mamster

I haven't been to Celadon or Baan Chiang, but I've been to Thanying, Baan Khanita, and Hua Lamphong Food Station. The ideal of service at top Bangkok restaurants seems to be "throw enough waiters at the problem and it will be solved," and this basically works. When we went to Baan Khanita we got there early because we didn't have a reservation, and we had about seven waiters for our table. This was a bit much. My favorite restaurant in town of those I've tried so far is Hua Lamphong Food Station (I wrote about it on my website), but it's not exactly a fine-dining establishment; it's more of an urban hideaway that happens to serve miraculous northern Thai food. Has anyone here been to My Choice on Sukhumwit? Kasma Loha-unchit raves about it, and she knows a thing or two about Thai food, it seems to me. It's also a casual place, I gather.

Has La Casa Gelato in Vancouver been mentioned on this board yet? It's an ice cream parlor on a seedy stretch of Venables, run by an obsessive Italian gelato maven who makes 198 flavors. Literally. I'm skeptical of "biggest in the world" claims, but I'd sure be surprised (and pleased) to find more flavors in some other shop. I was in Vancouver the last couple of days (I'll be posting some reviews) and went to the Casa Gelato twice. Among the more interesting flavors available this trip were balsamic vinegar (excellent), frangelico hazelnut with chocolate shavings, apple-cheddar, and pandanus leaf, which turned out to be one of the best ice cream flavors ever. If you visit Vancouver and miss La Casa Gelato, you are either lactose intolerant or insane.

I haven't bought the actual Fudgsicle brand Fudgsicles in a long time, but the Darigold Super Fudge variety (the notably, uh, missile-shaped one) is quite satisfying. Now I want to go to Montreal and get flambeed.

franklanguage, can you be more specific? Can you name some nutrients that are rendered biologically inaccessible through cooking, and which vegetables these nutrients are found in? Does cooking remove all the nutrients or only some? Do different cooking methods have different effects? Are you talking about organic nutrients such as vitamins, inorganic nutrients such as minerals, or both?

I'm now offering my private-label TBA trocken. I'm calling it "everclear". Let me just say once again before conceding that Jason is correct and I need to drink more and google less: Dr. Loosen. Thank you.

Back when I did standup comedy, I had a bit about how I didn't like to order seafood because the waiter always thought I was insulting him when I said things like "king crab" or "halibut cheeks." Hmm...it probably wasn't funny then, either.

Why are so many German makers doctors? Are they MDs or philosophers? Or is it a self-bestowed honorific like "Dr. Love" (which is not far off from "Dr. Loosen," now that I think about it). I did a Google search and it looks like there are auslese trockens and halbtrockens, and the trockens, at least, are pretty high in alcohol, but this is obviously a tiny niche; I've never seen an actual bottle.

I have my eye on that $10 lunch, too, because I'm a notorious cheapskate. Hey, wouldn't it be funny if the $10 lunch actually featured cheap skate?

Hmm...let me see if I can get a limnologist buddy of mine interested in this thread. I feel like I should know this stuff, but I don't. As for my opinion on Copper River Salmon, I've had it a number of times (including on the cedar plank--yum!), and it's never been disappointing, but I don't feel I can say it's "the best" with my limited experience. If you're serving some, though, give me a call, because my survey requires further data points.

We buy C&H brown sugar in a resealable two-pound bag, and it stays soft long enough to use up two pounds of it, easy. But I never saw that packaging in the Northeast. So if you have to buy the box, transfer it to a Ziploc. Should stay mushy.

I'm going to make one of those statements that invite goblet-throwing from the more learned, but don't kabinett, spatlese, and auslese refer to ripeness, and trocken, halbtrocken, or the lack of such modifier refer to fermentation? I've never seen a trocken auslese, but couldn't one exist, and wouldn't it be a dry, high-alcohol wine? Of course, I've seen a trockenbeerenauslese, but I've never tasted one. Also, can we add "Trocken" to our list of rock group names? It's like Dokken, only drier.

