slkinsey
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it seems like a lot of these italian-american pronunciations are just that: italian-american pronunciations. i'd submit that they're not wrong, and certainly nothing to find humor in. there are far funnier things than "gobbagool." mispronouncing french words. now *that's* a hoot.
I'd go a little further and say that these words are almost an Italian-American dialect. During the years when America saw a huge influx of immigrants from Italy, most Italians didn't speak Italian in their own homes, they spoke the dialect of their village or zone. In fact, it was only relatively recently that the Italian census showed more Italians speaking Italian in their homes instead of dialect. This is, IMO, not such a great thing, as the dialects are beginning to die out, but that's for another discussion...
Anyway, getting back to funny Italian-American words, the vast majority of Italians emigrating to America were from Southern regions like Sicilia, Campania, Calabria and Puglia. Plenty of them probably only spoke dialect and didn't particularly speak Italian. The dialects in these areas tend towards extremely soft consonants (e.g., "c" might sound very close to "g" and "p" might sound very close to "b" and in some regions "s" was changed to "sh") and tended to minimize final unaccented syllables. This is exactly how "spaghetti" turned into "spaghett'" or "shpaghett'" or "zhbaghett'" depending on where your family came from.
It is also the case that the Italian immigrants worked hard to integrate into American society and, as a result, Italian language skills were often marginal in the first generation born in the States and nonexistent in the second beyond a few words. This is especially true of dialect language skills, since the dialects tended to be microregional and most immigrants spoke different dialects.
Understanding all this, it's easy to understand how grandparents from the old country might pronounce "capocollo" as "gabogol'" using soft consonants and minimizing the final syllable. Their children, and especially grandchildren, not having particularly well-developed Italian language abilities, might perceive this as "gabagool" and before you knew it, that was the "official" Italian-American pronunciation. ("Capicola" appears to be an Americanization as well... in Italy it's either "capocolla" or, in central Italy, "coppa.") A similar thing might have happened if there had been massive 19th century/eatly 20th century emigration to Italy from Arkansas or Boston. The thing that I think makes a lot of the Italian-American "mispronunciations" a little more funny than mispronunciations of French is the widespread use of the same "mispronunciation" and the widely held belief that it is actually the correct one. There's nothing like someone telling you "don't say pro-shoo-toh, it's bra-zhoot."
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i would suggest you folks try to do a turkey "galantine" which is basically a totally "deboned but still in one piece" bird biggest advantage is that you
loose most of the "volume" and it therefor is easier to handle while frying and gain a nice flavor transfusion from the stuffing to the meat, last not least you cant fuckup the carving since it cuts like a big sausage...
Can we get a detailed explanation on how to do this? I've read about doing this before, but it seems you'd have to be a serious bird surgeon to pull it off... or pull all those bones out as the case may be. Could you then roast the bird conventionally? Perhaps by stringing it up into a large more or less uniform "sausage"?
Schneich, I don't think you mean to say a galantine, which is forcemeat stuffed into poultry skin, poached and surved cold, but rather a ballotine which is deboned meat, fish or poultry that is stuffed, tied into a roll, roasted and served warm.
Al... it really isn't that hard. Basically this is a turducken, only with only one kind of bird. All you have to do is cut the backbone out with scissors and spread the bird open. Then slide a sharp knife under the breastbone and slide it upwards scraping under the rib bones. Do this on both sides. Once the rib bones are free, slide the knife in the other direction, scraping against the breastbone, until you reach the center of the breastbone near the skin. Do this on both sides, disarticulating the wings from the breastbone up at the front along the way. Once the breastbone is almost entirely separated, lift the breastbone up with one hand while teasing away the last little bit of meat with the knife until the breastbone comes free. This is the trickiest part. Now, all that remains is to scrape the meat away from the larger wing bones from the inside. You can even use scissors for this. Cut away the remaining part of the wings once they get small enough to be tedious. Don't worry about any small holes, as they can be closed when you tie up the bundle. Now, using the tip of your knife, carefully scrape the meat away from the thighs taking care not to pierce the skin. When you get to the joint, you can disarticulate the thigh bone and put it aside. Now all that remains are the two drumsticks. I find that the easiest way to handle these is to stand them up with the knuckle on the table, take a pair of poultry scissors and snip around the bone all the way down to the end rolling the flesh down as you go. Once you get near the end, just lie the drumstick on the table and whack the knuckle off with a heavy knive. Voila! Boneless poultry! At this point, all you have to do is cut down the meat a little to distrubute it evenly (with turkey this involves cutting away quite a bit of the breast and relocating the meat to other areas), putting on a layer of stuffing, then rolling it into a sausage shape and tying up the whole works with butcher's string. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I can bone out most any bird in less than 10 minutes.
