JAZ

Another vote for Henderson's recipe. The caper and parsley salad is a nice foil to the richness of the marrow. Then, if you have leftovers, you can spread it on crostini, top with a little parmesan and run it under the broiler. This is a great appetizer on its own, but where it really shines is as a garnish for French onion soup. Leftovers are also great to mix into mashed potatoes, or the filling for twice baked potatoes, especially if you also add caramelized onions.

For cocktails, try Cortez on Geary Street in the Hotel Adagio (great small plates too) or Enrico's in North Beach.

For a relatively recent review of some Bay Area restaurants, including Gary Danko and Manresa, you might want to check out this topic. In fact, it reminds me that I still need to try Quince.

We have a menu. We'll start with mixed antipasto platters, shared family style (there will be two varieties of platters: one featuring Incanto's house-cured meats, and one without) __________________________ First course: Octopus crudo with marjoram and smoked sea salt __________________________ Second course: Chicken liver ravioli in balsamic brown butter __________________________ Main course: Rabbit braised in white wine with garlic & rosemary They'll choose our dessert the day of the dinner. I'll post the wine pairing as soon as it's final. We do have one last space available, if anyone else is interested.

I made this Bee's Knees Variation from the CocktailDB site, using blood orange juice. It was good -- more complex than I expected. I also tried it with gin, and preferred that to rum.

I'm expecting to get some possible menus from the restaurant within the next couple of days. If anyone attending the dinner has any allergies or major food dislikes, please PM me in the next day or so -- I'll try to take anything like that into account when choosing the menu.

Click here for a recent thread on the topic of gravy for biscuits. This thread might help with the biscuits.

I like to bake all my crumb crusts for just a few minutes (5 at the most) -- I find it gives a more complex, toasted flavor to the crust. I've never noticed chocolate crumb crusts tasting less intense after baking. I use Famous Chocolate Wafers for my crumb crusts.

Here are two of the three types of cookies I'm baking this year: The ones that look like sunny side up eggs are a cream cheese butter cookie base filled with lemon curd. The others are a variation of Swedish Sand Tarts from Sunset Magazine, filled with caramel (which looks very dark in the photo; I'm just getting used to my camera). I make my cookies small; although you can't tell from the photo, these are about an inch across.

We still have four spaces available for this dinner. The chef is working on the menu for us; then the wine director will select the wines. Post here if you're interested.

I have a confession. I've used the dust -- not on cocktails, but to sprinkle on top of christmas truffles. [Disclaimer: I got a free box from the distributor, Lynn, who was mentioned in the article; I doubt I'd have bought it.] But I have to say that it's really pretty. I've tried "luster dust" (a sparkly dust for pastry work) before, and it doesn't come close in looks to the real gold. When Lynn came to the store to do a demonstration, she had a cocktail glass rimmed with the dust. That, I thought, was gaudy -- just too much. And the "chunks" (which I also have) are a little much for my taste. But I could see a little of it mixed in with sugar to rim a special cocktail, although I haven't tried that. And a tiny pinch in the bottom of a champagne glass before it's filled makes the whole thing sparkle. Useless? Yes? Frivolous? Undoubtedly. But really cool looking.

The year is almost up. How did we all do, soup-wise? I didn't come close to a soup a week, but I made some new ones -- some from recipes, some on my own. My accomplishments: I got a pressure cooker, so I made split pea soup with smoked pork shank several times -- 20 minutes start to finish. (The pressure cooker and I also produced goulash, but I think that's more of a stew than a soup.) I made a new recipe for gazpacho from La Cocina de Mama. Made it twice before the great summer tomatoes faded from sight. I worked on pureed vegetable soups -- and made roasted red pepper and caramelized onion, asparagus and leek, and corn and chile. I discovered that half a can of green enchilada sauce, a can of chicken broth, some frozen corn, leftover rice and the insides from a chicken taco from the neighborhood taqueria (grilled chicken, black beans and salsa) make a pretty good soup, if one is so inclined. I made a lot of chicken stock, so I made several chicken soups. I believe I mentioned upthread that I stumbled on a fabulous new (to me, at least) way to thicken chicken soup -- making a buerre manie-type mixture with chicken fat and flour and stirring that in. With Ronnie Suburban and other Pig Pickin volunteers, I prepped pounds of vegetables for the VD stew, which I think counts as a soup. At least I'm counting it. There were other soups, I'm sure; but those are the ones that stand out for me. Does anyone else want to recap their Year of Soups?

On our older but still great thread, It's Friday, it's after 5:00, and I'm going to mix a . . ., we were investigating the possibilities of Boodles and Cynar. I came up with the Boodle's Baby Drop, the name of which you'll understand if you scroll back a little from my post. It was a first try, and I never went back to experiment or improve it, so if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to mention them here, or there.

I haven't tried that, but I make hot lemonade whenever I have a sore throat. A shot of brandy goes in if I'm drinking it in the evening.

If he's the type who likes to read about cooking, he might want to read through some of the eGCI courses before he gets to your house. (eGCI)

Erik, I had the same reaction when I tried it with Meyer lemon juice -- it really doesn't stand up to the other flavors. The drink is very different with regular lemon juice -- still not one of my favorites, but it's much cleaner tasting.

