carswell

While I'm only an Italian food lover, not an authority (and as I recently complained on the Italy board, there's no Larousse gastronomico we can check), my impression is that stoccafisso is always air-dried unsalted cod. See here for example. Are you sure about the herring? If so, it must be some kind of new wave stoccafisso.

Thanks for the tip. Will check it out the next time I'm at the market. Now that sounds appetizing. Maybe they should stick with seafood? Clickety.

Having given up its St-Denis Street digs, butcher/caterer Le Prince Noir is now ensconced in Jean-Talon Market's new extension (and at the Marché public de Lachine according to their business card). Besides horse meat, game, charcuterie and various heat-and-serve dishes, they sell duck confit, two legs to a cryovaced pack. The label says the legs retail for $35.90 a kilo but I paid $17.73 for a total weight of 849 g. Not only does that not compute, the legs didn't weigh 425 g (nearly a pound) each. Admittedly, they were large — it's a pretty sure bet we're talking moulards here — but they weren't significantly bigger than, say, Le P'tit Plateau's, which clock in at around 325 g. Straight from the package, the skin has a yellow tinge and is covered with black dots (pepper, it turns out). Reheating 20 minutes in a 350ºF oven produces no sizzle and only 1/2 teaspoon of fat. More black dots are left in the pan. The skin doesn't crisp or brown, nor does it have a subcutaneous layer of fat. The meat is brownish and there's a lot of it, dense in texture but dry, even stringy in places. Where's the succulence? The meat tastes of duck, not confit. Salty it's not but the skin and surface of the meat taste peppery, the first time I've encountered that flavour in confit. Passable, then, and probably the best confit on offer at the market. But far from the best in the city. Our side was the lentils with roasted carrots and beets reco'ed by jpbach upthread. "Fantastic" doesn't begin to describe it. Our wine was Castel Pujol's 2002 Tannat de Reserva ($21.25 at the SAQ) from Uruguay of all places. Leathery, spicy bouquet with a minty note and some wood; the little fruit there is is dark. Medium weight in the mouth, fluid, ripe but not jammy. Quite structured with tight, somewhat drying tannins and a bitter finish. Stylistically more European than New Worldian. Not particularly expressive at present. It will be interesting to see how it evolves. One thing's for sure, though: it works better with confit than any New World wine tasted to date. Boucherie traiteur Prince Noir Marché Jean-Talon 7070-C14 Henri-Julien St. 514 906-1110

Spent a wet afternoon prowling around the Jean-Talon Market and environs. Although the winter enclosure is gone, the place is a construction zone. Only a few stands were selling produce today but the allées should be humming by the weekend. sf&m's right: Havre aux glaces's cassis sherbet is profound, intense and, like all their other products, just sweet enough. The guy behind the counter mentioned that the red currants come from North Hatley and claimed that, in large part due to agricultural practices used, they are superior to European fruit. He also insisted I try the sherbet with some vanilla ice cream; the combination is indeed a winner. Lunch, by the way, was at Le Petit Alep, where I hadn't been in a while. High quality ingredients, great flavours, efficient service and adept handling of two youngsters. Recommended. On the way home, I stopped by Boucher Alkahair, corner of Jean-Talon and Henri-Julien (a half block north of the new extension) to check out their tagnes, which I'd noticed in the window last weekend. Am now the owner of an unglazed 12" rifi tagine, which set me back $35 taxes included. (The 12" rifi on sale at tagines.com runs US$40 plus US$6 shipping.) Alkahair also has glazed and partiallly glazed cooking and serving tagines in various sizes (the rifi only in 12"), but this is the first unglazed tagine I've seen in the city.

As part of our perambulations this afternoon, eGulleter arkestra and I did a soggy espresso bar crawl down St-Laurent. The Faema store's shot was a bit long but had good crema, a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, faintly bitter flavour. It's easy to see how it would do well as the basis for a latte. Cafe Italia's shot was the perfect length. Dense crema somewhere between creamy and oily. Dark, complex and deeply flavoured with an invigorating bitterness and long aftertaste. Serious stuff. Flavourwise, Café International's espresso fell between Faema's and Italia's, not as mellow as the former, not as intense as the latter. Good length and crema. All three were quality products but only Italia's was memorable. The day before, I had an espresso at Benelo on Crescent. As mentioned upthread, the cafe recently changed owners and coffee suppliers. The new beans give a shot very much in the Northern Italian style: more tan than brunette, smooth and with only a hint of bitterness. Good length, good crema but lacking some of that Southern Italian zing. That said, it has to be one of the better espressos available downtown, especially for those who don't care for Illy. And the food is first rate; a dense confection — a kind of mounded cookie made from whole almonds, flour and honey — was one of the best pastries I've had in ages. arkestra hit a couple of other bars during his stay, so here's hoping he chimes in with his comments.

