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...or try this smaller set - just skip through the first few pages of the set, that should give one interesting threads to read. One does not have to go through the entire set. https://forums.egullet.org/search/?type=all&q=pasta+brand+type+differences

https://forums.egullet.org/search/?type=all&q=different+pastas I usually have De Cecco, Rustichella d'Abruzzo, Garofalo dry pastas always around, as well as Cipriani (dried egg pastas). Some other odd-and-end or interesting brands (including Middle Eastern and Greek) are also around.** The "everyday" one I use tends to be De Cecco (rather than Garofalo which can be a bit more al dente than I like); R d'A & Cipriani when I feel fancier or want higher quality, but it also depends on the dish, of course. I like their taste and texture, which are different in their own way. I used to cook Barilla pastas but stopped a few years ago and threw them out and never bought any more on principle. However, in recent years they seem to have corrected a particular situation - perhaps I might try them again. In any case I didn't think their pasta was *that* great but - for myself, speaking personally - was way better than stuff like Muellers or Creamette, which turned out much too soft for Italian-style dishes for my taste. ** I presume E/SE Asian "pastas" are NOT included in the discussion, although I think they should be.

Petty, it is a shame that the phrase pasta machine means two entirely different things. One use, which is the Phillips machine, you dump in flour and eggs, the machine mixes and kneads the dough, then extrudes it through a set of dies into different shapes. I had one, it was very heavy, pretty loud, some of the dough would be left behind in the machine and not get extruded and took quite a bit of time to clean, so I gave it to a charity. Purists will say that unless you get one with metal dies, which cost a lot more money, the results will not be very good, though I thought the results were definitely satisfactory. If you don't have that type of machine, you can mix the dough in a regular mixer, like the Kitchen Aid or better yet a food processor ( extremely quick to make in a food processor ) and then you let it rest 20 or 30 minutes, and then you roll it out and cut it into the desired shape. For the rolling out, you can use a regular rolling pin - and some semolina flour for dusting the board, and that works pretty quickly. The other option is to buy what is referred to as a pasta machine or pasta maker - Atlas and Imperia are two well known brands. The machines are not as heavy as an extruder, but are very sturdy, and you clamp it to a surface, and run the dough through the machine a number of times, each time you adjust the rollers closer so the pasta gets thinner. Then you put on an attachment which cuts the pasta into fettuccine, or spaghetti , or if you have different attachments, some other size. The Atlas or Imperia can be fitted with an electric motor, I have one and it does make the process much easier, you can keep two hands free to feed the pasta through the rollers and retrieve it. If you used a rolling pin to flatten the pasta into a big sheet, it is pretty easy to cut into fettucine sizes, I haven't tried cutting it into spaghetti. Even though I have the Atlas with the electric roller, I more commonly use a rolling pin, it takes about the same amount of time to roll it out, but a lot less time taking the machine out of a cabinet and putting it away when I am done. Here is clip from Jamie Oliver making pasta with a food processor and a pasta roller machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upi5SkWXeBM My advice is to ask around and see if someone you know has a pasta roller machine and ask to borrow it and try it a few times to see if you like it. I am not a fan of an extruder machine for the reasons above. If you don't have a food processor, your money would be better spent on that, because it can make pasta dough, dough for bread, and many other things. BTW, after you finish resting the pasta, warm it up in a microwave for a minute or so, it makes it much easier to roll out.

gosh, you've been at this a while. "How does everyone create their unique recipes? " you might want to take a poll of how many people here create unique recipes from scratch. that could explain a lot. as for attempting to convert cups to grams, your app is doomed. not only does stuff like flour vary by 'type' - AP/bread - etc. but it also varies by grind. and you can't depend on 'descriptions' because Type 00 flour is a grind and the density, protein content, gluten are not part of that specification. plus, supermarkets buy their house brand from the lowest dollar per ton supplier this week and what you bought last week is likely not what you'll get next week - not the same manufacturer or processor or density. Salt - the size of the grind changes the weight per volume drastically. same for sugar - there's more than granulated/powdered/brown sugar. there's a USA and a European definition of egg sizes by weight. they're not the same.... pasta - the shape&size of any "generic name pasta" is not identical and 'elbows' vary by more that 20% from brand to brand and/or sub-class of "elbow" check out the diameter of "spaghetti" by brand. then add in angel hair to thick descriptors and you've got 200% difference in cooked volumes. and, even "perfectly" converting grams to cups, no one around here is likely to have a measuring cup with a line at 1.635 cups. you could go for the "cups plus /minus table/teaspoon" route. now, all things are possible. you just need to buy and quantify every brand of everything in the market, list it all out in the app, and keep up with all the changes. piece of cake, eh? I've been doing this dance for decades. I have a scale, I measure in grams, I keep notes. I have 'conversion' factors for the stuff/brands I use. for cooking it's hugely flexible; for baking, not so much - which is why I keep notes and know if I should use more or less grams next time.

The amount of gluten and oil are accurate despite how different they may be from other variations (except for the barley recipe, which has the same proportions). Because of the different properties of coconut flour, the base recipe had to be adjusted accordingly (as did the barley recipe, for the same reason). We found with this formula that the barley and coconut noodles were closer in resemblance to the original Egg Noodle recipe. There are some things to keep in mind when developing this dough. It is important to use a mixer with a dough hook attachment and to develop the gluten for about 4 minutes on high before adding the oil. At this point, you can proceed to add oil a little at a time. Once the oil has been incorporated, turn the mixer to high and develop the dough for another 5 minutes. Depending on the type (brand) of double-zero flour you‚’re using, or if you‚’re substituting all-purpose flour, you may need to add up to 10 g of water to form the dough properly. If you pull a vacuum on the dough immediately after it forms, more oil will leach out. Therefore, it is advised to either chill the dough before vacuum sealing it, or simply wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and allow it to rest in the refrigerator. Some residual oil will still escape from the dough, but this is fine. We like to use a good amount of flour to dust the dough when working with it. We also flour our rolling pin and flatten the dough just enough to fit it through the widest setting on the pasta machine. Flour the dough again, if necessary, to avoid sending oil through the roller, and be sure to dust the pasta machine with a good amount of flour in order to minimize sticking. I hope this helps. Sincerely, Aaron Verzosa Research & Development Chef Modernist Cuisine

The Whole Foods near me recently started carrying a small number of Sfoglini products. They're very high quality, on a par with the best premium pasta brands. It's kind of hard to compare them though because the only shapes available are Reginetti/Mafaldine and Trumpets, and I haven't seen other brands offering these shapes in my local market. They have beet fusilli too, but I haven't tried it. But what I have tried has an excellent flavor and texture. They're organic too, not that I especially care about that. But it's a high quality product all around. They have a bunch of interesting pastas available on their website using different types of wheat and grain, and I'd be willing to try most of them on the strength of their other offerings.

I find Fresh Direct's quality to be very good, in general. Here and there, something's not great, but most of the time it's as good as you'll find anywhere else in the area. For all things Italian, you could head to Eataly on 23rd and Broadway - they have an excellent selection of canned tomato products, pastas (both dried and fresh) and a very good produce and meat and fish selection. Their prices aren't always the best but they're actually not bad for most things. Some items are quite pricey, but a decent value for the quality. Their Piedmontese beef is expensive, but excellent quality. When it comes to duck, I haven't noticed a variety of brands, necessarily. Most prepackaged ducks are very similar (if not the same), but you can get different varieties by going to the Chinatown meat markets on Mott btwn. Hester and Grand, or in the butcher dept at Eataly, or by going to one of the specialty butchers like Ottomanelli on Bleecker. But I'm sure you don't want to run around that much... I've found that the meat markets in Chinatown have the best fowl selection outside of a specialty butcher - lots of different types of birds and all good quality. Other than what you'd find there, most supermarket chickens have been bred for large breasts and no flavor.

I want to buy Chinese low mein noodles and Japanese ramen and udon noodles. There are many different kinds at the Asian supermarket. I prefer thicker types than stay al dente. I don't know if this is desirable by Asian standards, but I'm used to Italian pasta. I have heard that ramen connoisseurs prize al dente-ness and try to eat the noodles as fast as possible before they get soggy. Should I buy the frozen or dried ones? Are the frozen ones actually fresh (not dried) and then frozen, or are they dried, cooked, and then frozen? I know the latter seems pretty silly but considering the variety of convenience foods available, I wouldn't be too surprised. Are there any brands you would recommend?

