Mr. Toast

In a separate post recently ReallyNice! talks about trying to find pork bellies for making bacon. That's easy compared to what I'm looking for: hog jowls for making guanciale. I tried A&J Meats; they don't carry them and aren't interested in looking. I checked the coolers at the Bellevue Uwajimaya's and they don't have them in stock. Due to language difficulties I'm not sure if I'll get what I want if I ask them (it was a comedy of errors when I asked for sake lees at Uwajimaya a while back; they had them in stock but tried to sell me a dozen other things because they called them something slightly different and we didn't understand each other's accents). Anyway, where else could I go for hog jowls?

Friends have the Viking 48" range and they use the grill quite a bit. I've enjoyed the results on occasion and I definitely like it. I'll have to say, though, that apparently they don't clean it very often and it usually looks pretty crappy. If your goal is to have a really beautiful kitchen you're probably better off without it unless you're willing to do a lot of cleaning.

Last year we roasted a small (50 pound) pig in a pit for practice, and then a lamb. I found it was, in fact, quite simple. Really Nice supervised the first roasting; he was our expert since he'd actually seen someone do this before. A few small points: we lined the pit with cement "bricks" - of the sort used to make patios and walkways. Other than that, we didn't use any rocks. The pit was just 18" or so deep. That was enough for 6+ inches of coals and an air gap below the pig or lamb. The animal was sandwiched between two ordinary wire gates purchased from HomeDepot. A friend welded the gates to hinges on one side and aded long metal tubing along two edges of one gate so we had, effectively, a large BBQ basket for the animals. The tubing made it easy to pick up the basket (it took two people, of course). It was also used to support the basket over the sides of the pit. Over the basket, and large enough to completely cover the pit, we placed a couple of pieces of galvanized steel. This was in place for all of the cooking time. Before cooking we built a fire in the pit using maybe 1/4 cord of wood. When it had burned down to a few inches of hot coals we put the animal on and covered with the galvanized steel lid. Because we weren't cooking anything huge we actually didn't need to add more coals during the cooking process. We did flip the basket a time or two and of course we monitored the cooking process carefully. Did I mention that we drank bourbon? Starting around 9 AM? Yes, we were happy cooks by the time the meal was ready.

So tomorrow's the big day! I'm looking forward to this. Reminder to self: don't forget to bring your chef's knife.

I've ordered the Niman Ranch guanciale twice in recent months, I like it so much. And last Friday I got some from Salumi when I was there in person. They're both really good, but rather different. I need to try them side by side to see if I prefer one over the other.

Update: I just called, and got through. I got the last spot - except that he said a couple people who called and left messages still can get in.

I called about a dozen times last week, hoping to get through to an actual person instead of a machine. I never did succeed.

And DOD (depending on date) Ms Toast may want to come along.

Can I join the party? May 17th probably wouldn't work for me, but the other dates are fine.

A friend of my sister didn't know the difference between a clove of garlic and a head. Hmm, come to think of it a friend of mine does know the difference, but still tends toward putting in a head's worth when only a few cloves are called for.

I just posted my review of E&O in a separate thread; we were there last night as well. Some of the specifics of my experience were different than yours, but the overall tone is exactly the same. It's a disappointing place.

A group of us went to Earth and Ocean last night. Most of the group went for the 25 for $25 special; I picked a more expensive prix fixe menu. Executive summary: Earth & Ocean is a decent restaurant with delusions of grandeur. Some of the good: The nettle soup was delicious (this was the first time I ever tried nettles). Desserts were very good. Some of the other dishes were also quite good. We all liked the fries, and I had an excellent bison steak. Some of the bad: First, the airflow sucks . We were probably 30-40 feet from the bar, but there was a constant flow of cigarette smoke blowing over us. Service was slow, and sometimes quite poor. I ordered a flight of wine to go with my meal. For the second course, the wine arrived after I finished the course. Then the next glass of wine arrived just 5 minutes later. And when we got the bill, I was charged for the individual glasses of wine, not for the flight - despite it being clearly called out on the menu. Some of the food was just plain disappointing. The venison stew was bland and the venison itself was dry. My baby octopus over fork-mashed potatoes arrived without any octopus. When I complained, they brought me another dish with slices of what I would have to call juvenile octopus - not at all what I expected. Another diner in our party who doesn't eat pork asked to have the bacon left off his entree. There was no *visible* bacon, but plenty of bacon taste. Huh! I really had high hopes for this place, especially after reading the menu. Now, I see no reason to go back.

Barbara Tropp has a very good discussion of velveting in her two cookbooks. I believe she recommends velveting shrimp in water, chicken in either water or oil, and beef and pork in oil. And yes, in my experience velveting makes a big difference.

