Wilfrid

Pasta with chicken liver and salt pork ragu. Montgomery's cheddar with grapes.

Although coq au vin recipes typically call for the chicken pieces to be lightly sauteed to give them a little color, I am not sure the purpose is to get a crispy skin, and I can't see any way for the crispness of the skin to be maintained through the stewing process. The good news is, I don't think a good coq au vin requires the chicken tohave crispy skin. Did your recipe actually talk about a crispy skin, or did you assume that was the reason for browning the chicken? As for turning grey, chicken cooked in red wine will look somewhat greyish. Again, I think this is authentic and to be expected. If you get the dish cooked with some blood added to the wine, the chicken will be almost black.

Of course.

I was once told the following, but do not know if it's true. Generally speaking, about the same amount of liquid leaches out of meat however it is cooked. fast searing does not seal in juices, as is commonly believed - the caramelization of the surface, and resulting promotion of flavor-enhancing chemical reactions, kids people into thinking that the meat is juicier. Sense or nonsense?

I once asked for a Pimms No. 1 Cup in the Philharmonic pub in Liverpool, and am astonished I live to tell the tale.* Professor g., I think you'll confirm that when filet mignon is on the menu in Old Blighty, the Brits then do pronounce it "fil-ay" (setting aside the sizeable minority who are unable to make any sort of sense of the phrase). *Just to save you the bother: "Ponce!"

Pedantic but true: the English word is actually "fillet" rather than "filet", so it's not the French word that's being pronounced with the hard 't'. g. johnson - being blackballed from White's? Good or bad thing?

Not all, I trust.

If only. I find it has a slightly cloying, sweet-ish off-taste. Of course, you can get around it by drinking it as cold as possible and as fast as possible. I was in a bar once where Bud were doing a promotion and offering free beers. The rep got quite peeved when I insisted on paying $4 for a Sam Adams instead.

But she's fine about people wearing ear plugs.

Far be it from me to digress , but - Steve - are they cooking good food at L'Acajou these days? I used to think it did a reasonable job within its modest range, but gave up after a couple of disappointing dinners last year.

Sounds most unpleasant, m'Lud. I have consumed various drinks laced with cannabis in my time, and would commend none of them for their flavor or bouquet.

Thank you, Marty. And nesita, you're absolutely right. Fat Geezer would have us believe that, just because he says Paris instead of Par-ee, he also sits in restaurants ordering foy grass and bottles of Bordoaks.

When I have had a bottled beer gone bad, the effect has been that it's turned to vinegar. I think that may be different from "skunkiness". I agree that Heineken and Becks share a slightly unpleasant flavor note which the word "skunky" describes well. I guess we drink them because they're well promoted. I have never much liked the taste of Bud, which again I think is quite distinctive. I have drunk my share, though.

If that's your best, Steven, I think I'll go to lunch.

Jinmyo, behave yourself.

On the contrary, you have let yourself down on this one, Steven. Quite a large number of foreign words used by English-speakers have anglicized pronunciations by conventions. Just sticking to place names, "Paris" is an example. So is "Moscow". "Peking" used to be an example, but has fallen out of fashion. "Boulogne" gets an anglicized pronunication sometimes; not always. Other place names, of course, are altered when they are transposed by English speakers: "Venezia" becomes "Venice", and so on. No mysteries or disagreement there, surely. Now, to get back to the point. The first 'o' in "risotto" is a short vowel in Italian - and there's no regional variation in that. I am not asking you to roll your 'r's (god forbid). I am just asking you to use the short vowel sound. And if you insist you are using an anglicized pronunciation of "risotto", I point you to the fact that the correct anglicized pronunication of "risotto" pronounces the first 'o' as a short vowel. I don't believe you'll find any English word where an 'o' is a long vowel when it comes before a double 't'. As I suspect you know, the American mispronunciation of "risotto" developed because people - wrongly - think they are better approximating the Italian original by elongating that vowel. There are many other examples of American pronunciations where a vowel has been inappropriately lengthened for the same reason. "Rioja" - that long 'o' again - is one. These are misconceptions, not equally valid variants. As you also know, dictionaries serve as an empirical record of usage and pronunciation. They are not a final court of appeal.

It's doubtless too late to rescue the useful term "sautee". It's now used as cognate with any kind of shallow frying, whereas it originally referred specifically to tossing something briskly in a hot pan - making it jump, as Suzanne pointed out. An unfortunate loss.

I did make Liza's potato and anchovy crisps last night. They came out a little bit more brown than I'd planned. I attribute this to the over-broad interpretation of Happy Hour by the staff of one of my local bars. I infer that they do not have shares in the business.

Nina, there's a difference between sticking to the correect vowel sounds - which I endorse - and adopting Italian vocal mannerisms - which I don't. All a matter of degree. Cross posting: "Also, Americans pronounce otter like ah-ter, so that doesn't work." It would be a big improvement if you took the American vowel sound at the beginning of otter and used it instead of the silly long 'o' with which they currently adorn "risotto".

Beside the point, Fat Bloke.* There are all kinds of debatable questions about how to transpose foreign words and names into English; I just raised a very simply question about pronunciation. Sorry to have abandoned you to all that, Nina. I think I agree with everything you have said, but I take a slightly less stern line. The simplest way to approximate a correct pronunciation of "risotto" without sounding like you are pretending to be an Italian is to make the middle 'o' short (as in otter) not long (as in Romeo). An easy thing to do, which is why I wondered what stops many Americans from doing it. *And how do you pronounce either "risottos" or "risotti"? Are you implying that the correct English pronunication of "risotto" has a long second 'o'? - sorry this is all out of sequence. If that is going to be your argument, I am going to be looking for examples of plain-and-simple English words where the 'o' is followed by a double 't', yet nevertheless is a long vowel. Not, for example: otter, plotter, totter, rotter, or any others I can think of.

Er, how do they pronounce it? SA Ris-oh-to. Or as if there's only one 't' in the middle. Not making any claims for the English, as such. They just pronounce it the same way as the Italins, as I guess most countries do.

What would you use that one for, Peter? I seem to recall that my mislaid beer batter recipe replaced a small proportion of the all-purpose flour with cornmeal, for added crunch. Can you make batter with just cornmeal?

Those anchovy crisps things sound not only delicious but also like the kind of thing I could make TONIGHT!

Why do Americans pronounce risotto wrong?

In the UK, you can get risotto drenched in meat sauce. Just in case you were all wondering.