balex

here

Lidagtes still has some good stuff, but it has gone a long way down the "organic chicken breast marinated in thai spices" route. For me a good butcher has to sell tripe, and veal bones. Lidgates does neither. 218 Portobello Road, has a halal butcher that sells cow feet and tripe and mutton. And is maybe 1/3 of the price of lidgates. But the quality is not so high. ← Tripe! where, where?(not the nasty soft bleached stuff!) ← The place I am thinking of is on the east side of portobello road about a block south of Garcia, the spanish supermarket. It had two sorts of tripe, lamb and beef. This was pretty obviously not bleached. Also, apparently they normally get a whole veal once a week, and will keep obscure bits of it for you if you want. Or so the guy said, but I haven't actually got my act together on this yet.

Lidagtes still has some good stuff, but it has gone a long way down the "organic chicken breast marinated in thai spices" route. For me a good butcher has to sell tripe, and veal bones. Lidgates does neither. 218 Portobello Road, has a halal butcher that sells cow feet and tripe and mutton. And is maybe 1/3 of the price of lidgates. But the quality is not so high.

I used to work there from time to time, and I liked "Le Petit Lyonnais" a lot, in Plainpalais. Good unpretentious lyonnais food. Quiet in the evening, and very busy at lunch.

At Sant Eustachio they adulterate it with some dairy product to get the crema. I think they use a light cream. I don't think the coffee is uniformly great in Italy: certainly north of Rome it is easy to find bad coffee. In Rome itself, there are loads of very cheap places that serve mediocre espresso. But it is very easy to find excellent coffee. (edit: but there clearly is a lack of innovation: there are very few places where they really try to go that extra mile, by tweaking or finding a better source of beans.) I was very surprised to hear that the coffee in America is better than that in Italy at the high end. Is this just a Seattle thing? I have never been to Seattle but I have been underwhelmed with the coffee in NY and SF and other points in between. It's very difficult also to find good coffee here in London: the major weakness is that the espressos have way more liquid in them, than they do in Italy.

Senape is to mustard as parmigiano-reggiano is to grana. They are both cheese, closely related, both very good in their own way, but with a world of difference in taste. Senape is most often translated as mustard. In fact, it comes from the white seeds of the mustard plant. ← I don't think this is correct. Senape is an Italian word that refers to exactly the same things that the english word "mustard" does. If tou ask for senape in an Italian restaurant, or in an supermarket they will bring you something pretty similar to what you would get in England or France. Made from the same types of seed. Perhaps you meant to say that your prefer Italian mustard to French mustard or English mustard. There are a variety of different but related plants called mustard: brassica nigra, brassica hirta, brassice juncea and brassica alba. A few moments of googling found this useful website about mustard. ← Unfortunately, you and I are not speaking of the same thing. The senape I was referring to is not found in Italian restaurants in Italy. It has nothing to do with the mustard one sees on a table, Italian, French, English or any other kind. I am referring to the senape you get in an apothecary. This is the same "essence" that Divina referred to as well as Steven C (who said the essence was still moto forte, thirty years after his nona bought it). I must have been going to Italian restaurants in Italy for the last thirty-five years with "senepeless" Italian friends, for I've never heard one of them ask for senape. What food does one order and then ask for senape? I'm curious. Well, my children like to have mustard with steak sometimes. I have tried to talk them out of it, but without much success Actually, I don't think we disagree. I stand corrected because I think that the Italian word senape does have a different denotation to the Enlglish word mustard since it also refers to the stuff you get in a chemist. (or apothecary for the more antique flavour). Though what would you translate that into English as? Though, I think we do disagree since the stuff you are talking about would normally be referred to as "essenza di senape" rather than "senape". I just don't like arguments of the type: "The wine they make in country X is not really wine at all: it is just fermented grape juice. The only real wine is that made in zone Y of country Z". It confuses a normative-aesthetic judgment (perfectly valid) with a completely bogus linguistic judgement,

