VivreManger

Although I trashed the recipe and presumably warned others off trying it, in the interests of historical accuracy and completeness, and for the convenience of future thread-followers, herewith are the URLs for accessing it from the NYTimes. I believe that, because of the one-week rule, today is the last day that one can easily down-load the text for free. Bittman's comments: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/dining/25MINI.html Recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/dining/251MREX.html

My wife is going off to Cape Town later this week for a conference. She has learned (from the NYTiems and other sources) that Bukhara and Africa Cafe are both good. Any comments and suggestions? I am posting this in ME & Africa, but since this rubric gets little attention -- the last posting was more than ten days ago -- if I get no response within the next day or so, I will repost the same query in general food topics. I hope that will violate no ethics.

Do any of the Atlantic Avenue pastry shops make the Palestinian sweet, konafe? It is a mixture of white cheese, shredded wheat and other crunchies (usually baked and dyed to an orange crisp), on which is drizzled warm sugar syrup directly from a heated pan. The warm cheese has the consistency of mozzarela, but I don't know the type used. I used to get it in Jaafar's on the lane running from Damascus Gate (right turn at the fork) in the Old City of Jerusalem. I have been promised a trip to Nablus, whence comes the best konafe, but that is not likely in the near future. Occasionally it is offered in Boston, but it is a faint imitation of the real thing. The crust is not dyed and crisped. It looks and tastes like little more than baked shredded wheat. Is it available in NY?

Report on the apple slice technique. Up here in the frozen North, we get brown sugar in a heavy plastic bag in a box. After it is opened, without a ziploc bag, one is dependent on the uncertain strength of a bag tie. A few twistings of that and it is useless, particularly at the start of the bag when the top of the bag is too small to give the necessary purchase. Obviously the immediate solution is to transfer the sugar to a zip-lock. That is what I did before adding not one, but two small apple quarters. I left them in for 24 hours and miracle of miracles, almost all of the sugar was back in its happy state. After I removed the apples, the rest followed suit on the accumulated moisture. Two problems: 1) I should have used one slice of apple. 2) The excess of apple did leave moisture that wet some of the sugar. However apples removed and bag resealed after another 24 hours of quiet contemplation, the sugar was dry, fluffy, happy, and the entire block was usable.

I was able to surmount the rendering problem, keeping the skin crispy and the flesh moist, withint the allotted time, but ultimately the recipe fails the taste test. I flattened the legs, intensifying the crispiness, and hastening the rendering by placing two bricks on top of a 10" lid on the four legs, within a 12" heavy aluminum skillet. This is a technique recommended in the squab thread and it is also an essential step in the making of a Caucasian chicken dish. About every 20 minutes or so I would remove this contraption along with the duck legs and pour out the accumulated duck fat. It produced nearly a cup of fat. Normally I regard a recipe as the basso continuo on which I create my own cadenza -- Bach is in the background as I write this -- but this time in the interests of culinary science, I followed the recipe very carefully. In the article accompanying the recipe, Bittman did suggest adding thyme and garlic to the aromatic vegetables, which I did along with some bay leaves. Before starting to cook the legs, I had slowly sauted a thinly sliced clove of garlic in the first batch of rendered duck fat which I had first removed from the legs. I then reserved the browned garlic and gribenes (tr. Yiddish for the fat bits left after rendering) for later in the recipe. BTW, the duck was Broome Lake, from Quebec. While I can get wild duck and muscovy duck in western Massachusetts, it is not regularly available and I have only seen them sold whole. The timing was pretty close to the advertised 2 hours, at most a few minutes more. I suspect I could have done it in less time if my 12' inch skillet were cast iron rather than heavy aluminum. Along the way I had experimented with the 10" iron skillet, but it was too small for the dish, though much faster cooking. The problem was that the dish is dull. I have been thinking about how to enliven it. First the duck legs could have been brined. Second the vegetables should be sauted with something more flavorful, perhaps throw in pancetta or other form of bacon/beef fry. In the summer I often hickory smoke whole ducks and then freeze them. Had I a bit of the skin and flesh from that duck, it would have helped. For the two cups of stock I had a bit less than a cup of very rich home-made chicken soup, which I supplemented with artichoke cooking water and a healthy TS of Bovril chicken stock. In order to keep the stock from uncrisping the skin, I wound up not using all of it, only one cup and a half. Otherwise it would have submerged the entire leg. That was a second mistake. I should have used the entire two cups, but reduced the liquid to the right duck based level before returning the legs to the pan. However before adding that liquid, I should have thrown in some cognac and red wine to the reducing stock. A cadenza of wine and cognac would help this recipe, but at the moment it is too late for me to try it. The result would be a kind cuises de canard au vin. A couple of other suggestions. The recipe is quite obsessed with keeping the skin as dry as possible, and free from direct contact with the cooking vegetables and liquid. It strikes me that apartheid is another barrier to flavor. If the dish were covered for part of the cooking the flavors would be stronger. The skin's crsipness could be restored by browing the legs under the broiler for a minute or so before serving. Good luck with your own experiments.

