weinoo

If you see Tucci, say hi!

The New Yorker's Daniel Ford takes on "Tucci's" spaghetti this week. Actually, not really Tucci's spaghetti, but eerily similar to when Bourdain would visit a specific restaurant and qvell about a dish, turning it into a pilgrimage for the sheep who follow such things, Spaghetti alla Nerano has joined that infamous listicle of dishes, after Tucci's quest and qvell. It happened on the first episode of CNN/Tucci's "Searching for Italy," a show which I've yet to tune into, as I generally feel as if actors should stick to acting, and not, well, pretend they're Bourdain. Because there was only one Bourdain. I digress. The dish is a simple one, but as we who cook all know, simple is hard when it comes to specific dishes. Hard to get right, and hard to get right consistently (my main example always being pizza, at least for me). One of the first things I learned in my first internship at a restaurant - do it the same every fucking time (I didn't work for Dan Barber, so there was no yelling, just cursing)...because if that customer loved a dish (let's say, spaghetti alla Nerano) the first time customer was in, customer wants that same dish the next time! Use patty pan squash, for example, and that cook might just end up swimming with the fishes in the Tyrrhenian Sea. As with many dishes in Italy's numerous regions and subregions, one nonna might make it different than another, even if they live just across the piazza from one another. I myself have never attempted the dish - I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, finding it - well, as Daniel Ford writes: Anyway, it appears as if Tucci and his wife Felicity Blunt loved the dish so much after enjoying it at one of Nerano's restaurants, Lo Scoglio da Tommaso, that they kept trying to replicate it at home - weekly, as a matter of fact! Unable to get it quite right, they did what any of us would do, and booked private time with the chef at Lo Scoglio. Their eureka moment? The zucchini is deep fried. All is good with the world - at least on the Amalfi Coast. I doubt I'll be making this dish any time soon; I prefer Marcella's recipes for zucchini when it might be the only vegetable available, especially zucchine fritte all'aceto. Served at room temp, it's a great antipasto, and it even works well as a contorni - perhaps for something as simple as spaghetti cacio e pepe. And how to make cacio e pepe? Don't ask. The Secrets of Stanley Tucci’s Zucchini Spaghetti

At that price, I might've bought six.

Just checked…$10/pint. in my grocery store the other day, Van Leeuwen was approaching that price. But HD was on sale for $4.

I can't believe I found this at (one of my) a local bodega...

Love a good stuffie.

But @JoNorvelleWalker was asking about a 5" knife? I was just giving an example.

Would one be better off with a 5" or 6" santoku? This is a pretty nice knife... https://www.cutleryandmore.com/shun-premier/santoku-knife-p125171

Sure - they are these...https://theunlikelybaker.com/classic-buttermilk-scones/

I made a half batch (8) of these totally easy buttermilk scones (with a few currants) this morning... Baked four off in the steam girl, and froze four unbaked. They're quite good.

That’s one way, I’m sure. I’m also sure it’s not the only way. Because there probably isn’t a restaurant on this whole continent doing it that way.

I used the Koshihikari for the chicken dish, and the organic one last night for the wild king salmon dish I made. I think more important is the cooking method. The donabe recipes use a little sake, soy, sesame oil in them, which certainly adds something to the rice. But I get great results in the rice cooker just using water, and if I’m making chirashi, that works just fine to cook the rice before turning it into sushi rice.

What???

Cut them some slack...they live in Iceland!

Good move. Cook some rice right away - it's amazing.

Hey they only get a few months a year in which to party like this, right?

Unfortunately, this is what food "journalism" has become. By the way, if anyone doesn't know it (and I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule...ahem...like at Rob's), working in a busy restaurant kitchen sucks is really fucking hard work. It's not as if you're gonna start off being Eric Ripert, working the dining room in his clean whites (I love eric, fwiw).

I actually wear ear plugs when grinding coffee; don't use the mini prep much, but the Blendtec also is noisy enough for me to pop in a pair of high quality plugs. These are my concert ear plugs...https://us.loopearplugs.com/ And these are my kitchen ear plugs...https://www.etymotic.com/product/er20hd/ They pop in and fit much better than the foam junk.

Pretty interesting article about the seasonal workers on the Cape who come from Jamaica. Many of the seasonal workers further out seemed to me to be from southern Europe... Pass the Chowder, and the Curry: Jamaican Chefs Add to Cape Cod’s Culinary Delights

That's what I'm here for.

My friend Jack lives in and fishes out of Chatham. Every year, they have to reassess where the cuts are, in order to boat in and out safely - drones have helped a lot. He shared this picture of the research center at the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, which is off Chatham as well... Pictures are from March 16, 2022, the day of the slide. The Cape is ever evolving.

Just got a new shipment of 10 lbs. of rice from The Rice Factory. 5 lbs. of Minamiuonuma Koshihikari and 5 lbs. of Miyagi Sasanishiki Organic. Both milled the day they were shipped, which was the day before I received them. Out came the trusty donabe... and this Chicken ginger rice from Toiro kitchen (with a coupla mushrooms thrown in for good measure) was outstanding.

I never get circulars, which is just as well.

I think we have a different definition of dense. There's no there there, in my opinion. As well as Brooklyn, which has way many more large apartment buildings in neighborhoods than Montreal does, don't you think? I find it to be a better restaurant city than the one I live in (to say nothing of the rest of the US) - much more satisfying, fun, and less pretentious than where we live.

James Peterson, a cookbook writer who studied chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, stated in his encyclopedic cookbook called Sauces: You need to cook a sauce for at least 20 to 30 seconds after adding wine to it to allow the alcohol to evaporate. Since alcohol evaporates at 172°F (78°C), any sauce or stew that is simmering or boiling is certainly hot enough to evaporate the alcohol. Alcohol Burn-Off Chart from USDA The USDA actually gives this data in chart form. 2Note that various other conditions are given. Most noticeable is that different values are given for baked items where alcohol is used but not stirred into the mixture. Also, you’ll notice that the alcohol evaporation for flamed dishes is lower than you might expect. You find out below why this is so. Typically, to make a Marsala, the wine is added to a pan that something else has been sauteed in, such as chicken, onions, mushrooms, etc. and used to deglaze the pan, whereupon chicken broth or other broth is added. Even if you were to make a large volume of sauce for four people, you’d probably not use more than 3/4 cup of wine. Let’s be generous and say you use a cup of wine. And let’s also say your Marsala wine is 20% ABV, meaning the wine you use in the dish contains 1.6 ounces of alcohol. This means that one ounce of it contains 0.2 ounces of alcohol. You would then, typically, add the same volume of broth, if not a bit more. So we have two cups of liquid, plus whatever other moisture is already in the pan. This means that the alcohol is diluted by the same amount of liquid. One ounce of this mixture would contain 0.1 ounce of alcohol.