I hadn't ever thought of deep frying a ballotine, but I bet it would work pretty well.
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Is "Aberlour Glenlivet" what you guys are talking about? My liquor store has Aberlour 15 year for $60, and the "Aberlour glenlivet" for $30
"Aberlour Glenlivet" is actually "Aberlour Vintage." I don't know why it says "Glenlivet" on the bottle. According to their materials it is a "specially selected cask of one particular vintage." There is no indication of year, but given the price one assumes it is younger than 15 years.
Take a look here to see the range of bottlings offered by Aberlour.
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Lodge is the only manufacturer of cast iron cookware left
I believe Benjamin & Medwin still makes cast-iron cookware. I bought a piece of it, new, less than a year ago. There also seem to be some other, imported brands available at stores like Target.
So they do. Whaddaya know. I somehow had heard that Lodge was the last American company making cast iron cookware.
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Thanks for the info, Alberto. Although I still think that grain whisky, as you call it, is what I would call "neutral spirits" when it comes out of the still, obviously it would not be so neutral after several years in a barrel. It seems strange to me that they would age a grain spirit for 50 years, but if you say it's true I acquiesce to your greater depth of knowledge. Thanks.
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In terms of a good blended scotch, I think you'd have to look long and hard to find something better than Famous Grouse. A bottle of that will run you maybe 30 bucks. I'd choose Fanous Grouse over Johnnie Walker every time. The gold and blue JW labels are obscenely expensive for blended. I can't see the point of spending more than around 40 for blended scotch.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you regrading Highland Park, which I think is among the best of the best. It has a hint of sweetness and peatiness, neither of whcih are overpowering or dominant.
Glad to see another HP fan. I am reluctant to do too much evangelizing, because I think it's so reasonably priced due to the fact that few people are hip to it.
Have you tried the 18 year old? Interestingly, I find that I prefer the 12 year because the honey/heather quality comes through better. I also like Laphroaig 10 better than 15 -- has more of that funky "burnt inner tube" thing going on, whereas the 15 is mellower.
Hollywood, perhaps he is a sophisticated Sophist? A sophisticated Sophist sipping some simple single malts, seemingly serenely satisfied?
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No...wait a minute...
Royal Salute 50 y.o. is a commemorative and extremely espensive edition of the Royal Salute blend from Chivas Brothers (normally at 21 years of age); in Scotland the age statement imply all the whiskies in a bottle, grain whiskies included of course.
Crown Royal is a blended canadian whisky made by Seagram; there's also a premium verison called CR Special Reserve. Anyways, to be called "canadian whisky" even the blending base (you said the "neutral spirit"), distilled usually from corn, must be aged at least 3 years in wood according to canadian laws.
D'oh! You're right, of course about Chivas Regal rather than Crown Royal. My eye saw one thing and my fingers typed the other.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say that the "age statement imply all the whiskies in a bottle, grain whiskies included." If by "grain whiskies" you mean neutral spirits (which is to say ethanol of more than 190 proof, often used in blended alcoholic beverages and commonly produced in a continuous still) I think you are mistaken if you think these are also aged 50 years. The whole point of using neutral spirits in blended scotch is that they are relatively flavorless and smooth out the flavor of the whisky by diluting the strong flavored single malts. What would be the point of aging them? I was recently at a tasting and presentation of Johnnie Walker Black in which the entire blending process was discussed at some length, and they never said anything about aging the neutral spirits.
Neutral spirits are a part of every single blended scotch whisky. Blends comprised exclusively of malt whiskys are called "vatted" rather than "blended." According to what I have read about blended scotch, they typically contain 20% to 50% malt whisky with the rest being neutral spirits. Canadian whisky is, of course, another matter entirely and has its own laws and regulations.
