Malawry

Jeff gave Mrs. JPW and I a sneak preview of some summery cocktails coming up at Palena as things warm up. There's a sort of updated lemon drop, with what Jeff called a "lemon Grappa" and Grey Goose with a squeeze of lemon juice. Very lemony, very refreshing, perfect even when it's not hot out yet. I liked the rhubarb juice with prosecco cocktail too, but then I like rhubarb quite a bit. There's also a much-expanded Monday cafe menu to recommend, including an artichoke antipasto that features fresh mozzarella and a filet of sardine. I also enjoyed the boudin blanc with foie gras-mounted sauce and Oregon verjus. Good eating. Kisses to Nadya and friend who we bumped into there.

That neighborhood has a real dearth of patio dining. Smith and Wollensky on 19th has some outdoor tables, or if you're not bothered by cheap resin chairs and office interns there's always Mackey's. Neither is anywhere close to the schmaltz factor of Morton's, unfortunately. Does Equinox have outdoor tables? It might be worth calling them and asking. Marcel's also offers outdoor dining in nicer weather, IIRC.

I like leftover pad thai. But I like just about anything leftover. It's not as good as fresh, but it's usually improved by a shot of chicken stock and reheating in a pan on the stove instead of in the microwave.

Everybody knows that the only chicken better than Palena's chicken off somebody else's plate is your own order of Palena's chicken, Jenny. No sad eyes required. I talked to Chef Frank briefly earlier in the week, and I had to ask him about that chicken. He said, "We just marinade it with some vegetables and spices we like for a few days." Yeah right, pal. He could tell his response wasn't cutting so he added that I'd learn more if I tried to figure it out on my own than if he just told me how to do it.

They loved it. Are you kidding me? They've been asking for it since I made it the first time, last semester. (I'd never made fried chicken at all before. So of course for my first try I made it for 34 guinea pigs. I'm fearless, idiotic or probably both.) I liked it too. I was trying to keep my mitts off because I visited a great place in Alexandria with my spouse for dinner last night, and I didn't want to ruin my appetite. But of course I had to indulge in a thigh, and, well, it definitely didn't suck one little bit. I ate a piece cold today and it was still excellent. I'll try to get my pix up by Sunday.

Grease fires are a lot harder to start in a dedicated deep-fat fryer than they are on the stove. I don't have a fryer at work, so when I fry for my girls (not very often) I use a pot of oil.

I made fried chicken for my 34 girls last night. I started Wednesday by cutting up 9 small chickens from Sysco. I then made a salt water brine and let it soak overnight in the fridge. Yesterday early afternoon, I poured off the brine and replaced it with a mixture of buttermilk and Tabasco. I let that soak a few more hours, this time at room temp. I made a mix of flour, salt, thyme and cayenne in a big paper bag. I drained the chicken and dropped a few pieces at a time into the bag and shook them with the flour. I then divided them into three pans: breast pieces, leg and thigh pieces, and wings. I set two big pots of oil on the stove and started heating them. When they hit 350 degrees, I started deep-frying. I added a little too much chicken to the larger pot, and some oil spilled over and started a grease fire instantly. I had to turn off the heat, remove some chicken, cover and move the pot, and then smother the fire with a huge pot lid. I then ran around and opened all the windows to prevent the smoke alarm from going off. I've never started a grease fire before and frankly it was pretty scary. I've started little fires on the stove many times before and was always able to get them out instantly. This one took several minutes to put out. Next time I'll add a buttload of salt or baking powder and then smother it with a pot lid. At least I don't have to clean up from my handheld fire extinguisher or (worse) from the fire-control system going off and blanketing my stove in foam. I did manage to fry the rest of the chicken without mishap, but I'm feeling kinda spooked about frying chicken and don't know that I'll do it for 34 again. (This was my second time trying.) And now I have to report to work today and scrub down my entire stove--it was too hot to take care of it last night.

Cannon's Seafood Market sells from shops in many burbs, too. I've had good luck with their Silver Spring market in the past. But I buy most of my fishies from Han Ah Reum in Wheaton. Dirt-cheap and sparkling-fresh. Plus they'll dress them any of 9 ways for you.

This is the recipe I use for pad thai. I make it at work sometimes--I made it the week I participated in the Foodblog actually. Pad Thai 1 pound pad thai noodles 2 eggs Peanut oil 1 tsp chopped garlic 1 tbsp chopped onion 3-4 tbsp vinegar 1 tbsp sugar 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 pound shrimp Chicken stock 1 tsp pickled sweet radish 1 tbsp fried tofu Sweet paprika Cayenne Sea salt and white pepper 1 cup bean sprouts 2 tbsp ground toasted peanuts plus extra for garnish 1 cup scallions and garlic chives 1 tbsp nam pla Jalapenos Lime slices Soak noodles in water for at least 30 minutes. Beat eggs. Heat pan with oil. Add eggs. Cook without moving until half done and then move to pan side. Add onion and garlic. Add vinegar, sugar and soy sauce. Add shrimp. Add noodles. Add stock if needed and toss. Add radish, tofu, paprika, cayenne, pepper, and salt. Toss. Add half of sprouts. Toss. Add peanuts and most of scallions and chives. Add fish sauce. Toss and remove from heat. Plate with shrimp and scallions on top. Garnish with jalapenos, raw bean sprouts, lime slice, peanuts, and spring onions. I learned this recipe at L'academie from a Thai chef. Comes out great every time.

