badthings

Holy shit. I might move to DC and start a restaurant just to get a piece of that.

Well, I managed to obtain some Niman Ranch veal from my local butcher (who was able to get it because he is attached to a restaurant). They tried 3 different kinds; he said they sent the grassfed back immediately because it was NOT good (the fat tasted of anchovy). I got a loin roast from a Wisconsin dairy farm -- he didn't have the feed/age specifics. So it was not one of the Florida calves discussed by Behr. It was dark red -- almost beef color. After perusing several cookbooks, I "roasted" it italian-style (pan roasting with a little wine, which sounds like braising to me, but that's another topic...). My butcher larded it with some fatback, which I left on. I cooked it to 150 degrees F. Before I discuss the result, I should be clear that I had nothing to comparison taste, and that I rarely cook veal. I'm not sure, to be honest, that I've ever had veal loin (chops/shank/sweetbreads/scollopini are all I can recall). So take the following with a grain of salt. The color ended up a dark gray, but not so dark that it didn't seem like veal. The flavor was not as neutral as the veal of my memory. Not unpleasant, like anchovies, certainly, but not the sublime delicacy of which Olney speaks. This is presumably the "re-education" part. The texture -- and this may have to do with the aforementioned cooking method, or my misunderstanding thereof -- was a bit like a spongy pot roast -- not nearly as firm as I expected. It was good though. scorecard: color: who cares? texture: good flavor: take it or leave it verdict: I won't spend that kind of money (think prime beef) on that cut again, but then again, I rarely buy veal. I would definitely try some other cuts that I'm more familiar with. [by the way, in emilia, they feed the hogs for proscuitto the whey from making parmagiano. that's a devine economy].

This is interesting. From this article in the 2/7/03 Cell, I gathered that sweet, bitter, and umami all use the same signalling pathway (but different receptors). So it would make sense that sweet or umami would disguise bitterness. But how does salt (or sour?), using another pathway, disguise bitterness? this (unresolved) thread is devoted to salt as a flavor enhancer, which would seem to be the opposite of a disguiser... unless disguising bitterness enhances flavor? More taste science, please.

A local supermarket stocks a nice Vignobaldo? Umbria IGT, 100% Sangiovese, for under $10. Not a great wine, but tipico to my palate, and a good deal. I'll keep an eye out for the lamborghini.

what he said. Uh, that would be Berkeley public schools. Fanny's school, in fact. Which doesn't diminish the attempt. Let's just be clear about it. Thanks to the Berkeley post office, I just read it the other day, and didn't find anything annoying about it. If anything, it makes the Slow Food people look bad, as Russ said.

I have a little kyocera "utility knife" -- think they call it a fruit knife, but the website doesn't seem to be working. It's kind of awesome -- only ground on one side, extremely sharp. You have to send it back to kyocera to be sharpened, but they suggest every 10 years I think. (Because the ceramic is so much harder than steel). The problem is that it is not flexible, which, one quickly discovers, is a very important quality in a knife. Ever use the side of a knife to crush garlic? That would shatter the blade. Even the classic mincing technique, with your off hand pressing down on the blade, is discouraged (I think). My conclusion is that even though it's cool, it's not as useful as you would thing

Steingarten says he always declares everything. According to customs, cheese is usually ok, so just follow the suggestions above, and make sure to claim it.

Just had a Columbia Crest gewurtz. I picked up on a whim from Trader Joes. Pretty weak acid, and insufficient (if any) floral/spicy nose that I associate with the grape, but not a bad food wine for the price, if you're not afraid of a little residual sugar. One can image better bottles coming from washington though. I think Navarro is very good, though Germany may be a better deal at the moment. Gruner veltliner is the new riesling! Is anyone growing it in the US? EDIT TO QUOTE: Right on! My favorite example is the $28 Carneros Albariño. HELLO? Rias Baixas costs half that. Unless you want to claim that Carneros is twice as good as the grape's native terroir (and somehow I suspect it's the other way around), you better find a way to sell it cheaper. I want winemakers to grow more interesting varietals here, I just want them not to gouge us for the privilege.

