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My favorite recipe for spaghetti and meatballs was inspired by this Mario Batali recipe. The key is the nuts. I wouldn't have thought to add nuts on my own. Since I'm constitutionally incapable of following directions mine are a little bit different. Plus I prefer less filler and ground walnuts to pine nuts (although this began as an economic decision). All portions are approximate because I'm capable, but unwilling to measure anything. 3 slices of bread soaked in milk (I usually use multigrain, crusts and all.) a pound of ground beef 5-7 cloves garlic 1/4 cup toasted, ground walnuts (1/4 cup after grinding) 1/2 cup parmesan, aged pecorino, asiago, or other sharp, hard, grating cheese you have on hand 2 eggs lots of finely chopped parsley salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste Mix all ingredients together and form into walnut sized meatballs (Thanks, petite tete, for the perfect description for the size. I, again, would not have thought of nuts in this case) I like to salt and pepper the outside of the balls. Then I sautee them in a little olive oil over medium high heat until most of the ball is browned. Until last week I would have agreed with slkinsey that since spaghetti and meatballs is the epitome of Italian-American a long-simmered red sauce with onions, garlic, "Italian seasoning", canned tomatoes, and red wine is perfect, but do to my recent household fresh, homegrown tomato infestation I made sort of a quick-cook fresh marinara and it was delicious. The sauce had the clinged much better to the meatballs and the pasta than the long-cooked, saucy sauce. Anyway, for my quick sauce I'll blender up some garlic, basil, parsley, and tomato flesh and toss it in the hot pan with the meatballs. If the tomatoes aren't very juicy I'll deglaze the pan with some wine first. I add the cooked spaghetti to the meatball+sauce pan to coat the noodles. I do, of course, reserve several meatballs for meatball sandwiches the next day. On a side note, if I am making meatballs solely for the purpose of meatball sandwiches I will use less or no binder (eggs and bread), but keep the nuts. The ground walnuts give the meatballs a slightly sweet, aromatic quality that is a little different and very good.

Thanks for all the ideas. The grapes are fairly tart, so the agresto sounds very interesting. They are also fairly small, but luckily we have millions of them.

Well, this is as good a place as any for one of my more amusing true anecdotes. At a bodega in NYC one of my friends was buying Smirnoff Ice (against my wishes--i mean why did everyone mock Zima but embrace the current wave of lemon-lime malt beverage? we'll never know). A general hanger on at the bodega noticed us ladies' choice and helpfully informed us, "yeah, that shit is good, but it is so sour it upsets my stomach. I gotta water it down with vodka." We kept that in mind.

I had a surplus of Kentucky Colonel Mint, which I read is the traditional mint for the julep, so i made one or two. My picture may feature my homemade gravalax platter, but the julep with the mint blossom garnish is still pretty attractive in the background. I just muddled a bunch of the mint with some raw sugar and ice and added Evan Williams Bourbon that was on sale at my local grocery store. Not bad, not bad.

So, as i was pulling out literally hundreds of wild grape vines growing and strangling our native trees and plants here in the midwest US I wondered if there was anything i could do with these besides make boring graoevine baskets or balls or risk that they will decmpose and not take over my hot compost heap. Has anyone here ever tried to make plonky wine out of this suff?

I'm an Iowa City native and after 10 year away i have moved back in with my parents and have come back with a new perspective on the area. As a high school student it was ideal, since the town is dominated by the University, which, as a teenager, being a college student is about the coolest thing possible, and while there are still several decent bars, i appreciate much more now. I do a majority of my shopping at the New Pioneer Co-op which tends to feature local products "whenever possible". (I assume you can grow most anything in the summer here, as i am doing in my garden currently, but that is another matter). I have discovered many new to me cheeses throough my shopping, some great, some good but overpriced. Some of my favorites have included the bleu from Cresco, IA, which has just been outed by the Cheese Society competition (which i am incredibly jealous of Artichoke for attending, as i was forced to dance at a wedding instead) as one of the best. I've also enjoyed a garlic and basil chevre from Northern Prairie Chevre recently. Of course, there is the classic Maytag Blue at the original Maytag (refrigeration, microwave, etc.) location in Newton, IA. I recently visited the facility while I was visiting my brother. The tour isn't that exciting, as they no longer have their own herd and buy from a cooperative and they don't provide a tour the cheese caves, but rather show you an antiquated, but amusing, video and let you talk to an employee in the packing portion, but the cheese speaks for itself. I took some pictures like this [ As previously mentioned, it was developed by Fritz Maytag in conjuncion with food scientists at Iowa State University. The same Fritz went on to found Anchor Steam Brewery. He is my hero.

This is another not too speciic suggestion, but perhaos adding the right amount of olive oil could give you the perfect consistency. I recently made a corn ice cream and upon the first tasting it was too sweet and too hard and icy so i blended it with some olive oil and it turned out deliciously creamy and buttery. Now i'll have to try to work up a pesto gelato recpie.

i moved out of ny about 4 months ago now, but the last tim i checked, the Mosco St. grocery had calamansi juice, but no fresh limes. Cynical as i am, i have to assume that they use the bottled juice in restaurants, since the fruit isn't easy to obtain in the US.

