slkinsey

The recipe is something like this: For this they are charging 17 dollars? We're talking about maybe 4 dollars of ingredients.

Re: zeppole, Lo Zingarelli says... Ring shaped cakes or sweet fritters that are prepared above all for carneval, or for San Giuseppe, in Napoli, in Calabria and in other Southern regions. The plural is zeppole.

Katie, I'm still not sure that one can buy true bison grass vodka in the US. While the Bison Brand people do go out of their way to make it seem like it's true bison grass vodka, my suspicions are aroused because 1) Bison Brand Vodka has long sold a bison grass flavored (as opposed to bison grass infused) vodka in the US, and 2) when I see things like this on their web site: I also note that nothing I have read suggests that the ban on true bison grass vodka containing the blood-thinning chemical has been lifted. This suggests to me that they have figured out a way to remove the "dangerous" chamical from the blade of grass in the bottle, but that the Bison Brand "zubrowka" sold in the US is still flavored to taste like bison grass vodka rather than being true bison grass-infused vodka. I don't know... maybe they figured out a way to entirely remove the chemical from zubrowka without screwing up the taste, but I doubt it. Here is some relevant information from polishvodka.com:

No. There's a chemical component of the grass that is classified as a "hallucinogenic agent" or some such nonsense, and hence is treated as a controlled substance, much like cocaine or heroin. Actually, IIRC, the reason it is banned is that there is a chemical component in the grass that acts as a blood thinner, the fear being along the lines that someone will get drunk on a lot of buffalo grass vodka, pass out and bleed to death from what would otherwise be a minor cut.

Monica, those look delicious! And I have always loved Indian treatments of cauliflower. Get thee to recipeGullet and put in some recipes forthwith!

Gotcha. Affectations of any sort are annoying as hell, I agree. regards, trillium All the moreso given the fact that such affectations are usually incorrect. Anyone who called it "leeeeeee lay" would have the acceeeeeeeeent on the wrong syllaaaaaaaable.

I honestly have to say that I don't really see why the writers cooking skill comes into play at all. I mean, there are plenty of sports writers who are not and have never been athletes at all, never mind in the sport about which they are writing. God, if that were a requirement, can you even imagine what would be written about boxing? All this is to say that I think there is a big difference between being a writer who understands food and who understands cooking, and being a writer who is a good cook. I wouldn't think that a sufficiently skilled writer would even need to be a good cook to write a book about how to be a good cook, so long as he/she had the necessary information. After all, plenty if not most of the best teachers of certain crafts are not the best practitioners of that craft... else they would be professional practitioners instead of professional teachers.

Sorry, Thomas. It's no longer a free article on the LA Times site.

Hmmm... still, that oven cleaner stuff sprays on like a foam and doesn't drip off (else it would run down the walls and drip off the ceiling of your oven). I bet it would work well.

I wonder how they would clean up if you sprayed in a whole bunch of industrial-strength oven cleaner, let the whole thing marinade for a few hours, and then went after it with a hose fitted with a spray nozzle. How do you clean these things, usually?

Thanks for the comments, jeunefilleparis. As yours is the first post on Mix after Doug Psaltis' departure as chef de cuisine, I'll take the opportunity to make this the new thread for reviews and discussion about Mix. The archival thread containing discussion about Mix under Doug Psaltis' tenure may be found here

Now, see... that would look a lot less like a person if the direct view of the pig was obscurred with a nice cloudy citrus brining liquid.

Dude (and I say "dude" in the non gender-specific sense )... Do you have any idea how awesome it will be if you actually do fill your exploding friend's bathtub with a citrus-brined whole pig? You'll have conversation fuel for years to come! Oh, and pictures are a must. Lots of pictures.

There is *absolutely no way* I will be able to get this girl to put a dead pig in her bathtub. I'm having enough trouble resigning her to the idea of putting it in her car. Well... where are you going to put the pig, then? I say you present her with a fait accompli: "Oh... well, I naturally assumed we'd have to defrost it in your bathtub overnight. Otherwise, we'll all be eating raw pork tomorrow. Wherever shall we put the pig? Whatever shall I do?" Or, hey, you could always get one of those kiddie pools... See... you're thinking about it, aren't you? I would think that flavored brining wouldn't work very well with most kinds of roasting because the flavor from the brine would be obscurred by the smoke. With luau style, however, it should work very well. I also stuff the cavity of the pig with fresh herbs. I'm not sure that a vanilla or juniper bring is really what you might want for a pit cooked pig, though. I'd consider dumping a few big bottles of lemon and lime juice and a few jugs of orange and grapefruit juice into the brine. That would be tasty. Oh... I agree with Brooks about the farting. Be sure to keep her away from any open flames.

I'll bet it wasn't anymore difficult than the trouble that Sam had getting that guy out of the trunk and into the hole. It's much easier if you run 'em through the band saw a few times first.

Just wrap it in a sheet of heavy plastic. A couple of heavy duty large trash bags would probably do the trick too. Or, you could always treat it like a body and wrap it up in a rug. But I tend to do that kind of thing only when I'm driving to a secluded spot in the woods with a couple of shovels. In all my previous pig-roasting experience, the pig has been frozen pretty hard when I took delivery and keeping it refrigerated was the least of my concerns. If yours is frozen (fairly likely, I'd say), I recommend defrosting and brining it at the same time overnight in the bathtub.

Um, er, would that be more than 1?? That all depends on the size of the butt. In your case, it would be around a metric ton.

'Ray! Updated list below: Totonno Pizzeria Napolitano -- Coney Island May 14, 2004 1524 Neptune Ave. Between 15th and 16th Sts. 718-372-8606 JosephB and Donna slkinsey and bergerka docsconz Blondie Alacarte Pan jogoode kurl phaelon56 Eric_Malson SarahD

Sounds good. I didn't bother raking out the fire, I just wrapped the pig in lots of cheesecloth and chicken wire, dropped it in, then pushed the rocks on top of it and buried the pit. The fire goes out right quick when you do that anyway. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a buttload of big rocks, though, as they are the only meaningful source of heat.

My one word of advice... make sure you get a lot of rocks, and burn a big-ass fire in the pit for several hours before you throw in the pig. Otherwise, you wind up with a lot of rare pork. The web site I reference above was a big help to me when I did my (200 lb) luau style pig.

Interesting... my experience has consistently been the exact opposite. We have never been rushed, and have always felt as though we could take all the time we wanted. Now, that said... as you know, we at the slkinsey household prefer to eat at a somewhat later hour than many. Our typical reservation time at Peter Luger is somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 PM. This means that we are probably the last turn of whatever table we occupy, and we typically close the place down. Someone going in with a 6:30 reservation might very well have a totally different experience in this regard. Lucky for me, porterhouse steak at 6:30 has never appealed to me. For one, I feel strange having a pre-dinner Manhattan at 6:00.

NeroW, how are you planning on roasting the pig? There are several "pit roasting" methods: Turning on a spit over a pit Placed whole into a closed smoker (this is what Varmint did at the pig pickin') Butterflied and roasted over an open pit (as described in this eGCI course) "Luau style" "roasting" where the pig is wrapped and buried in the ground with hot rocks (as described here) I've done whole pigs using just about all these methods at one time or another. And yea, it's the whole (gutted) pig, head and all. I have no idea if the brain is removed from the skull.

Tito Schipa in Neapolitan Song Nothing like it to put you in the mood for cooking in the Italian style with a light touch.

Brilliant vodka has a really nice bottle, as does Amaro Nonino, but the hand-blown Italian grappa bottles take the prize.

I like the hummus at Jerusalem Cafe up on 104th and B'way, but nothing compares to what I can make at home.