Senape is to mustard as parmigiano-reggiano is to grana. They are both cheese, closely related, both very good in their own way, but with a world of difference in taste. Senape is most often translated as mustard. In fact, it comes from the white seeds of the mustard plant. ← I don't think this is correct. Senape is an Italian word that refers to exactly the same things that the english word "mustard" does. If tou ask for senape in an Italian restaurant, or in an supermarket they will bring you something pretty similar to what you would get in England or France. Made from the same types of seed. Perhaps you meant to say that your prefer Italian mustard to French mustard or English mustard. There are a variety of different but related plants called mustard: brassica nigra, brassica hirta, brassice juncea and brassica alba. A few moments of googling found this useful website about mustard.

(These are not my views: I am just presenting an argument I have encountered( The third reason to decant wines has been the same reason that you "decant" sugar or salt or mustard: to put it in a more attractive serving container. Allegedly it used to be considered "middle class" not to decant champagne. I think I recall Lord Beaumont being cited as the source of this opinion. The idea is that everyhting you serve on the table should be out of its original container and in one of your own containers. I think this attitude died out in its purest form during the last century, but you still encounter its traces from time to time. I

Arrived 6:30, sat down at 7. Fabulous meal. Terrine to start: really one of the nicest I have had for ages. Just the right mixture of textures and flavours, not too fatty while still being really moist. Slow cooked pork (Middlewhite) with sauerkraut and sausage. The meat was so delicious, tender but still iwth a bite to it and great flavour. Milk pudding with pears and prunes. Everything was delicious. The pub was very crowded though.

So it is a little late for the autumn ones, you may have to wait for spring. M and C on Turnham green terrace and Michanicou Brothers 2 Clarendon Road London, W11 3AA Telephone: 020 7727 5191 Fax: 020 7243 5119 in Holland Park (round the corner from Lidgates) both have them normally in season.

Lies, damn lies and staitistics. Yes, you are right to be sceptical about these analyses. These are estimates of consumption not sales, so one would hope that they have adjusted for this obvious fact. I think you are spot on about the patterns of consumption. It's the half bottle of wine ten times a week rather than fifteen tequila slammers on Friday night. The French don't have quite the same taboo against drunkenness as the Italians, but it is still frowned upon.

Interesting question. I don't think bleudauvergne's argument that it is being stored is a good one, unless the amount of wine stored in cellars is going up year on year, which is unlikely. Here you can find the official French statistics : 14.0 litres per year of which 61% is wine. So it's a bit less than the figures mentioned below. The difference between perception and reality is striking. Certainly comparing UK to France in terms of alcohol.

Notting hill farmers market on this morning (Saturday morning). They have a beef stall that is very good for unusual cuts, and they always have short ribs. But NOT sliced thinly across the bone in the korean style. In the French style.

No. No. No! "All fur coat and no knickers?" is a good thing hahaha!! the one you thinking of is "all talk and no trousers!" ← I like the gay version: " all trouser"

Lunch today. I was very impressed. In general I have been very underwhelmed by restaurants of this type, so I was surprised to enjoy this meal so much. A wafer of filo pstary with some truffled cream A deep fried ball of salt cod in a jerusalem artichoke veloute starters lasagne of rabbit in a thyme veloute'. Not a veloute really, but very tasty foamy sauce and a very smooth puree of cepes. Lots of small chanterelles and I think other mushrooms (oops, there go my foodie credentials) Nice textures -- the filling of the lasagne was a quite firm forcemeat so the textural experience was very unlike a true lasgne -- the filling was firmer than the pasta. Flavours were fab. This was really nice to eat. the mulllet en papillote mentioned upstream. My daughter loved this. mains Roast hare. Interesting presentation: saddle meat was cut off the backbone and coiled up against the fanned ribs (hard to explain). Bed of sauteed mushrooms, slightly sticky sauce. A couple of leafs of spinach wilted in. Tender, flavourful meat, maybe slightly underdone to my taste. Again succesful. pudding was not quite so nice: caramelised pear, some crisp tuiley type things with chestnut puree and something else in. A bit too elaborate and the pear got lost. Lovely wine, excellent service. I liked it a lot. I'll be back.