On Saturday, I paid C$5 for five or six stalks of rhubarb, the first of the season. At least it was beautifully fresh and tender. I didn't ask about its provenance but suspect it may have come from a hothouse, which would partly explain the expense. If not, it was shipped in, since it's still early spring up here (the first crocuses are finally blooming and no trees yet have leaves). And you always pay more for the first of anything.

Fred Plotkin's La Terra Fortunata : The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is a model of its kind. And his Recipes from Paradise : Life and Food on the Italian Riviera is nearly as good. Clifford Wright's Cucina Paradiso : The Heavenly Food of Sicily, currently being discussed on the Middle East/Africa forum (?!), is full of insight and interesting recipes. Matt Kramer's A Passion for Piedmont is the best work about that region's wines and foods that I've seen in English. Looking forward to others' replies. My question along these lines: Is there an Italian encyclopedia of cooking, an equivalent to the Larousse gastronomique? And if not, why not? I've often found myself wishing I could pull down my Larousse gastronomico. And while we're at it, why not a Larousse indien and a Larousse chinois?

No longer true. It's a recent arrival and not widely distributed for the time being. (Except for the Rockland and Verdun outlets, all the inventory on the island is in deepest, darkest East End. Go figure.) But it's there. Surf on over to www.saq.com and enter product code 10327701. C$16.95 a bottle vs. C$19.95 in Ontario, too (!).

I wondered about that upthread. Of course, the terrace will be an option before long (not this week, though, from the look of the forecast).

A couple of food and wine loving friends have back-to-back birthdays coming up and I've begun thinking about their joint B-day dinner. Always on the lookout for something unusual and seasonally appropriate, I'd had my eye on a recipe in Paula Wolfert's latest tome, The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: a large chunk of skinless salmon filet slow-poached in garlic- and thyme-infused olive oil and accompanied by a salad of arugula, fresh mint, cucumber and raw rhubarb (!) dressed with a few drops of lemon juice. Last night I prepared the dish as a trial run and was pleased with the results: the salmon was moist and mellow, subtly flavoured and not at all oily while the salad was its perfect foil, cool, acid bright and lovely to look at. From the outset, I knew the dish was going to present a wine-matching challenge. What could handle the salmon's richness, which is only amplifed by the preparation; the subtle Mediterranean flavours of the olive oil and garlic; the herby green flavours of the rocket and mint; and the acidic bite of the rhubarb and lemon? My first thought was something from the southern Rhone—a white Côtes-du-Rhône for the trial run and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape for the Big Night. I also briefly flirted with the idea of a white from Spain (e.g. albarino) or Italy (e.g. pinot grigio), a rosé and a white or pink sparkler. In the end, I allowed myself to be swayed by the top wine guy at my neighbourhood SAQ outlet, who suggested Jaboulet's 2001 Mule Blanche Crozes-Hermitage, a marsanne-rousanne blend. Not a bad wine but not a particularly good match with the salmon. The fish made the wine seem bitter, the salad's acid made it seem fat and heavy. The only bright note was the wine's surprising synergy with the mint. So, back to the drawing board. I'm now leaning toward a sauvignon-heavy, oak-light Graves/Pessac-Léognan. (It'd be great if it worked, because the reds I'm considering for the main course include Gruaud-Larose and Pichon-Lalande.) And looking over my wine list, a probably too young '93 Corton-Charlemagne from Bonneau de Martray catches my eye. But I'm certainly open to suggestions. Got any?

Good question, oceanfish. And I don't have an answer, other than I know it's an ingredient in some Italian bitter wines and spirits. I've never grown it and only noticed it today because the leaves were attractive and unusual. At first I thought it might be fenugrek, which I'd just bought seeds for (have been using the dired leaves in Indian cooking and want to try the fresh). Resource: Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages site has a typcially informative rue page. Also, consider posting a query on the Cooking or General Food forum; there are bound to be eGulleters who know.