BTW, Booker is not aged for very long, about 8 years I think. Try also Knob Creek 9 y.o. 100 proof also from Jim Beam small batch bourbon range. Maker's Mark is a good starting point bourbon whiskey too.You're correct that Booker's is aged around 8 years. This is a long time for bourbon, as the charring of the barrels imparts much more wood aging flavor in a short period of time (Jim Beam is normally aged 4 years, and only 2 are required by law). Booker's is Jim Beam's small batch flagship brand. These are the barrels that the master distiller reserves in the best part of the warehouse and determines to be the cream of the crop. Personally, I think it has the strongest flavor and fullest mouthfeel... but any one of the Jim Beam small batch bourbons (which are all made from the exact same whisky coming out of the still, simply aged and treated differently) should be very good: Baker's, Booker's, Basil Hayden and Knob Creek. Maker's Mark, IMO, is a great mixing bourbon (the house bourbon chez moi) but isn't really so special that I'd carry a bottle across the water for someone.
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I'm now looking to add to my cast iron collection.
Lodge is the only manufacturer of cast iron cookware left, but there used to be quite a few. For the really heavy duty stuff, Griswold is highly prized. Take a look around eBay and you will likely find plenty of Griswold cast iron for same at reasonable prices.
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I will NOT buy one of those cheaper, lightweight grill pans that I have been thinking about.
I WILL buy a Lodge!
Rock on, brother. You're one step closer to qualifying for the secret eGullet handshake.
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In this way, anything that is fermentable/distillable can be used to produce Vodka. The reason that most vodkas are made using grain, is because it is by far the cheapest way to arrive at a distillable product.
And then there's the new Soylent Vodka everyone's talking about. That uses...
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Grappa and Marc are distilled from the "must" left over from the winemaking process. This consists lategely of grape skins, stems and the like.
Fundamentally, one can make vodka out of just about anything so long as it is refined to the point where it loses any particularly distinctive flavor, color and mouthfeel. Someone made the point on these forums recently that the water used to dilute vodka down to bottle proof probaby has as much, if not more influence over the character of the finished product than the ingredients that were distilled.
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Let me see if I understand... home is presumably overseas, right?
Yes it is. American bourbon.. hmm... Just as another data point my hubby reminded me that Dad loves Royal Salute.. (I assume you all know what it is even if I dont
) Royal Salute is a special, super-expensive kind of Crown Royal aged 50 years (although one can't really say how long a blended has been aged, since the neutral spirits in the blend are not aged at all -- presumably this means that some of the malts in the blend were aged 50 years). $250 or so a bottle, which strikes me as obscenely expensive for blended scotch considering that you could get 25 year old Springbank single malt for less than that.
Booker's, on the other hand, is <$60 a bottle.
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Let me see if I understand... home is presumably overseas, right?
If so, I think it makes the most sense to get him some American whiskey which, for all intents and purposes, means Bourbon. Personally, I think Booker's whiskey is one of the best and most interesting whiskeys money can buy. It's aged extra-long and is bottled at cask strength right out of the barrel without filtering.
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FWIW, I do something like this.
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I know it wasn't one of your original choices, but I have to second Aberlour. I can get it for under $30 in NJ, and it stands up time after time in blind tastings with outrageously priced scotchs and amongst scotch "snobs." If you can find it, it's so worth picking it up to try.
I third Aberlour being good stuff.
That said... I'd like to point out that, for under 40 dollars you can get things like The Macallen 12 ($39), Laphroaig 10 ($37) and Highland Park 12 ($37). These are outstanding malts. Highland Park in particular I think is one of the best single malts made. So, for a few dollars you can get a big jump up from the likes of Glenmorangie, Glenlivet and Glendiffich.
(NB. these prices are from Sherry-Lehman, an expensive NYC liquor store. I assume better prices can be found.)
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I'd start with the Glenlivet, that traditionally is the best of the region.
You really think so? I've never been much of a Glenlivet fan.
I had always thought Glenlivet's profile was so large because they were the first single malt to do large scale advertising and exporting. As a result, especially in America, Glenlivet became the first single male scotch of which many people were aware. Since the jump from Dewar's, et al. to just about any single malt is such a large one in terms of guality and flavor, Glenlivet became the "best" scotch before things like The Macallan, Highland Park and Lagavullin became relatively ubiquitous. It helped, I think, that Glenlivet is a relatively unchallenging malt. Glenfiddich, I believe, was the second scotch to jump on this bandwagon.
Anyway, that's my two cents. I agree with David that Glenmorangie is the cream of that crop. I don't think any one of the three is particularly interesting, but they all would work fine as an introduction to the world of single malt scotch... better yet might be to track down a whole bunch of smaller bottles in a range of styles to taste the range.
