markk

There's one other thing I =must= ask... I recall that as a kid, we followed whatever was the "hottest" place for Chinese Food, which is to say, egg rolls, spare ribs, and shrimp in lobster sauce. I don't know that it's true exactly that at some point King Yum ever fell out of favor, but I do remember, because I was already older at that point, that the distinction of "hottest" restaurant switched to a place called Gam Wah on Old Country Road in either Carle Place or Old Westbury. At some point we drove what seemed like hours to go there and then wait for hours for the same food we used to eat at King Yum. Does anybody have a memory of this?

That restaurant has switched hands at least 10 times, and gone under different names, but I know which one you are talking about. It was MY local chinese restaurant growing up -- my mother and father live on Horace Harding Blvd, on the Little Neck/Great Neck border. No, you're WAY too far east. The restaurant I grew up at was indeed on the south (Eastbound) side of Horace Harding, but no more than 3 blocks west of 188th St. (where the Bloomigdales was.) On that same stretch was a deli called (unless my memory clouds) Deli Masters. A little more west and you'd be to Francis Lewis H.S. where I went by the way. Are you thinking of someplace way farther east?

This dish is still on the menu. I'm not entirely sure that I'm emotionally up to a return to Fresh Meadows. I don't believe they've yet invented Xanax in the necessary strength for that. (Just kidding.) How do you know the restaurant?

I'm speechless! I was born and raised in Fresh Meadows (we're talking the early 1950's), and this was our local Chinese restaurant. (This is not entirely true- for the earliest years of my life we went to a place on Horace Harding Blvd., on the eastbound side, whose name I can't remember, and probably didn't move on to King Yum until the late 50's or early 60's, I guess.) As we were Jewish, we ate Chinese food one night every weekend of my life with no exceptions whatsoever, (and Italian food the other weekend night). We of course started with the wonton soup, egg rolls, and spare ribs. And of course we had shrimp and lobster sauce and fried rice. My mother was very fond of lobster, and half the time, instead of shrimp in lobster sauce, we had "Lobster Cantonese" which was actually lobster in lobster sauce. Try as I might, I can't find that today anywhere as good as it was there - and I do try! Thanks so much for this trip down memory lane !!!!!! (Last night, thanks to having learned about it from eGullet, I had a sensational meal including lobster over fried noobles at China 46, but that's another thread that shouldn't intrude here; I just wanted to give my thanks for that as well.)

I've been going to Orlando for years on business, and until last year resisted trying Le Coq Au Vin, which is written up everywhere as a local favorite for great French food. Well, I ate a delicious meal there and ate my hat as well. It's probably some of the best food in Orlando, although that doesn't say much. It's a very good restaurant. I wound up going back there 3 more times on my last trip. The wines are quite good too and the host is extrememly knowledgeable and down to earth about them. If you like great steaks, a local chain called Charley's Steakhouse has some great ones cut thick and grilled over a mix of local woods. They also own Vito's Chophouse which makes a magnificent thick rib-eye on the bone, but I'd suggest ordering it without the Italian seasonings. The service at these places is so incredibly horrendous and horrifying that I read with no surprise some postings on a local dining board down there by various people who said they "left the restaurant in tears" for one reason or another stemming from the way their server treated them. Being forewarned, however, you could still go and have one of America's great steaks. I don't like Pebbles at all.

Yes, I've done it with 3.5 pounders and it makes for a deliciously succulent lobster. I follow Julia Child's timing (I guess from The Way to Cook). I don't have it handy to quote, but she gives a basic time for the basic lobster then an additional number of minutes per pound, or per pound over a certain weight, or something like that (you know Julia). But whatever it is, every time I've done it, it's worked perfectly. Enjoy !!!

More than you will ever know, I regret mispelling the word "Malaysian" more deeply, and more sincerely, than perhaps any mistake I have ever made in my entire life. I cannot apologize more for this error nor humble myself before you more than I do with this posting. However, I don't know how to change the title of the thread. If this is something that only I, as the originator of the thread can do, I pray that you will tell me how to do this, and I pray that you will consider forgiveness for me for this horrendous, horrendous mitsake.