As is being discussed elsewhere in these illustrious forums, Alan Richman recently wrote an incredible roundup of his top 25 pizza picks in the United States. The night after it was published, I had dinner with Adam Kuban of SliceNY, who reminded me that one of my first attempts at food writing, a decade ago, was a New York-area pizza roundup that I published on my Fat-Guy website. We didn't have the word blog in 1999, we just called them websites usually with a capital W. Adam, whose website, I mean blog, is the best pizza blog out there, said I should republish my early effort. So on its tenth anniversary I'm doing that. To be clear, I'm not actually sure of the publication date of this item. I wrote it in 1999, that much I'm sure about, but for the next three or four years I made updates to it. This version probably reflects changes I made through about 2001. I don't know. I was a little hesitant to publish this, because my early food writing efforts seem in retrospect to be weak in places, but so be it. I think overall what I was saying was right, even if some of the details are a little screwy in retrospect and some of the writing is weird. If a student in my writing class today wrote this, I'd probably think he or she had some potential, maybe. Anyway, here it is for your consideration. +++ Pizza Guide By Steven A. Shaw The best and worst of New York area pizza . . . Introduction: Where Has All The Good Pizza Gone? DO YOU remember what great pizza tastes like? When all the elements of pizza excellence come together, the resulting pie is so irresistible, you abandon all self-restraint -- you can't even forbear until it cools down -- and so, having been reduced to your dumb animal essence, you scald your mouth on the bubbling sauce and cheese. But that doesn't slow you down: Slices disappear into your gullet one after another without a second thought -- no matter how well you ate that day, a great pizza compels you to tear into it as though you'd just been rescued from a desert island. The crust alone is an independent food product and the notion of leaving the edges behind on the plate is simply ludicrous, while the saltiness and lusciousness of the toppings trigger addictive behavior such that you can't stop eating until every slice is gone -- and after that you sniff and scratch, junkie-like, in eager anticipation of more, more, more, as though you're certain you'll never be fed again. Have you had any pizza like that lately? Good pizza has become so rare in New York City, most of us are no longer able immediately to identify bad pizza as such. Without a frame of reference, New Yorkers -- including some in the professional food press -- have slowly embraced mediocrity, not just with resignation but with enthusiasm for the now-embarrassing pizza specimens being peddled by, among others, John's, Totonno, Grimaldi's and the Patsy's franchises. And those places are among the top pizzerias in New York (in the entire United States, no less) on today's undemanding relative scale, the situation at the by-the-slice shops being even more depressing. The conventional wisdom -- that you can walk into any New York pizza shop, grab a slice, and confidently assume that it will be pretty good -- is manifestly no longer true (if it ever was), and it should come as no surprise to any long-time New Yorker not living in denial (though it might be news to tourists and newcomers) to hear that pizza in New York today is, overall, terrible. In 1998, there were hints of a pizza renaissance, when many new brick-oven pizzerias opened and some of the old guard began to franchise, but few of the newcomers maintained their flash-in-the-pan high levels of quality (they quickly learned that the consumer would settle for less) and the franchise efforts ultimately destroyed some of our best pizzerias. I'm now of the sad opinion, after years of struggling to find consistently reliable counterexamples, that New York isn't even America's top pizza city or state anymore. That honor has to go to nearby New Haven, Connecticut. And some of our other neighbors, such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, possess examples of pizza greatness that should make proud New Yorkers wince. Judging Pizza Pizza as we know it today, without getting into too much history and etymology, is basically dough, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, assembled by the pizza maker and baked in an oven. Additions (sausage and other toppings; additional varieties of cheese; herbs and seasonings) and subtractions (as in the sauce-free white pizzas and sauce-and-cheese-free clam pies popular in Connecticut) are possible, but these three ingredients define the species. That there can be so much variation within such seemingly simple parameters should come as no surprise. After all, wine is just fermented grape juice; cheese is just curds; and bread is just flour, leavening and water. It is indeed in these most basic of foods that the slightest variation becomes most important and apparent. Great pizza comes in many forms, and anybody claiming that a particular type of oven or flour or cheese makes the best probably hasn't taken the time to sample a variety of pizza specimens. Scores of pizzeria visits over the course of a lifetime -- and especially during the past few years when I've paid more careful critical attention -- have convinced me that the skill of the pizza maker and the quality (as opposed to exact nature) of the ingredients mean much more than adherence to any particular set of strictures. For example, many claim with seeming authority that superheated coal- or wood-fired brick and stone ovens are prerequisites for good pizza. Yet real-world examples belie such effortless attempts at categorization: On the one hand, some of the best pizza is not only baked in electric and gas ovens (Nick's, in Forest Hills) made of stainless steel (Di Fara, in Brooklyn), but also isn't even baked at particularly high temperatures (Polistina's). On the other hand, plenty of pizzerias with seemingly wonderful old-style ovens make astonishingly disappointing pies (Totonno, John's). Perhaps at the extremes -- where all other elements of the pizza are as good as can be -- a natural wood or coal oven properly tended achieves just a slight quality edge over a gas oven well-designed to reproduce the same thermodynamic properties (the New Haven pizzerias seem to derive their edge in part on account of their ovens). But this situation arises so rarely that it seems the oven is the wrong place on which to focus so much attention. After all, advances in the construction of ovens have made it possible to simulate most conditions with a variety of fuels (gas, electric, wood, coal) and materials (brick, stone, steel), as my discussions with professional bread bakers and examination of baking texts have confirmed. (That being said, it is nonetheless outrageous that New York City's picayune environmental codes make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired oven today.) Likewise, many (including some official-sounding associations dedicated to the preservation of what they allege constitutes traditional pizza baking) will make doctrinaire claims about the superiority of fresh mozzarella as a pizza cheese. But side-by-side comparisons of pizza made with fresh and low-moisture mozzarella (a firmer version of the cheese which, in its least flattering incarnation, appears as Polly-O and Sorrento in the supermarket, but can rise to exceptional levels in the hands of a good cheesemaker such as Arthur Avenue's Calandra cheese shop) amply demonstrate that in many cases the low-moisture can be better for this specific application because it exudes less fluid and has a more concentrated flavor, while an even more striking contrast reveals itself with authentic mozzarella di bufala (water-buffalo milk mozzarella), which, though most flavorful, has in the few instances when I've encountered it been far too watery for use as a pizza cheese. (The most important thing is not that the cheese be fresh or low-moisture, cow or water-buffalo, but that it be of high quality.) Similarly persistent myths, with respect to fresh versus canned tomatoes and American versus Italian flour, can be just as easily dispelled by real-world tasting. Sure, fresh San Marzano tomatoes in season are hard to beat -- but so are tomatoes from New Jersey. And at most other times of year canned tomatoes are more reliable. Italian flour enjoys a mystical reputation, but much of the wheat milled in Italy is grown right here in North America. In the final analysis, there is only one question I think should be asked when evaluating a pizza: Does it taste good? And the answer can be yes across a spectrum of styles: Thin, crispy, high-temperature-baked pizzas with fresh mozzarella and just a touch of sauce; thick, doughy, sauce-and-grated-low-moisture-cheese-drenched pizzas baked at low temperatures; and all pizzas in between. So long as the pizza maker is skilled and the ingredients are of high quality, great pizza remains within reach. Still, the phrases "skill of the pizza maker" and "quality of the ingredients" probably imply that there is more mystery to making pizza than the reality would support. Though a truly gifted pizza maker can stretch dough just so, and though it is a wondrous thing to watch any true artisan at work, it is also the case that the average moron can learn how to make outstanding pizza in a very short time -- a little more training being required if the oven is coal- or wood-fired, because there are additional intricacies involved in dealing with the fuel and in positioning the pizza in the oven to avoid hot spots. Acquiring good ingredients is no great trick either -- there are only a handful of pizzerias in America today that use better ingredients than you could pick up at Fairway, and no less than some of the best pizzerias have grown lazy over the years and switched to prepackaged, pre-cooked, pre-grated and pre-sliced ingredients. (The standard excuse is that people won't pay enough for pizza to support the use of good ingredients, but with even bad pizza creeping towards $ 20 for a large pie with a couple of toppings, this claim lacks credibility.) Even a standard home oven, properly outfitted with a pizza stone or quarry tiles and allowed to preheat for a good long time, can adequately reproduce the action of a pretty good commercial pizza oven. But because of the perceived labor involved -- especially with regard to making dough and letting it rise -- it's unlikely that people will begin baking pizza at home en masse (if they did, they'd develop a much higher set of expectations). I have to conclude that the dearth of good pizza today is not on account of any inherent difficulty in the creation of the product, but is rather due to consumer ignorance and a concurrent collective loss among our pizza makers of the will to excel, to buy the best, to use only the freshest, and to adhere to higher standards than the average clueless customer would blissfully tolerate. At this juncture in history, moreover, we cannot afford to exclude any excellent example of pizza from consideration just because of a particular ingredient or procedure. For there is so little good pizza in New York today that all arguably delicious specimens must band together to hold back the flood of mediocrity. Who Serves The Best? All this carping aside, however, New York has managed to hang on to a number of respectable pizzerias, even producing a few good new ones in recent years. Herein, you'll find my observations on what I consider to be the best pizzerias in the New York area, plus a few that I think are so overrated as to demand comment. After the pizzeria listings, you'll find three additional entries: A note on the pizza chains, such as Domino's; a note on some non-pizzeria restaurants that happen to serve excellent pizza; and a note on some pizzerias that have declined since the last major revision of this guide and are therefore no longer deserving of their own entries. In order to be recommended here, a pizzeria must be a worthwhile destination, rather than simply a good neighborhood joint. That is to say, I won't advocate a pizzeria unless I think it's sensible for a discriminating, food-loving individual to uproot and schlep to that location via public transportation. I'm assuming you've already found the pizzeria in your neighborhood that makes the best utility slice, useful for lazy nourishment but hardly much else. Here I'm talking about the places that take pizza to a higher level. (I welcome your suggestions of new pizzerias to try, but please bear in mind the standard I'm trying to uphold.) Of course, there are people for whom a subway ride is never justified as a means of acquiring pizza. They can stop reading now. My top pizza pick in New York City is unquestionably the original Patsy's, in East Harlem. Based on evidence collected in the past several years, including repeated and recent visits to all the other alleged bests, I don't think anybody in town can currently touch Patsy's -- not Lombardi's and not Totonno (both of which have deteriorated substantially); not Grimaldi's and not John's (which aren't even particularly impressive anymore). Following close behind Patsy's, I'm partial to Candido, on the Upper East Side; Nick's, in Forest Hills, Queens; and Denino's, in (on?) Staten Island. Next I'd give a special mention to Di Fara, in Midwood, Brooklyn, to which I was recently introduced -- through the mechanism of his book -- by the indefatigable Jim Leff. My respect for Polistina's has increased several-fold since its lackluster opening, such that I now hold it in high regard as the best pizzeria on the Upper West Side; Angelo's and Naples 45, both in Midtown, make a good product; Lento's, the original in Bay Ridge, is more than worthwhile; and Zito's East, in the East Village, deserves a nod. Falling off rapidly from there are most of the places that cling to undeserved top rankings in the guidebooks, like the aforementioned Lombardi's. Number one in New York City, however, becomes (at best) number three overall in the region if you start counting farther afield spots like Sally's and Pepe's in New Haven, Connecticut. They're well worth the trip. When finishing up the most recent set of revisions to this guide, at the conclusion of a multi-day pizza marathon, I visited New Haven for some pies and was shocked -- shocked! -- at the sheer extent of the gulf between New Haven and New York pizza. Note: Special thanks to Eric Asimov of The New York Times for providing me with a high percentage of my information on the interconnectedness of New York's major pizza families. His 1998 article, "New York Pizza, the Real Thing, Makes a Comeback," may not have turned out to be an accurate prediction, but Asimov's investigation into the history of New York pizza remains definitive. Sadly, his article is not available online, but you can read it in the window of most any pizzeria that was mentioned therein. Also, thanks to long-time e-mail correspondent Steve Wong, for tirelessly investigating most every aspect of pizza history, for spurring me to think along new lines, for authoritatively dispelling dozens of pieces of conventional wisdom and pizza mythology, and for time and again pushing me to visit just one more place in the service of making this guide as comprehensive and reliable as possible. And finally thanks to my chauffeur, confidant and Brooklyn expert, Neil Marantz, who was the only person not only to claim he could last through one of my multiple-pizzerias-in-an-evening expeditions, but actually to persevere good-naturedly through several. Pizzeria Reviews Angelo's 117 West 57th Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues) (212) 333-4333 ANGELO, WE are told, came to America from Greece via Naples in the 1930s, eventually opening a Brooklyn pizzeria called Pizza Chef on Fulton Street. Angelo's son, Nick Angelis, now owns Nick's pizzeria in Forest Hills, Queens, which opened in 1994. Nick Angelis's sister, Mirene, married another Nick, Nick Tsoulos, who is the force behind the Manhattan Patsy's franchises (I call them the Manhattan franchises as convenient shorthand to distinguish them from the original Patsy's in East Harlem, which, though also in Manhattan of course, has now essentially disavowed the franchises), which he began opening in 1995. Angelo's, named for Nick and Mirene's father, is a joint venture of the Angelis and Tsoulos families, and is run by Angelis's cousins, Nick and John Pastalis. And this is one of the more straightforward stories in New York's pizza history. Given Angelo's 57th Street location, smack dab in the middle of theme-restaurant row, it's amazing how non-glitzy and non-themey this pizzeria manages to be. Even more surprising, when shopping for a space for their new pizzeria, the Angelis-Tsoulos team lucked into this building, which miraculously already had the proper chimneys installed for handling the exhaust from a coal oven (almost unheard of in Manhattan, this was truly fate). Luckily, the pizza leans more towards Nick's than towards the lackluster Patsy's branches, and Angelo's party line is that it uses the exact same recipe as Nick's. Though I prefer Nick's, Angelo's is a reasonable substitute and is probably the best of Manhattan's centrally located pizzerias. The crust is thin, crisp and blistered, and, though a little too biscuity, it definitely picks up a discernible smoke flavor from the oven. The cheese is fresh mozzarella that, thankfully, isn't too wet or too bland. And the tomatoes in the sauce are of good enough quality to put most pizzerias to shame. I might go a little lighter on the sauce, but I'm hardly complaining. Service, too, is unusually good. The instant you're seated, a busboy descends upon your table with ice water (why can't every restaurant do this?). The polite, efficient servers function as -- can you believe this? -- a team. Sitting in the ground floor dining room, you can watch the pizza bakers, and they appear both serious and committed to the craft. All this -- premium location, admirable service, excellent pizza -- and still prices are no higher than at the average brick-oven pizzeria. Arturo's 106 West Houston Street (between Thompson Street and West Broadway) (212) 677-3820 ARTURO'S, WHICH I include here primarily because it has been so highly recommended by so many people that I feel compelled to respond, is a good illustration of the principle that a coal oven does not a great pizza make. By failing to maintain high standards of ingredients, and by not paying close attention to correct dough-making and pizza-baking technique, Arturo's long ago took itself out of the top tier of New York pizzerias. That Arturo's is one of New York City's most charming restaurants, I can't deny: The great music, divey old-Village ambience and close-knit, tightly packed clientele are all but irresistible. But the only hint of greatness in the pizza is the appearance of the crust, which evidences the appetizing blisters you'd expect from a high-temperature coal-fired oven. Yet the crust turns out to be doughy, the cheese is only average (though not at all bad), and the sauce is the weakest link of all with a resoundingly commercial taste. Add to that frequent undercooking and the inevitable sogginess, and it's hard to endorse Arturo's as anything more than a good neighborhood hangout. Candido 1606 First Avenue (between 83rd and 84th Streets) (212) 396-9401 SERVICE AT Candido has always been impressively bad and slow, and it keeps getting worse and slower. Delivery, too, has always been a nightmare, taking about an hour and resulting in reliably cold pizza. But at least in the past that could be remedied by having a preheated oven ready to receive and resuscitate the pie (even defective Candido's puts most everything else in Manhattan below 96th Street to shame). Now that they've slapped us with a $ 25 minimum delivery charge, though, Candido's is no longer even a useful site for everyday Upper East Side delivery. Still, as much as I'd love to be able to say Candido's serves bad pizza, the truth is that it's among the best pizzerias in America today. Joe Candido (the owner) is a disciple of Jerry Pero of Totonno fame, and I'm of the opinion that Candido is the only place in New York right now where you can get a pizza that is the legitimate heir to the Totonno legend -- and that includes at Totonno, which no longer serves pizza worthy of the name. Candido's crusts are as thin as they come, with evident blistering and a crisp skin, yet they maintain a good degree of pliability. The sauce possesses as deep a tomato flavor as I've encountered, and the excellent mozzarella is enhanced by a welcome, salty shot of parmesan. I get more than a few raised eyebrows when I say some of the best pizza available is on the Upper East Side (a neighborhood stereotyped for nothing so much as WASPy conformity and blandness), but prejudices aside Candido is a winner. Denino's (Staten Island) 524 Port Richmond Avenue (at Hooker Place) (718) 442-9401 GET A group of serious pizza eaters together, then get them debating who serves the best, and one joker is guaranteed to drop this wrench into the works: "Well, you know, the best pizza in the City is in Staten Island." Denino's, established in 1937, is justly beloved by Staten Islanders (and other sympathizers) and serves a great pie (for just $ 8, I should add). It has a thicker (though not thick) and softer (though not soft) crust than most of the brick-oven places in the other boroughs, with a nice exterior crunch and well-developed interior. The sauce is a paragon of balance: Both sweet and piquant. Only the lackluster cheese fails to contribute much to the overall pie, though it is harmless. The free-form sausage, though a bit loose-grained for my tastes, has good flavor and crisps nicely on top of the pie (it's not nearly as exciting when ordered, mushy, in one of the restaurant's regular dishes). Two special pies stand out: The "MOR," which is an acronym for meatball, onion and ricotta; and the "Garbage Pie," which includes sausage, mushrooms, meatballs, onion and pepperoni (pizza makers typically use the term garbage pie as a derogatory description of a customer's order when it includes too many toppings, but here it's been elevated to a compliment). But I prefer plain, where the crust and sauce really sing. Denino's is too crowded for comfort on weekends, but you can wander in there most weeknights and get seated without a wait. Dessert across the street at Ralph's Famous Italian Ices (501 Port Richmond Avenue, 718-448-0853) is de rigueur. Di Fara (Midwood, Brooklyn) 1424 Avenue J (at 15th Street) (718) 258-1367 NOT TO take anything away from Di Fara -- which I learned about in Jim Leff's excellent book, The Eclectic Gourmet Guide to Greater New York City -- but I do feel kind of silly singing the praises of a pizzeria that, twenty years ago, I'd have taken for granted. There was a time when serious, artisanal, Italian pizza makers like Domenico De Marco (Di Fara's owner) dotted the cityscape, especially in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Now, this level of commitment to excellence is such a novelty that a place like Di Fara must be viewed as a destination restaurant worthy of the D-train commute (luckily, it's right near the Avenue J station). Those who had the pleasure of seeing pianist Vladimir Horowitz perform, either live or on television, no doubt noticed that his fingers appeared to move in slow motion. The nonchalance with which Horowitz's odd-looking fingers played even the most virtuoso piece was, in a certain sense, disappointing. It's likewise a bit disconcerting to see De Marco make a pizza: His apparent expenditure of effort is so minor, you can't believe you're actually in the presence of greatness until you witness the end result. First he casually paws some dough into the approximate shape of a pizza, smaller and thinner than the typical monster now being cranked out at most slice shops. Next he spreads an uneven veneer of precious house-made herb-and-pepper-infused tomato sauce -- made from fresh tomatoes year-round. Then he picks up a brick of firm mozzarella and an old metal grater/slicer and shaves a pile of cheese right onto the pie. After shoving the mozzarella around so that there's at least a bit of it near every zone of the pie's surface, he drizzles olive oil unevenly over the pie and lobs the whole thing into a regular old stainless steel pizza oven. What emerges, upon receiving a quick dusting of freshly grated parmesan, is Brooklyn pizza the way it ought to be. Toppings are as good as the pizza, with the sautéed artichokes being the most unique and worthwhile. Be patient, though. As De Marco will explain, "I gotta cook the artichoke." Di Fara is primarily a by-the-slice shop, which means it serves primarily reheated slices. With the preponderance of New York's best pizzerias adhering to a whole-pies-only philosophy, the by-the-slice formula doesn't get much respect. But reheated pizza -- provided it hasn't been sitting around for long enough to become soggy and degraded -- is totally legitimate when handled well (some reasonable people even prefer it, though different types of pizza behave differently when reheated). I have nothing against reheated slices, which are a time-honored tradition and a necessity both in terms of inventory turnover and slice portability. But what I really hate is lukewarm pizza. I always ask for my reheated slice well done, and it seems nobody ever really listens. Enter De Marco, who is as serious about reheating pizza as he is about baking it in the first place. When he reheats your little slice, it emerges hissing, bubbling, steaming and smoking, on a sheet of aluminum foil, with a crunchy crust that has just enough structure to contain the other ingredients -- plus a resoundingly delicious edge. That the sauce and cheese will be great is a fait accompli, the main surprise being just how fine the whole package is, and the secondary shock being how far New York pizza (and Brooklyn pizza in particular) has fallen since the days when this level of flavor was commonplace. What happened to Brooklyn's slice shops, which used to be the benchmark? Recent tours of old favorites revealed that many of the traditionally beloved places, including Connie's and Roma, had gone inexcusably downhill, while only Del Mar (1668 Sheepshead Bay Road, 718-769-7766) was good enough to recommend even as a neighborhood place (not that it could touch Di Fara). That the pizza in Manhattan is now better than the pizza in Brooklyn is a shameful reversal of history, and the evaporation of Italian-Americans from the pizza-making scene surely has something to do with it. That's not to say you have to be Italian to make good pizza, or French to be a great French chef, or Japanese to make sushi -- anybody with the will to learn can become a skilled cook of any cuisine. But the Italians gave us a frame of reference and for the most part maintained a certain standard. Many of today's non-Italian pizza makers don't even know, or care, what good pizza tastes like. Like many neighborhood pizzerias, Di Fara also functions as a basic Italian-American restaurant, and yet another astonishing thing is how good Di Fara's non-pizza foods are. Each exhibits the same elegant simplicity, rusticity and attention to detail that is evident in the pizza. Certainly, there's no pizzeria in New York that serves a comparable mesclun salad, full of ripe tomatoes, chunks of fresh mozzarella (this is not the same as the pizza cheese), olives and cucumbers, and without a hint of iceberg or romaine in sight. Heroes and pastas are textbook, and there are usually several off-menu items that you can obtain by inquiring. The robust vegetable soup, when available, is particularly noteworthy. Note: Di Fara is a disaster on weekends and at peak weekday hours: The crowd grows but De Marco's careful pace never increases. I recommend weekday afternoons for the best experience. Garden of Eden 7 East 14th Street (between Fifth Avenue and Union Square West) (212) 255-4200 THIS BRANCH of the excellent mini-chain of gourmet markets has, nestled in its southwest corner, a massive ceramic pizza oven with a phony-looking brick façade (indeed it is just that, manufactured by the WoodStone Company in Washington state). The head pizza baker trained at, among other places, Naples 45, and the pies look promising as they're being made: The dough is expertly stretched, then covered with a raw tomato sauce (pureed but not cooked before baking, as at the New Haven pizzerias) and hunks of attractive fresh mozzarella, and placed directly on the hearth to bake. If you situate yourself at the extreme left end of the counter and lean in a little, you can see your pie developing in the oven. But the pizza in the end is merely good. The "00" flour in the mixture makes for a nice, soft, pliable crust, and the mozzarella from New Jersey is pretty good, but the pies are a soggy mess and the flavors are dull. In addition, because this is primarily a grocery store, there's no place to eat the pizza at Garden of Eden. This species of thin-crust pizza doesn't travel well, so, unless you live close by, your only choice is to eat it in Union Square Park (which only helps on a nice day) or to eat it cold. Still, given the thoughtful staff, I remain hopeful of improvement. Grimaldi's (Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn) 19 Old Fulton St. (between Water and Front Streets, by the Brooklyn Bridge) (718) 858-4300 GRIMALDI'S, a/k/a Patsy Grimaldi's and formerly called Patsy's, was opened in 1990 by the nephew of the original Patsy (as in Patsy's in East Harlem), who had died long before. The original Patsy's widow had managed the East Harlem Patsy's since her husband's death in the 1970s, and when she retired in 1991 she sold the shop not to her nephew but to some of her faithful employees. The subsequent upscale Manhattan franchising of the Patsy's name only made matters worse, and whether on account of legal action or personal pride (it depends who spins the tale), Patsy Grimaldi eventually took down his Patsy's sign and changed his establishment's name to Grimaldi's. This Brooklyn Heights pizzeria is cited by many as New York's best, and I recall some excellent pizza I had there in the early- and mid-1990s, but it's hard to accept that the current inconsistent and bland product could attract such a loyal and widespread following. On a good day, Grimaldi's turns out pretty good, crispy, nearly exciting brick-oven pizzas. More often, unfortunately, the pies are lifeless and dull, often sagging on account of being undercooked. Though the cheese is always excellent and the crust is most often good, the sauce is a real letdown, both in terms of inconsistent flavor and application. John's Original location: 278 Bleecker Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues) (212) 243-1680 Second location: 498 East 64th Street (between