Andrew Fenton
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Posts posted by Andrew Fenton
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First, to our fruitful multipliers: auguri! And kudos for managing to put out some terrific sounding- and looking-food, even as you put out newborns.
I wish I could blame my slackerness on biology, but it's just sloth, or maybe Ferragosto...
At any rate, last night I did manage to come up with an approximation of Franci's stuffed eggplant. I say "approximation" because there were definitely some unorthodox aspects. I used ground chicken because I had some chicken thighs I wanted to use up. And the sauce was left over from Monday's bucatini all'amatriciana, pimped up with capers and herbs.
Here's the result:
More Pugliese in inspiration than in result, but still tasty. If I could eat good fresh eggplant every day of my life, I would. And this provided plenty of leftovers, for lunch today as well as a couple for the freezer, to enjoy during the busy days of the fall...
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Just gonna jump in here to mention that I tried Amada for the first time, at lunch the other day. Twelve bones for the lunch special is a heckuva deal, especially that outrageously good gazpacho. And the cheese balls, which put the "crack" into "croquette".
I fully intend to re-ass one of those chairs very soon...
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Turns out that in France, they do in frogs the old-fashioned way... with high-powered rifles. From Time Magazine's European edition, a tale of Frog-on-frog violence:
Most nights, armed men stomp through the Périgord-Limousin Regional Park in southwestern France with orders to shoot ... frogs. But not just any amphibians. They're after Rana catesbeiana — the North American bullfrog — introduced to France in 1968 by a French aviator who liked the idea of the critters croaking in his garden. They're now an ecological menace.I suppose that if you nail them right between their little eyes, the legs are still good eatin'.
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See, that's why you need to plan these things well in advance, like any good military campaign. I bet that with a little organization, you'd have had no problems getting a crew together for a big ol plate o' uterus.
But as they say, you go to dim sum with the army you have...
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Newsgal, welcome!
Jas, was the Nardi brunello the one you brought to Studiokitchen back in December? I really dug it- but a few hours of decanting would've improved it, for sure.
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Where did you eat your stuffed tomatoes and do you remember any distinct flavors? Any specific cities or regions especially memorable?
Pontormo, that's a really good point. Funny how when I heard about rice-stuffed tomatoes I immediately thought of the ones I'd get from the neighborhood tavola calda in Rome. That's nostalgia for you, I guess...
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Now, let's speak of wine. I, myself, am only slightly educated to wine (and this might even prove my point). I don't have as much experience with it. I understand that there are many varieties, made from many different types of grapes, from many different wine growing regions in the world, and they all have their own flavors and aromas and whatnot.
However, fact is this: when you open a bottle of wine, you pretty much know what you're getting. A merlot from California is going to taste roughly equivalent to a merlot from France...
Admission of ignorance + transparently false statement = where I stopped reading.
I should say, I like beer, and I like wine. I don't like reading ignorant people bloviate.
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I'll third the recommendation for the New Vegetarian Epicure. I like the seasonal organization, and all the recipes I've tried are quite good. It's well-written, too.
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Here's another version, from Il Cucchaio d'Argento (my quick n' dirty translation):
6 large tomatoes6 T rice
oregano, basil, parsley (chopped)
oil, salt, pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Wash and dry the tomatoes, cut off their tops. Using a spoon, remove the seeds. Remove the pulp and pass it through a food mill, collecting it in a bowl.
Boil the rice for 5 minutes in salted water and mix it with the tomato pulp.
Add to the mixture the parsley and oregano, four tablespoons of oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Mix them well and and fill the tomatoes; cover them with the tops.
Arrange the tomatoes in an oiled baking dish and sprinkle them with a little olive oil. Bake for around 30 minutes. Serve hot or cold.
I'm a little surprised that the recipe calls for boiling the rice for only five minutes before baking. I'd worry that it would be insufficiently cooked. But if it works, it wouldn't be as overcooked and gloppy as most pomodori al riso filling; a good thing.
