Andrew Fenton

Godshall's does have rabbit. At least, they had A rabbit; I'm glad I didn't show up ten minutes later, behind the huge crowd of tiny, speech-impaired bald-headed hunters that showed up as I was leaving. Whew!

I think the thing is that parmigiana is one of those dishes that has lots and lots of variations; some small, like whether it's made with sauce or with fresh or with canned tomatoes, others larger, like the addition of egg or even of pasta. And it's also a dish that I'm pretty familiar with-- I've eaten a lot of it-- and so the less familiar version seems different and strange and bad and terrifying. It's like if you put olives in it; not that olives are bad, just that they're not how I imagine the dish should be. edit to add to Judith: oh no. I'm still eating it, mind you. Even with the eggs, it's still good. In fact, I'm sitting down to lunch right now...

I believe the Neapolitan gatto is either influenced by or a tribute to the French rule of this region. Yeah, the name is from the French "gateau". Judith, that bunny and kitty-- er, sorry, not THAT kind of gatto-- look great. I think we are on the same wavelength this week; I'm planning to make bunny on Saturday, and have been thinking about gatto as well...

good point. I should probably have said that "chiummenzana is A local equivalent of pomodorino" as I suspect that it's actually a slightly different kind of Caprese tomato, not just a dialect difference.

According to the book, chiummenzana is just the local equivalent of pomodorino. The recipe looks very similar to what you cooked, calling for cherry tomatoes, garlic, oil, fresh basil and oregano.

The cookbook is a cheapie (E 3.99), published by Bonechi, and entitledLa Cucina di Campania. I'd never heard the word before running into it in this book, though googling pulls up over 100 hits, and also suggests that it's a Caprese dish.

Tonight I made parmigiana di melanzane, a dish that in spite of its name (and its ubiquity throughout Italy), seems to have its origins in Naples. If there's a better comfort food, I don't know what it is; oozing and wonderful, with the richness of the mozzarella balanced by the acid of the tomato sauce. I followed the recipe in Gosetti della Salda's book (with the modification that I brushed the eggplant with oil and baked it, rather than fry the slices). Both she and Boni call for slices of hard-boiled egg to be added to the dish. That seemed weird to me, but I went ahead and tried it, to discover that... yeah, it's a little weird. Maybe it's just because it's not like the parmigiana I'm used to, but the egg didn't really do much for me. Oh, message for the Doc: that's some nice lookin' spaghetti! I was looking at another Campanian cookbook which had a recipe for a similar cherry tomato dish, called spaghetti alla "chiummenzana"; evidently that's what pomodorini are called in Naples. edit: Here's a photo of a plate of eggplant. I think docsconz and I have the same dinnerware:

Thanks for the Carlino's recommendation, David. I gave the tomato pie a try on my way home today, and it's pretty great. Very thick crust, great sauce-- I didn't taste anchovy, but there's a nice bite of rosemary. My only complaint is that the crust was a tiny bit gummy. That may be because it had been sitting around since the morning; or because it's kept at slightly below room temperature. It might benefit from a little spell in the oven once it gets home. If I can wait that long to eat it, that is. Carlino's seems like a neat place, by the way; I'd never heard of them (my ignorance; I don't know the Main Line at all), but they have a nice selection of prepared foods, good-looking breads, and lots of homemade pasta. I picked up some frozen tortellini which I intend to cook up in some brodo for a quick dinner one of these days...

Does anybody actually stick an apple in a roast pig's mouth? Or is that just in cartoons?

Very interesting. And here I was thinking he was Colonel Sanders's commanding officer...

Yep. The RTM is on my way home now, so I've been shopping there often. Which is great, as I used to head over there only rarely-- it's a little too far to easily walk from my house-- but I don't know it very well.

shhh! Be vewy vewy quiet! I'm hunting wabbits... edit: or should I say, "conigwio"?

Regarding "evoo", I still think that FistFullaRoux had the best suggestion:

All three ways are, or can be, terrific; and all are very very different. Rich, I'm curious: do you see a characteristic that links them, other than the name?

Any recommendations for where to buy rabbit at the RTM?

That's no doubt true. And while I'd give six months of my life for a good pizza a taglio joint in Philly (literally- I'm sure the cholesterol would do me in, I'd eat there so often), that's a completely different beast than Lorenzo's. Ditto Mama Palma's. Bob raises a good point. The worst pizza I've had in our fair city was from the place across the street from my apartment in West Philadelphia. It was truly, truly awful- though probably equivalent to any number of similar places.

Pshaw. I like Lorenzo's. It's cheap and greasy and filling and awesome.

I don't know if there's a thread on dry-aging-- I suspect there is, but I got the idea from... I don't remember where. Cook's Illustrated, maybe? Anyway, it works pretty well; the flavor of the beef seems more concentrated and complex, and the texture is still juicy. I wouldn't be too worried about spoilage. It's only a day or two, and it's in the fridge. edit: of course there's a thread on dry-aging! Here it is.

Speaking of Sam, I bought some beautiful little peppers from him last week: some are red, some are yellow, and they are all about an inch long. He explained that they're called "fish peppers" (and showed me the seed company blurb about them). They're a true Philadelphia product. The breed was grown originally by African-Americans in Philadelphia area, and were used to season fish and shellfish: hence the name. I haven't yet cooked with them, but intend to cook up some fish in the next day or so.

This is probably true. I really like Dick's burgers (though not their fries), but I recognize that my liking them is inseparable from nostalgia for my misspent youth. Still, it's hard to resist Dick's when I'm in Seattle...

I don't know that tableside preparation is dead; I do think that it has mutated. For example, there seems to be a growing number of restaurants that prepare guacamole at the table. Zabaglione prepared at the table is awfully good too.

I wonder, how does that compare to the costs of the average American school lunch program? No numbers at my fingertips but $8 seems high.That's a point made in the article. I don't have it to hand at the moment, but I believe that Cooper was working with a budget of around $3 per student. (That may even be $3 for breakfast and lunch; either way, it severely restricts what she can do.)

Kent, again that's an interesting test. It occurs to me that another procedure to try would be to test pre-salted meat against meat that was dried, but not salted. I've dry-aged beef in my refrigerator with some success. It makes me wonder how much of the advantages of pre-salting come from a couple of days of just sitting in the air and losing moisture that way.

Thanks for reminding me to report back, Kent: I took photos, but since I've been too lazy to upload them to my computer so far, I might as write up the results without them. I didn't remove the herbs or the porcini, which definitely didn't help the appearance of the chicken. Above, I mentioned the leprous appearance of the chicken: I figured out this time that those splotches were caused by oxidation, when the skin was lifted away from the meat by the herbs. When the chicken had been roasted, they weren't noticeable, though the chicken wasn't as evenly-colored as I might like. (This may also have been due to other factors, including but not limited to my cheap-ass oven.) The porcini chicken didn't have as deep a flavor as the rosemary chicken (which was really wonderful); but they were pretty old mushrooms, so I don't know how much flavor they had in the first place.

They do in Italy. But I don't know if they export it that way.