First and York Avenues) (212) 935-2895 Latter-day outposts: 48 West 65th Street (between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue) (212) 721-7001 260 West 44th Street (Between Broadway and Eighth Avenue) (212) 391-7560 THE OBVIOUS prediction would be that the original branch of a pizzeria would be the best, the second branch would represent a slight drop in quality, and expansion beyond that would result in generic and unremarkable additional franchises. There's no reason this needs to be the case, but with respect to John's it's all absolutely true, plus one other thing: Through some sort of unfortunate wicking action, the original and second John's branches have now been infected with the mediocrity of the chain. (By the original John's I mean the oldest of the current group; the original original, which no longer exists, opened on Sullivan Street in the 1920s, and moved to the now-Bleecker-Street location in 1934.) There was a time when John's was, if not the best, at least one of the best brick oven pizzerias in New York. The East 64th Street location may never have been a hundred percent on par with the original, but it was nonetheless excellent. But now John's has built Barnes & Noble-sized pizza superstores in the major uptown neighborhoods, and the pizza is overpriced, tastes mass-produced, and is often so underbaked as to be inedible. The Bleecker Street original is still marginally better than the others, but it no longer produces an eye-popping pie. John's used to have a thin but dense and chewy crust -- leathery, almost -- that became a signature. Now the Bleecker Street crust is often simply tough, without any compensating properties, whereas the crust at the other John's branches has gone in the other direction, towards the spongy and limp. The cheese used throughout the chain is quite good, but the current sauce recipe and ingredients are an insult to the great John's tradition. La Pizza Fresca 31 East 20th Street (between Park Avenue South and Broadway) (212) 598-0141 THIS IS the only New York pizzeria serving "vera pizza Napoletana," as certified by the Italian Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. The dough is hand-made of Italian "00" flour (a highly refined flour with less than seven percent protein), the sauce comes from San Marzano tomatoes, the mozzarella comes from the milk of Neapolitan or Roman water buffalo (though the Associazione permits fresh cow milk mozzarella -- technically fior di latte -- as well, contrary to the claim of Pizza Fresca's literature), and the baking occurs in a brick oven for just a couple of minutes at 450 to 485 degrees Celsius (842 to 905 degrees Fahrenheit). This may sound like just so much propaganda, and it pretty much is. Pizza Fresca's pies are limp and cottony (even by Neapolitan standards, where the pizza is more pliable than the crisp American archetype), and the buffalo mozzarella exudes so much moisture that pools of whey and water gather in the pizza's indentations, aided by the secretions of the watery sauce. Add to that a decline in standards since the restaurant's more promising opening (I'd be very surprised if the oven really was cranking in the 800-plus-degree range during any of my last few visits), plus outrageous prices for miniscule pies. Moreover, though pizza as we know it was certainly invented in Italy in the late 19th Century, the American pizza tradition has developed on its own for nearly as long and, at its highest levels, is a worthy rival. All these European rules and regulations seem antithetical to the American way (they may not even be sensible in Europe; witness the excellence of uncertified "Super Tuscan" wines like Sassicaia), and there's no good reason, when our country is possessed of its own excellent local sources of produce, to import all this stuff from Italy. It bears repeating that tomatoes, for example, are indigenous to the Americas, not to Europe, and that Italy imports much of its wheat from the United States and Canada before shipping it back here as flour in fancy Italian packaging. Perhaps if all this rigmarole made for better pizza, I'd think twice -- but it doesn't. L&B Spumoni Gardens (Bensonhurst, Brooklyn) 2725 86th Street (718) 372-8400 L & B SPUMONI Gardens simply couldn't exist in Manhattan, where the real-estate equation would never support a sprawling pizza-and-spumoni complex of such breadth. This block-long development, with three separate shops peddling different categories of Italian-American cuisine, plus ample parking and outdoor seating, is so instantly loveable it would be worth the trip simply for purposes of beholding its glory -- and that's not to mention the amazing Bensonhurst/Bay Ridge crowd, straight from central casting. Pizza-wise, L&B Spumoni Gardens serves an unremarkable Neapolitan-style pie, standard-issue Italian-American red-sauce cuisine, and very good spumoni. But the main attraction is the rectangular, thick Sicilian-style pizza. Sicilian-style pizza, which is almost never good, is a mere afterthought at most pizzerias -- the preferred slice of those who want to fill up without much concern for quality. But at L&B Spumoni Gardens the Sicilian slice has been elevated to its own phylum, making this place a mandatory stop on any serious New York pizza itinerary. The relatively light, pastry-like crust (as opposed to the dense, bready crust typical of Sicilian-style pizza), the copious sweet tomato sauce, and the fact that the pies are always fresh (right out of the oven, owing to a year-round, perpetual line snaking through the outdoor dining garden), are all noteworthy elements. But the most unusual aspect of L&B's slice is that the thick layer of sauce is placed on top of and completely conceals the cheese. As you let that sink in for a second, let me say by way of background that, when I first heard about L&B Spumoni Gardens and its sauce-on-cheese Sicilian-style pizza, in an effusive e-mail from a reader, I had my doubts. I pretty much just went out there because I was tickled by the name of the place. But I was amazed at how delicious this idiosyncratic slice was. The cheese rather than crisping and browning stays soft and melds to the crust, as in a grilled cheese sandwich. The thick layer of sweet, tangy, deeply concentrated, chunky tomato sauce sits on top of that, crowned by a dusting of parmesan. And it works, meriting a special mention in a unique category. I'm not quite sure I believe the guy behind the counter when he says, "This is how all real Italian pizza is made," but everyone's entitled to an opinion. Though I've run across pizzerias here and there, such as Zito's East, that reverse the standard order of things -- sauce atop cheese; and even in some cases cheese atop toppings -- I have yet to see compelling evidence of a widespread sauce atop cheese movement. Unless, that is, you allow that L&B Spumoni Gardens has been a Brooklyn institution, deservedly so, since the 1950s. Lento's (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn) Original location: 7003 Third Avenue (at Ovington Avenue) (718) 745-9197 Park Slope outpost: 833 Union Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues) (718) 399-8782 LENTO'S, ESTABLISHED in 1933, is one of New York's most venerable pizzerias, but it doesn't get a whole lot of attention. It deserves more. Aside from matching Denino's low $ 8 price for the basic pie, Lento's makes a uniquely thin and crispy -- almost matzoh-like -- pie that is guaranteed to disappear quickly (in part because it's thin and in part because it's good). The sauce and cheese aren't on par with the crust, but they're harmless, and the robust sausage is excellent. The servers are proud and sociable, and the whole place has a great Bay Ridge neighborhood feel (Bay Ridge being, in my opinion, the sine qua non of Brooklyn neighborhoods, and the location of among other things Saturday Night Fever). If you're in Bay Ridge with a car before 7:30, be sure to drive over to Hinsch (8518 Fifth Avenue near 86th Street, Bay Ridge's main drag, 718-748-3412), which is one of the only soda fountains I know of in New York City that still makes Coca Cola and variations thereof by hand with syrup -- vanilla, chocolate and pistachio Cokes are my favorites. Unfortunately, I can't recommend the Park Slope Lento's. Lombardi's 32 Spring Street (between Mulberry and Mott Streets) (212) 941-7994 BY MOST accounts, Lombardi's was America's first full-fledged pizzeria, established in 1905 (the consensus of food historians seems to be that the prototype of the mozzarella-tomato-basil pizza was created by Raffaele Esposito in 1889 in Naples, and named for the queen, Margherita -- though earlier versions of pizza were common in Italy long before, and flatbreads in various forms date back to prehistory) at 53 1/2 Spring Street, and most of the top New York pizzerias of the 20th Century owe their existence to Gennaro Lombardi: John Sasso of John's, Patsy Lancieri of Patsy's and Anthony Pero of Totonno's all learned the craft under Gennaro Lombardi's tutelage, and the current incarnation of Lombardi's pizzeria (opened in 1994 and vigorously exploiting its connection to the original) is overseen by Gennaro Lombardi's grandson of the same name. How disappointing it is, then, to take a bite of Lombardi's pizza today. Though good, and better than most, the pizza -- with the exception of the clam pie -- lacks any hint of greatness. The crust derives little benefit from the coal oven, baking is inconsistent and often careless, and the weak sauce is unworthy of the institution. On the standard pie, only the cheese is excellent. That Lombardi's persistently gets ranked as Manhattan's top pizzeria in popular surveys says more about such surveys than it does about Lombardi's. And exaggerating Lombardi's quality is a disservice to the newcomers, such as Nick's and Candido, that have surpassed it in quality, as well as to the old-time institutions, such as Patsy's in Harlem, that have exhibited far greater devotion to quality. The one saving grace at Lombardi's, and the only reason I recommend you go there, is the clam pie. Frank Pepe of New Haven is widely credited with creating this pie (I don't believe it was an original Lombardi's offering), which in the case of Lombardi's is made with freshly shucked top-necks from Connecticut (these differ from the littlenecks used at Pepe's only in size). The lack of any sauce or mozzarella cheese makes for a super-crisp crust, and the clams, garlic, herbs, olive oil and sprinkling of pecorino Romano are, taken together, reminiscent of very good linguini with white clam sauce -- but with a foundation of pizza crust instead of pasta. The olive oil probably also helps crisp the crust, a cheap pizzeria trick that can certainly be forgiven here. The sheer quantity of clams is impressive -- the pie is totally covered in roughly chopped chunks. Still, though the clams are good, they can get a bit rubbery. The phrase "freshly shucked" probably has shades of meaning: Based only on taste and texture and not on first-hand knowledge, I doubt these clams are shucked to order (for one thing, the pizza comes too quickly for that to be going on in the kitchen), but they seem as though they're shucked and chopped on premises the same day. Naples 45 200 Park Avenue (at 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, in the MetLife building) (212) 972-7001 THOUGH SHAMELESSLY corporate and slick, operated by mega-conglomerate Restaurant Associates and situated in the MetLife building adjacent to Grand Central, Naples 45 serves terrific pizza. It's a telling illustration of the power of research: Restaurant Associates devoted its considerable resources to learning how to make good pizza, and then engineered a system that could be taught to a variety of cooks and maintained over the years through rigorous quality control. The individual-sized pies, especially, come out with a thin, crispy, charred crust supporting a vibrant, sweet, well-herbed tomato sauce and first-rate mozzarella. I suggest requesting your pie well done. The salame picante pie, topped with wonderfully spicy salami slices, is particularly noteworthy. Skip the dining room and have your pizza at the little café tables up front, where you'll pay the takeout price (considerably less than the eat-in price). The pizza world will experience a good shakeup if Restaurant Associates ever decides to franchise this formula. Nick's (Forest Hills, Queens) 108-26 Ascan Avenue (between Austin and Burns Streets) (718) 263-1126 NICK'S, ONE of New York's best pizzerias, is proof positive that you can make first-rate pizza without being Italian, without having a coal- or wood-fired oven, and without being a hundred years old. Nick Angelis is Greek, and he says his father learned to make pizza in Naples. He opened this place in 1994, and it's more faithful to New York's great pizza tradition than every franchise of John's and Patsy's combined (right down to the Sinatra-heavy soundtrack, blue Formica tables and tin ceiling). The gas-powered oven not only provides sufficient heat to replicate the traditional Totonno-like conditions, but it even somehow manages to impart a certain smokiness to the pies that would seem impossible without coal or wood as a fuel source. Amazing technology. Everything about Nick's pizza is commendable, from the well-crafted, slightly crunchy crust, to the rich tomato sauce, to the non-rubbery and fresh-tasting cheese, to the fresh herbs adorning every slice. Mr. Angelis also provided the know-how for Angelo's pizzeria in Manhattan (named for his father) but, despite a gas oven here and a coal oven there, Nick's has the edge. Patsy's Original location: 2287-2291 First Avenue (between 117th and 118th Streets) (212) 534-9783 Franchised locations: 1312 Second Avenue (at 69th Street) (212) 639-1000 61 West 74th Street (between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue) (212) 579-3000 509 Third Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets) (212) 689-7500 318 West 23rd Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues) (646) 486-7400 67 University Place (between10th and 11th Streets) (212) 533-3500 I OFTEN wonder why the great brick-oven pizza shops of old, which tend to be in currently lousy neighborhoods, have been unable to muster sufficient genetic material to reproduce themselves. The original Patsy's in Harlem is far superior to any of the five Patsy's franchises farther downtown. Totonno's on the Upper East Side was substantially worse than the Brooklyn original until the Brooklyn original sunk to its level. And John's recent mega-expansion has both produced inferior clones and managed to corrupt its forebear. The newer locations of all these pizzerias would seem to have everything going for them: They're invariably cleaner, more attractive and more comfortable than the originals. They offer salads, expanded menus and perhaps even wine lists. Service is friendly. Yet the pizza is always disappointing, and it certainly doesn't have to be this way. As I've said before, I don't buy into the notion that quality pizza making depends on a specific oven or requires tremendous skill. Cooking pizza is a scientific process just like any other type of iterated recipe execution. It's simply a matter of ingredients, preparation and oven conditions. Both Nick Angelis (of Nick's in Forest Hills) and Rory Wade (the man behind the formerly excellent, but now hopeless, Pintaile's) have demonstrated amply that it's possible to produce great pizza in brand-new, non-coal- or wood-fired ovens. No, the explanation lies elsewhere, and I blame a combination of consumer ignorance (resulting in failure to demand the best and reject anything but) and commercial abdication of responsibility (the short-sighted refusal to strive for the kind of excellence that creates lifelong customers), both of which are of course closely connected. In the case of Patsy's, there's also an issue of management: The original Patsy's is still run by those who trained under Patsy and his widow. The new Patsy's franchises are the creation of Nick Tsoulos, the brother-in-law of Nick Angelis (of Nick's in Forest Hills), who licensed the name from the East Harlem Patsy's in 1995. The Tsoulos Patsy's never made pizza as good as the real Patsy's, and expansion has only made matters worse. At this point, if you go into the original Patsy's and get the staff talking, you'll be treated to vigorous condemnation of the Tsoulos franchises. (Tsoulos, to his credit, did a better job with Angelo's on 57th Street when he was backed up by Angelis.) Walk up to the original Patsy's on a typical afternoon and you'll find several consecutive Patsy's storefronts (a take-out shop, a bar, a dining room), on an abandoned-looking street. There will likely be a couple of bums hanging around the entrance to the takeout operation, and the door to the main restaurant will probably be locked (this part of East Harlem used to be a relatively safe Italian working-class neighborhood, and you can still find a couple of vestiges -- a deli and a bakery -- of the former resident Italian culture; but today poverty and crime are unfortunately prevalent in the area and so an extra degree of caution should be exercised). Walk into the takeout shop and ask for admittance to the dining room; if you're lucky, you'll be lead behind the pizza oven, through an alleyway, and into the back of the dining room. Then wait for a while among the pictures of Frank Sinatra and various New York mayors, and someone may take your order. What you'll receive just a few minutes later is the most exquisite pizza available in New York, properly charred on the bottom with a sweet/spicy sauce and a delicate coating of good mozzarella. Toppings, too, are excellent, such as Portobello mushroom slices and fennel-rich sausage. Patsy's also has the best condiment tray in town: Freshly-grated parmesan, chopped fresh garlic in olive oil, crushed red pepper, salt and dried oregano, served in beat-up demitasse cups on a metal tray (though all the pizza ever really needs is a tiny bit of extra salt). Perform this experiment next time you're at Patsy's with a few people: Order one pie with the standard firm (low-moisture) mozzarella, and one with the optional fresh. I think you'll be surprised at the contrast. I prefer the non-fresh, as do the erudite members of Patsy's staff. Patsy's definitely took a bit of a dip in quality in the mid- to late-1990s, at the same time that the franchises were expanding and Grimaldi's was cementing its reputation. Thus, you'll find a number of reliable-seeming sources claiming that Grimaldi's (owned by Patsy's nephew) is the rightful heir to the Patsy's tradition. This may have been the case for a short while a few years ago, but Patsy's has emphatically reversed its decline and is now back on top, while Grimaldi's has degenerated of late. In the 21st Century, Patsy's rules. The Manhattan Patsy's branches, unfortunately, are not worthy of the name, and don't even serve a recognizably similar pie. Polistina's 2275 Broadway (between 81st and 82nd Streets) (212) 579-2828 POLISTINA'S WAS the last restaurant creation of the late Artie Cutler, the brains (and bucks) behind Ollie's, Dock's, Virgil's, Gabriela's and Carmine's, and for whom Artie's deli was posthumously named. Polistina's follows the typical Cutler formula: Locate some industrious partners with a desire to excel, figure out what defines the pleasure in a particular type of cuisine, pick and choose the most compelling features of the best examples of the genre, consult with the experts (in this case Nick Angelis of Nick's in Forest Hills), and put it all together in a commercially viable, professionally managed arena. Then, continue improving in response to criticism and intelligent suggestions. When Polistina's first opened, I wrote that it had promise but that the crust could be a little crunchier, the sauce could be a little thicker and the toppings could harmonize better with the cheese (as it was, it seemed almost as though all the ingredients were cooked separately and combined just before serving). Over the past couple of years, Polistina's has cured each of these defects (not in response to my criticism, I'm sure, but rather as a result of widespread feedback and rethinking), such that it now ranks very high in New York's pizza hierarchy. The restaurant may be short on authenticity, but the pies, baked in a gas-powered, brick-lined Baker's Pride oven, now sport a crust as tasty and crunchy as it is beautiful to behold, the mozzarella cheese is robust and salty, and the sauce is plum-like and dense. In addition, Polistina's toppings tower above the generally mediocre ingredients used at most pizzerias. Fresh mushrooms -- several varieties, none of them the generic white-button kind -- are the main attraction, though everything I've tried has been compelling. To its credit, Polistina's recommends no more than two toppings, but in reality the pizza can support three or four if you're a toppings freak. Polistina's also has the benefit of being one of the most pleasant pizza shops in New York (along with Serafina). The dining room is clean, unpretentious and comfortable, with well-spaced tables, a painted tin ceiling and colorful posters. Service is friendly and well organized. The menu contains a fair number of non-pizza items (including very nice sandwiches and cannolis), the beer and wine selections are more than adequate, and the whole ambience is festive but not out-of-control. Be advised, though, that there are almost always lots of children in evidence at Polistina's. Sal & Carmine's 2671 Broadway (between 101st and 102nsd Streets) (212) 663-7651 ONE OF the only Manhattan neighborhood slice joints worthy of inclusion in the pizza big leagues is Sal & Carmine's, which is the Upper West Side's equivalent of Di Fara (if not quite so good). In the neighborhood, we used to just call this "The place with the big slice," and Sal & Carmine's slice is indeed about 50% larger than the average New York slice, though this doesn't seem to impact quality either way. As at the great slice shops of old, Sal & Carmine's has carefully chosen and considered its ingredients, ratios and techniques, and produces a slice with a nicely browned medium-weight crispy crust, vibrant sauce and high-quality cheese not-too-liberally applied. Plus, the guys behind the counter (they are Sal & Carmine, it's true) are a real hoot. For some unknown reason, the small seating area in the back is decorated with Walasse Ting posters and French fashion advertisements. Go figure. Sally's and Pepe's (New Haven, Connecticut) Sally's Apizza 237 Wooster Street (203) 624-5271 Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana 157 Wooster Street (203) 865-5762 The Spot (Pepe's) 163 Wooster Street (203) 865-7602 MY CREDENTIALS as a patriotic New Yorker are second to none: I was born in Mount Sinai Hospital, lived for the first eighteen years of my life in what was then a lousy neighborhood (with great pizza) known as the Upper West Side, and attended Stuyvesant High School (the real one, on East 16th Street) and Fordham Law School. I would characterize myself as more than patriotic: I'm an unrepentant New York snob, and my first instinct is always to believe that the rest of the country is an underdeveloped backwater. It's against this backdrop that I had my first-ever argument with my future bride (back before we were even dating; it would be seven years until we were married). The argument was over pizza. She hails from New Haven, Connecticut, and she one day made the seemingly outrageous claim that the pizza in New Haven is better than the pizza in New York. I unleashed a torrent of jingoistic fury. She smirked. (This remains our typical pattern of argument.) Later, as we were getting romantically involved, she brought me home to meet her folks, who casually suggested we drop by a place called Sally's Apizza (little did I know this outing had been carefully scripted). I was nervous enough meeting my future in-laws, so I didn't at first notice the coal-fired oven, the gorgeous pizzas being delivered to other tables, or even our own pizzas as they were placed in front of us. I took my first bite of Sally's pizza without much thought, but as my tastebuds awakened to what may be the best pizza in America today, I was first pleasantly surprised and then -- upon realizing I was in Connecticut -- devastated. Nothing I had tasted in a lifetime of eating New York pizza could compete with what was being produced at Sally's Apizza (pronounced "uh-beets" in the local Italian-American dialect). I tried to make mental notes of what flaws I could detect (too much sauce; the crust overcooked on one side; not enough onions) but I was fighting a losing battle against destiny. Sally's pizza was and is simply better than anything New York has to offer. If I may be indulged a moment of coal-oven nostalgia -- putting aside the knowledge that you can now reproduce most of these effects with a combination of gas, steel and technology -- the Sally's pizza oven is surely one of the wonders of the pizza world: Ancient, brutally dry and hot, spewing forth sparks, flames and smoke with reckless abandon. The bakers, or stick men, who are the sons of current owner Flo Consiglio (widow of the departed founder, Sal Consiglio), use seven-foot long peels (though you'll hear people claim they're eight, even ten feet long, I've actually measured one at seven) to slide the pizza onto the tiny hearth (for nobody who wishes to live gets very close to this evil monster) and to manipulate the baking pies so as to avoid uneven cooking (such an oven having inevitable hot and cold spots). The Sally's bakers, at the end of the day, look as though they've been working the boiler room of the Titanic. Sally's pies (whole pies only) are cooked at relatively high temperatures (in excess of 700 degrees Fahrenheit), and they emerge from the oven scalding hot, irregularly shaped squarish ovals served on wax-paper-lined rectangular metal trays, with a just-charred cornmeal-studded and blistered crust, fragrant tomato sauce and bubbling mozzarella cheese. The crust is certainly the primary salient feature that I think makes New Haven pizza the best in the country. It's thicker than the cracker-style crust at many of the top New York places, with a pliability that would allow for easy folding without tearing. Yet it also has a crispy exterior and the interior, while soft, is not at all wet or doughy -- there is a firm line of demarcation between the top stratum of crust and the beginning of the sauce layer, they do not overly merge. The sauce, though there's more of it than I prefer, has a bright, acidic fresh tomato taste balanced by a healthy degree of sweetness and seasoning. And atop that sits firm, salty mozzarella cheese of superior quality. Though I typically evaluate pizza in its pure sauce-and-cheese form, or with sausage (as I consider this the critical topping), it's also worth pointing out that several unique toppings and specialty pies are New Haven pizza signatures: White pizzas (cheese but no sauce) with special vegetables (broccoli rape, summer squash, fresh local tomatoes) are available in season, and they're fantastic, while clam pies (no sauce or mozzarella -- just clams, olive oil, garlic, herbs and a little grated cheese) are probably Connecticut's greatest contribution to the world of gastronomy. Sally's is often so crowded that people wait on line an hour or more to get in, and another hour for their pizza. For better or worse, Sally's is more of an old-world private club than a commercial restaurant. The staff most certainly does not subscribe to the customer-is-always-right school of enterprise capitalism. Rather, they believe that the restaurant is their home and that, despite the exchange of money going on, they're your hosts. They treat you as a guest only to the extent you behave like one, and they won't hesitate to refer you to the McDonald's down the road if you get surly and impatient. Preferential treatment for regulars is off the charts -- on the order of a Prohibition-era speakeasy -- and makes Le Cirque 2000 look like a socialist utopia. Luckily, my wife's family gets on very well with the owners. Still, the staff treated me as a suspicious newcomer for years because I was slated to wed one of their own (about a hundred years ago, my wife's older brothers waited tables there -- they never forget). After several years of marriage, though, I'm now sometimes allowed to place an order myself or put a quarter in the jukebox. Not always, but sometimes. Sally's has for decades been engaged in amicable competition with another pizzeria on Wooster Street (the nexus of what remains of New Haven's Little Italy): Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. Pepe's, as it is called, has more than its fair share of partisans. Frank Pepe, who came from Catania, Sicily (probably the origin of the "uh-beets" pronunciation), was the father of New Haven pizza. Frank Pepe's bakery opened its doors in 1925, though at that time it sold not exactly pizza but rather pizza-like tomato pies (some reports indicate that he was selling these tomato pies from a horse-drawn cart much earlier). You will hear folks in New Haven claiming that Pepe's was America's first pizzeria -- you will even hear them say that pizza in general was invented in New Haven -- but of course pizza comes from Italy and, in America, Gennaro Lombardi opened Lombardi's in Manhattan in 1905, where he sold bona fide pizza. What is now the Spot (the usually less crowded pizzeria behind Pepe's, which serves the same menu) was the original Pepe's bakery. The current Pepe's is the now-Spot's larger offspring, which opened in 1934 -- at which time Frank Pepe started selling his pizzas much as we know them today. Shortly thereafter the old bakery was repurposed as a pizzeria and took on its Spot identity. Despite some quasi-religious claims I've heard to the contrary, it is hardly possible to distinguish between pizzas from the Spot and Pepe's. Frank Pepe's nephew, Sal Consiglio, opened Sally's in 1938. Jane and Michael Stern, columnists for Gourmet magazine, have reported that Frank Pepe was allergic to both tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, which in part explains the origin of the New Haven signature no-sauce-no-cheese white clam pie consisting only of dough, clams, olive oil, garlic, oregano and grated parmesan. Having married into a Sally's family it was long a difficult issue for me whether I should set foot in Pepe's. Nonetheless, on your behalf -- and under pain of death, torture, divorce and excommunication -- I have of late made covert expeditions to Pepe's, including one instance in which I ate the same pizzas (sauce, cheese, sausage) at each place within an hour of one another, and one instance in which I did a direct comparison of takeout pies (these pizzas don't travel well, so the takeout comparison is less reliable but nonetheless informative). [continued in next post . . .]

