plum tart

I saw seville oranges in Fortinos in Hamilton this past weekend. There were lots of them and I imagine if we have them here in Hamilton, they will be in the Fortinos in Toronto as well. Cheers

I can easily get fresh galangal and fresh ginger in Hamilton, Ontario and have been able to do so for at least 12 years. The Asian stores all carry galangal fresh and frozen(which is a good idea because the rhizome pieces are generally large and I use only a portion when I make my curry pastes.) I agree with those who say that galangal is piney and medicinal tasting. I love it in curry pastes and lakhsa (sp?), basically any dish that calls for it. I would never substitute ginger instead and vice versa. They each provide a totally different taste experience.

I own that book - it's a wonderful book but I have never cooked from it and doubt if I ever will. Unlike you, Susur has some company in my won't cook list- "Noma" as I said in an earlier thread and Heston Blumenthal's beautiful book.

His blini recipe is easy and good if you can find some caviar And, I have done his skate recipe with a very nice mustard sauce. No special equipment needed.

I second Noma and Morimoto. Beautiful books but have no access to amost of the ingredients used in Noma and I find the recipes in Morimoto too complex. Sigh.

thank you. Is freekeh a "keeper" ingredient for you? Has it replace any other ingredient (eg rice) in some of your recipes?

I looked and liked. That tater tot recipe is amazing.

Interesting - I am playing around with freekeh too. I learned about it a couple of months ago and ordered some. I plan to stuff a roast chicken with it (cooked of course), some ground beef or lamb, pine nuts and a few spices - cinnamon, cumin maybe sprinkle sumac on at the end. There was an egullet thread that talked about it - I can't remember which one.

Sunchokes are indeed a pain to peel. For years I made a recipe of Jacques Pepin's which combined chicken and jerusalem artichokes in a cream sauce. It is a kind of braise. You don't peel the artichokes. This method draws out the nutty flavour of the sunchokes and is very tasty. I haven't made it recently because of it is rich but I used to make it at least once or twice a year. I have not found any other recipe that works quite so well as this one.

For years I used a manual toaster - it was the only way I could control the degree of "toastedness". I still have that toaster - they don't wear out. I have never been happy with pop up toasters. This year however, I felt like a change. I bought a toaster oven - the Cuisinart brick oven model which I now use - it does a good job but I still watch like a hawk. My favourite way to make toast is to bake the slices of bread in the oven at about 275-300 degrees. I find the flavour of this baked toast is deeper and wheatier. I don't bake toast for breakfast - I usually make it to accompany soup. Sometimes I butter it first. Yummm!

Red zinger tea from Celestial Seasonings if I have a cold - love the color and the flavor. I always add lots of lemon juice and honey. For chills and flu, I drink a mild black tea clear - darjeeling or keemun if I have them.

I live in Canada where we have only KFC and Popeye. Popeye arrived very recently and I wasn't impressed with either the chicken or the biscuits. The biscuits were hard little hockey pucks with no flavour whatsoever. The chicken was just ok. I will not be ordering from Popeye again. KFC has been in Canada for years and I crave it (lacking any alternative) about once a year. However, I have always found it too salty and the spices too ersatz so after my first drumstick I peel off the skin. Also their sides aren't all that great any more. Mostly I make my own (using Lori Colwin's recipe )which I like much more and I can have the biscuits fresh from the oven. I was in North Carolina for Christmas and my host swears by Bojangles. We had it 2 or 3 times for lunch. The biscuits are delicious especially since they serve them just out of the oven and the chicken was moist and tender with a crisp crust and a reasonable addition of salt and spice. They have sweet biscuits too which were good and a country ham and egg biscuit sandwich which my hostess loves. So, in my humble Canadian opinion, they are the best and I wish we had Bojangles in Canada.

My Life in France - Julia Child Letters to a Young Chef - Daniel Boulud A Meal Observed - Andrew Toddhunter Tender at the Bone nd its 2 sequels- Ruth Reichl Monsoon Diary - Shoba Narayan Feeding a Yen - Calvin Trillin Mouth Wide Open - John Thorne Risotto with Nettles - Anna del Conte Raw...Anthony Bourdain Animal, Mineral, Vegetable - Barbara Kingsolver This was a hard list to write and there are several more titles that I would have liked to include. This is a highly personal list. I collect fook writing and like it to evoke the pleasures of life and of eating. I like it to be well written and humorous, opinionated and personal and not too academic. I like it to transport me and deepen my understanding of food and its preparation in other cultures as well as my own. I like it to make me hungry and eager to cook.

yes, nutmeg is lovely with truffle tagliatelle.

