zoramargolis

As for canning, I don't think the AB process gets the temperature up high enough for it to be safely stored.

Do you mean WB (waterbath) process? Actually, tomatoes are among the foods that are safest to put by using waterbath canning. The high acidity in the tomatoes is the reason. I suppose low-acid, yellow tomatoes might be a concern.

According to an ad on the back page of the WashPost Health section today:

"VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED FOR STUDY ON CHEESE EATING

Volunteers will be paid $100 for completing the study on September 14,2006. Study will require eating 2 meals, consisting of only cheese; remaining at the center for 8 hours, and having blood samples drawn. Please contact: 202-686-2210 ext. 368 or bhuang@pcrm.org."

If it's Epoisses, I'm in! I'm afraid, though, that the volunteers will just be Jacked around.

Rice does not belong in burritos. What belong in a burrito are beans, meat and spicy salsa, and I ask for extra cilantro. Maybe some cheese and guacamole. It's a tossup whether Chipotle's pork or Baja Fresh's pork is better, although Chipotle's beef barbacoa can be tasty. When I get the peppers and onions with the stewy beef, it reminds me of machaca, my favorite from the old Burrito King days on Sepulveda near Venice Blvd. Before La Salsa opened. But seriously, rice ruins a burrito. It's just there to fill your stomach with cheap carbs.

So, I've got these lamb rib chops........

Plenty of dry herbs and spices. Some fresh mint, parsley, cilantro, basil.

Some onions, shallots, garlic. Some dried fruit. Some fresh berries. Some watermelon.

Some stock and/or wine that can be reduced.

What am I missing and how should I make my dinner?

I like fruit with pork and duck--not so much with lamb. Save the fruit for dessert. Or serve a first course of watermelon and feta cheese, drizzled with balsamic vinegar. Marinate your rib chops witn some olive oil, garlic, fresh mint and parsley. Charcoal grill them medium rare. Sauce not necessary. Oh, here's a thought, make cous-cous or a pilaf as a side with sauteed shallots and a little bit of diced up dried fruit poached in stock as the liquid, sprinkled with some toasted pine nuts or almonds and chopped fresh herbs on top. Have broiled fresh berries with creme fraiche or mascarpone as dessert.

Daruma in Bethesda has a few, as does MacArthur Beverages. You might also check with Joe Riley at Ace Beverages, via PM.

Skillet cornbread (stone-ground cornmeal from Old Mill--and, if you will forgive a spouse's pride, my wife won a blue ribbon at the Maryland State Fair for her cornbread lo those many years ago.)

Blue ribbon cornbread? Please do tell us more about that!

Roasted eggplant gazpacho a la Michel Richard

Spice crusted charcoal grilled tri-tip steak from Organic Butcher of McLean

Spice-rubbed grilled crimini mushrooms for Vegi-teen

Cheese grits

2004 Dão Quinta dos Grilos vinho tinto

Peach crisp with vanilla ice cream

Growing up, I did not cook much beyond scrambling eggs and making sandwiches. But my mother was a fairly good home cook who ventured occasionally to lasagna-land and middle-America from the Russian-Jewish standard fare we mostly ate (ie. chicken soup with kreplach, brisket, koteleten, broiled chicken, borscht, blintzes, chopped liver, chopped eggplant appetizer) and I was taken to a lot of different ethnic restaurants on a regular basis--Chinese, Mexican, Indonesian, Japanese, Italian and French. Food was enjoyed and appreciated in my family, even if we weren't terribly sophisticated.

When I went to NYC after high school and was living on my own, I started to get interested in cooking. I didn't have enough money to eat in restaurants for every meal, so I gradually acquired cooking equipment and cookbooks, and began to cook for myself and my friends in the downtown theater world (ie. other young, starving actors). Using lots of onions, garlic and wine was my mother's greatest legacy. I waited tables and hung around in restaurant kitchens, talking to the chefs, helping out and working at banquets and parties.

By the time Jonathan and I first crossed paths, I had been watching Julia on tv for quite a while and was thought of as a very good cook by my friends. Our relationship was a done deal the night I cooked chicken Marengo, rice pilaf, steamed asparagus and hollandaise sauce on a two-burner hotplate in his basement apartment in Rowayton, CT.