Cool blog, Tammy. And the photos of the kitchen are very satisfying--I've long wondered what it looks like! I have the same dishwasher in my work kitchen. What's in the potted plants on the dining room tables?

Most Passover chocolate is pareve--it's a lot harder to find milk chocolate than dark in a Kosher market's Passover aisle, in my experience. But then most folks serve a meat meal for the Passover seders, when Passover candies are most likely to be consumed--and since you can't mix meat and dairy at the same meal, the chocolates will have to be dark. I always loved the milk chocolate-covered matzos as a child. But nobody ever thought to bring them for me since they knew we would have a meat Seder and therefore no dairy. (I guess nobody considered how much I would have enjoyed them on the subsequent days of Passover. )

I think it'd make an incredible potato gratin. Or anything else gratin for that matter. Definitely don't pitch it!

If you have a copy of Penn and Teller's book Play With Your Food, there's a number of wacky ideas in there. I've often wanted to try the "bleeding heart" dessert, but I don't much care for gelatin.

Does anybody have some updated dates, especially for what's left of this week?

Thanks for your snapshot, Yellojkt, and welcome to the forum. When I was a student in culinary school, we were taught that odd numbers of items always look better than even numbers on a plate. It wasn't a hard-and-fast rule (we weren't downgraded if we broke it or anything), but it might help explain the proliferation of three-piece tapas. Try it sometime and you'll see that it's easier to arrange 3 items artfully than it is 2 or 4.

Chicken marsala, made with thighs instead of breasts. Hefty shot of demi-glace in the sauce. Spanking fresh crisp mushrooms. Sugar snap peas sauteed in a little of the rendered chicken fat with Penzey's Sunny Paris seasoning Iced coffee. We're playing spring in this house.

If your fried chicken is overcoloring, pull it out of the oil right away and stick it on a rack in a hot oven until it's cooked through. It won't be as good as chicken fried totally in the pan, of course, but it's hella better than burnt chicken and you won't give yourself salmonella in the process.

I had the ones at Pesce fairly recently. They were good but not great--just not quite as packed with lump crab as I like. If you're near 1789 I recommend checking out their cakes. It's been a while since I had it, but I remember a truly outstanding jumbo-lump specimen with some kind of fennel slaw that rocked.

I haven't tried that yogurt, so I can't respond to the differences between Total and the yogurt you mentioned. Total is a Greek-made strained yogurt--not a yogurt cheese, but thicker and richer than most domestic yogurt.

Back on the old Total Yogurt discussion from November/December 2004: I bought some Total with Greek honey recently from the Takoma Park Silver Spring Coop. I just ate it tonight. Good as ever. So I'm supposing it's more widely available again, and back on US shelves.

This is great. I had planned fried chicken for the menu at work soon because my girls keep asking for it--but I'm saving it for Thursday, March 31 (after Lent is over). I follow an adapted version of Damon Lee Fowler's technique from his New Southern Kitchen cookbook. I cut up whole chickens, brine them overnight, then soak them in a buttermilk-Tabasco mixture for several hours. Drain, pat dry, toss in a bag with seasoned flour, and fry in soybean oil in a pot on the stove. I'll try to take pictures of fried chicken for 34 when I do it, though that will be pretty late in the life of this thread.

Jeezus, Tom. I store my books on a shelf too. I guess my girls oughta watch out! Where are you supposed to store books? In a hermetically sealed plastic crate in the depths of the freezer, where they're easy to reference?

I make my meatloaf by hand, but that's 'cause I do 5lb at a time and it's not that hard to do it by hand in that quantity using a big foodservice bowl--and the bowl is easier to scrub than the mixer. But I do use the mixer for a lot of other food jobs fraught with peril if overworked--cutting butter into flour for biscuits or scones, kneading pizza dough, working meatballs. The key is to watch it, run it on fairly low speed, and turn the thing off frequently to check texture and scrape the bottom/sides. I ruined a batch of biscuit dough once by pasting the fat into the flour. Never again.

This is my last official blog post--it's time for the next candidate to take over. But I wanted to mention this morning's breakfast first. My folks came back to my house to join my husband and I for a late-morning breakfast. I prepared a base of sauteed mushrooms, tomato concasse and chicken andouille sausage from Poche's market in Louisiana. I loaded the base into some New England bean pots my mother-in-law gave my husband years ago, and I cracked an egg or two on top of each. I added a dot of butter and baked the bean pots until the eggs were cooked through. We ate them with some sliced pears. Thanks for all the great comments here, folks. It's been a fun week!

I usually make a quick-and-dirty bread stuffing, using the ends from the bread I buy in from Ottenberg's. I'm open to other suggestions, though. Apples: peeled sliced organic Granny Smiths, sauteed in butter with a little cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar. The fromage blanc is the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company product, stirred with some cinnamon, some nutmeg, and a little Chinese 5-spice powder. Plus maybe a half-teaspoon of sugar. I put a dollop in the bottom of each bowl, then added the apples, and then topped it off with more fromage blanc. It wasn't very sweet and was a little tart, which I know is a set of flavors my parents appreciate.