carswell

Lard is fine in cookies that don't require a buttery taste. (For those that do, try half lard, half butter.) The texture in almost always superior to that obtained with butter and, provided you avoid the hydogenated stuff, lard is actually healthier (less unhealthy?) than the yellow stuff. Look for pure lard at artisanal, Latino and Portuguese butchers. It can also be ordered online. It's easy enough to make your own. The best fat for rendering is indeed the fat around the kidneys (it's called leaf fat) but any relatively pure fat will do. Yes, it creams like butter. Well, actually more like shortening. I use it in pie crusts (often with butter) and crackers. It's also the best fat for browning pork. And in a pinch, I use it to strech duck fat when making confit.

Rosés are a good bet with ham, especially if you can find one made from cabernet franc (Chinon, Anjou, Touraine, etc.). If you lean toward red, think light, something along the lines of a Beaujolais, Chinon, Refosco or an inexpensive pinot noir (Saintsbury's Garnet, for example, or a generic Burgundy). If your ham is clove-studded, try a gewurztraminer or pinot blanc. Bear in mind that you're looking for something to cut the salt, refresh your palate and slake your thirst. With ham, big wines are simply out of place.

In the last couple of years, all five of my Émile Henry glazed clay baking dishes have begun to develop cracks, meaning they are no longer watertight (roasting juices, cream, melted duck fat, etc. leak out the bottom). One, a litre oval dish that was perfect for clafoutis, actually broke in two. <sob> I love these dishes and have treated them with respect. I've not poured cold liquids in hot dishes or put cold dishes into hot ovens. I've carefully washed them by hand. And yet after five or six years of use, every one of them has developed cracks that only worsen with time. Is this par for the course? An unavoidable fact of life? Increase kitchen budget to include replacing Émile Henry dishes every five years? As Paula points out, they ain't cheap. As fond of them as I am, I've been thinking of switching to metal pans (clafoutis oval excepted), which don't leak and let you pour cold liquid in them and heat them over a high flame, great when making sauces from pan drippings. But I'd really rather someone told me how to avoid the cracking problem.

Thanks for the report, crickle. Your approach sounds great. Carrots would be a perfect side. Forgot to mention earlier that the clerk at the Veau de Charlevoix store could not stop telling me and everyone else within earshot that cheeks make the absolute best blanquette de veau, especially with lots of carrots. Also, a couple of days ago I was sharing my discovery with a French friend. He knew all about the store and the cheeks and scoffed at the idea of trimming off anything but the fat. He leaves the silverskin on and says it softens completely with long cooking and, if anything, adds moelleux* to the dish. This goes against the advice of the people at the store and every recipe I've seen, but I'll try it soon and report back. *Hard to translate. Unctuousness? Butteriness? Meltingness?

Not sure what any of this has to do with Montreal, Quebec and/or Eastern Canada, but Big Night is one of the two best resto flicks I know (haven't seen Dinner Rush). The other is the epic quest for the perfect noodle soup, Tampopo, with its sweet zenny zaniness that only a foodie can fully appreciate (avoid the French dubbed version however; it completely blows one of the funniest scenes).

Sour cherries are especially popular in the Midwest and Northeast, I assume because they're hardier or less susceptible to spring frost damage. One of the most popular varieties, montmorency, is French in origin. The flavour is closer to morello cherries (griottes) than to, say bings.

Straying off topic here but... They can be air-dried, sun-dried or dried in a dehydrator or very slow oven. As far as I know, they are always pitted and usually cut in half before being dried, skin side down. They can be simmered beforehand in sugar syrup or sprinkled with sugar before drying. For details, do a web search on "drying cherries" or some such, or post a query on the Cooking board.

Agreed. Sour cherries are far superior to bings and rainers in clafoutis (in pies too), with an intense cherry flavour and bright acidity. It's important to up the sugar, though. The season here is short but when I can get them they're the only ones I use. Sour cherries are also good for pickling and in sauces for meat (pork, venison, duck, etc.). Have you tried drying them?

Not sure about that; but, I believe it is a pretty common practise, especially among volume wine makers whose wines never see the inside of an oak barrel. Doing a quick google for "wine oak chips", I find the rules for French mid-market (vin de pays) wines were changed in 2004 to allow the use of oak chips, wider geographical sourcing of grapes, and smaller amounts of named varietals in their wines. ← While I've not been following every development in this story, I recall reading about a catch that's still preventing French winemakers from using wine chips. I think it was that although oak chips have been authorized for non-AOC wines, what constitutes an oak chip has yet to be defined. If so, not only would their use not be common practice, it would be illegal. In any case, they are definitely not authorized for AOC wines like Figeac.

Soon to appear in a French wine near you! (Allowing oak chips in low-end wines is one of the changes being proposed by INAO.) I agree. And I think one of the reasons is that so many French wines are blends, whereas American wines are usually varietals. And as soon as that variety name goes on the label, the winemaker is limited in the amount of blending he can do. Of course, another of INAO's proposed changes will allow more varietal bottlings in France, so the days of cheap French wine's superiority may be numbered. If so, the irony will be complete: what's meant to save French wine will have destroyed French wine.

markk, was it you who wiped the dust from the bottle?