We moved to Vermont together and started vegetable gardening and keeping bees. I got a job as a cook in a natural foods restaurant in Brattleboro, called The Common Ground, which was a collective where we could pretty much cook whatever we wanted to as long as brown rice and stir-fried veggies was always on the menu. A friend I met there and I started a small catering business, doing parties and weddings. When she got a job as executive chef in a restaurant across the river in New Hampshire, I worked there as a prep cook during the day, and waited tables at night. I also waitressed at a fairly sophisticated French restaurant in Marlboro, Vermont, where I learned continental service, boning trout at the table and tableside flambe-ing and a lot about wine and traditional French food from hanging around with the chefs and the sommelier.

When we moved back to California, I was into year-round organic vegetable gardening, foraging, pasta-making. I took formal cooking classes for the first time, from Wolfgang Puck and Michel Richard, at a small cooking school called Ma Cuisine. I was a private chef for a family for a few years and an occasional caterer. Always passionately interested in food, always looking to learn more. Though other things in my life have changed a lot, that hasn't.

Derek's first day! Just by happy coincidence, I stopped in for a light meal at the bar before going to a movie. Derek seems very happy to be at Citronelle, and Mark, who I finally had the great privilege to meet, is happy to have him there. The eggplant gazpacho, which Michel Richard called "my baba ghannouj soup," was garlicy velvet, with the sweetness of roasted eggplant, a subtext of earthy nutty tahini and a hint of chile heat. The soup was garnished with cucumber and beet crisps, some basil oil and a few coriander seeds. The bowl was set into another bowl filled with ice, to make certain it would be cold to the very last spoonful. Very refreshing. By coincidence, I roasted an eggplant on the bbq last night, so I am going to attempt an amateur version. Michel is such an inspiration.

I'm pretty surprised at the positive comments (local or not, it IS a chain, and we know how most folks around here feel about chains ) I have only been to the Verizon Center location. Went twice and thought it sucked both times. YMMV but I have no interest in trying again.

One.Time.Only.

In the late 1960's, I was a server at Top of the Gate, the bar/restaurant upstairs from the Village Gate night club on Bleecker St. in Greenwich Village. Jazz musicians like Bill Evans, Gary Burton, Junior Mance and Toshiko Akiyoshi played at Top of the Gate--there was no cover charge, and people could sit at the bar or at a table, have a drink or a few, a sandwich, burger or a full meal and listen to the music. The music was great, but the tips varied a lot--Junior Mance, with his uptempo, energetic style brought in people who came to have fun, ordered lots of drinks and tipped accordingly. Bill Evans was the worst as far as tips went. He would almost nod out over the keyboard, playing slow, contemplative stuff and people would sit and listen all evening nursing one drink.

One night (I don't recall who was playing that night), a party of 16 people came in and were seated in my station--pretty much my only table that night. Of course, it was at the station the furthest from the bar. I'm sure the manager gave me that station out of spite, because I had turned him down when he wanted to have sex with me. Their first round of drinks came all at once, but from then on, one person would order a refill or a sandwich, I'd ask around the table if anyone else wanted something. They were too busy talking to respond, or didn't want anything at that moment. Then when I brought the drink or the sandwich, someone else would look at it and say, "Oh, that looks good. I'll have one of those." It went pretty much like that all night--they had me running back and forth for hours. You get the picture. At the end of the night, I presented the check, which was between $150 and $200, and everyone started pulling money from their wallets to pay what they figured their share was. Someone handed me a thick stack of $1 and $5 bills and said "The tip is in there." By the time I had counted the money, the party had all drifted out. They had left me a $5 tip. I saw red and ran down the stairs to Bleecker Street, where the stragglers were walking up the street. I grabbed the closest guy and started screaming at him that I made $1 an hour and had busted my ass all evening and he and his friends had stiffed me. He protested mildly that he had left a tip, even if his friends hadn't. "I don't care. You cough up some money and collect from them later!" I was a mad woman. I think he pulled a ten dollar bill out of his wallet, gave it to me and ran. I know that if I had gone to the manager/maitre d' for support, he would have just laughed, and if he knew what I had done he would've fired me. I was beyond caring at that point.

