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Everything posted by mamster
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Nancy reviews it today: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html....10.html Three stars.
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I feel like a snob saying so, but I never have any expectations for tropical fruit outside the tropics. (Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised, though.) The best way to enjoy mangoes (and papayas) here in the frozen North is unripe. Green mangoes have a wonderful sour edge, and green papaya is a bland vegetable with good crunch, makes a world-beating salad. Are green mangoes and papayas used in Indian cooking? I know them from Thai cooking, mainly.
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I had lunch at Philadelphia Fevre today. I ordered the pepper steak with half sweet, half hot peppers, and managed to turn down fries and cheese fries before finally giving in to fried zucchini. It was one of those light lunches. The sandwich was tops--considerably better than the place on the Ave, and better than my memory of my last visit to Philly's Best. The pickled peppers gave it a nice vinegary note, and the bread is soft, soft, soft, so it's a good package overall. The fried zucchini was excellent, sliced into coins, breaded, and served crunchy. They're delicious and hot as hell when you first get them; I burned my tongue with each charming puff of steam. As Michael Hood says, anything out of the deep-fryer is good, but this fried zucchini was exceptional, little slabs of delicious grease. My geography gets fuzzy when you introduce diagonal streets, so I thought this place was closer to 23rd and Jackson, but it's actually near 23rd and John, which means it's one block off one of my usual buses. Maybe I was better off thinking it was annoyingly far away.
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jaybee, my mix is about the same as yours, right down to the 1" slices of challah, but ever since I saw the tip in Cook's Illustrated, I put some flour in the batter. It makes the exterior of the bread crispier without interfering with the custardy center. I envy your griddle--my cast-iron pan makes two slices at once.
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I made a rhubarb cake from Nigella Lawson's book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. It had a nice, moist texture thanks to a cup of full-fat yogurt, and if I had increased the rhubarb by about 50%, it would have been really great. In fact, maybe I'll make another one with extra rhubarb this weekend. Of course, the cake isn't any more low-cal than the pie, so I don't know if this helps.
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There is, in fact, a USDA produce grading process, but it's optional. I don't know much about it, really, but I'd bet that if Whole Foods were really shelling out for the top grade and their competitors weren't, they wouldn't be shy about telling you. Actually, that USDA site is really interesting. Did you know that the standards for kale haven't been updated since 1934? U.S. No. 1 kale must be "well-trimmed, not stunted, free from decay and from damage caused by yellow or discolored leaves, seed stems, wilting, bud burn, freezing, dirt, disease, insects, or global thermonuclear war." Okay, I made up that last part, because they didn't have that in 1934.
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Good question. Um, you could run it on a gel with a sample from the crime scene, apply some probes, and see if this particular onion is the suspect you're looking for. You could definitely stain it many funny colors. You could also just leave a pile of it in the locker of that kid who beats you up--it's pretty gross.
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I would never think to come between a woman and her amp. Onion DNA is easy to extract in large quantities and hand to students in a test tube. Because DNA is long and stringy, you can take a pipette, stir it around, and bring up a goopy hunk of it like vermicelli. You can actually do this in your kitchen with products you already have in your house: an onion, dish soap, salt, and rubbing alcohol. If anyone is interested (right!) I can tell you how. It will not help you grow enormous mutant onions, unfortunately. Biology is a lot like cooking. You can follow the recipe and it might work, or you can change something and see what happens. The quiz is tomorrow; start cramming.
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For that matter, Roger, what I was calling pork confit at my local French place is actually bills as rillons de porc on the menu. Are rillons the same as rillettes? Whatever they call them, they sure are good.
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I've been--I thought their dosas were comparable in quality to those I've had at several Indian restaurants, and I liked the choice of fillings. I also thought they were a little too expensive; $6.50 for a masala dosa struck me as a little high, and the one I had (with chicken, arugula, peppers, and onions) was $10. If they were closer to $5 and I still lived in New York, I'd probably go there a lot. In fact, I'd probably go there a lot anyway, and just gripe about the price. They do seem to be treating the dosa format with a certain degree of reverence; I'm not qualified to report on the authenticity, but they're not doing bacon-cheeseburger dosas or anything like that.
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Clearly Monday mornings aren't kind to me either, since I called you "clink". So I'm starting to think about the banh mi crawl idea. I'm thinking we meet at 12th and Jackson, hit all the places near that corner (88, Seattle Deli, Saigon Deli, Thanh Vi--any others?), walk down Jackson and stop at Buu Dien, and end up at the Uwajimaya food court where we supplement our haul with a couple of theirs. Would that make sense? I'm not ready to nail down a date yet--I'm swamped this week with writing and teaching, but my mind keeps wandering to those crusty, cheap sandwiches.
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clink, have another look and cry--they didn't mention us!
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Probably the hierarchy should include books inscribed to a famous recipient, which are especially valuable. Anne Fadiman has a good essay on this topic (presentation copies) in her book Ex Libris.
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There's a piece about fennel pollen in the latest issue of John Thorne's Simple Cooking. He describes it as "freaking awesome" and offers a recipe for shrimp with fennel pollen. I haven't ordered any, though--I'm waiting for my foodie friends to offer me a pinch of theirs. jaybee, start using that fish sauce in place of soy sauce or salt in a variety of things and see what works.
