fresco

Funny you should ask: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=31935

You may be onto something, although there is a lot of variation in reaction to the different brassicas. For instance, I can't stand brussels sprouts while my wife thinks they are splendid. I'd have rapini a couple of times a week, but she thinks it's the devil.

It's possible. It may also vary from processor to processor. I'd forgotten how recently canola was introduced as an oil for human consumption--think it was late 1980s or early 1990s. For what it's worth, someone (maybe more than one) producer in Alberta is producing an artisanal, cold pressed canola oil made from organically grown seed. I tried it about a year ago and it was pretty good, though astonishingly expensive compared with the mass produced stuff.

Is it possible that there has been some improvement in processing canola oil? I remember some years ago thinking there was an unpleasant fishy taste to canola, but haven't encountered that in a while. Anyone know? Edit to add: A google search indicates the culprit is sinapine: http://pbi-ibp.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/bulletin/...ssue2/page1.htm

It's been pissing rain all day, very much like London weather. I had a particularly nice halibut fillet, so made, for the first time, fish and chips. No beer in the house, so I used cider in the batter. Turned out ok (wife says chips better than from local fish and chip shop.)

Think chestnut flour was used in parts of Italy simply because people couldn't afford wheat flour. Then it disappeared and now it's fashionable, but not among the poor.

It would be tragic if he practically destroyed The Wine Clip, wouldn't it? Especially since eGullet was doing such a great job at this gratis.

Some outfit came out with a maple syrup liqueur a few years ago. Don't know whether it is still around. Bad idea.

Great story. Hope you'll tell more stories from this place--we need more bar lore on eGullet. Green Stripe scotch...don't think I've seen that stuff since university, when we used to drink in the War Amps bar.

Less is definitely more with pizza toppings. But try telling that to a a 21-year-old who has just come back from the gym and smoked a joint.

Nice looking pizza, by the way. Did it take you a while to get the knack of sliding it off the peel and into the oven more or less intact? (I'm still working on that one.)

Do you keep your stone in the oven even when you're not baking pizza?

It may be largely a timing issue. If Koreans had arrived in large numbers in North America at the turn of the century, or before, as Italians, Chinese and others did, millions of people here would probably be saying every night, "Let's order Korean." Koreans are not, in my experience, more insular than any other group of people new to a country.

Costco isn't allowed to sell wine anywhere in Canada, but I keep reading rave reviews about their selection and pricing in the US and it makes me wish they could sell here. Stuff like this story, which alludes to Costco's top wine guy, eight regional buyers, frequent educational trips, and pitching their products to an informed, affluent group of customers: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/94297_wine06.shtml

There is another way to look at this issue. Farmed salmon may well prove to be the salvation of wild salmon, by depressing the price people are willing to pay for it. Indeed, if markets are flooded with farmed salmon, the price of wild salmon may drop so much that it doesn't pay to fish for them on a huge scale. If the cod had been more easily domesticated, the scandalous devastation of their stocks on the east coast might have been averted. On a somewhat related note, so many farmers and ranchers in western Canada have "diworsified" into elk, wild boar and buffalo that the price for these once expensive exotics has crashed.

Miguel, thanks for all this. Hope you will continue helping me (and others on eGullet) out with my education about food and other things Portuguese.

You might look at some tapas-style canapes. If you have the Tapas cookbook by Penelope Casas, or can lay your hands on a copy, she does a few variations on meatballs that are quite good and freeze well. For stuff that doesn't freeze, she also has a recipe for a killer potato salad with olive oil, onion, dill, orange juice and a couple of other things. Really redefines potato salad. Easy to make ahead. If you don't have it, Amazon does: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...530434?v=glance

In her editor's note this month, Gourmet's Ruth Reichl noted and praised a new credit card-sized camera, saying it would have made her job a lot easier if it had been around when she reviewed restaurants. The Trio report was excellent. This sort of thing just blows away what newspapers and magazines are able to do. eGullet may yet change the whole nature of restaurant reviewing and reporting.

There is something mildly appealing about the ritual around tasting a new, fresh wine, but I do find it odd that happening upon a BN which doesn't taste like soda pop (or worse) is an occasion for rejoicing. So much other drinkable wine out there...

It sounds like you guys need an advance team.

I agree with almost everything you say, Robyn. Indeed, most of the salmon we eat is the farmed Atlantic variety, because it is a lot better than no salmon at all. But fresh sockeye is mighty tasty.

Perhaps I'm not "most people" (hell, I'm not even "a few people") but I'd eat fresh sockeye every time I could get it. But it's not often available, and it's rarely very fresh, unless I happen to be in British Columbia. But I take your point about overfishing. What I hope will happen is that salmon farming practices will improve to produce a better tasting fish, posing less of a risk to its wild cousins. That I would pay for.

I've watched quite a few favorite food items get discovered by restaurants and food writers and rocket in price--monkfish, mussels, squid and flank steak, to name some. On another thread, skate came up, and it occurred to me that it is bound to get discovered and appear on every "bistro" menu around--pushing the retail price up considerably. What other modest (and modestly priced) foods do you think are about to become expensive hits?

There's nothing at all wrong with skate, in fact it is quite delicate and good, and ridiculously cheap. Skate wing sells in Chinatown seafood stores here in Toronto for $1.99 a pound--that's about US$1.50.

We may be talking about different beasts. My "Chinese" cleavers were purchased at stores in one of Toronto's Chinatowns and are indeed meant to be used for chopping meat, if the guys who operate barbecue places in Chinatown are anything to go by. The older one is carbon steel and rusts easily so doesn't get used much anymore. The other one is stainless, but they are both quite heavy with fairly thick blades. As I recall, both were purchased for the equivalent of pocket change.