers' market. Cooked slowly in a cast iron pan until dark, they are fantastic on any pizza. And fresh tomato slices could certainly work with any Mexican ingredients. If the tomatoes are very juicy I slice them and drain briefly on paper towels before topping. Also any kind of peppers would be appropriate too. I like to mix types/colors, sautee them quickly in olive oil and add to the topping. Roasted pasillas would be great. With the exception of already cooked meats and fresh tomatoes, I generally like to pre-cook my toppings, and that includes mushrooms. I frequently sautee radicchio or chard or dinosaur kale for toppings. I would think greens would be easy to incorporate in a Mexican flavor pizza. And how about corn? I've never put corn on pizza, but I suppose if it's tender and fresh you could cut it off the cob and sprinkle on a pizza without any pre-cooking. Corn would be yummy with a sprinkle of that crumbly Mexican cheese. Fresh tomato, garlic, roasted pasilla chiles and a flurry of queso and cilantro would be like a salsa pizza. I suspect I am in the minority--at least in upscale pizza circles--but I really like pineapple pizza, with or without ham (no, I don't precook fresh pineapple.) If I do it veg I like fresh tomato slices as well. I actually prefer Mexican pineapples to Hawaiian, and I always think of pineapple with red chile sprinkled on it when I think of Mexican street food. So maybe pineapple could be encorporated into a south-of-the-border pie.

Fresh sardines: salt and pepper, olive oil, grill for a couple of minutes on each side over high heat. My favorite markets seem to have them more often right now, so whenever I see them I grab some. If they are small, my only problem is that I risk burning myself because it takes so long to turn them all over. I'm thinking a grill basket would come in handy for small fish, no? Fresh wild sushi-grade tuna steaks: I marinate them for 20 minutes or so in a little soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil, salt and pepper. Then coat liberally with toasted sesame seeds, pressing them in a bit. Oil the grill. Grill briefly, hot fire, just so the fish is rare in the middle. The sesame seeds do get grill marks, if that matters. Salmon: I could just cry. I think those days are gone, and it's sad, in so many ways. Nothing beats fresh wild grilled salmon, just barely done at the bone.

I take issue with Mike Hartnett's comment that food and politics are a "bad combo" and that food is simply about pleasure. To much of the world's population food is a desperate necessity and "taking pleasure in food"--slow or otherwise--is meaningless. When huge numbers of people lack food, potable water, shelter and anything else we might think of as basic rights on this planet it's all political. If the goal of Slow Food festivals and events is to entertain and entice people who can afford a steep entry fee so the organization can raise money that goes to rehabilitation projects in New Orleans or projects around the globe that help feed hungry people, then I won't argue with it. If their intention is to simply spread the word about how important slow food is and how much fun it can be to "take pleasure in food" then I have a beef with it. Either way, it has political ramifications. There is a tendency among locavores and slow foodies to simplify, but all the aspects of food production, transportation and affordability are really complicated, and every action has consequences. Go to the farmers' market in Berkeley or the Ferry building. Buying local small crop produce is very expensive. Who's buying there? I guarantee it is not a very diverse crowd. Try downtown Oakland farmer's market: The produce is cheaper. Not all of it is local or organic or pesticide free, but much of it is, and most of it looks nice and fresh. The crowd is far more diverse. And how about all the people who can't get to any good produce market because they don't have transportation and they are working two jobs? They are forced to shop at expensive markets where much of the food is processed. Ask them if they have to time for slow food or if they can afford peaches at $3.90 a pound? I'm sure they wish they could. Even the concept of eating locally isn't simple. Take those lovely strawbs from the farm 100 miles from your market in Chicago. Delicious, organic and you chat with the seller every week. Seems like you are doing a good thing if you can afford it. But what about the carbon footprint? It's been shown that it costs more in gas per basket to drive a small pick-up 100 miles than it does if that basket of strawbs were trucked by a semi from nothern California. And that was three months ago. Not so simple. I'm very lucky. I live in a place where the choices, for those of us who can take advantage of them, are fantastic. I have a flexible schedule and a car, so I can get to the farmer's maket when and where it is happening. I have the time to cook dried heirloom beans. I don't eat a lot of meat, so I can splurge on sweet onions and tomatoes that cost, frankly, a ridiculous amount of money. They're awfully good, but none of this is cheap and often it is neither quick or simple to prepare. It's a luxury to eat like this and through no fault of their own, most people can't and don't. Sorry, but everything about the way we produce or consume food has political implications.

