Margaret Pilgrim

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "crise de foie", which is precisely what it sounds like! The French recommend several days of nothing but mineral water.

Several months ago I enjoyed a slice of olive cake at La Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Savory, not sweet, this loaf cake (4"x 4"x 12" brioche pan probably) was very moist, rich, slightly crumbly, contained oil-cured olives, red onion, Nieman Ranch ham, guyere, vermouth, and it's my sense that it was not yeast leavened. I haven't been back on days that they have been baking it, so I haven't been able to do a proper autopsy. Any ideas?

But, Steve, we do know that acclaimed chefs, who, we are told, insist on the best artisanal products, can screw them up and, in their haste to feed three seatings, turn out dishes that are not rich but "greasy".

Have to agree with Dstone001 that Slanted Door is kept alive by tourists and those who haven't had the opportunity to experience (and be blown away by) real Vietnamese food. Sorry for the negativism, but SD is a sorry table.

To add veggies to your diet, all you have to do is think outside the box. What you're really trying to get is a rainbow of color, regardless of whether it's a vegetable or fruit. Since I only have to cook for my husband and me, "family dinner veggies" are often a huge bowl of ruby red grapefruit sections or sliced navel oranges; or platter of wonderful sliced tomatoes with goat cheese; or cucumbers in sour cream; or a plate of peeled cantaloupe slices; or peaches in red wine; or, like last night, after a fritatta with zucchini, broccoli, red and green pepper, red onion, Nieman Ranch ham and Spanish goat cheese, we had a bowl of blackberries and raspberries drizzled with fresh plum syrup and heavy cream. Sometimes dinner is a platter of indoor-grilled veggies with aioli: asparagus, portobellos, green onions, red onions, red peppers, eggplant, zucchini, radichio, Belgian endive, parboiled red potato. I serve a lot of things beside a mini salad or clump of dark green baby lettuce and cherry tomatoes. And when it comes to warhorses like broccoli, beurre blanc and Bearnaise make 'em disappear in a flash.

Robert Brown wrote, "I ran into Eli Zabar in front of his store yesterday. He mentioned a bistro on Boulevard Hausmann that also owned, or was next to, a wine store. The name was close to 'Petrossian', but wasn't. He likes it a lot and said they serve big portions of meat. Does it ring a bell, anyone?" Robert, while doing my "homework" I came across the Caves Petrissans at 30bis avenue Niel in the 17th. It's noted for its veal tenderloin (best in Paris?), Salers' faux-filet and tele de veau, as well as classic daily specials. One walks through the Cave and bar to reach the clublike dining room. Might this be your mystery restaurant, albeit on Niel rather than Haussman?

Two products I can't live without: Those 2+inch thin plastic squares that have a different arc at each corner, costing about .89 at kitchen stores. They fit into the corner of every pan or pot, the straight edges scrape the bottoms clean, plus great on cheesy residue on china. With these thingies, you don't even have to soak stuck on gook. And "Barkeepers Friend", a Comet or Ajax type product, that instantly restores shine to stainless, copper, porcelain. My All-Clad looks like it just came out of the carton, and my white sink is spotless. (Also fabulous on bathtubs and showers.) Not harmful to sterling. Caution: do not use on copper unless you want a bright finish. i.e., great for the bowls you use for whipping egg whites or polenta pots, but VERY bad for anything with a patina finish.

Bushey, run, don't walk, to the super and buy "Oxy-clean". You add one scoop to your wash, and stains are GONE. I use it on antique linens all of the time. We spend most of our leisure time at antique events, and tableware is my passion. I'm really a sucker for French "lapkins", the huge (approx 27"x30") linen napkins, usually with massive embroidered initials. I just brought home a group that are the classic country French natural linen with red bands woven on the four sides, with 6" red initial cartouches in the center! Wild! We use our stuff, not holding back "for good". We have mostly switched from using "sets of china" to more interesting settings. When I am shopping, I frequently see something and try to think of a use for it: a particular food or dish, a theme for a dinner. I just came home (from Brimfield, Bushey) with sardine tongs and two groups of strawberry forks. (How do you like the idea of 5 or so small farmer's market strawberries in a martini glass, jigger or so of grand Marnier and a drop of heavy cream? I'm still working on the setting for the sardine tongs. One of my favorite finds was a group of French silver cheese forks. We have several groups of chargers, 12-13" plates, that are our workhorses. Some are all white; some art glass; some white china with clusters of vivid fruit on the rims. I love the latter for dramatic fruit desserts that involve a sauce. I picked at a house sale a couple of dozen Perrier-Jouet champagne glasses, which I adore because they are so foolish. They are painted with the same apple-blossoms as the bottle. They, more than the champagne, make me laugh whenever we use them.

