Ling

Yeah, I agree...the meal seems kind of light, doesn't it? I wanted to add another thing, but I'm kind of superstitious and don't want to do four dishes (four being the unlucky number for Chinese ). But we'll probably add another dish. I was going to serve the caponata with bread, but couscous also sounds good. The fennel and orange salad sounds great! Maybe we'll do that. (I would love to do the anchovy pasta; that sounds incredible! I love anchovies! The last time we cooked with anchovies, we used like 2-3 fillets and ate the rest of the jar as is. ) The arancini will be filled with cheese (the guests are OK with cheese). I've only had arancini a few times in restaurants and they were filled with mozzarella--how authentic is this? Should I be stuffing it with another type of cheese?

No, the Epoisses in Seattle isn't raw milk, unfortunately. I believe the Epoisses sold in the US is thermalized (as opposed to pasteurized.) I'm looking for raw milk Epoisses (produced by Laiterie de la Côte or Ferme des Marronniers.) And while I'm at it, is there a chance someone has come across Cremerie Classique butter in Vancouver? I think it's produced in Oregon, but I haven't been able to find it in Seattle (so it's probably more of a stretch that I'll find it here.) It's the best butter I've ever tasted...it has a milky sweetness that's so different from Plugra.

Nope, I think I'm the dense one here...sorry about that.

Beautiful cake, Becca! I had mango mousse cake today from a HK-style bakery, and some maple flavoured nougat candies. Lumas, you're too modest...the brownies look great. Is that the recipe with dark, milk, and white chocolate in it? I was going to make the almond tart from that book one day, but I guess I'll be giving that a pass...

i find that salting to taste can be a saviour. ← Wow, thanks for the tip. Who woulda thunk...all the things I learn on EG...

Klary, that looks great! Could I also have the recipe please? Love the shot of the salt flats, hathor! I've decided on our Sicilian vegetarian menu. (We're cooking for vegetarians.) We're going to do the caponata, arancini, and I'll try to do a version of cassata...there are so many recipes out there that mine will probably be an interpretation, rather than something very traditional. I'm not a huge fan of marzipan, so I won't be using that.

Yes, it still counts...I read reports that say even the water in the vegetables we consume count towards the 8 glasses a day. However, 8 oz. of coffee and tea only count for 6 oz. of liquid because of their diuretic effects. Other reports say that some doctors today feel the 8 glasses a day is a rather arbitrary number--not everyone needs that much, and some people need more (depending on weight and activity level.)

Wow, I'll be sure to check it out, Gerald. Could you give us a preview of the menu? I'm not really one to nitpick about authenticity; I just want my food to taste good. I was in Orange County/LA recently, and one of the places we stopped was El Gallo Giro in Santa Ana, which a few posters on EG claimed to be the most "authentic" in the area. It looked promising--huge line at lunch, we were the only non-Mexican people in there, and no one working there spoke English except the girl who got me my horchata. We ordered something like 4 or 5 items (some tame, like pork torta, and some more adventurous, like tongue taco) and were really let down by the lack of flavour... We had a $2 carnitas taco from Grand Central market the next day for our first lunch, and it awesome, even though I don't know how "authentic" it was.

If you're standing in front of Richmond Center facing Shanghai Wind, it is in the strip mall to the left of SW.

Are rosti rings the same as ring molds? If so, I got mine at Cookworks (Granville and W. Broadway.) They have a downtown location as well.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE all kinds of sushi AND sashimi. But cannot eat uni. I was just describing it to my FIL the other day as rancid pudding. ← What SHE said ! ← Is it because you've had bad uni? The first time I had uni many years ago, it smelled and tasted like garbage, so I avoided it for a few years. I've since had it many times at excellent Japanese restaurants where the uni is sweet and tasting of the sea...there should not be a bad odour or taste.

Thanks for the pictures, athinaeos. I especially like the bold presentation of the whole octopus! The Pane Siciliano and both types of bruschetta look awesome, FoodMan. Did you make the eggplant caponata as written? Did you find it too sweet, like Andrew did? I'm planning to make it for a vegetarian Sicilian meal on Thursday.

^The candy sushi is adorable! I missed that the first time it was posted. I had dinner with my family today...for dessert, I had the Mozart cake (meringue, chocolate buttercream, some sort of vanilla cream filling?), and sampled my brother's tiramisu, my sister's cheesecake, and my dad's Russian cake dessert. It reminded me of the mille crepes and the filling was kind of tart, like whipped cream and creme fraiche, and there were sour cherries on top. That was the best. (My mom also had the Mozart cake so I didn't steal any of hers. )

I had some raw milk Epoisses smuggled in from France recently and I can't stop thinking about it. I know that some cheese shops carry raw milk cheeses in Vancouver, but is the raw milk Epoisses available?

^I think it's Belle Epicurean you're thinking of...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think the chocolate sushi is quite ugly and gimmicky. It didn't taste good...it was a thick chocolate shell (not so tasty) around a goopy rice pudding (lots of thickener, I suspect). I think the other two desserts are gorgeous--actually, all the food I photographed from Sanafir is gorgeous, though unfortunately didn't taste as good as it looked. The coffee chiffon is very mild in flavour...it is similar to those cakes sold at HK-style bakeries.

