Andrew Fenton

High praise, and a reminder that I need to head back to MM soon! Especially now that the weather is getting warm, I'm missing Italian vongole something fierce. There are times I'd consider selling my firstborn for a bowl of really good vongole veraci...

As usual, listen to Holly's suggestions; they're gold. On charcuterie: DiBruno's is great, but I don't know that it's so much better than good deli/specialty food stores elsewhere. What would really make it worthwhile is if you combined it with a trip to the Italian Market. That's a must-visit for a food-oriented tour of the city, and the best way to get to experience Philadelphia in all its stinky glory. Also, there isn't a lot of good Burmese food in New York: not in Manhattan, for sure. But Philadelphia has a real gem in Rangoon. I'd stop there for sure.

Joshua Stein writes a brief guide to Philadelphia for the Guardian (UK), and while there's certainly material to argue about (Pho 75 the best in the city? I beg to differ), he gets the roast pork:

Beer is good, yeah. So is sparkling wine. And you wouldn't go wrong with a dry riesling or a sauvignon blanc, I think.

Leftover barbecued ribs are a treat, of course. Best eaten at midnight, standing up, with the refrigerator door open.

According to Michael Klein, Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov are going to open a Texas-style barbecue spot at 9th and South this fall. That can only be good news, I think.

Slice definitely makes a terrific pizza, and is our usual delivery pie. Next time, try the eggplant pie: it's really out of sight. I've said it before and I'll say it again: between Slice, Chickie's and Bitar's, that corner of 10th and Federal has an embarrassment of eating riches.

Speaking of finishing in the oven, you often hear that meat can only absorb so much smoke, and that after it has smoked for a while, you might as well finish it in the oven. Has anybody tested this? Presumably it depends on size and weight: but how much smoke can a given piece of meat (say, a ten-pound butt) benefit from?

Whenever I get done smoking some meat, I like to throw a few red bell peppers or a couple of eggplants into the smoker. The vegetables take advantage of the residual heat and smoke, and since they're not especially temperature-sensitive, I can just leave them in there without paying too much attention to them. Some nice smoky vegetables are a great payoff. Smoked eggplant goes into baba ganoush or baigan bartha, and smoked peppers are terrific on a turkey sandwich. This time, I got a great deal and bought six or seven red bell peppers, which have just come out of the smoker. I don't think I'll be eating a lot of turkey sandwiches this week, though. So what are some good recipes that use smoked peppers?

Different strokes, I guess; I've never been happy with high-fat barbecue sauces. I guess my feeling is that the pork shoulder has enough fat that the sauce doesn't need much of its own: sort of the opposite of a salad with vinaigrette.

I suspect it'd be fine. At room temperature, you ought to be able to get it to emulsify okay. But honestly, a cup of oil sounds a little gross to me: I tend to prefer sauces with just a little bit of fat. To give you a comparandum, =Mark's S. Carolina-style sauce only calls for two tablespoons of butter, and is awesome: I am making up a batch this afternoon.

Actually, the crust at Delorenzo's is pretty great- it's feather-light and crispy and as different as night and day from DiFara's soupy mess. But thinner and crispier than Richman likes, I guess, which is fine. It's definitely an idiosyncratic list. Why is Osteria's zucca pizza the one chosen? I get the sense that it's because of the unusual (for the US- less so for Italy) toppings. I don't doubt that it's a great pizza- I've had several Osteria pizzas, and they've all been very good- but I suspect that he was looking to round out his list with something off-the-wall.

Ah, I missed that. I'd actually say that Delorenzo's is a better pizza than Tacconelli's, but then, I didn't write the list.

I'm surprised that Delorenzo's in Trenton (Hudson St., natch) didn't get a notice for their tomato pie. That's really an exceptional pizza.

Now, that looks delicious: I could eat it up right now! Also, nice pasty!

This paragraph caught my eye: Spices are probably the most globalized ingredient out there. And if we, say, add black pepper immediately before serving a dish, it's hardly going to be cooked. So I pose the question: are spices leading us down the wrong path?

Did you buy any of the organic pasta? I bought- but have not yet cooked- both the regular ($.99/lb) and organic ($1.19/lb) on Thursday. The regular pasta is indeed smooth as can be, but eyeballing the organic spaghetti, I can see that it has some texture.

Really? I thought the Delaware escolar had eaten all of them.

Local, eh? I didn't know that you could fish for skate in the Schuylkill! YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.

Why yes there is! I haven't been back in a couple of years, though. THAT has to change!

Yes, bacon cures great in the refrigerator! I've done it several times now.

A whole lamb would be stupendous. I'd love to do that, one of these days.

Trader Joe's Italian Linguine Ingredients: Durum wheat semolina, niacin, iron lactate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid. Trader Joe's Organic Spaghetti (Imported from Italy) Ingredients: Durum wheat semolina.

Those are some nice-lookin' heads you got right there, Phil. I'm pretty sure I saw them on the cover of the Death Metal Cookbook. Just out of curiosity, how much were you charged for them?

It's on again! This weekend. I'll be there on Saturday, early-ish.