rlibkind @ Sat 18 Nov 06, 12:44 pm

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bills @ Sat 18 Nov 06, 11:06 am

Pontormo @ Sat 18 Nov 06, 11:02 am

Thanks to all who dropped down the rabbit hole and entered the powerful alternate universe called Limerickland. The entries were so uniformly good that I think that this competition will become an annual event. * * * Third Prize: Carrot Top, who combined the culinary and concupiscent: There once was a poulterer from France Who wore goose feathers rather than pants Each morning he woke And as the dawn broke He engaged all his geese in a dance. His concept was "Poulet Heureux" (Gastronomic confreres: furieux!) But his roasts were so succulent They brought all un-buckle-ment "Delicious!" they cried, curieux. One chill morn he suffered priapsis While roasting a fat goose while capless His feathers they crisped No more joyous bliss! Tout fini! Et son nom est "hapless." * * * Second Prize: moosnsgrl. This is an especially elegant entry: To find a good wintertime melon Would require the skills of Magellan How much easier t'would be To eat seasonally And just buy what the farmers are sellin'. * * * And finally, First Prize: Simon_S, the silver-tongued Irish organist. This Paddys learned much from eGullet: Like Whats rouget? Oh, simply red mullet! As an offer of thanks Heres a class for the Yanks About Guinness and how you should pull it. Theres a rule that you must take to heart: Tilt the glass, pour the draught, but leave part. Please dont finish the fill Till alls settled and still, Thats the secret behind the black art. * * * Here are you well-earned Golden Gulleys. Revel in them! * * * (There are less virtual but equally fabulous prizes for winning the Smackdown; they'll be on their way shortly.) + + + To catch up on your reading, follow the link to Smackdowns Past. Pour yourself another cup of coffee. Heck, bring on the bonbons, brik or bacon -- its dangerous to read on an empty stomach.

By Priscilla

Driving, driving driving driving after having taken my Mother out for an appointment and to lunch and then returned her to her home. Pretty much drained am I, and anticipating the cloggy southbound freeways in SO not a good way.

I remember to turn on the radio for the last half hour of Steve Jones's Jonesy's Jukebox just in time to hear him noodling around on his guitar like he does, a part of his show I love. Course there isn't a part I don't. He plays a snippet of this and a bit of that, then begins to pluck a barely recognizable "Roadhouse Blues" by the The Doors, stops, starts, tries again, asks his ever-hovering producer if thats right. Finally he jettisons the idea, muttering, "Its useless, anyway," meaning the song, and makes a couple of almost unintelligible cracks about Jim Morrisons dress sense. Hee hee -- don't tell Ivan, major Doors proselytizer, whose favorite song that is. But then Steve Jones and I dont always see eye-to-eye with Ivan musically.

"Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell" by The Stooges rips open the radio, and before I am consciously aware my bare foot is tapping on the accelerator and I'm sitting up straight and bopping discreetly, so discreet as to be imperceptible to my fellow drivers, I assure you. (In a startling and life-affirming who-knew, the Ig has recently been revealed as a cookbook-owner essential in this delightful recent eG Forums topic.) A couple more headbangers -- Steve Jones is in a headbanging mood today, clearly -- and I'm grooving, allowing everybody that wants to to merge and join the flow of traffic, join MY flow, thinking inevitably if fleetingly of Joan Didion's merge metaphor from Play It As It Lays. Didn't young B.E. Ellis reference it in Less Than Zero? Homage? Hmmm. Whatever. Let's face it, he ain't no Joan Didion, however his heart may be in the right place.

I'm pondering dinner -- back to normal, or what passes for normal 'round these parts. Anticipating, in a good way this time. Anticipating The Last Caprese.

Sounds like a movie made from a Mario Puzo novel, almost, only this is an insalata: The last several tomatoes from Ivan's this-year's crop are lined up on the table, facing this fate. They are all save one from the orange variety, which was something hillbilly I think, a name I get a kick out of because my dads people, before they were Okies were Missouri hillbillies. And of course that leads me inevitably if fleetingly to The Kinks' "Muswell Hillbillies," which I have life-long taken to be a Ray Davies personal aside to me. The save one was a pink Lebanese, an especially good-looking tomato. All are good to eat.

