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Monthly Archives: July 2010
CSA Pickles: Revised Ratio!
Chef Pardus blew through Cleveland a couple weeks ago, and with summer in full swing we had loads of little cukes on hand (we also did veal heart again, got it on video, stay tuned). While there was much to do in getting dinner out (tongue salad with new potatoes, calves liver and onions, corn relish, cucumber sunomono, grilled foie gras (grilling foie takes some serious attention!), and the grilled heart with an herb shallot vinaigrette—Pardus found time to get my pickles on the cure. Because of time constraints and other issues, he didn't add aromatics. What he did was make a 3% brine.
I have for years been using a 5% brine for everything, pickles, chicken, pork, etc. But this 3% worked great and I'm thinking that if you're ...
Posted in Ratios, Recipes, Technique, Vegetables Comments closed
California Travel
Fresh Spring Rolls with Viet Dipping Sauce Recipe

Durian fruit being cut at a Vietnamese market in southern L.A. The green behemoths in front and back are jackfruit. (All photos by Donna.)
Posted in Main Courses, Recipes, Travel Tagged Nuoc Cham, vietnamese spring rolls, white on rice couple Comments closed
New York City Travel
What began as a Bourdain initiated boondoggle turned into a great break in NYC for me and Donna with several restaurants I’d been eager to try.
We arrived early, unloaded our bags at the most excellent Ace hotel (I highly recommend), then headed south to Balthazar, where we had hoped to get some breakfast—love their shirred eggs; it's the perfect way to enter the city. Alas, closed for renovations!
The young ladies posted at the door to preserve customers sent us several blocks east to Bowery and Houston to the McNally’s pizza joint, Pulino’s, where we had our eggs, on pizza. (Why eggs on pizza aren’t more common, I have no idea; want to try it? Here's a recipe.) We’d just taken a seat at the bar when ...
Ratio App Now Available for Android Devices!
At last, thanks entirely to app developer, marketing genius and avid cook, Will Turnage, and graphic designer Leah McCombe, the Ratio smart phone application can be downloaded by those who use android devices! Thank you Will and Leah.
Android users, scan this QR or click the link above. Let me know in comments if you have any problems!
For those who don't know what Ratio is or does, watch the demo below. The Ratio app is a cooking tool, a calculator of ingredients for 30 different fundamentals, from cake and muffin batters to bread doughs to vinaigrettes, to sausages and brine. I find it invaluable. If I just need a couple cups of brine, I plug in the amount I want and it calculates the salt for me. Same for if I have 28 ounces of sausage I need to season, or 247 grams of sausage for that ...
Goodbye, Harvey Pekar
Cleveland Lost a great literary artist and story-teller yesterday when American Splendor author Harvey Pekar died at age 70.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer devoted much of Page 1 to the news. William Grimes wrote a worthy obituary in The New York Times.
And while the appreciations are beginning to flow, no one has written a more thoughtful one than Anthony Bourdain on his blog today. On location in Spain for his show No Reservations, Tony took time out to write a piece that places Pekar precisely in the context of his time and of the city that gave him such rich material. As readers know, I try to avoid thanking Tony in public for anything, what with all the trouble he gets me into, but Tony, you've done ...
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