For the simplest kind of American-style fish, crab or shrimp cakes I find the rule of thumb is to use as few ingredients as possible--keeping the seafood as the star of the affair--and refrain from blending or mushing the ingredients or doing anything violent to them. Shrimp or crab is cooked ahead of time, til just barely done, and then flaked or cut into small pieces that will still have a bite to them. The most delicious seafood cakes are also the most delicate and don't bind easily because they are mainly seafood and not a lot of binder. Have you ever heard anyone complain that there's too much crab in their crabcakes? For shrimp cakes, I steam the shrimp until they are still they are underdone, then cut them into small pieces. I mix with a little egg, a little mayo and a little panko. I have also used a white sauce as a binder, and that works pretty well without needing a lot of it. I add minced scallion or sauteed minced shallots; you could add all kinds of seasonings or minced peppers or whatnot, but my preference is to keep it simple. Then I shape them into patties (and it does take patience), press them on both sides into panko for a light coating, then refrigerate for a couple of hours on a cookie sheet. They get sauteed in butter or olive oil gently just until cooked thru and golden-brown on the outside, turned just once, carefully. They are messy to handle but the resulting texture and flavor is worth it. The idea suggested above of using some amount of mushed raw prawn as a binder for the chopped shrimp or flaked fish is very interesting. It would give the cakes a very different texture and certainly a different flavor if mixed with flaked fish.

Mmm...potato salad. I like many different kinds, some with mayo, some with vinegar and olive oil. There are two essential ingredients for potato salad: good quality flavorful potatoes cooked al dente--and celery. Yes, I know there are people who won't eat celery. If you come to my party I will make you a special bowl of potato salad sans celery, but everybody else will get celery. I might add radish, red onion, eggs, jalapenos, pickles of various kinds, whatever is around or whatever appeals in the moment. Spanish smoked paprika dusted on at the end can do wonders for a potato salad. Home-made mayo? Yum. But the potato should always be the star, not the mayo. Once in a great while I can be in such a good mood that I will eat without complaint the ice-cold stuff that's served alongside ribs in BBQ joints, but generally it's awful. I call the potato salad (and the slaw and noodle concoctions) in those places Mayonnaise Salad. Too much egg, overcooked cheap starchy potatoes, too much sugar, too much sweet pickle and far far too much mayo. I'm there for the pork; if I'm outside at a picnic table and the sun is shining I am pretty forgiving of those salads. But even when I enjoy them they are still awful--in that special way. I prefer warm or recently made potato salad. The potatoes should be waxy or new potatoes--red or white. Yukon Golds are good. French fingerlings are fantastic. I agree with many posters above, that sprinkling on the vinegar and some salt when the potatoes are still very warm, then letting that sit for a bit, makes for a better bite. Here's a simple potato salad that doesn't use mayo and subs lemon juice for most of the vinegar. It goes especially well with any southwestern menu. I've tweaked it in the last few years, but I think it might have originally been a Bon Appetit recipe. Potato Salad with Toasted Cumin Vinaigrette: Toast a couple of tsps. cumin seeds in a heavy skillet over med heat til fragrant, about 30 seconds. Cool. Grind coarsely. Mix lemon juice and olive oil to taste for a dressing. Add the ground cumin and let sit. Cook potatoes. Cut while hot and sprinkle with a modest amount of plain or cider vinegar and some salt. When cooler, add minced celery and red onion, thinly sliced scallions, chopped hard-cooked eggs, minced pickled jalapenos to taste and a handful of chopped cilantro. Salt and pepper to taste. If you like, sprinkle on a little of the pickled jalapeno juice from the jar. The recipe says it can sit 2 hrs at room temp before serving. It's very good and a little different.

