trillium

Last night I made 5 half-pints of red currant jelly and 1 pint of pickled sour cherries. All of the recipes came out of Chez Panisse Fruits. I found the red currant jelly in that book much less fussy then Ms. Ferber's and since it is so goddamn hot right now, less fussy is good. The leftovers and skimmings tasted great on toast this morning. I had no idea red currant jelly actually had a nice taste. I'd only ever had the store bought kind and I always wondered why people would use it to wreck a perfectly good fruit tart. The sour cherry pickles were touted as being "irresistable" when offered with charcuterie. I intend to try out the claim when I start making terrines again in the fall. I hope I'm not sorry I didn't brandy more, but the only pint I did used up the last of the brandy! The rest of the sour cherries got mashed with some sugar to be turned into bounce after they do a little fermenting on their own. regards, trillium

We managed to do a tasting with Plymouth, Bombay Sapphire, Hendrick's and Junipero between what we had and what friends had. We tried them straight from the freezer. What I thought was my favorite (the Sapphire) came in dead last for pretty much everyone, including me. It really had a subdued flavor compared to the others and I'm surprised it's listed as a recommend for people who like a stronger flavored gin. I'm now drinking my words (instead of eating them) and hoarding the bottles I lugged from BevMo, where a bottle of Plymouth cost a cool $15 compared to the $33 here. We thought Plymouth and Junipero were the best for making cocktails, where Hendrick's was too perfumy for some of us, and the rest thought it would be good just drunk straight. regards, trillium

We're talking about the same thing, but I don't think they're citrons (if by citron you mean mostly pith and peel). They're a member of the sour orange family (Citrus aurantium ssp. bergamia), which is why I find them so fabulous in cocktails. Not only do you get that wonderful zest, but the juice rocks. Here's a picture of what they look like, along with some bergamot propaganda. The ones I bought last year were grown in California, and they were sold at my local and very wonderful grocery store. I'm sure they weren't as specially fragrant as the ones from Calabria, but they were pretty damn wonderful. I know that GreenLeaf, a wholesale produce co. in San Francisco was selling them last year. Here's an article that popped up in the SF Chron, maybe it will help you hunt them down in NY. My two favorite cocktails I made with these guys...I need to name them. The first is more nutty and herbal, while the second is just a riff on a "Bitter". Both are great. 1.5 oz light rum 1.5 oz sour bergamot orange juice 0.75 oz homemade grenadine 0.5 oz French creme de cacao (you want something not too sweet) Shake over ice, pour into chilled glasses and garnish with a bergamot peel twist. The fragrance and layers of complexity with this drink were amazing. Even if you don't have bergamot sour oranges, I recommend playing around with the pom and cacao together, they really complement each other. If you don't like tart cocktails, you'd want to cut down on the sour orange juice. 1 ounce gin 1/2 ounce green Chartreuse 3/4 ounce bergamot juice 1 dash Herbsaint, absinthe or Pernod Shake over ice, pour into chilled glasses and garnish with a bergamot peel twist. regards, trillium

Actually, just to add a little more to the confusion, there is a Chinese "turnip" that kinda looks like daikon, but is shorter, squater and has green around the top. That's what the Cantonese grannies I know like to make low bak with. And when a SE Asian is talking about turnips, they mean jicama not daikon.... daikon and its cousins get called carrots as in "carrot cake"....which is something similiar to low bak but stir fried with egg and other goodies. That's why I love books with latin names and Chinese characters along with a good photo illustration. regards, trillium

I know we all love the "parts"... but let's be honest - they are objectively speaking not the "best" parts of the animal. They often have an odour that needs to be treated with spices, and they are often tough, so requiring a long cooking time. Kudos to our poor ancestors who invented, through necessity, ways of making meals from scraps and discards. I think anyone who comes from a culture with a tradition of eating the "parts" should be duty-bound to uphold this tradition. Whether you like it or not! I don't think cooking time should be a consideration when it comes to defining "best" per se. You have to cook tongue a really long time, but I think it can taste just as good as a grilled t-bone. Some of the toughest cuts have what I'd call the "best" flavor! I do understand your point about odors and offal though. regards, trillium

When they're in season, you might try experimenting with bergamot oranges, which are the original flavoring agent for earl grey tea. Besides their lovely peels, the juice is nice and tart, since they're a sour orange. They make great cocktails. regards, trillium

