Wilfrid

In England, the filet coated with pate and baked in pastry would be called Beef Wellington.

Question: what specifically makes home fries home fries. Are they just bigger and fatter than regular fries? Or is it some additional falvoring assumed?

Well, I was going to post this at the end of the cassoulet thread, but this now appears more appropriate. I went to Jarnac last night, specifically to try the cassoulet. A pretty room, as Yvonne said, and I found the service extremely pleasant and friendly. I ended up having a long chat with the properitor, Tony, who also heads the service - a fellow British ex-pat, although raised, as Grimes said, in France. The cassoulet came in a casserole, and was certainly hot, but I was then offered a plate so that I could serve myself from the pot. I can imagine it would have been very hot eaten directly from pot. An advantage of eating it this way, was that I was able to use a fork to serve the beans, thus straining the inappropriate liquid. Yes, as I said way back on the cassoulet thread, cassoulet should be moist but not wet. When I mentioned to Tony afterwards that I had come to try the cassoulet, he actually said, without any prompting, that it was "runny" because the chef liked it that way. Well, I suppose I would rather have it runny from preference than from ignorance. The positive points. The beans were perfectly cooked. They used Great Northern beans, which are exactly what I use to make the dish, and they were soft but not mushy. The sausage was recognisably a Toulouse susage, meaty and peppery. There were nice chunks of pork. A meaty duck leg was not a 'confit', and to be fair the menu never claimed it was (cassoulet with duck, pork and sausage was the billing). Even if you're not going to preserve the duck, I think there is merit in at least some form of pre-cooking to render the fat. The leg appeared to have been poached in the cassoulet, so the skin was soft and white. I just lifted it off and ate the meat. Picky, picky... I thought this was actually a pretty good cassoulet. Getting the beans right is half the battle. Since I had not exactly been abstemious at table earlier in the week, I preceded it with a light salad of chanterelles (with some other mushrooms too, and accented with some shreds of fried onion). I followed it with cheeses bought from Murray's. Some thought had gone into the accompaniments for the cheese: a piece of membrillo and some tastes of mostarda di frutta. The food bill came to around ุ, and I drank a decent Cahors for า. I found it all pretty good, although quite obviously what I ordered didn't tell me much about the chef's ability beyond the cassoulet.

Tempted to start a new thread called 'Amazed at Unresponsiveness of e-Gulletarians', but I suspect the reason this Caribbean forum is not moving yet is that it's probably a minority of members who have eaten in the region enough to want to discuss it, and then the experience of that minority is scattered over various different islands and cuisines. Anyway, if anyone has got Dominican Republic suggestions up their sleeve, I will be checking in once more before I leave for Santo Domingo. I will comment on my experiences when I get back. And if that fails, I shall just go back to posting on A. Balic's bio thread.

About the only thing that can go wrong with pheasant when you roast it is drying out the bird, especially the breast, so let me just give you an alternative. Brown the bird nicely in a pan. Put some roughly chopped veg - carrots, root vegetable, chunks of onion - in the bottom of a dutch kettle/stovetop casserole. Pour in red wine up to the top of the vegetables, and throw in some herbs (or some aromatic juniper berries if you like). Sit the pheasant on top and cover it. Let the liquid simmer (don't let it boil away), and check the breast and thighs of the bird with a sharp knife or skewer occasionally to see if it's done. Probably about forty minutes. Roasting in the oven is a classic, but my alternative, which is halfway between pot roasting and steaming, should guarantee you moist, tender meat. I used to cook every kind of game bird this way in the days when I lived in a garret with only a couple of electric plates to cook on.

Hmm, interesting to read the comments posted about Le Cirque. The point I didn't really make on this thread, although I made it elsewhere on the New York forum, is that -almost to my suprise - I have found the cooking at Le Cirque to be way better than pedestrian. I won't repeat my description of my last meal there, but will say again that it was one of the best meals I have had in New York in many months. This may go against the grain of majority opinions here (who cares?), but the meal was certainly better than the (good) meals I have had recently at Cafe Boulud, Bid, Union Pacific and Blue Hill, and streets ahead of a disastrous meal at the refurbished JoJo. It was also not the most expensive meal on this list. Another point I made on that other thread, was that one of the reasons I went to Le Cirque was that they were offering dishes outside the admittedly formulaic range of the typical 'menu for socialites' - tripe, blanquette de veau and so on. I wonder if I get a different perspective on this because I'm English - maybe I have different assumptions or maybe I'm just thick-skinned. But I can't see how you have to 'prove' yourself in order to get good service at Le Cirque. The interaction with the waitstaff at the beginning of the meal is surely pretty straightforward. I order my tap water, like I always do, and then speak my food order, clearly, precisely and decisively. Maybe other people don't do that. I hardly feel I'm doing anything that merits good service, but perhaps there are other customers dithering, mumbling and dropping the menus. ,

I have no basis to disagree. As I said, I've had no problem, but I am hardly a representative sample. Thing is, I like, and am intellectually interested in, what you might well call "dinosaur" restauarnts and "dinsoaur" cuisine. Not that I would want to eat that way all the time - but I would regard it as a pity if that ethos became extinct.

