Hey Mabel and dcarch. DH doesn't use a recipe as such either. He reads a lot and absorbs ideas and then closes the book and utilizes what he feels will work. He is a master of sauces. He rarely uses anything from a bottle or jar. One ingredient that is necessary is black vinegar. We have about 5 kinds ! They all taste differently and add a note to a dish that is not possible to duplicate. Another ingredient for his spicy dishes are the tiny pickled Szechuan red chilies. They are incredibly good and add a distinct piquancy to a dish. He also uses a tiny fermented black bean that he soaks and minces with cabbage and pork..yum...my very favorite dish. Another is pickled radish wonderful with pork also. A couple things he always does is use peanut oil as it won't burn and you must use enough to get the appropriate smoky taste and then you can drain it off in a sieve after cooking but before combining with the other ingredients. Also having the wok as hot as you can possibly get it. One thing he has done is to cook over hot charcoal in the grill. He sets the wok on the bed of coals. We have never had such perfect stir fry as when he does that :) Garlic and ginger are 2 things that the cookbooks always do wrong. They over cook them and also too hot so they burn/char and have a bitter flavor. He adds 1/2 of these and just barely fries them..only to bring out the fragrance. Then the other half goes in the dish with the sauce and is heated through/finished and thus not over-cooked. This way you get much more nuance. Key to many dishes is the stock. Our son is a professional chef . He has what he calls wonderfulness ! We have adopted this and find that it adds so much to a dish and you only need a few spoonful. We only make chicken but you can do it with any meat/poultry. He has duck and lamb and beef in his freezer. Roast a chicken and take all the bones and skin after serving and place them in a pot with onion/celery/carrot . Cook down for about 1 hr. Don't need to do it very long. Don't put in salt until ready to use as it can get to concentrated and ruins a dish. Now is the important part. Every single time you roast a chicken and are ready to cook the bones/skin...put them in your already prepared wonderfulness that you have stored in the freezer. Every time you reuse it the added richness makes it more wonderful !! DS has some beef stock that has been going for about 5 years. It is like a sourdough starter. You never use it all and you always add to it. You add more water to it so the bones are covered and add more vegetables. Let it cook one hour...press down hard on the bones/vegetables and then simmer the broth some more to condense. Filter it a couple times through cheesecloth and you are good to go. As for books we have a couple that he gets more ideas from these past few years than any others. Fuchsia Dunlop's books...Revolutionary Chinese and Land of Plenty also Yan Kit's Classic Chinese .Delf's Good Food of Szechwan also. As to our exhaust set up. It is fantastic. I researched for a year. It is a Tradewind liner in a custom wood surround. It is mounted 33" from the countertop. It is the exact width of the cooking area....12" fryer+6" space+36" gas Caldera cooktop. = 54". Due to the efficiency of the hood and remote 1400 cfm blower we didn't need to have the liner extend beyond the area. We use it for everything turning it on 5-10 min before we start to cook and letting it run the same after to make sure all the HOGS get out :) Heat, grease,steam and odors. You can't even tell we have cooked anything when we are done. It is amazing. We have an 1890 home so didn't need any makeup air. In fact we close the doors coming into the kitchen and make sure the windows are closed or the door shut so that it draws even better. It is a miracle of ventilation. Our open shelves/wood hood and wall are always clean. After over 6 years I never ever have to scrub anything. Only DH's splashes ! He loves to fling things into the wok and flash his spoon :) I am leaving for 3 months to bicycle across Canada with a friend. When I get back hopefully I will have time to get over to this forum. I used to come here years ago but can't keep up with so much else going on. My biggest thing is Wild Yeast baking of sourdough breads. My starter that I grew is over 3 years old I make breads once a week. I would love to share the ins/outs of that with anyone that is interested. Hope this gets you off to a good start. Dcarch...I looked at your pics ..wowza !! You will be interested I am sure in my DS's restaurant. It is The Red Hen in Lexington VA. He is the new Trailblazer 2012 Small Town Chef for Cooking Light Magazine. He will have a big spread featuring his food in the November issue. He was also just featured in a beautiful pictorial interview in Edible Blue Ridge. His big thing is charcuterie. He is really getting a lot of attention. There is one typo/mis-quote in the article...on ph...otherwise it is all accurate. Hope you enjoy. c Here is a link that might be useful: Charcuterie