Well, it's not exactly a recipe. Take a large beautiful head of garlic, peel the cloves, and dice them coarsely. Set them to simmering gently in a large quantity of very good olive oil (I use Spanish "arbequina"). Before they get a chance to brown, make some room on one side of the pot and add the shrimp shells to sautee until they turn color and flavor the oil, then remove them. Just as the garlic looks like it may start to brown (you can cover it for a while as it cooks too), toss the shrimp in the oil to start cooking, and cover the whole thing with a good handfull or two of chopped Italian flat parseley and fresh basil leaves, and stir around. Turn up the heat, dump in the mussels and a few ounces of white wine if desired, and cook until the mussels open. If you like a thicker more flavorful "juice" remove all the seafood and cook it down a bit. Then, I just served all of this over the grilled swordfish.

Last night I made grilled swordfish with steamed mussels, shrimp, and garlic.

They buy everything to order (which is why the crabs and such are so good), so you really have to arrange with them in advance and the best way is to stop in. They need a week's notice (since I don't think they go to Chinatown every day). That may not work for you, but for me knowing that on a particular day I'm going to have crabs and a vegetable is perfect for me. They may even want you to pay in advance if they haven't known you for years - I don't know about this, but I would think that was reasonable too. So I would suggest stopping in one day and seeing if you can arrange this. I've been doing this for a long time and am very comfortable with it. It saves me a trip to Chinatown for these foods, and the quality is some of the best as well.

If you speak French, that works fine, but I think you're going to get somebody in trouble with that line. 30 years ago, when I spoke no French at all, I asked something just like that of a French waiter, and he replied, very nicedly, "Ce sont des cuisses de pigeon farcis de leur fois, rôtis à four doux jusqu'à rosace avec des navets confites et blancs de poireau au miel." and I was no better off than before I started. Having spent a lot of time eating in France, sometimes with people whose first time it is eating that food as well, I think that a better approach might be to learn the phrase and the concept "qu'est-ce que vous conseillez ?" (What do you reccommend?) The sentence that follows from the waiter usually starts with "Well, our specialty is..." and the dish that comes is usually wonderful. I know that some will balk that the diner might get a food he wouldn't normally order, but I have to tell the story of being in France with a very picky eater, someone who only ate hamburgers and chicken breasts, being stranded somewhere where what the chef served us was going to be the only food were going to have that day. And it just arrived. The only part of the description that my friend heard was "pâté de campagne" which he knew to be something like a meat-loaf. And as wonderful as that pâté was, it was plated alongside an unctuous, creamy pâté, and something else piled on toast, which he declared were vying as the two greatest things he had ever eaten in his life - and he insisted that I call them over to find out what they were. Of course, I had heard the description go by in rapid French and knew that one was "Mousse de foies de volailles", mousse of duck and pigeon livers, and the other was "toast aux abats" which turned out to be finely chopped sauteed duck livers and duck hearts. Prior to that moment, not only had my dumbfounded friend never eaten a bite of either duck or pigeon in his life, he wouldn't even consider eating dark meat chicken! This was not lost on him, however. From that meal on he was a changed man. Now he asks "qu'est-ce que c'est vous conseillez?" and whatever they answer, whether he understands it or not, he orders it. And I really do think that this is a great attitude with which to travel to France.

Does anybody have any favorite Maylasian dishes to suggest and describe to somebody new to that cuisine?

What a great variation! (I posted earlier on Americanos coming when I ordered "Campari and Soad" and loving them.) I just made one of these and I loved it. I find that Campari is a tad too sweet (I have friends who think that as well) so I've taken to adding a dash of Angostura Bitters to whatever I make. Just thought I'd pass that along.