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Thanks for your kind thoughts, Greg. Welcome to eGullet and I hope you decide to stick around and poke your nose into a few of our other forums. We have a strong, expert and informed group of members from the midwest -- so you might try asking around the midwest forums about places to buy cookware in Chicago, etc. You never know what these guys can turn up. Even a lot of long-time New Yorkers don't know about Bridge Kitchenware, for example. I recently read on the forums about some great places in the Twin Cities to buy salt water fish, which is something I might not have expected in a city so far from the ocean and something I bet many Minneapolis-dwellers don't know about either. Who knew? That's why this is a cool place to hang around.
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I do not believe the smoke is from the seasoning burning off. I say this because the seasoning on my grill pan appears to be perfectly intact, and I almost always use it on the highest output of an extra-strong burner.
Suzanne, it is absolutely a fact that you can burn seasoning. For example, if you put a cast iron pan in an electric oven and set it to "self clean" the seasoning will be entirely burned off. This is the recommended procedure for "restarting the seasoning" when the original seasoning is damaged.
As I said before, there is definitely a darkening with "seasoning-like" appearance that happens through extra high heat cooking, and I have little doubt that there are some elements of seasoning that are retained in a grill pan that is consistently heated to the point of smoking and used over extra high heat. But I also don't think this is quite the same thing as the seasoning I have in my other cast iron pans. It is relatively well accepted, I think, that extra high-heat cooking is bad for seasoning as it is usually understood and implemented, and most people seem to believe that you can "ruin" several decades worth of careful seasoning by heating an empty cast iron pan too hot.
That said, I also doubt it is the case that extra high heat cooking burns of all of the seasoning, so I suppose a certain amount does remain. In any event, I would imagine that the extent to which the seasoning is burned is highly dependent on the amount of time the pan remains at high heat before the food is introduced, as the "cooling" action of the food may protect the seasoning to one degree or another. If the food goes in before the pan gets smoking hot, there may be relatively little burning of the seasoning.
I DO know that smoke comes first from bits of food from the previous use not completely cleaned off, and second from the vaporizing juices of whatever I'm cooking.Two things here:
First, I hope I am not being misunderstood when I speak of a smoking pan. What I am talking about is a pan that smokes when it is empty. Obviously there is a certain amount of smoke that is generated from the food once it is put into the pan.
Second, assuming the grill pan is cleaned reasonably well after each use -- and I naturally assume this is the case with your pan -- I would think that the amount of actual food residue left behind is negligible and unlikely to create much smoke. Whatever smoke-creating food residue that does exist should burn up and cease smoking fairly quickly. This has always been the case, for example, when I have decided to reuse a stainless-lined skillet I had just used and didn't bother cleaning it out before slapping it on the burner to preheat again. And, in these cases there was clearly a visible residue from the previous use in the pan. When one cleans a cast iron pan, one generally makes sure that no visible residue is left behind. All this is to say that I think it's unlikely that a significant amount of the smoke coming off an empty grill pan is from food residue (other than the food residue that creates seasoning). Given what is understood about seasoning, it seems reasonable to conclude that a significant amount of the smoke coming off an empty seasoned cast iron pan preheated to high temperature is coming from the seasoning itself.
And as time passes and I use the pan more and more -- and clean it thoroughly after use -- that initial smoking has diminished.I'd be interested to know how you're cleaning the pan and whether or not this effect might be due to the fact that you are preventing the usual seasoning build-up. I know that my smoking has also diminished over the years, and largely attribute it to my cleaning techniques. Once I get the food out of the pan, I like to pour in some water and perhaps a touch of dish soap to boil up as much residue as possible -- pouring the whole thing into the sink while it's still bubbling furiously. Then, after dinner when the pan has cooled down I scrape it out with a stainless scouring tool and a little water, after which I put the pan back on high heat for a minute or so to dry the pan off. Usually there is no smoking during this second heating. After that, I wipe the pan down with an oil-moistened cloth to prevent rusting and hang it back up. My grill pan smokes a lot less since I started treating it this way than it did when I treated it like my other cast iron pans and actively tried to build up the seasoning.
Again, I don't necessarily advocate taking extreme steps to prevent seasoning to build up. It is the nature of cast iron that a certain amount of seasoning or seasoning-like effects will happen on the surface of the pan over time.