I like this recipe but I don't use all the spices (sometimes I just use what I have on hand). I also increase the amount of raisins. (I also use the jumbo sized raisins that come in a plastic package...they are moister than the dried out little things in the bulk bins!)

^Lowering the amount of flour and replacing it with the same amount of cocoa won't cause your cake to fall out of the pan or become rubbery...it is more likely because you overmixed the batter.

I think it looks good, Abra. What did you think of the way it tasted?

I always oil my pans for cakes (except angelfood or chiffon), but do not flour them. The flour doesn't do anything besides create an unsightly "crust" of greasy white stuff in areas on your cake. You could also use parchment.

Yes, I do see Cape Gooseberries (aka ground cherries, physalis) everywhere as dessert garnishes, and have been seeing them ever since I started dining out in nicer restaurants when I was 17 or so. A quick search tells me they are native to the Andes. Yes, you're right...it was the only edible thing on the chocolate sushi plate. The baked yogurt was great. It had the texture of cheesecake, but with a bit more tang. I'm guessing they drain the yogurt with cheesecloth, then mix it with sugar and cardamom before baking it. (Just finished the last of the oatmeal raisin cookies...)

We had dinner at Sanafir with two friends last night, but didn't order that much food as they had eaten a late lunch. (My boyfriend and I had another dinner elsewhere afterwards). The room is gorgeous, the service was great (informal, attentive and friendly, a nice fit for the restaurant), but the food left something to be desired. We ordered the pork, lamb, beef, and tuna trios, the lobster risotto, and the dessert trio and a round of cocktails. I had the Coco (blue curaco, peach, champagne) and that was my favourite of ones we tried. There were no years listed next to the wines by the glass, which I found rather odd. I thought the food was beautifully and artistically presented, especially since each trio was so inexpensive. You can view the pictures of the food here: Sanafir dinner First up was the tuna trio--ahi spring roll, mango, shiso leaf, strawberry ginger salsa; smoked albacore loin, saffron celeriac puree, microgreens; seared big eye, thai black rice, lemongrass cream. There were a lot of flavours going on in each dish, and none of them really worked for us. The accompaniments were all so strong and busy that the tuna was relegated into the background. I especially disliked the tuna roll because the sauce was so sweet. Next came the lamb and beef together. Of the lamb, 2 of the 3 were good--we enjoyed the lamb chop, napoleon of eggplant, goat cheese, tomato (although it would be rather hard to mess up such a simple dish) and the seared rare loin with vegetables and herb/shallot dressing. The loin was thinly sliced and the crunchy texture of the julienned veg was quite nice. The lamb shank was less successful--if you click on the photos, you'll see it looks rather dry...there was little sauce served with it, and it seemed as if the shank was braised and then left out in the open for a long time, or at maybe roasted to finish because it's quite impossible for a braised meat dish to be so dry...isn't it? The beef trio was not bad. I liked the oxtail cappelletti with Parm Reggiano and truffle and the beef tataki was also tasty. The braised short rib and lentils didn't have that depth of flavour we look for, and though it said it came with chantrelles on the menu, it was enoki on the plate. The lobster risotto was the worst dish of the night. There was maybe a tablespoon of lobster meat diced up and folded into the risotto, and the shrimp I ate was fishy-tasting. I know from EG that it's pretty difficult for a restaurant to make risotto to order, but surely I have had much better risotto anywhere else. Each grain of rice was so swollen with stock, yet still a bit hard as if someone had dumped in a lot of liquid to start the cooking process and just let the rice absorb all that it could, but still yanked it from the heat too early. Not to mention there was not much lobster flavour in the rice. The lack of creaminess of the poorly-executed dish was "fixed" by the ton of cream they added at the end. The pork trio was OK, with the pork pakora being the tastiest of the three. There was little meat and sauce and a lot of bun in the Asian interpretation, and the grilled pork saddle (with potato puree and tomato jam) was rather dry. Dessert was also OK. We enjoyed the baked cardamom yogurt, and the berry meringue napoleon was also quite nice, if unremarkable. The chocolate fruit sushi roll tasted about as good as it looks and sounds... All in all, I feel kind of strange being the lone dissenting opinion...but I'd have to honestly say nothing blew me away, and the few dishes that were good were at the same time nothing extraordinary. I'd give the food a 6/10.

Yesterday, I had the Cook's Illustrated oatmeal raisin cookies, and also ate the white peach ice-cream. The cookies were good, but I've used better recipes. After dinner at Sanafir, we also had: berries, meringue, whipped cream baked yogurt, tuile, grape granite (this was the best) chocolate sushi roll...this was as tasty as it looks...

Oh no, I feel terrible! It would've probably worked with an angel food pan, so sorry Abra! I would just serve slices of the cake with vanilla ice-cream and caramel, or maybe serve it with espresso-flavoured creme fraiche and chocolate sauce. If you have cream cheese or marscapone, you could use the espresso chiffon cake as ladyfingers and make a modern interpretation of a tiramisu. So sorry again...ack...I feel so bad...*hugs*

We made Yukon River salmon a few weeks ago and it was incredible! We grilled it and there were flare-ups because it was so oily. Afterwards, Henry asked Charles (the chef de cuisine at Mistral) the best way to cook it, and Charles said to cook it in a pan to medium, so the fat isn't wasted.