Sightings at Jean-Talon Market earlier today: - First fiddleheads of the season (didn't ask whether they were local) at Chez Nino - Gorgeous and pricey young rhubarb, the just unfurled leaves a pale yellow-green, at Chez Louis - Bedding plants — including rue, lemon verbena and English lavender — at the garden store next to Première Moisson - Awesome blood orange sherbet at Havre aux glaces. I asked if it was made from fresh oranges and the answer was yes; in fact they'd just finished squeezing a case's worth. Italian oranges? Yes, the California ones have great colour but taste terrible. The owner thinks the just-squeezed case may be their last of the season, so if you're interested, seize the day. It's like eating essence of blood orange. I initially wondered if it wasn't a little too sweet, but the looooong slightly bitter finish convinced me otherwise. My mouth was tingling for minutes after my last bite. The winter enclosure is still up but the outdoor stalls are in various stages of completion and a couple were even occupied. Should all be open-air by next weekend.

You're right about 1990 VTs, though it wasn't a banner year for botrytized wines (sélection de graines nobles). But '88 and '85 were also first-rate. Limiting myself to citing one "authority," here's Phaneuf in his 1993 Guide du vin: Plus nerveux usually means sharper, higher acid, which typically increases longevity. While I haven't checked my notes, I don't recall tasting any of the three. I have had Hugel pinot gris VTs from '90 and '88, though, and they were lovely. But don't buy a bottle thinking you'll get something similar to an icewine. These will be nowhere near as dense or sweet. In fact, since they're Trimbach, they're almost certain to be dryish. (Along with, say, Hugel and Beyer and as opposed to, say, Zind-Humbrecht and Weinbach, Trimbach tends to avoid Parker-pleasing high residual sugar levels.) So I wouldn't think of them as dessert wines. They'd probably be happiest accompanying a seared foie gras scallop with a not very sweet sauce. Or being sipped as a deluxe aperitif or digestif. I could also see them pairing nicely with a fish or shellfish first course like scallops in a curried cream sauce. Trimbach's regular and reserve lines of rieslings, gewurztraminers, pinot blancs and pinot gris are almost always worthwhile. But to really understand the beauty of Trimbach and the genius of Alsace, hotfoot it to the Westmount SAQ and pick up one or two of the Island's nine remaining bottles of the 1999 riesling Cuvée Frédéric Émile. Gorgeous now and capable of improving for at least another ten years. Pricey at $49 but it's one of the world's most enthralling expressions of dry riesling. Plus it's a relative bargin next to its rarer stablemate, Clos Saint-Hune.

Go here and scroll down to the first picture. Montreal's in New England, right?

Excuse my grousing, but I smell something fishy here. And I'm not referring to the fact that Pepin's approach is nothing like the traditional technique for preparing gravlax. No, my beef is that "sea bass gravlax" is an oxymoron. As any Swede will tell you, gravlax is a compound of two words: gravade, pickled or cured, and lax, salmon (akin to lox). Linguistically speaking, sea bass gravlax makes as much sense as pork coq au vin, tuna beef wellington or a peach candy apple.

No doubting that. I wonder what effect the increased demand is going to have on prices, though. Haven't seen any box-office figures but am surprised the film appears to be having such an impact in Quebec. The staff at Phos report that À la dérive is as much in demand as the original Sideways. Speaking of the Signature store, this week's new arrivals circular listed Trimbach's pinot gris Vendange Tardive in half bottles from three long-past vintages at hard-to-believe prices: 1990 @ $47, 1988 @ $42 and 1985 @ $36.75. Not only do those prices seem low for 15-20 year old wines, they also seem backwards (normally the older a wine, the more expensive it is).

Yet in my apartment, which if anything has an excess of sun, it won't survive into January. (Tiny leafed Greek basil does better indoors but is a culinary wimp.) I think the lesson here is that there are few hard and fast rules and that all gardeners, indoor or out, have to learn by trial and error what works with the conditions and cultivars at their disposal.