Wednesday's NYTimes, in addition to the latest Cruella-Nigella bit of tarted-up Brit-food, had a Mark Bittman recipe for pan-seared duck legs then braised in aromatic vegies. I thought I would try it later today since I have the ingredients lying about. Several months ago I used his quickie version of a cassoulet as the basis for my own recipe which was good enough to satisfy a friend from Toulouse. Any comments out there?

I can't remember how to repair a box of dark brown sugar that has dried up and solidified into an unhospitable mass.

My 11-year old daughter wrote the following and asked me to post it: Last night I had a delightful maple syrup mashed yam and squash. The nutmeg did the trick, but I do have to say the sweet maple syrup was, oh so delicious. I also had clementine chicken that was topped off with soy sauce, honey, OJ, and anise powder. Yum… I can still taste that anise sauce in my mouth. If anybody has any recipes that include squash with maple syrup please get back to me.

You must have some great fruit this time of year. The best mangos I have ever tasted in December come from Australia. Unfortunately I can't find them in the States, though they are available in Paris for about $9 each !!. In Australia they must be cheap enough for a struggling grad student. Are melons abundant as well? You could get add ice cream -- preferably a good quality vanilla -- to the fresh fruit and have a cool and refreshing sweet.

Great. Unfortunately their season, at least where I live is limited.

I insist that tahina is a necessity for hommos. It is also a necessity for baba ghannouj, in which some miscreants put mayonnaise. Beyond the preparation itself, presentation is also important. Too many simply pour it out into a dip dish and let it sit there. Even lousy store-bought hommos can be rescued, to a degree, with a drizzle of tehina sauce (that is the lemon-garlic preparation described above), EVOO and paprika or cayenne. Pine nuts either raw or lightly sauteed are a delicious addition. Parsely is absolutely essential. Sometimes I reserve some chick peas before crushing and serve them hot on the hommos below a drizzling of the other additions. Good Middle Eastern olives, pickles, cucumbers, turnip, peppers etc. are also important to give the dish some excitement.

I thought to revisit and correct my report of a few weeks ago about sampling Herme's products. The correction concerns price and quantity, if I may raise the matter of filthy luchre. I had ordered the 3/4 person apple-orange tarte for about 20 euros and was surprized by its size. In fact when I dug up my receipt, I realized that they had packed and correctly charged me for the small individual tarte, a size I had not noticed in their catalogue. My wife, after her return from Prague, did sample that apple orange poppy seed tarte. Her first reaction, too sweet, but she later started to enjoy it. However her pastry taste is more central European than mine. My judgment remains that it is too much of a streuseley hodgpodge. However my devotion to the sable florentin has only held and grown more fervent. At the moment I am contemplating the last 1/4 of a stick left in the plastic container. It is a marvelous confection: in addition to the expected butter, sugar, and almond powder, et al. this version has honey, zests of orange, and Grand Marnier. It is a bit more expensive than I had first remembered, about 14 euros rather than 10. If any of you are looking for compact and convenient gifts to bring home after a Christmas trip to Paris, that is the package. While the macarons are superb, these keep better. Speaking of macaron, why can't we get the NYTimes et al. to drop the second o when referring to the French product which, as you all so helpfully informed me, has little in common with the horrendous dry coconut-cough-inducing gullet-clogging syrupy-sweet creation many of us most readily identify with Manischevitz and matza.

You signed it best yourself. De Gustibus non est Disputandum Nuff said.

