marie-louise

There really isn't a substitute, taste-wise. Depsite the fact that bacon and pancetta are both fatty pork products that get crispy when rendered, they taste nothing alike. I'd go vegetarian: use olive oil for the fat and pick a salty flavorful complement for the pancetta bits (Kalamata olives; sun-dried tomatoes; maybe capers, depending on what else is in the dish.)

That would be my advice-start small, see what you enjoy making from scratch. I think there's no one right answer. It depends on where you are on the money/time equation. I don't have time to make everything, but I'm still fussy about the things that taste much better homemade. Personally, i only rarely make bread, and if I do it's just for the fun of it, because I live in the Bay Area, and we have incredible bread at every store in a 100-mile radius. And it's cheap. I do always, always make all my own stock-I think anything tastes better when made with homemade stock-and I occasionally make homemade mayo. But I happily buy those overpriced Stonewell products and use canned tomatoes [Muir Glen only] all year long. I have a decent recipe for tapenade, but mine's not as good as what's in the jars, so I buy it at the store. I do try to avoid things with preservatives whenever possible. Making things from scratch helps in that regard.

Lower heat, bigger pan, lid askew. I find when the pot's up too high, eventually the very bottom burns, and if you're not careful, can impart a burned taste to the whole sauce. So, my solution is to cook it longer at a lower heat.

You don't have to take a total pass-I bet they'd like making, and eating, the cream puffs. The nice thing about the fish dinner, besides how good it tasted, was that it was a really quick dinner to make. It's handy to have menus for those times you want an elegant dinner but have no time to make anything. I'm not sure when I'm going to get to the duck, but I'm trying it somethime very soon. Hopefully this weekend. I've invited friends over Saturday; I'll have to call & check if they like duck. Who (Suzanne, perhaps) on what thread gave me such great advice about cooking duck so that it doesn't come out greasy? Does anyone remember? It seems to me it had a poaching/blanching step, but other wise was similar to Jacques. Edited to say, I found the the duck discussion: here

I'm such a happy camper. This dinner was GREAT! Made the fish (thin local petrale sole) and sauce exactly as directed. Made my usual pilaf recipe (Pierre Franey's recipe, the only difference is that it's baked at 400 for 17 minutes) because fortunately the repairman got the fridge going before ALL my stock thawed, so I didn't have to spend the day making soup and more more soup. DH made a Sauteed Brussels Sprouts & Pancetta dish, using up some of the pancetta that got a little warmer than I'd like and... more chicken stock. The brussels sprouts, and especially the pancetta, went well w/ the meal. I was skeptical, especially because the salty pancetta mirrors the salty capers, but somehow it worked. Echo champagne-a little sweet on its own but great w/ food. PS While thumbing through J&J I spotted a recipe we MUST all try some week-Chocolate Pots de Creme. My usual recipe is slightly different, but it is the genesis of the chocolate pudding of our youth-made w/ real cream and real chocolate.

I've had a Vent-A-Hood for the last seven years that I'm quite happy with. It comes apart for cleaning (you do have to keep it clean so the grease doesn't catch on fire) and the part that gets really greasy can go into the dishwasher.

I like it as an appetizer: on bruscetta, topped w/ just about anything you can think of-roasted red peppers, tapenade...

Maybe you & I can make catch-up fish some other time. Somewhere between dinner and dessert last night, my refrigerator died. Grrrr-we were planning on dim sum and a hike on our day off, then a nice fish dinner. Now it looks like we'll be hanging around for a repairman and eating lots of soup w/ all our thawing stock!

I usually rinse my capers-do you?

I also add the wine first. But I have no idea why-that's just the way I do it. It seems any liquid would release the fond from the bottom, and as long as it is boiling, the alcohol would burn off whether there was another liquid mixed it or not-isn't it the heat that evaporates the alcohol?

Thank you, thank you, I changed my Monospace font to Arial 24 and now I can read Project's posts!!! PS I do use Explorer and the latest OS that's not Jaguar (we have it, just haven't installed it.) I tried and loved Safari a few months ago, but there were still a few sites that it dodn't work with, so I switched back.

I hate you. Hate me too, I drive past there twice a week. He forgot to mention that the rest of the year the boats fish for local Dungeness crab, also available for a reasonable price. Only a few more weeks until the season starts.

I once owned a house that didn't have a hood over the stove. It wasn't as much of a problem as you might think. Of course, it was a drafty old Victorian, there was in essence a fan going 24/7...

Project, I too enjoy your posts. But I have the hardest time reading them-I can barely see them. Not only is the print small, it is a faint grey instead of black. I'm on a Mac-do other people have this problem or is it just a Mac quirk? Can someone offer advice to either Project on how to adjust the font or me on how to adjust my browser?