Le Voltaire has been recommended to us by several urbane and knowledgeable Parisians as being an excellent and quintessentially Parisian dining room . We have shied away from it because of it's reputation as a celebrity haunt. Do any egulletiers have experience dining there, and if so, what was your opinion?

We went there several times when our son was at school in NYC and when Anne was still alive and cooking. I simply sat on redial until connected, and begged and snivveled for a reservation, telling Frankie that we would only be in town for x number of evenings, were desparate to eat there, etc, etc.. Because our name, Pilgrim, is the same as Frankie's in Italian (Pelegrino) we established a joke about it. He would concede that he had to find room for his San Francisco relatives. You probably do have to demand to talk to Frankie. How was it? Funky. A time warp. God-awful decor. Amazing clientele. Memorable. Frankie's routine from which he didn't waiver: he pulls up a chair and sits on it backwards and says, "What's good? It's all good. So what do ya like to eat?" Then he coaches you through an order. "No, you're all gonna have the same pasta. We're not making 3 pastas for one table. You're gonna order two antipasti for the table, one pasta for the three of you, and then each of you can order a main course." The Strega bottle was left on the table with coffee. The food was quite decent Italian-American. Service was slow as determined by the kitchen. The table was ours until closing.

Suzanne, I just don't know. I have always assumed that tomatoes without onions or peppers could be safely waterbathed. But in the last 5 years or so, I read increasingly about the danger of processing new low acid tomatoes without pressure. I asked a grower at our farmer's market Saturday, but aside from agreeing that yellow and green varieties are low acid, they had no input on safe canning methods, and suggested a netsearch. An alternative is to contact your local state university extension for information. However, unless we have a handle on the precise variety we're dealing with, the answers will either be inconclusive or unnecessarily stringent, erring toward safety. In your case, and assuming that the information from the Virginia website it correct, I guess you could go to a pharmacy for litmus strips and test your puree before bottling to see if it exceeds the 4.6 pH and needs further acidification. Further complicating things, I just watched a pop TV chef waterbath a whole spectrum of tomato products: pepperonata, antipasto, whole tomatoes, puree with basil. His casual approach terrifies me. It used to be so simple.

From: http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/foods/348-594/348-594.html ****Tomatoes are normally considered to be an acid food. However, some varieties may have pH values above 4.6. Therefore, if tomatoes are to be canned as acid foods, they must be acidified with lemon juice or citric acid. Add 2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid per quart of tomatoes. For pints, use 1 tablespoon bottled lemon juice or 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid.

I'm going to throw a tire-iron into the cogs by proposing an exacerbation to the usual hazards of travel or even eating away from home or, worse, even staying home! I want to phrase this in the form of a question, actually, because I have no proof or scientific information to support my premise. My husband began taking one of the well publicized prescription 1-a-day acid preventative capsules several years ago. Since then, perhaps 2 years, he has had 3 episodes of severe stomach flu/food poisoning/digestive chaos, lasting from a week to 10 days each in spite of medical intervention. I recently read that one of the major reasons for stomach acids was to kill dangerous bacteria. Is it at all possible that the use of the acid suppressors increased my husband's susceptability to whatever bacteria caused his upsets? Has anyone else experienced this joint phenonenon? Inquiring minds want to know.

Paling beside Suvir and all the previous experiences, but incomparable for us was the brandade de morue that a friend used to prepare, from his French grandmother's instruction, some 40 years ago! He dramatically brought out a huge pot of hot boiled mashed and whipped potatoes, mixed in cooked and flaked salt cod, chopped garlic, raw egg and olive oil, whipping the mass into a smooth but textured whole. We enjoyed his presentation perhaps a dozen times. Since then, my husband has ordered brandade almost every time he finds it on a menu (read a zillion times), but has never been served anything close to our friend's dish. Many contain cream; some are oily, some fishy, some bland. Our friend's didn't and wasn't. I have finally suggested to my husband, "Stop ordering brandade! You're going to be disappointed!" Needless to say, I have also tried many times to recreate the magic and joy of this humble dish, but no amount of wine for cook or diner elevates my attempts to our friend's simple but perfect rendition.

Seconding Jin and Bux, I will add that I have recently found a 100% idiot-proof way to make mayonnaise: I use a "French working jar", one of those ubiquitous squat jelly jars (the kind with orange or red or green or blue plastic snap on lids) and a flat bottom wisk. The wisk in motion seems to just fit in the jelly jar, and the mayonnaise takes shape or body within a few seconds. I should add that I am categorically against any process that causes me to wash a machine when not absolutely necessary.

