Fat Guy
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We've acquired 80 white-trash potato-flour rolls. In addition, I grabbed a diverse selection of what I think will be appropriate condiments and garnishes. Sounds as though our cup needs are totally covered, so next week I will return the extra cups I bought; but I'll have them in the van at the event just in case we have to build a barn out of cups or something. See you all on Sunday!
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Okay I'm heading out to shop. I'll get white trash bread with lots of preservatives so it will still be good in 3 weeks, and I'll also grab whatever else strikes my fancy. If there's duplication too bad; there's always next time.
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Many thanks. We love organization.
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White trash bread. Check. I'm on that.
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Ellen is out of pocket for the moment, so let me try to give the basic answers here:
> What religion are the Mongolians?They're overwhelmingly (96%) Tibetan Buddhist. The Kazakhs that Ellen is talking about in the past couple of travelog entires, however, are mostly Islamic. But you're talking about a country that was under harsh communist rule for quite some time, and where the religious leaders and intellectual class (and in fact anybody with even a high school education) was exterminated. So when one says the Mongolians are Buddhist and the Mongolian Kazakhs are Islamic, I think one refers to very mild, mostly cultural forms of those religions.
> Are there rooms inside a ger?It's one big room inside as far as I know. Ellen can perhaps provide details later regarding how the space is actually allocated and how privacy, if any, is achieved.
> When is part six?Most likely tomorrow.
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In his "San Sebastian Dining: Akelare to Zuberoa," Robert Brown chronicles his meals and observations at the five "must" restaurants -- Akelare, Arzak, Martin Berasetegui, Mugaritz, and Zuberoa -- in what has become, as he puts it, "the latest Mecca for traveling gastronomes."
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I hope there's a happy ending to all of this (besides your triumphant return home, that is.)
It would seem that getting out of Mongolia alive is by definition a happy ending.
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Ellen and I are coming, that's two people, though only one who will be involved in pork in any way.
We can take on some of the dry goods burden if somebody gives us a shopping list. Any item available at Costco is fair game, as we will be there tomorrow (Friday) AM. Otherwise, I will coordinate with Rachel to plug last-minute gaps.
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That eagle is no dummy. He got Eagle Hunter to bring the food right to him. Who's training who?
Maybe the eagle has been getting lessons from our bulldog.
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Some of this cheese is still sitting on our kitchen counter. I guess I should taste it, huh?
If you all don't hear back from me for 24 hours, call for help.
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good thing they recycled it. i missed it the first time.
Not that there's anything wrong with a news roundup based on previous news, but the story about Daisy May's appeared in the Times dining section on August 27, 2003 ("FOOD STUFF; Where There's Smoke, There's Desire"). The Pearson's information appeared on Jusly 2, 2003 ("Butterfield 81, an Upper East Side bistro, is closing tomorrow. In September, it is to become a barbecue spot. Ken Aretsky, the owner, has teamed up with Ellen Goldberg and Robert Pearson, of Pearson's Texas Barbecue"). And the Blue Smoke information is of course old news. But it's standard procedure at the Times to let the restaurant information run through several iterations. Usually there's an Off the Menu or Food Stuff piece, maybe a Diner's Journal, followed by a starred review or a $25 and Under, and then follow-up coverage in Critic's Notebook or other roundup-type trends pieces; they might also get the chef in for a series, etc. That's just how smart media outlets leverage their content.
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I never promised you a rose garden or an eagle. What I promised was:
Vengroff, McDowell, sure you can find an eagle or two pretty much anywhere, but you can only find Eagle Hunter in Mongolia. And let me assure you, I've seen a preview, and you have no idea what you're in for with Eagle Hunter.
And I stand by my promise, I surely do, even more so now than ever. In fact I think that, simply on account of that first picture, Eagle Hunter delivered on my promise. And on account of the spoon, he has already over-delivered. And there's still Part V to come.
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Bux, in the photos Ellen has brought back over the years from something like 20 different Third World countries, there has almost always been a liberal sprinkling of secondhand Western clothing interspersed with the traditional garb. When you drop off of old clothes at the Salvation Army, what do you think happens to them? Do you think poor Americans get them? The reality is they don't want most of them. Only the cream of the crop is kept here and redistributed to the poor locally; the rest is packed up and shipped off to the Third World. Some charities actually sell it in the Third World, or to subcontractors who specialize in the resale/recycling of clothes. Have a look at this page for an interesting overview.
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Come to think of it, I asked myself, where do these kids go to school, if at all?
At Ghengis Khan High School?
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Well if you lived with me, wouldn't you go to great lengths to stay away?
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Gotta love eagle hunter's Adidas red-white-and-blue track suit!
It goes really well with his hat, that's for sure.
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I'm actually quite surprised to read only positive feedback on this thread; I had expected more of a backlash
Your ideas suck! You're an idiot! Grant Achatz too!
Is that better?