Oh well... when it's all said and done, people should just do what makes them happy. I doubt there is a definitive answer to what one should do, as it depends on one's stove, usage, etc. And I understand that my thoughts on leaving cast iron unseasoned for extra high heat cooking go against a certain amount of cast iron dogma. Perhaps it will be my fate to be boiled in oil in a well-seasoned cast iron cauldron as a heretic.
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My experience wrt. copper pans:
Some weeks ago, I ordered two heavy copper SSL pans at Dehillerin, Paris.
A 8-inch sauce pan an a 8-inch saute pan. Both are meant to prepare food for two persons.
Hi Boris!
Thanks so much for relating the experiences with your new heavy copper pans. I'm glad to hear you are enjoying them. It would be a little awkward if I had been saying so many good things about copper and you had said, "This stuff sucks! Damn you eGullet for recommending copper!"
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Mr. Kinsey-
I have a few small questions to ask you, about cookware. Your comments on this website have been insightful, extremely well-articulated, and enormously helpful to me. As an amateur chef, I have been seeking to learn more about cooking for almost two decades, and I've found few websites, or books, that have been as effective as your comments in helping me gain a better understanding of cooking techniques.
Hi there, person with inscrutable handle!
Thanks for your kind remarks, and I'll see if I can address some of your questions below.You have stated that your 11 inch curved sauteuse evasee is perhaps your best and most versatile pan. I've carefully investigated the products made by Mauviel, Bourgeat, and Falk Culinair, and Falk seems to be the only company that makes an 11 inch curved sauteuse evasee. Is this correct?Nope. Bourgeat makes one too. That said, if you can get an amazing deal on a Mauviel "regular" sauteuse evasee, there's no reason not to get one of those instead.
At Dehillerin, I was shown the Mauviel 11 inch Rondeau, lidded, with very high sides and a stated 7.5 liter capacity. It was so big, and so heavy, I concluded that I would not often need a pan that large, given that I rarely cook for more than two.Right. That sounds like probably more Rondeau than you need.
However, I am strongly interested by the 11 inch Mauviel saute, the commercial-grade, with cast-iron stem. I cook pasta regularly, and this pan would enable me to add the pasta to the sauce and finish it. It seems like a wonderful pan, and large enough, to cook an entire chicken, or to use for cooking Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic, Chicken Marsala, various fish entrees, and related dishes, but small enough to be useful for lesser quantities of food. In short, quite versatile.Would you consider this pan to be a good choice for a first experience with top-quality copper cookware?
Absolutely! This is a great first choice pan for all the reasons you describe and many more. You should get it.
My 8 quart Calphalon stockpot is serviceable for simmering stocks on a snowy Sunday, but I intend to get a larger, cheap stainless stockpot soon.Good instinct. Go for something at 12+ quarts, and try to get one with a disk bottom.
However, my 2.5 quart Calphalon saucepan, though a nice size, drips, and I'd love to replace it with something better. Would you recommend a flared saucepan, if I wanted to go the copper route on that? Would 2.5 quarts roughly, be a good size pan to get, or should I be thinking of a slightly larger pan?It really depends on what you want to use it for. Do you find that the 2.5 quart size is useful to you? What do you plan to use the pan for? If you want to sauces and do reductions, and it's something you do fairly frequently in a pan of that size, then a heavy copper sauteuse evasee (aka flared saucepan) might be a good choice. On the other hand, it may be the case that you use the 2.5 quart pan mostly for reheating stuff, boiling/steaming and thin liquids. In that case, heavy copper would be a bit of a waste and you might do better with a disk bottom design. If that is the case with the 2.5 quart pan, but you do want a heavy copper pan for making sauces and doing reductions, you might want to consider getting a smaller saucepan or sauteuse evasee (say, 1 to 1.5 quarts).
I hope this helps you somewhat. Please feel free to follow up with more details and questions if there is more information you would like.
...and let us know how you like that copper saute pan!
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You might notice that newscasters all speak with the midwestern non-accent. Or at least the central OH non-accent. I would take that to mean that it is the most non-accented way to speak American. So anyone who pronounces things differently from the newscasters is wrong.
I have actually heard this said about many different locales... usually the locale in which the person saying it resides. I had always heard growing up that newscasters used "unaccented Eastern Seaboard English." It would make sense that I would hear that, as I grew up on the Eastern Seaboard.
