Rachel Perlow

Seton Hall Prep in West Orange or Seton Hall University in South Orange or Newark? Not that they are all that far apart, but if you want to keep it as short a drive as you are saying, it could matter. Saturday night lobster buffet at The Manor would be a good choice for a graduation night dinner. Something for everyone (there is more than seafood), and you know what the price is going to be be (except drinks). Of course, if you want BYOB, it wouldn't work.

Bowtie pasta, roasted cauliflower, buttered & toasted bread crumbs, EVOO, S&P. Simple and serving at room temperature is fine. Looks very bland on the plates, since everything is beige/brown. If you can find a tri-color or just another color of farfalle, that would be make it more visually interesting. Or, just serve the beige combo on a bright red platter.

I saw it at 5:27. Very nice story (in between coverage of probably flooding and the Pope vigils). The Ugly American recipe isn't up yet, but a link should appear on this page by tomorrow, I would think.

That's how we "discovered" jiaozi. We were there on an off hour and the staff was sitting down to dinner. One platter was full of plain looking dumplings we hadn't had there before. On inquiring, we were given a plate of them. They've been a de riguer dish of ours ever since, and since then, have regularly appeared on the special board up front.

What Chris said! I think what's partially intimidating about that book is that most of the recipes call for a zillion ingredients, but they're straightforward and produce consistant results. I'm usually impressed at how close they come to what I'm trying to copy from a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant. My book falls open to the Spicy Beef Salad and it helped me perfect my Summer Rolls. Apparantly, my sister never did either. She's been on her own for about 15 years now and that book has been sitting on her old shelf since then. Just this past weekend I was at my parents' house for Easter Sunday and finally decided to take it. Hopefully I can make more use of it, we'll see. But it sure is darn pretty! ← ... Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. Their info has a publication date of 1999, though it sure seems like it has been sitting on that shelf for longer than that. Maybe my sister got it as a Christmas present and never took it with her. I wonder- is there a statute of limitations on cookbook abandonment? Oh well, posession is 9/10ths, as they say... ← Two choices there... either wait until she brings it up ("hmm, where's my Chez Panisse Cookbook? I was going to take it home this time") and you can fess up and bring it back to her, or just tell her you borrowed it and to let you know when she wants it back. She probably never will, but then you won't have that nagging feeling.

Made up my minestrone yesterday. This time I used the immersion blender to puree a bit of it to thicken the broth. Jason's having some with his lunch today. Hey Jason! How is it?

Freeze them in amounts appropriate for a regular weekday dinner. They defrost and reheat fine in the microwave. Once you can break up the block put it in a bowl and stir every minute or so.

I don't think that's true. The green tinge will appear when an egg is overcooked, at too hard a boil, regardless of age or shocking in cold water after cooking. Here's a link to the eGCI course, Hard Cooked Eggs.

Your leftover macaroni and cheese is from your common meal, yes? Are there often leftovers and how does taking them work?

Ah, there's the rub, "new things." The thing about all the young children at places like Penang and Saffron, is that the vast majority of them are Indian or Asian (at both places), so the food there isn't new to them. You can't start bringing kids to (not their) ethnic restaurants when they are 6 and picky. You've got to start when they are babies. I remember watching with enjoyment the babies sitting in high chairs at dim sum, while mom fed them dumpling fillings with chopsticks. You gotta start them young. Of course, I don't have any children, so feel free to ignore me.

The ice thing was mine and my brother's idea. One time we got there and it was so bad, we sent Jason out for ice while we took out their ice maker container and cleaned it. We refilled it with the bagged ice.

Did you fry the falafel or bake them in the mini-muffin tins, like we discussed in the Dinner for 40 thread? If in the mini-muffin tins, how did you put the batter in the tins? If you were using a spoon or two spoons and it made a mess, a better idea is to get a small disher (like an ice cream scoop). I use one that is about 1 inch in diameter, makes perfect little falafel balls and no mess on the muffin tray.

Only briefly in advance. I don't think a "make your own" bar would work for Vietnamese Summer Rolls, mostly because they take practice to make without tearing the rice paper. However, they can be made a couple hours in advance and are incredibly inexpensive to make. Once all the ingredients are assembled, there could be an assembly line of the head cook & assistants to get them all done quickly. This is also a great item to use up leftover bits of meat, if there is anything leftover from a previous meal. Make a variety - they'd all have the noodles, herbs, pickled vegetables, the variety would come with the filling. If you have some leftover meats, some with grilled vegetables, and maybe grill some pork or chicken breasts for most the them. Serve with pho soup and you've got a nice meal. Here's a link to my pictoral on making Summer Rolls. Edit: The links aren't working in that linked post, the recipes were mostly adapted from Hot Salty Sour Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, or PM me for them.

Restocked my freezer's soup basket with 8 portions of matzo ball. I've got to make some more minestrone soon too.

It was so nice to see two coffee bowls on the table in this morning's breakfast photo. Welcome home Loic! Bravo! Persistance pays off. My mother would be so proud of you. :)

What does a brocante shop sell?