Lamb's quarters grows wild like crazy in Chicago (along with purslane...and the purslane in our old back yard never tasted all that peppery). I'd carefully be tending a patch in the back yard when our well meaning landlord would pull it all up. One of my favorite taco fillings is lamb's quarters with browned onions, a sprinkle of aged cheese and roasted tomatillo and chipotle salsa. My favorite variety of lamb's quarters ever is one with magenta colored "dust" on the undersides of the leaves. I still have seeds for that somewhere.... Sadly, I have not spotted purslane or lamb's quarters here in Portland, and they don't sell them at the farmer's market either. Great article. regards, trillium

In the Asian markets in California, Dungeness crabs are sold live. Each time I bought these beasts, I needed to battle with them to the slaughter, risked getting my fingers clipped off. These suckers are strong. Not fun if you ever get caught by their claws. The taste is excellent. Only second to lobster on my list. Put them in the freezer or fridge for a little while to calm them down. The cold kind of works as an anesthetic and makes them easy to handle. I love Dungeness too...but while we've played around with chilli crab and pepper crab, I really love them best just boiled in salted water. regards, trillium

Dejah: hmmmm... I have not seen that before in our Asian markets. I wonder if this would be a regional thing. I live in Sacramento, California. Which region do you live in? I want to be on the look out for it. How do they package that almond dofu fa? Is it like regular dofu fa in some round cylindrical plastic container with a loose cap? Is it sold in the dofu section? Refrigerated? The ones I've seen are from Canada. They're Sunshine or some other close to that named brand. They're sold in the same refrigerated place as the regular tofu products but they have their own spot on the shelf. regards, trillium edit to add: they're sold in a similiar package to the regular tofu, plastic rectangular carton on the bottom, thick, transparent cellophane type stuff on the top, with name and info printed on it.

Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table has a recipe for making your own rice noodles. regards, trillium

Too bad XO doesn't come in small bottles, huh? That would be the coolest thing to pour out for the ancestors who drank. regards, trillium

Oh man, I'm hungry now. I think I'm going to try aprilmei's blanched pig liver, since we have some left from our terrine making adventure. Do you think it will work ok with liver that has been frozen? I love salted fish fried rice, so it gives me a good excuse to make that too. Come to think of it, Americans do eat stuffed intestines, we just call them sausages! But nowadays, unless you're very lucky, they're collagen casings not the real deal. I've never made that pigsfoot baby soup, but I've had it before. I like putting pigs feet into my chicken stock to give the stock a nice thick texture. You can buy them already split for very little money at the Asian grocery stores around here. I'm very intrigued by the idea of deep friend intestines...does anybody do this at home or do you just buy this sort of thing from hawkers? regards, trillium

You won't get any flak from me -- it's definitely substanded compared to every other meat he sells. And there just happens to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this -- it's the only meat in the shop Dino doesn't cure himself. That's why when it's on the board it's listed as ADP prosciutto (or some nonsense starting with A). Hopefully now with the adopt a proscuitto program he'll start curing his own. Although I have my doubts as to whether it'll compare favorably with proscuitto di parma since, as I understand it, there making hams there like they've had for centuries and hanging them in the wide open and the pigs have strict local diets. I don't know about Dino's local pigs, but I know for a fact that those hog legs are curing in his new facilities. That's not to say that these proscuittos won't be good, hell, they'll be great but they might not be ethereal. It's amazing what diet can do to the texture and taste of hog meat. It took me a little while to adjust to cooking the half a hog we bought that grew up eating a lot of whey. I'm sure that hanging outside makes a difference too. What I'd really like to do is go down south and buy a bunch of country hams that have been hanging in barns and have a taste-off. Now there are some hams I'd love to adopt. regards, trillium

Welcome! If you get off with only buying one cookbook from hanging around eGullet, you'll be lucky. Tonight I'm finishing the black currant and pinot noir preserves. Working with fresh black currants has really opened my eyes to their mult-dimensional flavor profile. I didn't realize how herbal and astringent and fruity all at the same time they could taste, I guess because my main black currant experience is the jar of Ribena the partner has to have in the pantry at all times. regards, trillium