A couple of years ago I built a wood-fired oven in my back yard. In my oven, the wood burned in the same chamber where the pizza is cooked, as an earlier poster described. From a cold state, it would take a few hours to get it up to temperature. For thin-crust pizzas, I eventually settled on 700 - 740 degrees F as the right temperature range. Once there, I could maintain that temperature for hours with a small fire burning on one side of the oven. My oven came from a kit I purchased from www.earthstoneovens.com - check the website out for more details. Anyway, about all I can say is that I'm sure the high temperature makes a difference, I'm pretty sure baking right on the tile floor makes a difference, and I think the wood makes a difference - though, as someone else said, it probably makes more of a difference for things that cook longer at lower temperature. And since I've never cooked in an oven like this with a different heat source I can't say anything definitive. I moved to a new home a few months ago, and had to leave my wood-fired oven behind. But I liked the thing so much that I'll be building another one in my new backyard this summer.

Brief follow-up to my original post: I got to eat at Sooke Harbour House again last weekend. Edward (the chef) invited me to sit in the kitchen next to his station this time, instead of eating in the dining room. The idea was that we could chat between courses, and I’d get a chance to see the kitchen in operation. He also promised to fix me a few extra courses through the course of the evening. What’s not to like with this arrangement? Of course I accepted. I don’t know how this would have worked out on a really busy night, but the night I was there it was pretty slow and the staff were all relaxed. When I got there he had a tray prepared with a dozen or so ingredients ready for my extra courses. My dinner took three hours, and I got around 11 courses (we lost track). I had everything on the regular menu, including both full entrees and both desserts, plus around five extras. It was a fabulous meal! Edward asked me what my favorite course was. I could have picked the sea scallop topped with Edward’s bacon, a bit of blue cheese, and a sauce which I’ve forgotten. But one other dish and part of a third were what I still really remember as stand-outs: first, a little piece of sautéed sablefish topped with a blend of Edward’s own canned spicy ketchup and a commercial (Muir-glen?) ketchup. Very simple, but perfectly done. Second, a potato pancake made with salt cod and an artisanal cheese from Montana. This was a revelation to me. I’ve tried preparing salt cod at home, and I’ve eaten it at good restaurants a couple of times. To me, it always just tastes like old, poorly handled cod, very fishy and basically unpleasant. Edward’s wasn’t like this at all – it was light and mild, almost ethereal in flavor. Really nice!