Slices of mixed colorful varieties alternating with slices of avocado sprinkled with sea salt and garnished with red onion and a drizzle of olive oil. Slices of tomato with slices and fresh buffalo mozz, drizzled with oil and sprinkled with fresh basil. Greek salads with fresh baguette for sopping up. Uncooked sauce for pasta: chop several tomatoes and salt to taste. Let sit in a bowl while you bring pasta water to boil. Before serving add best olive oil, fresh ground pepper and/or red pepper flakes, fresh chopped basil, whatever. For an interesting twist omit the oil and add small chunks of butter instead. Spoon liberally over hot pasta. It's a bit labor intensive, but my favorite thing to do with tomatoes if I have lot of them is make fresh tomato soup. The simpler the better: for 12 to 15 medium red tomatoes you need only 3 or 4 oz of butter, a cup of dry red wine and fresh herbs or garlic crouts for garnish. A tomatoey gazpacho. Tomato tart.

Thanks for all the suggestions. My goal is to do the best I can within the limits of my patience. You have shamed me into admitting that we have been stashing the coffee in the freezer in the Peets paper sack that it is sold in; clearly not well sealed, and opened to the air every other day or two. I am not going to buy a vac sealer, and being realistic about this, I don't see myself buying less coffee more often. I can believe that frozen beans have less flavor, but will now test that out. I also read that grinding frozen beans dulls the blades on the grinder. I don't find that to be the case, since my grinder is about 30 yrs old; the blades got duller after the first 10 years, but then they reached stasis and continue to do a fine job. So it seems like my best option is this: when I bring my coffee home I should put a week's worth in a mason jar and keep it in a dark place. Divide the remaining beans into week's worth portions and freeze them in well-sealed heavy plastic bags, getting as much air as possible out before sealing. Decant as needed into the mason jar. I believe I can do this. Dave, I just looked at that vacu vin coffee saver. I am guessing that the pump costs more that the container. And what do they mean by the "dark color of the container?" It looks like clear plastic. But wait, there's more!

Thanks, Morgan. That's a good concise history of yvette and violette. And I love the caveat that follows the recipe for the fizz w/Violette, warning that if you make the drink with soy milk instead of heavy cream it will taste different.

There's a lobster roll, and then there's a lobster salad sandwich served on a roll (or bun) that's often wrongly billed as a lobster roll. The lobster salad sandwich has smaller pieces of lobster and standard salad ingredients such as celery and mayo. The classic lobster roll, in my mind, means a grilled buttered roll or bun and unadulterated large hunks of lobster. The lobster salad sandwich with mayo can be good, if it isn't done with too much mayo. If the roll is lightly toasted and lightly buttered it's even better. Then the lobster salad can be fairly cold and makes a nice contrast. The lobster roll that is the minimalist thing of my dreams is a toasted roll with a slather of sweet butter and large hunks of lobster sprinkled modestly with sea salt. In this case, I prefer my lobster to be room temp or cool, but not really cold. The perfect lobster roll should not be dripping with butter. It goes without saying that the lobster should be as fresh as possible and not overcooked. I have a very hard time believing that a McLobster would be worth eating. I'm probably going against the grain here, but any small improvement in the quality of the bread/bun/roll is a good thing. It should still be a simple white-flour affair, but I am of the opinion that the average supermarket hot dog and hamburger buns are just plain awful. The best accompaniments to a lobster roll are home-made potato chips and a light lemony slaw.

Both my husband and I have cut back on coffee, so we don't drink it every morning. We buy a 1/2 pound in the bean maybe every three weeks and have been storing it in the freezer, taking out and grinding only as much as we need for a given pot. It's been suggested that grinding frozen beans doesn't maximize flavor and that instead I should take from the freezer about a weeks's worth of beans, whatever that might be, keep it at room temp in an airtight container and grind per pot as always. I checked the coffee threads and couldn't much find info there devoted to storing coffee beans. How long can beans be at room temp without ill effect? What type of container preserves beans best at room temp? I don't want to be too fussbudgety about this, but I think of coffee as a special treat now, and want to get the most out of my cup.

