mcdowell

Clarissa Wright and Jennifer Paterson, I seem to recall. I'd forgotten all about them, but loved their humor and their passion (if not their food), cruising around Britian in the little side-car. Great stuff.

I worked at Exxon in Houston in the 80's, oil tanker stuff. I had no idea Justin Wilson was with the company (with me and 30,000 others), or I'd have looked him up on a trip to Baton Rouge. I also had no idea he did comedy albums, something now to go seek out. Thanks for posting, fifi, and filling in the gaps.

Four: well, you'll just have to keep trying to teach the little buggers, now, won't you? My son was like that. He'd only eat yellow cheddar, and then only if it was shredded. Then one day a few months ago we were stuck in a crowd at Whole Foods, taking entirely too long to shop, and the boy started wandering around. He discovered, all on his own, the olive bar (with its little sign saying "samples ok") and the platters of cheese set out to sample all around the store. Today he won't touch yellow cheese, demanding instead Cabot white cheddar, which is what he packed in his lunch this morning (along with a mix of stuffed olives, some with garlic, some with sun-dried tomatoes). There's hope for all these kids, and they'll get there without a lot of help (just proper exposure to the good things).

Nacho Cheese Doritos... grandpa's feet... ah, yeah.

I don't know about Bourdain. He writes sentences like : "I found myself sitting in the jungle with Charlie". I read that, I think, in the first paragraph of his book two years ago and immediately closed it, laughing at the pomposity of it all. Ultimately I did read it on a plane somwhere and overall enjoyed the adventure, if not the writing. I've never seen a recipe from Bourdain, or eaten at one of his restaurants. With him, I think its cult of personality, and I'm there. I really enjoy watching him on FoodTV and, even if I don't really enjoy his skill with the written word in his books, I enjoy what he posts here. He's adventurous and funny and cute and unself-conscious and all of those things that you want to see, and it's because of him that his show works (can you imagine Al Roker taking his 'on the road' show to Siberia to take a steam and a dip in a frozen lake? It wouldn't work). I'm glad for Tony and that he's around, but I'm having a hard time saying why, and I'm not certain that I'd miss him if he weren't. I do miss Justin Wilson, the first cooking show that I ever watched, probably 15 years ago. I don't know if he could cook, but he was funny as hell. Is he still around? As for Emeril, I find him as annoying as everyone else on TV, but I also think it'd be a treat to have him do a Q&A here. It'd certainly be popular.

I think part of the confusion may be that, apparently, the Absinthe that's sold today is different than that described in the historical literature, the stuff of hallucinations and fuzzy drunks, 26 times more the "fun" compounds. This according to scientific studies at UC Berkeley & Northwestern University, summarized for lay-folks at Science News: In some countries, notably the Czech Republic, absinthe is still available, albeit in a less potent form. Old absinthe contained about 260 parts per million of alpha-thujone, says Arnold. "Present-day absinthe generally has less than 10 parts per million," he says, which is below the maximum concentration permitted by European beverage guidelines. In today's absinthe, "the most toxic compound is the alcohol," quips Arnold. Good read that describes the mechanisms of the chemicals involved.

There's a recipe at King Arthur Flour's web site that I like. If you bake and don't get their catalog, then you should get their catalog.

Took me a long time to find, but it's all I use now.

Wait... you would replace the capers and jams and not the tartar sauce? What I meant (as opposed to what I wrote) is that I find the capers and jams more essential than the tartar sauce. I'd throw out the tartar sauce, certainly, but it wouldn't be on my list of "must replenish". I'd do without until I needed at some point way, way, way in the future.

Quick inventory of the ice box here at the mcdowell compound shows also: Capers Jar of sliced jalepenos Jar of sun-dried tomatoes Tartar sauce Jams/Jellies (quite a collection in my fridge) 4 pounds of pre-fab cookie mix, bought from a neighbor child during a school fundraiser. How long are those good for? Of those, the capers & jams are what I'd have to replce.

Gee, Kolache's isn't what I remember La Grange for! A haw, haw, haw. Wow. Along those same lines, you'll never guess who I ate my first kolache at Weikel's with: Marvin Zindler, about five years ago, right after his wife died. Wow, is Marvin Zindler still alive? Is he still doing his slime-in-the-ice-machines reports? One of those things that stay with you forever.

Can't forget the french press for coffee, and a pound of ground beans. Life's essentials. I keep the propane bottle on the grill filled above half always, moving from hurricane country to earthquake country. And, of course, a house rabbit (but don't tell the girlfriend that he's part of the 'preparedness kit' )

Environment plays a huge role in what you choose to cook, but also in what you choose not to cook. I initially took to the stove (as differentiated from "the pit", which every Texas boy is born understanding, coming to age as we all do at our daddy's knee beside the woodpile) because it looked like I was going to spend a disproportionate amount of my life with a Northern girl (thank God that didn't turn out to be the case) who refused to cook the southern and creole foods that I love. So I picked up a couple of books, good knives, and a set of Calphalon, and never looked back. I moved to Boston some years ago, a town with a serious drought of Mexican food of any flavor. I attacked that as a subject with a great deal of inspiration and compulsion, working my way through Diana Kennedy and also some trashy border cookbooks, all to compensate for the bland offerings of New England. It was a case of satisfying cravings, both of taste and of technique. Now I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (ironically enough with a Texas woman this time) in a small community heavily influenced by Asian culture and food. Just before I moved here, I had decided to tackle Chinese and Thai cooking, bought the requisite cook gear and books, but have never pursued it. There's just so much diversity of Asian food here, and of such stellar quality, that it's never occurred to me to take out the wok and cook from the wondrously beautiful Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet book that I so love to browse, or any of the others. It's far easier to head to the corner where I can find what I want already plated and ready to eat, inexpensive, and of better quality than I imagine I could produce. So instead, I spend my evenings and weekends refining what I'm already comfortable with, focusing on the techniques, but also spending real time with new interests. These days I'm working on long term projects such as baking good bread and in making my cheese better (inspired by the great local curd), but also playing a bit with new passions, such as Indian food, because it seems a lot like "back home" food to me, which brings it sort of full circle. If I didn't move around so much, continually finding myself cuturally so far away from where I belong/crave/come from, then I don't believe that I would be half the cook I am today. I'd be good, but narrow, just as you posit in your post.