Both of these recipes also ignore the key detail of the potatoes that are cooked along with the tomoatoes. I'd chop a few potatoes, parboil them, dry and oil them, and add them to the baking pan.
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To us in Philly, it makes them look dumb. To everyone else on the planet, it looks like we get our rocks off on Jell-O.
Exactly the problem. We're supposed to be defensive towards NYC, not SLC...
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Going out to a good BYOB restaurant, which we have plenty of. And then taking a walk through the city and getting some gelatin at Capogiro.
My first thought was to wonder if that was an artifact of Word's spell-check. But no, Word 2004, at least, recognizes "gelato" just fine. Anyway, it's pretty bad; makes both Sless-Kittain and the editors of Forbes look awfully dumb.
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On my last few flights to Europe I cleverly brought a great big pastrami sandwich with me. It's tasty and easy to eat in a confined space. But the other advantage was that that massive blast of fat and protein put me right to sleep...
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See, that's the kind of out-of-the-barrel thinking I like to see.
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Madonna mia! Andrew, have you no shame?
Fortunately, no. Every so often I worry about developing a sense of shame; but so far I've managed to dodge that bullet. Whew!
I would like to point out that this particular category is called "FINE Spirits and Cocktails."Trust me, this will taste just fine. And finer the more of it you drink! But I'm glad to see you're on board with this project, Pontormo; it can only benefit from your insight. Let me address some of your suggestions:
1) powdered eggs and egg substitutes unless the object is not to transform the vodka into viscous gunk. While I realize you have come down hard on drinks that did not seem palpable enough for human consumption, I'm kind of having a hard time believing taste matters all that much to you.I would totally go this route, except that I'm not in
* the army,
* prison, or on
* the international space station.
However, I like the idea of a quick and dirty route, and I'll keep this in mind just in case my circumstances change. (Hello, NASA? You listening?)
2) Going for something more organic than processed? Make friends with one of your Reading Terminal Market purveyors and see if they'd be willing to put some interesting strong-tasting things in their chicken feed. That is, if say, egg shells react to the presence of garlic in their creators's bodies the way our skin does when we sweat. My scientific education is lacking, I realize. Then seep the shells in your booze of choice.Now we're talking! I totally love the idea of chicken-hacking like this. Ideally, what I would do would be to find a farmer who I can persuade to feed his chickens booze. Lots and lots of booze. You know how hoboes and frat boys smell? If that pore-liquor smell works for them, why not for chickens? What I need to do is to give a chicken Jack Daniels for like a week straight; those eggs would be AWESOME.
Should you return to the Italian roots from which these ideas sprang like Minerva--haggard, breastplate backwards--from Jupiter's brow, how about prosciutto e melonello?Brilliant; truly an idea worthy of Bacchus. Plus, it'd be all classy and whatnot. And if there's one thing I'm all about, it's class.
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We were just talking about igniting liquor elsewhere, and Mr. Ed Hamilton had sage words. Flames are likely and explosion is possible.
Any time you raise the temp of your liquor you vaporize alcohol, increasing the likelyhood of flames, especially if you have a gas range.
Fortunately, I have an electric range. Also, I live for danger. My feeling is that courting death make the resulting baconyeggycello all the more savory. (Burnt hair, not so much.)
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Tipping for takeout thread (covers delivery, too).
I always try to tip at least 20% for delivery. The people bicycling to my house in cold or hot weather are making less than minimum wage and deserve a good tip; not tipping them is cheating them.
Plus, throwing a couple of extra bucks their way makes them happier and insures good service in the future. Even if it weren't the right thing to do, it'd be the smart thing to do.
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I used the Studiokitchen corn soup as a base to make a summer fish chowder. My goal was to make a soup that had lots of flavor, but would be lighter than most chowdas. The corn soup was perfect for this; as all the people who've made it or who've had it at Studiokitchen can attest, it manages to be both light and rich at once.