Especially in a temperature-controlled cellar. ← Not the Sigalas Rabaud. ← Yeahbut it was being mentioned in reference to the Léoville, n'est-ce pas? In any case, I can't imagine how temperature fluctuations, even in the range RN! is talking about, could create a vacuum sufficiently strong to suck a cork (and a long Bordeaux cork at that) into the bottle. It defies the laws of physics.

Especially in a temperature-controlled cellar.

The Chez Panisse books, especially Bertoli's Chez Panisse Cooking, are among the most used in my collection. Wells/Robuchon's Simply French is simply excellent. Frédy Girardet's Émotions gourmandes (can't recall the English title) is inspiring and useful. Some of Trotter's books — in particular and somewhat to my surprise, Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home — have kicked my cooking's butt into the 21st century. Kochhar's Indian Essence has opened windows I never knew were there. I'm really looking forward to delving into a recent acquisition, Aquavit. And many friends, virtual and otherwise, swear by The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

There's certainly room for regional volumes. Montreal is the second largest francophone city in the world and, taking the population as a whole, one of the most food-aware communities in North America, yet you will not find here a single decent tome in French or English devoted to the cooking of, say, Alsace, Normandy, Brittany, Franche-Comté, the Auvergne or Corsica. Part of it is a distribution problem: good cookbooks for those regions are available in France (I have a few in my collection) but not as many as there should be. And the English-language pickings are poor. For anglophone audiences, I suspect the ideal approach would be a guide to the food and wine of the region plus recipes, kind of like Friedrich's A Wine and Food Lover's Guide to the Loire meets Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France and maybe Wells' Food Lover's Guide to Paris.

He's dumped us for Hawaii, gang, faster than you can say tabarnouche.

OK. But this is The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, i.e. the 2000 revised edition of A Book of Middle Eastern Food. And the recipe does call for fresh coriander; it just goes into the soup at the same time as the spinach. So, the ground coriander seed would appear to be intentional or an oversight. Are you aware of any other Middle Eastern dishes in which it's used this way? Will have to give it a try the next time I make the soup.

I've not seen either variety. But I haven't looked either. Will ask around. Would be surprised if no one stocks quality almond paste, though being a pastry klutz it's not something I'd know about. In any case, IIRC, the headline for Lesley's Wednesday (?) column in the Gazette was something along the lines of "Can't find marzipan? Don't fret! It's easy to make." So maybe she'll chime in. If not, post a query on the Pastry and Baking forum. Sorry. IIRC = If I recall correctly.

MaeveH's Hour review Tastet's Voir review My impressions closely parallel Thesorus's. Great space. Polished service. Imaginative bites well prepared but not a place to go when you're really hungry. Pretty good wine list but disappointing selection by the glass. And your bill can add up. For a wine bar with the emphasis on wine, I much prefer Bû, though Pullman takes the prize for food and overall chic.

So, Paula, do you or don't you? Pit, that is.

Am at a loss to explain this as anything other than sabotage. The rodent theory is interesting but: - How could a mouse or rat hanging from the rack produce sufficient force to force a cork into a bottle? - Even if a rodent were strong enough to push the cork in, wouldn't the capusle show more damage? Wouldn't the hole be bigger? - Even if a rodent could push the cork part way in, would it be possible, anatomically speaking, for it to push the cork all the way in? - The puddle on the floor would imply that the "accident" occurred not long before it was discovered, yet the thick layer of dust on the bottle and adjacent rack appears not to have been disturbed for a long time (except for the top of the bottle, which looks like it was recently cleaned with a rag — by markk?). Wouldn't a rodent have left tracks? Of course, it had to be a 25-year-old bottle of LLC, not the Gallo merlot you got at the office Christmas party, eh?

As you may know, the Académie française originally called it a flan but eventually deferred to the outraged limousins and defined it as a kind of cherry cake. Interestingly, Le Robert's definition is (my translation) "a cake baked in the oven and made from flour, milk, eggs and mixed fruits (fruits mêlés)"; cherries are mentioned only in the example (clafoutis aux cerises).

Yes, and tomatoes; cherry tomatoes; carrots; green beans; sausage; chestnuts; leeks; leeks and ham; and asparagus; etcetera; to say nothing of grapes; apples; quince; raspberry; raspberry and chocolate brittle; pears; kiwis; dried apricots; fresh apricots; bananas; peaches; peaches and red currants; plums; prunes; and mirabelles (delicious!). And those are only French French recipes (see Google search results for "clafoutis aux").

Not Weinstein & Gavinos? It's been closed a couple of months by my reckoning. It was shuttered when I walked by in early February and the snow had obviously not been cleared for at least a couple of weeks.

I will second Busboy on ivan.