paul o' vendange

That’s good to hear. I didn’t agree with the ultimate call, but he’s clearly a gifted chef. King Georges is a fantastic look at the two of them, you’ve probably seen it. Edit: Ripert, sorry. I’d read in some sources that they’d had a falling out as a result of her losing it on elimination. I regret mentioning it as a bit gossipy. I see they’ve been together in interviews and events since.

Oh god, impossible, lol! A lot of them I’m so fond of some of the chefs and so I get bummed when they get eliminated. I also get pissed when one of my faves loses to the wrong chef (imo, of course 😁. Seasons 2 and 11...). Season 11, Nick winning didn’t sit at all well. Soft spot for Stephanie, Nina too. Sad thing is, Nick was chef de cuisine for Georges Perrier at Le Bec-Fin, before it closed. Which brings up a point. I’m so often blown away by the pedigree many of these chefs have, only to cook so poorly on the show. Or tanks a relationship with mentors, e.g. season 8, J’en and Eric Ripert. Yikes! )

Good. Been through each season multiple times and still, on completing, I get deeply bummed. Oh, and: 1. Padma called my bread “beautiful” once, in a tweet. 2. I exchanged with Tom a bit, on the epochal topic of Gilroy garlic. My life is complete.

I have a few by Chef Ducasse - Flavors of France, his first book (Riviera), Atelier, his bistro book, maybe a couple I am forgetting. Let me say at the outset I prefer books that are written with as little adjustment to home limitations as possible. I want to learn the chef’s techniques, equipment and materials, but above all else, I want to try and capture the chef’s mind, see the inner life and how it expresses in her or his cuisine, and that things not be “simplified” or “adapted” for the home kitchen. To that end, on Ducasse, I have long looked at his massive bibles, beginning with his first, the Grande Livre de Cuisine, followed by Desserts and finally on Mediterranean cooking. On the other hand, as they are bloody expensive, I’m loathe to take the plunge if they are basically reference entries, no real techniques, reasoning and/or genesis behind a given recipe, and/or recipes themselves. In a word, ignoring the fact a cuisine stuffed with black and white truffles (especially, as is his wont it seems, the latter), foie, and caviar isn’t something I’ll be working but on rare occasions (like, “My Last Supper” rare, lol), is the book useful as a working and teaching text, from the professional kitchen point of view?

Terrible sucker for sensory allurement. Chocolat?, emergency outing to store for movie fix of crappy chocolate. Babette’s Feast? Off to the races and little sleep. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover? Don’t ask. Reading through « My Last Supper » (apologies - iPhone stuck on French, no idea why), pg. 126, Martin Picard in a late fall woods. Before my body went on permanent strike, used to be my favorite place to be alone, or stalking deer in vast wilderness tracts with my son. He references a recipe for snipe from the 1984 edition. And I am screwed yet again as I must have it. I prefer to read in French, both to keep alive in the language and because I overwhelmingly prefer to read stuff in its original language (leaving my options to a good French, a middling Spanish and a laughably bad German). I couldn’t find a purely French 1984 (Edited by Robert Courtine). I do see a French-English version, but don’t know if it is faithful to the original. Anyone have it know anything about the bilingual edition? In their contents, are they identical? French-English:

1961 in my eager hands!

I used to get whole moulard in wholesale from Christian Gasset of Au Bon Canard but that was a long time ago and he is more than busy supplying chefs around the country. I really like Muscovy but love moulard. I’m coming up empty on whole moulard. Anyone have any source?

Swan, I’d forgotten! That should be a helluva bbq. Hon, can you pass that giant bird with flames shooting out it’s nostrils? Oh, and the lard pie, with live doves - too much? 😆 You have me thinking (you all do, actually), I should be going backwards in editions, not forwards. In all seriousness, thank you @FlashJack, it’s a perfect idea.

