DRColby

Rummaging around the remains of the garden yesterday I dug up a couple of horseradish roots. Ground them up, added a little white vinegar and some salt. I started crying when I began grinding, and the tears really flowed when I taste the stuff... knock your socks off. I was going to feed this to my wife today (we both like horseradish) for a Valentine's Day dinner of beef. But after thinking about it , I am affraid I's lose her, iron gut and all. Perhaps it will tone down in time for St. Patrick's Day? How do you mellow it out without adding mayo? I was once in a spice store and guy in front of me bought two pounds of cayanne. Nosey me asked what he was doing will all that: "I add it to horseradish I grind and give it for Christmas presents".... Guy must not have any friends left... Ain't going that way, for sure. dave

My wife dies for Mexican food, could we join you? Least preferred is Monday or Wednesday lunches. dave

Hi Lisa, Very interesting. Is Le Ferrandi open to the public for meals like some of the cullinary schools in the US? Please keep up the posts. dave

How big, and what kind of salmon? One of my wife's favorites with a coho or king that is 6 or 7 pounds is to remove head and tail, split it down the backbone, leaving the fish together, and then place it skin side down on a double layer of heavy weight foil. Cover the flesh with brown sugar and sprinkle liberally with tobasco sauce. Let marinate at room temp most of the day (6 to 8 hours). Drain off liquid that's accumulated in foil and place fish - still on foil - on grill or under broiler. Again, be careful because the sugar cumuation will burn. When white fat droplets are showing on salmon it is done. The fish frame picks up very easily after cooking and you can then cut it into pieces. dave

The antipasti plate at the Pink Door. Big enough for a meal for two along with some bread and a little of their house red. dave

The blood oranges now on the market make some great salads and the pink grapefruit are at their best. I missed seeing any Meyer lemons in the Seattle markets this year; bought two in Columbus,OH at $1 each... such a price. Dave

Fifi, you don't know how right you are.... A couple of weeks ago we were in Santa Barbara and stopped at the original Little Black Sambo's for breakfast. It has a different name now and it passes me by as what it is. Anyway, They also sell a version of book "Little Black Sambo". My wife collects children's books, and like you remembered this from childhood, so she decided to buy the last copy the resturant had. There were two black guys in line back of her at the register who started verbally attacking her for buying a "racist book"... Pretty amazing in such a laid-back town. We were on our way to LAX. The rest o fthe trip was spent with my wife reading the book and trying to find what was so offensive. Dave

Mark, I just went from a 30" electric with Hobbs burners to a Dacor all gas-30" Preference. We have had painters around this weekso I haven't used it much. So far we are quite pleased. We went through the argurment of the high BTU of the commercial like ranges, and decided it wasn't worth tearing out a microwave and fan that was over the old range to put in an expensive hood system. The Dacor was a little over $2,000. Another range we considered that is a little less is the GE Profile. The biggest differences I have noticed with the Dacor have been the oven, broiler and the quicker cooking times on top the range. Bang! It's on. Bang! It's off. No waiting. I made Boston Brown Bread last night using the convection oven. It took about half the time our old oven would have. The broiler is infrared and very quick. A fritatta with acheese topping took 2 minutes to brown. The top burn BTU is like 12,000 and it seems more than adeqaute for what we do. We're please with the addition. A person I worked with put a Viking in a simlar home cooking situation 3 years ago and is ready to take it out because of the heat it creates. Hope that helps. Dave

"A Life of Gluttony", A.J. Libeling. Dave

We toured the Rungis Market in France two years ago. A butcher shop owner told us that he lost close to 40% of his business when Mad Cow's Disease was discovered in France. The problem there - and here - was restoring the creditablity of the industry. Creditabllity isn't simply created by saying "I am having beef for my Christmas dinner." The French put in an expensive tagging and tracking system that traces an animal from the slaughter house to the table. Every cut of meat is trackable; where it came from, where it went. Given that it is impossible for USDA to inspect every carcass or standing cow we very much need that system here. Also I am more worried about the parts of that cow that went to the rendering plant that the actual meat. The ethical thing would be for USDA to list the products that coming out of the rendering plant so we're sure there's noneim things like a food supplement my graddaughter might be taking, or my dog's food. And finally: stop feeding this stuff to animals. Dave

