formerly grueldelux

That's one of my favorite things too. Also great with the addition of canned diced tomatoes. For some reason it's a magic combination. Even better when brushed with melted butter and baked on parchent till browned.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Imagine if you could just fire up your chimney starter, head inside to do your prep, heat up the wok to a blistering levels, bring out your tray of prep, wok away. Added benefit: wok smells/fumes kept outdoors. I wonder if you could rig a galvanized bucket to do the job, if you could cut out the bottom and add some vent holes and something to hold the coals. The flared top might hold the wok securely. I'm filing my patent now. michael

Just a thought. What about using a chimney starter with a wok? I imagine size compatability and stability would be the main concerns, but tantalizing prospects, I think.

One of my staples is an adaptation of a pasta dish from Mark Bittman. Boil large pot of water, add spaghetti. In morter and pestle, make a paste of one clove of garlic with a bit of salt. Add a handful or more of pitted kalamate olives and mash them lightly. Add a splash of olive brine and several tablespoons of olive oil and stir to incorporate. When the pasta is nearly done to your liking, add a generous amount of spinach (Any type, even frozen. Just use lots.) to the same pot. Continue cooking. Reserve a bit of pasta water. Drain pasta and spinach. Toss with sauce. Serve with copious amounts of grated parmesan.

Wait, where's the drip pan? Really, that's a seriously cool idea, thanks for sharing. I have a thick chuck steak I'll try that with tonight. michael

Michael, I have never used Roland laksa paste. I never even knew that laksa paste was commercially available here. That is very good news to us -- thanks for the info! The ingredients list does look pretty good. Please let me know how your laksa turns out

thanks for a fantastic blog. I can't wait to try some of these dishes. In fact, yesterday I picked up a jar of laksa paste at my closest asian supermarket. It's by Roland. Do you have any experience with this brand of laksa? How does it compare to the brand you use? The ingredient list looks pretty good, so I'm guessing they're interchangable. michael

i'm with you. The sensual qualities of food have never had any relation to sexuality for me. Completely different appetites. In fact, the more intense the "rendez-vous", the more food becomes an afterthought. A luscious ripe mango makes me lust after another luscious ripe mango, followed perhaps by a nap.

I don't know if I'd call it outrage, but I'm definitly perplexed by this thread, the sentiment is just not from my world. Most of my men friends are great cooks, usually significantly better than their GFs or wives. Perhaps there's a generational divide? Most of the daughter's of 70s feminism that I've been blessed to know are thoroughly conflicted about domestic issues, and many of them ended up without any skills whatsoever. Meanwhile, the men have been happy to step up to the stove. And women doing a man's laundry? Weird.

I really like chacareros. Light and tender bread filled with grilled meat of choice, topped with steamed green beans, jalapenos, optional mild cheese like Muenster, tomatoes, avocado spread, salt and pepper, optional hot sauce. If they'd work a pickle in there I'd be in heaven.

Don't know if this is too obvious, but anchovy butter is a great thing. I try to keep some in the freezer to have on hand to melt on steaks, place under the skin of chicken, add to a pan sauce etc etc etc.

Sorry about that. I think most people could see that I was joking around, but I agree that the topic title was misleading, and I support your changes. _______ I gather this subject has been talked about in wine forums and here on eGullet, but do you know if any of the other food glossies have touched it? Does it strike you as a bold article for Gourmet to publish? I stikes me as a departure; I don't normally think of Gourmet debunking wine folderol (I thought they had not only swallowed the Kool-Aid, but had done so with special Riedel Kool-Aid glasses.) Who can take those specialized wine glasses seriously anymore? Hasn't the placebo effect now been removed?

Moderator's note: The original title of this thread was: Big study shows riedel glasses ruin taste of wine. We felt this was misleading, edited the topic for better communication and clarity for those browsing the contents of the forum and added this note so the post would still make sense. Well I actually made that part up. But a v. interesting article, I thought. Turns out it's all in your head. A couple of studies, including one sponsored by Georg Riedel in an effort to back up his claims, have found no evidence that glassware makes a significant improvement in the taste or aroma of wine. Moreover, the whole idea that a glass can direct wine to certain regions of the mouth and can thus be tailored to flatter a specific style of wine is basically nonsense since it disregards how taste buds actually function. People who believe wine tastes better in Riedel glasses are suffering from raised expectations, a sort of placebo effect. Which doesn't invalidate their experience, of course, but one wonders if the same effect can be gained by other things carefully designed to raise expectations. $400 wine tasting clogs, perhaps (They put the nose at the proper nosing angle.) Or maybe the oenophile's barcalounger (improves taste!) michael