Very interested as well, sounds delicious. Viognier can be such an imp, but the right marriage is wonderful. Funk note is interesting. Love it in farmhouse ciders (Normandy), saison and touches in certain British ales done traditionally and on cask. Can’t say I’ve picked it up in a wine, and it’s presence especially in a viognier would be great interesting. Thanks, @weinoo. @JoNorvelleWalker, very cool. Brewer very interested in traditional methods (British ales). My wife is Estonian and she loves their version of sahtis, runoff in spruce boughs and very open to “good” infections during fermentation. Before Covid, for an anthropology course my son was taking, I helped him put together a best guess on late kingdom Egyptian beer. Mash “brick” is fermented on mash in a clay pot, as well. Would be interesting to follow the thread on the process you describe. So - mad for French (Pinot) burgundies, always on the hunt for the rare price break at better appellations, or solid wines at village or regional cru. Always up for new or undiscovered Willamette Valley as well. Back in 2005 my wife won the national fellowship to attend IPNC - nice. Ample time with Martine Saulnier, Riedel, tons of extraordinary makers, tons of great wine. I ran our restaurant. I’ve never gotten over the jealousy.😂 So if anyone has ideas....🥳

Fascinating. Is oxidation induced late fermentation, or in the bottle? Any sherry or Madeira qualities?

I know of their slicers but not this knife - flexible, wider blade fillet knife, at Williams for $100. Anyone have any experience?

No specific recommendations, though drooling, but there’s a pretty wonderful book, Great Kitchens: At Home with America’s Top Chefs. Open discussions of noted chefs and their home kitchens with excellent photos and a floor plan for each. The opening chapter is Ken Hom, who at the time of publication maintained homes in Berkeley and Catus, Southern France. Beautiful. The ubiquitous commercial range, island stuffed with tools (he likes to look at them as beautiful unto themselves); wokburner and, interestingly, a commercial Hobart DW (he teaches at his home). Couple dozen homes of chefs and chefs/partners. For me, deepest possible sinks (with overhead stockpot - faucet at the range), commercial 6 burner range, wood fireplace/grill/split (see Jean-Pierre Moulle (sic - no special characters), formerly of Chez Panisse; Mark Miller), brick bread/pizza/roast oven (Alice Waters), extensive kitchen herb and veggie garden (Alice Waters!), open plan kitchen/DR/LR (See John Folse - add in vaulted timber frame, “theater” kitchen!). Ton there. I either drool or cry into my glass. GoFund Me for that beautiful little farmhouse off the Côte D’Or because I’m just a swell, swell guy, pending).

Thanks weinoo, will do on the Beard book. I’d seen it referred to in Jeremiah Tower’s autobio (I think), but for some reason I’d thought he was an Eastern guy. Many thanks!

I’d say all three, though of them, recipes least. A lot of time spent going down a rabbit hole of references to references to ...:: - and a lot of times, inspired, usually in pulling together a menu (home - family and friends, long out of the industry and it literally feels like I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever known - another story). My heart is in classic French (go to Carême for a kind of comfort in nesting historically, Escoffier dependably), and here the book makes me smile. That said, I’m terribly addicted to books. I prefer great chefs, with little accommodation to home cooking. I want to see inside their mind as directly as possible, and adapt as I can. Not Larousse specifically, but one huge lament: I grew up on the Pacific Ocean coast, surfing, fishing and diving. I now am chained to the MW and try to explain to my family how much it bums me out to buy seafood here. Sea- and fertile-coast/veg-centric (long) seasonal cuisine - e.g. David Kinch and Manresa, French Mediterranean or Brittany - can’t afford to buy Browne Trading regularly and can’t bring my myself to buy what they proffer here in whole fish - bronzini, striped bass, red snapper; forget trout, all shellfish. It’s lucky I was a probably born with a Burgundian heart, love fowl, all game, lamb. But man I miss the produce, and same hour, much less day, much less however many days since our poor specimens swam alive, of all seafood. Man, rant more than a lament, I guess! To bring it back to Larousse, my heart is pretty classically French and the edition I have is beautiful in this way (like yours, I imagine). Brief notes on this latest edition talks of some new techniques, good product coverage, a more global approach, and some looks inside some great kitchens and their approach (ALWAYS a sucker for the latter). So, got a bug for some of it, just not sure it’s a $65 bug when I already have a bible I love. Weight - Advil, 😆. Reps with Larousse, CIA, Kamman, Ferrandi. Who needs a gym? (Do not gush about Ducasse’s massive encyclopedias. I may get in shape, but my wife will kill me.).💪😳

Just hoping to get a comparative sense of the latest (?) 2009 edition, black and white cover, and the 2001 “revised and updated” edition, red cover? I have the 2001 and am very devoted to it but trying to get a sense if it’s worthwhile getting the 2009 edition. Any thoughts? thanks.