Honestly I want a blender that I cannot kill. I go thru blenders like people go thru shirts. On an average I kill one every three months. I am too cheap to by the expensive ones so I buy the $19 ones and they cannot take all the lentils I try to blend. I know, I know.. I am pathetic!

Also -- I would LOVE (if I had a larger kitchen) to get a larger food processor and one of those nice big ranges with five burners and a grill. I could go on and on!

Santa are you listening?

Monica-- forget about Santa, bite the $ bullet and buy yourself a VitaMix blender. It's the home version of the machine that Starbuck's uses to make Frappucinos, and most high-end restaurants have in their kitchens (same motor, plastic housing instead of metal).

It will keep working for the rest of your life, and if you amortize the cost over your lifetime, it is not that expensive. This thing is so worth it--it has a 2 HP variable speed motor--strong enough to run a tablesaw. It makes sorbet out of chunks of frozen fruit or ice cubes. The most amazingly smooth purees, even out of raw vegetables. And there is a grain grinding jar available that will turn your various pulses into flour in seconds. I use mine all the time. I know that I must sound like a shill for the company, but it is my "They'll have to pry this from my cold dead hands if they want to take it from me" kitchen tool. There are many good knives, mixers, food processors, but there is nothing that is in the same league of versatility or power when it comes to blenders.

www.vitamix.com

Lightly fried oil is good!

Try frying in a combination of oil and butter. Even better.

As the family story goes, a great aunt was making the beef broth for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, capelletti en brodo. She put a strainer in the sink, then poured the contents of the stock pot into it. What she didn't do was put a bowl under the strainer!

Knowing all of the time, effort and ingredients involved in making meat broth/stock, this one resonated. I had a large stockpot full of veal stock bubbling away. I turned it off and set the glass lid on the pot with a bit too much energy, and the glass lid shattered into the pot.

My daughter goes to a private school where lunch is provided as part of the tuition. High school aged kids can leave campus at lunch to buy food, but no one except the devoutly religious or the very allergic bring food from home. The cafeteria food gives the kids a convenient target for adolescent rebellion and general snarkiness, which takes a little pressure off of the teachers and administrators. As a body-conscious vegetarian teenage girl, she grazes at the salad bar or skips lunch altogether ("I was too busy studying!") and then buys a Starbuck's cappucino after school.

When she went to public school and brought lunch from home, I had some influence over what she ate. She liked it when I sent a wide-mouth thermos with soup (black bean with sliced hot dog was her favorite), chili, mac and cheese or pasta. She felt very grown-up when I sent hot water in the thermos and she had a dehydrated cous-cous, bean or noodle cup from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's to pour it into. This obviously would not work for a four year-old, but Emma could handle it.

Another popular change from sandwiches was cheese, crackers and apple slices (almost as good as a Lunchable). Chips, salsa and guacamole was HUGE--then everyone wanted to sit with her at lunch.

3 June 2006, 10:30 p.m.

Finish hour-long simmering of bacon/onion mixture needed to make Lithuanian Bacon Buns for Spring DR.com Picnic. Dough complete through 1st rise and awaiting portioning and stuffing with bacon/onion mixture. Scrape bacon/onion mixture into food processor to "finely chop" as directed by recipe. Whir-whir-whir. Scrape finely-chopped bacon/onion mixture into mixing bowl. Taste for salt. Add more salt, pick up wooden spoon to stir in salt and notice 1/3" x 1/2" chunk from tip of wooden spoon is missing. Pray to higher power that 1/3" x 1/2" chunk from tip of wooden spoon came off while scraping finely-chopped bacon/onion mixture out of food processor bowl. Look in processor bowl. Empty. Wash hands. Feel around in finely-ground bacon/onion mixture for 1/3" x 1/2" chunk from tip of wooden spoon. Feel nothing but finely-chopped mixture. Closely examine finely-chopped mixture. Look at ready and waiting, perfectly-risen dough. Oh-so-briefly consider nutritional and health aspects of consuming finely-chopped 1/3" x 1/2" chunk from tip of wooden spoon. Sigh deeply. Toss finely-chopped bacon/onion/wooden spoon mixture into garbage. Put dough into refrigerator. Sigh deeply. Go to bed.

