carswell

Two new promotions, both in effect from today (May 19) through Monday (May 23): - in the outlets, 10% off purchases of six or more bottles of wine and/or spirits each worth $10 or more - at www.saq.com, 10% off all purchases of $100 or more.

Chunks of parmesan drizzled with fine old balsamico (not the $4-a-500-ml bottle stuff). I second the game suggestion. It also pairs well with spice flavours and can handle a bit of sweetness. One of the most memorable matches I've tasted was an Italian medieval dish, a duck stew with red wine, vinegar, sugar and warm spices. Barbecued baby back ribs. Spicy sausages. Savoury fruit preps: dates stuffed with gorgonzola and/or foie gras pâté; bacon-wrapped prunes on rosemary skewers, etc.

tanabutler, your definition of farmer may work for you but it's highly idiosyncratic. See Miriam-Webster (www.m-w.com), for example: You're proposing that a new, more narrow definition replace an existing, broader one. But why? Especially when English already has the term truck farmer to describe what you're calling a farmer. Grapes, whether for eating or wine-making, are a crop. Ergo, a grape grower is a farmer. Few exclusively wine-grape growers are truck farmers, however.

For all I know you may be right but, god, I hope not. Their PP is a pale imitation of the real thing. Even assuming that epicurious is, unlike me, not crustally challenged, the problem is the locally available pecans, invariably small, dessicated, stale and tasting more like tree bark than nuts.

But would the essential bacteria survive the drying process?

Ah ha. That traditional Vietnamese specialty, sushi...

The best I've tasted was at Savannah. But that was before the recent chef change and they may not do takeout. And even then it couldn't hold a candle to the homemade and diner pies served in the southern US. New crop nuts from local trees make a world of difference, not to mention the larded pie crusts.

Believe it or not, a classic wine geek pairing for champagne, even the really good stuff, is hot-from-the-popper popcorn sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan and drizzled with white truffle oil.

Timing will depend on factors like the heat of your fire and the thickness of the fish. It'll be about the same as an equivalent thickness of salmon. The texture is closer to that of other "oily" fish like salmon or bluefish than, say, sole or snapper. To soften the flavour, you can let the fish sit briefly in an acidic marinade (made with citrus juice, as Kevin72 suggests, wine or tomatoes, for example). You should also frequently baste the fish with something similar as it grills to keep it from drying out. Another thing about mackerel: the dark strip of flesh that runs along either side is the strongest tasting; some people remove it before cooking but that's probably not advisable when grilling. You can grill just about anything. I've never tried flounder but suspect you'd have to be careful about overcooking due to its thinness. Also, the increased surface area would make the often problematic sticking skin even more of an issue. Lastly, the fish's shape would make it a tight squeeze in many grill baskets. If you try it, let us know how it turns out.

LOL. By the way, yesterday I noticed that L'Escale à Saigon, just west of La Chronique, had its windows covered with paper and the name on the awning had been painted over. Was in a bus and so couldn't investigate whether they've folded or are just renovating. Anyone know what's up?

My lack of familiarity with U.S. jurisprudence is showing here, but has the constitutionality of banning the shipping of wine and spirits by producers, regardless of whether they are in or out of state, ever been contested? And aren't there states that ban shipping by producers but allow it by retailers? If so, would that be grounds for a lawsuit by producers?

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/27...pdf/03-1116.pdf

The states that had banned out-of-state shipping are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont. It's likely that states with a prohibitionist bent and little in the way of viticulture — Mississippi and Oklahoma, for example — will simply ban all shipping. Ditto states whose politicians have ties to wholesalers and their deep pockets. In fact, didn't New Jersey ban in-state shipping last year in anticipation of just such a ruling?

Good news but it's not quite as black and white as this statement implies. Reportedly the court ruled that it is unconstitutional to treat out-of-state producers differently from in-state producers. States can still ban the shipping of wines to individuals by out-of-state producers provided they also ban it by in-state producers.

