mamster

I have not tried the Cantillon kriek yet, but I intend to get it next time I'm at Whole Foods. If I were you, I'd ask at your location and see if you can convince them to buy a case or two. I also fully intend to go to Bruges someday, but I think that will probably happen sometime after my next trip to Whole Foods.

Here's an interesting little column by my colleague at the Seattle Times; it seems almost designed to provoke opinion on this forum, so have at it. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html....29.html

I don't actually miss Minnie's--I just miss the sourdough pancakes. But given the overpriced side dishes and the surly help, well, I can make my own pancakes or go to Julia's.

Miss J--I have a bunch of Bangkok coverage on my web site (http://www.grubshack.com/). You're not going to be surprised at my general advice about street food, which is: don't ever eat it because it will kill you. Just kidding! Thai street food is one of my greatest pleasures. Basically, using common sense will keep you healthy and, more important, lead you to the most delicious food. A vendor with a long line of customers is a good sign, of course. If you're in Bangkok on Saturday or Sunday, don't miss Chatuchak Market, which is said to be the largest market in Asia. If it's not, it's close--I've been there several times and have seen maybe a third of it. They have everything from traditional handicrafts to used American t-shirts to food to (sadly) live endangered species. It's the last northern stop on the SkyTrain--I hear it used to be an agonizing 90 minute cab ride, but no longer. Chatuchak does a good job of appealing to both tourists and locals. On my site I have an article about a few of my Thai favorites that you probably haven't seen in at Thai restaurants in the West, such as fluffy catfish salad, Thai sausages, and sour curry. If you like papaya salad (som tam--if you haven't tried it, do so), you should eat a lot of it--it's served everywhere, from street stalls to the best restaurants, and is subtly different every time. If you get som tam on the street, you can design it as it's made: specify by holding up fingers how many chiles, whether you want crab, and so on. Learning to count from one to ten in Thai is easy to do and very handy. Most vendors can count and specify prices in English, but not all of them, and any Thai you can learn will be both appreciated and genially laughed at. At one restaurant, Laurie and a waitress were absolutely cracking each other up while coming up with a rudimentary Thai-English pidgin with plenty of broad hand gestures. I could go on forever. Maybe we should move this to a new thread; if you have questions about particular tourist attractions or the like, please feel free to ask. I am Bangkok's biggest booster.

The other night I was looking for somethign to read in bed, and I pulled the recent Art of Eating issue that concerned Belgian beer. In it, Ed Behr travels around Belgium talking to brewers, musing about whether the traditions are dying out, and picking the best brews. He was most generally positive about Cantillon gueuze, which is a blended lambic. The Cantillon brewery (http://www.cantillon.be/) is run by nth-generation beer traditionalists who refuse to join the lambic brewer's association because those other brewers leave residual sugar and do other untoward things. Maybe I'm not telling anyone something they don't know here (I learned all of this from the magazine), but lambic is an unusual beast. Whereas nearly all other beers are fermented by an addition of cultured yeast, lambic is left in vats in musty warehouses to ferment "spontaneously"--that is, by the action of dozens of species of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Gueuze is often hyperbolically called the "champagne of lambic" because it is blended from several years and then fermented further in the bottle. Well, I'd read this issue back when I got it (last year, I think), and even though I like beer, I must have convinced myself that a genuine gueuze would be a hard thing to find. After rereading the issue, I decided this was something I had to try, so I steeled myself for a lengthy search. Turns out they carry Cantillon gueuze at my local Whole Foods location. A 750ml bottle was $12--expensive for beer, but (a) this beer is considered by many serious beer drinkers to be among the best in the world (I tried to imagine getting one of the world's best wines for $12, and said hurrah for beer), and (b) I've probably spent more than that at a ballpark or concert for really bad beer. Cantillon gueuze comes in a bottle with both a cork and a bottlecap. It is best served at cellar temperature, somewhere in the 50-60 F range. It's one of the most unusual drinks I've ever had, an unabashedly tart, fizzy, and cloudy beer with citrus overtones. I expected it might be heavy and unapproachable--Behr had warned as much--but it's hard to imagine someone who likes beer and wine in general, even in a strictly amateur way like me, not finding gueuze not just a cerebral experience, but a refreshing one. I can't wait to go back for a bottle of Cantillon kriek, with sour cherries.

When it comes to salmon, I am true to my word. I made a recipe from the Babbo cookbook, which I am loving. This entailed roasted salmon atop a salad of English cucumber, red wine vinegar, Jim Dixon's olive oil, mustard seeds, shallots, and scallions. Balsamic vinegar is drizzled over the top. This was, as they say, good. Oh was this good. It's hard to compare the sockeye with the king; each is a worthy fish on its own merits. The sockeye is firm and full-flavored, the king buttery from its larding of succulent fat.

foodie52, what cooking school do you work at? I think we'll be having CRS sockeye for dinner tonight after seeing that Clones movie.

I'm bending the "across France" part of the thread, since we never left Paris except by Eurostar, but when Laurie and I spent a week there, it was a deliciously frugal experience. This was partly deliberate and partly happenstance. We were there the week of Christmas, so a lot of things were closed. We had been hoping to eat at Les Crayeres. Closed. Then we thought too late to try for a reservation at Arpège, and didn't get one. We had no trouble getting a reservation at La Régalade, made a last-minute res at L'Epi Dupin, and dropped in for lunch at L'Os à Moëlle. Our most expensive meals were on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, at some fading brasseries (if only eGullet had existed back then). Our hotel was an inexpensive and charming on in the 6th. Basically, if you just eat at places on Whiting's web site, you can have a memorable Paris experience without spending so much. Interestingly, I kept ordering surcharge dishes (such as foie gras) at the bistros, but never got surcharged once. In fact, some grad student friends of ours when we lived in New York took a trip to Paris on some cheap round trip tickets, and they had a great time even though they couldn't afford any restaurants at all. They bought wine, charcuterie, bread, pâtisserie, and ate it in parks. I would have liked to make it to one of the starred places, sure, and I probably will next time, but as John said, if anyone has the idea that France must be done lavishly or not at all, I say piffle.