I don’t disagree. Bernie’s right and we are talking thermal conductivity in addition to thermal mass. It’s nigh just impossible to replicate the bake from a brick pizza and and home, no matter what we do. So we do what we can. I’ve found steel is just not very good compared to my results obtained using either a stone and an array of saturated linen, or a cast iron cloche as advocated by the Tartine approach. I should note I’m talking about levain only, not pastries. if folks haven’t read it but are interested, the late Alan Scott was a guru behind a resurgent interest in traditional brick ovens. See The Bread Builders. Mud ovens, too, are pretty wonderful. There’s some cultural anthro study out there re the traditional mud ovens of Quebec, 16th century on. Forget it’s name, but it’s somewhere and fascinating. At any rate, this is pretty far off Anova, apologies. Just wanted to share my experience. Will beg off now.

Lol, yep, pretty peppy bit of steam. That steam goes so quickly, but I want to do what I can to keep a humid environment. I forgot to mention I toss a couple of ice cubes at T-15 to also lend to a good start. The sheet of soaked towels goes in right at preheat (I’ve always gone an hour for preheating. Oven may be there but I want to make sure the stone or Dutch oven are fully at temp). The towels perform like champs. See plenty of steam coming up till I pull sheet or the cloche lid, 20 minutes. Even with the fact the oven constantly vents. Ideas aren’t mine. Sort of a hybrid of Hamelman and Tartine.

I am no scientist either but yep, we’re talking thermal mass. Your plate retains heat better than a stone has greater mass still. One benefit, I believe. Is to act as a bit more of a buffer - every time we open the door the temp drops dramatically but it’s less of a problem with bakes on material of higher thermal mass than lower mass. I can’t speak for Anova as I’ve never used one. My oven gets a warmup, with cast iron steel Dutch oven if applicable, or stone itself when doing bakes with barards or any other longer breads like baguettes. In this second case, I set up a cookie sheet with rolled up kitchen towels, heavily soaked prior to being put in the heat oven. Regardless, I have a hotel pan full of lava rocks which hit with water just prior to baking . Anova is a steam oven, right? If so I can’t speak to anything else but f higher or lower higher mass.

Thanks weinoo, really nice. I cannot remember anything about it (what and why....not a whole lot left!), but with respect to ratios, sucree more sugar balanced relative to fat, and the opposite for Sablée, this lends certain properties I can’t recall. (?) I dock sucree for blind baking. Is the advice against it because of more liquid fillings (e.g. curd)?

Douglas, were you in the industry by any chance? My cousin is a CA winemaker, though he left working for the big concerns when consolidation killed any hope of quality (he ran Jekel, until it was bought by bourbon guys and collapsed all capacity into mass-wine). It’s a shame, I love his wine. Pretty crazy, I used to work for a craft brewery (Goose Island, pre-Bud), and during that time my wife and I won a trip to England, dinner with the late Michael Jackson (all things malt writer, not the King of Pop) in London and a tour of breweries throughout England. Pretty cool, after tour of Fuller’s in London, in their adjacent shop, lo and behold I see a small mountain of his wines on display. They gushed, I was and am deeply proud of him.

Excellent post, thanks Jimbo. Never thought of it. Makes perfect sense.

$9.95, 2 day shipping included (prime). About as cheap as it gets, I imagine,

For some reason all I see anymore in terms of Amazon is the domain itself, not a link to the product. Sorry, I see I forgot to name the company in the post (Xximuim - in the title). Here’s a description: Silicone Mold,1PCS Half Sphere Baking Mold Chocolate Candy and Gummy Mold Teacake Bakeware Set for Chocolate, Cake, Jelly, Pudding, Candy Molds Non Stick, BPA Free Silicone Molds (24 Rounds) They all look the same in that they are 4 x 6 rounds, 30 mm: Thanks for any thoughts, guys.

I commend you! I am guilty of being both a technological Luddite, and someone who needs to feel the weight and feel of a book. So I can destroy it with notes and relentless ladle drips and oil slicks.

Inevitably I’ll get it because my cookbook acquisition illness is terminal.😏