Ashen

For lunch we often ate my Dads homemade pancetta( or salami,sopressa,) sliced paper thin with bread , table cheese and giardiniera while growing up.

adam perry langs cookbook serious bbq would be a great place to start but you don't have to wait to use some of his recipes . There are quite a few of them on his website. adamperrylang.com He gives recipes for more than just low and slow , there are some good grilling ideas there too. The artichokes with anchovy butter is awesome.

I wouldn't brine it personally.. Brining denatures the protein in the meat and causes a distinct texture change. I am sure it will taste fine if you do , but it can change how the meat pulls apart in the end. pulled apart and sauce added you will have lots of flavour anyway and the butt will stay nice moist if you do a slow braise. A brine really won't give you much benefit in this situation.

two - 1 L bottles of Grand Marnier at the duty free in Orlando.

I guess from the reactions there aren't many fans of Dennis Miller or Lewis Black around here. Rayner doesn't do angry rant nearly as well as either though, but that might just be the medium written word vs. TV. It made me laugh though.

no , it wasn't a complement but then it isn't as big a critisim as it may sound either. I am still glad I bought it, if only to help me figure out what I like better. I certainly like it well enough to finish the bottle.

I like smoke and peat, and I bought my talisker 10 with that in mind. After many sessions going through most of the bottle , I am left with the conclusion that it just doesn't have the backbone to carry all the peat and smoke it has for my taste.. Which is why I used the term overbearing instead of overpowering.

Dalwhinnie 15 is my favourite. Talisker .. I still have about a third of a bottle left but I doubt I will buy another. I find the peat and smoke just too overbearing for my taste My next bottle will probably be a Jura 10. I tasted this with my bro-in-law and it was a nice little drop. It has its own unique subtle style.

A suggestion on a different track than a single malt. If he really likes blends how about turning him onto something that has been garnering a lot of attention for being innovative. Forty Creek whiskys are my favourite blended whiskys now. Forty Creek Barrel Select Won double gold at San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2006 Forty Creek Confederation Oak won double gold 2011 in san fran too. double gold means all 33 judges unanimously awarded it gold. What is a bit different about the forty creek whiskys is that the three grains are each treated as single malts. they are mashed, fermented , distilled , aged separately then blended and finished in another barrel . a fuller discription of their process here.

That is a great looking cast iron pan. My father in law once gave me one he pulled out of an old storage shed , he was helping to clean out down in New Brunswick. It didn't have had any markings on the bottom . When I heat stripped it to get the rust off and do a reseason, the markings ended up just being buried under the crud on the bottom.. If you do a full strip and reseason they may be hiding under there. Also looking at the picture I wonder if that could be an 8 instead of a 3 with just some seasoning obscuring the mark.. A 3 would be about 6 inches across, and 8 just over 10 inches. I really think it looks like wagnerware to me btw.

definitely a shun ,the end credits listed shun cutlery. It seems like a shun classic chefs knife , although it could be the western cooks knife. At 13:18 of the vid it just about breaks my heart when he uses it to cut on the plate.

For me nothing beats WalkersWood jerk paste , except maybe when I dry rub my homemade smoked scotch bonnet powder into the meat first before rubbing with walkserswood paste. I do that on a pork loin every once in awhile and then slow smoke it over hardwood. My Jamacian bro-in-law is always wanting me to make more of it for him.

I havn't tried many olives I didn't like, but my favourites right now are nicoise. I also enjoy some of the different stuffed green olive options.. anchovy, blue cheese, garlic, jalapeno, habanero. That almost made me drool a bit, I will have to hit vincenzo's this weekend and stock up..