December 2006* Le Versance, Pharamond, Le Cameleon, Le Tradition, L'Arôme, La Marée Passy, Le Reveil du 10e, Les Fougères, L’Orenoc, Le Cottage Marcadet, Au Petit Monsieur Top of the line, old son 8.0 Le Versance, 16, rue Feydeau in the 2nd, 01.45.08.00.08, closed Saturday lunch, in the old Le Petit Coin de la Bourse space, wonderfully renewed to its old glory (Chef Samuel Cavagnis, who passed through the House of Loiseau in Saulieu and the House of Mitterand here, en route, supervised the cleaning and refurbishing of the place as well as the reinstallation of the stunning stained glass windows) of 40 years ago but more elegant than I recalled in the 1970’s. Or maybe it’s just the understated grey walls with gold trim or the 1889, I think, menu, etched on a glass partition, of the 17, was it?, courses served at the opening of the Elysee Palace, I recall. (All this detail came from the most genial chef I’ve talked to in years). (And, I hope this is not putting a curse on it, but its elegance and tone remind me of Thierry Burlot.) The menu is inventive and merited the three hearts in Figaroscope and the rave review in Le Fooding. My beloved downstairs neighbor, always game for a meal, was impressed by its daring. We started with a shot-glass full of lentils, smoked duck breast and truffle oil – incredible. She had the “menu,” 32 for two courses, 38 € for three (which come with a glass of wine, a St Emilion for her, very fruity but dry) whilst I ate off the carte and was not wine-deprived either, having a very nice Bordeaux. Incredibly she ate better. She had a soup made with watercress with chicken chunks – it sounds boring, eh? Nope, great! I had raw tuna with sesame three ways – first the tuna was covered with dried seeds; then there were swollen seeds in a timbale; and finally there were seeds and essence in a soyishe sauce that I was warned was salty but not too salty for me. Then she had a round baton of wrapped noodles with various types of shellfish and a sauce that when taken together was the best pasta dish of the year. I had rather ordinary cod-flakings wrapped in a fine strip of aubergine with big grey beans – yummy but not oomphy enough for me. Her dessert was a poached pear with a drizzle of sweet cream (called a gratin but I know butter and cream when I see it) and spectacular coffee ice cream. The downstairs was jammed with Bourse-types and one anorectic, the upstairs looked only 2/3rds full. The bill (warning, warning, it will be more for you, we were careful) was 102 €/2. He’ll be closed for the holidays but will open again January 2nd. Prediction, he’ll soon pack the place at lunch, abandon the “menus,” then you’ll be able to get in at night when the boursiers go home to Versailles. Come back? - you betcha Dude. The December Surprise; great old-time food, inconsistent service 7.0 Pharamond, 24, rue de la Grande Truanderie in the 1st, 01.40.28.45.18, closed Sundays and Mondays is a blast from the past. Like Brute, (Brutus to us Anglos, but I like Brute better, sounds more like him, eh?), I came to bury this place not praise it. It’s been here forever, well, at least since 1832, it’s in Tourist and Pick-pocket Central, it is and was clearly over-priced (11-24 € for entrees, 19-39 mains and 9-15 desserts, total, well you can do the math - 39-78 € before wine, etc); it was totally Anglo last time I came (about 1832) and when I read of its resuscitation by an ex from L’Ami Louis, I thought I gotta do this, it’ll give me great ammunition for a devastating review. But on the other hand, Richard Hesse in Paris Update loved it and hey. OK. So I come in from the Etienne Marcel side and approach this ancient monument; pretty much the way I remembered/expected; wonderful velvet curtain, great stencil details, nice floral-type arrangements. So I said to myself “One goes for the spectacular décor, it’s entertainment after all, not the food, relax.” And indeed, it was like a French country resto in the 1950’s – old school, huge portions, familiar favorites like tripes, steak and snails. Sat down, long wait for a menu, longer wait for the order to be taken, even longer wait for the wine list – conclusion, staff not yet polished. Look around: all business folk, one top-rank law/banking/insurance “Partner’s Holiday Lunch” ordering magnums, etc, of Burgundies, one patron having a cigar which I hadn’t seen in years - until much later, when the younger, Coke-drinking, cigarette-smoking crowd came in and overwhelmed the non-existent ventilation system. But to the food: the celery soup amuse-bouche was OK but the fresh warm bread was over-the-top – good start; then a green salad (because the ENORMOUS mounds of os a moelle and vol au vent looked daunting and cardiac-clogging) – not bad, but too fancy/schmancy in the oil & vinegar department; then rognons de veau in their style, which I guess means pretty plain and mildly over-cooked but…. I saw what I thought (without my glasses) was a little mound of mashed potato – no, it was butter and I’m here to tell you, butter on those kidneys was divinity, although in fact, mustard worked OK once I’d depleted the butter. Oh the wine – confession, I had a whole bottle of Minervois at 13 € (I figure the guy is cleaning out the cellar and thought this was a dog – it wasn’t! only mistake he made all day.) Coffee, had to be sent back, not serré as I’d asked. I did not have dessert, they looked even more daunting than the entrees. My bill was 53 € but recall what I had and didn’t have; the average citizen will spend twice that. ”Should one go?” If Pharamond was the destination of your youth, if you hanker for those old time recipes, if you’re rich and if you need a shelter from the storm, come on in. This was surely the most interesting meal of the month. Old school, old prices - old son. 7.0 Le Cameleon, 6, rue de Cheveuse in the 6th, 01.43.27.43.27, open everyday, is Jean Paul Arabian’s latest venture. Arabian, of course is the ex-partner of Ghislaine and came here from Le Restaurant in Lille and Ledoyen + Pierre au Palais Royal and one place in the 18th not on his resume that none of us can recall, in Paris. He brought in Chef David Angelot from Ledoyen and since September or so has been providing fine updates of classic cuisine at reasonable prices – 25 for two, 30 € for three courses with glasses of wine at 4 € and bottles starting at 19 €. I went with my “real food critic friend” and we had a ball. The bread was first rate (Poujauran, he posited). We shared: escargots on top a sauce/soup of chopped-to-infinity parsley and fried calamari with tartare – both superb. Then we shared: a fat slice of calf’s liver that was neither top-flight product nor cooked to my specification (which would be really raw inside), but the accompaniment – macaroni with cheese (I jest not) and pork with coriander flavored carrots and tiny onions was so wonderful that it offset any lingering doubts about the liver. Finally we shared what I never would have ordered without prompting, a divine pain perdu with roasted pineapple and beer, yes beer, zabaglione. The bill with coffee, a bit more wine and a tiny digestif = 94 €, although the bar person charged us 100 €, and my famous friend didn’t dispute her math, figuring like I did that we’d tell the story of her inability to divide 94 by 2 enough times to make up the 6 €. Oh, on the way out we saw several other dishes, onglet, raie and other stuff that was equally appealing. ”Should one go?” I cannot think of a reason why not to. Shush – A gem, despite the weird location – Don’t breathe a word. 6.9 La Tradition, 2, rue Budapest in the 9th, 01.48.74.37.33, closed Sundays, is on this funny sort of closed-off street/lane but serves anything but funny food. It was “discovered” by A Nous Paris a few days ago, I didn’t like the picture that just showed the comptoir, so I dropped by two hours after reading the review, et voila, there were tables too for 8-10 covers and I told the guy who looked astounded that I’d tumbled on the place about the A Nous Paris review – PS tonite there were several copies scattered about. Anyway, despite its weird location, it’s a gem. Southwestern-oriented food and wine but not totally. The amuse-bouche was/were gougeres – light, flavorful but not overly cheesed, perfect. Three of us went and unfortunately (not for us but for this report) were so entranced by two dishes that we all ordered them – 1st the sauteed foie gras with raviolis of mushrooms and white truffles (only problem, they forget to warm the plates) and the dessert – a so-called baba au rhum with the best raisin ice cream of the decade – really a deconstructed baba – which was divine (no probs at all.) In the middle we had (1) a “ragout” of veal sweetbreads and kidneys (the best! – guess who had it); (2) strips of duck on an apple “parmentier” not bad either; and (3) salmon, OK, OK. Each one of us thought his/hers was the best. The bill = 167 €/3 and my pals took home a ½ bottle of wine too. ”Should one go?” Yes - If you can reserve for lunch enough in advance; at night - no sweat. These guys really know what they’re doing; go before they move uptown or downtown. Stretching and almost making it 6.5 L'Arôme, 3, rue Saint-Philippe-du-Roule in the 8th, 01.42.25.55.98, closed Sundays, is a really neat looking place with upscale flowers, table clothes and glasses. I was greeted terribly warmly by Eric Martins, ex from l’Ami Marcel, who couldn’t have remembered me from there but acted glad to see me. There is an ample 33 € blackboard lunch menu with mostly terrine/type firsts except for one hot dish and thus I ordered the soup with essence of small crabs and whole mussels – fantastic. My biche bourgignon had a spectacular sauce but was both too much and too dry (but I’m finding all game dry these days so maybe it’s me). The celery mousseline with it, however, was very, very good, as was my dessert of pear in red wine and violet ice cream. The bread was either made there or a holdover from before Lionel Poilane died because it was gold standard – crisp outside and moist inside. I predict he’s going for the stars. Wine is by the bottle, glass, 25 and 46 cl pots, the cheese from MA Cantin and the coffee Illy – the guy has good providers. My bill was 50.80 €. ”Should one go?” Chef Pascal Bataillé, ex of Pierre Gagnaire, has got it pretty much right, let’s give him another try. Filling the Sunday Fish Trou 6.5 La Marée Passy, 71 ave Paul-Doumer in the 16th, 01.45.04.12.81, open everyday, inhabits the space that would appear cursed – three restos in as many years – Le Bigorneau + l’Escale run by the Coutanceau group and now this. It’s in a great location, if you love the 16th or are on your way to or from the Trocadero or Musée Marmottan. But even to an alien from the 18th, it’s pretty nice. Except for one American couple on the verge of an argument, and a couple of sugar-daddies and sugar-babies, most folk seemed to be French, rich, pleasant and old (but more about that later.) As I entered the place I noticed, even at 12:30 it was pretty packed, and the host immediately greeted me and on learning my name apologized profusely; the kitchen staff had screwed up and while he had a record of my reservation, I would not be at a primo table but stuck off in Siberia/Coventry/etc. for which he sent over a coupe de Champagne right off (PS I had a fine table, in a fine location, in the midst of wonderful folk my age who entered wishing me not only a “Good Day” but a “Good Meal!”) There is an extensive menu on the blackboard; firsts ranged from 10 tasty-looking langoustines to a scallop/celery/chestnut soup to a tartare of salmon and oysters to what I had – crunchy giant shrimp with a tandoori sauce (that I could have sworn was a regular tartare sauce); the seconds included a huge whole maigre (meagre, one of the Drum/Sciaenidae family) solette, bar, daurade and what I had, simply the “Best of the Year” scallops (grilled toasty brown on the outside, raw inside); and classic desserts of which I had the crepes Suzette (in homage to the late great Bistrot Cote Mer – it was more flour-y than theirs was). As I was saying my goodbyes to the host and congratulating him, he said that they just cooked simple food – harrumph, it may be simple but it’s great product, well done. It turns Olivier Morteau’s formula (go to a culinary desert, import an innovative chef and charge low prices) on its head – the 16th is hardly a desert, there have to be a host of chefs to run a place that provides two meals a day, seven days a week, and the prices aren’t rock bottom.) But these folk are hustling, the bread is gold standard, the cheese by MA Cantin and they have well-priced wine by the glass, 18 cl portion and bottle. At least on a Sunday for those statistically inclined, the age range was 20-90, the mean age 88, and the median 82. And the damages, with some very nice white wine, were 52.50 €. ”Should one go?” On a Sunday, for a fish lunch, I cannot think of a better bet. The Quintessential 1930’s Bistrot 5.0 **Le Reveil du 10e, 33, rue Chateau d’Eau in 10th, 01.42.41.77.59, closed Sundays, was in the Le Fooding 2007 Guide distributed last week with Liberation, under the category Terroirs. I’d never been, indeed I’d never heard of it, so if this vanguard of food publications thought it was in the wind; that was good enough for me. Despite its ancient appearance and 1930’s Marcel Pagnol type wait-folks with cabbie caps and suspenders, apparently most food folk, except for Mssrs. Petitrenaud and Cammas et al, were/are in the dark about its existence. Too bad for us all; it’s a gem – for those who don’t mind being jammed together with 46 French-folk, smoking Gauloises (just kidding about the brand) and drinking pots (45 cl – don’t worry, they’ll explain why this strange amount- costing all of 9 €) of Lyonnais wines. This is one place where the décor and setting and clientele outweigh the food. Oh not that it’s bad; I had the “artisanal” escargots (standard) which were not as good (or salty) as my local guy makes them; then the blanquette de veau (again not as good as at Mori’s, say and needing the mustard they routinely put in front of you); finishing with the milk custard. They have the range of classic dishes one might hanker for (a huge coquelet, kidneys, confit, etc.), sizeable platters of charcuteries and cheeses (10 or so) and every Beaujolais known to man. The bill = 29.60 €. “Should one go?” Absolutely, you’ll be swept back in time. Like the old Cyclone in Coney Island 3.5 Les Fougères, 10, rue Villebois-Mareuil in the 17th, 01.40.68.78.66, closed weekends, provides two courses for 22 and three for 29 € and is run by Stéphane Duchiron (ex-Lameloise) and Roland Durand (ex-Passiflore + Bon Accueil.) The meal started off with a bang, the rillettes with sesame seeds with tiny toasted rounds of sesame bread were simply delicious; I ate the whole thing. Then came the bread, two ways, warm and also good; I preferred that with cereals. Then there was a long pause: it took forever to order and even longer than that for a carafe of wine (16 € for a 50 cl carafe) to appear, which is hard to comprehend since there were three in the kitchen and two in the salle for a total of 30 covers maximum. So I started to lose heart. Then bang, up we went again with a wonderful croustillant of veal tail atop green lentils flavored with bacon and topped off with sprigs of spicy greens. Then the main course came and my heart again sank – the pheasant was overcooked and not particularly tasty, although the fall veggies in broth were quite good as an accompaniment. At that point I figured we had to go up again and I was right – the three tiny savarins topped with Chantilly and grenadine ice cream were divine. But wait, the Illy coffee, asked for serré, was weak. The clientele was most tony and interesting, among them were the French equivalents of Miranda Priestly and Andy Sachs and two food critics, one of whom was assuredly the grayish Michelin Man. This place really has promise but the day I was there was like the girl with the curl or the Coney Island roller coaster; when good - terrific, when off – disappointing. The bill = 48.50 €. Unfortunately, for them, but maybe good for us, Jean Yves Bath has decamped the pricey 8th for the 17th, re-opening right across the street in a place still called Bath’s, at 25 rue Bayen with a 25 € menu at lunch (it was 30 € downtown.) But that’s for next month. “Should one go?” (to Les Fougères,) Let’s see what the Michelin man says. Good product, good cooking; so, why weren’t we more enthusiastic? 2.5 L’Orenoc, 81, blvd Gouvion St Cyr (Hotel Meridien) in the 17th, 01.40.68.30.40, closed Sundays and Mondays was taken over by Claude Colliot, exBamboche, and got three hearts in Figaroscope. It’s an elegant space; we had a primo window table in a true no smoking room; and the service was impeccable. My guest ordered the 38 € lunch menu and I ordered a main and dessert (the entrée prices were off the charts.) She started with a cold cauliflower soup with divine little shredded veggies. She then had a pot au feu where the chopped cabbage in a cabbage leaf was spectacular but the beef was flavorless (I know, it often is.) My St Jacques were terrific product but the accompanying carrot puree enhanced with orange flavor again was so spectacularly better than the main ingredient that I stopped to ponder the situation. Finally, she had marinated grapefruit slices around a custard, topped with a cassis sorbet which all together worked while I had a “larme” (big strips) of chocolate with a mound of confited black olives alongside, which were again, so much more dazzling than the chocolate. Illy coffee, bless them, was serré as ordered. Bill = 116 €. Not excessive for a birthday celebration but not consistently great either. “Should one go?” If you’re struck at the Meridien Hotel or Palais des Congres, think about it. Trying hard to be haute de gamme in Montmartre 1.0 Cottage Marcadet, 151 bis, rue Marcadet in the 18th, 01.42.57.71.22, closed Sundays and Mondays, is a place described by Laidback as a “Gourmet restaurant” in a “culinary wasteland” with a “serious young chef” (Choisne Cyril) and he loved his meal there six weeks ago. I went with high hopes for several reasons: I respect Laidback, I loved the Cottage in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and it’s a few hundred meters from where I live. I went with someone who also lives in the neighborhood and knows her way about French food, having written a lot of reviews and recipes. First impression: the menu – very ambitious – a 100 € degustation menu (and we’re talking about Montmartre mind you) and an a la carte listing with (as Laidback learned) a huge number of pretty pricey items. Second thought; go with the 35 € lunch menu for three courses or 27.5 for two and try to find a wine that wouldn’t break the bank (the wine list was ambitious too) – success with a 18 €/50 cl carafe of a drinkable Cotes du Rhone. And three, try to pay attention to the food while getting to know this most interesting dining companion. The amuse bouches were a sort of nem of red shrimp and little veggies that were quite tasty. The bread stick and brioche roll I had were better than alright. I then had a pied de veau, very cleverly and carefully layered with potatoesque trivets and she a veloute of rocket, with parmesan slices and sun-dried {I assume} tomatoes, pistachios and pine nuts as well as carrot chips on top; both of which were OK but nothing to write home about (my pied standard is Tante Marguerite’s). But it was the mains that fell off - my deconstructed rabbit with lots of tiny veggies wasn’t bad but there was no excitement, no pizzaz, none, what does Richard Gere say in "Chicago," none of “the old razzle-dazzle?” – this was simply calories shoved into the mouth; her caramelized Saint-Pierre {sorry Ptitpois, there’s no Amurican translation} with green tea {stretching eh? Sounds like Aspen} was equally OK, but so what?) Now, however, comes the one minute in a delightful 2 hour lunch that shapes the whole experience. The wait-guy noted her taking (non-flash) pix and said she couldn’t use them/it (or what?) which was self-defeating since later he complained to me out of her presence that they had only been reviewed by one guidebook or publication (the pathetic Bottin,) and my companion has a blog that would have gotten the word out to a lot more readers - but without pictures, she’s not going to post it. Too bad. At some point, without communicating why, we both decided not to have dessert (in my case it was that after what I’d had so far, I wanted to cut my losses). The mignardises were good (canele/cannele {google it, you'll find the difference}, truffles, macaroons, tiramisu) and coffee OK, but as I say, the lack of talent and 1-minute warning about taking pictures shaped the meal, which is really too bad. Plus, and I'm sorry to disagree with Laidback, the area is not a total disaster, it has better places: to name a few, the fabulous Spring as well as L'Histoire de...., 2 Pieces Cuisine and while for only one dish - the superb double lamb chop - Le Truc. The bill, however, was an easy 81 €. ”Should one go?” Tough question, if my guys insist, I will, but with my fists up. Not Ready for Prime Time (or anything else) 0.75 Au Petit Monsieur, 50, rue Camelot (yes, it’s in the old C’Amelot-space) in the 11th, 01.43.55.54.04, closed Sundays and Mondays, got two hearts in Figaro this week, that must have pained Emmanuel Rubin no end. These folks have simply not yet got their act together. The place, while terribly well-staffed for such a small and intimate space, could not get the food out promptly (and there were only eight customers); could not get the food “right” (one guy send his main back twice); and could not get the credit card machine to work on the first three tries. A part ca, as they say, what else? Well, the food is over-priced – nems are 6.50, starters 8-17, charcuterie platters 20, mains 19-25 and desserts 8 €. The bread was terrific looking but soggy inside; the pheasant two ways was accompanied by a deconstructed set of dishes, including a game sauce, pumpkin puree, pumpkin sweetened with chestnuts - and the coffee was a pallid Richard. Can’t I say anything nice? Well yes, the nems I had were strips of spicy chorizo and calamars with a nice dipping sauce and the St Chinian was drinkable (at 19 € a 45 cl carafe it was a reasonable choice). The formula, however, even tho’ only 19 € as well, consisted of stuff that was banal-sounding. ”Should one go?” Not on your life, until this guy finds his compass. *Occasionally I’m asked why I don’t post each and every month on the eGullet Society site; well, I usually do, but when I’m in OP’s (other places) with my long suffering wife Colette, such as Greece and Seattle (in October), Italy (in March,) etc, I post on other, appropriate forums. **Well I had an epi-epiphany today: I realized that all these numbers I’ve been assigning to restaurants in response to a challenge from Pagason (so named, in the Scandinavian tradition, after his father Paga) were inadequate in describing places. As John Whiting, my treasured friend, cautioned me correctly years ago, this was a trap, in that one could not compare a great old school restaurant (say La Tour D’Argent) with a great new resto (say Ze Kitchen Galerie) or compare a classic bistro (e.g. l’Ami Louis) to a edgy one (e.g. La Cerisaie) or a grand brasserie (like Bofinger) with a modern version (like La Mascotte). So I surrender unconditionally. Indeed, Pagason’s father brought to my attention this week the fact that he and I assume folks want to eat at the newer, edgy, breaking-the-ground places like Spring rather than the old standards, such as Vaudeville. Well, that may be true of eGullet Society members, but it’s not true of my friends and professional colleagues – be they French or American. Therefore, or as they say, donc, to better help members in the choice of an appropriate venue, henceforth I will use the “Francois Simon system,” writing a title atop each review and a query “Should one go?” and an answer afterwards. Let’s see how it goes, eh? (the Canadian in me can’t resist that.) Edited by John Talbott to add numerical ratings on popular demand.