We're planning a special dinner for eGullet members and guests at Incanto in January. The dinner will feature a flight of Italian wines selected to match the four course meal. Here's the relevant information: Date: Monday, January 9, 2006 Time: 7:00 pm Place: Incanto Restaurant 1550 Church St., San Francisco [Public transportation: the J Church Muni streetcar stops about two blocks away] This dinner will showcase the unique seasonal, Italian-influenced cuisine of Incanto, with Italian wines selected to accompany each course. The chef will talk about the courses and the wine director will discuss the wines selected. Exact menu will be set at a later date; it will be posted in this thread. Incanto Restaurant has garnered much discussion both in the local SF press and on the eG California forum (click here and here for a couple of eGullet discussions of the restaruant). It's known for a reliance on local, seasonal ingredients with an emphasis on using the whole animal. The wine list is exclusively Italian, with wines selected to complement the dishes from the kitchen. Cost: Fixed cost of $45 for four courses (plus tax and 20% gratuity). Optional paired wine tasting for $17-$20 (to be determined before the event). Total cost would be $57.75 without wine. With wine, the top price would be $83.50. The dinner will take place in the private Dante Room, maximum occupancy 16. Reservations can be made by posting in this thread (first come, first served). Because space is limited, reservations will be limited to one guest per member. We'll keep a waiting list, and if there is enough interest, we will try to plan future dinners (perhaps quarterly). Payment to be made in advance (right before the dinner is fine) by cash or check. Any additional beverage or food ordered will be the responsibility of the person(s) ordering and can be paid directly to the restaurant at the conclusion of the dinner. If you have any questions not answered here, please PM me and I'll try to answer them. Hope to see you at the dinner! -------------- This event has been organized through the eG Forums by members but is not sponsored by the Society or its eG Forums. The event is open to all participating eGullet Society members, contributors and their guests. By participating in this event, you confirm your understanding and acceptance of the eGullet Events Policy (click here), to which all eGullet Society members have already agreed.

I have the Boulevard book. It's beautiful, and the recipes do sound like you could really make them at home (I haven't tried any of them yet). I like the fact that the each "reicpe" is for an entire plating -- not that you have to make all the elements, but it gives you an idea of how the restaurant does its presentation. On the other hand, the layout could have been better, given this element. The sub-recipes aren't really broken out completely, and some of the recipes go on for several pages. This means that at the top of the recipe, you have a list of the ingredients for all the sub-recipes, then you get pretty extensive overall notes on the dish (which is a great addition, in my opinion), then you get the instructions for each of the sub-recipes. It's going to mean a lot of page turning while cooking, which is a bother. I'd still recommend it despite this flaw.

Le Crueset will definitely heat up on an induction burner; I've used it on one. I'm trying to remember if I've ever left a piece of LC on an induction burner for a long time, and I think that I have, but I wouldn't swear to it. Sorry -- I guess that's not much help.

The Orka "Squid" combination basting brush and bulb baster is one of my favorite gadgets. When I first saw it I thought it was frivolous, but when I had to brush oil on three sheet pans of crostini for a class, I realized how handy it can be. The photo doesn't really make it clear, but the brush top comes off so you can fill the body of it with marinade, oil or whatever; then you can draw up additional liquid as needed. The removable top also makes cleaning easy. At less than $15, they're affordable too.

Another interesting book that focuses on vegetables is The Anatomy of a Dish by Diane Forley, which is not only beautiful, but very informative as well. In addition to recipes and general ideas, she includes all kinds of charts on everything from "Parts of the Plant and When to Eat Them" to "The Plant Kingdom" to "flavor charts" for the various families of edible plants.

Eggnog already made the Forbes list for most fattening holiday foods: fattening holiday foods As I posted in that thread, it's really hard to evaluate their claims when they don't give a serving size. Anyone can see that this list of ingredients will total way more than 335 calories, but since that's the case, what constitues a serving? Half of that? A quarter? They don't say. And in what universe does a Margarita have twice as many calories as an eggnog?

I missed this the first time around, but how seriously can you take an article that suggests vanilla vodka and Diet Coke as a substitute for a pina colada?

I wonder where the author gets his or her information on calories. My usual source cites 65 calories per ounce of 80-proof alcohol (of any sort). Not to mention that when you look closely at the "recipes" the article cites, they're ridiculous: Maybe some misguided souls make margaritas that way, but a well made, normal-sized Margarita is more like 2 oz. tequila (say 140 calories), 1 ounce triple sec (I'm guessing, but I'm willing to put it on the high side and say another 100 calories), plus an ounce of lime juice (negligible calories -- maybe 15). I think both of these Forbes articles are insulting to the reader: they're distorted, they rely on scare tactics and questionable statistics, and they willfully disregard the option of moderation.

Last spring a friend and I picked up some cardoons at the farmers' market, just because they were there and looked interesting. We ended up making a composed salad of the cardoons (blanched) and potatoes (boiled) with a white wine vinaigrette with anchovies and lots of garlic. Topped with chopped Kalamata olives and parsley. It was great -- I really liked the cardoons. To me they tasted a lot like artichokes. The recipe we followed is from Vegetables From Amaranth to Zucchini by Elizabeth Schneider. It's a great book for ideas on unusual vegetables.