Tastet reviews Le bleu raisin in this week's Voir (the link will take you directly to the review until next Thursday, after which you'll have to pull it up from the archived reviews listed on the left side of the page). From the photo, it appears they've redecorated, opting for an upscale bistro look and feel. The menu's now written on big blackboards and they've dropped the many-little-plates approach in favour of three first and three mains a night, each listed with a recommended wine by the glass. After bravely confessing that he has "repeatedly failed Wine Appreciation 101" (my translation, as are the other quotes), Tastet admits to bringing along a wine geeky friend, who claims not only that the winelist is populated with many interesting bottles but that they are reasonably priced; in fact, some sell for scarely more than retail at the SAQ. No examples are provided, alas. The food sounds interesting if a bit predictable (where have we heard the phrase "market-driven French" before?), though some of the ingredients are unusual. Tastet swoons over a couple of dishes and complains about the size of the foie gras appetizer The elaborate names of the dishes come in for some ribbling ("detailed to the point of tedium"): - Tartelette d'escargots et de lentins de chêne, pignons de pin et graines de cumin torréfié, le tout coiffé du Riopelle de l'Île-aux-Grues - Ragoût de pétoncles acadiens tendres arrosés de vinaigre de malt, cassolette de pépins de grenade, lentilles vertes et boutons de marguerite - Mijoté de jarret d'agneau gaspésien à l'eucalyptus et raisins imbibés au Pineau des Charentes, coulis de Bouq-Émissaire des Bois-Francs et mousseline d'aubergine à l'huile de sésame grillé - Pétales [!] de cerf de St-Alexis-des-Monts sur fondue de chou frisé au pain d'épices, jus et copeaux de truffe noire himalayenne. The desserts: Île flottante sur crème anglaise à la menthe, coulis de fraise à la cardamome or a Pot chocolaté, délice de pommes, parfum de basilic et Bouq-Émissaire. "Don't bother with the crème brûlée, the menu's weak link, basically due to its lack of originality. Which is certainly not the case for the restaurant or its cooking." None of this comes cheap: first courses $14-23, mains $32-39, desserts $6-8. Guess you make it up on the wine. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

The first 30 or so bottles in my collection, some of them expensive rarities, ended up cooked because I stored them in the bottom of the coolest closet in my apartment. This being "cool" Montreal, I don't have air-conditioning and it's amazing how warm even the darkest closet gets when you go away for a sunny weekend in July and have to leave the windows closed. And of the cooked wines that others have poured for me, an amazingly high percentage have spent time in apartment closets. I'd strongly recommend to anyone considering closet storage, especially in an unairconditioned apartment, that they get a max/min thermometer and take some readings at the height of the summer before storing wines of value anywhere but the fridge.

Spearmint, peppermint, thai basil, holy basil, etc. all have long and glorious histories and essential uses: genoese basil is as out of place in a Thai curry as thai basil would be in a Riviera pesto, and a candy cane made with any mint other than pepper just wouldn't compute. I'm talking about the wave of "flavoured" herbs like chocolate mint, lime basil and tangerine sage. Oregano thyme, anyone?

Sounds like your bottle may have undergone secondary (in-bottle) fermentation. Or perhaps it hadn't finished fermenting when it was bottled. In any case, it wouldn't be something caused by your storage conditions. The biggest danger with cupboard storage is overheating, which gives red wines a stewed prunes aroma, flattens their taste and prevents them from evolving harmoniously. To avoid "cooking" your wines, you need to find storage where the temperature never exceeds 65-70ºF (20ºC). That's usually pretty hard to do in an apartment (I speak from experience). Small wine fridges can be had for not much these days; I saw a 17-bottle fridge for under US$100 last fall, and that's in expensive Canada. In a pinch, you're better off storing your bottles in your regular fridge than leaving them in a hot cabinet or closet. Just be sure to lay them on their sides if you don't plan to open them in a week or three; it keeps the corks from drying out (of course, if the bottles are closed with plastic corks or screwcaps, you can store them upright with impunity).

Check out the recent Growing herbs in an NYC apartment thread, which, name notwithstanding, isn't very NYC-specific. Sun lovers like basil you're pretty much obliged to grow outdoors. Sorrel is another delicious salad herb; it's a perennial, though, and becomes quite the clump after a year or two, so I doubt it would work as a windowsill or window box plant. I often pot sprouting shallots and eat the chive-like shoots. If you can provide sunny but cool conditions, nasturtiums are great; you can even pickle the flower buds.

Don't you find that's true for most "flavoured" herbs. The "doesn't taste all that good" part, I mean. Can apple mint justify its existence? Is there a truly worthwhile use for pinapple sage? Lemon thyme looks and smells great but I have a hard time finding a place for it in the kitchen: the occasional fish dish, maybe, but not much else. Hybridization run amok? Vanity herbs?

You're right that it can be horribly invasive. However, it can be contained. Plant it in a large, partially buried pot. Or completely surround it by an impenetrable barrier several inches deep and extending one or two inches above soil level. Many garden supply stores carry plastic "edging" strips expressly for this purpose.

T. vulgaris aka common thyme, though in Quebec it's usually called English thyme. Your standard cooking thyme. Bushy and quite hardy.