Sure, Chris, there are different factors to consider such as gluten and coarseness of grain. I was focusing primarily on distinctions between protein content in the hard wheats used for making dried pasta in Southern Italy, and the softer wheats in the North where eggs are incorporated into the dough (sfoligia). I wondered how they compared to the hard wheats found in many stone-milled AP flours vs. the softer wheats used for White Lily and other highly processed Southern brands of flour. Just dropped by the library, and after Shaya's post, found further justification for sticking with KA AP flour. That's the type and brand Marcella Hazan prefers, saying flours made for making pasta are no good. Off the top of my head, I can't remember what she said to justify her pronouncement, or if she did, but her word's good enough for me. I picked up a new bag and skipped the Tipo 0/00.

Pizza Napoletana: Buon Natale anche a Lei! Kevin represents only one of a number of eGullet-home cooks in North America--and at least two European countries that are not peninsulas--who have developed a strong appreciation for Italian food, whether on their own, or as a consequence of travel, living abroad, watching television, or falling in love with an Italian. Perhaps we developed a passion for Dante, Giorgione, Umberto D, furniture designed by Memphis, or maybe even bicycling while growing up in a midwestern college town surrounded by quarries. Many of us do not have Italian backgrounds and are not fluent in your native language. We are learning a lot, making do with what we have, sometimes in places where the supply of Korean, Japanese or Mexican groceries is substantial, but there is no Tipo 00 to be found. Cardoons? Forget it! Bottarga? Boh--let alone a wealth of artisanal products you might take for granted back home or even in the U.K. (From what I understand, Alberto may be having a harder time in the capital city of Scotland than I have in the capital of The United States.) Nonetheless, it's fun to try new things, experiment, document meals and see what others have done. I can only speak for myself, but I can say that I enjoy the genuine spirit of comaraderie and collaboration. It was wonderful when Franci participated on a regular basis since she represents the point of view of an Italian with culinary training who is knowledgeable of a wide range of dishes prepared outside of her own native Puglia. She speaks her mind, yet often finds just the right way to teach me something I had not read in the sources at my disposal in North America. I think she might have even expressed disapproval or corrected a thing or two with grace. Perhaps my memory is inventive, but I am thinking in terms of how easy it is to instruct or offer a different point of view without a harsh, supercilious tone. Your advice is welcome. Backhanded compliments? Well, I'm not sure that's what you're offering here, but you seem to have come to bury Caesar as you praise him. Why not be pleased that people in different parts of the world are cooking your own food? As far as ricotta goes, I don't know how many water buffaloes were brought to North America during the Middle Ages. There is certainly not a sufficient number of meals prepared by residents of Boise, Idaho to keep a fresh-cheesemaker in business were she to specialize in sheep's milk ricotta. This factor is not unrelated to the reason it is hard to find a sharp, aged cheddar in Siena. I can readily buy a very good ricotta made from cow's milk at my farmer's market; Foodman makes his own. (Ada Boni's translated book on regional cooking suggests cottage cheese if there's no ricotta around.) Most people are perfectly satisfied with store-brands and will buy whatever is at the supermarket to make a very inauthentic lasagna with dried pasta, mozzarella and a tomato sauce they make themselves, with lots of garlic and fresh basil. They could care less about authenticity or whether their dish is faithful to Neopolitan or Bolognese practices. It tastes good to them and it's how their mother-in-law makes it--only better. As for YOUR posts about ricotta in everything, I searched online and found that you made a valuable point about the gatto' di patate. That's the kind of insider information that is useful to have. As for the calzones, would it be fair to say that there is not one right way to prepare them? Here's one that doesn't involve greens, but eccola! The recipe calls for ricotta. While including the word "ricotta" in my search, I managed to find only one recipe for pizzette di scarola, and sure enough: no ricotta. The type I've had in Italian-American street fairs were filled with mozzarella and tomato sauce. I never saw greens except in filled pies the size of large American pizzas. So, the published recipe Kevin used introduces something that might be less familiar to cooks in this country.