I have no inside information on the Satay Hut, but I'll ask Nancy for the latest. GC, you'll probably make it to the eastside location before I do, so please report.

I have a bit of anecdotal evidence for the idea that well-marbled meat gets more tender as it's cooked, up to a point. A few years ago my family went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which serves pretty good prime wet-aged beef. My father and I sat adjacent and both ordered the rib eye. I asked for mine medium-rare and he requested medium. (Ruth's Chris is one of those places that has a frame-shifted standard for cooking times: rare equals charred exterior, cold interior. What most people consider rare, they consider medium rare, so my father was not asking for his steak to be overcooked.) As it turned out, my father's steak had a great balance of chewiness and tenderness, and mine verged on tough. (So I kept stealing bites.) As I said, this is purely anecdotal, and I'd give more credence to Shaw's experiment, but I still consider my experience pretty suggestive. Perhaps the fact that we ordered rib eye, probably the fattiest cut on the menu, had something to do with it. Jeffrey Steingarten, in his article about wagyu, does a side-by-side taste test of rare and medium-rare samples of this highly marbled beef and likes the medium-rare better, but he doesn't ascribe this to tenderness, only taste.

From today's NYT magazine (Julia Reed): "Most American literature is seriously devoid of culinary references. Which is why it is such a pleasure to read Tolstoy. Proust may have written a million words based on memories prompted by a simple tea cake, but the madeleine really was not the point." Is that self-conscious enough to pass muster?

A similar principle is at work when you get the rare beef in pho. Raw beef slices are added to the broth and, if you're lucky, get just barely colored. Now I'm hungry, and I just had dinner.

Is it too late to throw in another? "Post-prandial."

...Wild Turkey.

I thought of another one: pedestrian. I am seriously guilty of running this one into the ground, which is apt, since I don't own a car.

My non-greasy engine is now bordering on collapse, let me tell you. This has little to do with this thread, but Lesley's talk of the perfect creme brulee reminds me that I have had the opposite of the perfect creme brulee: the absolute worst thing that is still recognizable as creme brulee. It was amazing. And it was served as part of a dessert sampler, and one of the other desserts was much worse. This came at the end of an unremarkable but often enjoyable meal, and then suddenly we were slapped with these loathsome desserts. It was a good laugh, and later I got some ice cream. And, dammit, I've used "worked" many times. I'll have to nip that one.

Sure, you can say that the first time, but what about the next time? I'm sure you can catch me saying "greaseless," and here's why: I write a couple of reviews a month and have reason to believe most of my readers are regulars. My word count limit is severe. And though I try to avoid it, a lot of the places I review are typical: neighborhood Thai place, bar and grill, cheap sushi, etc. In this context, people want to know whether the onion rings are greasy (as in soggy) or not. I guess this is a form of laziness, since I should always strive for new observations and new ways to make old observations, but sometimes I'm convinced that what people really want out of a certain review is for me to say: "This is a good Thai place. It is located in Magnolia. The phad thai is good. The spring rolls are crisp and not greasy. The coconut ice cream is too grainy. I also recommend dishes X, Y, and Z." I hate turning those in, and believe me, I do blame myself, but not a hundred percent. Other times, I get to write about someplace really weird, and then I have a lot more fun and the writing is better. Maybe my observation should go like this: some places, because they have unique qualities, deserve reviews. Other places, which may be just as good or better but are more generic, deserve notices but not reviews. At my paper, at least, we don't have any way of making that distinction, so you end up with recycled phrases for recycled restaurants. Excuses, excuses. Incidentally, I just searched my site and the Seattle Times, and there is no record of my saying "greaseless" or "greaselessly"--yay!

I'm sure I can think of some. "Redolent" is a pet peeve--I'm sure someone can catch me using it, but I wish I wouldn't. "Greaseless" in reference to something fried. Clearly there is a continental divide: I've never seen a restaurant likened to an ocean liner, nor the words "bosky" or "plumped." But I can assure you that in my next review I will be plumping for some bosky madeleines. You know, it occurs to me that Proust's madeleines are to food writing what Plato's cave is to all other writing: the all-purpose metaphor.