In the "eating in Victoria" thread there was mention of Sooke Harbour House. My girlfriend and I went up there last month and I wrote up a rather lengthy description, mostly of the cooking class we took there. Here it is: We spent two days at Sooke Harbour House recently. It’s located 10 or 20 miles west of Victoria on Vancouver Island; you can visit their website at www.sookeharbourhouse.com. The first evening we ate in the restaurant as part of our “Gourmet Getaway Package,” which includes meals and lodging. It also includes a tour of their award-winning wine cellar. It doesn’t include drinks with the meal; we paid extra for that. The restaurant prepares Pacific Northwest Cuisine, using local ingredients where possible and for the most part avoiding ingredients that can’t be grown in the region – lemons, for example. They grow most of their own herbs and salad greens. The menu changes daily, reflecting both the whim of the cooking staff and the availability of ingredients. The menu is published shortly before dinner starts each evening. During most of the year the choices are reasonably extensive (given the restrictions listed above) but during the dead of winter the menu is relatively limited. Since the first time we dined there we have always chosen the “Gastronomic Dining Adventure,” which is a five or six course tasting menu. Don’t come here unless you have a reasonably adventurous palate – dishes like “Cilantro and sweet marjoram butter baked Port Renfrew Lingcod in a Dungeness crab, goose neck barnacle, pea, smoked sablefish, sweet cicely broth, crispy Halibut wonton, bok choy spears and snap peas” are the norm. They aren’t always spot-on (we once had a disappointingly ordinary baked cod) but they’re great often enough to get the restaurant rated as among the very best in Canada. Our meal Sunday lived up to expectations. Every course was excellent, service was friendly, never stuffy, and the wine pairings worked for every course. Dinner took around four or five hours. We saw other customers cycle through in much less time but we came there to relax and really enjoy the food, and that’s just what we got to do. The second afternoon we took a cooking class with Chef Edward Tuson, long-time head chef at Sooke Harbour House. One more person had signed up for the course but cancelled shortly beforehand so it was just the two of us and Chef Edward for the afternoon. He started us out in the gardens. Despite the time of year (mid January) a few herbs were growing and even blooming outside (this has been an unusually warm winter) and more were available in small greenhouses and cold frames. We tasted a dozen or more plants, many of which we knew just as ornamentals – like begonias – or weeds – like chickweed. Edward (I’ll drop the “chef” appellation from now on, as he’s quite informal in person) already had a menu in mind for the afternoon, and he harvested leaves from six or eight different plants for the meal as we went along. After a half hour or more in the gardens, we went inside and changed into cooking whites provided by Sooke Harbour House for the class. Edward showed us the menu he planned. Earlier he’d asked if we had any particular allergies or dislikes – we said no – and replaced cod with tuna when he learned we’d eaten cod the previous evening in the restaurant. Then we started right in with the prep work. Edward doesn’t work from recipes; everything is in his head and he seems to always know what needs to be prepared next. We did pretty much all the work, from peeling the garlic and cutting the onions to timing the cooking (Edward doesn’t use a timer). Generally he would do something once to show us how to do it, then step back and ask us to finish up. This is exactly what we wanted, so everyone was happy. There were just a few exceptions to this rule: Edward cut the tuna steaks. Perhaps he was worried about wastage, or consistency in the thickness of cuts. Edward did most of the clean-up work himself, telling us that he felt bad about asking paying customers to wash the dishes. This was OK with me, but Ms. Toast chose to help him out in some of this work. Edward roasted the vegetables for one course while the rest of us sat in the dining room and drank wine. Again, this was mostly a matter of being a polite host on his part. We could have followed him into the kitchen and helped out here, but we were happy to sit and talk with the sommelier. J Over the space of the afternoon we did the prep work for what I would consider a fairly complicated four-course dinner, but at no point were we rushed. We took two or three short breaks, including one mid-afternoon where Edward fed us a simple but satisfying pasta dish made with his own cured bacon and a few vegetables. Around 6 PM we were through with the prep work and Benjamin Philip, son of the owners and one of several sommeliers for the restaurant, showed up to discuss wines and join us for dinner. He was also prepared to give us a tour of the wine cellars but since we got that the previous evening we declined. Benjamin proposed to pour four different white wines from the Okanogan Valley region of B.C. to taste with the first two courses of our meal. The idea was that we would do an experiment to decide for ourselves which wines best matched the dishes. We agreed, so this is what we did. First, though, we started with a sparkling wine. While we were drinking that we quickly finished preparing the first course. The final step was plating, and we did this at the plating station in the kitchen. Then the four of us each took a plate of food and we marched single-file into the empty dining room and sat at a choice table. Edward and Benjamin had given us the option of eating alone or with them, and of course we chose to eat as a group. So we had a leisurely course, trying all four wines with the soup and pretty quickly coming to agreement on which wine worked best. When we were ready for the next course we bused our own dishes back into the kitchen and spent a few minutes finishing and plating it. Then single-file back into the dining room, and so on. Not long after the dessert course Edward excused himself to go back into the kitchen, where he did the final clean-up. In all, we got around 11 hours of instruction and companionship – and a fabulous meal. I had been somewhat hesitant about signing up for the cooking class initially. It’s not inexpensive, and from the Sooke Harbour House website it’s not entirely clear what you’re getting into. Now having taken the class I’m wildly enthusiastic about it. From a purely financial perspective, it was really a bargain. Edward provided all the instruction we could ask for, in an always friendly fashion. And we both agreed that it was just a heck of a lot of fun. There’s no question that we’ll be wanting to go again next year. For the record, here’s our complete menu: Butternut squash soup with Grand Fir oil, walnut crusted goats cheese and chickweed Couscous crusted Albacore Tuna, squash flan with a Portobello mushroom green cabbage dumpling, Japanese plum glaze and a nasturtium leaf emulsion Braised lamb shanks in tomato and rosemary with a potato sour cream leek cake and roasted carrots, parsnips, celery root and Brussels sprouts Pumpkin seed praline phyllo crisps with roasted strawberry fool, scented geranium crème Anglaise and maple syrup granita

A while back, a group of us had dinner together at Chez Panisse. After a nip or two of wine, we agreed that it would be fun to fix a Chez Panisse dinner as a group back at home. In the spirit of another dinner done last year based on another restaurant, we mangled the name of our meal: Chez Pansies. I'm sorry to report that our photographer took the night off to eat and have fun so we don't have any fabulous photos, but here's the list of courses. For extra credit, can you tell which one recipe didn't come from Chez Panisse or any of it's cookbooks? Tuna-olive tapenade on crostini Lamb's lettuce salad with quail eggs Artichoke tart Chicken baked in a salted herb crust Fettuccini with onion confit and winter greens Tarte Tatin

I have almost the complete set of Pleasures of Cooking. I'm missing some of the early issues, when they were a smaller size. I only started subscribing around the fifth year but I ordered back issues of everything that was still in print and got a few more from my mother. When my house caught fire and partially burned back in 1988 I threw out a garbage can full of sooty cookbooks but kept PoC. Some of the covers are still blackish today but I have a lot of old favorite recipes in there. As recently as last week I picked one up and found a new recipe to try.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'd prefer to go the local route, so I'll try Seattle Art Supply first.

I'm looking for a Seattle source for gold leaf. I've never used it before, but I have a recipe I want to try which involves affixing it to chocolate on a cake. I've checked a few obvious places like Sur La Table, with no luck. Any ideas?