slkinsey

Yes! I love Hoegaarden. I was actually quite sad to learn that the Celis Brewery in Austin, Texas had gone out of business. Pierre Celis was almost singlehandedly responsible for reviving the witbier style and I thought Celis White was even better than Hoegaarden (Pierre Celis was the original owner of the brewery that makes Hoegaarden). Unfortunately, Celis entered into a partnership with Miller which eventually acquired 100% of the business and decided to close the brewery and sell off everything. Anyway, I hear that some other company may have acquired the equipment/trademark and will revive the brand. I have not heard whether this will happen or, if it has, what the results have been like. I love all kinds of wheat beer, although I have never been able to get a hefeweizen either in America or in a bottle that came close to what I drink from the tap when in Bavaria.

Interesting what they say on the Esperya site about Guanciale: I can agree with the use of guanciale and pecorino -- although I think it is acceptable if not preferred to use pancetta and parmigiano -- but the adminitions against bucatini and onions struck me as very odd. I don't think I have ever eaten this dish in Italy when it hasn't included these two ingredients. In fact, I always thought it was Bucatini all'Amatriciana. Thoughts? Link to recipe on Babbo website: clickare qui.

Although I am not always a huge fan of TVFN stuff, I have found Alton Brown's method for grilling salmon steaks to work really well. This ends up giving you a little "fillet mignon" shape of salmon that is easy to handle on the grill, and you don't have to worry about the flap parts falling off or overcooking. When you remove the fish from the heat and take off the string, the skin comes right off with it.

I always thought they used to use beef tallow. What's the differene between beef tallow and lard? Is lard from a pig and beef tallow expressly from cows? Yes. Lard is pig fat and tallow is cow or sheep fat. From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary I don't know if I totally agree with the tallow definition, though.

