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That fig and prosciutto pie sounds very tasty. I finally tried Tutti Bella last week. It was pretty decent though I think I like Via Tribunali vbetter. The crust at the latter has a smokier richer flavor than at Tutti Bella. -Amir

Fero's Meats, at Pike Place Market (where Crystal Meats used to be) carries fresh goat meat (I think it's halal too).

I get my knives sharpened by Antonio Knoy who runs Seattle Sharpening. He totes his sharpening rig around town to do work for restaraunts and will, I believe, make housecalls. Last I knew he charged $3/blade and will also do scissors and the like. He's been handling my knives for a couple of years. I've also had him put new tips on a couple that were mishandled by people and taper the heel of my Wusthof Chef's knife to more smoothly meld into the blade edge. http://www.seattlesharpening.com/ The street address listed there no longer applies but the email address and phone number are still correct.

I would wager that *cringe* I Love Sushi wopuld do quite well. Lots of people love it. I think it's garbage.

It became legal to sell raw milk in Washignton just in the last few months. I recall hearing of a place getting ready to start bottling it. Need to find out who it was.

I am a big fan of the OK Corral which, as I understand it, is Georgia style BBQ. Yum.

I'm a big fan of Uli's for brats and that sort of thing. Hell, there's a born and bred 'Scony as one of his chief guys and he approves.

I just tried a slice at Zagi's a few days ago. Terrible. Like the cheap crappy pizza I ate in college. Ginormous slices with lousy cheese, huge pools of grease that poured off as I picked the slice up and crust so dry it crumbled when I bit into the edge. Granted this was a slice and who knows how long it had been sitting there - I'm sure the crust is a lot better on a fresh pie. I'm sure the grease is not. Still, it reminded me instantly of the cheap joint I used to go in college to get monstrously-large slices of pizza for very little money. Except that Zagi's was less cheap (inflation I suppose). I might at some point go back and actually order a pie to see if it's any better when fresh and made to order. I suspect it will still be very weak. I think it's trying to be the sort of pizza that Hot mama's is and while the latter is by no means stupendous, it is tasty and cheap and brings to mind random pizza joints in nyc - the little no-name jobbies that were never great but tended to at least be servicable and convenient.

Yes, grilled on some nice bread with red onion, mustard and spinach. Or, break them up and use in a pasta sauce. Yum.

This is my first stab at gardening. I have some sugar snap peas growing in the yard now (need to do some more work on the bamboo and twine trellis I built for them) and a bunch of tomatoes potted out on the deck. I do worry that it's a tad cold yet for the tomatoes but we'll see. Need to get cages for them rolling this weekend. The tomatoes are one each of green zebra, juliet, dona, orange sunburst, yellow pear and sweet million.

You can maker a basic fresh chevre. it'll be more mild than one made with non-UHT milk but still servicable as a spread or a ricotta substitute in lasagna or the like.

I made this ahi tataki a few weeks ago. One of my better platings, though it still feels a tad sloppy.

The use of milk for stregthening and repairing clay pots may be due to the casein in it. Apparently (my coworker learned this the WSU Cheesemaking Short Course last week) casein, which is one of the primary proteins in milk, dries very much like Elmer's glue. So, it may be the binding action of this protein in drying that makes this work. They were telling the class this in terms of the importance of cleaning the equipment as rapidly as possible so that nothing can dry on.

I had skate once at a restaraunt (Crave) and it was incredibly tender and delicious. Thoroughly fantastic. I tried making it at home and made the mistake of mot specifying to my fish guy that I wanted a small piece with cartilege removed. I wound up with a whole frickin wing and it was the freakiest food item I've ever attempted to handle. It felt like the fdorsal fin of some sort of strange alien creature. My attempt was an abject failure. I will try again at some point with amore managable piece.

