If anyone is looking for good, solid information about canning tuna, try Eugenia Bone’s book, Well Preserved: recipes and techniqes for putting up small batches of seasonal foods. This book is full of information, and it’s warm and personal. Bone includes recipes using canned and otherwise preserved foods.

Regarding the sustainability of the Northern Pacific fishery, many organizations have rated the fishery as robust. These include the Marine Stewardship Council, Oregon’s Dept of Fish and Wildlife, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. However, I have looked at the scientific report that Monterey Bay used as part of its evaluation. What’s important is that the albacore stock is again being evaluated in 2010 regarding whether it is being fished at levels that are sustainable. We should all stay tuned. We want the fishery to remain popular and healthy, but not overfished!

Matthew, Thanks for the tips on adjusting and making gochu-chang. (I’m hoping the hunt for soybean malt powder will not deter me.)

One more thought: I didn’t have any gochu-chang when I made bibimbap with brown rice, and used a chili garlic sauce instead. This worked pretty well, and I think it was because short grain brown rice is itself naturally sweet and nutty.

It made me think that in the future, I may adjust my gochu-chang depending on the components of my bibimbap. I can see how you might want the gochu-chang to be less sour and less hot for a delicate bibimbap with a white fish and pea shoots than you would for one with beef or bulgogi.

I also want to know how to make gochu-chang. So far, the only brand I’ve found is sweeter than spicy. It seems like the sweet and hot should be more balanced. I bet homemade gochu-chang tastes cleaner and punchier than the stuff I have.

Matthew, Tell me about using a gas stove to heat the stone bowl. I’m curious. It must be much faster than using the oven?

Liz, I share your enthusiasm completely. A friend told me that the best bibimbap she had was in the Korean countryside. It was made with brown rice and had leaf lettuce and various namul. The thought of crunchy lettuce over rice makes me look forward to trying a springtime bibimbap with new spinach, asparagus, and more. How about spring Chinook? Think of all the great textures.

Anonymous, Is the slight flattening you describe specific to bibimbap? Is it done to affect the texture of the dish somehow?

Janice,
To clarify, you should discard any seeds you find. Enjoy!

Alex,
Do you mean russet potatoes? Russet potatoes fall apart easily when boiled, whereas a red potato or another waxy potato will hold its shape better. You can certainly use russets for the frittata, but if you have a choice, go with the waxy varieties.

Matthew, You reminded me of my day at work last Friday. We got in sardines from Astoria (I’m in Portland). They were the freshest I’ve ever had and it was heaven on earth (okay, I like fish a lot). I turned them into a pasta sauce with saffron, pine nuts, raisins and fennel greens, but any preparation would have showcased these beauties. It was a good reminder that with little oily fishes, superfresh makes even more of a difference than with leaner fish. Oily fish start to smell fishy faster. Great article.

Oops! Add the vinegar after the oil. It spikes this aioli in a way that lemon juice alone cannot.

Thanks, Liz! After you make the zucchini baba ganoush, check out the zucchini puree recipe. It’s a similar technique, except you season the roasted squash with fresh mint, salt and a pinch of sugar. And olive oil. It’s a nice spread and would be good on a tomato sandwich with cream cheese.

Anonymous,
I like Napa cabbage in a salad with oranges, cilantro and almonds. Spring turnips are good: roasted alongside sausages or chicken; just plain roasted; or cut into wedges, parboiled and then sauteed with their greens and garlic and chile flakes. They also make a fine substitute for radishes.
Emma, your spicy greens pasta sounds extra good. How do you sauce it?

Speaking of eggs, a poached or fried egg is delicious over salads, with bread or toast to mop up the yolk and dressing.

Bravo, Cynthia! What you’ve described—what our senses get to experience when we cook—is one of the reasons I cook for a living.

John of Cattail Creek says that they reach about 60# by three months of age, but I don’t know the live vs. dressed weight. He thinks that’s the ideal age/weight to butcher--any older and the lambs put on more fat than lean, he says.

I have a couple of ideas from the Italian repertoire that might fit well with your summer grilling. One is scottadito, literally “burn your fingers.” You marinate chops in chile flakes, lots of chopped rosemary, olive oil, and a touch of ground cloves and grill. Easy and spicy. Good with grilled polenta (4 cups water to one cup polenta makes it set up nicely on the grill) and a slaw. For the shoulder, you can braise it and let it chill completely, preferably overnight. Then you slice it, grill it (away from the hottest flames, so that it smokes as much as it heats through) for the smokey flavor and serve it with a spicy tomato sauce with garlic and cinnamon or a chutney. I’m impressed by your resourceful idea of mixing the rich ground lamb with the lean game.

Charlotte,
What are your plans for the various cuts?

Amazing. I have spent years eradicating knotweed, which originated in the yard of our neighbor, an absentee landlord. At one point it was about 15 feet tall. Years later, the occasional stolon still sends up a shoot. I am always on the lookout for them. Now I’ll know not to throw them in Metro’s yard debris bin. Thanks.

I remember when a chef I know who is obsessed with freshness told me that when she makes pasta sauce, she always makes a double batch and freezes half. You could have knocked me over. The thought had never occurred to me. It was as if I had never heard of freezing things.
This same chef also confessed to a habit of using her toaster to reheat slices of cold pizza in the morning. Which is the better tip, making and freezing extra pasta sauce, or reheating pizza in the toaster?

A quick way to remove the seeds: cut the pomegranate in half along its equator. Hold the cut side over a deep, large bowl and whack its exterior all over with a wooden spoon. The seeds will easily fall into the bowl.
(The bowl should be big enough to catch the spray of staining juices.)

I grew up amidst the dairy farms of Wisconsin; my father is a large animal veterinarian. In the years that he practiced he saw the average daily milk production of a cow more than double. During those same years there was a surplus of milk. The government began paying those who owned small family farms to leave dairy farming. Conventional dairy farmers have had to increase production to stay profitable.

My dad’s clients always drank their own cows’ milk, of course, and of course it was not pastuerized. I think it’s fine to drink raw milk if you do not have lowered immunity, and if you can visit the farm where the cows are milked. I recall from trailing along with my dad that barns are like people’s homes, with a range of housekeeping standards.

A very good question. The short answer is, I’m going to stick to the brand I know to be local and organic.

Last winter, when I couldn’t buy eggs at a farmers market, I noticed that a brand of supermaket organic eggs I buy varied from week to week in terms of how fresh they seemed and how orange their yolks were.

Overall, though, I have not noticed a great deal of difference between the three or four store brands we have tried. The only thing they seem to have in common is that they are not terribly fresh. I can tell because the yolks are not as firm, not as upright when you crack the egg into the frying pan.

My household recently went back to store eggs after a long season of eggs from the farmers market. When my husband cracked one the other morning and looked at the flabby, pale yellow yolk, he was very disappointed and said with uncharacteristic drama, “What are we going to do now?”