carswell

My butcher receives his rabbits on Wednesday or Thursday. I usually shop on Saturday. Well wrapped in plastic and stored in a cold fridge, they're fine for Sunday dinner. I think I've waited as long as Tuesday, though at that point the meat was getting a little high. In any case, rabbit doesn't strike me as any more perishable than chicken. And in a pinch you can freeze it.

Mmm, rabbit. What chicken aspires to. Your prep looks great. While it lends itself to roasting (especially boned and stuffed), grilling and frying, not to mention the various types of rabbit charcuteries, my favourite way of preparing rabbit is braising. In another thread, I listed some winners: With prunes, pearl onions and lardons With white wine, mushrooms, mustard and thyme With Pineau des Charentes With celery, vinegar, olives and capers With red peppers With cream and dijon mustard With red wine, tomatoes, pine nuts, saffron and orange peel With white wine, anchovies and capers With carrots, leeks and green beans With preserved lemons and garlic With cider With tarragon and cream With bacon or ham and brandy With choucroute With green or red cabbage With beer With walnuts Niçoise style (eggplants, zucchini, red peppers, tomatoes) Sicilian style (parsnips, celery, pine nuts, golden raisins, fennel seed, vinegar and chocolate) Cacciatore style If you'd like detailed descriptions or, in many cases, recipes, say the word. For example, here's the recipe for the first on my list. See also here.

Thanks for the recco, larkhess. And welcome to eGullet. To be frank, I'd been avoiding Il Piatto Pieno because of mixed reviews, though none of them come from people whose palates I trust unconditionally. Googling doesn't turn up much either. There's an Italian wine geek who gives it one out of four stars and complains about the klunky stemware. And Françoise Kayler in an August 2004 La Presse review is more positive, though she complains about the veal. (She also didn't give it a star rating; don't know why.) Still, it's great to have another data point, and excellent gnocchi are probably all the inducement I need to give it a try.

You know, I just did a bit of googling and see that the resto is listed as a favourite by a couple of particpants in a discussion of BYOs over on the Crus et saveurs board. And La Presse gives it four stars, something I find hard to understand based on my single visit. The place does have a lot going for it: the cadre is appealing; the antipasti make for a gorgeous spread and fill you with anticipation; the dishes are attractively presented; the waitstaff and management are welcoming. But I get the feeling that, ultimately, it's more about the overall experience than the food, that their pitch is aimed at a bourgeois Quebeco-Canadian clientele, not gourmets and not Italians. Meaning their other suggestions were write-offs too? What were they?

Last November, after months of my bemoaning the city's lack of a decent Italian BYO, a participant on another board recommended La Forchetta, claiming it to be "of exceptional quality." Though I'd walked by the caterer/restaurant many times, I had no idea it was a bring-your-own. A week or so later, I called to make a reservation. The phone was answered by, I assume, a kitchen hand who spoke little English and less French. He took my phone number and said the owner would call me back. The owner never did. Subsequent calls were picked up by an answering machine that instructed me to leave a name and number; I did and never heard back. On Friday the week before last, I called at around 4 p.m. and this time connected with an coherent Italian-accented francophone, who accepted a same-day reservation for two. It's a pleasant high-ceilinged space, "warm and intimate" (around 30 seats) as my correspondent promised, with exposed brick walls and a dark green partial wall in the back that divides the dining room from the kitchen. One side of the room is dominated by a long low refrigerator case with an impressive array of beautifully presented "antipasti." The table settings are attractive: white linen tablecloths and napkins, tulip-shaped stemware (too small for big reds, though), a decked-out bud vase, a lampshaded candle holder and a flask of olive oil for bread dipping. We were greeted at the door, relieved of our coats and shown to a cozy table for two. Service was friendly if rough around the edges. Two waiters served us. One, a young Italian, was cool and obliging. The other, a Québécois au boutte, would not have been out of place selling used cars in Sorrel. Within minutes of being seated, the former had uncorked my bottle, filled my companion's wine glass and poured my portion into an empty water goblet, not noticing his mistake or apologizing even after spilling wine down the side and onto the tablecloth. This was the only time our wine was poured for us—probably a good thing. The Québécois handed us our menus and explained that we could order à la carte or choose the table d'hôte, which includes three appetizers, a main, dessert and tea or coffee, for $45, $50 or $55, depending on the main. The waiter was positively dithyrambic about two of the most expensive mains: guinea hen with figs and rabbit stuffed with veal and porcini mushrooms. Other mains included a three-cheese lasagna, osso bucco and "the best lamb shanks in town, guaranteed." We chose the hen and the rabbit. After the waiter takes your order, you accompany him to the refrigerator case to pick your three starters from the 30 or so on display. Our waiter seemed bored stiff by the process, stopping his recitation upon reaching the end of the first case; had we not asked whether the antipasti in the adjacent case were included in the deal, I doubt he would have told us. After we made our selection, he took the plates to the kitchen for reheating. On returning to our table, we found a basket with several stone cold slices of country-style bread. Minutes later, the appetizers were delivered. Any reheating that had been done was minimal. Arranged three to a plate around sprigs of baby arugula, the apps ranged from wonderful to unexceptional. The fresh date stuffed with foie gras and gorgonzola was a standout (I'll be trying this at home); grilled portobello mushrooms were overpowered by the pesto stuffing; the fig wrapped in prosciutto missed the point and was topped with something sugary (fig confit?), presumably to cover the out-of-season fig's lack of flavour and natural sweetness; vitello tonato on red endive leaves was lovely to look at but bland; a half pear stuffed with walnuts, gorgonzola and 40-year-old balsamic vinegar should have been a winner, but the pear was underripe and hard; red peppers stuffed with mozzarella were what you would expect, no more, no less. If the appetizers were a mixed bag, the mains were an outright disappointment. Both had been prepared ahead of time and reheated, though neither was hot. The hen was overcooked—the breast unpalatably dry—and had zero depth of flavour. While the promised figs could be detected in the sweetness imparted to the flesh, none were actually sighted. The better of the two dishes was the rabbit, the meat moist but somewhat overwhelmed by the ground veal stuffing. Porcini were AWOL as far as I could tell. Both dishes were presented as pyramids sitting in large shallow bowls on a layer of grainy yet mushy lukewarm "risotto." The rabbit was incongruously topped with finely grated celeriac and both dishes were garnished with grated raw carrots and red pepper and an arugula leaf planted like a feather in a cap. While the crudités made for a colourful presentation, the flavours and textures were totally at odds with the rest of the dish. To our relief, the restaurant partially redeemed itself with dessert. They were pushing tiramisu. Also offered, but only after we asked if tiramisu was it, were panforte, which they described as a walnut cake, and panna cotta topped with zabaglione. The tiramisu was tasty, unctuous and not oversweet, though more a mousse, as no ladyfinger or other substrate was to be found. Our two décas allongés were very good. With a bottle of mineral water, taxes and tip, the meal came to $75 a person. While I might return to buy a few antipasti for take-out, I'm back to bemoaning the city's lack of a decent Italian BYO. La Forchetta 234 Laurier West 514 279-9090 http://laforchetta.tripod.com/index.html