Last night at the heyjude house, I was charged with preparing a beautiful 2.5-pound slab of Copper River king fillet. I prepared it according to a method I learned from Mark Bittman. Heat a nonstick skillet over high heat with a drop of vegetable oil. Salt and pepper the fish well and place it skin side up in the pan. Brown it for one minute, flip it, and transfer it to a 500 degree oven until done to your liking. This piece took about 11 minutes--I like my salmon medium, a little further than most people will tell you to take it, but still noticeably pink in the center. We served it with roast asparagus and egg noodles, and that cheap burgundy, which I thought was perfect but my father found too acidic. He did not have any complaints about the fish, which had everyone moaning in delight and declaring, "The skin's the best part!" If they can figure out how to grow these things with skin on both sides of the fillet, I'd buy that. The QFC deal has now been moved onto the Advantage card, FYI. I'd like to do a side-by-side comparison of wild BC king salmon and Copper River. I guess I'll apply for one of those NEA grants.

Let us know how your dinner is. Review or no review, they're always jammed.

I reviewed La Tienda Cádiz for the Times. I like it, but I recently went for lunch on my own nickel, and I'd advise going for dinner: at lunch there's no table service, but the prices are the same, and it's cheap but not $6 cheap. It's a good place to shop, and they sell a really good port for $17. Laurie and I went to Julia's for breakfast a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed the Hobo Breakfast, which was a scramble of eggs, bacon, green pepper, onion, and potatoes. There's nothing inventive or brilliant about their breakfast, but they open early and with Minnie's out of commission, it's nice to have a breakfast place other than the Broadway Grill. Haven't tried Julia's lunch or dinner yet.

BH, I haven't seen this new Amazon feature mentioned on any of the main boards. Maybe you should post about it on General--since it covers quite a few cities, probably most users would like to know about it.

BH, I didn't know about this, and it's amazing--thanks for mentioning it. Of course, this is going to cause problems for restaurants when they change their menu. I mean, even bigger problems than before.

This week, QFC has Copper River sockeye for $6.99, and you don't need to use the card. They also have wild king, non-CR, for the same price.

You can drag me! And I'll bet you can drag klink and Batgrrrl, too. I was hoping Shiki would have more of the Mashiko-style fireworks I'd heard about, too. It was my first omakase experience, though, and probably represents a good baseline, in that it was mostly very ordinary but high quality pieces.

I know plenty of well educated, middle class people who can't write at all, and I expect most people who have to read writing samples would agree. It's not something that comes automatically with a college degree or a mortgage.

The Washington Post food section no doubt has the same dilemma as most newspaper food sections: how to keep happy the readers who want to know about the latest ingredients, restaurants, and ethnic cooking trends, and the readers who want simple recipes that they can get on the table in an hour. If this is an issue at the Post, how do you serve both masters?

I don't want to watch anyone nibbling Joel Robuchon.

I don't think I've ever had meethe chaawal, but I've had plenty of things flavored with pandanus leaf, aka screwpine, and based on that experience I'd like to try it. (The tree isn't at all closely related to pine trees; it's more like a palm tree.) Among many pandanus-wrapped dishes, I had a delicious pandanus ice cream in Vancouver BC.

Miss J, I haven't been to Cambodia, but I've spent a fair amount of time in Bangkok and would be happy to make recommendations. The Lonely Planet Cambodia book is one of their better ones for food coverage. Also, Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour has a couple of chapters on Cambodia. He didn't like it much, but he seemed to be going out of his way to have a gonzo experience, and didn't eat well for it. (We were going to do Angkor Wat on one of our trips but decided to go to Laos instead.)

I trust everyone is familiar with the notion that once Hitler appears, the thread is over. But that's a usenet-related doctrine, so I'll just jump in anyway. First of all, this thread has been a blast to read. Second, a good restaurant should have a bit of the agora to it. This means that when I go to a restaurant, I should expect to hear other people's conversations, and I should also feel free to jump in if I'm interested, offended, or just nosy. The original conversators may react as they please. Now, of course, I'm very curious what would happen if people went to a restaurant and had a loud but not overly loud conversation about something offensive to basically everyone. Someone invite Tony Bourdain to dinner, start dropping hints about your favorite San Francisco granola restaurants, and report back.

Last night I did make linguine with parsnips and pancetta. It was divine, largely thanks to Armandino's pancetta, which is the best I've ever had. Why have I never bought this before? Maybe it's because I know that if I go in to get pancetta, I have to get a sandwich, too. Then again, how is this a problem?

I said more about the morels on the Adventures in Eating morel thread, but they were sauteed in butter and served in a pool of buttery mushroom juices. Heavenly.

A couple of Pacific Northwesters had lunch today at Salumi in Seattle, and they had some gorgeous fresh morels available sauteed in butter, sitting in a pool of buttery mushrooms juices that tended to trickle down your lip when you took a bite. I should have gotten some more to go. Dammit.

Ah, so I'm not crazy, I'm just not paying attention.