GG Mora

You know, by shear coincidence I was in the UK this week and caught a bit of Kitchen Nightmares just before passing out from jet lag. Compared to American reality TV, I found it to be fucking brilliant. I suspect that this level of incompetance is rampant in small restaurant land, but would never be detected or even suspected by the average paying customer. Yeah, the fact that the "chef" had NEVER made an omelette was rather impressive. It almost makes me want to stay in the UK. :lying: Edt: spalling.

Oh, and Miahoyhoy? In case no one else did...Welcome to eGullet!

Hey GG, I'm in Southern VT. Found mine about 10-ish miles louth of Manchester along the battenkill. On the menu in a heart beat! Get out! You in Arlington? You cook professionally there? I'm due back home late tomorrow after a scintilating/grey/wet 5 days in England's Midlands. I'll have to hike down to my motherlode spot and check the F-head's progress. Who knew?

It's a little early yet for F-heads in SoVT, but my garlic is looking fab. Of course, it'll be a while before I can actually use it. I'll be planting salad greens on Monday.

I find the recipes in Saveur to be the most consistently spot-on of any of the food rags (although I've never cooked from Fine Cooking). F&W just seems dated and uninspired or else wrong-headedly derivative. And Cooking Light just plain old sucks.

Here in New England, what you call a Garage Sale or a Yard Sale is often called a Tag Sale. Which can be unfortunate in rare instances. I used to drive past a pet cemetery near Kent, CT, and one spring weekend the owners, whose house was on site, were clearing out and having a Tag Sale. But they put the sign for said sale on the sign for the pet cemetery. So it read: BALMORAL Pet Cemetery TAG SALE Right. What else would they do with them? Anyway, I have a gorgeously patina'd Griswold #10 skillet that I got for a buck, and a Donvier hand-crank ice-cream maker that I paid all of 25¢ for. If I follow the directions for the ice cream maker, it's worthless, but through experimentation I've figured out how to make decent 'scream with it. Edited: because some idiot called in the middle of my post and I couldn't get away & made mistakes the first time around.

Aha! She shoots...she scores! Congratulations!

Recently I've been making "free-form" apple tarts, baked on a parchment-lined sheet pan. I use tapioca for thickener. Inevitably, the crust gets a hole somewhere & some of the filling juices run out. Thanks to the tapioca, the puddle sort of stays intact and caramelizes & when the whole pan is properly cooled, the puddle peels off in one neat piece. Sort of like a caramelized cinnamon-apple gummy-puddle.

Oh, and though 1st place is yet to be announced, should we assume you'll soon have a Golden Gully with which to accessorize your blog?

I anticipate with 'bated breath. And I'm fastening my seatbelt as I type. Go, girl. :wheee:

More cast iron. I picked up a Griswold #10 for $1 at a tag sale. It was badly crusted with cooked on scudge & the owner thought it was hopeless. Sucker. A quick trip through the self-clean cycle and a salt/oil rub & it was better than new.

Vienna Fingers. You guys are killing me.

Sounds like communion.

Given that I'm starting to experience the same thing, I should be more sympathetic...

No wonder you're having a hard time sloganeering for coffee.

No, I'll thank you right now for instilling a craving for sweets just when I'm trying to avoid them. I'm totally with you on the split-box GS cookies. In fact, I love just about any vanilla sandwich cookie. Even those funny waffly ones that you have to break apart. Oh, heavens, look what you've gone and done?

I'm with the owner on this one. My 10-yr-old stepdaughter, who has a chronic eyes-bigger-than-stomach problem, recently proclaimed that she loves buffet restaurants because "you can take as much food as you want!". Both her Dad and I lit into her post haste, gently but firmly, to straighten out her thinking on the issue. Instilling values is a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Sounds like, in the case of the fellas in Monica's tale, nobody bothered.

Indeed she does! I received "The Good Cookie" just in time for last December's holiday baking. Thanks again, Maggie!

Yup, bodily functions and bathroom talk are right out. Everything else is fair game. Unless we're dining with my stepkids. Cardinal rule: no "telling" of movies and TV shows. We're trying to train them that conversation is a two-way proposition.

Bollocks. I just spent half an hour typing up a response and somehow lost it. Paella happens a lot around here. My husband's father is from Valencia (family came here when Franco got going), so paella is a big deal. Everyone has a different approach – my FIL and his brother bicker endlessly about ingredients and method. My husband's brother makes an entirely different paella than does my husband, and my husband's paella has evolved significantly since he hooked up with me. All of them would agree, though, that the best paella is made in a carbon-steel pan and cooked over a wood fire. Bottom line is, bigger pan needs bigger fire. You can fake it across two burners, but you'll have to finesse the pan (rotate it) for even cooking (DON'T stir it!). There is a paella-specific propane burner (called a paellero), available in a number of sizes, that will make the job easier. Tienda has them: paellero. FWIW, a paella pan is also called a paellero. Our party pan is 26", and that usually gets cooked over a wood fire. My husband makes a low tripod out of three lengths of re-bar driven into the ground, then builds a fire using small sticks (about 1" in diameter). The small sticks are important: they let you stoke the fire up to a rage quickly and cool it down just as fast. It's important to level the pan, especially if it's a big one. Just fill it with water and place it on whatever setup you're cooking on, then futz until it's level. Here's a photo of the fire setup: I think that's a 22" pan. We had three going that night – the 26", this one, and a 16" without meat for the fish-eating "vegetarians". Here's a finished paella, albeit from a different party: Sorry if this post is a little disjointed. The first one was spot-on.

Yes, but there's something deliciously louche about keeping the whole bottle to yourself....

This doesn't sound so bad, if it comes right down to it. No, Jack already did that. Clubs and dancing. Frankly, I'm pretty adaptable and can go urban -----> rural as necessary. Just not into "scenes" (but scenery is fine).

That's sounds like just the sort of thing. Is there train service to Ludlow? Hiring a car seems a bit of a bother for one day.

Most elements of this are endlessly debatable. One is not: the music. Last Saturday night, my husband and I tried a newish joint run by a Swiss fellow and his wife. The menu was all Swiss "specialties"...none of them awful, none of them spectacular. Quaint, but not twee, decor. Polite, unobtrusive service. For the price (quite reasonable), I might be persuaded to return. Except for this: throughout the meal, the music playing was a scratchy recording of traditional Swiss yodeling piped through one small, tinny speaker. THAT, my friends, is the soundtrack of hell.

And Jack had to go and mention Paris twice. Would that Jaguar were headquartered there instead.