I'm thinking of making a variety of pasta flavors and shapes and wonder which type of machine to buy. I have a book which has recipes using alternate grains such as spelt and soy flour. I also want to make flavored semolina pasta as well. I have a KA and I see that there are two different kinds of attachments; a linguine and a ravioli maker. I would probably prefer to hand cut my own ravioli. Can the linguine attachment make plain sheets for lasagna and ravioli? Or should I go cheaper and get a hand crank style? I see that many of you have an Atlas brand. Are there other brands you recommend? I thought I should try rolling out the pasta dough by hand before investing in a machine. I know this takes some time but I don't mind if the results are the same or better. What have been some of your experiences? I welcome all comments.

Fresh air. Blue sea. Fish and fruit. Campania has been a tourist destination long before passports were needed. Somewhere, depending on your sources, between the 8th and 5th century BC, the Greeks arrived in Campania. The city of Napoli, or Naples, which means ‘new city’ was founded by the Greeks and is located on the Via Appia, which connects Rome to the Adriatic port of Brinidisi, gateway to Greece. The Romans annexed the area in the 4th century BC, and thus began the legend of Capri as an island of the rich and famous. Roman emperors, enamored with the fruit, vegetables and sea life, built fabulous villas around Naples, Capri and Ischia. Life was fairly stable until August 24, 79AD when Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabaie. The volcano taketh away, but in return it left the soil very fertile and productive. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Campania area is fought over by many nations and periodically falls under various foreign rulers. From around 1000 on, Napoli is a thriving city, the de facto capital of southern Italy and a center for art, culture and economic activity. Charles of Anjou lost control of Sicily in 1281, but retained the mainland territory of the Kingdom of Naples; which included the areas now known as Campania, Abruzzo, Molise, Bsilicate, Puglia and Calabria. In 1504, control of the Kingdom of Naples was ceded to Spain. Spain ruled the Kingdom from 1504-1713 and they did not do well by the area. Infighting between the church, Spanish and Italian nobility, widespread disease and famine caused this once rich area to suffer terribly. The Austrians move in around 1707, but don’t stay for long. By 1738, the area is back under the rule of the Spanish crown. In 1816, Sicily and Naples are merged into the “Kingdom of Naples”, and are under the rule of Ferdinand IV. By 1860, Garibaldi was unifying Italy and Campania formally joined the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. From a culinary perspective, Neopolitan and Sicilian cooking share a common background. Again we see the Arab influence with dried pasta, spices, rice, citrus, peaches, apricots and even the artichoke. What did all this sunshine, wine, olive oil and lemons do the people of Napoli? I went to my trusty little 1931 Italian Touring Club Gastronomic Guide, and found this comment, loosely translated, “the city where one not only lives in the kitchen, but between orgies and baccanals, the city of gluttony.” The guide goes on to say that its not true; the Napolitani are ‘in love with a good table, they love singing and the sea, all because they are in love with everything that possesses poetry.” Now, that sounds good to me. Maccheroni or Spaghetti? Although the Napolitani will argue this point, they did not invent pasta. As we know, the absolute origin of pasta is still being debated. What the Napolitani did do, according to documentation from the beginning of the 17th century, was invent machinery for making ‘spaghetti luogo”. This was a crude machine, but if effectively made long, thin pasta that would be dried and sold commercially. This industry is still thriving, dried pasta from Napoli is currently exported and enjoyed all over the world. Try to find Gragano pasta if you can, it has a wonderful rough texture and absorbs flavors beautifully. What’s the difference between maccheroni or spaghetti? It depends on where you are from: in southern Italy it generically means a long spaghetti. Other ‘long spaghetti’s” mentioned, and descending in size are: zitoni (ziti large enough to be stuffed), zita, mezzani, mezzanelli, maccaroncelli, perciatelli, bucatini, vermicelloni, vermicelli, spaghetti, vermicellini, spaghettini and finally, capellini. There will be a test on pasta sizes at the end of the month! In central and northern Italy, maccheroni (or macaroni) usually means a short pasta with a hole in the middle, like ziti or penne. The Golden Apple or Pomo d’oro The Napolitani also did not invent the tomato, although they do worship at the altar of the red orb. It is not until 1750 that the tomato begins to show up in the gardens and on the tables of the regular inhabitants. The tomato plant just loved the fertile soil to be found on the sides of Mt. Vesuvius and Campania is home to many, many varieties of tomatoes. One of the most popular sauce tomatoes is the San Marzano, a smallish, pear shaped tomato. The original San Marzano no longer exists, although through recent DNA research they are trying to bring it back. So, all those San Marzano tomatoes in a can that you pay extra for, are a recent development, not the original San Marzano. Just some trivia to roll around in your brain while you are in the supermarket decided if its worth spending the extra money. I still buy the San Marzano’s, I think they make the best sugo. Another tomato that has been showing up in the market lately is the “coure di bue”, a big, ridged tomato, it is excellent eaten raw. Here is a photo of some coure di bue with a little basil-ricotta on the side. It’s a perfect month to be studying the cuisine of Campania….there are tomatoes everywhere! Pizza The guy who ‘invented’ pizza should get the Nobel Peace Prize. What other food is so internationally eaten and enjoyed? Everybody loves pizza in some form or another. The origins of ‘pizza’ trace back to Ancient Rome, and the foccaccia oven or “picea”. One of the first recorded recipes for the “Pizza napoletana” is found in the 1858 “Usi e costume di Napoli e contonrni”. Here is a rough translation of the recipe: “Take a piece of bread dough, and using your hands, shape it in a round form until it is the size of a head. Season with oil, lard, cook in the oven and eat it.” The classic pizza napoletana usually has tomatoes, anchovies, capers and mozzerella. Would the first person who makes this, please let me know? I’ll be right over. Napoli may be the birthplace of pizza, but it has found a home in everyone’s heart. Mussels, Mussels, and more Mussels Mussels, clams and oysters all play a huge part in the cuisine of this region. From the simple “Impepata di Cozze” (mussels, pepperoncino, parsely, lemon juice and some bread), to far more elaborate recipes, the mussel rules. The rest of the sea bounty is also treated well. A classic “fritture de pesce” might include small calamari, small whole fishes, little shrimp and big prawns. If fried food is going to kill me, this is how I want to die. Buffalo Mozzarella This mozzarella really does come from the water buffalo. Honest. Its not just a brand name. Campania raises 80% of the water buffaloes in Italy and as a result is one of the largest manufacturers of this type of mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella should be eaten within 24 hours of being made. Which brings up the argument: buy imported mozzarella or local? I’m just bringing it up, I’m not offering to settle the question. Buffalo mozzarella is recognized to be more delicate and flavorful than mozzarella from cow milk. Fior di Latte mozzerella comes from a cow and has a very soft, more liquid texture. Its also delicious. Be careful when cooking with it as it may have more liquid than you bargained for. Other Cheeses Here are some Campania cheeses to be on the lookout for: Caciocavallo: can come from either the water buffalo or the cow, smoked and unsmoked. Comes in a round shape with a little top knot. Legend has it the cheese were strung over a horses back and carried around. More likely it was tossed over a beam to age. In any event, I would like to formally dedicate the extra inch (one of the extra inches) around my hips to Kevin72 and his recipe for fried caciocavallo with oregano. Caciorictta di capra: a soft, crustless goat cheese Pecorino: sheep cheese, comes soft and fresh right up to mature and rip the lining off your tongue picante Scamorza: Can come from the cow or water buffalo and traditionally is a bulging oblong shape with a rope around the middle, indicating what your waist will look like after consuming lots of this cheese. Comes smoked and not smoked, melts beautifully over roasted vegetables or a little bit of prosciutto. I’ve only selected broad categories of cheeses, there are literally hundreds of variations on each of these cheese. Meat A quick trip inland and you will be eating lamb, pig and courtyard animals, just as you would in central Italy. The island of Ischia is famous for its rabbit dishes. Prosciutto is made in Pietraroja, in the province of Benevento. Good salamis are to be found throughout the region. Emigration Between 1899 and 1910, approximately 2,000,000 southern Italians emigrated to the United States. Conditions in southern Italy were extremely harsh, the populace was literally starving to death, jobs were rare as the industrial infrastructure found in the North of Italy was nonexistent in the South. This massive migration into the United States, and the immigrants desire for products and produce that they were familiar with, expanded the North Americans exposure to “Italian” cooking, and spaghetti and meatballs became a staple “Italian” meal. All these things that we take for granted, that we might recognize as ‘generically” Italian, things like tomato sauce, pizza, dried pasta are the result of desperate people emigrating to the New World. They created quite a legacy, didn’t they? Campania is rich in many things, it should be a very satisfying month for all of us. Buon’appetito!

Here is a controversial one - I quite often buy economy streaky bacon - why? Because the 'better' stuff is often too lean. I do also buy good quality dry cured stuff too though - I'm a sucker for buying interesting sounding bacon. Pasta I usually buy good stuff, but it depends on the type and what I am using it for. Farfalle and conchigle I quite often buy supermarket brand. Orrichiette I get expensive stuff and the same for long pastas, penne I usually get a mid priced one like Barilla or De Cecco. For long grained rice I always buy basmati, but usually a fairly cheap brand (Although I did buy a good quality huge 10kg plastic jar a while back!) Some things I like to buy expensive varieties, just to try - I'm always trying different butters, but often can't tell much difference. Eggs I'm very picky about - won't buy cheap eggs. Cheese - some cheeses I'm happy with supermarket versions, Lancashire (Although I do buy Kirkhams Lancashire when I find it), Cheshire and Wensleydale are fine as they are light fresh tasting cheeses - supermarket budget cheddar is pretty rank though. Soft and blue cheeses I rarely buy from a supermarket unless for cooking with they are never ripe. The best Parmesan and Pecorino I've found without having to go to an italian deli or specialist cheesemonger is actually in the cheapest budget supermarket, so I buy that. In the UK supermarket own label sherry is actually pretty decent so I buy that for drinking and cooking. Vermouth for cooking too (Although I probably wouldn't drink it)

Went a few nights ago. Thought it was good but surprisingly not outstanding. Pastas were ok, but I thought I could probably do as well at home. Loved the salume, loved the ravioli with egg (that was the one pasta that was out of sight good). Thought the suckling pig was good but not profound. The fried artichokes were a bit soggy and kind of tepid in temperature. Does anyone have an issue with a single brand of spirit offered? (i.e. Belvedere vodka, Plymouth gin, etc)? Those are fine brands, but sometimes I'd like a different type of gin, but not available here--they have an agreement, as I understand it, with the supplier.

As someone who's struggling with it now (and the poor kid is seriously underweight to boot), patience. Lots of patience. Yelling and screaming and pressing the point got us vomiting. Nagging from well-meaning relatives about how she was never going to eat anything but specific brands of macaroni and cheese got us not eating at all. Rationality, negotiation, "mouse bites", licks, letting her help cook, letting her pick. Letting her eat food off our plates... Mostly though, we just go with the flow on food. Macaroni and cheese because pasta with butter and parmesan (specific brands, because other ones "had a taste"), which became pasta with tomato sauce and parm. Cole slaw that's slowly widened to several different types of dressing. Following acceptable flavors got us from dill pickles to fresh cucumber salad and balsamic dressing for carrots and cabbage (from the slaw). The really hard part is not "losing" foods. She'll take a sudden irrational dislike to foods she's adored. They just "don't taste right" anymore, and we scramble for a bit finding replacements and altering things. Some of them come back, and some don't. I wish I knew why.