Tastycakes are inscrutable -- I think you had to grow up with them. For me, they were a kind of semi-annual forbidden fruit that made up for the frightening accents of our mid-atlantic relatives (you can't get them in New England). The thing that makes them special is that they really don't taste anything like comparable brands. (They must use a manufacturing process that everyone else rejected). IMHO, ITS-ITS are similar: they're not as good as the nestle tollhouse icecream sandwich, for example. What, and where, are zingers? I rock the southside TopDog, because it's the closest to work. There is one now to the west, on the way to BART from campus, and, inexplicably, one in the Long's Drugs at "the rock" safeway stripmall on Broadway. The quality does vary, but they all use Saag's sausage, as far as I can tell. The southside one, by the way, is covered in libertarian propagana, not anarchist (maybe a natural evolution?). And, sorry Capnhank, but Laval's pizza is inedible, at any location. Maybe it used to be better, but considering what people eat for pizza around here, I doubt it.

I really like my Chef's Choice 8" chef's knife, but I find I use a 6" chef's knife more (I have a pretty small cutting board and they are easier to manipulate). I have 2: a Wusthof and a Global. The Global is the most perfectly balanced knife I've ever used. the Global and the Chef's Choice both hold an edge much better than the Wusthof, and they also have no bolster, which is something I like, but you may not. That said, I like the Wusthof too. As far as national differences go, french chef's knives are different from the German ones as well, some people like them better, but it is pretty tough to find one that's been well made these days (many if not all of the Sabatiers are stamped). Oh, I have an $8 Chefmate breadknife I got at Target, works great. I don't understand why people spend serious money on anything but a chef's knife. Except maybe a filet knife or a big slicer. EDIT: the global I have is western-style, so the steel is VERY thick (so much that it is tough to sharpen in my lazy-man-style sharpener), ground on both sides. I think it's this one

As I recall, Olney discusses his love of hyssop at the beginning of Simple French Food, but i don't remember any specific recipes. if you don' have it, PM me and I'll check mine tonight.

Just had one for lunch, suckers! Washed it down with a Top Dog and an ice cold RC. I'm just rubbing it in. Really, it's no tastycake.

touché. My dining companions almost universally mock me when I order a $5 pluot for dessert. That's ok -- it's just a vessel for the dessert wine anyway. By the way, having read the older thread Rachel cited, the idea the CP is the best restaurant in America is laughable. It can be argued that it's not the best restaurant in Berkeley.

Rachel, I know a lot of people feel that way, but this is precisely (I think) the CP manifesto: if you have a perfect ingredient, don't fuck it up. Maybe this makes me weird, but the last thing I want wrapped around a pluot is a short crust and creme patisserie, no matter how thrillingly executed. (Bacon is another story). I know the logical conclusion of this argument is that cooking is something you do to trick people into eating shitty ingredients, which is not what I want to say.... But, I really believe, maybe because I've been in Berkeley too long, that the best thing you can do with a perfect peach, or strawberry, or whatever, is put it in your mouth. By the way, the food at CP has been pretty good for the last couple years, I think. It's not my favorite restaurant, but I always take visitors there (or persuade them to take me), and I haven't been disappointed in a while. Always upstairs, though -- downstairs is a bad deal by comparison, and the lack of choice is unacceptable. The concept works much better as a "cafe" than a fancy restaurant, IMHO. And I always thought the wine list was great, with the lowest markup around, but I shop several categories down from the original complainer in the tread you quoted.

Holy shit -- I want an Yquem slushy! Like, right now. Mark, the dark, nutty qualities -- are they sherry-like? (Not as in oxidized, as in the underlying depth of flavor; or maybe it is oxidized too?)

The USDA Agricultural Research Service is working hard on the glassy-winged sharpshooter, the major vector for Pierce's disease. Their latest plan is to import parasitic wasps from S. America for biocontrol. Now, as a California resident, do I prefer experiments in importing foreign species, or genetically engineered disease resistance? Not easy questions. [i bring this up here because these articles just came out today].