Perhaps the grass is greener, on the other coast. NY deli is a genre onto itself, but I have to argue that Montreal deli is superior. Smoked Meat is the best of pastrami and corned beef combined and I have even eaten at Lou Siegel's before it closed. I have not eaten enough NY pizza to offer a considered judgment, but New Haven is certainly comparable or better and Satarpio's thin-crust pizza in East Boston, right near Logan Airport, is almost good enough to schedule a lay-over in Beantown. However I have to confess that I prefer the range and variety of oriental foods available in SF to both of those distinguished cuisines. Another issue is price-quality and cuisine consciousness as an element of civic identity. Food is more important for SF than it is for NY. Last, there is the problem of practical access, convenience, and per capita scale. How many SFs can we fit into a NY subway car. Given the size of NY, it is a tribute to SF that the issue of the smaller city's food culture can even be raised in the same paragraph as the Empire City. Person for person, acre for acre, SF beats NYC. My Vietnamese SF vegan baker-friend disses Slanted Door as the kind of food he can eat at home so why bother, but.... Slanted Door does grill an excellent brontzini. I won't claim victory. That is for others to judge. (If they want to bother with my nonsense!!)

I got to go for physical therapy for my back which is why I can indulge in this thread for awhile. ORIENTAL and not just Ahi Tuna. Slanted Door, Delfina, to mention a few. However I must rush off for now.

Obviously, SF is the best foodie town in the country. Sure one might be able to get a better meal in the best NY restaurant over the best SF restaurant, but in terms of culinary culture as a whole, SF is superior. In terms of the price-quality ratio, SF wins again. A new restaurant opening in SF is a major event. On a per capita basis, SF wins hands down. The range and variety of foods is outstanding. Another point of comparison might be the number of food correspondents at the Chronicle as opposed to the NY Times. I suspect that the Chronicle has more. Here though the comparison might be unfair since SF has become a one-newspaper town and NY still has a few others. But do the Voice, Post, the Daily News, and on the margins Newsday have any culinary clout -- Cheap Eats aside? I am a native New England who has over the years spent only a few months here and there on the West Coast, so my endorsement is not based on crude nativism.

When did Ernie's close? I think I went there in the early 80s and that it closed late in that decade.

In a Lausanne restaurant a few weeks I had a glass of gavi di gavi. The waiter recommended it when I asked for a glass of dry white to go with my dorade. It is a pleasant wine. I had never had it before and want to learn more about it. Any suggestions out there?

One well-known gourmand recommended to me the sand dabs at Tadich's as a classic. I mentioned this to my SF foodie friends who said they would never trust my judgment again, if I ate there. However as a statement of quintessential SF dining experience it may be worth a brief visit, particularly if you can get a curtained booth and just order a simple fried fish and frites. Another SF classic is I think called Ernies, if it is still in busines. Jimmie Stewart had a scene there in Vertigo. It represents a different tradition in SF dining: The long counter restaurant with iron-skillet cooked food. For simple seafood, I recommend SWAN OYSTER DEPOT 1517 Polk St. (nearer California than Sacramento), (415) 673-1101. Open 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday. No reservations or credit cards accepted. Near Bus 1, 19, 42, 47, 49, 76/cable car. The oysters and chowda are great. The fish is fresh. The SF clientele authentic. By the way, if you are doing SF ethnic food, I might want your help in tracking down an Iraqi restaurant that my nephews used to patronize (their mother was born in Baghdad): Ya Ya Cuisine, 663 Clay Street, Phone: 415 434-3567. I tried to find it a year ago, but it seems to have closed. Another ethnic theme are the Japanese breakfast restaurants. I don't remember ever seeing an article on them, but I have not been surfing the Chronicle recently.

I don't think lahmajun made from left-over lamb is a good idea. Various curried dishes do work well with previously cooked lamb, but lahmajun should be made with freshly ground lamb, mixed with tomato paste, olive oil, plenty of garlic, to create a tatar-like paste that is spread on the dough or pita bread (here I do cheat) and then dotted with small tomato and green pepper bits -- an appropriate -- albeit obvious Xmas color combo -- and put in a 350 oven for about ten minutes or less. As a garnish you can have some lemon wedges along with parsley sumack dusted onion slices. You could cut some lamb off the leg and reserve it for lahmajun. I just re-read the original post and see that the weekend is past and that it is too late to reserve raw lamb for the lahmajun. By all means you should play with a curry. The simplest thing would be to make a tikka paste with some onions and tomatoes and throw the lamb in to simmer long and slow. Then serve it on an open mini-pita slice garnished with fresh coriander and lime juice.