To say there is no problem with overfishing in Alaska is rediculious. One only has to look at the distance that AK fishermen travel to fill IQFs and you realised that fish populations can be - and are - depleated in AK. The state of Alaska has what they call time/catch records. There are far more hours per fish now than 20 years ago. Some fisheries in danger: The Keni run, the Bristol Bay fishery, perhaps the Cooper River run. Look at what has happened ay Copper River. More fish are being taken and the price is dropping each year. BC has had to close the Fraizer - one of the world's great fisheries - to the taking of Reds because of over harvest and one other factor: What happens in the ocean. Despite all our smarts, migratory fisheries still depend much on one thing: What happens in the oceans; water temperatures, how much feed is around, and pressure from open water fishing. In recent years on the West Coast the herring and anchovey cycles have peaked, thus there has been record salmon runs. it wasn't that way in el Nino years, warm-water fish, such as mackrel, migrated north and close to shore and gobbled up all the Coho and King fingerlings that made it to saltwater. California has ban gill nets. Its fish population has increased. If overfishing was - or will be no problem in AK - then fish traps wouldn't be ban, subsistance quotas wouldn't be altered, and IQFs wouldn't dictate the harvest, and fishermen could stay home and fill their nets. Dave

It will be interesting to watch what (if any) effect Starbucks will have on French cafe habits. ...the "grab and go" vs "I own this table for the day." Perhaps the reception will be like that of McDonalds. I understand that [ostongs on French chat rooms has been quite accepting of Starbucks. I am surprised. Dave

Beans, For the record, I don't eat farm-raised salmon. I also ask any resturant I enter with steelhead on the menu to take it off. Three times last week we had what ypu call "wild" salmon. Once salmon patties off a King frame. Once in a gratin - mixed with what you and I call sea bass -and albacore. And once a piece of grilled silver. All that fish was from either WA or AK (international on the tuna) waters and personally caught. I have fished on the Nushkag (sp) and think it is one of the best managed wild fisheries in the world. An isolated river, that most people can't get to, with a fish-run from a bay with stange but fitting commercial regulations. The Nush' wasn't aways so well managed when commercial fishermen got desperate and nearly depeated the entire run. Fortunately the Kings have lamprey scars and so don't sell well as premimum fish. I have also stood on banks the Thames in London, near the Tower, and seen the little marker that reads " The last salmon passed by here in 1520" (or some such ancient year). I have also stool on the banks of the Seine and be told by fishermen that salmon are returning up-stream. People, demand, and stupidilty (or greed) vanqish our resources. One only has to read the history of the "iron Chink" or see pictures of the huge, abandon canneries in Bellinghan, King Salmon, or Southeast to undertand this. Let's use our resources wisely so we don't have to wonder what the last salmon in the Thames tasted like, or if the French sportsman is telling a fish story, or that susistance fishing on the "Nush mustl really be just that. dave

Beans, I think prices for wild salmon - chum (outside of roe stripping), pinks. silvers, Bristol Bay reds - point out that people are spending their salmon bucks on pen-raised fish. Add inthat the point that canery demand for salmon is almost not existant and you get what amounts to not a very good market for wild salmon. I think to that if we were to check you would find that world and US salmon consumption is at an all-time high. I'd like to see the AK fishermen getting their fair share of this huge salmon market. I'd like to see them supplement the seasonal runs with AK pen-raised salmon so the market has a constant supply of "AK salmon"; not Chilan, not BC, not Norwegian, not Scotish raised salmon. My point is the world is going to eat salmon. Whether it is from pens off the coast of Santa Barbara, Petersburg, AK, or Thiland, matters mainly to Alaskans. When I travel the coast of Southeast I see abandon oyster farms, abandon fox farms, abandon mink ranches; I know that things crazier than pen raising salmon have been tried in Alaska. Some worked, some didn't. Keeping pen-raised salmon away from the public won't. dave

Let's call a spade a spade. Most people won't eat wild salmon. They won't eat chum, they won't eat pinks, they won't eat many silvers and are damned selective in the reds they eat. Examples? Long ago lots of wild salmon went in cans. How much canned salmon does anyone eat anymore? Costco this summer had whole reds - or sockeye - from the Copper River for sale. Whole, fish for under $4 a pound. It wasn't fashionable at the time - after the great Copper River promotions were over - and they didn't have a lot of takers. People who eat wild salmon don't eat wild Atlantic salmon (thank, god). On the other hand about the only salmon that European's eat is Atlantic - pen-raised fish. Want to start a big run on depleating our wild salmon (Chinook and Coho) populations? Just like we have done with the Atlantic salmon and our steelhead, then create a big market for these fisheries, and let the Russians and Chinese start fishing for them in the open waters. dave