I made the corn soup (thanks to Percy for the de-kerneling hint!) and added it to:
- roasted fingerling potatoes (from Livengood's),
- some reserved corn kernels,
- steamed haricots verts, because I had them on hand,
- cod. (Deena, I gave the cod fillets a quick cure, rinsed and dried them, and pan-roasted them).
Here's a photo:
A great one-bowl summer meal.
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It's all about the hobo pride, baby.
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Okay, a question for all you meat spirit connoisseurs. By this point, you'll all have figured out the logical next step in this process. What's the greatest, most savory, and fully delicious meat out there? Why, bacon, of course. So by all rights, baconcello should be next up.
But the thing is, I'm looking for a good breakfast drink. And I'm thinking that bacon and egg-cello would be even better than just bacon. But I need to figure out the best way to infuse the eggs into the vodka.
I'm not going to use raw eggs-- that would be nasty, and potentially salmonellicious, and wouldn't give the "Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast in a glass" flavor that I'm looking for. My first thought was to use hard-boiled eggs. But I worry that the hard-cooked egg proteins won't infuse well.
Better would be to whip up some sous vide'd spring eggs and then infuse them.
But my thought is to poach a couple of eggs directly in the simmering vodka; this will keep all the flavor in the alcohol. My question is, is there any chance of an explosion from boiling vodka on my stovetop?
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Old Foodie, I think I see a research grant in your future...
Now, to respond to the SL's (bunge & kinsey):
Perhaps, because of flamability, it would not have been a good idea...but did you grill one post-soak and dress it up in a bun with fixins?Tell us about the drunken weenies? Do you think they would be good slapped on the grill and served alongside a Weenietini?The good news was, the weenies were reasonably alcoholic, even grilling burned off part of the booze. Also, they didn't explode like beef grenades. (There's some sort of Molotov cocktail joke there, but it's escaping me.)
The bad news is that a hot dog that has been soaking for weeks in alcohol tastes like a lab specimen. You remember that kid in high school biology who, for $10, took a bite of his fetal pig? He might like these.
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Great article, JJ.
I couldn't help suspecting somehow that waiters who doubt your ability to use chopsticks don't also question your ability to open up your wallet and pay the check... Though if you had a really condescending experience, I suppose you could give that a try.
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A hoax? A joke? I beg to differ! Every new paradigm has its detractors: it's widely known that the Pope's first response to Galileo was something along the lines of come on, dude! The earth going around the sun? Please. But we all know who got the last laugh; likewise, soon Salami on the Beach will be served at all the finer bars, cocktail lounges and Spring Break wet T-shirt contests.
As to comparisons with barbarians and Romans... well, let's just say that the Goths needed a little something extra to take over Italy. Black eyeshadow and gloomy music will only get you so far: high-proof liquor and red meat fill in the gaps. QED.
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Savory cheesecake?
I must have the recipe!
Hmm, I'd thought it was in Anna Thomas's The New Vegetarian Epicure, but it's not. I'll see if I can dig it up; otherwise, I bet somebody around here has a recipe...
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And have you considered a sliced cornichon swizzler? We in Chicago demand relish in our Weinertinis.
You know, I experimented with using sweet pickle relish with the weeniecello. When I had the neighbors over for a tasting, we agreed that the resulting cocktail ("Franks for the Memories") was too sweet. The only person who liked it was their son. But he's fourteen, so what do you expect? A cornichon would make for a more sophisticated drink, I agree.
Peach Cobbler
in Pastry & Baking
Posted · Edited by Andrew Fenton (log)
If you don't peel the peaches, the skin will sort of pull away from the fruit and get all wrinkly and unattractive. It will taste fine; but peeled peaches will make for a more attractive dessert.
To peel the peaches, just drop them in boiling water for maybe 30 seconds; then put them in a bowl of ice water. The skin will slip right off.
Pyrex will work fine for a baking dish.