No, it's not the New Zealand ones that I'm talking about - I don't eat or order those, largely because they're frozen. I'm talking about the black mussels. Whether they're specifically PEI (which are the ones I buy at home) I can't say, because I don't know if restaurants spring for those. But they're the regular black mussels, and the principal restaurant in question was the Belgian place "Petite Abeille" on 14th street, where for years and years the mussels have been spectacular. On my last visit the mussel meats were gigantic, but puffed-up, airy, fluffy, not particularly flavorful and not particularly tasting or chewing like a mussel. Some of the places in Jersey where I've had mussels lately have had them the same way. I'm wondering if maybe that's a feature of the season, or some other thing that I'm not aware of. But I sort of remember mussels as having texture and flavor, not like these.

I love mussels. In two resraurants I go to, lately the mussel meats seem artifically plump, filled with air, with a fluffy, not a chewy, consistency, and the meats are rather large (and airy). They have no body to them, and no real mussel flavor. Can anybody explain this? One is a restaurant that for years has been delivering exceptionally good mussels, the other a local place where now that I think about it, they've been like this more often than not. I do buy them at the market and make them myself from time to time, and they're not like that at all. Has anybody else experienced this? Can anybody else explain this?

Fairway Market at Broadway and 74th carries a cream cheese that's packed in containers in the cheese department against the wall. It has somebody's name, that is to say the Fairway labels on the containers (the brand doesn't have its own packaging) says "so and so's cream cheese", and it is all natural and gum-free. I like it but I confess that I'm not a cream cheese maven. But, considering the incredibly high quality of the products that they carry in this manner, I would think it would certainly be worth checking out - after all, most of the stuff that they select or private label is spectacularly good. Incidentally, their smoked salmons are delicious, and took top honors in a recent NY Mag tasting. Even the pre-sliced ones (there's Gaspe, Scotch, and Norwegian) are great when you live outside of Manhattan and have to buy them to keep for when you have the craving a month later.

Good for you for posing this question! I agree with you wholeheartedly! I think that the instruction "salt and pepper to taste" is ridiculous, because it only satisfies the level of salt and pepper that we have become conditioned and accustomed to because recipes have always said "salt and pepper to taste" - and we should acknowledge that most of these were written way before the fresh herbs and spices that we now have at our disposal were available. Why doesn't it say "thyme and rosemary to taste" ??? I grew up used to salt, as we all did. In college in the 70's, I worked for a fellow in the theater who used to cook for all of his students and helpers - pastas, stews, meat loaves, and the like - and this was most generous indeed. He'd put some vast quantity of food up to cook and continue with his lessons. When he put a meatloaf or a vat of meatballs in sauce up to cook, he'd taste it and add salt to make the tomatoes taste right. He'd return 45 minutes later and taste it, and decide that it needed salt, and add it. Well, he'd repeat this 45 minutes later and add another handful of salt, and this would happen every 45 minutes. I realized that the amount of salt he was adding was simply frightening, and I thought about it and realized that the salt was obviously being absorbed by the food. At the end of the cooking process, he'd have added several cups of salt to a dish, and the people eating it would still add salt after they tasted it! But everyting at that point was dull and murky tasting! So, I developed the habit of tasting food that I put up to cook by taking a little bit in a cup and adding salt to see if it tasted great; if, with the pinch of salt it did. I'd leave it cook without the salt, knowing that at the point of serving, I could add a little salt which would bring out the flavors that salt brings out, and satisfy the salt level that most people were accustomed to. This has brought me a lifetime of delicious cooking, and for coronary reasons, I have reduced the amount of needless sodium that I consume, and for those dishes, such as those that are tomato-based, I am still satisfied with the little salt that I add. But, to answer your question, I DO NOT LIKE BLACK PEPPER. When it says to salt and pepper to taste, the amount of pepper that I add is NONE. There are a very few, very few dishes, where I feel that freshly ground black pepper is a necessary taste, and then I add it. But pasta dishes, and salads, when they always bring the pepper grinder, are not included - I always decline. I don't want pepper on most things, not to mention everything, that I eat. Congratulations on your question !!! There's at least I who am on totally the same wavelength as you !!