I still think you could call shenanigans on it though.. I mean what kind of pretension to just say olli and expect all customers to know what that means, they could use a good Ro-Sham-Bo to knock some reality back into their world. lol

If Baron d'Apcher is right and you are referring to the restaurant RN74 then the olli reference is to the producer because Olli Salumeria is mentioned in this seattle times article about the restuarant. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/restaurants/2016289232_cicero23.html "Charcuterie includes exemplary pork pate and chicken liver mousse, both house-made, along with stellar cured meats from Olli Salumeria in Virginia. Hudson Valley foie gras sliders, packed with peppery sylvetta greens and served with caramelized onion jus, become the ultimate French dip." It sounds like a pretty nice restuarant too.. I wouldn't mind lunch of nicoise salad with a hefty chuck of ahi tuna for 12$ .. YUM! I think it was meant as a whole statement.. " assorted olli & homemade charcuterie" meaning it is an assortment mix olli charcuterie and homemade charcuterie

On the olli front I think it may refer to a company , especially if you are from virginia Olli Salumeria which makes sense in the context of the menu meaning the plate has meats made by Olli and also housemade . sorry can't help on the others.

lhot dog spagehtti is always fun , and it is interesting to see who is quick enough to figure out how it is done without being told.

It is very unlikely that I would ever notice a difference even if there is one. I do often drink tea in the winter , but it is bagged black tea brewed strong , and then I bruise it.. (I wring that teabag for all its worth) Then add a good hit of lemon and honey. It is a decent fairtrade organic ceylon black tea though.

My wife won't touch my shun knives.. Mostly it is because she is afraid of how sharp they are but also she is afraid that she would do something to the edges . She uses smaller knives for the most part, paring and utility. This isn't altogether a bad thing since she has such tiny hands, that larger knives are harder for her to control properly. She doesn't want her knives dull though, every once in awhile I get a reminder to sharpen up her knives too. She will use a old inexpensive wilthshire chefs knife we have had forever. For a 10$ knife(when we bought it) it is actually fairly decent. It takes a good edge and holds it longer than the henckle set knives I have relegated to the basement kitchen/bar.

Just out for sushi tonight.. Wakame salad is one of my favourites too.

I don't think they are talking about the molecular oxygen but the dissolved gass oxygen in the water. Water is fairly soluable to gasses, and usually holds oxygen , nitrogen , carbon dioxide and other gasses in Solution. When boiled this gasses end up escaping . Bottled water often uses this ability of water to contain gasses in solution by adding ozone for taste.

I love my shun classic nakiri . I have almost stopped using my shun chefs knife since I bought the nakiri. Now I just have to find a perfect paring knife, finding one that has just the right blade length and handle shape is harder than I ever thought it could be.

I really love Nicoise , but I still like a well made horiatiki salad better.

I am not so confident in the electorate of California these days to make an informed decision after what happened with Prop 8. Kneejerk judgements based on inflamed propoganda about morals and ethics seems to be a recurring theme in my observation. While I will conceed there may be maltreatment of geese or ducks on some foie gras farms. A ban bascially is a statement that there is no way to do it that is not mistreatment. I think they should have to prove this ,and that any way of farming foie gras is out of line with common practices in other animal husbandry industries. Any farms that don't follow proper procedures could be dealt with , without the need for a prohibition on all foie gras. this process described in the report mjx linked to before seems to be very efficient and demonstrates care for welfare of the birds. "In larger units, pneumatic devices are used. They allow the farm worker to deliver the same quantity of food in 2-3 seconds. Such a system is connected through a computer which helps to determine the amount of food to deliver to each bird on the basis of the body weight and the amount of food which was delivered during the preceding meals"

Will .. I have to agree with you as to the treatment of hens in egg battery farms being much more mistreated than foie gras farming. There are other animal husbandry practices in beef and pig farming that are more stressfull as well I think.. in both they castrate without anesthetic, docking of tails and clipping of teeth in piglets is also done without. Hens in batteries can often have their beaks clipped. Geese and ducks are force fed for about 2 to 3 weeks... the more advanced farms use a process that takes no more than 2-3 seconds per feeding. So even geese that go for 3 weeks have maybe a minute of accumulated force feeding. Add to that , the fact I have seen on two different programs geese and ducks rushing to the feeding station for their turn . For the farms that do traditional feeding, it can take significantly longer, but one of those programs I mentioned was a farm that feed this way. The geese and ducks still rushed to the guy feeding them, tt makes me wonder where the lines of what constitute mistreatment really should be drawn. I don't eat foie gras btw, No moral qualms, just not something I enjoy. I still eat pork, beef and eggs though, but I know what it takes to get it too me . I don't delude myself that meat just appears on little plastic wrapped styrofoam trays.