John Whiting

Have you tried Popeseye Steak House in Olympia? I haven't been there but friends have recommended it.

A strong case has been made that the cassoulet is in fact a descendent of the cholent, the Jewish bean stew which is set to cooking so that no work need be done on the Sabbath. As for whether the movement of culinary influence was up or down, James Bentley writes: In other words, it was a two-way street and, with the most popular dishes, it's virtually impossible to separate the class origins of the various elements.

My post was slightly misleading. There are two methods recommended by the RSPCA but I follow the first; i.e. placing it in the freezer until it doesn't respond to handling (I check every half-hour or so) and then bisecting it lengthwise and grilling it with a generous amount of butter. The bisecting can be accomplished without the freezing, but I'm not a good sport -- I don't like to give the critter a fighting chance. When I buy a lobster already cooked -- and in Britain I very infrequently buy a lobster at all -- I don't enquire as to how it was cooked. That way lies madness. But if I'm doing the job myself I prefer it grilled and I prefer a method that insures I don't do a botch job. Growing up on Cape Cod, I ate lobsters with the carefree abandon that kids today eat Big Macs. But today my wife and I generally prefer crabs, particularly spider crabs. The meat is more complexly tasty; and, since, they require a certain amount of work to disect and extract the meat, they are a hellofa lot cheaper.

I prefer to either pre-kill a lobster or cook it humanely. There are two alternatives recommended by the RSPCA: (1) Put it in the freezer for two hours, where it gradually goes unconscious. It can then be skewered or split without a struggle. (2) If boiling or steaming, start with cold water and bring it gradually to a boil. The lobster passes out as it gets warm. There are those who argue that a lobster feels no pain and that the frantic scratching in the pot is merely a reflex action. They tend to include those for whom any slow preparation or cooking method would be an added expense or an inconvenience.

Do the Thais have different palates? We had a Thai friend to lunch recently, to allow her to sample traditional British cuisine. In the course of the meal the subject of spiciness came up and she said that she never found any food in London that was hot enough. Jokingly I offered her the hottest bottled sauce in my cupboard -- Whistle Blower Pickle from Bombay Bangers. It is not only very hot but also has a very strong flavor and I use it very sparingly because it can completely take over whatever you add it to. Our guest tasted a bit on the end of a spoon, expressed her strong approval and took a generous spoonful, which she added to her meal. It must have been about twenty times the quantity I ever use; generally I just dip a fork into it and then stir into my food what little adheres. Now, this young lady was not a show-off. She was in fact exceedingly modest and a perfect guest. I watched her closely as she ate the rest of her meal and she didn't show the slightest symptom of discomfort. I'm not a wimp when it comes to hot Asian dishes, but if I had tried such a thing I would have been sweating profusely and in extreme agony. Does anyone have an explanation?

A French friend has just sent me this via email:

From today's Guardian, here is Matthew Fort's take on Racine. He could hardly be more enthusiastic. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4473619,00.html Edit: No, the web site says it was August 3, although I don't remember it.

Cabrales: It's contentious. So much of the "pro" evidence comes from scientists whose sources of income include the firms they are defending that it's difficult to read the evidence with confidence. And some of the anti-aspartame voices blame it for practically everything except global warming. One thing is certain. A good friend who heads a dental school tells us that strongly acidic soft drinks, whether sweetened with sugar or artifical sweeteners, are eating away the enamel of both children and adults at an escalating rate.

In fact there is said to be a serious health risk from soft drinks that have been stored unprotected in very hot climates and then refrigerated at the last minute for consumption -- gas stations in deserts or semi-deserts for instance.

Here's the latest report on Pret a Manger's American bid, from today's Guardian, with input from NY food historian Andy Smith: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4478330,00.html Edit: I've only just noticed that this is apparently condensed from the New Yorker story that this topic started with. My apologies. But since the original was not available online, this may still be of interest.

This loses much of the garlic juice into the water. And yes, it can go off in the fridge without it being obvious. If I come into a lot of garlic, I peel it, chop it roughly, blitz it with a neutral vegetable oil in a blender and freeze the result. The oil makes it easier to cut off what you want without thawing, and the neutral oil makes it compatible with a wider range of cuisines.

It's _Cornucopia: A Gastonomic Tour of Britain_ and it's out now in paberback. It's the best book about the present state of British cuisine, both the good and the bad.

SteveP wrote Maybe.Steve, I'm afraid this is another of those questions that doesn't have a definite answer unless you make it up. Re fruits [sic] such as tomatoes: The inherent quality of those commonly available used to be better before they were bred into anonymity, but storage and transportation problems meant that it many areas of the US (and elsewhere) they arrived and went on sale in terrible condition. I can remember my father picking through specimens on sale at full price which today would be thrown away even by the greediest merchant.