Why is it so cited, if your interpretations are accurate? Surely, there must be more to it than that. Perhaps someone could provide a link to the WHO's full report on their study. The reason it is cited a lot is because of politics, which is exactly the same reason the pro-tobacco people always cite the flawed study posted by MatthewB earlier in this thread. Both sides think that the respective studies prove their particular points. It is also political of pogophiles to post this "debunking" as some kind of proof that there is nothing wrong with secondhand smoke. The fact of the matter is that both studies are flawed to the point where they are meaningless because -- please listen closely everyone so I don't have to keep repeating this -- the smoking status of spouses and parents is not a good indicator of one's exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, and it is in fact very difficult to quantify ETS exposure of any kind. Guess what this means to both pro-tobacco and anti-tobacco people... it means that studies about secondhand smoke that use these things as a measure of exposure to EST aren't worth the paper they're printed on. In fact, one of the big problems with all of the secondhand smoke studies is obtaining a proper measure of both esposure to EST and likewise figuring out how and when to judge the health outcomes. For example, one of the big problems with judging childhood exposure is that until recently pretty much everyone was exposed to a fair amount of secondhand smoke. The same holds true for workplace exposure. This makes it very difficult to figure out just how much more secondhand smoke certain people got relative to others. In fact, if one is examining the effects of childhood exposure to ETS for people born in the 40s or 50s, the exposure they got from their parents may be fairly insignificant compared to what they were getting from other sources, especially when one factors in the significance of ETS exposure following childhood. This would tend to obscure the statistical significance of any results that used the smoking habits of the parents as an independent variable. Further complicating matters is the fact that these studies typically look at the effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers, which in the case of the children of smokers excludes the very large number of such children who go on to become active smokers themselves. And, of course, there is a significant question as to whether a study is truly evaluating all the potential negative effects of the ETS exposure (as opposed to just one) and whether the subjects are old enough for these effects to have manifested. The point of all this is that there are a million reasons why studies like this can show different kinds of results and why the statistics are not always very significant from a purely statistical standpoint. This should be blatantly obvious to anyone who understands research methods. This is, needless to say, not great news for someone who wants to use or attack a study of this kind for political purposes. You will note that I have not cited this kind of study to support my position. That said, the controlled animal experiments of which I am aware all strongly support the hypothesis that exposure to secondhand smoke is dangerous to one's health. Of course one always runs into the tired argument of "these are rats, not humans, and it's not really like that in the real world... how do we know it will be anything like that with humans?" This is why I find the cat study I cited earlier -- and which I note none of the pro-tobacco folks here has mentioned in their rebuttals -- particuarly persuasive as it links real-world exposure to secondhand smoke with the incidence of cancer in cats. Especially interesting is the fact that the results showed a linear effect that was dependent on the level of exposure. In layman's terms, this means that the more the cat's owner smoked, the more likely it was that the cat would develop cancer. That strikes me as pretty persuasive evidence. As to Tremor's assertion that there is no evidence that breathing secondhand smoke is any worse that breathing the air in NYC or LA, I think there is plenty of evidence. Can you really be serious? Are you really trying to tell me that you think spending 12 hours a day in a smoke-filled bar and 12 in my UWS apartment breathing regular NYC air would be no worse for me than spending all 24 hours breathing my regular apartment air? I mean, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but that is either deliberately obtuse or hopelessly naive. Most people would agree that smoking a cigarette is worse for your health than not smoking a cigarette, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that spending 8-12 hours in a room full of tobacco smoke is at least equal to smoking one cigarette a day. This is what I am trying to figure out: Do you pro-tobacco people think that smoking is not bad for your health? Do you think that all the things in tobacco smoke that make it bad for your health are magically 100% absorbed into the lungs of the smoker, and that none of these things enters the environment when the smoke is exhaled? Do you think that all the tobacco smoke, or even most of the tobacco smoke from a cigarette passes first through the lungs of the smoker before entering the environment? If your answer to these questions is "no" -- and I have a hard time seing how they could fail to be -- then it is reasonable to conclude that long-term exposure to secondhand smoke is bad for one's health. I am absolutely not saying that I think smoking should be outlawed or banned, and I am not saying that the NYC law is the perfect solution. I have been known to smoke a cigar from time to time myself. What I am saying that the scientific evidence points strongly to ETS having negative health effects and I do think it is reasonable to protect people in the workplace from prolonged exposure. So, to me, the debate is not whether secondhand tobacco smoke is bad for you. It is silly to think otherwise. The question is what measures are reasonable measures to protect people from ETS health effects. Tobacco consumption is a fairly unique "vice," because one can indulge in most others without having the mere act of indulging transfer some of your "vice" to those around you, whether they want it or not. None of the alcohol in your martini or the calories in your 32 ounce steak or the smut in your tentacle porn or the heroin in your needle is automatically transferred in part to the person sitting next to you or standing across the bar. Tobacco smoke is. Now, I've been in plenty of NYC bars, and almost all of them were enveloped in a thick fog of tobacco smoke. There is no way this can't be bad for the people who have to spend their working lives in that environment.

I always thought they used to use beef tallow.

Ah, I forgot about them! Good place, nice people. I got very good whole Bottarga di Muggine from them some time ago.

I have found that with recipes, it is usually fairly easy to tell whether it is totally original or based on a published recipe. Most truly original home recipes look something like this: "Home" recipes that are really cookbook recipes look more like this: Anything that calls for precisely measured amounts (except for baking), especially if it tells you how many it serves, is unlikely to be "authentic" even if it has been in the family for years. Anything that calls for things to be added according to a number of "tomato cans" of a certain ingredient is much more likely to be real. Think about the way you usually cook when you are making dishes of your own invention... do you have any idea how many teaspoons of this and that are in it? I certainly don't.

Yea, I have often found it interesting that Americans confuse the different kinds of tea and somehow got to thinking that "high tea" is a dainty meal for the British upper classes when in fact the opposite is true. I doubt very much that the radish sandwich as described by Newman would be served at an authentic "high tea." Still... I'm going to be making some radish sandwiches as soon as I can get down to the Green Market.

