mrbigjas

my only problem with this thread has been the restaurant's name. it's so distracting reading all this. (does anyone here not know my name is james? i don't think so.)

hey, i proposed that!

Fioretto is more used for baking cakes and cookies. See amorpolenta, zaletti, pan de mej (mei=millet in milanese), biscotti di meliga. ← ok, will do! when i was at the store looking at the bricks of vacuum packed polenta, i just picked out the one that had the instructions to cook for 45 minutes. you can't really see the size of the grains through the plastic, so i was hoping i chose the right one--guess not.

aw man, i wish i coulda made it. any other reports? more details?

good stuff, vad. looking forward to the results.

yeah, what he said.

i kinda like that idea. however, i would make it more of a taste-off. order a giant lobel's porterhouse, go to ochs and get a giant porterhouse that's the dry-agiest thing they got. have jasonz get one of his cappuccio's joints. heck, get one from dibruno's new shop and whole foods' dry-aged stuff too. maybe see if we can have someone get one from the good stuff esposito's sells to restaurants, although i guess that would miss the whole point of dagordon's original question about where we as consumers can just buy them. everyone bring a cast iron pan and we'll go nuts. after all, i trust the palates of the folks on here way more than i trust cook's illustrated's tasting crew.

i kind of like it too. it strikes me as kind of representative of the dining scene in philadelphia in some ways.

i don't think that would have helped the situation. his pics have a tendency to make even crappy food look good. philadining, next time you head over to wendy's, can you take a shot of your spicy chicken sandwich? and especially the fries? because wendy's french fries suck, and i wanna see if you can make them look good.

ok i bought some more yesterday--the kind is called moretti. you can read about the types here. yesterday i bought a package of fioretto, although i may go back and pick up a package of taragna to try. i also bought about 1/3 of a pound of this speck. i'll have to make it in to something...

well, that's a different story...

interesting this topic came back up yesterday. a coworker of mine who lives near snackbar was talking at lunch yesterday and said that the place bothers her. i asked why, and she said that it's weird because in the afternoon you have people lounging around in sweatpants reading the paper, and then in the evening you have people going out for fancy drinks and dishes before/during/after dinner. and there is this weird time from like 5-7 where the two groups overlap and it makes her uncomfortable. i thought that was kind of interesting.

here's a post from hathor's foodblog

that site i linked for the pic up there? i really want to buy some, but i just can't bring myself to pay $4.95 plus shipping for 12 oz of cornmeal. i have to draw the line somewhere--i'm not sure where it is, but it's before that.

that's what i was saying -- i don't think it exists here. i'm not sure there's enough of an everyday market to support a really high-end shop like lobel's here in town. i mean, i'd shop there, but i couldn't afford to that often. get a bunch of people like me, and you have a place going out of business; i'm just not sure that philadelphia has the concentration of wealth to support it yet. i'm just theorizing here, but i have another question: does lobel's have a trade supply business? if a place opened up in town that could supply the best stuff to restaurants and had a consumer front and did mail order then i could see it working...

thanks ludja--with all the confirmation, i reckon i'm gonna have to make it again. damn you, about.com!

well, not yet anyway--not till we get to the little-known region of italy called 'korea.' well, here's what i did: heat up a quart of water, when it boils i salted it some, and started sprinkling in the polenta while stirring. lidia taught me about that. then it started thickening. then after about five minutes, it got real thick, so i added probably about 1/2-3/4 cup more water and stirred that in so it could actually cook. then after about 10 minutes, the same thing happened. then after about 10 minutes the same thing happened. my guess is that i probably ended up with about a 6:1 ratio of water to polenta in all, and it cooked for maybe a half hour to 40 minutes. at the end i stirred in about 2 T of butter. and that was about it. i didn't even put parmigiano in it this time. i wonder if that was the difference in flavor--that i usually load it up with cheese. well, not 'load'--i like to think i have SOME sense of restraint. but i didn't use any this time, and i think we might have enjoyed its absence. the polenta i used was the kind that comes vacuum-sealed in a brick, and is pretty coarse, and is not perfectly cleanly yellow--it's got little brown bits like in this random picture here, which was my first google image result for 'coarse polenta'--and it turns out it's a trentino breed of flint corn they're using there. i wonder where this stuff was from. i have to restock, so i should have an answer relatively soon. i get the impression buford gets pretty huffy about a lot of things--wasn't he the one who went on and on about how it's an abomination to make a pesto in a blender? i mean, i know on one level it is, but i'm not a old italian homemaker who has all day to tend to a polenta pot. but if i keep enjoying it this much i might have to invest in one of these... kevin, i wonder if you're right about the mistranslation for cumin. caraway would kind of make more sense--although cumin does seem to be one of those universal spices that shows up in nearly every cuisine, which is why i didn't really think twice about it. but for instance, when i was reading the google translation of that link franci posted, it kept translating noce moscata as 'walnut moscata' instead of nutmeg... maybe i'll have to make another batch and see.