I've recently found myself in the same boat, so I sympathize with your plight. Am unware of a cocktail equivalent to the useful Recipes into Type : A Handbook for Cookbook Writers and Editors and The Recipe Writer's Handbook, though I'll be tracking this thread to see if anybody suggests one. My workaround has been to buy a well-edited cocktail recipe book and raid it for elements of style (making adjustments for Canadian usage, of course). The book I've settled on for now is Dave Broom's The New American Bartender's Handbook. Note that my choice of this volume has much less to do with the recipes per se than with the language used to describe them. If someone wants to recommend an editorially more worthwhile work, I'm all ears. Applying this workaround to your questions: Yes. This is different from cookbooks where the general rule is to list ingredients in order of use. Of course, cocktail recipes are seldom as involved as food recipes. Yes. Even ingredients like amaretto, blue curaçao and crème de menthe are lower-cased. No. Though I have to note that some books initial-cap any ingredient for which they provide a recipe.

Also, the Weber rotisserie attachment doesn't fit the 18½" grill. And the 18½-incher's lid doesn't have enough clearance for tall food like beer can chicken (beer can cornish game hens maybe, beer can quail for sure).

My favourite grilled fish is probably striped bass. If I have any dried fennel stems on hand, I toss them on the coals under the fish in the last minutes of cooking and let the smoke perfume the flesh. You can do the same thing with fresh or dried thyme branches. Mackerel takes nicely to grilling. A tip from Martin Picard, chef-owner of Au Pied de Cochon, is to stuff the fish before cooking with fresh tarragon branches. What would overpower more delicate fish works beautifully with strong flavoured mackerel.

This I didn't know, though it makes sense. My experience has been that buttermilk produces a slightly tangier, nuttier and thicker result than sour cream, though I've never done a side-by-side comparison. Maybe it's the additives in the sour cream or the age of the bacteria? In any case, irrespective of the souring agent, I've never succeeded in making a really thick crème fraîche, a point driven home recently when Liberty, a local dairy products company with an international reputation for its cream cheese and yogurt, began marketing Quebec's first widely available crème fraîche. It's not only thick enough to hold up a spoon, it's so gooey I immediately checked out the ingredient list, expecting to see that they'd added stabilizers and thickeners. But, no, it's 100% pasteurized (not ultra) cream. I wonder what makes the difference. Bacteria strains?

Jacques Pépin, too, reportedly, though I learned the trick years ago from a caterer.

Wow. Are they the same vintages? I bought a couple of bottles of the Nicolis at the SAQ last year but I now see I didn't add them to my wine list and so can't confirm what I paid; as I recall, it was around $50. At the higher end, the price discrepancies aren't usually so pronounced or always in the LCBO's favour. One of the more extreme examples was the 1994 Bordeaux premiers crus (Margaux, Lafite, Latour, etc.), which sold for $100 a bottle here ($90 during the 10% off sale) and, a few months later, were $495 in the Classics Catalogue. And the differences are not explained always by mark-up; factors like exchange rate and date of purchase also enter into play. (Was told that's what happened with the '94 premiers crus; the SAQ bought them as futures, the LCBO didn't and the Bordeaux boom hit in the interim.)

Boucherie Traiteur Prince Noir Marché Jean-Talon 7070 Henri-Julien (514) 906-1110

Just in from the JTM. A zoo it was, not that I'm complaining. Tons of bedding plants and many flowers made for fragrant strolling up and down the allées. A few sightings: - Meyer lemon trees, about 5½ feet tall, with golf ball-size, lime-green fruit. $99 at the nursery outlet just north of L'Olivier. - Huge rosemary bushes, the size of a tumbleweed, at one of the herb retailers more or less facing Havre aux glaces. Didn't ask the price. - Première Moisson now sells pasta. I picked up a plastic tray of three-cheese ravioli. Will report when I get around to eating it. - Chez Louis has what they're calling wild asparagus, imported from Europe. Looks like a pale green stalk of wheat on steroids. If I heard correctly (and going by the way the face of the lady who asked the price blanched, I did), a small bunch — a side dish for two people — costs $24.99. They also had big fresh summer truffles from Oregon at slightly over $1K a kilo or approximately $70 the fungus. I passed but did get the cashier to open the container to let me smell. Sigh. - Havre aux glaces has implemented crowd control measures: a U-shaped one-way line. Sorry to report that they refuse to mix flavours in half-litre containers. If you want cassis-vanilla swirl, you buy a half litre of cassis and a half litre of vanilla. Not sure I understand the reasoning here. The matcha tea ice cream is as intense as their other products; am not sure that's such a good thing, however. edit: Forgot to mention that Aqua Mare, the fish store at the north end of the new extension, has bags of addictive Calbee Shrimp Flavored Chips. About the size and shape of Cheetos, the chips are baked and so relatively low in fat. Wasabi powder gives them a sinus-clearing bite with the shrimp flavour just peeking though. $1.99 per 95 gram bag