I've lived and spent time in just about every major region of the United States, and what I have gleaned is that every single one of them has some kind of distinctive regional accent. Now... does this mean that everyone in those regions speaks with the accent? In my experience, no. My father, for example, grew up in rural West Texan, lived in Boston for 30 years and now lives in Houston. There is not, nor has there ever been, the slightest hint of an accent in his speaking voice. Similarly, most people who know me would say that I don't have any regional accent, despite the fact that I grew up in a city with one of the thickest and most distinctive accents, and lived for five years in a part of Wisconsin known for its regional accent.
Generally -- but not always, of course -- one finds that regional accents are less prominent among people from higher social and socioeconomic strata (especially among the "vieux riches" as opposed to the "nouveaux riches"), and among people with higher levels of education. There are plenty of counterexamples, of course (Bill Clinton, for example, is highly educated), but I have found this to be a reasonably reliable rule of thumb.
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If you're not using the pan at high heat, then undoubtedly the seasoning is building up and staying on -- so it's definitely not an "I'm right and you're wrong" situation. You are definitely right in the context of your use of the pan.
That said, if you find smoke coming out of the pan after preheating it empty over high heat for 5-7 minutes, that smoke is coming from the seasoning burning off. There are no two ways about it -- that's what's happening.
Now... this is not to say that a grill pan used consistently over high heat doesn't eventually turn black and take on many of the superficial trappings of seasoning. This is from the carbonized oil and whatever else that ends up sticking to the pores in the iron. But it never does take on the slick, smooth, slightly shiny look of well and truly seasoned cast iron. Again, if you don't use high heat, it's a completely different story.
In re to FG's suggestion of anodized aluminum... I'm not so sure I'm down with that. Aluminum has a significantly lower specific heat per unit volume than iron -- so low, in fact, that an aluminum pan would have to be several times thicker than an iron pan to have a similar heat capacity. Heat capacity, as explained in my eGCI cookware tutorial, is especially important when cooking foods where you want the heat to start high and stay high throughout. On the other hand, since the actual surface contact is so small in a grill pan it's possible that the influence of heat capacity is mitigated somewhat, in which case aluminum might have some advantages due to its having much better thermal conductivity.
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I'd like to be the voice of dissent here and explain why I don't think seasoning is important or even desirable on a grill pan:
1. If you are using the grill pan appropriately -- which is to say, heated until screaming hot -- (a.) real seasoning will never develop, only a carbonized coating; (b.) any "seasoning" that does build up will burn and be damaged every time the pan is subjected to extremely high heat (which should be always) -- this is why "seasoned" cast iron grill pans smoke so much even before there is any food in them.
2. The main advantages of proper seasoning are (a.) makes the pan less reactive, which prevents rusting and also mitigates food reactions to some degree; and (b.) imparts a certain amount of "nonstickness" to the pan.
These advantages do not particularly apply to cast iron grill pans for a variety of reasons: (a.) as explained above, it is virtually impossible to build up and maintain good seasoning that confers the advantages described above on a grill pan if it is being used with appropriately high heat; (b.) because grill pans are not used to cook foods where chemical reactions with the food are a concern, the reduction in reactivity conferred by seasoning is not important (I'll get to rust later); and (c.) due to the fact that the food is only contacting a tiny surface area of the pan (the ribs), and at very high heat, sticking to the pan is not a significant concern -- especially if the food is lightly oiled before putting it in the preheated grill pan.
So, really the only advantage of seasoning in a grill pan, as I see it, is the prevention of rust. For that, I simply wipe on a thin coating of oil before I put the pan away. This is not to say that I think one should actively try to keep the pan totally raw, but I think it doesn't make sense to go to the trouble one normally takes to build up and maintain seasoning. This means that I think it's ok to clean the pan with water, detergent and a scouring pad after use, and I don't think one should bother going through all the rigmarole of brushing the pan with Crisco and baking it in the oven and all the other things that go along with seasoning. In my experience, the more "seasoned" a grill pan is, the more smoky it is. And, in my apartment anyway, using the grill pan is smoky enough without the additional smoke created by burning away some seasoning.
(NB. Of course, this doesn't apply if you don't use the grill pan over super-high heat, but IMO it doesn't make much sense to use it any other way.)
Wild Fennel ("finocchietti selvatici")
in Cooking
Posted
Excuse me while I drool. This is one of the best dishes ever.