Too bad you threw it away! What do you think they use in "low carb-high fiber" bread to give it substance without carbs? Cellulose. That's a high-falutin' word for sawdust. I've eaten many a finely ground wooden spoon tip, especially in the blender years before the wide availability of food processors, when you'd have to scrape down thick mixtures in the blender jar while the motor was spinning.

We were visiting relatives in Vermont earlier this summer. They were in a rented cottage with a rudimentary kitchen. I volunteered to make dinner, and decided to make my never-fail flourless chocolate cake for dessert. I bought butter, good dark chocolate, cocoa and eggs at the co-op, made the recipe that I know by heart and popped it in the oven. What hadn't occured to me, was that the oven temperature gauge might not be an accurate reflection of the actual temperature inside the oven. So I didn't check the progress early enough. The baking time that would yield a perfectly moist fudgy cake in my home oven turned out a 10" circle of compacted chocolate dust. We crumbled some and mixed it into some vanilla ice cream and threw the rest away.

Before Mark Furstenberg opened the first MM, he did a months-long training-in-residence with Nancy Silverton at LaBrea Bakery in Los Angeles (and brought some of her sourdough starter home with him, if that story is not apocryphal). A few years earlier, LaBrea Bakery's bread had caused the sort of community palate altering revolution in Los Angeles that MM subsequently did for DC. Silverton eventually sold out for a lot of money, and the product bearing her brand name is now available frozen, in supermarkets around the country, a pathetic shadow of the pinnacle of artisanal bread it once was. So it is, ultimately, always about the money. Until a new young upstart with a passionate commitment to excellence crops up and provides us with the real goods until they have an offer too good to refuse. Or they are forced, for one reason or another to sell, like Furstenberg was.

We've all had things happen in the kitchen - those DOH! experiences that leave us helpless with frustrated rage and a gawdawful mess to clean up. I thought it was very brave of Julie Powell in her_Julie/Julia Project_ to admit that she had allowed her kitchen to get so filthy that she was breeding houseflies under her dish drainer. These are usually things that you tell no one about, and try to forget they ever happened.

Sometimes, though, disasters can be rescued, and transformed into something completely different and actually edible. I had one of the latter today, although goodness knows I've had plenty of the former--like the time the waxed carton of chicken stock leaked all over the inside of my pantry and spoiled. Pyew. Or the time I didn't read the Dionne Lucas recipe for boneless leg of lamb stuffed with sausage critically enough, and ended up with company at the table, and medium rare lamb with uncooked pork sausage in the center. Or the time a juice glass slipped down into the garbage disposal, or the glass carafe of olive oil smashed all over the floor...

This time, though, I had bought some pretty-looking, small blush-tinged local apricots at Wegman's that turned out to be some new form of vegetable-based flannel. My favorite solution for fruit that isn't fit to eat raw is to make compote, since cooking fruit with sugar often transforms it into something quite a bit tastier. I pitted and cut up the apricots, added sugar, peach liqueur, some brandy, a little water and some orange peel, covered the pot and put it on a low flame. Then I went off to do something else in the back of the house...and completely forgot about the compote. By the time I smelled it and remembered what I had left on the stove, the liquid had all evaporated and the sugar had caramelized and started to burn. Instead of bright orange apricots, I had dark brown sludge. But, miracle of miracles, it didn't taste totally bitter or scorched. I added some more peach liqueur and a bit of water. And started to think about what I could do with caramelized apricot sludge. I ended up making flan--poured the apricot caramel on the bottom of a casserole and a custard mix (eggs, sweetened condensed milk, milk, creme fraiche, vanilla and orange zest) on top. I baked it in a water bath at 300 for 40 minutes and at 325 for another ten when it hadn't set. And it not only was edible, it was actually delicious. The custard was light and silky-- the mild, vanilla custard and intense dark caramelized fruit were a chiaroscuro of flavors. Wow. The apricot compote I originally had in mind was going to go on some vanilla ice cream, maybe. What I ended up doing was risky, a lot of work and valuable ingredients that would have been wasted if it hadn't worked out--nothing I would ever have thought to do if I hadn't had a barely averted disaster to contend with. And it worked. Whew. I did have to work on the All-Clad pot with some Bartender's Friend to get the burndy stuff off the bottom, though.