I think there's no question but that those who are moderately prosperous and care about what they eat can, with a bit of effort, obtain a variety of foodstuffs that even the rich would have had to travel the world for only a generation ago. The mass of the population eat badly because the food industry knows how to appeal to their weaknesses -- and how, indeed, to encourage those weaknesses and make the punters complacent about them. The "guilt" for junk food must be shared between the producers and the consumers. Its cheapness has already been mentioned. The prosperous *want* cheap food, the poor *must have* it. It is achieved by driving the small farmers out of business and farming on a mass-produced scale. Neither the Left nor the Right is innocent -- one listens to the people, the other to big business, and cheap food is what they *both* want. Of course it could be obtained even more cheaply from Third World countries where farmer laborers are even worse off; but there are tarrif barriers on many foods and those that do come in are overpriced relative to their cost, the "added value" having been accumulated along the distribution chain. In summary, although many peasants world-wide are worse off because they have lost their water supplies or have been driven off their land, most Westerners have much more than ever before of whatever food they want, and at a lower cost. I know my wife and I do, and we're living mostly on a couple of modest pensions.

The intriguing thing about Rachel Laudan's essay is that people of opposite political persuasions, left and right, may well claim it as evidence in their own support.

If you are casting your net wide enough to include the world's entire population, there is conflicting evidence of mass starvation versus improved diet for the impoverished. Paradoxically, in Third World countries obesity is now a major factor in malnutrition. One of the most important overviews comes from culinary historian Rachel Laudan. Her essay, "A World of Inauthentic Cuisine", overstates the case against terroir and related values, but it raises a number of inescapable questions which require an answer. Steven S, you will probably find yourself more in agreement with much of its ethos than I do. http://www.orst.edu/food-resource/kelsey/laudan.html

It's interesting that no one has mentioned those areas -- large parts of Portugal, for instance -- that rely on the cork industry for their livelihood. This, of course, is no reason for staying with corks forever, any more than automobiles should have been suppressed in order to protect the manufacturers of buggy whips. Nevertheless, it should be dealt with as part of the total picture

Only 25 km from Calais is the Chateau de Cocove, a rather splendid 18th century chateau converted to a hotel. It's part of the Best Western group, which means it's low in snob value but quite adequate in efficiency and competance. As a hotel (not a restaurant) it rates a mention in GaultMillau, but the food is, I think, quite edible -- particularly after the long drive from York. In general atmosphere it's a hellofa long ways from Calais. Details at http://www.hotels-tradition.com/cocove/

One episode relating to our last visit to Le Petit Blancmange is worth recounting. My wife and I were sitting next to one of the loudspeakers which was blaring out Musak from the local Virgin Radio station. We asked the waiter if he would turn it down. He explained very apologetically that Richard Branson was about to arrive for lunch, that he was a heavy investor in the restaurant and that he insisted that Virgin Radio be the "background" music. Alas, our schedule did not allow us to await his arrival and tell him very loudly what we thought.

Alas, too true. Mt wife and I tried to like it and gave up. It became so generally disappointing as not to merit an itemized report.

This shows to good effect in the book's coverage of Colonial cuisine, in which it rightly takes its cue more from the Hesses and from Waverly Root rather than from Daniel Boorstin's bland, mass-produced _The Americans: The Democratic Experience_.

And chicken stock: As Steven has rightly said, doing it right requires a degree of time and attention. But doing it wrong can still produce a delicious result. We get six to twelve organic chicken carcasses at a time from a local butcher, cost well under two pounds. If I'm in a hurry I break them up roughly and put them in the pressure cooker with roughly cut onion, carrot and celery, salt and pepper, and whatever herbs I feel like. Add water (being a pressure cooker, it doesn't have to cover). Bring to pressure and give it half to 3/4 of an hour. Let the pressure come down, or speed it up under the cold tap if you're rushed. If I've more time, I brown the carcasses first in the oven and sweat the vegetables in oil/butter in the open pressure cooker. The result: Is it as good as if it had been slowly simmered? No way. It's not clear. It's not "refined". Is it as good as what I can buy? Infinitely better. And it cost me less than two quid for several pints, depending on how many carcasses, and about fifteen minutes of my not-so-valuable time.

And as for angry posts, one thing I've learned from eGullet is that, if the topic is flowing, they are of no more importance than a fart. Fan the air and get on with it.

As for shortcrust pastry: my wife's experience is that there can be a conflict between what tastes the best and what is practical or even possible in a commercial environment. For fat she uses half butter and half lard. The result has an incredible richness and lightness that falls apart in the mouth into flakes that disappear before you can swallow them. But the slices tend to fall apart as you serve them. If you bought it from a bakery, you'd arrive home with a box of crumbs. Alas, we'd no more buy a pie than a hot soufflé.

My wife, who has taught cookery courses, including baking, for thirty years (which doesn't necessarily make her the greatest but at least suggests that she'd experienced) never bothers to make puff pastry or to teach it any more, but buys it frozen -- but it must, she says, be 100 percent butter.Marzipan, on the other hand, she always makes. It is a world away from any commercial marzipan I've ever tasted, either from fine restaurants or Paris patisseries. Guests who don't like commercial marzipan sometimes leave theirs behind on their plates without tasting it -- a mistake which I rectify as soon as I've carried it to the kitchen! But it's softer, more delicate and can't be shaped in as virtuosic a manner.