Thanks, BON! Your site is a great resource for the ramen-lover. I'd get some today, but I have a date with some Vietnamese sandwiches....

Okay, I have an update on this product. First of all, the Sitram website is http://www.sitram.fr/. Second, a reader kindly pointed me to a Dutch auction on eBay, where I scored a 10" Cybernox pan for $33 including shipping. For that price, I figure I can abuse the thing and not feel too bad about it if it ends up tattered. (hell, I treat my more expensive nonstick like royalty and it still ends up flayed.) The build quality of the Cybernox is not comparable to All-Clad or Kitchenaid, but it's better than low-end stuff. The handle is oddly U-shaped, kind of an exaggeration of the All-Clad handle, and it's welded, not riveted. It does stay cool. The pan itself is of the thick bottom, thin sides philosophy. I'm agnostic on this issue, since I've never really done a head-to-head comparison. The surface is basically indistinguishable from stainless, just a little shinier. I don't pretend to understand the physics of the Cybernox coating. Sitram's PR practically dares you to use metal utensils, so I have been. I have a good test environment for this particular pan, I think, because I have three other 10" skillets: cast iron, All-Clad (stainless surface), and a Costco teflon pan. All of them see regular use. The Costco is starting to wear out, and I've been looking for a replacement. It's too early to say whether the Cybernox will be that replacement. I've made scrambled eggs, which always leave a sandpaper-like film on the All-Clad. I used only a tiny drop of oil, and the eggs didn't stick and cleanup was a snap. You basically just have to touch the thing with a sponge and it's clean. Of course, this is also true of a new teflon pan, and then a couple months later you're scrubbing the thing within an inch of its life. I can't say whether that will happen to the Cybernox; they claim it won't, but we'll see. I'm making an effort to be downright abusive with the metal spatula; I made some pasta sauce with roasted red peppers the other night, and I was in there grinding the spatula edge against the bottom of the pan to finish some knife cuts I'd missed. The surface still looks shiny. One of my biggest annoyances with teflon is its poor heat transfer. The Cybernox seems to fall somewhere in the middle: for a given burner setting, it doesn't get quite as hot as the All-Clad, but much hotter than the teflon. Whether this is due to the makeup of the bottom plate or to the coating, I couldn't say. So I don't want to get too excited about the Cybernox; the handle is pretty bad and it could well wear out next week, but it seems to be a nice compromise between teflon and stainless, with some of the benefits of each. If you find one cheap on eBay, snap it up. For the retail price ($110 or so), wait and see. Apparently there are two versions of this pan available, and the other has a different handle (nicer shape, looks like) which does not stay cool but can withstand hotter oven temperatures. Why any metal handle would have trouble in the oven is beyond me. Here's a site that sells both versions.

I've had great luck with a half-bread half-ground-pecan crust with a pinch of curry powder for chicken breasts. This was also in the Cook's article. I think half the things I cook originated in Cook's. Brandade de Morue is a French preparation of salt cod. You soak and poach the dried fish and whip it with garlic, oil, and milk until it has the consistency of light mashed potatoes. It is often then whipped up with actual potatoes, but it wasn't at Le Pichet. The end result is a creamy, briny spread that's great on bread, or with roasted peppers or, now that I think about it, probably fries. I think I liked the venison sausage of last time marginally better than the chicken, but I quite enjoyed both and would happily eat either again, except that I want to try something else next time I go. There used to be a Pasta & Co just off Broadway, but it closed. I'm still heartsick over that one. Have you tried their Matriccina sauce? It's one of the best red sauces I've ever had, great with any of their fresh pastas.

I'd rather have five pounds of Parmigiano-Reggiano. I have some duck stock in my freezer. I would have more but there was a little mishap involving slippery ziploc bags and stock-soaked socks. Costco some pretty good frozen ravioli. We had some for dinner tonight. They're the triangular ones with the little packet of parsley-cheese topping. The precut frozen green beans work well in Thai curry, I find. At least as well as the stringy ones I usually see fresh in the off-season.