Wow! Lime and chile are such a classic affinity that chile-spiked lemonade sounds like a natural...a "why didn't I think of that" thing. Thanks a lot. (I have had lavender-spiked lemonade as well as lemonade with ginger slices, both excellent.)

re Muscats, those from Rivesaltes are nice, and we second Bux's mention of the Navarra wines, particularly the Dulce de Moscatel from Ochoa. Yesterday we opened a delightful little muscat from a tiny California winery: "Zibbibo", muscat of Alesandria, from Nevada City Winery, 4% residual sugar, around $20 the half bottle. (This, by the way, is a lovely little winery that I like a lot.) I am currently kicking my self that I only bought 2 bottles when we were there. Among non muscat, Coteaux du Layon Beaulieu "Les Rouannieres", and Bonnezeaux "Les Melleresses" are both excellent, as well as the simple but good Jurancon Doux.

My husband was in business for 25 years, providing a unique range of products to highly specialized buyers. His clientele were international, as the reputation of his business spread. For many of those 25 years, he kept posted beside his desk an editorial, clipped from a trade journal, entitled "The Customer You Can't Afford". As the title suggests, the article proposed that at a certain point the demands of a customer fall outside the perimeter of the offerings of your business, and that custumer is best encouraged to trade elsewhere. Over time, my husband gave this encouragement to not a few clueless would-be customers who demanded or expected more of his time and emotional attention than was tenable. The irony is that these high-maintenance shoppers were baffled that they weren't considered valued clients, while those he considered friends never asked for special service but always received it.

Ron, I loved a comment I read on a usenet wine group. A man said, and I probably paraphrase, "I can't say that my Lagiuole corkscrew opens a bottle any easier than other corkscrew, but I get a thrill everytime I take it out of the drawer and feel it in my hand." I can't think of a better rationale for owning anything!

Bux, close but no cigar, although yours may well work as well. The one I have is marked "Pulltaps", which just caused me to do a google search and behold: http://www.pulltap.com

QUOTE (Margaret Pilgrim @ Aug 25 2002, 03:44 PM) Bux, from what I understand/remember, lifesized biblical creche figures were very much a part of a Provencal Christmas until their exhibition was outlawed by the Reign of Terror after 1789. Bux answered, "From what I understand, you were too young to remember much." You've got it backwards. I'm so old that 1789 is crystal clear; yesterday is the blur.

Dstone, unfortunately I am technically compromised, so don't do pictures without a lot of outside help. We paid 13 euros for an anodized finished product. The most expensive model was 40 euros, and was exactly the same but "felt a little better in the hand". To describe it again, it is essentially the old-fashioned and classic waiter's corkscrew, the kind they sell for around 5 bucks at wineries or wine shops. Whereas that original style corkscrew has a single set of leverage prongs, this one has a kind of hinge affair and a second set that smoothly kicks in when you have reached the end of the leverage action of the first set. You just move the second set up to the lip of the bottle. Any better? Uh, I don't think so. Sorry.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I wonder if many of us have experimented with the new(ish) waiter-style corkscrew with two fulcrums. We saw them first through a closed shop window, then went on a search for them. Before we found them at retail, we saw them being used in several restaurants. They are exactly like the classic waiter-style screw (foil-knife, screw and fulcrum), but have a second fulcrum that kicks in just as you have reached the place on the cork where the lever usually quits being effective. We tracked them down in the wine accoutrement department in the basement of BHV, ranging in price from 13 euros to 40 euros, depending only on finish. We brought one home, and although I (thought I) was completely happy with the waiter's corkscrew, this one is amazing: one gentle pull, the second lever kicks in and, zoop, the cork is out without a whisper! Pros never did it so smoothly.

Have you tried used book stores, such as Green Apple Books in San Francisco? http://www.greenapplebooks.com/, or if you live in this area, I am sure that Cookin', the well-publicized re-cycled cookware store in SF has a copy of Vol.II. (She categorically refuses to ship or mail goods.)

Bux, from what I understand/remember, lifesized biblical creche figures were very much a part of a Provencal Christmas until their exhibition was outlawed by the Reign of Terror after 1789. The Provencals, resourceful as always, simply reduced the size of their scenes, dressed the inhabitants as their friends and neighbors, i.e., representing all the local vocations, and continued their tradition while breathing new life into it. The Marseille Foire aux Santonniers takes place in December, but I don't know exactly when.