Don't have a dishwasher but even if I did I'd wash all stemware by hand. Dishwashered glass always has a dishwasher feel to it and often a dishwasher smell. My stems are spotless without vinegar too, thanks to a tip I picked up from one of Hugh Johnson's books: just before drying (with a lint-free glass cloth, of course), fill the glass with scalding hot water, let it sit for a few seconds, then empty it and dry immediately. No spots, no lint, no off odours.

The traditional melon is the pastèque à confire, a kind of watermelon, aka zucca melon. Click here. Good luck with the calissons, by the way. Have heard they're a challenge to make well, even for professional candy makers. Me, I just pay through the nose for the ones from Aix.

This was discussed not long ago. See Swiss chard: how to use it?. And a new favourite of mine is Lebanese Lentil and Chard Soup.

My "garden" these days is in pots on my terrace. I grow mainly herbs that fall into two groups: things I can't easily buy (e.g. lemon verbena, winter savoury, lavender, nasturtium) and things I'm otherwise forced to buy more of than I usually need (e.g. rosemary, thyme, marjoram). A new herb I'll be trying from seed this year is anise. "Herb" not "spice," because I'll be growing it for the leaves, not the seeds. Fred Plotkin's excellent book on the cooking of northeast Italy, La Terra Fortunata, has a recipe for mussels steamed with anise leaves that I'm anxious to try. Will have a go at shiso, too, provided I can find a plant. If I had a real garden, I'd focus on fruits and vegetables that are best eaten immediately after harvest (corn, asparagus, peas, berries) or that are hard to find in markets (heirloom tomatoes and potatoes, yellow corn, baby favas, and so on). Identiflier's right about the Montreal melon. Assuming you've got good seeds, I suspect your biggest problem in the Eastern Townships is degree days. You might try covering the ground around the plants with black plastic sheeting — ugly but it creates a warmer micro-climate. It was the only way we succeded in growing decent okra and watermelons in upstate New York.

It's a celebrated musk melon that was grown in and around present-day NDG in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s. As the city expanded, it was farmed less and less until, finally, it was thought to be extinct. Seeds were located in the mid-1990s and production, on a very limited scale, has been resumed. See Return of the Montreal Melon. Anyone know if it's ever sold at public markets?

I like them all. The first volume is not nearly as cutting-edge as it once was, but that just proves how influential Waters and company have been. The volume I use the least is Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza and Calzone. These days, the two I consult the most often are Vegetables and Fruits. I think that's because they lend themselves to exploiting the explosion in produce that has occurred in recent years — "OK, now that I've got some cardoons, what do I do with 'em?" — and because so many of the recipes are for simple, weekday dinner kinds of dishes. The Café book strikes me as the least innovative of the lot, by which I mean the one I've learned the least from, the one more filled with ideas you can find elsewhere. But that's not to knock it: like the others, it contains many delicious, mostly straightforward recipes and lots of useful related information. And like the others, it's a pleasure to read and behold.

