melkor

My knife of choice at the moment is a 10" messermeister meridian chefs knife. The handle fits my hand perfectly, it's a good weight, the shape of the blade is excellent for chopping, and after spending a bit of time to give it a good edge it's extremely sharp. The rest of my knives are mostly henckels with a global tossed in for good measure.

Make a pot pie. If you have some chicken/duck/goose/whatever fat sitting around use it to sautee some veggies in a cast iron pan, put them aside and make a milk gravy, add the veggies and the chicken back to the pan and bring it up to a simmer. Make some corn bread batter and spread it evenly over the top of stuff in the pan. Stick it in the oven for half an hour - 45min and bake it until the corn bread is golden on top.

Why? They are generally overpriced for such a new and unproven appellation. perhaps that's the thought in your circle of experts. however, this circle of expert thinks that 12-14 for a crisp white isn't too much. this circle of expert also appreciates when awareness is hightened. crazy, i know. The price issues with Long Island are a secondary gripe for me; my main problem with LI wine is that it's no more compelling than wine from Texas/Virginia/etc - there just happen to be more people dumping money into building on LI so people are hearing about it. You can get better riesling/gewurtz from the Finger Lakes if you'd like to support your own state. The reds are acceptable at best - I tasted through a few hundred of them in early August and found very few that I'd consider buying even at half their asking price. Long Island has an identity crisis - you can't grow world class merlot in a climate that will support world class gewurtz and vice-versa. Sure people grow gewurtz in Napa, but they don’t think it’s at the same level as the Alsatians are making. Oh, and your $9 to $14 will buy you a bottle of Trimbach gewurtz, or pinot blanc, or riesling, or pinot gris. Whatever opinion you have about LI wines is fine with me, just don’t make me drink any more New York 50% cabernet 50% chardonnay blends.

Whats the fill level in the bottle that was found? What color is the wine? It seems like it'll be hard to sell a 90 year old bottle of wine with unknown storage. Here are a few links that'll give you some more info on what the bottle is worth Auction Results (Chicago Wine Co) Fine & Rare Wine Co (London) Wine Searcher search for yquem 1918 and then again restricting the results to france where you will find another 2 bottles for sale. Keep us posted on what happens with this, it's definitly an interesting story.

massimo's delectable at 1027 abbot kinny has amazing cookies and great breakfast/lunch food, definitly worth a visit if your out by santa monica/venice.

I've got no idea, but I'd like to register my support for a bacon tree.

Thats what I use every morning to make my coffee, I've got one small gripe with it - you can't brew less than 4 cups at a time or it will double brew your coffee and the end result will taste like crap. As long as you put in enough water and properly put it together it makes great coffee with little or no effort. I would recommend that you pre-soak the grinds with a spray bottle before turning it on as the coffee tends to float otherwise. You can also adjust the brew time by sliding a dime or a quarter under the base at the back to increase the amount of time the coffee is in contact with the grinds, a dime or a quarter under the front lip will do the opposite. It's also remarkably easy to clean.

Try a little test to see how good a job your drip coffee maker does. Bring a pot of water to a boil, take the filter basket and filter from your coffee maker and load it with your usual amount of coffee grinds, take the water off the boil for 15 seconds or so and then hold the basket over the coffee pot and pour the water slowly onto the grinds. I suspect you'll find that coffee to be much better than what your drip maker produces. You can buy manual drip filter holders for $5 or so, or go to a vac-pot or french press. I personally prefer a vac pot for my coffee, but I also have a french press that gets used from time to time.

Beef, the other other white meat.

Northern California - Gravenstein Apples

On to the Skittlebrau project.

Earlier this week I tried a completely different brownie recipe. It's by far my favorite brownie recipe. I adjusted the nut flours to even amounts, covered it in a chocolate ganache (75% chocolate 25% cream) and cooled it in an icewater bath.

The best thing I've found is to soak your hands in lemon juice.

So your clearly on the right team... Now how do we convert the others? :raz:

Not even if you could get it signed by Marc Summers?

There is no such thing as a good veggie burger. If your vegetarians are fish eating vegetarians then either make large fish cakes and serve them on hamburger rolls with some kind of sauce (I'd go with a spicy tarter sauce). If they don't eat fish then make some falafel. Vegetarians’ eating fake meat pisses me off, it's fine if you don't want to eat meat, but don't replace meat in your diet with pre-formed shitburgers. There is plenty of good food in the world that is neither meat nor make-believe-meat.

Nope. These pics CF is posting are going to force me to make another pastrami this week.

The picture in this thread of my pastrami is from the brisket flat, the point end has more fat on it.

we'll put *you* under those lights and in front of the cameras and see how good *your* memory is. For a chance to win a new toaster? No thanks.

That's what I thought when the show started. The problem is that the show starts with a quick summary of an unwrapped episode in which they run through all the answers to the questions they will be asking on that episode of the show. It's truly painful to watch, especially when the contestants can't remember what they just saw 60 seconds ago.

Sure, they could replace Mario with Marc Summers.

Has anyone else seen this train wreck of a show? Can anyone come up with anything about this show that isn't absolutely awful?

I think Americans don't like it because it tastes bad, very bad Jin, whats the difference between marmite and vegemite?

Icecream.

I'd visit Pride from the Napa side, they are less than a mile into Sonoma and nowhere near Healdsburg. Have a picnic at Pride, the view is great and the people there are incredibly friendly, just call ahead to schedule your picnic and tasting. Grab some bread at Bouchon Bakery on the way up 29 in the morning (where you should also get some coffee and snacks). Stop at Dean and Deluca and visit Ricardo (at the cheese counter), tell him that you were sent to talk to him about cheese and that your having a picnic after you leave D&D, he'll go through tasting whatever cheeses might work with what you like and you'll leave with a nice selection. Finish collecting your picnic supplies at the deli counter at the back of dean and deluca. Drive up to Pride (it's about 15min west of St Helena) and buy a bottle of their Viognier to have with your picnic, they will supply glasses and the wine will be chilled for you. Their picnic tables are under a covered awning outside the wine cave overlooking the vineyards, and most of the time there is no one else out there.