JAZ

Interesting article. I haven't been drinking much Italian wine, but maybe now I'll have to check out a few bottles. Thanks.

As has been mentioned, juniper berries are good in marinades for game and also add a nice touch to sauerkraut. I have a recipe somewhere for gravlax made with gin and juniper rather than the more usual dill - it sounds great, but I've never tried it. One thing to keep in mind if you want to use juniper berries is to make sure your preparation contains some alcohol, as juniper requires alcohol to bring out its aroma and flavor.

Do you write them out by hand, or on the computer? I recently compiled all my mother's recipes from cards and clippings on Master Cook for her. I printed them out on full pages (2-3 recipes per page) and mounted them in "photo-album" style recipes books (the pages are sticky with a plastic covering that you peel back to mount the recipes). It turned out quite nice. I included extra pages, so she can add recipes as she wishes. The nice thing about that style book is that you can mount any size card, clipping or printed page. The books I used came with divider pages with pockets in them for extra clippings, notes, etc. I work at Sur La Table, so that's where I got them, but I'm sure they're availabe elsewhere.

I'm not sure that a whole new dimension would be good for raisins (a whole new universe, maybe). I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the vehemence of all you raisin lovers, though. Didn't expect it.

Magnetic bar, 12 inch length. It holds 1 paring, 1 utility, 1 6-inch chef's, 2 8-inch chef's and a bread knife. I've always had more wall space than counter or drawer space, so it's worked well for me. I am at the point where any additional knives will have to find another home, but the only knife I want to get is a santoku, and I figure when I get that, one of the 8-inch chef knives can go into a drawer.

Egg salad would be my guess. An egg cuber is not something that cuts an egg into tiny cubes. It's a square mold in which you insert a peeled, warm, hard-cooked egg. Screw the lid down chill it and the egg comes out in a cube shape. Why would you want to do this? I have no idea, really, but the only thing I can think of is so you have square slices of egg for canapes. You do have a point there.

I've made both, and can say that making your own Kahlua isn't worth it. But my recipe for Irish cream liqueur is way better than Bailey's because it uses fresh cream (it has to be refrigerated, though).

Working in a cookware store, I have to admit I can go overboard on the gadget front, but I try to hold off on most things until I've heard a lot of feedback, or have ahd a chance to try them out. I did get a garlic peeler, which I used at first but haven't touched in years. It works, but only really does one clove at a time, and the side of a knife works almost as well. And I did succumb to buying a julienne peeler, which is fun, but not essential in the least. But I've not been interested in the avocado slicer, mushroom slicer, garlic slicer, or tomato slicer. I sort of like the idea of a cornichon slicer, but only because it sounds so cool to have a dedicated cornichon slicer. Probably not a good reason to buy something. Sometimes when I'm making tapenade or other olive spreads, I think about a cherry/olive pitter, and tomato sharks are great when you're dicing tons of tomatoes for salsa, but I'm just not sure whether they're worth the space. But melon ballers? Not frivolous in the least. I have several sizes and like Kit, I use them for coring apples and pears. I also make a lot of appetizers and use the smaller sizes for removing the insides of cherry tomatoes and tiny potatoes when I'm stuffing them. The smaller ones are great for seeding cucumbers, too. And I have to say that I love my olive and caper spoons, small, almost ladle-shaped slotted spoons with long handles for getting olives, pickled onions, capers, cocktail cherries, etc., out of jars, which are also great for removing the odd lemon seed that makes it past the strainer. And then, there are things like cheese planers, which might only have one use, but they're so good at that one use that they are worth the space. Likewise with the citrus reamer. Can't live without it. My nominee for the most worthless gadget? The egg cuber.

Is pico de gallo the same as salsa, or a specific type of salsa. I've always read that pico de gallo is a very specific combination of chopped raw vegetables: tomatoes, onion, and jalapenos, plus cilantro. Anything else (I believe) is not, strictly speaking, pico de gallo. Salsa is Spanish for "sauce" and so is a much broader term.

All the wine suggestions so far are excellent. Go for "spicy" reds (Cotes du Rhone, Zinfandels [cautiously], Tempranillo or Rioja, even a serious Beaujolais like a Morgon would be great) with softer tannins and you can't go wrong. Another delicious option for the non-beer drinkers would be a good dry hard cider. I really love that with BBQ and smoked meat. I know this will sound strange (I was skeptical until I tried it) but cold sake goes really well with barbecue. Dry cider is good too.

Necessity being the mother of invention, I was trying to figure out something to do with a leftover bottle of vanilla vodka that was given to me. Not being a sweet drink fan, I had pretty much dispaired of finding a use for it. Then I mixed it about half and half with orange juice (Tropicana pasteurized not-from concentrate), shook it vigorously with ice and poured it into a chilled cocktail glass. It tasted exactly like a Creamsicle (the old ice cream treat), and even had a creamy mouth feel to add to the effect. Now, I have to say it's still not my style of drink, but if you like dessert-type drinks, you might like this. I imagine it could be a big favorite with college kids. PS. Glad you liked the lemon drop drink, cew.

