Really Nice!

We glanced in the kitchen after eating, during the break between lunch and dinner. I was surprised both by how clean and orderly the kitchen looked, and by how many cooks were in there, all happy and clean. When TK was up here in Seattle promoting his FL cookbook, I pulled out a FL clothespin from my jacket and asked him to autograph it. He laughed, but I don't know if it's because someone presented him with property stolen from his restaurant, or that someone would actually ask him to autograph a clothspin. Probably a bit of both, but what the heck, it a valuable clothspin now. -- Did you notice the carpeting on the floor, or how bright the kitchen is?

I find it amazing that they can put out an eight-course lunch and then a 10-course dinner (not including the one or two dishes not on the menu) for 100 or so seats in the evening. I've enjoyed dining there on three occasisions, but never been there for lunch. Was the restaurant full? How much is he charging for lunch?

My most successful lasagna (or is it lasagne?) occurs when I don't boil the noodles and put about 1/4-inch thick layer of sauce in the pan before inserting the first layer of noodles. The noodles absorb the sauce which gives the noodles added flavor, and you don't have a puddle of liquid on the plate.

The airport are you departing from will dictate the type of plane you're flying. Napa and Sonoma have small airports suitable for Cessnas. Otherwise, Oakland or Sacramento for comercial flights. As sam_harmon says, Sacramento is the better of the two traffic-wise. How do you plan on getting from the airport to the restaurant? Car rental? Cab? Limo? Build in some wait time to your schedule. If you arrive in Sacramento, you should plan on arriving no later than 3pm if your reservations are at 6pm. Plan on staying at the restaurant until 10-10:30pm. I wouldn't schedule a return flight until after 1am--which might be difficult if it's commercial. If your reservations are 7pm or later, you should look at spending the night; otherwise, you'll be spending all that time looking at your watch and tapping your foot trying to hurry the dinner along rather than enjoying the experience. Or, you can try the lunch service on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. You should have no problem with flights then.

A group of us ate there in September. We had a bottle of Willakenzie Pinot Noir that I really didn't like. I suspected it was corked, but the sommelier disagreed and said that this particular wine had that. We went back and forth in discussing it, and he generously offered to let us select something else, but we stuck with it. After constantly swirling it for 15 minutes or so, I noticed that it started to open up. We stopped at McMinnville OR on our way home to Seattle and I wanted to stop by Willakenzie for a tasting to see if all their wines tasted corked, but their tasting room was closed for the season. The other bottle we had (for dessert) was a 2000 Domaine de Durban Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise. It was wonderful. So much so that Marlarky hunted down a case of the stuff.

with hints of coriander and orange? You know your beer! I also added a pinch of ground ginger to the final boil as an aromatic. I thought it would go well with the coriander and orange peel.

Thin slice some cabbage and mix with a sauce. Whisk together: 4 parts mayonnaise 1 part sugar 1 part vinegar pinch of salt

Depending on where you live, you'll may have to go to a butcher shop for it.

A couple friends invited themselves over so I guess I am. Beer will be homebrewed Belgian White Bier and Octoberfest. Buffalo Wings. I bought a gallon of sauce from The Anchor Bar in Buffalo New York, home of the original buffalo wings. They list several ingredients but the four most prominant are: cayenne pepper, water, vinegar, and oil. (Farther down this list is garlic powder.) Everything else seems to have been selected by the lab to give it a long shelf life. From those ingredients I should be able to duplicate their flavor profile and not have to buy it again. Italian Beef Sandwich In honor of my Chicago Bears wonderful 4-12 season. makes about 6-8 sandwiches 3-4 pound boneless chuck roast 6 cloves garlic, crushed 1 tbsp dry crushed red pepper flakes 1 tbsp oregano 1 tbsp salt 1 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper 1 cup water 2 bay leaves sausage rolls 3 thin slices Swiss cheese per sandwich Preheat oven to 250°F. Combine garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt and pepper. Rub into roast. Place water into a sauce pan not much larger than the roast; add roast and bay leaves. Cover with a lid and bake for 3 hours; basting about once every hour. Remove beef from pan and let sit for about 15 minutes. (This allows the juices to evenly flow through-out the meat.) Use a deli slicer to thinly slice the meat or use an extremely sharp knife. Test the gravy in the pan and adjust seasonings. Note: It should have a strong pepper taste to it. You may optionally add 1/4 cup barbecue sauce. Turn broiler on and broil opened sausage rolls for about 2 minutes to brown. Use tongs to place meat on rolls; top each with 3 slices Swiss cheese. Broil till cheese melts. Serve with gravy for dipping. Thomas Keller's Lemon Tart From The French Laundry Cookbook.

They had a table at the University Farmer's Market last year where you could buy low quantity. I bought a chicken and a chuck roast from them. The chicken was okay. Nothing that memorable. I haven't tried the chuck roast but plan on doing a slow braise with it sometime soon.

Purchase some caul fat and then you'll really be getting fancy. Caul fat is the fatty membrane from pig and sheep intestines. It looks like a mesh and is used to keep things together; like a stuffing on a lamb chop (or in a boneless chicken leg:-), or when barding a roast.

