melkor

Are you saying $6/lb is cheap or expensive? It seems cheap when you consider it takes a gallon of milk to make a pound of cheese.

A lot of restaurants do serve cheese. It all depends where you live.

Exactly. Just make twice as much as you need so you can eat half the batch while you're "sampling".

I roast red peppers and use them. There are a lot of horrible harissas available - you need to find an authentic one like tucal. I go by feel and taste. Keep a cast iron pan handy and you can sample the sausage mix as you make it.

Roasted peppers are key, as is harissa. Lamb casings, lamb fat, ground lamb, spices, stuff, grill, serve with couscous. Without the mix of peppers the flavor isn't right. Using anything other than lamb fat makes the finished product something else entirely.

Who knows. It's pretty obvious that we aren't the target audience - who knows where someone who buys mail-order corn would otherwise get it.

Dean and Deluca in St Helena CA has some great people working there. Their cheese selection is top notch and it's extremely well cared for. I've never ordered from their catalog nor do I buy much of anything other than cheese from them, but I'm happy to shop there any time I'm in the area. More power to them if they can provide a decent product to people who obviously are otherwise unable to get the products any other way.

I'm not saying the no-knead bread is perfect or even close for that matter, but from the king arthur photo it looks like their version is significantly worse.

The bread in their photo looks terrible. I don't see any reason to try that recipe.

Mediocre tomatoes of all types have been a common phenomenon for decades. You're in the distinct minority when you argue that the "heirloom" designation was a guarantee of anything. You've always needed to shop with good vendors to get good tomatoes. Good tomatoes have always been a small percentage of the tomatoes available.

I don't shop at the Union Square Greenmarket, it's rather inconveniently located for me. The quality of the tomatoes available at the farmers market here is consistent - some vendors are consistently good, others consistently bad. I buy great tomatoes from Dirty Girl at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. I used to buy great tomatoes from Mariquita also, but they stopped selling at the SF market. There are vendors selling cardboard flavored tomatoes at nearly every farmers market. A lot of the tomatoes we eat come from our garden. I don't agree that the designation "heirloom tomatoes" was ever a reliable indication of tomato quality. I think a decade ago it was a good way to identify vegetable purveyors that cared more than average about the product they were selling or were trying to offer something different. That didn't guarantee that they had a good product, but it was a sign that they were trying. I don't remember thinking the quality of tomatoes was consistent. We obviously agree that they aren't consistent now. I think over the past decade more farmers have been growing a larger variety of tomatoes, some of them open pollinated others hybrid. Some have had more success than others. I think the biggest change locally anyway in terms of tomato quality hasn't been any sort of decline in heirlooms, it's been the increased availability of incredibly flavorful dry farmed tomatoes. I don't think dry farming is viable everywhere, and again it doesn't guarantee quality, but a small handful of producers are doing a great job with this technique.

Maybe you should stick to buying your tomatoes in little plastic packages, in January. Heirloom tomatoes by definition are varieties that have been around for generations - what led you to believe that such a standard was any sort of guarantee of quality? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you don't know where to buy good tomatoes at the Greenmarket and the ones you buy at grocery stores and gourmet shops are inconsistent. Do you happen to know the names of any of the farms where you purchased mediocre tomatoes? As much as you seem to like brushing aside my comments about knowing your vendors and buying from people you trust, it's one of the only ways to be sure you're getting a good product.

So, let me get this straight. In 1993 there were good heirloom tomatoes available at the Union Square Greenmarket. In 1997 there were good heirloom tomatoes available at the Union Square Greenmarket. In 2007 there are good heirloom tomatoes available at the Union Square Greenmarket. You started a topic to bemoan the decline in quality of heirloom tomatoes because it's now possible to buy shitty heirloom tomatoes at the A&P and some vendors at the Union Square Greenmarket are selling worse tomatoes than others? Again, this gets back to the point I was making earlier - if you shop poorly, you get a poor quality product.

I've never shopped with you but if you can't find decent tomatoes in August and good cheese in Manhattan you're just not trying. It's not that good heirloom tomatoes are any less good, but bad heirloom tomatoes are now available year round at places like A&P where you shouldn't be buying your produce anyway.

That isn't the argument I'm making. My point is that making any sort of proclamation about the quality or availability of a product based on what you happen to find at your corner market is absurd. Just like suggesting that you can get good quality fish at ShopRite is absurd. If you shopped at the green market or whatever the local equivalent is where you happen to be, then you'd have the same position that weinoo, sam, and a half dozen others have expressed in this thread. Nobody ever made the case that 'heirloom tomatoes' were somehow better than all other tomatoes. They haven't been dumbed down - there have always been terrible hybrid and heirloom tomatoes available, just like there have been excellent hybrid and heirloom tomatoes available. If you buy garbage ingredients, you end up cooking and eating at best mediocre food. So rather than lament the poor quality of grocery store tomatoes, shop for ingredients where they are best. I don't see how lazy shopping is any sort of basis for a blanket statement about the quality of an ingredient.

So isn't this topic like the soft cheese topic and countless others just the result of poor shopping rather than a lack of access to quality ingredients? Hopefully the next topic in this vein will be about how hard it is to find sushi grade fish at ShopRite. This is a recurring theme, on eg and elsewhere - it isn't reasonable to buy mediocre ingredients and assume they are a good representation of what is available.

I agree completely, besides - what is there to object to? The woman started the program and her philosophy is entirely reasonable - eat real food, share it with your friends and family...

I suspect you are a member of a very small group of his fans. Even Michael "everything-is-delicious" Bauer hated what he was doing...

The chef got the boot a couple of weeks ago, the Chronicle reported on it on the 15th.

The slanted door and burma superstar are both fairly heavily americanized versions of their respective cuisine. Carolyn, when was the last time you were at Campton Place? They've been going through chef after chef and from all accounts the food isn't worth seeking out. If you're doing the americanized ethnic tour, Mijita is a fine choice. Personally, I'd head across the bridge and eat at the taco trucks on International Blvd - there's a fresh churros truck there also. I'd also swap out the slanted door for Pagolac and Larkin Express deli for burma superstar.

I think that foodblog was mine. From long ago when I didn't really know how to steam milk... Things have improved since...

1) throw it in a pot with a little water over low heat, go to sleep, it'll be all rendered with chips of crispy skin left in the morning. 2) yes 3) yes

The Halal butchers around here all carry lamb and goat heads...

You could always use the same source as Bistro Jeanty and Bouchon use...

This reply seems a bit harsh. The original poster asked: Your recipe is neither fermented nor made without corn syrup. The wikipedia entry incidentally begins with: That seems to suggest your recipe makes a perhaps similar tasting, different product.