Wait, isn't glass something that is easily kashered?

I added a note to Jason's first post. We found that when you make the chocolate water with all U-Bet it is too sweet, so add some unsweetened cocoa powder to the mix.

I don't know about the picture, but after they were removed from the buttermilk and seasoned, they were dredged in plain AP unbleached flour, with no seasoning, since the seasoning was on the chicken.

Just easier to quote Jason's Dinner! post... (you all know I do 99% of the cooking for the pics Jason posts, right?) This was my very first time, ever, frying chicken like this (I've done breaded cutlets, but never whole, er cut-up, fried birds). Some of the pieces got a little burnt, but just a little. I mostly kept the temp between 350 - 375 F, used a cast iron skillet, as you can see. They cooked quicker than anticipated, dark meat around 12 minutes, white, around 10 (breasts were cut into 2-3 pieces), wings, around 5. I kept them warm in a 200 F oven while cooking the rest. Oh, the fat was soy bean oil with a touch of bacon fat for flavor. The salads were made earlier in the day. The potato salad includes diced red onion, red bell pepper, crumbled bacon, hard cooked egg, scallion, parsley, with a dressing of mustard, white wine vinegar, bacon fat and a little mayo, salt & pepper (I combined a bunch of recipes). The carrot/red cabbage salad also contains sultanas, vanilla yogurt and lemon juice. Here's a link to the recipe, it calls for dried apricots, which I didn't have, so I subbed the yellow raisins. Very good, crunchy salad, nice and light -- especially because everything else seemed to have bacon fat in it! I did do the livers at the end, but they were just "eh" -- Jacques Imo's does them better (what a surprise), and even though their's are great, I still prefer my chicken livers chopped, Jewish style. Overall, it was an experience, one to be repeated on rare occasions. Like someone else said above, it's not so much better than take out that it's worth the huge mess and time commitment for a weekday dinner. But would be worth it for good friends on a weekend or holiday, especially if they want to help man the skillet!

The pita bread was a blast to make. I used my KitchenAid for the dough, which made the kneading easier. It didn't look like the dough balls had risen much after an hour, but I went ahead with the rolling out (rolling twice, allowing them to rest for 5 mintutes helped get them rolled out thin - the mechanical kneading developed some strong gluten) and the remaining 15 minute rest before baking. To be honest, this was the first time I'd really baked directly on the tiles lining my lower oven rack. I was fascinated, watching them puff up though the oven window. Very cool. Most of the other dishes were things we've made before, or variations thereon, but the homemade pita and the garlic sauce were new to us. Thanks Elie.

Rinsed my chickie and it's now bathing in buttermilk, about 1/4 cup hot sauce and 1-2 tsp salt until tomorrow. BTW - Tonight we're having bulgogi. Hey, while we're at it, anyone have advice for frying/serving the chicken liver? Specifically, I'm thinking of the fried chicken livers from Jacques Imo's in NOLA. I'm soaking them (just the two from the chickens I cut up) in milk until tomorrow, then I plan to just dredge them in the same flour mixture as the chicken. But I won't fry until after all the chicken is done because of Jason's paranoid aversion of all things liver, jic one breaks and "contaminates" the oil.

My chickens are cut up and I'm ready to marinate. I definitely want to do the buttermilk thing, I mean I bought buttermilk and everything. Think I should add the 2 teaspoons of baking soda to that? Edit: OK, I've read around some more. I'm going to brine for an hour (water/salt), then rinse. Then buttermilk and hot pepper sauce until tomorrow. I'm going to start brining now. If you have any more advice re: marinating, please post within the next hour. I'll check in again before buttermilking!

See now, this is part of what confused me. Brooks, if the chicken was sitting in soaking solution, was that a water based brine, buttermilk, or the egg/tiger sauce wash? If not the egg wash, then would dipping it in the egg wash off the soaking solution? I guess if the soaking solution was just a brine, that would be OK. Also, has anyone tried removing the skin from the chicken? How does the crust stick? Is it good that way, or should I not bother?

OK, I'm starting my fried chicken process this afternoon. I have two just barely under 4 lb whole chickens to be cut up. I figure each bird will give me 12 pieces (cut the breasts and back in half). I have buttermilk to soak it in and plan to spike that with hot sauce and salt. Anything else? I tried scanning the first couple pages of this thread, but there don't seem to be any actual recipes posted, or are you all using variations on Alton and Martha? So today I need help with the brine/marinade. Frying is tomorrow. I got soy bean oil. I just can't bring myself to buy a can of Crisco. And soy bean oil is what soul food places I've been to or seen on television lately seem to use. I would think corn or peanut oil would be better, but Jason wanted to try to duplicate what a place in NJ that closed last year did. What goes in the flour dredge? If I salt the marinade, does the flour need to be salted, or should the chicken be salted as it comes out of the fry, like other fried foods? If I put seasoning in the flour, will it burn in the oil? Also, someone above used baking soda, why and what does it do to the crust? Thanks all.