I wonder who the other offenders are? I think I got the impression from an earlier thread that you felt Caravelle fell into that category. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have always been treated very well at Le Cirque, and I'm pretty much a twice a year customer rather than a regular. I've been trying to think of places where I felt I was being treated like I didn't fit in, and the few offenders that come to mind are by no means upscale restaurants. Something which clearly does happen - and doubtless for the kinds of reasons Steve Plotnicki gives - is extraordinary treatment for high rollers, regular big spenders and celebrities. I have no objection to that, as long as I'm treated well. I certainly don't feel forlorn if Siro Maccioni doesn't come over to chat with me. Relieved, if anything. I wonder how real these "siberias" and "hierarchies" are, and how many are left in New York?

I expect to be drinking Brugal or Barcelo rum, served in quantity, over ice, in large paper cups, chased by chilled Presidente cerveza from the larger sized bottles. I will be standing in a street in Santo Domingo, and with any luck will have lined my stomach with a couple of pounds of perniz (spelling?), a marinated, slow baked pork dish.

Yes, that offer still features prominently on Le Cirque's menu.

Point taken. I overlooked 'local' and was just reading them as best restaurant lists. Nothing very New Orleans-ish about the Grill Room; but a very good professional restaurant.

Results of the poll are in, and it may be a regonal thing. Some of my friends from the north of England are acknowledging the dish, although they eat it with brandy butter, not as part of a fry up. Is Adam on his own with that one? Anyway, I am now caught up in e-mail correspondence about eating corned beef for breakfast on Christmas Day. Where this is all heading, goodness knows.

I'm only a visitor to New Orleans, but those lists really surprise me. I should have thought Bayona was obviously an outstanding restaurant, and far better than some of the places mentioned. I have also had exceptional meals at Emeril's flagship, and the Grill Room at the Windsor Court hotel, while maybe too formal for some tastes, seemed to me to be cooking at a much higher level than most of the 'upmarket' places listed in the thread.

Yvonne, "clouty dumpling" indeed. Sounds like you could throw it through a wall. I am now going to have to conduct a poll of British friends to see if anyone else has heard of frying Christmas pudding. Trifle, yes of course, but...you don't put batter on it first, do you?

Historical answer: Cajun food is the food of the Cajun people. The Cajuns were French famring folk who had settled in a region they called Acadie near Quebec. Cajun is just a corruption of Acadian. They were forcibly expelled by the British for suspected collaboration with the French during the war over Quebec in the eighteenth century. They found themselves at sea with nowhere to go: most of them were eventually taken in by the state of Louisiana, which already had a large, Catholic, French speaking population. They were given some pretty poor land to farm out on the bayous. They had to redevelop their agricultural French cuisine, using rice as a staple (easier to grow in swamps than wheat) and using other local ingredients like crayfish. Deep breath. Creole just means something which originated in a French colony - be it a person, a langauge or a dish. Creole food is the food of the French community in Louisiana, and their descendants. Now, this community came straight from France, not from Quebec. Like the Cajuns, they faced the challenge of adapting a French cuisine to local circumstances - but their cuisine was that of Paris and urban France, not a 'peasant cuisine'. All of which is consistent with jhlurie's observation that Creole owes more to haute cuisine, while Cajun is more home-style. This was all a long time ago, and the two cuisines have come to intermingle on menus. Even more importantly, the cuisines have been subject to outside influences, most distinctively that of African cooking on Cajun dishes. The use of okra, and I believe the term 'gumbo', for example, came from the poor African slaves or former slaves who lived alongside the Cajuns in rural Louisiana.

Innocent, sir. We didn't have it where I grew up, so for me it's not really evocative of anything. I just find it hugely more palatable than supermarket breakfast sausage links. I guess the version I buy is 'home made' - maybe there are commercial scrapples out there which are less tasty. Incidentally, I just remembered what got me started with scrapple - it was Calvin Trillin raving about it in 'Alice, Let's Eat'. Not the best of reasons, because some of the American dishes he praises sound fairly disgusting. Or was it Lionel Trilling? No, pretty sure it was Calvin Trillin. (Edited by Wilfrid at 4:55 pm on Dec. 19, 2001)

Fried Christmas pudding? You're not joking, are you. I have never heard of that. I found some mini British (Fortnum & Mason) Christmas puds in Dean & Deluca. I'm going to need some convincing before I throw one in the frying pan.

Eek. Thanks, Steven, I think I'll pass.