Actually, I hardly ever marinate anymore. Ever since I discovered brining, I brine all my chicken, shrimp and pork. After the brine, I use a dry rub or paste (leaving out any salt, of course). With beef, I'm usually braising tough cuts, and, if I decide to splurge on a steak, I don't want a marinade.

Describing the way wine or food tastes is not difficult because of the subjectivity of the experience. Describing any sensory experience is virtually impossible because the senses are so basic. We don't learn about sensory experiences the way we learn about mathematics. They exist outside of language, in a sense, and that is why anyone who wants to describe a sensory experience has to resort to analogy. For instance, if I'm trying to describe the taste of a lemon, or the sound of an oboe, I'm pretty much forced to say things like "a lemon tastes sort of like a lime" or "an oboe sounds sort of like a cross between a clarinet and a bassoon." None of this would be any problem if we didn't want to talk about our sensory experiences, but of course we do (or eGullet wouldn't exist, would it?) Eating and drinking are most often social activities, and what's a social acitivity worth if you can't talk about it with other people? So if you wish to talk about the wines you drink, you have to speak in analogies, and the most you can hope for is that your analogies are accurate yet universal enough that other people understand what you mean by your description. The best traits (I think) in a wine or food critic are a very wide experience tasting things; a very good memory, so when she tastes something new, she can cast back to previous experiences and pull out some similar taste memories; and an ability to accurately describe the taste memory. And I'm with Britcook on this one -- at least fruit and vegetable terms are more accurate than psychological and anthropomorphic terms. It's very true that some wine writers and many wine lovers purposely make their descriptions arcane to make themselves feel superior, but I think most people are really just trying to describe something that's hard to describe. A lot of people (including some "professional" writers) are not very good at it, but I don't think most of them are malicious.

Yeah, I second that.

I bought a bottle of Luxardo around Christmas (in San Francisco) and it was wrapped in the straw/wicker stuff. And I suppose there are advantages to living in California, where I see Picon virtually everywhere. Far more common than maraschino.

Harold McGee soaked mushrooms in water for fine minutes and found that 252 grams of mushrooms (23 mushrooms) absorbed 6 grams (less than half a tablespoon)of water, total. He points out that mushrooms are 90% water to begin with, and raises the point that a few more drops of water wouldn't seem to make much of a difference. To clean button or crimini mushrooms, I put them in a plastic bag, fill the bag with water and shake them around a bit, then pour them out into a colander to drain. I wouldn't do this if I were serving them raw, because the outside texture changes, but I don't like raw mushrooms, so that's not an issue for me. Edit: spelling

This sounds wonderful. Do you use uncooked sausage, or the smoked sort? If uncooked, is it in the casing, or removed?

First, let me say that I like both beer and wine. I used to make beer, and am familiar with the wide variety of styles. But to make a make a blanket statement that beer is more complex than wine is just as limiting as the opposite tack of disparaging beer. Beer is complex, but that doesn't mean that wine is not. They're different. Period. The acid level in wine makes it better suited for some foods, just as the sweet/bitter profile of beer fits well with other foods. Many foods go well with both, which is a good thing if one likes variety, as I do.

The Aviation is my favorite cocktail since I discovered it in the book. Though I have yet to find a bar or restaurant that stocks maraschino, so I've given up trying to order it out. The few times I did ask for one I got a blank look and had to recite the recipe, and even then what I got back was pink and super sweet. Oh, another good one to try is the Floridita. If you can find Amarena Fabbri (imported wild Italian cherries in heavy syrup), add one or two to your Aviation and you will be in heaven. I hate the usual maraschino cherries served as garnishes, but these things are wonderful. PS Have not tried the Floridita yet; the creme de cacao puts me off. Isn't it awfully sweet?

My favorite cocktail book by far. Auspicious discoveries for me include the Aviation and the Jasmine.

This reminds me of a great scene in a novel, Secrets of the Tsil Cafe by Thomas Fox Averill. The narrator, whose father owns a restaurant that serves only foods from the New World, gets tamales for his lunch and ends up getting in a schoolyard fight over his strange food. The next day, he throws his lunch away, and then he begs his mother for a normal lunch. He continues, "The next day, my mother gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small bag of potato chips, and two Twinkies. I sat in the lunchroom and tried to eat the unfamiliar food. The sandwich tasted like a sweet sponge, the potato chips like salt, the Twinkies like sugar. Everything had the same texture: no texture at all. Nothing was rich, complicated. But nobody teased me on the playground." Then he goes home and asks his father for some tamales.

Inquiring minds want to know: does the grape go in skin side up or skin side down? (fun article, by the way)

Well, how would you account for the fairly universal preference for spiced food (using the more general definition of "spice" to include herbs, onions and chiles)?

If you're referring to the American Scientist theory, maybe I can clarify it a little. The authors of that article were not talking about the conscious reasons people have for using spices; the were talking about the ultimate reasons why people would have evolved to enjoy the taste of spices. In other words, they're not saying that people in hot climates knew that the spices acted as antimicrobial agents and used them specifically for that purpose. They're saying that because many spices do kill microbes, the people who used spices in their food (presumably because they liked spicy food) would survive longer and reproduce more successfully, so that over time, spice use would be selected for naturally.

Also called salicornia, samphire or glasswort (thank you, Elizabeth Schneider).