I don't know the JP Hevin shops at all. Please tell us more. I am also curious about Peltier run by the patissier Philippe Conticini located at 66 rue de Sevres (7th), 01.47.83.66.12 (open daily), and 6 rue Saint-Dominique (7th), 01.47.05.50.02 (open except Sundays and Mondays).

My ATM password follows that rule, yet I still had trouble. I wonder if my home bank has screwed up. In France I use a Telecarte, but I was not in Switzerland long enough to buy theirs. Unlike French phones, Swiss proclaim no extra charge for credit care usage. That remains to be seen when the bill comes.

Thanks for the practical advice given before my trip. Have any of you had problems with using ATM and credit cards in Europe recently? I just got back from Paris and Lausanne and had repeated but inconsistent problems in using both my cards. In a small store in Lausanne my Visa card was rejected, but my Mastercard worked. Phone booths in Switzerland allow credit card use without any extra charge. The phone booths in rail stations do what they claim. They work, but the phones in the post office and elsewhere do not. In those instances I tried both Visa and Mastercharge. In Paris I had similar inconsistencies in shops and restaurants. At Petit Marguery, after trying the Visa and Mastercard without success, the American Express worked. I realize that with increasingly intrusive security procedures, credit card companies will sometime hold approval when the usage pattern is unusual, but these cases were far too inconsistent to suggest a design at work. The other problem concerns bank ATM cards. The ATM in terminal 2 C, arrival just to the right of the information booth, run by Union des Banques de Paris (??) would not accept my Cirrus-linked bankcard. That same day I had trouble at Bank Lyonnaise and one or two others, but eventually I got a Barclaysbank ATM to work for me. A few days later, I succeeded with a Bred (?) ATM. In all my trips to Europe I have never had so many problems with plastic. In the past, there might be general problems such as the armored car drivers strike in France or Italian ATM slow-downs on weekends, but now the trouble seems more widespread and erratic. Any similar complaints? The solution might have been before departure to alert the banks and credit card companies to travel plans, but I suspect something more that that is causing the trouble.

Re: Cabrales "the apple slice on top as not being entirely dried, as having some suppleness (limited)" You are quite right. The slice is dry, but still supple. It has a texture between the standard dry fruit softness and the crunchiness of a sweet potato chip. I am curious how it is achieved. The same applies to the orange slice in the Veloute. (By the way, how do you get accent marks in this mode? When I post a long message I usually compose it off-line and then cut and paste, but for a quick response I don't bother. However the result is inaccurate French orthography.)

