Andrew Fenton

Tinto has added a $25 prix fixe brunch menu to its Sunday lineup. It looks ridiculously good.

How funny- that's exactly the same lunch I had at DSG on Friday (only minus the soup, which underwhelms me; I got the dry noodles)! I think the soup dumplings may have improved, if anything: there seems to be more soup in them, the texture is a little finer, and I haven't gotten a broken one in a while. So it's all good.

Holly, with any luck future scientists will be able to clone you from preserved grease stains. I predict you'll be telling discriminating diners of the 24th century just where to get the tastiest Soylent Green burgers...

Also, it's not especially elegant, but I've found that chicken wings are ideal for a stovetop smoker. Brine/marinade/rub them, smoke them, and finish under a broiler to crisp up the skin.

Chicken wing confit is really good. (Link is to a description of Jonathan McDonald's version at Philly's snackbar restaurant.)

It's pretty great. I haven't been back since that visit a year and a half ago, but that's nobody's fault but my own: by all accounts, the new(ish) owners have been putting out terrific food. And the Sunday night prix fixe is a bargain.

Maybe it was the friendly smile of the farmer at the market. Maybe my natural immaturity made me unable to resist the name. But for whatever reason, I bought a rump roast the other day. Thing is, with the exception of the occasional brisket designated for barbecuing, I pretty much never buy big pieces of beef. What should I do with this piece of rump? It's from one of those hippy-dippy natural cows (grass-fed, free-range, summers spent backpacking through Europe), and I suspect that means that, like most hippies, it's not so tender. So my thoughts immediately turn to braising. But on the other hand, maybe I should just slap that rump into the oven and roast it? It is a rump roast, after all; surely they wouldn't call it that if you weren't meant to roast it, right? And so I turn to you: the experts of eGullet. Tell me what to do with my rump!

Prosciutto di capra! How cool is that? I'll be sure to ask about it on Sunday.

Ah, thanks for asking! I cured half of it with a maple/brown sugar cure and smoked it with applewood: I was pretty happy with it. The other half is in my refrigerator right now, curing with a mixture of black pepper, garlic and juniper berries. That's not going to be smoked: I'm going for something closer to pancetta that I can use primarily for cooking. Then next week I'm going to ask if they can order me another belly...

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I'd never had Martin's sausages before! I turned that right around and bought some bratwurst and andouille last week. I smoked it all for a couple of hours yesterday over a mix of hickory and mesquite- the bratwurst, served on a Sarcone's roll with spicy mustard, was just insanely good. INSANELY good. The andouille wasn't bad, but a little strong for eating straight- I'll toss it into a soup or a gumbo later this week.

I can't speak for our esteemed neighbors, but lobster was "prison food" at some point around New England - 19th century, I'm guessing - but it's worth looking up. Once people started canning, it became a marketable resource and a very big industry.My understanding is that the "colonial prisoners were fed lobster" story is an example of culinary fakelore. There aren't any contemporary references to the practice; references to it start appearing in the late 19th century-- a time when lobster stocks were starting to diminish-- to draw a contrast between the current scarcity of lobster and its ubiquity in the past. Anyway, the lobstermen's loss was my gain; I was just up in Cape Cod and was happy to see lobster prices lower. I pretty much only eat lobster when I'm in New England (it's just better up there), and I eat a lot of it when I am there.

Yesterday at the South & Passyunk market, I bought a watermelon from Livengood's. How decadent, I thought, to be eating watermelon in late October! And you know, while it wasn't as great as a really first-rate watermelon of July, it was still pretty darn good. I miss summer...

Oh, I don't know. I appreciate the desire to defend the honor and purity of the French language. But for centuries now, English has been beating French up, stealing its vocabulary, misusing its terms (and grabbing its lunch money and shoving it into a locker for good measure.) "To sous vide" doesn't make much sense etymologically, but then, neither does calling a main course an "entree". And it's a genuinely useful term, so I suspect that fighting "sous vide" is a losing battle. Still, it's this sort of dispute that makes grammarians such wealthy and powerful individuals...

Hey Vadouvan, I'm curious why you say the term doesn't belong on a menu. Is "sous vide" (or, more appropriately, I guess, "cuit sous vide") less appropriate for a menu than "broiled", "fried", "poached" or other cooking terms?

I really liked the Windsor burger: everything about it was first-rate, from the patty itself (nicely medium-rare as I'd asked), to the crispy bacon to the slightly marinated onions. That's a fine burger. The night's special-- mussels cooked in a ginger beer base-- was also terrific. But I have to disagree about the onion rings, which sucked. Two reasons for that. Number one, they were too oily, to the point where the main flavor in the batter was oil. Yuck. And number two, where was the onion? Barely any onion to be found there: a more accurate description would be "batter rings, lightly flavored with onion." Not to my taste.

That Vincent Price, Holly? Let me run to the Google... Wow, yeah: that Vincent Price. Master of horror and gourmet chef; truly a Renaissance man!

I'm looking for a followup on this story- is the red tide warning still in effect? I'm going to be on Cape Cod next week, where I plan on eating a lot of lobster if I can: just wondering if I should still avoid tomalley...

Well! Exciting stuff, there. It'll be very interesting to see where Shola's next steps lead...

Who said anything about sin? As with all holidays, it's about symbolism and tradition.

I had never considered the combination of brisket and bacon before, but it works beautifully. I'm cooking a brisket right now and I keep thinking how much better it would be with bacon. Oh sure: think of all the beef-based stews that have a little bacon in them. A great combination, but not one that would really fly during Rosh Hashana...

I got my onion-including recipe from Roman friends of mine. Not that that proves anything of course (and it's silly IMO to fetishize "authenticity" in a dish like this), but there you go.

I agree that browned garlic in carbonara doesn't sound all that good... though to be honest, I never put garlic in my carbonara anyway. Onion, on the other hand, is key, its sweetness balancing out the richness and salt of the dish. But you want the onion translucent, not browned.

Bah, the statute of limitations on revealing the end of the Grapes of Wrath has long since expired. If you're out of high school and haven't read it, you've only yourself to blame. Anyway, it's been a while since I read the book, but re-reading that scene reminded me of the Carita Romana, the story in which a woman secretly breastfeeds her father, who is starving to death in prison. (My favorite depiction of it is in Caravaggio's Seven Acts of Mercy in Naples.) I'm sure Steinbeck knew about that story...

Well, obviously PETA is saying that as a stunt. But leaving aside the ickiness (and possible disease transmission), my understanding is that human breast milk is very low in fat content, lower than most mammals' milk and certainly lower than cow milk. So even if they were serious, I don't think human milk would make very good ice cream.

Hey, that's a neat trick! I've downloaded Flashlight- it's a useful app to have anyway- and will give this technique a try. No - the phone doesn't seem to be giving off all that much light as you're doing it. I doubted that two were even going to work, so I didn't think of trying only one. Besides, I held them at opposite sides of the plate tilted at an angle to the food for evenness of lighting, so I doubt that I'd try one. And believe me, it's so barely noticeable in person that I had my doubts that two were going to work at all! And, of course, you can't use one iPhone to provide light and take pictures. Still, it's mighty cool...