Yes, the purple means they've been in a frost, which is good. I think some artichokes just have more spikes than others. What you want if it all possible is ones that are very tightly closed. The ones we get at the Farmer's Markets are almost as round as a ball on top. They are more or less in season all year around here-they grow them in the foggier parts of the California coast where the weather is prettty much the same all year long-but I think they are most prolific in the spring. You can prepare them very simply-just cut off the top quarter-inch or so to get off most of the thorns and cut off the base so it sits flat. Then just steam it upside down for a very long time, until a leaf pulls off easily, and serve w/ melted butter and lemon as a dipping sauce. Really, ignore me. I'm sure it is quite good. I have access to more fresh produce than most of the country, for which I am grateful on a daily basis. I am enjoying it for all of you and sometimes my enthusiasm gets the better of me. Do you know about roasting asparagus? It is very, very good that way, and gives you the added benefit of not having to boil it last minute. I don't know about anyone else, but trying to get the sauce made and the fish properly cooked is about my limit of things I can watch at once. Anyway, peel the asparagus (see page 186 of J&J), coat w/ a little olive oil and salt, then cook single layer on a cookie sheet in a 400-450 degree oven until done-about 10 or 15 minutes. They won't look pretty-they should be sort of limp and browned in spots-but the flavor intensifies and it tastes great.

I'm in Oakland, California. I'm sure they are at the store, but God knows where they come from. I've been getting a CSA box delivered every week for years-they also sell to Chez Panisse-and so I am hopelessly spoiled by eating seasonal vegetables that were picked that day and only had to take a one-hour drive to get to my house. Just ignore me, they have spoiled me for life... Edited because I just noticed I misspelled the name of where I live. Jeez!

I read the recipe for the sole this morning. I just want to caution people to be careful not to overcook their fish. I've never cooked a whole sole-that may indeed need 4-5 minutes-but what I think of as a "thin fillet" needs more like a minute MAXIMUM a side. (She discusses cooking times in Sauteing on page 245.) I think I am going to try this w/ some sand dabs. They've showed up in the fish market the last year or so, but I've never cooked them at home. Also, I think I'd make the sauce first before I started the fish (or get my husband to make it while I cook the fish.) I'd be worried the fish would either get cold, even on a warmed plate, or overcook, if I made the sauce second. Many years ago I took a cooking class series in San Francisco from a woman named Judith Ets-Hokins. She said that sauteed fish w/ Buerre Blanc was one of the hardest dishes to make well, as there is no room for error. Overcook the fish, burn the sauce, use fish or butter that isn't fresh-there's nowhere to hide your mistakes. But cook perfectly fresh fish perfectly well, and sauce it with a wonderful simple sauce, and there will be nothing better. This is a real "Chez Panisse-style" dish! I'm still trying to think of a vegetable. A baked tomato would be perfect in the summer, but they are all gone for the season and I can't bear those hothouse ones. Something green, but what? Broccoli seems too strong, and asparagus and green beans are out of season as well. Sauteed spinach, maybe? PS I forgot to add that I didn't make the Creme Brulee. I'm not much of a dessert person, although I occasionally order Creme Brulee in restaurants. More than wanting to learn how to make it well at home, I have a sudden urge to learn to operate a blowtorch, so I will have to loop back to your descriptions at a future time.