I will never again confuse the high-BTU burner with the others, nor will I toss vegetables into hot oil from a foot away, and certainly not both simultaneously.... it's been four months, and my arm still carries "birthmarks" put there by the splashing way-too-hot olive oil. Nor will I ever wear a too-large bathrobe, strands of cotton dangling, while cooking with a small pan over a large flame.... it freaks the hell out of the children when the fire spreads to your back and you have to shed that flaming robe only to find yourself standing there naked in the kitchen, but for a spatula, stomping it out, hoping against hope that it won't affect your security deposit when the veneer over the hardwood melts. These things I would never do again.

The American Cheese Society held their annual gathering here in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, where Alice Waters was invited to speak. She urged the artisan cheese makers to go organic & stay small, and a few of manufacturers disagreed. Getting tired of living the high tech life, I recently ran a business plan to see how much cheese I'd have to make & sell if I went into the business, just to be on par with what I make in my current industry. It would take a lot of pounds of cheese at $10-15/lb to just sustain my current quality of life. I can understand why some of the small cheese makers feel the way they do.

I believe that the proper term is nyotaimori. I don't believe that the g-string & flower pasties are authentic.

In some places, like the backwater Columbia, South Carolina, they get exicited over a new Starbucks coming to town. It's a mark of sophistication, a boost to the local ego, allowing the community to dare think they're as urbane as Charlotte or Augusta... Then again, maybe they're just glad to have coffee that's not from the Waffle House. Don't know. I've said it before, but I'm a Peet's man. Long live Peet's. Do they have any on the East coast?

It's an interesting point. I shop at the Sur La Table in Los Gatos, CA, and it's almost directly butt-up against a Williams Sonoma that opens into the street behind. The SLT is always packed with people, while the Williams Sonoma just has a few. So even people in No Cal know. As for me, I buy most of the "practical" kitchen items at SLT. There are some serving pieces, etc, that we get at Williams Sonoma, and occasionally some of that yummy pound-cake mix they sell. So while it's rarely first choice to buy at, it's always on the list of places to browse.

Me too... that Bourdain gets all the breaks. She's a cutie.

There's an editorial over at slate.com asking if french fries are the new Marlboros. They point out that there are some of the same legal minds at work here attacking McDonald's as attacked the Big Tobacco folks. There's another at the Washington Post, drawing the same parallels. Really scary are the words found in an older, and very extensive, article in Insight Magazine, again linking the two crusades, and pointing out that milk and pork are next. They don't like the ads, given that statements such as "drink milk, it's healthy" and "pork, the other white meat" are misleading. It's high absurdity. But when they come after my cheese cave, I'm taking up arms.

I think someone's yanking yer chain (if you'll pardon the expression).

Good catch! I've looked at this topic a number of times today and didn't notice my own spelling mistake (and there doesn't seem to be a way to edit the topic description once it's committed). It is indeed 'garoupa' that I was asking about, and did spell it right in the message body. I hope that didn't confuse anyone. The menu in question was definately Hong Kong influenced, or at least seemed so by the names of a number of the dishes. I'm heading back there Friday to sample a platter (or three!) of garoupa, then will report back here. A word of thanks to you all. There is no place else in the cviilized world where you can shout out "what's a garoupa" and get the range of answers, so quickly, that you all provided. I don't know who's right and who's wrong, but my brain is full, and that's a very good thing.

Thanks. That was my suspicion (that it was grouper), but I didn't want to jump to conclusions. As for the translation, I'm holding the menu in my hand and there are three dishes whose English description is only: "braise garoupa with brown" For three different prices! I'm going to order that next time I go in, see what I get.

They opened a new Chinese restaurant very near my house. Within days of it arriving, there were crowds on the sidewalk outside of this place, every night, all Asian. Crowds outside any restaurant in Cupertino, California, is a rare thing. Crowds outside "yet another" Chinese restaurant are unheard of. I went this afternoon, after the lunch rush, to see what the fuss was about. The menu was heavily seafood oriented and I recognized most everything on it. There were, however, a very large number of dishes featuring something called "garoupa", something that I'd never heard of. I asked the man there who was taking care of me what this was and he couldn't help me beyond "its fish". I'll spare the exchange and the translation problems, except to say that we were talking but not communicating. So instead of something with "garoupa", I had the "red wine with oxtail clay pot" and was blown away. But my question is simple (and google didn't really help): What's a "garoupa"?

You're reading McGee, straight through? Good for you. Seriously. I tried that once, about three years ago. I stopped when I hit page 350, unable to go on. I was a little better educated, and my brain a lot more numb, than when I began that trek. Now it sits there, this book, waiting for me to have a question so that it can be opened. It's never on the shelf long enough to gather dust, and eventually I'll have read every page. But straight through? No way. My night-stand pile of books is surprisingly food-free these days. Currently reading Bellocq's Women, by Peter Everett, fictionalized account of EJ Bellocq's life in Storyville. I'm reading this because I am passionate about photography, New Orleans, and, occasionally, hookers. Last food-related book I read was It must've been something I ate by Steingarten. Highly recommended.