I too have recently settled on a mixture of high gluten and pastry flours, with optional semolina and a longish ferment. Wondering, though, about 00 flour, which I never use. Are the 00 flours available in the US labelled as to protein content or suitability for bread making? I wonder because Jeffrey Steingartens's bit on Italian bread in It Must Have Been Something I Ate made me realize that I shared in what may be a widespread confusion: that 00 is both soft and low protein. It really just refers to how finely the flour is milled and not the protein content, which can vary widely within each grade. Semolina and high gluten flour will definitely not give you an Italianate crust. This is not to say that it will be bad, but it won't be like they are in Italy. 00 flour doesn't necessarily refer to the protein content so much as it does the level of refinement (more refined than American unbleached AP). One can buy "tipo 00 per pizza" in Italy, and I have used it here. The resultant dough strikes me as somewhat weaker than an American AP dough, and definitely much weaker than a high gluten or semolina (aka strong duram flour) dough. In my experience, a pliable dough made with "00 for pizza" is too weak to be twirled or stretched in the air. Almost all the stretching of the dough happens on the bench. This accords with what I have observed in Italian pizzerie. As a result, I came up with the idea of using around 25% (highly refined and low in gluten) cake or pastry flour to mimic the "00 for pizza" dough and have been happy with the results. With high gluten and semolina, you have to use fat to cut the dough and make it tender. With "00 for pizza" or the mixture I have described above, you get a tender crust without using fat in the dough. 100% AP with no fat is probably a good compromise for those who want a chewier dough. I've basically settled on something near John Thorne's proportions; 4 parts pastry flour 4 parts hi-gluten bread flour 1 part fine durum flour no fat With nearly 50% pastry flour it results in a dough that's definitely a little weak. So maybe the end results are close to your 75% a.p./25% pastry? Mr Thorne claims the resultant dough has all the strength of an a.p. flour dough but more character. I just know it delivers a dough that has a good wheaty taste and is both tender and crisp. In any case, it wasn't until I got a ceramic cooker and developed the patience to preheat it at 600-650 degrees for an hour that I got anything approaching a decent crust (mine cooking in 4 minutes, with good char.) I plan to give your recipe a try and do a comparison. -michael

I too have recently settled on a mixture of high gluten and pastry flours, with optional semolina and a longish ferment. Wondering, though, about 00 flour, which I never use. Are the 00 flours available in the US labelled as to protein content or suitability for bread making? I wonder because Jeffrey Steingartens's bit on Italian bread in It Must Have Been Something I Ate made me realize that I shared in what may be a widespread confusion: that 00 is both soft and low protein. It really just refers to how finely the flour is milled and not the protein content, which can vary widely within each grade.

I spent the first half of my beer life in Canada and the last ten years in New England. From my experience, it would be hard to declare a winner in the craft beer category, with plenty of fine microbrews widely available in both countries. But I'd definitely give Canada the edge with the mass produced stuff. Blue, Canadian, Ex, and my throwback pick—50 (Me and the boys and our 50, me and the boys and our beer) have a lot more character than Bud, Miller etc. (Of course this could be lingering beer nationalism, I realize.) It's funny, though, how uniform the brands ultimately are. I can remember people having fierce loyalty to a certain brand (usually Blue) and holding, say, Ex in utter contempt. I'm not saying there are no perceptible differences, just that I'd be happy with almost any of them, even O.V. -michael

Thanks for the very interesting information. I thought it was more widely used in Italy, but it looks like it's just as new and obscure there (for most people) as it is in America, where food people have known about it but where it's still far from mainstream. Now I'm off to the hills of Tuscany to harvest some for myself! (I wish.) -michael

My wife was recently in Florence for a few weeks and I asked her to bring me back a bit of fennel pollen, which would be about the only thing she could fit in her luggage (I know it's easy to obtain via mail order.) She couldn't find any. Not only that, she couldn't find anyone who even knew what she was talking about. She didn't hit all the markets, but she did a fairly thorough search, and asked all her friends. Some qualifiers. My wife is not excactly a food enthusiast (Just my luck to find the one Italophile barely interested in food.) But: she speaks fluent Italian and she knows Florence well. She's spent at least a month per year in Florence for over thirty years and has lived there for uninterrupted periods of up to two years. Also, she has many dear friends there, and, in one case, is so much a part of the family that she has a key to the house and her own room. This friend's cousin has a neighborhood trattoria. In other words, her Florence credentials are good enough that I have to believe that fennel pollen is not all that popular there, which comes as a surprise to me given that it's marketed as being from Tuscany. Some theories. It's more popular in other regions and is not that popular in Florence. Or, traditionally people just gathered it themselves (e.g. for salumi) and it hasn't yet spread as a consumer product. Or, though used here and there in Tuscany, it's not all that common and it's been pretty much created for the American market. Do any of these theories make sense? -michael

Pretty sure it's not cheesemaking. More like cheese appreciation, from what I understand, with lectures, sampling, field trips etc. It's taught by Ihsan Gurdal of Formaggio Kitchen.

Do you mean that there are no worthwhile certifications (as compared to hands-on experience in retail) or literally none? Because I know Boston University, for example, offers a three-month (I think) cheese certification course.

Yes. Read up on his wonderful Q&A session on eG not that long ago. He's quite well liked here on the 'gull. Including by me. He brings a lot to the party.

Alton Brown: X brings a lot of _________ to the party (X=an ingredient or technique.) or When we bring X to the party... Every single episode.

"So many little eggies, and I'm still starving, and I'm going to eat them all before I go to sleepie."

I get the willies from "sammie" and especially "sammitch," sorry to say. And everyone should know that taters are spuds.

Martin Yan: Tiny bit...Chinese cooking wine. Tiny bit...tapioca starch. Tiny bit...rice wine vinegar. etc. etc. But it's just a funny quirk. I quite enjoy his show.