Haven't tried this with Anjou-Québec's mason jar confit but Paula Wolfert has suggested running soggy skinned confit under the broiler for a couple of minutes after reheating. Her photos of the end result certainly look convincing.

Homemade is better than no crème fraîche but, in my experience, never quite equals the real thing. I have a slight preference for the buttermilk versions, despite the fact that I end up throwing out the 95% of the leftover litre of buttermilk (hate the stuff). Since crème fraîche is only cream, the quality of the cream you use has a major impact on the quality of the end product. Ultrapasteurized cream is tasteless; no surprise, then, that crème fraîche made from it is unmemorable. Don't see why you would want to use your yogurt maker. If room temperature is too cool, just leave the bowl in the oven with the oven light turned on. Given homemade ultrapasteurized crème fraîche's lack of texture and tang, I wonder if you mightn't be better off using regular cream in your truffles and, for your tart, a mix of sour cream and whipping cream, 50-50, that you've set aside for an hour or so before whipping.

Second wattacetti's potato rec. Not only do the spuds smell and taste wonderful, they develop a delightful texture. And with the quantity of fat you have, you should consider cooking them Quercy-style, which involves slow-roasting cubed russets in a cup or two of duck fat (which can be recycled afterwards) for the better part of two hours, then turning up the heat for 15 minutes to finish. Drained, sprinkled with salt and showered with an hachis of parsley and garlic, they are the crispest, goldenest, most flavourful spuds it will ever be your pleasure to eat. PM me if you'd like the recipe. Duck fat is also a fine sautéing medium for vegetables and, especially, seafood. And, of course, you could use the fat to make your own confit of duck, duck gizards, other poultry, pork, veal sweetbreads, etc. The fat will keep for several months in your fridge and even longer in your freezer. You can extend its shelf life by heating it over low heat until the duck juices have simmered off, straining out any impurities (herbs, spices, garlic, pieces of meat) and pouring it into small tightly sealable containers (like plastic cream cheese and crème fraîche tubs). You'll find a number of wine reccos in my confit survey, though some of them are no longer available. I think reds from southwest France are generally the best fit. Here are a few I know are still around (prices are approximate): - 2001 Fronsac, Jean-Pierre Moueix ($17.50). - 2002 Peyrouzelles, Gaillac, Domaine de la Causse Maurine ($17). Not much left but worth going out of your way for. - 2002 Torus, Madiran, Alain Brumont ($15.50). A Madiran for early drinking (no, that's not a contradiction in terms), it still benefits from being allowed to breathe 30 minutes or so before consuming. - 2002 Cahors, Château de Grézels ($16) and 1999 Cahors, Château de Mercurès ($22). Both are unpretentious, unParkerized examples of the appellation. - I love Côtes-du-Frontonnais reds with confit but haven't tried any of the current vintages. Château Montauriol is usually in a class by itself, but 2003 was a difficult vintage due to the heat. Still, given the estate's track record and the wine's reasonable price ($19), it's worth a shot. The 2002 Château Bellevue-la-Fôret is almost certain to be a winner at $14. At the low end, Château Cahuzac's L'Authentique ($11.50) and Montauriol's Les Hauts de Montauriol ($12) are good buys, though they lack some of the stuffing that make their big brothers ideal matches for confit.