I am one of those sceptics, but the difference with these gadgets is that they obviously do/might work. Double decanting is a good work around. So decant into a decanter. Pour it all into a jug, and then back into the decanter. Or if you don't have a decanter, pour it into a jug, rinse out the bottle to ge rid of any gunge and pour it back into the clean bottle. This is good if you drink more bottles than you have decanters, and makes sure you don't get mixed up.

I apologise for three posts in a row, but this is an important topic.. I always thought that browning onions for these sauces was considered very wrong. I am sure I recall being told by some cook I respected, that if the onions brown at all, you have to throw them all out and start again. Long slow cooking so they are very soft and sweet and tender, but not caramelised. I will put on my asbestos underpants now, because I am sure people will disagree rabidly.

This is another thing. You make it with fennel seeds, garlic and chilli, fried together, and then crumbled italian sausages (skinned that are browned) and then pelati. Very good, and much quicker than ragu (oops, I meant bolognese sauce).

But Adam did his with 'strattu, which is great but of course not Neapolitan but Sicilian. I don't know what the Neapolitan equivalent of this is, if it exists? There should be a thread on strattu if there isn't already. I used to go to Palermo at least once a year just to buy this stuff, (and have a panino with milza of course).

perhaps so, but i would hope (hold) that any civilized diner would above arguing, and "discuss" issues in an open dialogue... but that raises another observation. i've noticed that some cultures, which seem extremely passionate about food (boy, am i getting myself into trouble with that statement), like the italians, chinese, spanish and perhaps french, would put content of the conversation second to focusing/enjoying the communal experience. i contrast this (mainly) with the american culture, where even the greatest food could be ruined by an off-remark... ← Italians also typically love to argue. That made me very comfortable in Italy, because most Jews also love to argue. The point of discuzione (argument), though, is to have fun, not to make really serious accusations. I think there is a difference between good-humored argument and verbal confrontation. balex, what is "sconceing"? ← I think these are special cases where people have to live for many years in a community and one wants to avoid getting on each others nerves. Religiosu communities often eat in silence which I suspect has the same purpose ... Sconceing involves drinking a whole bowlful of alcohol. (A sconce).

Where? Not my experience in US, UK, or Italy, except for the sexual proclivities of those present-- sometimes. ← It is a traditional rule in Engalnd, which is still practiced in clubs, colleges and probably officers' messes though I am guessing there. Violations are punished by sconceing. The point, such as it is, is to avoid bitter arguments. There are also prohitbitions about talking "shop". Taken together these basically ban talking about a) anything interesting and b) anything you know a lot about. Insert emoticon of your choice here,

I think there is no need to put a lot of vegetable falvour in the stock since it is easy to add it as desired. If you want some onion or parsley flavours (I am holding off on using "notes" here) it is really easy to add them in. The key factors for me are 1) the maillard flavours -- white/brown stock 2) ratio of meat to bone. The italian brodo is almost pure meat (bones are for dogs!), and the trad french stock is almost pure bone. What is interesting about the Ducasse approach is the way he has a number of variants -- the bouillon from a pot au feu, the fond, the jus and so on that lie at various points in the space of possible stocks. Personally, I didn' have much success with the Ducasse jus, probably because I didn't add enough fat. I think it is the process of almost frying the glace in fat that gives that classic jus taste: it must sizzle to develop those flavours.

No tamarind? For some reason I have always thought that worcestershire sauce had a lot of tamarind in it, (googling for the two names seems to confirm this)

Synecdoche is the specific term for this sort of part-for-whole metonymy. One of those words one has to use when the opportunity presents itself. Sorry a bit OT.

I drove past Harrods this morning and noticed that they have a Laduree tea shop. Laduree is famous for, among other things, having the second best macarons in Paris. Anyone been? Is it open?