The Pastry- I tried three different types of pastry for the Empanada: -Refrigerated pie dough -Frozen puff pastry dough -Homemade pie dough (without sugar and lard substituted for the vegetable shortening). Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Dough- My first attempt at filling the Empanada using store-bought pie dough was a disaster. The filling was still warm out of the pan, and the heat of the filling literally melted the pastry away. I couldn’t work fast enough from the time I spooned the filling into the center of the pastry round before it started to melt and holes began to appear in the dough. From that point on I realized that regardless of the type of dough I used, I would have to let the filling cool to room temperature before I began the stuffing and frying process. The refrigerated pie dough was convenient and easy to work with, but as you would imagine, it had some major flaws. It didn’t have any flavor whatsoever, nothing. The texture of the fried store-bought dough was crisp and the crumb was coarse, holding up well to the deep-fry method and holding up well in the hand. It just didn’t taste like homemade, buttery pastry dough and it didn’t have a light, flaky texture. Nothing unique about it. Pepperidge Farms Frozen Puff Pastry- I always keep some puff pastry in the freezer, typically Pepperidge Farms brand, or Dufour Pastry Kitchens if I’m feeling an urge to spend a little more money to get something of higher quality. Pepperidge Farms frozen puff pastry seems to work just fine for simple, quick dishes. The main problem I have working with Pepperidge Farms is that they fold it, which creates this seam that tends to break when you pull the pastry and try to lay it out in one rectangle. I’ve found the easiest way to avoid the problem is to let the pastry thaw at room temperature before unfolding it gently. If there is a break at the seam, it’s easily fixed with flour and a quick rollover. I still hadn’t learned from my first attempt at stuffing pastry dough with hot, or warm, filling. One spoon of the hot filling and the puff pastry immediately withered and I couldn’t get the Empanada formed. At that point I stepped back and let the filling cool in the refrigerator a few hours before another attempt at stuffing. To get the Empanada at the final size I wanted I used an empty can as the template for cutting the dough. Then about 2 tablespoons of filling, a brush of water on the edges of the dough, then crimped to seal the edges. I’m not exactly an artiste when it comes to fluting pastry—I used my fingers or a pasta cutter to crimp the edges of the dough, nothing fancy but it worked. The puff pastry was easy and convenient, and the deep-fried Empanada was crisp, yet light, flaky and buttery. Deep-frying, (in 350 canola oil), the puff pastry gave the surface little blisters which added to the light texture. One problem with the puff pastry is that the interior dough was still basically raw around the filling, and that was after about 4-5 minutes in the deep-fryer. It tasted better and had a better texture than the refrigerated pie dough, yet it still lacked the amount of flavor I was looking for. Cutting the puff pastry dough- An interesting coffee cup for a dough template- The stuffing on the pastry- The shaped puff pastry Empanada- The fried puff pastry Empanada- The fried puff pastry Empanada- “My” Pastry Dough- I’ve been making this pastry dough recipe for about 15 years now and it typically doesn’t fail me—at least when I use it in baked dishes. This was the first time I've attempted to deep-fry “my” pastry dough. The basic recipe calls for both butter and Crisco shortening to give the pastry both flavor and an incredibly flaky, moist and flavorful crust. I use a combination of both all-purpose and cake flour. The finely milled cake flour gives the finished pastry a delicate crumb. Recipe- 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup cake flour 1 tsp. salt 1 stick (1/2 cup), chilled butter 1/2 cup Crisco Ice water Mix the dry ingredients and then cut in the butter and Crisco by hand with a pastry cutter. Add the water and stir with a fork to bring the dough into a ball. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour before rolling out. For the Empanada version of my dough recipe, I decided to substitute lard for the shortening because I thought it would add more flavor. I left the sugar out and added some dried chipotle chili powder and black pepper. "My" pastry dough ingredients- The finished dough ready for resting in the refrigerator- Tools for cutting the pastry rounds for the Empanadas- The filling with a sprig of fresh cilantro- Deep-frying in 350 canola oil- With a sprinkle of coarse sea salt- Buffalo Empanada with Roasted Tomatillo Salsa- I already had the roasted tomatillo salsa on hand from a recipe I did a week before. It couldn't be easier and was a perfectly piquant dipping sauce for the rich Empanada- Hull and halve some tomatillos. Broil in the oven just until soft and the skin begins to blacken. Place the roasted tomatillos in a blender and combine with olive oil, lime juice, salt, pepper, cilantro, parsley and chili powder, (I use dried chipotle chili powder). Making your own pastry dough takes time, but it’s always going to result in the most flavorful finished product-you can control the amount of fat and moisture that goes into the pastry, and controlling the amount of flour gives you the leeway to experiment with the “mouthfeel” of the crumb in the dough. The deep-fried Empanada using the homemade pastry dough had the best flavor-incredibly rich, buttery and fatty. The only problem was that it took almost twice as long in the deep-fryer to get a golden-brown color than either the refrigerated pie dough or the frozen puff pastry products. The crust was light, flaky and cooked through, but the biggest problem was that after one bite, the pastry fell apart and left me with pieces of dough and filling. In my mind an Empanada is to be eaten with your fingers not a knife and fork. I think cutting down on the amount of butter and lard and excluding the cake flour in the pastry would probably leave me with a more sturdy finished Empanada. But minor technical criticisms aside, I’ve come upon a savory-filled pastry that I’ll be making many more times in the future.

I use home branded artisan pasta imported by my local Italian providore. Someone above mentioned bronze die extrusion. This leaves little ridges down the pasta to which the sauce will stick. This type of extruded pasta is a level above Barilla (which is good for a mass produced product) and typically a bit more expensive but the difference is noticeable and worth pursuing.

I'm looking into different pasta brands, trying to find a personal favorite for dried pastas. I was searching eGullet to find your opinions on the subject and thought that we needed a dedicated thread. So here it is. Please share your personal favorites and experiences. Why is it your favorite brand, and for what types of dried pastas?

Welcome to the 2012 season of eGullet Foodblogs and welcome, too, I guess, to my corner of Melbourne. Now, it's not Sunday. Not yet. Not even here. It will be soon--it's Saturday night--but I figured I'd post my prep for Sunday's dinner now, given early on Sunday I'll be spending most of the day at the Australian Open. I must apologise in advance, too, for the quality of some of the photographs. When I'm in a store somewhere I tend to prefer using my iPhone to my hulking SLR, a decision that often results in shitty photo. Some context. I live and have always lived in Melbourne's south eastern suburbs. I've spent most of my life in suburbs with a very high population of migrants from all over the world. Australia's culinary scene is shaped by migrants. The Italians and Greeks and others from that part of the world, back in the second half of the 20th century, they brought pizza and pasta and capsicums and salami. In the later part of the 20th century, the Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodians brought over a wide array of condiments, fruits and vegetables. Every batch of refugees and immigrants has brought their food with them--from boiled bagels to biltong, chorizo to bok choy. Entire suburbs became, and to some extent remain, 'enclaves' for various ethnic groups--Springvale, which I'll show you some time during the week, is home to a great many Vietnamese and Cambodian-Chinese. Clayton, where I am now, was once home to many Greeks and Italians--they're still here--but now has a very large population of Koreans and Indians. Dandenong, which you'll also see, has a lot of Sudanese, Sri Lankans, Indians, people from what used to be Yugoslavia and many others. The nation's collective palate has matured, too. At some point, not too long ago, supermarkets started selling frozen packages of 'stir fry' vegetables and a selection of dried pastas that went beyond spaghetti and 'macaroni'. Products I once had to look for in specialist stores--one of the many local Indian grocers, for instance--I can now find in most supermarkets. Much of this change has been in my lifetime. In my family home the menu evolved from variations on bangers and mash to include an increasing selection of heavily Australianised Asian and Italian dishes. The South East Asian influence is very obvious in the menus of our fine dining scene. I could show you many different parts of my city. If you visit here as a tourist, you're likely to visit Queen Victoria Market and maybe a couple of the big name restaurants in the CBD. I'll show you a little bit of that, but my focus will instead be on where I live and the surrounding suburbs. The preview pictures Canned grubs from South Korea, as avaliable at the 'Hong Kong Supermarket' just down the road. Not a mango or orange tree. It's a lemon tree in my backyard. Many Australians own lemon trees and we tend to get a bit weird about paying for lemons in the supermarket, even tho' they're typically only $3-4 per kilogram. Harry's Deli, a large Greek grocery store located at the end of my street. Reasonable selection of spices and dried goods, as well as olives, Greek cheeses and 'homemade' dips. A selection of umami boosters that, as a couple people pointed out, includes vegemite. I very much prefer savoury flavours to anything else. One of the local butcher shops. Australians might recognise these titles as coming from local chefs/authors. We also have reasonable-sized Indonesian population in Clayton. This is one of two Indonesian restaurants--very cheap and not bad, either. The food is very much like what you'd imagine getting in an Indonesian home in terms of presentation and menu options. A small part of the spice section in India at Home, one of the two larger Indian grocers (there are two big 'supermarkets' and a lot of smaller places, most of which also sell hot food items such as samosas) in Clayton. Also sells products from elsewhere in southern Asia, Fiji and South Africa. Some of the cheeses sold in one of the local Italian delis. Also sells a small selection of non-Italian products, including Spanish paprika and canned fish from Portugal. Harry's Outlet -- Greek deli I ducked into Harry's in search of juniper (not Greek, sure, but their spice selection is decent)--no luck--but ended up stocking up on some of their 'homemade' dips. Oasis Bakery -- Middle Eastern bakery, grocery store, etc My search for juniper led me to Oasis, a Middle Eastern grocer five minutes from home. It's 'Middle Eastern' in its focus but also sells a lot of interesting foodstuffs--some modernist cuisine-type additives, canned snails imported from France, a variety of canned fish eggs, a decent selection of Mexican chillies, etc. The spice selection is easily the most extensive there is so close to home. It's a nice shop. Vine leaves, obviously. A selection of dips, including all of the usual suspects--hommus, ful, tzatziki, roasted capsicum, etc. A selection of duck and goose products including fat, confit and rillettes. Salmon roe, lumpfish caviar and a few other varieties of 'fish egg' priced between these two points. Actual caviar is not sold here, of course. We're not in the right area for that. A selection of olives, ranging from hulking kalamatas marinated in a variety of ways to pricey little ones from Italy. Part of the section dedicated to oils and vinegars. Avaliable are products such as raspberry finishing vinegar, organic sesame oil and a truly baffling variety of infused extra virgin olive oils and fruity/spiced vinegars. Opposing this shelf is a shelf dedicated to sauces, including a selection of peri peris from Portugal and southern Africa and some 'gourmet' chutney. A section of the (long) wall dedicated to nuts and dried fruit, running from macadamias to slices of pear. A section dedicated to pre-packaged Turkish delight, running from cheap bulk packs to expensive organic stuff. A line of tajines they're pushing. Part of the spice, herb and powders section--you can pre-made blends, a variety of different chillies (in powder or whole form) and chilli blends, vegetable and fruit powders, natural food colourings and essences, whole and powdered spices and additives. A selection of salts, ranging from the usual--table salt, rock salt, etc--to some flavoured salts (wild garlic, etc), expensive Maldon sea salt and a few interesting ones, such as black salt and hickory smoked salt. Selection is actually superior to that of the ultra expensive gourmet shops such as Simon Johnson and Jones the Grocer. Part of the pickles section--runs, again, from industrial-sized cans of pickled onions to little jars of chillies. Freeze dried fruits and vegetables, sitting atop a freezer that holds icecreams, pastry, savoury and sweet-filled pastires, dough, ready meals such as their housemade Lebanese pizzas (avaliable hot in the restaurant), desserts of various kinds and a huge selection of frozen fruits and berries (want 3 different kinds of cherry, by any chance?) Just near here, too, is a whole wall of cheeses and a counter that sells a variety of pastries, ranging from baklava to macarons (insanely popular in Australia at the moment, thanks to Masterchef). Some honey--again, the range includes expensive local stuff (Manuka, organic, etc) and some imported ones from Greece and other places. Still cheaper than Simon Johnson, Essential Ingredient and other places aimed at wealthy inner suburbanites. If I find the time I'll show you one of those stores as a nice bit of contrast. A section dedicated to dried beans and grains, ranging from farro and organic quinoa to chickpeas and navy beans. Some dessert-type products, including Persian fairy floss, orange blossom water and rose water. Around the corner is a selection of chocolates, mostly imported or good quality local ones. Some beverages. There is also a large selection of teas and coffees for sale at Oasis. Oasis also has a restaurant, which sells--both for takeaway and sit-in customers--Middle Eastern dishes such as Lebanese pizza, doner kebabs, salads, desserts and a wide selection of stuffed bread/pastry-type products. The food is reasonably priced and, in my experience, very good. I don't eat there often--my shopping tends not to coincide with lunchtime, as Oasis is insanely popular and it's difficult to get in/out of the carpark, as it's on a busy main road--but I've never struck a dud dish. The haul. I went in looking for juniper--I need it for Sunday night's dinner--and came out with smoked sea salt (I'd been on the look out for this stuff since buying the Hawksmoor at Home book, so it was hardly an impulse purchase), goose rillettes and some wild Australian olives. The olives, which I ate with some of the imported brie I bought the other day. Very nice olives. Dan Murphy's I'm cooking kangaroo on Sunday night so I figured I'd want some beer to go with it. Luckily, Dan Murphy's is just down the road from Oasis. Dan's is a chain of booze outlets owned by one of the two big supermarket chains. It has very good prices and a very good selection of some of the finer things in life--craft beer from Australia, wine from Australia and elsewhere, spirits and, of course, single malt whiskies. I have enough wine, whisky and spirits at home, so I was only in search of beer. Part of the liqueur/spirit section. Looking out over the wine section. This store, by the way, seems smaller than the other near near my house. Cider has become popular in Australia in the past couple of years. In addition to the shitty overly sweet 'apple, strawberry and bullshit'-type stuff, there's also some good quality imported French and British (as well as a few local) ciders. At some point this week I'll try and track down some of the better Australian ones--they're not sold at Dan Murphy's yet. Part of the beer section. The selection runs from the mass produced locals and imports (VB, Carlton, etc, as well as Stella, Corona, etc) to locally made craft beers, a few that straddle the line between mass produced and crafty (James Squire, the Matilda Bay range) and some nice imports (Duvel, Chimay, Leffe, Sapporo) from Belgium, mostly, but also France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa and other places. A wider selection of, say, Indian beers (Kingfisher, Haywards 5000, etc) can be had at some of the smaller bottle-os in Clayton, which service a large Indian clientelle. The haul. Note the Sierra Nevadas--I've heard very good things. All of the others (aside from the minis) are local beers. Spiced and smoked kangroo -- prep Why did I head out in search of juniper and ale? On Sunday night I'm cooking kangaroo, working from a recipe in 32 Inspiration Chefs -- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia [and some other places] for springbok. In the original recipe, some springbok loin is marinated in a spice mix, tea-smoked and then seared in a pan. It's accompanied by, among other things, a verjuice reduction, an apple chutney, parsnip puree and braised radicchio. It's a little more involved than what I'd normally make for dinner, but it's the weekend, school holidays (I'm a teacher) and the moment I saw some of the springbok/kudu/etc recipes in that book I was really keen to try all of them with 'roo fillets. Kangaroo, incidentally, is the most widely avaliable game in Australia--most supermarkets will sell the 'Macro Meats' brand fillets, steaks, 'kanga bangers', hamburgers, mince, mini-roasts and a variety of pre-marinted products, including sis kebabs and spiced steaks. Through a decent butcher, you can also order in--or sometimes even find, if you're lucky--kangaroo meat from other companies and in other cuts, including tail. In Queen ViC Market you'll maybe find 'roo biltong or salami. It's very lean and a bit like venison in terms of flavour--a bit sweet, a bit of iron, a meat for people who like meat. It's disgusting if over- or under-cooked, too. A lot of people don't like it because their one experience was negative--it's so easy to ruin. An increasing number of fine dining restaurants, including Vue de Monde, The Point and Jacques Reymond, are starting to include 'roo on their menus. The 'roo fillets, sitting in a marinade comprised of cumin, coriander seeds, chilli, mustard seeds, juniper, salt (I used some of the smoked salt), black pepper, soy sauce, treacle, olive oil and Worcester sauce. Verjuice reduction (water, sugar, verjuice). The apple chutney (Granny Smiths, red onion, sultanas, tomato paste, garlic, ginger, celery, brown sugar, red wine vinegar, water, cinnamon, nutmeg, bay, cardmom and cloves). When I return home from the Open I'll set to work on the last minute elements of the dish--the parsnip puree, the radicchio and some polenta (corn meal seemed like a nod to the African origins of the dish, while ticking off the starch requirements nicely). Instead of smoking the fillets in the oven with rooibos tea, orange zest, star anise and cinnamon as in the original springbok recipe, I'll load up my smoker with some hickory chips. The dish shall be served with much beer.