We just got back from a long trip, mostly in Germany. I can report that in Berlin, there are some restaurants that are at least supposed to be American. I didn't eat in any, but I understand that they are popular with ironic, hip young people and travelers. They have some shockingly un-PC names -- like "White Trash." As a matter of fact, on this trip, my family and I were thinking of what we would put on the menu at a nice, American cuisine restaurant abroad. Here's some of the things we thought of: Turkey - with all the trimmings Crab cakes Jambalaya Lobster New England boiled dinner Fried clams Tex-Mex chili Corn on the cob Pie, especially apple, pumpkin, pecan, and blueberry Barbecue -- lots of kinds! Cole slaw Baked beans Biscuits Meat loaf Navajo fry bread Hot dogs! And hamburgers, too -- why not? Watermelon Fried chicken Chocolate chip cookies Chowders Cornbread Fish fry PBJ What did we forget?

Hi there needinfo1! Unfortunately, no, it is not just the grates that look dirty, the surrounding black surface gets cruddy as well with dirt and grease, but also with water spots. Once you remove the grates for cleaning, though, the surface is easy to wipe down since it is smooth. The grates take more time since they are full of little nooks. I am a fairly neat cook so I don't understand why the black gets so dirty looking. It is very discouraging. I have a friend with the smooth top all-electric legacy and that stays much cleaner looking. Personally, I don't like to cook on an electric cook top -not enough heat control for me -- but if you are ok going all electric, the cleaning will not be such an issue. Since you seem to be fairly interested in the Aga, I thought I will share some other info with you. Ignore what is not of interest to you! large vs small oven: I use the smaller convection oven 90% of the time. I have even changed the way I cook to use the smaller oven. For example, I now make two smaller pans of lasagna rather than one big one. I do this for two reasons. 1) while the smaller oven preheats extremely quickly the larger one takes an inordinate amount of time to preheat, longer than any other oven I have ever used and I don't like to waste the time (or the energy use) waiting an 2) while I am of average height my husband is quite tall and he finds it too low to go to stoop down to get things out of the low, larger multi purpose oven. If you, or someone in your house, is tall, this is something to think about! noise: The small oven is a convection oven and the larger multi-purpose oven has a convection mode. The fan noise that comes with convection is not quiet. If you are cooking on the stovetop at the same time and have the exhaust fan running, it adds up to quiet a bit of noise. I am okay with this, but I have noticed that I sometimes don't hear things (like the phone ringing!) when both the exhaust fan and the convection fan are running. the broiler: The little broiling oven is cute and works well for things like bread. I would love to be able to use it for things like chops but the rack is just too close to the heating element to fit much more height than a piece of bread. There seems to be room, so I wish Aga had mounted the rails for the rack just a bit lower so the broiler could be more useful. So there you have it, the good, the bad, and the dirty! Good luck with your decision, Lilly

I am a planner. I plan every detail. I don’t want to miss any of my must see sights when overseas as travel is so expensive. I keep a detailed binder with tabs for each day with directions/ passes. We do use our GPS, but I still print directions. I keep all receipts and a travel diary. When I get home I immediately start on my scrapbook and I keep the diary pages in the scrapbook so that when I am old or gone my children can look back over our trip and remember the trip through my lens as well as theirs. I usually pick something unexpected to study six months before I go on a trip. In Israel I studied Bauhaus architecture. In Turkey I read Orhan Pamuk’s books - his descriptions of the wild Bosphorus were wonderful. In Italy I read books on Bernini. This is something I enjoy doing as when I am there I feel connected through what I have studied. I also like staying In AirBNB’s as I feel more integrated with the locals. I always search for inexpensive airfares and use points as often as I have them. We usually fly out of NYC as it’s half the cost of flying from our city and we always enjoy a day in NYC before and after the trip. I packed gorgeous dresses for Italy, Israel, Turkey and Greece last year. I have GREAT pictures but it was a serious pain. I don’t know if I will ever do that again. In Scandinavia we lost our luggage so in every picture I have on the same jeans, T-shirt’s and jacket. That was actually a nice reprieve. I think travel is different for everyone. Some people hate planning while other’s like myself completely love the process. Even though I plan so thoroughly I have found surprises in every city. I really enjoy having private guides as I love history. I love all the things they show me that are unexpected. I have some ideas for where I want to go in the summer of 2020 but I haven’t completely nailed it down as I watch airfare rates and adjust accordingly. Rates are cheap to London now on Delta. I use Scott’s Cheap Flights.