My good friend Sandy, who seems lately to be very interested in cocktails but doesn't actually make them, dropped by at lunchtime yesterday with a bottle of Rothman Creme de Violette. She came mainly to pick my husband's brain about how he makes labels. Her plan is to decant it into several lovely blue bottles and give it as gifts. We tasted it undiluted and then poured a little into water to see how strong the taste and color were. My husband thinks it smells like a French hospital. Sandy tasted mostly just sweet. I thought it was pretty complex, fragrant and slightly medicinal, but in an interesting way. I could tell right away that the Rothman does not produce an intense blue color, at least not in realistic quantities. So, when we get our bottle with its lovely custom design label, what, besides an Aviation, should we make? We typically don't make cocktails beyond a classic martini, G & T, and once in a blue moon a Corpse Reviver or, once every four years of course, a Leap Year, so we don't keep a lot of mixing ingredients on hand. I prefer drinks that are relatively simple and don't require armloads of ingredients and I'm not one who likes to drink my candy bars. I would certainly have to make a special trip for maraschino of some kind, but then I could always decant some for Sandy. So...other ideas for using my Violette?

I probably liked brunch a million years ago when I slept in and had a hangover and woke up slowly, craving eggs or juice or whatever. But I don't wake up late on the weekends any more. I need a little something soon, and can't wait until eleven o'clock. If I have my usual breakfast of one piece of toast or maybe a bowl of oatmeal I won't want a huge cholesterol laden meal three hours later. I don't even like to eat breakfast out--I'm not hungry enough to justify a restaurant meal at that hour, nor do I want to get completely dressed to do it. The only time I can remember enjoying a big late breakfast meal was when I was part of a hippie farm community. Yes, I really was. We had a cow and chickens and plenty of pork products always on hand. One of us was a roly-poly ruddy cheerful dude who grew up on an Argentine ranch and loved to cook. Mountains of scrambled just-laid eggs, highways of bacon, freshly baked bread, home-churned butter, all washed down with strong coffee and milk which was basically half & half straight out of the cow. At the end of this year-long experiment we were all wearing large baggy overalls because no other clothes would fit; at least you can look cute wearing that if you are milking a goat. Truthfully it gives me more pleasure to think about it now than it would to eat it. How did the American breakfast and brunch become such a heartbreaker? It made sense on the farm, I guess. But now, if you try to limit cholesterol and animal fat you have a hard time at a brunch. If you drink three bloody marys to compensate you don't feel so good either. Some Asian cultures have a good idea with soup for breakfast. I can see eating a steaming bowl of pho on a cold winter morning, but I don't really want to go out for it wearing my jammies.

I'm really looking forward to the Waitsburg experience next time I go to visit my daughter. Meanwhile I am trying to get her to go for the pho and report back, but have been unsuccessful so far. She would be a good test, since she's used to great Viet food when she's home. Despite full-time summer jobs she and her friends are shockingly frugal and never eat out. Okay, I'm not complaining. Beauxbrie, I would agree with you about the croissant at Colville. It was just dripping with butter. It was all outside, and no inside, if you know what I mean. I am not a huge croissant fan ordinarily but in France we stopped at a roadside bakery outside a small town and had a wood-fired croissant that was crunchy and flaky and a little smoky on the outside and totally greaseless. There was a real inside, also greaseless and light and more like...like a cloud. I thought about that croissant for the rest of trip. My husband and mother were amazed, since I'm not typically wowed by pastry. It was different than anything I've ever experienced. It was so good it made me want to weep. So that's my standard. Next time I will try the kouign aman. But I was not disappointed in my Colville experience; the coffee was very good and the atmosphere lovely and the sun was pouring in on our table by the window. I did end up ordering a birthday cake from Colville over the phone. The owner was gracious and happy to accomodate a special order (I switched the filling on one of his standard cakes) and my daughter said it was wonderful, although I believe that by then--Sunday afternoon of her birthday weekend--she was partied out and this was her third cake. My parents never ordered me a cake like that when I was away at college.

I have tried frying both ways: without any batter coating and with a very thin light egg and flour batter. I found that the eggplant sans batter sucks up more total olive oil than the battered eggplant (that doesn't sound right does it? That poor battered eggplant!) The batter absorbs only what it needs to brown, but the uncoated eggplant just keeps on absorbing. The result was that the eggplant w/no coating tasted very oily. The eggplant when coated was far more intense in flavor and perfectly soft without being oily. Using relatively thick slices helps to maximize the vegetable and minimize the oil. Really just a personal thing, but for me battering has another bonus, which is that it allows for the integrity of the eggplant in the finished dish. It has more structure that way, making it easier and prettier to serve and less like a mushy casserole. If you are wishing to eliminate the oil and/or the batter I think baking would be a better solution.