Agreed. I wrote that from the old world perspective that when you drink a wine, you drink the place. With new world, when you drink the wine, you drink the grape. By law, they're only allowed to plant certain grapes in certain regions. Heck, they can't even begin harvest until the law says they can. Sometime back I had a friend who was dating a Frenchman and he once told me, "French customers have no clue as to what varieties of grapes the wine maker uses and we don't give a hoot about it. What matters to us is the "appellation" or where the wine is produced. Also note that the best French wines were always blends anyway. These silly "cabernet sauvigon" and other "merlot" markings you see here in the states are strictly for tourists and you should stay carefully away from any French bottle that indicates the grape variety as this indicates a lesser wine meant for you un-cultured Americans."

A little background. A guiding principle behind the European is the concept that wines should be named after their place names. The name of the place connotes which grapes were used to make the wine (which is dictated by law). The place influences the character of those grapes in its own unique way. Therefore, the most accurate name that a wine can have is the name of the place where its grapes were grown, not the name of its grapes. Terroir is a French word that has no direct English translation. It comes from the word terre which means soil. It is closely related to microclimate, but it means more than that. It includes people, culture, and lifestyle. Terroir is not limited to wine production. Take cheese production, or example. The natural feed for cows is grass. Grass is different at different elevations even if that difference is only 100 yards apart. This is the same with wine. Given drainage conditions, grass may grow one way at one elevation and clover might grow predominately at another location on the same farm. There's a book that's called, Terroir that can offer some information. Unfortunately, it mostly discusses the geographical side of terroir. Oh, and ignore the fact that Hugh Johnson is a co-author. He only wrote the forward.

This is why it didn't get crispy. What you made was an en papilliote. This is a moist-heat method of cooking (steaming) where the food is wrapped and the steamed liquid comes from the food itself. It's an extremely healthy cooking methodology and makes for great presentation at home; more so if you use parchment paper than foil. By cooking en papillote you can increase the sweetness in the dish by using mire poix or other aromatics. If you want caramelization of a food product, stay away from moist heat cooking methods: simmering, poaching, boiling, steaming, and en papilliote.

I was not a picky eater. My family called me 'Mighty Mouth' because my mom would empty the bowls of food, one at at time, on my plate as she cleared the table. God, I wish I had that metabolism today!! Things I'm picky about today: Panko

Shhh... Don't tell the French this, but it started with Catherine De Medici who introduced the fork and spinach to the French. She was an Italian who, at the age of 13, married a French prince (the Duke of Orleans who would become Henry II) and took about 20 chefs with her to France. History has credited these chefs as being the foundation of French cuisine.

Are you seriously comparing Denny's to the finest restaurants in New York City?

Then this is exactly what I need! Thanks, NeroW

I let my subscriptions to Gourmet and Bon Appetite run out. There's too much advertising and too much non-food related stuff that doesn't interest me. I got tired of flipping through the first 50 pages only to find 44 pages of advertising, two pages for the TOC, a page of employees names, a page of contributors names... The Art of Eating is a quarterly magazine that I enjoy reading. Art of Eating. It's $39 for one year, $69 for two years, or $99 for three years. Art Culinare is the ultimate in food porn. Incredible pictures, but the dishes are rather involved. 1 year subscription (four issues) at $59.00 I'm thinking about Gastronomica. Does anyone have experience with this one?

What's your elevation? What how far off was the instant-read thermometer before you calibrated it? Was it also off the same 6 degrees?

Yup! That's exactly what I had to do with mine, but not because of heat. Somehow mine didn't like how it rested at the 90 degree angle between the oven and the door when the door closed. My reading went off the scale the second time I used it. It turns out the cable got frayed a little. I now wrap some foil around the cable where it meets the door. Otherwise, I've had no problems. I like to use it for either slow cooking items, like briskets and chicken, in the smoker, or very fast cooking in my pizza oven. Chicken is done in about 25 minutes in that thing.

Weekends are usually earlier, around 5pm. Weeknights are around 7pm. Latest will be a nible when my girlfriend comes home. She's a flight attendant and occasionally will have a late flight, like this morning when she got home at 12:15am.

I don't know, but I'm glad to see there are a couple of places that are making it. I've made this dish about 5 times and I never know how it compares to 'real' cassoullet. 3 days to prepare? Is that including duck confit or some other step/process?

I have a total of 26 bottles spread out over 1995 - 1998. I'll probably get several of the '99 as that year is looking pretty good for the region. I don't plan to start opening these until around 2005. I'll be sacrificing some of the fruity nuances, but I like my wines a little more mature. I had my hands on a bottle of the '94 that I found at a wine shop in downtown Seattle. The store bought it from a private collector who was liquidating his inventory. One of the workers there had one bottle of '95 and one of '96 and he really wanted to make a vertical so I let him have it. For $55-60 I would have waited a few years before tasting to get some of that bottle bouquet going.

That's a very good price for Yattarna. I haven't seen the '99 out here (Seattle) yet. A couple of prices based on my recollection at the Costco in Kirkland: Chateau St. Jean Bob Young Chardonnay 2001 $21 Caymus Connundrum 2001 $19 Penfolds Grange 1997 $129 <- Long gone Lafite Rothschild 1999 $129 <- Long gone Dom Perignon 1995 $85 The only places where we can get spirits other than wine/beer are state-run stores. Our sales tax is 8.3 percent.