Well, it says "Show Me the Cheese", and I couldn't resist. My two favorites are Epoisses (top) and Mont D'or. I'm also quite fond of creamy, runny (and very stinky) Munster.

I love Campari. One year I was staying at the Sofitel in Paris, and we would send a friend to the bar for drinks. I would tell him to get me a Campari and Soda. The drink he would come back with was delicious, and perhaps an improvement, but it clearly wasn't Campari and Soda. When questioned, he said that that was what he ordered, and wouldn't know anything else to order. At the end of the week I went to the bartender myself and asked if he knew the guy that was coming in every afternoon and taking out a Campari and Soda, and he replied "sure". I asked, "And what do make for him? It isn't a Campari and Soda, is it?" and he replied, "No, it's an Americano."

Three years years ago at a magnificent restaurant I frequent in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace, where I have become great friends with the chef and his family, I was taking photos of my dinner. At the end of the meal, another diner, a somewhat matronly, elderly woman, marched over to my table and asked me, in German "Are you Germans?" I replied in German "No, Americans." She almost immediately broke into a gigantic smile and said "Wunderbar! Wunderbar !!!" and walked back to her friends beaming to inform them that we were Americans who obviously had a great interest in our food. We overheard this and got into a conversation (in French, thankfully) with them, and they explained how wonderful they thought it was that we'd bring photos of our French meals home. The next year, with a newer camera that also took video, we realized that when we cut into our warm apple tarts that the "crunch" had to be recorded for posterity. At that point we'd come to realize that most of the people staying there at Christmas time were regulars, and we were on a friendly basis with them, stopping to say both hello on the way in and good night on the way out with most of them. So when the next apple tarts arrived, I stood up and tapped a knife on a glass as if to propose a toast, and in what I call French, explained that we were about to take a video with sound of the crunch, and needed everybody to hush for a moment. THEY LOVED IT, ad of course complied, and all gave me their e-mail addresses so I could send them the link when it was posted. I share it with you here: A restaurant meal in Alsace that ends with me asking the dining room to hush-up for a moment

You've hit the soul of traveling with this observation. I stay quite a bit at the Hilton (sometimes the Holiday Inn) in Strasbourg, France, and I've made it clear to the staff that I converse with them in French not to show off, but to improve my language, and our conversations, when they're not incredibly busy, sometimes become grammar lessons. They've all learned that at some point in a conversation I will invariably ask them to write out a particular verb's conjugations or an expression. But most importantly, they know never to break into English to help me out, no matter what my need, becuase more than I care that they know that my bedspread caught fire from a short in the lamp cord, I care about being able to say that in French for the next time such an emergency should arise. There's one guy there who said, "for the same reason, I'd like to speak English to you and ask you to correct it, if you'd be similarly kind" and while that killed the fun for me, of course I had to oblige him, but I solved that by only passing the desk and waving when he was on. My favorite thing is what happens when I first enter a place - a store or a restaurant, speaking farily good French. Being a wonderful people, their first thought is to repay the kindness and answer me in my own language if they can, but I seem to have found a combination of inflection and facial expression that indicates that I'd like to do the transaction in French, and they always smile as they realize this. Better fun can't be had on a trip. I am always complimented at some point in the conversation about my French, which probably is making them cringe inside (I know that when somebody speaks English as well and at the same time as badly as I speak other languages, I have mixed reactions), but I enjoy spending 2 weeks at a time speaking only French, and so I always answer them in French, "Thank you. I love mutilating your language." Yet more doors open.