Uh-oh, I'm not going to get anything done until I read all these things... One more: According to this article from the Feb. 7 Cell, "despite relying on different receptors, sweet, amino acid, and bitter transduction converge on common signaling molecules" (amino acid = umami) -- meaning that salty and sour are somehow different from the other three. I can't read the damn Cell article without a subscription, but here's a summary. Something I read at the time suggessted that sweet/bitter were the most evolutionarily important tastes, because sweet = calories and bitter = poison, but I'm not sure where this was... ... or what it has to do with salt... EDIT: That didn't take so long! Might Salt (and sour) have a different and potentially more overarching effect than the other tastes because it is ion-channel mediated, not G-protein mediated? I don't know, but it seems like ion channels would move a lot more material than G-proteins.

Finally went to TJ's last night: Amarone "Conte di Bregonzo" bottled by C.V.B. S.R.L., Verona imported by Santini, San Lorenzo, CA Most of the italian wines were the same bottler and importer (I should have checked to see if the address on Barbaresco was in Verona or Piedmont). I picked up a cheap bourdeaux ($10 Lalande-de-Pomerol), of which they have several, hoping I'd get lucky, something I've given up in their Italian section.

Jancis Robinson, in her Q & A: GM vines are even tougher to analyze than the standard commodity crops because of the scrutiny we devote to their "organoleptic properties". The problem is that scientists can't be sure exactly what they've done to a modified organism. If they introduce Pierce's disease resistance (obviously desirable), they have no way of knowing what else they might have done too. In terms of wine grapes, a couple of extra (or differently folded) proteins could effect those organoleptic profiles -- not to mention the gazillion other compounds they keep finding in wine that might have some effect on us. (The same is of course true for the yeast). Now, it would be interesting to talk to a plant biologist who could relate the potential magnitude of these effects to that of resistant rootstock grafts, or even clonal selection. This is why you should kiss your friend. She, and a lot of other people, need to do a lot of work to figure this out, so that when the inevitable happens, we have a better grasp on what we're doing. Edit: I'll take a bacon tree too!

WS article on two new closures designed to minimize people's discomfort with screwcaps (more effective than fake cork-pulling, I guess): I just don't get it. What's so exciting about a cork? You'd think the fact that it doesn't come with a straw would be sufficiently impressive for these people. If it works better, that's another story of course.

whoa. that sounds like a good idea. are they good? AMAZING. I would stick with chocolate, though certain family members (their brains addled from growing up in the mid-atlantic), are fond of the sketchier flavors. The unmatched cheapness of Tastycake cupcakes (so airy!) means that frozen they take on this ineffable, delicate consistency.... bastards! I wanted to gloat about how I can eat ITS-ITS and you can't, but now I just want a tastycake...

Maybe I'll get one tonight. Don't be jealous -- you guys get to eat Tastycakes. My family can't be the only one that keeps the chocolate cupcakes in the freezer. mmm... Tastycakes.

Based on blind testing, Jagermeister is slightly better than NyQuil. At least, that's how I remember it from college. Several years ago, we invented our own sporting event, less exciting than your Jager olympics, called the Cynar crossfire challenge. It had something to do with sliding around newly-refinished hardwood floors and falling down a lot. For obvious reasons I no longer remember the details.

There is no real glut of good grapes, from vines more than a few years old, from good vineyards, in good regions (including the central coast). The glut is of newly planted vines in marginal areas (i.e., the central valley). "Charles Shaw" is made by Bronco, which is owned by a Franzia (don't know if Franzia is still owned by a Franzia, but the connection is clear enough). Having said that the Chuck is "drinkable", I feel I need to qualify that statement. The reds are drinkable, and even interesting, in the sense that they illuminate the charateristics of wine that are easy to fabricate cheaply. These are obviously exaggerated in the Chuck, to compensate for the low quality of the grapes. On reflection, the whites are not, in fact, drinkable. The sauvignon blanc tastes like a Heathbar that melted in a pile of sawdust. (american oak sawdust of course). I don't dare try the chard.

I was just reminded of last year's cheap standby: Protocolo Red and Rose. $5.50. viño de la tierra de castilla (spain). from one of those areas that's just too hot, as discussed on another thread. Not a great wine, of course, but very drinkable with food. I have just tried the rose this year: a little, uh, dusty on opening, but it cleaned up considerably after a couple minutes.