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Is there anything else you typically see confited in the traditional sense besides duck and goose? The only thing I can think of is the crisped pork confit I love to eat at Le Pichet in Seattle. Duck confit is about as good as life gets, so I wonder if I'm not missing out on some other confit opportunities.
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tsquare, welcome! I did email Rebekah Denn after I saw that, and she came and read the thread and plans to go back to 12th and Jackson with printouts in hand. I encouraged her to post; maybe she will.
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I can't say I like the 5 Spot either, but I do end up there occasionally, and next time I do I will try the botanical. PerfectCircle, don't worry about it--there is nothing the least bit unethical about saying "The Seattle Times said the salads were good." And it doesn't bother me. They used to serve chicken fried steak sometimes at my college dining hall, and there was this guy I knew whose overly primped wavy blond hair looked just like the prefabricated breading on the CFS. We used to call him "chicken-fried" behind his back. Kids can be so cruel.
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I do all the savory cooking; Laurie does the baking. (My dessert repertoire is limited to toll house cookies and brownies, pretty much.) In practice this means I do almost all of the cooking. Laurie is capable of cooking, but I get all the practice because I get home earlier, and I enjoy it. So there is no resentment.
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Hey, I kind of like chicken fried steak when it's not smotheren in gravy. I was going to mention the Madrona Eatery and Ale House, since I wrote that review praising the salads. They're really quite good. Osteria la Spiga has a salad called the bruciatina (I think I'm spelling that right, but I couldn't find it mentioned on the net), with frisee and other lettuces, crisped prosciutto, and balsamic vinaigrette. Laurie and I split one every time we go. At Kingfish Cafe there's a great chipotle caesar salad. Normally I am the first to cry foul when someone monkeys with the caesar formula, but this is an excellent salad, and huge. That salad and a plate of the peel and eat shrimp would make a perfect light meal for two. Saigon Gourmet, in the I-district next to the bus tunnel entrance, serves a green papaya salad topped with beef jerky. It tastes better than it sounds. No green papaya salads served here stand up to the ones I've had in Asia, but my favorite of the Thai versions I've tried in Seattle is the one at Orrapin Noodle Experience on Queen Anne. Ask for a dish of prik nam pla sliced chiles in fish sauce, to augment your salad. The squid salad at Viengthong, on MLK South, is good overall and has a dressing highly conducive to soaking up with sticky rice. I guess I've bent your formula quite a lot here. Of the salads I've mentioned, those at Madrona and Kingfish are the traditional lettuce-based and big enough to make a meal.
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Okay, let's make it an event. Is there any place we could gather and eat our banh mi after we accumulate them?
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Can I admit that I didn't like sushi before I became a food writer, and I'll now happily gobble anything a sushi chef drops in front of me? I think our Philadelphia-based friend will be eating her words sooner or later. Has anyone invited her to join this thread and defend herself?
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You may have already heard this, but Bulent Ertur, the owner of Bistro Antalya on Broadway and maker of the best gyro-type sandwiches I've ever had, has been in INS jail for the past couple of weeks in some sort of immigration dispute. Seattle Weekly story Ertur is a nice guy and a brilliant cook. I don't know the details of his case, nor do I care (there's no intimation that it's in any way 9/11 related). I want the guy back tending his doner kebap on Broadway, and I've long been hoping that he'll someday expand his menu and grow into an open storefront on Broadway, but keep the sandwich counter. Without immigrants like Bulent Ertur, I would be out of a job and generally despondent. (Full disclosure: I'm quoted on Bistro Antalya's web site, which doesn't seem to have any information about Ertur's case.)
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Okay, I completely disagree with this, and I worked as a popular music critic for about three years. I do like classical music, but I was never going to be called on to write an article about it at my rock-critic job. I don't like jazz, bubblegum, or contemporary C&W. That doesn't mean I don't believe they are worthwhile art forms; I just don't enjoy listening to them. That's why I was hired as a rock critic: my enthusiasm for rock and roll was inherent in my writing. I didn't actively denigrate the types of music I dislike, I just didn't mention them. In music it's easier to get away with that than with food, because the palette available in music is more complex, I think. I might argue that there are only a few kinds of taste receptors on the tongue but many more kinds of "music receptors" in the brain. In any case, I'd be pretty suspicious of a music critic who claimed to like every type of music, and I'd be equally suspicious of a critic trying to build a career criticizing something she's not interested in. That said, I liked the Philly critic's column. If nothing else, she's got us talking about her.
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Hey, klink, today I used your sig-quote in class. I told the students that bacteria have their DNA all over the cytoplasm. One of the students looked in the textbook, which said that bacteria keep their DNA in an area called the "nucleoid". I was prepared to concede this point when my supervisor stepped in and said, "I think Matthew is more correct than the textbook." I said, "A friend of mine likes to quote Muhammad Ali..." ObFood: We extracted DNA from an onion, so the whole lab smelled like the banh mi from 88. Okay, not that good.