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I guess, conceptually, there's "sweet" and there's "dessert." Not the same thing necessarily, I realized after using steak-dessert as an example. The point about sweetness doesn't get made if you serve something savory for dessert. I'd often be happy eating potato chips for dessert, but that doesn't demonstrate anything. The point of the exercise, at least I think this is the point, is to show how potato chips can be sweet, regardless of whether they're served as dessert or not.
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Some of the general points that avant garde chefs try to make about ingredients may very well cut against the specific point of this meal. I'm operating under the assumption that the point of this exercise is to demonstrate the sweet and savory possibilities of various ingredients: to show how they may currently be identified in one context but nonetheless fit well in another context. If that is the point, I think the argument is weakened the farther away one goes from the ingredient in its original form. If you wanted to demonstrate the sweet possibilities of beef, for example, the most shocking demonstration would be the one with the least intervention, i.e., serving a steak as a dessert. Now of course that isn't going to work, but the farther away you move from the steak, or from other beef permutations that people currently associate with beef (hamburger, etc.), the more likely you are to get the skeptical reaction I described above. Because if you make the beef into ice cream, removing its expected texture and temperature and masking its expected flavor with sugar, people will not feel that the sweet possibilities of beef have really been demonstrated; they'll feel that they've seen a demonstration of food-processing technology. Not that there's anything wrong with that; but if the goal is to make a point about sweet and savory, it seems to me the individual recipes should support that specific point to the greatest extent possible.
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In an emptied brown eggshell, a soft chawan mushi style custard (barely sweetened and flavored with a hint of bonito/dashi) will be baked in, about 1/3 to 1/2 full. Spooned on top of that, will be a layer of a light, semi-liquid yuzu and ginger gelee, set with pectin. A caramel foam will be dispensed next, finished with the trout roe and a mere drop or two of maple syrup.
One reason this is such a good idea is that it doesn't alter the physical state of the ingredient. For something like coconut, which is firmly accepted as a sweet ingredient, it makes sense to dehydrate it, drop it in liquid nitrogen, make it into flaming ice cream, expose it to gamma radiation, or whatever. But if you did that to the roe, nobody would be impressed. "Well, sure, you can make anything sweet if you send it into outer space and coat it with enough sugar," they'd say. So for the counterintuitive ingredients, it makes sense to keep them recognizable or at least in the range of recognizable states in which that species of product would appear in a traditional meal (traditional meaning anything up to nouvelle cuisine but not avant garde).
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It's not only comprehensive, but also historical.
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Vengroff, McDowell, sure you can find an eagle or two pretty much anywhere, but you can only find Eagle Hunter in Mongolia. And let me assure you, I've seen a preview, and you have no idea what you're in for with Eagle Hunter.
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The menus, with prices, are on the restaurant's Web site:
There's a pretty comprehensive list of NYC kosher restaurants on the KosherLink site:
You sort of have to divide kosher restaurants into several categories in order to make sense of the whole business. For starters there are different levels of certification and observance. Second Avenue Deli is a good example. Often referred to as kosher, you won't find a lot of Orthodox Jews there because it's open on Saturday. There are also different agencies that provide certification, some of which are stricter than others.
The other division has to do with mission. On the one hand, there are three primary actual kosher restaurant cuisines here: European-derived deli, European-derived dairy, and Middle Eastern. A kosher deli or falafel shop is what it is -- no modification to the cuisine is necessary to make it kosher. On the other hand, there are kosher restaurants that serve traditionally non-kosher cuisine, modified to use kosher ingredients and combinations of ingredients.
There is virtually no reason for someone who doesn't keep kosher to dine at the latter group of restaurants. Even Shallots, which is probably the best upscale kosher restaurant in the country, is pretty run-of-the-mill compared to the non-kosher competition in that price range. And that's not to say it isn't pretty good. If I kept kosher, I'd be extremely happy to have Shallots as an option. But since I don't, I'd never need to eat there other than for journalistic purposes or for a lunch or dinner with people who do keep kosher. There are also some screamingly bad kosher restaurants. For example, almost any kosher Chinese restaurant is going to be just awful.
The former group of restaurants, however, deserve plenty of attention from the non-kosher community. A couple of years ago, while working on a falafel roundup, I became convinced that Kosher Delight had the best falafel in town. And nothing has happened since then to change my mind. Rectangles does a very good job with standard Israeli fare and also has some good Yemenite Jewish dishes. And that Great American Health Bar place on 57th Street is one of the most reasonable and high-quality places in that area when all you want is a quick, convenient, portable lunch.
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I guess a mare's udders are located much farther back than a cow's, thus the optical illusion.
Mongolia. Seriously. Freddy v. Jason.
in Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific: Cooking & Baking
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You consider this the good part? Were I the friend, I'd be thanking the good lord every moment of every day that I missed the "good" part. With good parts like this, who needs bad parts?