I am still amazed at how great a saltine with butter is. Sometimes simplicity is best.

Thanks for the fun report. As a recovering scientist this kin of stuff is always right up my alley. Why accept old wives' tales when ou can do your own controlled experiments (although those old wives have some pretty good ideas.) I particularly enjoyed your description of Section 9 about the interaction of foods and liquids in the mouth. I'm a bit envious of your opportunity and I'll have to check out those food MRIs. As for the brining-related questions I have my doubts that the acutal water, salt and sugar don't penetrate a bit deeper into the meat. Fluorescent dyes (or any type of dye) are much larger molecules than salt or water ions so they can't penetrate tissue as well. In addition, cells and tissues have molecules that normally interact with water, sodium and chloride. Plus, I don't want to admit that I'm fooling myself when I like my roast pork loin much better than an unbrined version. Although I would agree that this shows that it is fairly useless to add other flavoring agents like peppercorns to the brine, as these molecules will be larger and likely not penetrate any further than the dye did, but I do it anyway. And my guess on the following question: is that even without the presence of additional water there is still some mass action that is causing some water to flow from the high concentration of water (duck interior) to the low concentration of water (the salt). Salt will also flow somewhat from the high salt to the low salt environment and add some saltiness to the meat. Doing this sort of process for a long time allows the salt to penetrate further into the meat creating a gradient of saltiness from the high salt exterior to less and less salty layers the further interior you go. And the herbs transfer their flavor because the flavourful, or odorful? compounds are fat soluble and there's plenty of that to go around on a duck.

Although I like the ramen at Menchanko Tei and Sapporo better, Rai Rai Ken is set up like a traditional ramen shop, like in Tampopo. So if you want to relive the movie put on your cowboy hat and go in and sit at the counter. And I really liked the buckwheat beer from Rogue I had the last time I was there.

Call me unamerican, but I have to say: milk ketchup

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart.

My understanding is that chicory and endive are the same plant, but the green, leafy chicory is the regular growth and endive is the second growth of the bud, usually under low-light conditions. After looking it up, this seems right--this site has some interesting facts. And it cleared up the mystery of chicory in coffee for me too. Apparently it used to be a coffee substitute. Funny that these days Cafe du Monde is much more expensive that pure, unadulterated beans.

I've gotten slices from Patsy's in the past in the dor that is one door uptown from the sit-down restaurant. I assume they use the same oven, which is in the take-out portion. The pictures look like the place I've been to. But, unfortunately, they only let you get the plain slices by the slice.

It;s not such a big deal in retrospect, but the first time I had a pot full of oil catch fire in my tint 5thg stiry walk-up the first and only thing I could think to do was hold the pot out the window so that it wouldn't set off the fire alarm.

I prefer an uncooked sauce for any thin crust pizza. It gives the whole pie a bright taste, plus it takes no work whatsoever--just puree some canned san marzano tomatoes with salt and pepper (and if you're me, plenty of garlic and pepperoncini). Long-simmered sauces traditionally go with thicker, raised crusts. To me they always taste too sweet in the context of bread and cheese, but I've been shown to have sweet-a-phobia these past few years.

Did you mean coma?

Well, if the genious researchers in the Kraft foods test kitchen count as serious recipe creators, take a look at this gem: Bacon Snack Bars It combines the best from all worlds, namely bacon, peanut butter, tang, and breakfast cereal.

I've seen this praise of Swanson's on the show a couple of times (although they do always say homemade is better). The thing that really bothers me is that every time they point out that what people like is directly related to the amount of sodium in the broth, but don't ever hint to what this means, like "this broth might taste good now, but if you boil it down for a while it will taste like a salt lick."

ketchup catsup

I don't dine at a lot of high-priced restaurants and I must confess that I've never consulted swith a sommelier but...I'm usually more opinionated than my male dining companions when it comes to wine. I haven't made much note of who is "presented" with the wine list, but I will say that every time I have ordered the server has presented me with the taste before accepting the bottle. Even in places that could barely get the orders right. I don't know if I have had incredibly good luck with perceptive but incompitent servers or whether many of my good servers have had bad luck with the kitchen. C And on a side note, I am a scientist. While I know that NaCl (table salt) is neutral, I found Katie Loeb, a wine professional, informative and helpful on the subject of how wines work with food. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks for making the call, ExtraMSG.

Speaking of chipotle and pronunciation, how is Niman Ranch pronounced. I have been pronouncing it in my head Nee-man but I heard a story on local news pronouncing it with a long i. As I don't trust ether source, what is it? And for the record I think chipotle makes a decent burrito and has surprisingly pleasant employees for a chain in Manhattan. Maybe they pay their employees decently or something.

Sounds like a great Iowa Thanksgiving menu. Iowa maple syrup, who knew? I'm still a little bitter that due to a vomiting incident after McDonald's "pancakes" and "syrup" and the fraud perpetrated upon customers by so many restaurants claiming to serve "maple" syrup while serving corn syrup flavored like maple, I thought that I hated maple syrup from the ages 5-25 or so. Anyway, I've finally realized the error of my ways. And I'm interested in the rest of your Iowa foodblog.