There's basil remaining on the plants, lots, in fact. These have been the least-bolty basil plants evereverever, impulse-purchased while walking through a little plant boutique I like to call Target Garden Center, in frustration over every single one of the sprouted-from-seed startlings having been consumed by some predating arthropod or another. It is just the kind I like best, too, huge succulent leaves with huge flavor. When the weather is hot, and wasnt it hot this summer, that flavor is just what I want

Todays Indian Summerish 85 is fortuitous, because it lends even more savor to this final expression. The mozz aint anything to write home about, just Trader Joe's "Caprese Log," which happens to taste good and, despite my slight aversion to the somewhat manipulated shape (putting one in mind of those square hard-boiled egg contraptions, or similar), excels at its job: making nice uniform Caprese stacks, which is how I've been doing it this summer. Over the years Ive done rustica-messy-chunked, beefsteak-overlapped, even teensy with cherry tomatoes, delicious one-biters. But the little stack is what Im liking for the past couple of seasons, and I didnt even have Trader Joe's log at my disposal at first. But I'll take it!

At least for now, for this Last Caprese. Who knows what next year will bring? Will Ivan even grow any tomatoes? We know I won't. And whither Target Garden Center bolt-resistant basil? Or indeed, any of us.



Priscilla writes from a Southern California canyon populated by the typical mix of old hippies, wannabe off-the-gridders, equestrians running the gamut from 20-acre Thoroughbred full dressage to clip-clop nag-riding busted flat in Baton Rouge, schoolteachers, artists, wealthy entrepreneurs, and law enforcement officers (for some reason).

by Craig Camp

2005 Petrus: $3000 a bottle
2003 Chteau Margaux: $460.00 a bottle
2002 Domaine de la Romanee Conti, La Tache: $1300 a bottle
2003 Pegau Chteaunuef du Pape, Cuve de Capo: $500 a bottle.

Lets face it, when we think of French wine, we think expensive, elegant, sophisticated and chic. They are the wines you drink at Daniel in Manhattan while wearing the latest from Paris. Unfortunately for the French, only a small percentage of the wines they make fall into this elite category, and the vast majority of the wines they make are unknown and ignored by American consumers.

The worlds most famous and expensive wines are French. French wines are the only wines truly sought after by collectors. While pretenders like Screaming Eagle cause feeding frenzies with American collectors, its only the elite French producers that really whip both American and international collectors into a lather.

Certainly no one would argue anymore that the French have a monopoly on great wine. While bruised a bit by the worldwide explosion of interesting, well-made wines, the elite French wine juggernaut rolls on. Evidence of this is the massive coverage of the futures offering of the acclaimed 2005 Bordeaux vintage, which has been a focus of the wine media for months. In fact, a good vintage in Bordeaux still has such an impact that those vintages become great vintages for all regions in the mind of the consumer; even those wine regions with weather, vines and geography that have nothing to do with Bordeaux bask in the reflected glory of great Bordeaux vintages.

As great and historically important as the most famous French wines are, the most exciting thing about French wine is not the bottles for those with trust funds and Ferraris, but the fact that the French are making the best wine values in the world. They simply cannot be beat in the under-$20 a bottle range for making wines that still offer character, personality, and, most of all terroir -- that unique sense of place that makes a wine distinct and exciting to drink.

Ill repeat that: the best wine values in the market today are almost all French. Its not the new world that offers wine bargains: Australian wines should actually be singular not plural, as theyre all the same jammy syrup with different labels. California wine is personality-free industrial wine produced from the same UC Davis oak-chip recipe; South American wines are thin, flavorless and produced from hopelessly over-cropped vineyards. Only their European neighbors Italy and Spain offer the French any real competition in this under-$20 category.

Ironically, as good as the French (with a lot of help from the British) were at marketing their wines over the past centuries, today they dont seem able to sell their way out of a brown paper bag. Theyve been blasted out of the value end of the wine market by a bunch of New World wines with cute animals on their labels and snappy names that are easy to remember. This is not to say the French are blameless for this situation -- all that junky wine with varietal labels from the Languedoc that flooded the market in the 90s convinced a lot of consumers to look elsewhere for everyday wines.

The French Appellation Contrle (controlled place-name) system of wine regulations established the structure that allowed French wines to dominate the market for so many years. These regulations established minimum standards for how a wine was grown and made before it could be sold with a particular name. These names were based on place above all else. The varietal was important and precisely controlled. For example, a red Burgundy must be 100% pinot noir, and a Sancerre must be 100% sauvignon blanc. You wont see those names on the label, but their regulation is far more stringent than varietal labeling as used in the New World. For example, a winemaker in California has to use only 75% pinot noir to use the name. While the best California producers would never do that to their pampered pinot noir, you can bet