chezcherie

the "tear and eat" system probably evolved from the "only butter one small piece of the roll" etiquette, i'm guessing. i bite.

please, sir--what is "gringe"? thanks, and thanks for the mouthwatering demo. now i got the need to knead! edited to add that i googled gringe, and was sorry i did...

there's a cornmeal and olive oil cake with lemon that is very nice, and seems the soul of tuscany. if only i could remember whose it was---maybe michael chiarello? but any riff with those ingredients would qualify, i'd think.

stupidly simple egg casserole: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put a tablespoon or so of butter in an ovenproof casserole (1 qt? i'm so bad at volume estimation...) , and stick it in the oven while it's preheating, so the butter melts and gets a bit nutty. Beat together 6 eggs. Stir in about a cup of grated cheese (your choice), 1/2 cup of creme fraiche or sour cream, 2 tablespoons flour. (from here, you can go nuts--i usually add slices on precooked sausage, like aidell's, sometimes roasted green chiles or salsa, etc.). Remove heated casserole from oven and pour mixture in. return to oven and bake until puffed and golden, about 35 minutes. Smells great, looks divine and tastes better.

this stuff, apparently, is good enough for the french laundry: grown up soda=GUS i tried some ginger this week at the fancy food show--dry and crisp...pretty tasty for soda!

we were there last february. i think thye had just opened a second location around the corner, but can't for the life of me recall the name.

new orleans menu lists herbsaint as open, and i'm just hoping mayhaw man mis-typed, as i know he knows whats up...my first sazerac was at herbsaint...sigh. http://www.nomenu.com/RestaurantsOpen.html

it is on the list.... (they state somewhere in the intro that the numbers are arbitrary...it isn't a count down, or up, just a list of 100 favorite things.) edited for bad typing

haven't done it with that particular recipe, but have subbed hazelnuts for other nuts many times in similar recipes, where ground nuts take part or all of the place of flour.

i, too, love the Food Lover's Guide, but you must be forewarned that it has not been updated in quite some time. many of the listings are out of date....still a lot of great info and a wonderful read.

i confess to sushi-ignorance. i was pregnant pretty much the whole decade that sushi came to prominence here in CA, and somehow, i never got the hang of it. but kid #2 is becoming quite the sushi-savvy guy, and he's curious. the place he frequents has a cabinet behind the sushi bar that contains sets of chopsticks that belong to regulars. he's a little hesitant to ask, so i'll ask here on his behalf...how does one go about having your own set stored there for ya, so you are not relegated to the pull apart wooden ones? thanks for helping!

i noticed on the tv commercial that as soon as the pasta starts to swell a little, it raises up above the water level....so you'd have crispy little ends, at best. yuck.

i like orzo or couscous with chix marbella. (love this thread, so thanks---i've gotten a lot of good ideas from it!)

marzipan would be quick and cute.

the current 2/06 edition of saveur magazine has them on the list of their top 100.

not frozen to begin with...thanks for that, it didn't occur to me. (and now, as i type, it occurs to me that just because she bought it that way doesn't mean it wasn't frozen and defrosted at the foie store...will have her check that.)

just heard from a friend who purchased about 1 lb vacuum sealed foie gras for new yrs. things got hectic and it's still in the fridge today (the 4th). her question--can she freeze it at this point, or is she committed to foie-ing tonight? (not that that's a bad thing.) i have no experience with "left over" foie, so i turn to the experts for advice. thanks.

i'm just guessing that those giftie-glasses CAN'T be broken...

i wonder if you might get a better response contacting them through their website, which states: Featuring a unique metal bonding process, All-Clad cookware is used in many of the finest restaurants in America, and is sought by serious home cooks seeking all-professional cookware to enhance their cooking experience, as well as the slogan "All Clad. All Professional"... i love All Clad, and would hate to see that they are diminishing their reputation in this way. I use All Clad in my cookig school (although, I think my home pieces get a greater work-out, frankly!) and highly recommend them to students, so I hope this story has a happy ending.

i was given some of this stuff recently. it tastes exactly the way one would expect sparkling wine from an aluminum can to taste.

i had a version made by pyrex that just gave up the ghost (on thanksgiving...5 minutes after the turkey was in the oven, the darn thing was registering 160 degrees....) might try a more pricey model, i guess.

now, why didn't i just PM you directly, like i thought of doing? thank you, andiesenji, goddess of cookery gadgetry and tools! when they come up with one that can remotely measure internal temperature, will you let me know?

so i've been looking at these mini non-contact thermometers. i like the idea of them for a couple reasons. (sadly, the first is that the read-out is pretty BIG, and i have just had a "zero" birthday, and can't see so good no more). also, i like the clean factor--that i don't have to worry about the probe harboring bacteria if some one forgets to wipe it down after poking it into a roasting chicken. but therein lies my confusion....if it is taking the surface temperature (which is my understanding), does that help me at all with internal temps, say of roast pork loin? cuz, mainly, that's what i need to take the temperature of, not the surface temp of soup or chocolate. thank you for your patience with a tragically right-brained individual. your insight is appreciated.

i hope steven shaw replies here, as i would like to know which soup tome he highly recommended. fat guy?

Abra, I just now read your fabulous illustrated tamale-fest from last year. I was wondering if you could share what you came up with for the vegetarian version, for both the dough (butter instead of lard perhaps?) and the filling (you had mentioned you were considering corn and cheese I think). Thank you! ← hi steven--i'm not abra, but we just did a tamalada at my cooking school (and three more next week...) and the very sucessful veggie version included butter and vegetable stock in the masa, and cheese, roasted chiles and black beans in the filling. they went over big!