I dunno, there I am busily extending your bio thread, Adam, while you're up here messing around with my scrapple. Bux's description is impeccable of course. The one I buy doesn't seem to have excessive cereal, and I believe the tradition is that the sausage meat is made from some of the more offally bits of the pig. I buy it from a stall in Union Square Greenmarket, the name of which I always get wrong - High Hogs? High on Hogs? Hogs High? Or is it High Hope Hogs? For the holidays? Well, I was just talking to myself really, and the only reason is that there will be quite a lot of days close together when I may have the time and inclination to eat a cooked breakfast. And you have now reminded me to add a slab of beer to the shopping list. By the way, I can't remember what Lorne sausage is, but have you come across fruit pudding in Scotland (it's a kind of cereal-laden sausage studded with dry fruit)?

Thanks. Yes, I am sure I am getting my stock and my crock confused. A crockpot is what it must be. Starting on high heat certainly makes sense - I only did it the other way round because I wasn't sure what it was going to do. Looks like the main benefit is leaving it on when I'm out of the house. I'm not yet convinced I'm going to be using it much, but thanks for the recipe offer Steven - Would they be different from regular braising recipes, though? The other bizarre thing is that I inherited it from the Mother of my Baby who has been using it to sterilise baby bottles. Now I have discovered that it doesn't reach a boil, I wonder how wise a use that was. Anyway, baby's thriving. I also have my eye on a large sealable jar in which she's been storing baby milk - it will mean I can make more confits. :)

Ah, Yvonne. Happy memories there, but loving pubs is a heartbreaking business. I don't know whether they still have the good cheese in the Lamb and Flag: what they no longer have is the wall separating the two bars. It's been knocked right through. Absolutely criminal. And although the Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street seems in good order, I recently discovered that the Sun opposite, which used to be a rough sort of place with one of the biggest beer cellars and widest selections of real ales in London, has been refurbished and now sells mainly lager. I think this hits ex-pats like us hardest - it seems every time one goes home, something wonderful has vanished. I think the French Pub in Dean Street is worth a mention. In many ways unlike a pub (won't sell beer in pints, forexample), it has retained its eccentric character over the years, and still sells an excellent selection of wines by the glass. I would like to take you up on your comment about pubs in New York, but I guess I should do so on a different Board, right?

I have just inherited an electric stockpot, with no instructions, written or verbal. It has two settings, low and high. I haven't measured the capacity, but to give you some idea, you could fit a pheasant in it easily, but would struggle with a chicken. Enterprisingly, I tried using it to cook a pot roast. I used a piece of chuck (around a pound and a half), surrounded it with chopped onions, root vegetables, garlic, bits of salt pork and fresh bayleaves, and filled the pot with red wine and a little beef stock. I went for the low setting first, having no idea how it would cook. After about three hours, the food had taken on some colour, but the meat was still bloody inside and the vegetables crisp. I went to the high setting, which kept things at an audible simmer, but not a boil. About an hour and a half later, everything was done. The dish was fine. But given that the food was no better or worse than something I could have prepared using the cooker, what is the advantage of the stockpot? All I can think of is that I was more comfortable (rightly or wrongly) wandering off and doing other stuff for several hours than I would have been leaving a naked flame in the kitchen. So is there anything this gadget can do better than a cooker? Am I overlooking it's true purpose? What could one cook on the slow setting? Or is it just aimed at people who haven't got cookers? Any reflections would be appreciated, as always.

In fact, the string of Brazilian restauarnts known as Little Brazil is on 46th, between 5th and 6th avenues. About fouur and a half minutes walk from the tree if the street was empty (!). Checked it out, as I have given myself an appetite for Feijoada. The Ipanema, on the north side of the street, is where I've eaten it before. ภ.95, and you won't need to eat a whole lot else.

Well, this is now a Food Network thread, and it is interesting to see what people like and don't like. For what it's worth, I think Sarah Moulton is very professional and full of useful information, but about as TV-friendly as a dead goldfish. Good Eats I find unwatchable - precisely because of the awful 'witticisms'; it feels like a kiddies' show. I used to like Flay's double act with the comical redneck character - Jack someone - but I think he struggles to carry a show by himself. Mario is so utterly dull and ponderous - another reminder that performance as a chef and as a TV star just don't correlate. I used to really like Rosegarten's show. Emeril is just vastly amusing. Crush? I used to have a crush on the Mary-Sue Milliken, one of the two 'Hot Tamales' (their expression) who used to do Mexican style recipes. Where do all these people go? Ooh look, here's the Tamales' website: http://www.millikenandfeniger.com/MSMSF/msmsf.htm (Edited by Wilfrid at 12:37 pm on Dec. 18, 2001)

Yes, not only are they cheap, but at this time of year several of them should be serving feijoada, the wonderful, rib-sticking stew of pork, sausage, other pig-parts, beans and so on. I don't have any particular restuarant in mind, but you could stroll along the block and check out the menus.