Everybody in the hospitality industry in France speaks English. (An exception might be a tiny b&b in some remote region, but then again, anybody who's been to school since WW II has learned English.) But for an absolute fact, everybody in the top and not so top restaurants, and absolutely definitely for sure in every bistro mentioned in every guide book, they will speak English. I haven't had a chance to read this entire thread, but I do speak some pretty good French, enough that once I go into a place and start the conversation in French, we wind up speaking French the entire evening, and wonderful doors open up to me - the doors of the kitchens, to new friendships, etc. Nobody is fooled into thinking I'm French (but I'm NEVER taken for an American, either, ever). But that's another matter and separate from your question. They speak more than enough English to accomodate you and show you a great time. On the other hand, learning a few pleasantries would certainly be a nice thing to do, and would undoubtedly buy you some extra help. Why don't you follow some of the suggestions given, and learn at least to say "Good Day" and "Good Afternoon" and "Good Evening" in French, and then learn to say "I'm sorry that I don't speak French. Is there someone who could assist me in English, please." That would do it. My hobby is traveling in France and eating. Along the way I make lots of new friends and happily many of them are restaurateurs. Here are some photos of restaurants (some as fancy as Michelin 2-star establishments, some not fancy at all) where I've photographed the food. Photos of Restaurant Dinners in France And as I say, they will speak English in every restaurant and bistro in Paris. Not only has everybody learned it in school, but everybody watches CNN. Sadly, it can be said that it's hardly like being in France anymore. That's the reason I travel to the nether regions. But you'll be fine. And my last suggestion is, even if they do come up with a dish whose translation is "Chicken in the Style of Aunt Paulette" - they'll be able to tell you what's in it. For me, I don't care what's in a dish as long as the chef recommends it - I eat everything, and as you'll see from the photos, I do. If you've never made a meal of Frog Legs, sauteed duck liver, and preserved duck thighs, you have a new world waiting for you. I have a friend who thought he'd rather die than eat these foods in France. Now, after many years of traveling there, he doesn't eat anything but. The people and the foods are great and they will speak English. Have a great time!

Thank you for this post! This might be a good time for me to re-state my original idea in its entirety for the group. I've become quite intrigued and enchanted by the food at Grand Sichuan International (on 9th Ave. in New York) - well, aren't we all - and at the same time, really fed up with what passes as Chinese food where I live in New Jersey. I'm not just fond of Szechuan food either - I love Cantonese food, and a meal of steamed fish, crabs, and a green vegetable is heaven to me, but we don't get remotely edible Cantonese food either where I live. But there are many local places whose Szechuan/Hunan dishes, while ridiculously sweet and goppy, are at least better than their horrible attempts at Cantonese, as long as you add heat to them. So I usually take fresh serranos and Scotch Bonnets to them and choose dishes whose flavors these chilies will complement. THEN I learned that the Sichuan peppercorns could be purchased on-line. And when I spoke to the guy at CMC and he described the Birdseye Chili, I thought that it might be the other "secret" pepper that Grand Sichuan uses. So now I have both the Sichuan peppercorns, and the Birdseye chilies to take to my local restaurant. If anybody out there has any suggestions of what dishes they could add these to and in what quantity, that'd be great to hear. I've brought them the Grand Sichuan menu and asked if they'd call and inquire, but so far they're hesitant. Thanks to everyone who's helping on this!

Thanks for the info on the change in legal status - that explains it! As far as the Birdseye Chiles, I don't mean to be a wise-guy here, but I had no intention of getting one in my eye. I like food really hot (I bring serrano and scotch bonnets to my Chinese restaurant to add to my food and still it's not quite hot enough, or as hot as at Grand Sichuan International), and I bought the birdseye peppers with the thought of adding them to my food. If you have any firsthand knowledge of them, I'd love to know what foods you've had them in, and if you're saying that they're too hot to eat (the man at the place that sells them said they were too hot for anybody there to eat), I'd appreciate knowing why you say this. Thank you for whatever detail you can give.

Should I not cook with them, then? I was hoping to take them to my local Chinese restaurant and ask them to add them to my food. Any thought on how many (or few) they should use in a dish?