Okay, all you kitchenistas out there. Your turn--fess up!

Gazpacho

Chicken liver crostini

Apricot flan

2006 Avondale Rose´

No more Super Fresh in Fairfax! Nearest one is in Washington, then Maryland. Dunno where they went.

Oops. My bad! I meant Super H. On Lee Highway.

There was a fascinating article in Gourmet earlier in the summer about honey made from Tasmanian leatherwood pollen. The stuff was described as deep and rich; what musk is to perfume. Anyone seen it in the DC area? Further, anyone have any ideas about where in the area to find honey that is more earthy and deep than what we are generally used to? I'm very curious to try something a bit different.

Health food stores used to carry buckwheat honey, which is very dark and pungent. You might look at Whole Foods or some of the smaller markets that carry organic and health food items to look for that kind. Also Dean and Deluca and Balducci's are likely to carry some unusual international varieties, as is Sur la Table.

Joe Riley, at Ace Beverages told me that he has ordered some Italian honeys to sell in the store. Cornucopia in Bethesda has some unusual European honeys. And Cheesetique in Del Rey has some unusual types, though I can't recall if they had leatherwood honey.

A few phone calls might be worthwhile. Then there is always the internet.

I’m looking for fresh beans, such as cranberry, lima or some variety of black-eyed or cow peas. Has anyone spotted beans at any of the local farmer's markets? A couple of years ago, one vendor at the Dupont market sold cranberry beans, but I haven’t been able to find any since.

Thanks for your help!

You'll have to wait until somewhat later in the season for shell beans--at Arlington and Dupont markets you'll also find some limas, but again, they have a longer growing season than green beans, so it's too early for them. It doesn't seem right somehow, does it, since favas are very early. Check out at Super Fresh in Fairfax--they often have some variety of shell beans for sale.

To each his/her own - you can be happy with your Coors-brewed slushy beer and I'll be happy with my Mexican food at Taco Bell

Enjoy, baby. What beverage will accompany this repast?

Just curious--what are your thoughts about Magic Hat #9, Otter Creek Copper Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse? (The motley collection currently residing in my refrigerator.) I may be a glutton for punishment--but I am interested in finding out more about how my seemingly pedestrian palate compares to someone who is obviously very discerning and knowledgeable about beer.

I have to comment on Tiogo's yellow corn.

I usually prefer the white corn varieties: Silver Queen/King, anything with Queen in the name. Just love those types and have found the best ever at Dupont.

But, as I noted upthread, I went to Del Ray this weekend and bought a few ears at Tiogo. It was yellow, and most not as big and hearty as others. BUT WOW, has to be the sweetest corn I've ever tasted.

The super-sweet varieties you are describing have really taken over in the past twenty years. These days, there's not too much talk about "heirloom varieties" of corn. In years past, the reality of corn was that within an hour of picking, corn had begun to lose it's sweetness as the natural process of the sugar's transformation to starch began. By the time one bought corn at a supermarket, it tasted completely starchy. The only hope to get good corn, if you didn't grow it yourself, was to buy from a farm stand that would sell corn the same day it was picked. When I first started vegetable gardening, I had never tasted really fresh-picked corn. I thought that farm-stand corn was amazing. However, knowing about how quickly sugar was transformed into starch, we developed a method for dealing with home-grown corn. I think we used to grow Golden Bantam, which was a popular old Burpee variety. First, I would start a big pot of water on the stove. When the water was boiling, we'd go out to the garden, pick some corn, shuck it into the compost pile on the way into the house, and it would be in the cooking pot within a minute or two of being picked, and after a minute or two in boiling water, it would be on our plate. We would eat corn as a separate course, so that we could focus on it without distractions. It was astonishing-- sweet, crisp, juicy and full of flavor, unlike anything I had ever previously tasted that was called corn-on-the-cob. I remember my husband saying: "It's too sweet. We should be eating this for dessert."

Today's super-sweet varieties are really good. I'm not knocking them at all. It's possible to buy it, picked days earlier, and even save it for a few days in the refrigerator and it is still good. And farmers' market corn, picked the day before, is wonderful. But it's still nowhere near as exquisite as home-grown corn, eaten within minutes after being picked.