<off-topic minirant> While you're right that usage is changing, especially among a vocal group of Southwest US food writers and their adherents, and while I admit that the earlier post is the first time I've seen the dish spelled chile, your categoric claim that the "fruits are called chiles" is not only prescriptive, it's patently wrong. "Calling" the fruits chilis or chilies is perfectly acceptable US English. For example, see the 11th edition of Merrriam Webster's, published in 2003, where chili is the headword and chile an alternate spelling. And let's not forget the rest of the English-speaking world, eh? The standard Canadian spelling for the fruit is chili, whereas chilli is preferred in India and, if I am not mistaken, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Have been meaning to start a thread on the spelling of culinary terms. Maybe this will push me to do it. </off-topic minirant>

Civet is a stew, not a sauce, traditionally made from game (wild rabbit, wild boar, venison, etc.), pearl onions and lardons (bacon chunks). The braising liquid is typically red wine with some of the animal's blood being added as a thickener at the end.

Sicilians throw raisins or currants in with the onions and anchovies. Yum.

Point of information! By fronds do you mean the feathery leaves or the sturdy stalks? I'd been assuming the former but if the latter, you can air-dry them. The next time you grill a fish (striped bass is classic), throw the dried stalks on the coals under the fish a couple of minutes before the end of cooking. The smoke impregnates the flesh with a wonderful delicate smoky-anisy flavour.

About once a month, when I open a well-aged Bordeaux. The last really memorable bottle was a 1990 Pichon-Baron. Tonight my hopes are riding on a 1994 Pontet-Canet.

Chop the fronds. Combine with chopped waxy potatoes; chopped fennel (if you have any left over); smashed garlic cloves; a peeled and quartered onion or two; some peeled, seeded and chopped tomato; lots of fresh thyme leaves; a couple of bay leaves; a pinch of saffron threads; a shot of Pernod; and some chicken broth. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Serve as an accompaniment to roasted fish. Or poach the fish in the dish. Or steam it on top. Or up the amount of chicken broth and poach an egg or three in the dish for a bouillabaisse d'oeufs (rouille optional).

Pasta! Use it to sauce ravioli (stuffed with herbs, prosciutto and paremsan; or chicken mousse; or leek and mild goat cheese with a little lemon zest) or fresh fettuccini tossed at the last minute with sautéed mushrooms and/or asparagus. Fresh thyme or tarragon would be choice herbs. edit: typos, g@*it!

Sounds directly Montreal-related to me... chefworks91, Boîte noire has it on DVD and English and dubbed French videocassettes. Phos has it on videocassette only. If you're looking to buy, Metro Video doesn't stock it but can special order it. You can also buy it though amazon.ca.

Yeah. Real maple taffy swirled into vanilla ice cream at the last minute. "Last minute" is the operative phrase here — a couple of churns maybe? That's all it took in my parents' hand-cranked ice-cream maker to produce raspberry ripple. With maple taffy, one of the challenges must be finding the right taffy temperature: cool enough not to melt the ice cream but warm enough to stretch into threads that a spoon can cut.

No offence taken. We're a friendly bunch and you're just getting your sea legs. Actually, I'm surprised that one of the moderators didn't up and move the threads to another forum. If I were you, I'd try asking my question in either the General Food Topics or Cooking fora.

The Red Wine Haiku Review

Don't know if they've put up the "Elle est arrivée" sign this year, but Le Bilboquet's flagship product and homage to spring, la crème glacée à la tire d'érable (maple taffy ice cream), is now available. In fact, according to the clerk I spoke with, it's been on sale since they opened for the season last Thursday. That means you have another three or four weeks to avail yourself of this vernal delight. Le Bilboquet 1331 Bernard West 514 276-0414 open daily, 7 a.m. till midnight Now, would someone kindly convince Havre aux glaces to get into the act? Actually, with the maple taffy stand just across the way, you could buy a cup of HAG vanilla to go and make your own!

Am sitting with bated breath in anticipation of replies as this is a category of dish I've only just discovered thanks to a fabulous recipe in Atul Kochhar's Indian Essence: tenga, a sweet and sour fish curry from Assam (East India), replete with bamboo shoots, star anise and kaffir lime leaves.

Suet is rendered beef or mutton fat. Lard is rendered pork fat. I guess the fat could be shredded before melting, though it's usually chopped or ground. In North America, most of the lard sold in supermarkets is partially hydrogenated and adulterated with preservatives. While hydrogentation keeps the lard solid at room temperatures, it also creates trans fats (bad). Artisanal lard is pure unhydrongenated rendered pork fat.