only positive experiences from me Jo . i was willing to spend as much as was necessary to get the 'best' , i had some money burning a hole in my pocket at the time. so i was in knots trying to decide on which one. my final contenders/ choices came down to the Fissler Vitaquick, the Euro fissler with the timer or Kuhn Rikon. i have no doubt that other brands do fine but those were simply my choices. the internet is full of good reviews about the KR cookers, but quite a few people mention that one needs to tweek/fiddle the flame just right to get it to sit in the perfect place on the valve (white line), that didnt concern me too much, i assumed it would be easy enough (somehow i would be different) and any difficulty in that or that some say the KR is slightly noisier would be outweighed by their stylish good looks and what looks like a robust valve system, i also particularly liked their non standard extra very wide braising size pans for certain purposes, but not for most meals , i noticed that parts could be purchased for their valves readily at many places and it looks easy enough to replace the parts if the need ever arose. i was also pretty keen to get the euro & australian fissler version (officially Australia gets the euro version but in fact the USA version can be had here as well), one because they look better ,just the valves and knobs etc, the pans are the same, more particularly the indicators and the top of the range model that has timers that beep when its done or if it pressure goes too low or too high. not having (sorta) used a pressure cooker since i was a little kid (the old type that rattle and if you open the lid too early the soup ended up on the ceiling) i thought , perhaps due to a little trepidation, that might be a good idea since i dont always stand at the stove and often walk to the other room to glimpse the TV or whatever sometimes. however, my kids (young adults) talked me out of the timer version, said it might just be gimmicks or too much gadgety that even if it worked we could probably do without, so i crossed that off my list (reluctantly at the time) so it was down to the Euro/Australian fissler second or third from top model, that frankly looks nicer but i ended up buying the USA vitaquick model due to price i just couldnt resist, i got the two pan set which uses one top shared between two pans. a great economical way to buy them and now that we have been using them i dont even think about how the indicator looks or anything else, it just works, its easy enough to see so thats fine and dandy. the american test kitchen rated it the highest and even though our own much praised and admired pazzaglia (me too i have one of her books to try out soon) is less than keen on their review i thought it was as professional as could be expected with computers being used to to measure temp and pressures. Laura reviewed the Euro model with the timer and had a very bad day with it leaving it empty on the fired up stove top for 5 min or so with nothing in it to overheat ruining the base probably didnt help the overall impressions it gave her so we have been using the vitaquick for some months now, guessing about six or so, couple of times a week at least for family but some days , a couple or so each week it gets used two or three times a day, since two of my lads work a second job and play night time sports they filter into the home at different times through the night. i don't like them using a deep fryer at night (the smell through the house at 10-12pm of a deep fryer is disgusting to me, takes ages to heat up and then cook) and i'm not keen if they decide to do a fry up using a frypan on top of the stove late at night either, sitting back watching a movie or reading but sounds and smells like a fast food kitchen, yuk. microwave i dont care, its just a reheat device around here mostly and they would often put water in the pasta pan and cook up some pasta which takes ages to do and uses much energy which costs a lot down our way. so the pressure cooker has opened up a much better menu to them which i like because obviously their my kids and i want them to eat well and healthily, i dont mind them doing a quick browning of a protein and then the lid goes on or it does rice or pasta much quicker than the traditional way (many many different sauce recipes for pasta, in an instant, which they love) we also have a sous vide immersion device much like your mentioned Anova , i think as time goes on their will be so many brands we couldn't poke at stick at and the prices are getting cheaper all the time as a result, mine is a SWID Addelice, a euro machine that was a good (half) price at the time compared to the considered top brand we all know. i had a quick look on utube of the Anova, it looks fine but i didnt see any details about how much power it had, it seemed to take a very long time to heat the water to temp (21min according to the utube) whereas mine is mere a fraction of that , mine is also about 2400w on 240v from memory so that might be where the differences lye. assuming the Anova has less power it probably doesn't matter much though, for one, sous vide isnt about being fast and also you could use hot water from the tap or boil some water in a kettle to be close to temp to start with, the machine can then just do its job and regulate which doesn't require a high power output. what i like about the Anova is the shield/cover is all around the heater element which shields the bags from touching the element, although it does look to not have enough ventilation holes in it, it probably doesn't effect it in reality though, on my machine it is close to letting a bag slide in behind and touch the heater element , it hasn't yet but i am always watching it, being handy i will probably make something to finish it off. the other thing that sticks out to me is how high the machine is , more particularly the height needed for emersion, it appears very long. it would be worth checking the minimum ness depth of water needed to use the machine in case you dont have a have vessel deep enough or need to purchase that as well, as a comparison the SWID fits in very shallow water, without checking probably 4"-5". i use it in my sink at the moment, i have duel kitchen sink with one being very shallow , using it in the sink frees up the stove top for other cooking which has been beneficial as for which you should buy first, well it is purely your own call and what excites you the most at the time...my view is sous vide and pressure cooking are different methods not competing methods, sous vide takes some time, not hands on time but time none the less, i dont go for the common stories that it is so tender its like nothing you can cook without it, i did various extensive comparisons a few months ago with beef all identical from same cut and beast, cooked at different lengths sous vide (from 1-12 hours) and some on pan and some over charcoal and some in extremely low (slow cook) oven then fired over charcaol to finish and we found that the longer you sous vide the drier it got, it may have been more tender but not nearly as nice because it was drier/ less juicy. a lot of this sous vide hype around the net is largely , i think the word is hyperbole . not that i am against it, i still think it has a great place and great results, but it has its restrictions, i find sous vide is kinda fool proof, so a young or inexperienced cook can get it just right, so long as they dont stuff up the browning stage, however cut and quality of meat no matter what anyone says still makes a huge difference, it can rank above cooking in pan because unless you have extreme heat not readily available to ammeter cooks the protein gets cooked/crusted too deep which affects tenderness and juices. i reckon, that the best thing any cook can have experienced or not is a decent thermometer not one of those turkey analogue things, but a high quality digital thermometer. even cooking sous vide you need it because the meat comes out unappealing and needs flaming/grilling/brazing/browning not just for looks but flavour so it helps to know what temp your serving my pick is first a digi thermometer, then a pressure cooker because for me it serves more work (for me), sous vide is better for weekend or perhaps dinner parities with too many people you have trouble cooking for. even in the pressure cooker though is not perfect, i have made and developed some wonderful casseroles over the years, some indian dishes we all love around here better than any restaurant but we cant duplicate it 'perfectly' in the pressure cooker but considering in the pressure cooker takes a mere fraction of the time its not bad at all and we have near on perfect meals midweek or when busy, and sometimes cooking the traditional way in pot or in oven can be overdone and make meat tuff (go past tender) even if sauce is still beautiful . pressure cooker makes meat 90-97% as good as best possible outcome conventionally but better than many times because it is quite easy to overcook conventionally (if the belief is longer cook makes more tender meat you reach a point where it goes tuff again) but unfortunately pressure cooker doesn't develop the sauce/gravy quite as well as a very long slow cook, it can be concentrated after to enhance but long slow cook is best but often not always practical . i think pressure cooker is best choice to a soud vide but it depends on your household habits. obviously my vitaquick has been put through its paces, over a number of months and still looks and works like new so i cant complain about it at all, quite happy here. best of luck cheers chippy

I love all versions of Anne. Walter breaks my heart every time I read the books! Anne and Diana's feast for the visiting author is a classic. Is that the meal where both of them and Marilla all sugar the peas? I do remember those Alcotts! Also - in Little Men, did anyone else covet the mini cookstove that Amy's daughter received? I was pretty proud of my julienne - here's all three of them - parsnip, apple and pear: I remember those little cartons and they don't seem to make them anymore! I was actually looking for one this weekend for a retro congealed salad that I'm making in place of fruit salad for the weekend (jello counts for fruit below the Mason-Dixon line, right ?) Those Family Circle cookbooks are a hoot. I think that they are the ones that Lileks uses in the Gallery of Regrettable Food. They belonged to my MIL and I was so excited to get them! And your savory bread pudding recipe sounds wonderful - we love fennel; I'll be using it later this week! lucylou's bread pudding was just amazing. The only sweetness was from the caramelized onions, so it was really savory. I have had them in restaurants, but none as good as this one was! Thank you and Randi for the advice about the spinach - I'll put that in my notes when I type up the recipe and try that next time. I'm sorry for what I call my 'cadaver hands'! Everyone is wondering about my gloves and I meant to tell you about it before now and just forgot. I wear gloves almost all the time when I am cooking, cleaning, etc. I am not some phobic, Michael Jackson, mask wearing wacko. I've always had extremely dry hands and when I was working at the store it got really awful - cracked, actively bleeding fingers - just agonizing, plus folks didn't like me bleeding on their food. My doctor prescribed Kerodex cream and the gloves at work. It was like magic. My hands cleared up in a few days and I started wearing them at home, too. I've really gotten used to them - I've caught myself mid-meal still wearing them ! I'm hoping that the restaurants that we are going to this week will cover this and I am going to try to get up early enough to get to the farmer's market, too! Since my focus this first blog is on 'new to me' recipes, I won't be cooking my old standbys which are pretty regional - fried chicken, long cooked vegetables, biscuits - but I am making a congealed salad this weekend and if that's not regional, I don't know what is ! artisan02 - I do cook alot from Simple Fare - it is a wonderful cookbook and I think I found it years ago at a discount bookstore. My go to Pot Roast recipe is from this book. Doddie & Randi - I'm glad you like my shoe spreaders! Aren't they girlie? I love girlie stuff (as anyone could guess from my pink striped powder room)! I think they were a gift from my MIL and FIL. Rob - I adore my ceramic knives. I have the big one, a little paring knife and a peeler. They are all awesome. Mr. Kim gave me the set for Christmas - really because they have pink handles and I am all about pink - he really didn't know anything about them. Serendipitously, they are wonderful and my favorite knives. I have hand strength issues and they are so light and easy to use. I only use my Henckels now when the job is rough or could conceivably shatter the ceramics. And Dejah - re: the knives - I believe that they only have to be sharpened every few years - maybe someone else knows for sure? Sony - nice to 'see' you again! Be sure to PM me if you ever find your are going to have a couple of hours in Richmond! Otis eats little packets of Pedigree wet food topped with some Pedigree crunchies. Plus whatever hits the floor! I said the other day that my next pug was going to be named Roomba! He is a passionate omnivore and would eat until he popped, if we let him. We almost never feed him people food because of his puggy tendency towards...um...rude noises. He is sweet, but not bright and sees the entire outdoors as a giant smorgasbord - grass, twigs, snow, squirrel corn, etc. - all have an irresistable draw for him! zeemanb - I have just recently discovered your blog and am getting caught up reading it from the beginning! It's really great fun! We are definitely siblings under the skin - love of food, urban neighborhoods, politics, ethics, surgery, etc. I'm glad I found you! I know exactly what you mean about the doggy bags. I always want to explain why I didn't eat much in restaurants and am afraid the chef will be offended at my lack of appetite. Plus, I am still not exactly a small person, so when I say, "I have a small appetite.", I'm always sure they are thinking, "Yeah, sure you do"! I did the showing everyone how small my meals were, too. That will pass. What hasn't passed yet is when I'm folding laundry and see how small my underwear is! For everyone who wants the recipes for the things I'm making, I'll be posting them (properly credited, of course) on my webpage (link is below my name) as soon as I have the time. How about the promised explanation of my drinks and a house tour? In one of the shots of my island there were a row of 2 lt. drinks on the floor. These are "my drinks". When you have a gastric bypass, you are not supposed to drink sugary, carbonated drinks. Most diet drinks are still fizzy. And, believe me, when you drink one, you know it. That foam just crawls right up your esophogus and is nasty. I know some bypass patients who have worked at getting back on carbonated drinks, but I figure, why bother going through the surgery if I'm going to find ways to break the rules. My stomach capasity will increase naturally anyway, why add any other ways for weight to creep up on me? So after I had the surgery, I was drinking just water or tea. That got tired really fast. I am not a coffee drinker at all, so I used to get my caffeine from diet coke. Someone suggested drinking flat diet soda. None of the dark ones appealed to me, but Mt. Dew and the lighter drinks are less carbonated anyway. I tried different things and found that Kroger's house brand version of diet Mt. Dew was something that I liked. I used to just let it go flat, but that takes forever, so I started just bringing it to a boil, cooling it and putting it back in the bottle. I love this stuff and always have it on hand. Let's take a food related tour around my house. Here's the kitchen. Pantry/laundry area: Inside the belly of the pantry beast: Moving around the room: Counter Shots. Keep in mind that other than the island, this is all of my counter space. My newest toy - it's a very large toaster/convection oven. I love it dearly, but it takes up a lot of space - that's about a foot of usable space in front of it: The corner - cracker jar, Otis' NomNomNom (does anyone get this reference?) tin, the coffee bean suck machine (as opposed to the plastic bag suck machine which lives in the island and which I haven't used in months), the coffee maker/grinder and the beginning of the utensil forest (in one of the Oz books there actually is a village named Utensia in the middle of a forest and the inhabitants are kitchen untensils - lots of good food in Oz books, too - eeeek, another one of my mad, passionate collections I am confessing to): The Utensil Forest: The narrow little place between the stove and the fridge where lives the olive oil, garlic, sugar bowl, S&P, etc. - the stuff I need right at my elbow: Notice the instant coffee - does anyone else at eG admit to having any of this stuff around? Mr. Kim and Jessica use this when they are in a rush and only need one cup - I don't drink coffee so it doesn't reflect on me! Also - notice my bacon salt - percyn recommended this stuff and I keep it by the stove so I'll remember to use it since it's new. Here's the fridge - as you can see, we stick everything in the house on it. I really like a cleaned off refrigerator, but it just doesn't happen! That shot is an outside manifestation of the chaos within. The fridge: The freezer: This is what happens when you open the freezer: This is my freezer list - it is supposed to be an up to date list of everything in the freezer. It is usually current for about 3 days after I completely rehaul it: We call this Banshee's cabinet. Called that because it's where our late lamented kitty used to eat her meals so that Otis couldn't get it. It was an old cruddy thing that Momma and Ted found in the garage when they moved. I painted it and it holds all my food storage stuff. A good shot of the world's ugliest floor is also included for your viewing pleasure: Food Storage cabinets: The pasta/rice storage cabinet and the oh-so-up-to-date list of contents: Other stuff: (see the Penzey's bottles at the bottom? We just got a Penzey's - will try to fit a visit in on the weekend!) Spices: That's it for the kitchen; now let's visit the rest of the house. In the dining room I have dishes stored in the china cabinet, like normal people: But if you look closely, I also have a shelf that runs around 3 walls of my dining room that holds more dishes and serving pieces and pitchers (my wonderful FIL made this for me for my birthday one year). There is also more stuff in the sideboard. This is my coat closet. We took the coats out so you can see it's real purpose: Ok, now I feel really trashy. Also in the living room is a small sideboard: It's also full. Notice the teeny tiny little cake stand on top! Isn't it girlie ?? And just to show the full extent of my shame, if you lift the skirts of my side tables like Can-Can dancers: Actually, that wasn't the full extent of my shame, because in the attic there are big, giant things (juicer, canning equipment, bread maker, etc.), but you're not seeing that - we have to go in there with a flashlight and the camera wouldn't work! Whew! Well, no cooking for me tonight. We are going out to dinner - I'll be back later with a report!

Hi everyone we would like to share with you our food experiences in Montréal. Restaurant LOMBARDI is located on duluth street in the popular plateau Mont-Royal area. It's a BYOW type restaurant. Our friend Georges told us about this place. He told us that the restaurant re-opened after being closed for more than a year because of a fire. We noticed that the building is brand new. Our waiter told us that everything is new except the personnel. Everybody is back on the floor and in the kitchen. Guess he wanted to reassure us by saying it's the same good old cuisine. Same or not we didn't care since it was our first visit. Our experience was as expected from a restaurant serving Italian cuisine. It was very rich and nourishing. We had for starters melon prosciutto and figs prosciutto that were very tasty. Especially the figs and prosciutto interaction. For main course we had a huge pork shop a la sauce porto and veggies. You have to be hungry for that one. You know how it is when you're full and it's good, you keep on eating. An interesting twist was the trio pasta dish. Usually when we had similar dishes in the past, it was the same sauce for the 3 different pasta but at Lombardi's it was a different sauce for each pasta. Since Restaurant Lombardi is a BYOW type restaurant, a bonus is the location of the wine store called SAQ two doors down from the restaurant. In the province of Quebec, most "BYOW" (bring your own wine) restaurants don't charge a corking fee like other restaurants in the rest of Canada. Here's a link to a video of our experience there. http://30sr.blogspot.com/2008/09/restaurant-lombardi.html and a few pictures

Mmmm.... After reading through this thread, I find it strange that everyone accepts "pasta" as just that,"pasta". I'm not talking about the shapes, I'm talking about the ingredients and manufacturing methods. A "Good" pasta like Barillo or DeCecco is only made with semolina flour and water, and extruded through bronze dies. No manufacturer will tell us exactly HOW the pasta is dried prior packaging either. There is of course, pasta made with eggs as well, and cheaper pasta made with different types of flour and extruded through nylon dies, leaving a very smooth surface texture which results in not much sticking on the pasta. I imagine there'd be quite adifference in texture and taste using a "cold start, minimum water" method with a high quality pasta, and a House brand Supermarket-type of pasta..........