First of all, congratulations, Seth! I love that you still took the time to write up your cooking experience. A true EGulleteer. Once again, I only sort of followed the recipe-I have a hard time not tinkering w/ things, even though it IS Julia or Jacques. Many years ago I used to make a slightly different version of Beef Bourguignon. Then I made my stew with lots of vegetables in it, until I decided that I really didn't like the taste of vegetables that had been cooking in stew for a while. The last few years I've settled on Bruce Aidell's California Beef Stew w/ Zinfandel (in The Complete Meat Cookbook), served w/ Roasted Vegetables on the side. The only changes I make to BA's recipe is to delete the coppa and cut down on the salt-I find his recipes WAY too salty for my taste. Julia's and Bruce's recipes are fairly similar is you look at them side by side, so I thought it would be kind of fun to compare and contrast them to see if I could tweak my current recipe a little further, and also create a Bouef Bourguignon recipe that didn't take too long. Based on your feedback, I was curious to see where I could take a few shortcuts so the recipe wasn't so time consuming, so I set off to experiment with that in mind. I cut the recipe in half-it still serves four-so that helped shorten the prep time. I couldn't find salt pork at my local market, so I substituted pancetta. That's what's in BA recipe. I buy pancetta a pound at a time, sliced into 1/4-lb. slices. I seal it in a Food-Sealer, and it keeps fresh for months. I sauteed it in olive oil until crisp, then removed the pancetta and sauteed the meat in the pancetta oil/olive oil mixture. So that skipped the blanching step while adding a little extra, albeit Italian, flavor to the stew. Bruce flours the meat before sauteing (1/2 cup for 4 lb. meat.) So I did that. I have no idea the pros and cons of flouring or not. I also took a look at an old Fine Cooking Magazine article by Madeleine Kamman, which just confused me-her recipe is completely different. (one main way is that the meat marinates in reduced wine overnight, before being browned.) One step that seemed kind of odd to me in Julia's recipe was wrapping all the aromatics in cheesecloth. I figured, who wants to deal with that boiling hot, dripping bag at the end of the cooking time. Madeleine takes out the meat, then puts her sauce through a chinois at the end. That looked like a better idea, so I just threw all the chopped vegetables in the stew loose. Well, what I didn't notice until I was ready to strain my sauce was that Madeleine reserves her lardoons until the end; if I strained my stew, I would also strain out all those wonderful bits of pancetta. So I decided to leave the bits of carrots and tomato in the sauce. The diced carrots were distracting and I'm not sure they added that much to the flavor of the stew. I think I might leave them out next time. I did the onions as instructed. My old recipe called for frozen pearl onions, thawed and sauteed along with the mushrooms. I actually think that frozen pearl onions have more flavor, and those onion steps were a PITA. I increased the amount of mushrooms because I'd bought too many. I liked it with more mushrooms-I'd do that again. (For a full recipe, I'd use about a pound.) And I'd use frozen pearl onions. I used some cheap California Pinot (Montpellior) and my own meat broth that I keep in the freezer for risotto. The wine was okay-not too complex- but next time I'd try to get some inexpensive French wine instead. The best tip I gleaned from this cooking exercise? Add a spash of wine right at the end. I tasted the sauce before, and again after. That makes a REAL difference-it does noticably brighten the taste-I am going to start doing that with all my braises. Julia says to use some of the wine you're drinking for this step, but we were drinking a bottle of Williams Selyem-no way I was tossing some of THAT in the stew, so I used more of the cheap stuff. I made the Buerre Manie, but I'm not sure I liked the thicker sauce. I might skip that step too. I did like what I made. Stew w/ Zindandel is great, but beef cooked in Pinot is just as good-just a little more refined and subtle. I really liked the sauteed mushrooms and onions added at the end. I am definitely adding this to my personal cookbook. Per Madeleine's recipe, I served this with Spaetzle. I therefore did not have any problems w/ extra sauce-the spaetzle soaked it up nicely. For the same reason, I think I will serve the leftovers with Egg Noodles. I skipped the chard; somehow I think it would have been distracting on the side of the plate with the Spaetzle, although with Mashed Potatoes I think it would have worked well. Looking forward to making fish with you-I'll probably do it Monday. I've made this recipe before, although I usually just buy small fillets of what is labeled sole in California. Depending on how much time I have, maybe I'll get adventuresome and try following the instructions for fileting a whole fish-it looks sort of fun.

Better late than never-am planning to make tomorrow (my day off.) I even got chard & potatoes in my CSA delivery! Now what exactly is so time consuming; maybe I should make some of it tonight?

Thank YOU for the corrections. I can never remember the names, it's just more like, "let's go to that Greek place by Broadway..." Lunch would be fun, but my life is not my own during work hours. I am always cancelling lunch dates for emergency meetings and urgent requests. Such is life. They treat me well and I love my job.

California salmon is not in danger. The Monterey Bay Aquarium publishes a list of best choices of fish to eat, fish to eat with caution, and fish to avoid, including a card you can print and keep in your wallet: Monterey Bay Aquarium website Some types of cod are also on the best choices list.

I work in downtown Oakland, too. I usually bring my lunch or eat unspeakably bad food at a meeting, but here are some of my haunts: Pho 84 for Vietnamese. (I think it is on 17th & Webster.) Some of the workers opened a new place on 16th between Webster and Franklin-it is pretty, a little better and not as crowded, but I can't remember the name. Take It Thai across the street is okay; the owner is kinda more cranky than the food is good. Great sandwiches at Cafe Aroma on the corner of 19th and Franklin and the nice pulled turkey sandwiches and turkey salad at 17th & Franklin. (can't remember the name.) The Japanese place down 17th (between Franklin and Webster) is pretty good. Peony & a little takeout place on Webster for dim sum in Chinatown. Addis Ethiopian buffet on 19th between Franklin & Webster. There is a wonderful Greek deli on I think 20th, right by Broadway. They have gyros and the best pita / hummus. On that corner is a place w/ good Philly cheesesteaks and cheese fries. There are few good Mexican places in the neighborhood. Lana's (Chinese) on 19th between Broadway and Franklin isn't too bad if you choose carefully-their chow fun and stir-fried veggies are pretty good. Plan time for a nap after luch-it is way too much food for me. There are a few more that I can't remember the name of, and a few more that have either gone downhill lately or gone out of business all together. The biggest loss was a Korean place around 14th.

I have grey concrete counters w/ little flecks of colored stones. They look great, are very practical, and match the two fireplaces in my house or I'd rip them out, but it bugs me that I can never tell if they're clean or not. I'd prefer a nice white counter, or a shiny black one, that I KNEW was clean when I was cooking. I once read a great piece of advice about kitchens: Pick a floor that hides the dirt and a counter that shows it.

Mostly, we have live rats. Brought in through the cat door by the cats, who have no interest in having anything to do with them once they let them go inside. Occasionally we have birds flying through the house; that is also a lot of fun, especially since some our rooms have 16-ft. tall peaked ceilings. Oh, the stories I could tell about catching these rodents over the years. I could gross ya all out. But I won't.

FYI Jessica's Biscuit has a number of the Good Cooks series for sale-and they are still new! I love that they buy up going-out-of-print books.