melkor

Use a few drop of vanilla extract diluted in milk.

Why does something need to be cheap to be slow? Good espresso can be made with a lever machine, but that takes much more skill than pulling a good shot with a Synesso. Dried pasta has never been the sort of thing you make at home - fresh pasta absolutely. I also don't think anyone considers pizza, gelato, or dried pasta haute cuisine. To make bistecca florentine completely at home, you not only need a wood fire but you also need a 3,000 pound Chianina steer. Much of Italian cooking is accessible to the home cook, you're just highlighting the things you can't do with $3.75 in your pocket and less room than Paris Hiltons jail cell.

I'm thinking you want something more reliable than an 87 Testarossa if you plan on getting more than half your dish plated.

Vanilla takes a long time to grow and cure. The entire process from flowering to completely cured vanilla bean takes about 1 year. This process is done completely by hand, therefore, the cost is reflective of the process. ← At the moment, a buck a bean is a horrible price. A few years ago when vanilla was at record prices, a dollar a bean was a good deal. The people at saffron.com in San Francisco are charging $20-$29/lb (90-130 beans) depending on grade and origin.

Berries.

I was under the impression that Bourdain is no longer a fan of eG. ← Indeed, so he's unlikely to be disagreeing with Batali re: eG.

Here's someone selling 1960 yquem.

Given what bourdain has written about eGullet elsewhere I doubt they were talking about eGullet.

Tahitian vanilla has more aroma than taste, bourbon vanilla has a more pronounced taste. I cut vanilla pods into 1/2 inch sections and simmer them in butter if I'm making a savory vanilla dish. Using the vanilla butter to cook eggs will give you much better results than scraping the pods and expecting to extract much flavor. Peas are especially good with vanilla.

Le Sanctuaire in Santa Monica is the most likely place to find it - they don't have an online store but they'll ship if you call them.

I drive a moderately expensive plastic car that seems to have been assembled by drunkards, the price of the pieces that go into it don't factor into the retail price. Food, wine, travel (does it cost 10x as much to fly someone from airport to airport if they get a bigger seat and a rubbery chicken breast instead of over-salted peanuts and a bit less legroom?). To the point Russ was making earlier, it doesn't cost 10 times as much to fry and egg and deliver it to your hotel room than it does to fry an egg and bring it to your table at a truck stop. There's not much outrage over room service prices or for that matter hotels charging $45/day for parking.

Can you tell us a bit more about the dry wines you were served? Who made the Chateaneuf and what was the Vielles Visgnes (I think you mean Vieilles Vignes - since VV translates roughly to 'old vines' it isn't terribly descriptive)?

I just ate my way through Vancouver last weekend - there are a lot of similar style places in SF. Mid-day is hard, but you should be able to eat well in a few hours. In general, I'd avoid fisherman's wharf like the plague, hop in a cab and run down to the ferry plaza then work your way around the city from there. I'd suggest Yank Sing for dim sum, but you'd be nuts to have dim sum in SF if you live in Vancouver. Nothing higher-end is all that good during the day. Most of the more formal places are closed and the ones that are open are dishing up mediocre food. Good sushi can be had at the bar at Takara at lunch time (until 2 I think). Bahn Mi & sugarcane juice at Baguette Express - they're open until 5 (not very high-end though - $2.50 for a sammich). Pretty much all the tourist trap restaurants in the ferry building are open - of the bunch, I'd go for out the door (slanted door to go): they have great chicken buns and the daikon rice cake is good too. Bi Rite creamery can give Mondo a run for its money, get the coffee and the salted caramel - it's in the mission (pretty far from fishermans wharf). If you're set on something more fancy, Piperade is close to fisherman's wharf and they're open for lunch.

Everyone likes great food, service, and atmosphere - different people find different food 'great'. Aside from the kitschy gift shop, Brix has a comfortable atmosphere, the service is competent but to my taste the food isn't good. People clearly like the place since they're full all the time, but that may be the stream of cars that drunkenly leave the Sattui parking lot and swerve their way down to Brix (and Mustards).

The people that line up down the block in their rented SUVs to picnic with 500 other people at V.Sattui.

Brix caters to the V.Sattui crowd, if that's your thing you're likely to enjoy it.

Why do farmers need to be poor? If you can sell tomatoes for $4/lb, cherries for $7/lb, or eggs for $8/dozen and people will buy them - good for you. I don't see what all the hate is for. God forbid someone who choses to be a farmer should be able to afford to send their kids to college or pay their mortgage.

There's a great taco truck at the 128 east exit on 101.

The FDA is close enough - the ratio should be 100g vanilla per liter. Different beans have significantly different weights, planifolia vs tahitian, moisture content, bean size, etc. Figure between 150 and 350 beans per kilo, you need a scale.

I think this is a great idea and should be expanded, 1 - 10 scores for each cuisine should be required in everyones signature on eGullet and the site should allow you to filter out posts from people who score lower than 8 on Dutch cuisine. Seriously? Professionals can't agree on what makes a good cook or who is one, what purpose would it serve to segment amateur cooks? Some of the worst cooks I know can improvise better food than the Olive Garden serves, does that make them 10s? If you're a 10 do you get to wear a toque when you go to the grocery store?

Yeah, that was a batch of duck saucisson sec we cured in the wine cabinet a while ago. It works quite well.

Yep. I agree.

We don't just have desert, there's also a huge mountain range on our eastern side that can't be farmed.

The saffron.com people seem to have the best price for vanilla and at least for me - they're local.

Isn't this just cut and pasted from the same topic you posted on ebob? It's even stranger to read your reply to yourself without anyone commenting in between. I haven't got enough experience with pre-phylloxera wines to compare them to current wines and clearly winemaking technique has changed significantly in the past hundred years. I find it hard to believe that growing grapes on the rootstock of swamp grass would produce a better grape than one using grape vine roots, but I have no way to prove that is the case. The zinfandel vineyards around the sierra foothills that survived phylloxera produce a very different wine than the vineyards that have been replanted, but is that because the vines are 120 years old or is it because they're on native rootstock?