It's probably liverwurst and Vietnamse pork "sausage". "Vietnamese Home Cooking" has a recipe for the sausage. Sometimes one side of the sandwich is covered in margarine and one side is covered in mayonaise or a sweet dressing like Miracle Whip. In big cities you can usually find the carrot and daikon already pickled in vats in the produce section of a SE Asian grocery store, but it's not so hard to make at home either. You use white rice vinagar, sugar and salt to your taste to make the pickles. My favorite Bahn Mi is one a friend taught me to make, you make homemade garlic mayonaise, and put it on crusty bread with "Thai" basil, cucumber, lettuce and poached shrimp. I've never seen that sold in shops. My favorite store-bought Bahn Mi is probably the grilled chicken one from a little corner grocery store accross from a bar I used to frequent in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. regards, trillium

Except when you judge that someone else is being a snob. Then it's ok to "assert an opinion" about them. Lecturing people about their uncomplementary opinions about what other people eat or drink on a forum devoted to having opinions about food and drink seems to defeat the whole purpose. I think we all know there is a difference between thinking that what someone is drinking is vile and thinking that the people themselves are vile. You aren't what you drink, right? Because if you are, those Humping Alligator drinkers really are in a world of trouble. regards, trillium

Well, you're clearly a more enlightened human than I! It's certainly not the first and most likely won't be the last time I've been called a snob. Probably a good reason why you're in the service industry and I'm not, right? regards, trillium

The partner was whipping up a pot of nonya-style chicken liver curry last night with the last of the rempah in the freezer. My cousin came over for some chemistry help and was very interested in the curry until he found out it was made with chicken livers. This got me to thinking about "parts". I think people in the US eat the least amount of parts then anyone else. The idea of a whole stall devoted to pig parts soup would really surprise them. I have to hear the same story over and over again when the partner is talking to someone about how barbaric and terrible it was to buy a half a pig and have it come without the skin (!) or organs, or feet and tail. The part that annoys him the most is that it gets thrown away or sold for soap making. He tells the story so many times and so passionately that a friend named it "the pig of discontent". The farmer we bought the pig from thought we were nuts to want that stuff. I was visiting a Chinese Malaysian friend over the weekend and told her about it. She was so horrified that you could buy a pig without skin she had to repeat the story to her sister when her sister came in the room. What are some of your favorite dishes with parts? regards, trillium

Hey, if you can't be judgmental about what people drink, what can you be judgmental about? That's another kettle of fish entirely. I'll defend to the death the right to sneer at people who order Sex on the Beach or white zinfandel. But I don't think anybody has argued that a bartender ought to criticize her patrons, at least to their face. I heard one better then Sex on the Beach the other day, but I was too afraid to ask what was in it. Some days I just can't stand to be disillusioned any further. Humping Alligators. I kid you not...the mind boggles. Really, what's not to get about being judgmental about what others choose to drink? Our livelihoods don't depend on being nice to people drinking the alcoholic equivalent of food at Olive Garden, so we can afford the sneering. It's a different perspective. It wouldn't be so bad if it were not for the fact that most bars seem to cater to the lowest common denominator. At least with food you usually have a range of choices and tastes in any given city. regards, trillium

I guess my suggestion of adding some fatback to your mix is probably no good then, huh? I think your dish is one of those fusion things (I mean that in a good way) and that's why you're not seeing it in classical Vietnamese cookbooks. regards, trillium

Well... that explains why my medium rare steaks are always overcooked and my martinis never have enough vermouth in them! Right now I'm loving Plymouth and Noilly in a 2:1 ratio with 2 olives... yes, I'm a cretin with those 2 olives, but even more because I prechill all the booze and then shake the hell out of it to get them diluted enough. Two words: crushed ice (not cubes)

Purslane (aka verdolaga) gets used a lot in some areas of Mexico... my favorite way to eat it is in a pork stew type thing with tomatillos and green chillies. I remember reading it has the highest omega3 and 6 fatty acids of any vegetal thing, so it's good for you too... And it is good with fish too. regards, trillium

I'm glad you like it. If they're anything like their electric kettles, it should last quite a while. We've had ours for 5+ years. One I called my mum after shortly after getting that toaster for her and giving her a pint of my blood orange and bergamot marmalade and we were talking about what we'd eaten for dinner the night before... she'd had "half a loaf of toast". regards, trillium

The jam I made did contain rose water too, did you miss that part because I rambled on so much? I forgot to mention that Ms. Ferber frequently uses dried rose petals more often then fresh in her jams. That could work for you too, if you really had to have the petals in there. regards, trillium

Unless your stupid state doesn't sell it, right? Then you're stuck with Skyy. regards, trillium