Trader Joe's is selling frozen Italian chestnuts that are peeled for about $4 a box. Can't coment on quality because I haven't used them yet. My experience whenever buying chestnuts in the shell is that I throw about half away because they are rotten. I bought 2 boxes of them for a dressing for Thanksgiving. Probablymore than enough, so maybe I'll try to emulated the Mont Blanc desert we enjoyed on a sunny day in Paris. dave

I just finished reading about hepatitis (sp) and green onions from Mexico, and thought about how fortunate some of us are because we know where most of our food comes from. For example, our onions, greens and beets are still coming out of the garden. We eat lots of fish we catch and also lots of game others bring us . I don't hunt anymore. One of the hallmarks of a good hunter - or fisherman - is how he's cared for his kill. Our neighbor loves to hunt. His wife refuses to cook game for him. Consequently. we got lots of venison this fall. perfect. The neighbor makes sure hehangs the carcas for the right amount of time, butchers it correctly, and goes to great effort in the packing and wrapping. We find most game (and wild fish) so rich that we don't ear near as much as we would of farm-raised meat. A little bit of loin rubbed with crushed juniper berries, salt and pepper, then quickly seared in some good oil or duck fat is just about as good eating as you can get. Surly much better and safer than Mexican green onions. dave

I am badly left-handed. One time while visiting Boston I got carried away by the apperance of an expensive cheese knife. It had a special coating on - like a butter server, or fish knife - on the right-hand side. The cheese knife is little - if ever- used..... expensive and usless. dave

There is an American food writer/tranlator who inherited the right to run tours of Rungis. her name is Stepahnie Curtis and I have miss placed her e-mail and phone but her address is: Stepahnie Curtis 10 Rue Poussin 75016 Paris We took her tour two years ago and would highly recommend it because Rungis is, like, 540 acres, there's much to see, and starts very early. I think we left at 4 a.m. Depending what you are interest on there is much going on. We spent a small amount of time with an ofal butcher. He showed us the effects and precautions taken because of Mad Cow disease. The other thing Stepahnie knows and does at tour end is stiop for breakfast within the market and to shop. She was doing this tour only one day a week when we visited. By all means, though, go. Rungis is not to be missed. Dave Colby

Thanks all for getting me on the right track. Think I have it down after two nights of experimenting. Last night was best, did the high heat-peanut oil method usiing some albacore chunks, the last of the garden goodies (Swiss chard, pettie pan squash, Napa cabbage) a sauce of soya, rice vinegar, fish sauce, saki, ginger and garlic. Add straw mushrooms, the noodles,cilantro and green onions at the end to warm. Very good. Night before I tried a pork loin cut up with the Japanses cuttlet sauce; sauce was too heavy for my taste. Anyhow I am dowen to about 3 pounds of noodles left in freezer and now know how to use them. Thanks, dave

I have the terrible problem of going to Costco, seeing something I think I can make great dinner out of. and then after I get home find out I have no idea how to use what bought. The latest is four pounds of Yakisoba noodles ( think they are fresh. Anyhow now they are in my freezer). My first attempt - kind of a stir fry - ended in a very soggy mess. What I would like to get to is a salad or some kind of fish dish that utilizes these. Even better yet would be a recipe with wild mushrooms (I just picked some matsutakes, ruff stemmed boletes and a prince). Recipes, suggestions, divine guidence, and instruction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dave

We just spent three weeks in France, most of which was in Paris, but took a two day break and went to Vernon as a base for visiting Giverny. We have been to Giverny three times and never quite get over the beauty of it. Also in Giverny and often overlooked is the American musem which I rank with the Maeght Foundation in Saint Paul for architecture and interest. Try Gites France program, the hotel in Vernon servers pretty good regional food. You don't want too many meals there, though, because it is very rich. Hope this helps, dave

Question: I have always interperted (and done) the bleeding of fish -especially delicate fish such as salmon and albacore - to be the cutting of the gills, or across the tail,to allow the fish to bleed immediately after being caught. We do this for a number of reasons (hot weather, not returning home for a long time, etc.) but mainly because the fish simply taste better when eaten. Of course the blood line needs tot be removed later if you are not filleting the fish. Am I wrong in this interpertation? Dave

Am I wrong on this? I take my duck fat (which I use mainly with potatoes) and freeze it in ice cube trays, then defrost what I need. Seems to work fine and much easier to store. dave