When I have a white truffle I always grate it over tagliatelle with butter and parmesan with just a touch of cream. The combination is divine.

I prefer to serve ragus with paparadelle for all the reasons you have given. It is a better vehicle for the sauce and is more satisfying taste-wise and also in terms of mouth feel and texture.

Years ago, my husband and daughter and I had a cottage near a sugarbush south of Owen Sound Ontario. Every year in spring break or when the sap was running we would make maple syrup. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on equipment - so we bought taps and used them but we collected the sap in green plastic garbage bags (these were my husband's favourite container for just about everything). We did the initial reduction outside over a fire using my very large stock pots since we didn't have an evaporator, and I would do the final finishing off reduction indoors. That still involved a lot of boiling. You really need to do the initial reduction outside since you have to boil a large volume for a long time to get anywhere near syrup. The farmers next door who made maple syrup every year using a huge ancient evaporator and tending the fires all night, recommended old long johns as a filter. We were somewhat dubious but tried them. Our syrup was pristine - clear and pale and sweet. The farmer's syrup was dark and smokey. We loved them both.

Years ago my husband and I were invited to dinner at colleagues of his, in the television business. Both Alan and I had reputations as adventurous and curious cooks so our hosts had determined that they should cook us something exotic and foreign. They decided to cook meloukhia, an Egyptian soupy stew made with fresh jute leaves, a variety of spices and sometimes chicken. I don't believe they had eaten the dish before, nor that they had a recipe for it. In any event what we sat down to at dinner was a grey green tasteless muck with no chicken or spices to be found. The erstwhile cook was very pleased with herself. Unable to find fresh meloukhia leaves she had searched out and found boxes and boxes of dried meloukhia leaves, and with the addition of water and nothing else she had made our meal. There were no accompaniments, just the pasty sludge that went by such a lovely name. We had a terrible time choking it down - it had no flavour and a ghastly texture and I recall not being able to finish it. In addition, the couple and several cats - 4 or 5 which they allowed to roam on the table while they were dining. The cats wandered here and there (they certainly weren't interested in the meloukhia) and were fed meat tidbits. I was actually envious of them - they ate better than we did. However, I did not appreciate their presence and their food on the table with ours. It was an appalling evening and we never visited again. Maybe we weren't sufficiently appreciative guests (I didn't ask for the recipe) but even now I can't think of that "meal" withoug gagging.

Thank you so much for the recipe. It sounds incredibly delicious. I will make it soon! Yumm

I have always covered the pots lightly with foil in order to prevent the crust and it has always worked well, however I think I will try a sheet pan, next time - it is easier and not so fiddly. I don't recall pock marks and I have made hundreds over the years. I'd keep the water bath though to keep the texture silky. I agree the oven temperature should be lower.

How did you make your broth? A student that lived with me once make it out of some powdered mixture that she bought at the Chinese grocery store. Frankly, it was revolting. I have tried recipes from some of my Chinese cookbooks but haven't been entirely satisfied. Could you recommend a recipe or a method?

I ordered Darina Allen's book after Snadra's post and I received it the next day from Amazon. It is a lovely gentle cookbook, and I am enjoying reading it. While I won't slaughter pigs, or defeather chickens I will cook from it. And as Snadra says it is lovely to know there is a country in the world where people still cook the traditional way!

My daughter and her partner are great outdoor enthusiasts. They hiked the west coast trail ov Vancouver Island last summer. It was supposed to be a 3 week hike but halfway into it they realized that they were running out of food, so they supplemented their diet with a lot of huckleberries and other kinds - salal berries, blackberries etc. They had gorgeous looking breakfasts of a mixture of all sorts of berries but Suzanna says that the huckleberries were the best. She's going to hunt them down next summer and make pies.

My copy of "A Platter of Figs" was appropriated by a highly respected Canadian chef. He couldn't put it down so I let him keep it. He cooks in the European style you refer to.

I loved Platter of Figs and this one sounds wonderful as well. I will be buying it soon for sure.