There's an article and recipe for Orechiette Carbonara by Suzanne Goin in today's New York Times Food Section Yea... I saw that in the Times this morning. Maybe I'm a purist, but I have to admit that my first thought was, "I don't know what that is, but it's not Carbonara." In my world, a dish is a dish -- you can't go changing it to something else and continue to call it by the old name. Carbonara (leaving out for the time being that it is spaghetti alla carbonara) is pasta, pecorino/parmigiano (in order of preference), guanciale/pancetta/bacon (in order of preference), raw egg and cracked pepper. Period. Similarly, there is no such thing as a potato "lasagna" and that drink that contains not a drop of gin or vermouth is not a "martini." On the other hand, my second thought was "hmmmm.... that sounds pretty tasty." In a related tangent, although I have never been served spaghetti alla carbonara this way in Italy, I am rather fond of doing it the way Mario Batali does: separating the eggs, making the sauce with the whites and putting one raw yolk on top of each serving to be mixed in at the table. Anyone else try this?

One more response for me too! First, I'd like to point out that the science concerning the health risks associated with smoking and passive exposure to tobacco smoke is not exactly inconclusive, tobacco industry-sponsored studies notwithstanding. The scientific/medical community is pretty well lined up in the "it's bad for you" camp. The tobacco companies want to make it look like there is controversy, but really there isn't. To make a few examples, the author of the study you linked to is funded by the tobacco companies. It's also too bad that you didn't find your way to rebuttals and comments like this one. Among the author's comments are these telling sentences: "It is not being married to a smoker—the indicator of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke used in the paper by Enstrom and Kabat—that leads to disease; rather, it is the inhalation of environmental tobacco smoke. As an indicator of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke the smoking status of spouses is a highly approximate measure." You might also want to peruse the "rapid responses" posted to the bmj.com web site by readers of the Journal. Among the many critical comments was a link the the following letter from the American Medical Association to the author of your study explaining that it was declined for publication and saying that "[we] believe that this opinion piece is full of speculative assumptions of doubtful scientific value. We could not judge the merit of your criticisms because your own data and methods were so inadequately described. I should add that your article contains perjorative comments that should have no place in responsible scientific discourse." So, I agree that a lot of the debate is about big corporate dollars... but it is the tobacco companies that are stacking the deck on this one.

I think there are several things here. It does indeed get more complicated with human beings reporting behavior, and it is possible that the subjects are exposed to lung cancer risks other than secondhand smoke from their husbands. That said, just because the human element "could lead to erroneous or misleading results" does not necessarily mean one should throw the baby out with the bathwater and automatically discount all results from all studiesinvolving data of this kind. This is one reason why the cat study is a good one. These are indoor cats which have pretty much the same cancer risk as all other indoor cats except for the varying levels of exposure to secondhand smoke from their owners. The only way to get a tighter experiment would be to set up controlled groups of cats and have smokers breathe varying levels of secondhand smoke into their environments. As for public policy and secondhand smoke, I think one has to understand the variables and make some reasonable assumptions. We know that secondhand smoke is bad for you. Just how bad it is, we don't know, but studies have demonstrated that nonsmokers (both people and animals) who live with smokers are at increased risk for certain health problems. I think most of us would agree that this is the case. Now, think about the amount of smoke a nonsmoker living with a smoker is exposed to... What, maybe 20-40 cigarettes a day, maximum? A bartender could easily be exposed to 40 cigarettes an hour throughout the length of a shift. Given the foregoing, some public policy changes seem reasonable to me. Now, as other people have pointed out, any time changes are made there are going to be some losers. There were losers when the government stopped the use of asbestos. It is possible that Tony Bourdain's working class bar may never recover economically from the smoking ban. This is too bad, but strikes me as somewhat inevitable. My feeling is that most bar smoker/drinkers will adapt and learn to live with it, and most businesses will rebound. I also appreciate his somewhat romantic take on bars as a place where one goes to do bad things to one's health, and it is too bad that his archetype may die out altogether. This too is inevitable, and the same thing happened to other subcultures when refrigeration came in and the health standards for meat were raised, etc., etc., etc. To me, the fundamental difference between smoking and most other unhealthy pursuits is that I can sit next to an alcoholic and not be forced to suffer for their addiction (ok, discounting breath). And I for one am glad to be able to go out and destroy my liver without destroying my lungs at the same time.