The new place near me is called Zagi's and there's a little review (and mention of this discussion thread!) in this week's Belltown Messenger. "Super-foodie site eGullet.org has over 150 entries on the search for New York-style pizza in Seattle." http://www.belltownmessenger.com/032005/032005-ronald.html

I had some fantastic skate a few months ago at a restaraunt here called Crave. it was incredibly tender and delicious. I tried making some at home but I got way too big a piece to handle and made the mistake of not having my fishmonger remove the cartiledge and such. I must say that raw skate is about the freakiest thing I've ever handled. It was like a fin taken from some sort of bizarre alien life form.

Wine refrigerators can be used for the first week of aging of bloomy-rinded cheeses. You can set them up into the 50's and put in a bowl of water to maintain the humidity. They do not tend to hold the most consistent temperatures (at least the cheap ones I've seen). They vary by as much as 10 degrees between the top and bottom shelves and cycle up and down over a range of a few degrees as they go through defrost cycles. I haven't noticed any problems from these temperature issues so far.

Casuelita's, on Western and Vine, has a ceviche dish. I think it's proawns. I haven;t tried it yet but everythign else that I've eaten there has been excellent.

I've considered it. As I said, Via Tribubali scatches that itch for me and there are other pizza shops in town that I rather like (Il Forno, Hot Mama's, and Toscana off the top of my head) - Pag's is just not one of them.

So, for the last couple of years I've been very much wanting a firebox smoker. You knowm the sort that has the heat and smoke source in a box mounted on the side of the grill so that the heat is indirect and allows for a long slow smoking. I'm aiming to try and keep the cost down to the neighborhood of $100. I've seen the Amierican Gourmet Deluxe Smoker at Home Despot and it seems like a fiarly reasonable choice. Any other recommendations on places to look in town to acquire such a device?

The Kasbah Moroccan Restaraunt has just opened tonight on 85th just off 15th Ave NW. Looks beautiful through the windows. The one Moroccan restaraunteaur I've managed to ask about the place (Zack, co-owner, with his wife, of Jasmine down at Pike Place) and he says he knows the cook and that the guy is good. See the ISO Dining COmpanions for tasting plans.

Actually, we're not carrying any supplies anymore as it required a pretty hefty amount of training for the staff for products that sold very little. New England Cheese Making Supply is a great resource. For more advanced goods (i.e. when you start wanting more sophisticated equipment, specific culture strains and such) is the Glengarry Cheesemaking & Dairy Supply Website. They are also a great resource for things like high-grade wrap for soft cheeses. There are also some small-scale cheese producers out on the peninsula. I think that the Estrella Family cheese company is there. They make some lovely cheeses and have been getting a lot of great press lately. I'll do my best to answer any questions.

THere's apparently some new NY style pizza place (so they claim anyway) up here in Greenwood/Crown Hill. There was a flier posted by my bus stop. I will attempt to investigate more closely sometime soon.

Well, I like Chicago-style pizza as well. I tend to find Paggliachi's to lack flavor and be too goopy with cheese. I think to some degree it's a question of ingredient quality (which is why the Salumi pies make me consider tryign them out again). The pizza I love isn't just good because it's done in the style I like but because it has incredibly fresh and high-quality ingredients. While Pag's certainly tends to use better stuff than pizza hut or the like it's still not up to what I love at Grimaldi's. Via Tribunali scratches my NYC pizza itch (though they appear to use canned mushrooms on their funghi pie which seems a little sad for a $9 one-person pizza). I also quite enjoy the pizza at Il Forno (that tiny little place on Olive just above I-5), Toscana, Hot Mama's and a couple other places and while none of them satisfy my NY pizza cravings, I do enjoy eating thieir stuff. Pagliacci has just always rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it's time to give them another go as it's been a while.

Dammit, it sounds like I may need to try this stuff. I love the finnochiona from Salumi and take some hom enearly every time I go in (which is to say once every week or two). I generally cannot stand pagliacci though. I find their "pizza" to be just downright terrible. Inedible - I'd rather go hungry than go there. I am admittedly a Brooklyn pizza snob so ymmv. But, for the Salumi pizza, I will try it again. I will need to see if the pagliacchi near me (on 85th in Crown Hill) has it. Otherwise I'll hit the Broadway one the next time I'm on cap hill.