great news, kevin! update, and another question: 1. i reheated the canederli this morning and they were... well, better! more to my liking anyway. they'd had a chance to dry out a little so they weren't soggy from being boiled, (edit: soggy on the outside, anyway--even last night they were fine inside) and the flavors of the spinach and nutmeg had permeated more, so it was more coherent. with some melted butter and parmigiano they were a darn good snack. 2. does goulash always have cumin in it, or is that recipe on about.com an odd one? this stuff tasted even more like chili this morning, and really i suspect that is the culprit. and it's just not a flavor profile i associate with goulash, which i expect to taste mainly of paprika. 3. i don't know what i did right last night, but that polenta was the best i've ever made. maybe it's the polenta itself, which is some fancy expensive stuff i get at dibruno's. but boy was it good.

why yes, i find him quite irresistible myself! that's a great reference, thanks. those look a lot better than mine, and actually i think i see where i went wrong. it seems like there's a balance that needs to be struck, between getting the bread soft enough to hold together, but 'non spappolare.' i don't think i got it quite soft enough. and the recommendation that you use breadcrumbs instead of flour to hold it together... hmmm.... i think i'll try them again. growing up with central pennsylvanian cooking, i do have a predilection for dumplingy, doughy, bready things congratulations! he'll eat well, that's for sure...

didn't wanna miss out on this month, although my time is taken up recently by hassles at work and this guy right here (no that's not a mini-hat, it's a toy). so today with a little time, i had a chance to look through the recipes on the sites pontormo posted, and ended up making this right here: that's some goulash, polenta, spinach canederli and cabbage. i can't believe i didn't notice the big blob of polenta on the bowl. i mean, really, i'm no food porn type. i am merely documenting things i try. but still, geez. anyway, not the most attractive cuisine. but i posted the pic anyway because i'm not sure if the spinach things are... well, right. i mean, they tasted good, but really i'm not sure if they were close to the real thing. i only had frozen spinach, so the proportions were off to start with... i just couldn't be sure. i had to add a lot of flour but it was probably from too much spinach--i'm not sure how much of them is supposed to be flour, or if it's supposed to be like gnocchi, where the flour is just barely holding together the breadcrumbs and all... the cabbage was just sliced (not thin enough, btw) and cooked with bay, juniper, and vinegar. that's just bacon on top--i don't have speck right now. i got the goulash recipe from the about.com site--the mrs said it reminded her of chili. well, sure: chili powder has lots of paprika; there's cumin in the recipe, marjoram is related to oregano... makes sense to me. and i've said it before but i'll say it again: there's no stew beef like shin meat. anyway, have you folks made these canederli? what say ye? (edited because i always mix up the img and url tags)

i find this double deep frying method quite intriguing. kind of the opposite of sous vide AND it has the advantage that we don't have to worry quite as much about food safety. would this work for old meat as well? vegetables that have gone off?

nice way to end the blog. i have a bottle of elk run ice wine downstairs that a friend gave me several years ago that i've never opened. i should get to that one of these days... edited to say thanks for doing this! good fun.

wait is anyone surprised? i just want to know how i can get it.

very interesting, thanks. having a small house i've wondered about putting in a powerful stove like that, and the hood it would need, and how that would affect things. i appreciate the info...

can the public buy from either of them? haha