You never know - there are lots of people who don't eat pork, and not just Jews. And there are lots of Jews who don't keep strictly kosher (and would eat cookies in the office) but definitely won't eat pork (e.g. me) If I had eaten one of those cookies and you hadn't mentioned the lard, I would be really unhappy with you. Morale of the story: always mention ingredients people might have a problem with, unless you know (for sure). How is someone supposed to know what other people might have a problem eating? I mean, some people -- crazy people, I know -- don't eat butter. Some people don't eat products that come from certain parts of the world for political reasons. Some people don't eat refined sugar. If I make a bunch of chocolate chip cookies and take them to work, should I provide a list of ingredients for everyone? No, that just seems silly. In my opinion, if a person has certain dietary restrictions then it is incumbent upon him/her to inquire as to the ingredients before eating. This is pretty much standard practice among considerate vegetarians ("is there any meat broth in this onion soup?"), kosher or "kosher-lite" pork-free eaters ("is this a beef/kosher salami?") and people with food allergies ("was this cooked with peanut oil?"). If you have such a problem with pork that you would be seriously upset at eating a cookie prepared with lard, then my feeling is that you should ask before eating. I would also like to add that I know a number of pretty serious kosher and vegetarian types, and they all usually provide their own food or ask questions before trying any unfamiliar food. Similarly, in the few occasions when they discovered that they had eaten something they shouldn't have, they rolled with the punches and shook it off... they figured that neither YHWH nor the Big Vegetable in The Sky was going to hit them with a thunderbolt for eating a cookie with lard in it by mistake. That said, if I had prepared cookies containing lard and I knew you didn't eat pork, I'd try to tell you. If I didn't know, on the other hand, I don't think it's a requirement.

Ah... Well, I certainly don't believe that secondhand smoke is nearly as dangerous as firsthand, or that it is a surefire ticket to cancer and heart disease. I agree that some of the dangers of secondhand smoke have been exaggerated. But I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that secondhand smoke is bad for you, and most studies I have read seem to confirm that secondhand smoke negatively impacts one's health. Just how much of a negative impact it has is hard to quantify, especially as it is hard to properly gauge how much secondhand smoke a person is exposed to. Nevertheless, if you sit in a bar inhaling lots of secondhand smoke for an hour every day while you polish off a pint of Guinness, there is enough evidence to say it is an "absolute fact" that the smoke is a greater danger to your health than the alcohol... if for no other reason than the fact that the alcohol is supposed to be good for you and the smoke, regardless of how bad for you it may be, is still bad for you. One of the most interesting studies I read recently, and which recieved a fair amount of press, showed that cats living with owners who smoked (i.e., exposed to secondhand smoke) were far more likely to develop cancer than cats living with nonsmokers. Furthermore, "risk increased with both duration and quantity of exposure, with evidence of a linear trend." (Bertone ER, Snyder LA, Moore AS.; Environmental tobacco smoke and risk of malignant lymphoma in pet cats; Am J Epidemiol 2002 Aug 1;156(3):268-73). This, in my book, is pretty strong evidence that passive smoke inhalation and other kinds of exposure to secondhand smoke (skin contact, etc.) increase the risk of developing certain cancers, and that the more one is exposed to secondhand smoke the greater the risk factor. In light of that, it strikes me as reasonable to protect bar and restaurant employees from this risk. My apoligies if I overreacted earlier, as I am not used to seeing things I write characterized as a lie, although I understand now that your comment was more to the popular view of secondhand smoke than my post per se. Best regards to your ass as well.

"If repeated often enough, a lie will become the new truth." What?! Are you trying to suggest that this isn't true? Let's see.... All research points to the conclusion that moderate drinking to the tune of one drink a day is good for your health. Research also points out the health risks associated with inhaling second hand smoke. Hmmm... one thing is good for you, the other is bad for you. This, in my book, makes it a fact that the second hand smoke inhaled in a smoky bar is a greater danger to my health than the alcohol in the one drink I am consuming. So where is the lie exactly? Do you think all people who drink in bars are abusing alcohol? Or that all the health risks associated with tobacco smoke are somehow magically absorbed only by the smoker and that exhaled smoke is risk free? Or are you just talking out of your ass because you don't want to believe there's anything wrong with second hand smoke? Do you have anything to offer that contradicts the above?