Although the Pierre Hermé thread has wandered far away from its gastronomic origins into the realms of Paris chic finance, I hope it won't be amiss if we return to what their products taste like. This past Sunday I picked up more than a dozen different pastries from the rue Bonaparte store. Forewarned that there might be a line, I had called in my order from the States. Earlier they had faxed the price-list. (Incidentally the quality of the copy was poor so some details were illegible). In fact there was no waiting line on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. Fewer than half a dozen customers were desultorily milling in and out. (On the night before, the line at the cheese shop, Barthelemy, was snaking out into rue de Grenelle, by contrast). The pastries were waiting for me when I arrived. Since I was rushing to bring them to friends for tea, I did not bother to check what they had packed. Nor did the Rudi Gernreich-costumed -- no mono-kinis, just lots of solid angular browns and blacks -- serving staff offer to go over my order. The bijoux-like post-modern austerity of the boutique is amusing, but it wears a bit like a Jacque Tati movie from the fifties -- all a big joke. Les Émotions: acidule, veloute, Les signatures: tarte aux pommes a l'orange-- (for 3-4 persons), surprise Macarons: huile d'olives, chocolate aux fruits de la passion, caramel a la fleur de sel, chocolat Petits-fours: plenitude, ispahan, tartelette chocolat, mont blanc, tartelette citron, caraibes Most of what I ordered was there, but much was missing. In place of the signature, caramel a la fleur de sel, and huile d'olives macarons, I got pistachio and coffee, neither of which I had ordered. The tarte aux pommes a l'orange (for Euro 21.40 !!) could hardly serve that many since it was the size of a standard single-serving tarte from any Paris patisserie. Once in the shop, I added two other items that I thought would travel well for the trip back to the States, one package of sablé florentines and one of sablé chocolat. Only one made it. My reaction to this range of tastes is still mixed. First as to les Émotions, acidulé and velouté, anyone who knows English cooking will immediately recognize them as chic Parisian versions of the trifle, the treacley sweet combination of fruit, nuts, cream, sugar, and cake, layered in an often clear glass and dished out as pud to balance the joint served up at the beginning of a Sunday dinner. The next course is usually a nap. The acidulé, as those who remember the earlier reports, is a combination of mascarpone rice pudding, roast apple slice, mint and lime gelatin, the last justifying its name -- of course gelle sounds better in French. The most startling and intriguing taste in this desert is the dry-roasted apple slice which crowns the 4-5" high glass. It is a wonderful combination of dryness and sweetness and almost makes the entire desert worth it, but as far as I am concerned rice pudding is still rice pudding, with or without mascarpone. I think a stronger spice, perhaps cardomon, maybe with a bit of clove -- cinnamon would be a disastrous cliché -- might have given this base greater interest. I am not sure it works all that well and at Euro 7.30 a shot, even this generous portion -- it can easily serve two or three different spoons several dippings -- may not be worth it. The velouté is also crowned with a thin slice of fruit, orange, almost crystalized in its intense flavor, like an unsugared confit, a nice contrast to the coffee that dominates the trifle. The cardomon used here combined with the suffusion of coffee recreates the sweet cardomon-coffee combination that is characteristic of Turkish-Arab coffee, but the allusion is overwhelmed by the orange influenced coffee gelatine at the base. Both deserts offer a pleasing variety of textures, but the diversity may be too overwhelming. They never gelled in my mouth. The petits-fours were more successful. The ispahan, the chocolate (plenitude and tartelette), mont-blanc and lemon were all excellent. I can't match the description, by Cabrales, as I recall, of the combination of rose and litchi that this creation captures. I usually don't like rose-flavoring in Middle Eastern sweets, but this creation combines the tastes with subtlety and panache. The caraibes (pineapple and cream of cocoa) did not work well. The tiny slices of pineapple fell off the tarte. Though the combination works well in a daiquiri, it never connected here. We were a group of five for tea sampling nearly about 10 separate pastries (two of each flavor) so we could hardly get more than a bite or two each. The chocolate used in the plénitude and tartelette is intense and flavorful. The lemon flavor in the tartelette citron au citron is sharp and pleasing. I had been looking forward to the two signature macarons, olive oil/vanila and caramel/fleur de sel, but they were missing from the box. The other flavors are delightful, though pistachio and coffee are not my favorite. Particularly enjoyable is the chocolate with passion fruit. The cruchiness of the meringue is well-complemented by the smooth passion fruit paste at the center. I am sorely disappointed by the tarte aux pommes a l'orange. It is more of a crumb cake, than a classic tarte, with poppy seed dotting the sweetened orange and apple chunks and strussel crumbs on the top. This is Hermé's homage to central European strudel-poppy seed pastry, not my favorite style of baking. My wife loves the stuff. When she gets a bite, I can gage how well he has achieved that taste. At the moment she is in Prague, doubtless getting her fill of such confections. The Surprise in texture and taste reminded me of the chocolate passion fruit macaron, definitely worth ordering again. It captures a similar sensation of cruchiness and sweetness, but with almond and vanilla assuming the role of the macaron's chocolate. The sablé are definitely worth getting. The chocolate never made it to the plane since I left them as a dinner gift. As soon as the container was opened, the rich buttery chocolate aroma pleasingly overwhelmed the nose and palate. Chewy and smooth, each little cookie was a delight. Right now I have just opened the florentines for the first time. Stick cookies, essence of almond, carmelized sugar, and butter are overwhelming. The crunchy almonds and chewy caramel butter of each bite is a delight. The sablé make a very practical, compact, and easily traveling gift to bring home from Paris. Highly recommended. I hope this extends coverage of the Hermé offerings. There are still enough tastes there left to explore. Having devoted all of this effort to sampling their wares, at the end of the day I am not sure if the Emperor's new pastries are all worth it. As I indicated in a posting to the New York discussion group, I still admire the artisanally prepared offerings of classic French pastry. If given the choice, I would still love to have Bonté's cassis cream cake over any one of Hermé's delights. But Bonté is no longer in business so I will have to settle for what I have found on rue Bonaparte,