John Whiting

Yes, it's the culture-motivated exclusivity that John Thorne talks about. Paula once told me in no uncertain terms that confit of goose or duck just wasn't worth making unless it could sit for half a year before using. Yes, it improves with age, but it's the same mentality that tells us that balsamic vinegar isn't worth consuming unless it costs at least sixty pounds a bottle.But I have to thank her for one of the best tips I ever received for making a rich succulent cassoulet: reduce pork and/or goose/duck fat to paste in a blender, along with a generous quantity of raw garlic, and stir it into the stock you add to the cassole. It accomplishes even more effectively what you aim to do by lining the bottom with fatty pork rind.

I like it. I guess I'm one of those stinky Wops. I even like the stench of rotten milk, as given off so unequivocally by Epoisse or Limburger.Garlic presses seem to be one of those matters of faith and morals that can split families and start wars.

Garlic presses: it's time-consuming to reduce garlic to paste without working it with salt, and sometimes you just don't want more salt. If you want garlic puree in something you don't want either to cook or to liquidize -- for instance, garlic butter for making garlic bread -- a garlic press is convenient. Or at least I and some others find it convenient; those who don't aren't obliged to use it.

I'm going to slip in a word for the much-maligned garlic press. The most frequent objection is the difficulty of cleaning it. There's an easy way: Hold it under running water, upside down, with index finger inserted in the cup. With the other hand, press the stiff bristles of a handbrush repeatedly into the holes, at the same time moving the finger around inside the cup to clear away the bits of garlic that have been dislodged. It may sound complicated, but it's easy to get the hang of and only takes about 10-15 seconds.

John Thorne on Paula Wolfert is very perceptive. It's not just a put-down of Paula, who is indeed highly skilled, but a sober analysis of our modern urge to personalize traditional cooking and give it the unique stamp of individual celebrity. In contrast, I've already mentioned _Cuisine du Terroir_, an anthology in which the 300-odd recipes contributed by the Master Chefs of France are not even identified as to personal source.

Mirabel Osler's long article on Ludlow, published in the NY Times Magazine in 1999, is far better. She lives there, she knows it inside out, and she's a fine writer. It's still available from the NY Time archives for $2.50, or much less if you have a package account. http://query.nytimes.com/search....1494D81 Neither does he have any "grand plan" to leave, or even to expand. In fact, he has no "grand plan" at all. Enviable.

Bread knives are serrated on one side only. If it doesn't cut, it's too dull. Grind or file down the knife on the flat side until the points catch on your fingertips, and try again. I've made even cheap dull bread knifes functional, with occasional steeling on the flat side.

Or as a Berkeley friend of mine used to say, "If the shoe fits - cram it up your ass!"

Monsieur Pas de Talent: Seul le silence est grand; tout le reste est faiblesse.

St, Peter's Organic Ale is supurb. I don't know if it's better than it would be if it weren't organic -- and I don't particularly care.

The wittiest man I ever knew once had the perfect response. We were having lunch in a London health food establishment called Food For Thought. We were just finishing, less than half an hour after sitting down with a full lunch from the cafeteria-style counter, when a waitress came over and asked if we could eat more quickly, as there were people waiting. My friend looked up at her and remarked pleasantly, "I see. Lots of food, but not much thought."

There's a difference between labeling packaged food and labeling restaurant menus. If we lost the former, we'd be totally at the mercy of the manufacturers. Now there's an ingredient I'd want to be positively identified!

In popular American cuisine, nothing succeeds like excess!

Miss J, if you reread our posts, you'll see that in both cases it was rhubarb that we had. In my case, it was spiced with ginger and sweetened enough to balance the fruit's strong acidity. Wilfrid speculated that, for his salmon, gooseberry would have worked equally well.

By an amazing coincidence, in May my wife and I had flash-fried foie gras sel with a rhubarb confit (chutney, they called it) on the side, at Domaine de la Tortinière, a pretentious luxury hotel in Montbazon, just outside Tours. The juxtaposition of those two flavors/textures was by far our best experience at the hotel -- and, due to a mixup on their part, we were occupying their most expensive suite at the cost of an ordinary double room.

If children can be enticed away from the decorative delights of junk food by a bit of visual ingenuity, then more power to the parents!

A Scottish classic -- and it deserves to be a classic -- is fried mackerel served with not-too-sweet gooseberry sauce. The oiliness of the fish plays eloquently against the acidity of the gooseberries.

Humor in food is a "peasant" tradition as well. A friend from a rural farmer's family in the Midwest told me of a Halloween tradition in their household of serving a chamberpot full of steaming cider with a few twisted crullers floating in it. (I wonder what they get up to in *real* French laundries....)

There can never be a "definitive" book on such a subject, but one can dive off the deep end into Levi-Strauss' classic, _The Raw and the Cooked_. A recent prize-winning work, which I have some reservations about, is Felipe Fernández-Armesto's _Food: A History_. Closer to hand, I'm about to start a topic centered on a witty AlterNet article, "The Politics of Dog", which examines the motivations of forbidding or allowing certain foods.

My wife and I ate at Le Jardin des Ramparts a couple of years ago. Don't remember details, only that we loved it -- most attractive garden-like decor, excellent food and a Sunday lunch that was particularly good value for money without descending to cheap boring ingredients and mass production.

When a chef with a proven track record sets out on a daring venture of apparent integrity -- and particularly when he attempts to preserve an endangered tradition -- he should be given every encouragement, especially during the inevitable settling-in period.

Cheddar is a particularly unfortunate case, inasmuch as real farmhouse cheddar -- Mull or Montgomery or a cheddar type such as Linconshire Poacher -- is one of the world's great cheeses, with an infinite variety of flavors and textures. I once complained to a French friend that good rindy cantal was hard to get in Britain and he replied, "You don't need cantal -- you have cheddar!"

Steve has this one exactly right in every detail. If labels are to mean anything at all, international trades description laws must operate that protect long-established artisanal makers of food as well as wine. Edit: Of course a lot of the manufacturers are big factories, so strike the word "artisanal", although they get protected as well and arguably need the protection even more.

You're probably aware that a preponderance of the beans served in cassoulets by "authentic" restaurants in Southwest France come from Argentina.

This, I presume, is an aspect of homeopathy.