I don't think it misses the mark at all. If one goes into a bar every day and has a pint or a glass of wine or shot or a cocktail, research is telling us that this is actually good for your health. So, no, prolonged alcohol use will not kill you. Prolonged alcohol abuse will kill you. These are two different things. And I think I can say without fear of contradiction that occasional smoking -- be that first-hand or second-hand -- will kill you faster than prolonged moderate alcohol consumption. As for second hand smoke in the bars... again, if I visit a smoke-filled bar every day and have a drink, it is an absolute fact that the second hand smoke is a far greater danger to my health than the alcohol consumption -- probably right in line after those bikers shooting pool who keep looking at my girlfriend. That said, the laws against smoking in bars aren't really meant to protect the customers anyway, they are meant to protect the employees. And, contrary to your assertion, it is, in fact, the government's business to protect employees in the workplace from as many ills as possible. I do think the smoking ban will affect business at many NYC bars, at least temporarily, and anectotal evidence tends to support this. This is because a lot of alcohol addicts are also nicotine addicts, and because of "social smokers."

Sounds like spaghetti cacio e pepe to me -- a Roman dish. It should be made only with sheep's milk cheese, IMO. Delicious and simple.

Although coal = carbone and charcoal = carbone di legna, the only dictionary reference I can find for the word carbonaro/a is for members of a quasi-secret society similar to Freemasonry, the Carbonari. A coal miner is simply a minatore di carbone. That said, "-aro" endings are indicative of an activity or profession, so clearly someone in the family had something to do with coal or charcoal. The materials I have seen on the Carbonari give carbonaro as "charcoal burner" (burner = maker) and this seems a reasonable assumption (it is odd that this meaning doesn't appear in the Zingarelli dictionary, though). Whether or not this is a dish that was associated with people who made charcoal, or whether the name is a more poetic allusion to the cracked pepper representing flakes of coal or ashes is a question for the philosophers... I am rather inclined towards the latter interpretation, which is why pepper is such an important part of the dish for me. I am not so sure whether I believe that many of these dishes were actually associated with the professions or activities after which they are named. Call me crazy, but I have a hard time imagining a common prostitute stirring anchovies in olive oil until they break down, adding tomato, capers, olives, etc... It is also interesting to note that most dishes so named are named after the woman in the case of dishes like penne all'arribbiata ("angry woman's penne" or "penne in the style of the angry woman") or the wife of the working man in the case of dishes like pollo alla cacciatora (hunter's wife's chicken -- strangely changed to "hunter's chicken" in America where it is known as "chicken cacciatore). Shows you who was doing all the cooking...

Dolsot bibimbap: scallions, julienned carrots, shitake mushrooms, spinach, mung bean sprouts (all prepared slightly differently), raw egg and rice -- all crisped up in my new stone bowls and drizzled with Korean chili paste diluted down to a sauce consistency. There are other things I probably would have thrown in, but that's what I had lying around the house. Anyone know of a good Korean cookbook they can recommend?

There was an article in Saveur about leaf lard not long ago.

I bet you could hide it in a cool spot in the basement and Mrs. Varmint would never know... Slap a label on that baby that says something like "organic tile caulk." Can you imagine deep frying chicken in pure lard? :droooooooooool:

Um... what he said. Seriously. I was pretty much thinking exactly the same thing. Second place would be raviolo di uova al tartufo bianco.

The quality of the lard can make a big difference. I can't imagine using those greasy, mealy bricks from the supermarket. I always get mine at Faicco's Pork Shop on Bleeker Street... keeps well in ther freezer.

No web site of which I am aware. If you'd ever been there... they don't exactly seem like a "web site" kind of place. Anyway, they do have a telephone number... and since they supply a lot of NYC restaurants with salumi, I am betting you could get them to fax you a price list and ship you some stuff. Besides their wonderful guanciale, and among many other things, they also have culatello, speck, cotechino and my favorite: zampone. I mean, how can you possibly go wrong with a sausage stuffed into a pig's foreleg?

I get mine at Salumeria Biellese, and it is quite good if not the best I have ever had. Guanciale is by far my favorite salume in the bacon/pancetta family. AFAIK, it is not widely known nor appreciated in the US. Wouldn't surprise me if it were unavailable by mail order. Beyond Carbonara, it is great in Bucatini all'Amatriciana and I like to use it when I make spaghetti with sauteed baby artichokes... Also wonderful sauteed with brussels sprouts.