Malawry

OK, so Squids, JPW and I will be hitting Jackie's for dinner and Mayorga for post-prandial beverages. Once they are open we'll pick a date. I can't wait!

Impressive job, Steve. Your creativity and your speed are equally astounding! You guys look deservedly tired in that last photo.

I vote for joining. Nobody wants to fight with the charming Mrs. JPW after all! (You, I could probably take on. ) I'll try to keep an eye on the site and report back any opening dates. Mark, I wonder what kind of wine list they can drum up given the circumstances in this county?

'Cause we've been suffering long enough. WE WANT A GOOD RESTAURANT IN THE DOWNTOWN SS AREA! A more reasoned response: because downtown Sil Spring is undergoing a renaissance, and this is a chance for Cashion et al to get in on the ground floor of what is sure to become an entertainment and dining destination over the next decade or so. The new AFI cinema, the first two phases of the Downtown Silver Spring development, the new multiplex, and rumors of the overhaul of City Place are all contributing to a very friendly restaurant environment. Surely the restaurants will follow...we have a taste with the established chains (local and national) opening in the Downtown Silver Spring development and with the Red Dog Cafe not too far from the downtown area, so it was only a matter of time before somebody like Cashion took a chance. (I'm hopefully wondering if Jose Andres will open something up here next.)

There's a website now for the restaurant Ann Cashion is involved in helping to open in downtown Silver Spring: Jackie's. Who wants to join me in pasting my salivating face to the window until opening day?

I should be in. After all, if not you'll all call me chicken. OK, that was a bad pun.

Ack--I've been out of town and didn't see that this got coughed up again. If I can I will try to stop by Saturday--we shall see. It's a great little shop, more herring than I think I've seen anywhere else in the area (they've got Parkway Deli and Snider's Super Foods beat, easily). Plus I'm amenable to Polish sausages these days, so if I can make it in I'll pick a few up.

My favorite cucumbers are the middle-eastern style cukes grown by Wheatland Vegetable Farms. They're small, fairly thin-skinned, absolutely delicious with no bitterness and lots of cuke flavor. Mmmmmm! One cool thing to do with your cukes is to cut them into large (1"+) chunks and tunnel out the seeds and pulp with a grapefruit spoon. Stuff the center with whatever sounds good...cream cheese and gravlax, lamb kibbeh, a hummus-like chopped garbanzo mixture. Doesn't suck. I adore Thai-style cucumber salad with rice wine vinegar, a dash of sugar, salt, cilantro, mint. Very refreshing in the summertime. I also love the American vinegar and onion salad. And they're perfect shredded, salted, drained, stirred into strained yogurt, and enhanced with either an Indian tempering oil or some crushed garlic for raita or tzatziki.

Fresh pasta makes the best lasagna, IMO. I don't bother to boil the sheets before laying them in. Actually I usually slap them out of the pasta maker and layer them in the dish immediately, stopping cranking on the maker periodically to lay down the next layer of sauce etc. before getting more noodles done.

I'm interested in attending, depending on when and where we meet. I'm not a BBQ type cook but would still be game for eating BBQ made by somebody else.

I am terrible at names. Hopefully others will swim in and identify themselves. Here's who I remember from Monica's pix. In the top photo, the lady in the pretty dress is Babka Next photo, the table to the right is occupied by (from left) Mnebergall and Mrs. Mnebergall, and then I'm afraid I can't remember who was who at the rest of the table. The third pic I'm good with since I was at the table myself. From left, Squids, me, Txaggie, Cjsadler, Mdt, Mrs. JPW, JPW. Next, we have Mrs. Bilrus, Bilrus, and Monica's husband (with his back to the camera). Next, on the right in the center the tall guy is DCFoodie. Behind him is Mrs. DCFoodie. I think the rest of the people at their table were either coworkers of his or partners/friends of those coworkers. The people in the second-to-last photo that I can identify are also in the last photo. In the last pic, sitting against the wall are Stacie, a friend Edward brought, and then Edward. Babka is sitting opposite them. There were three more tables of people that Monica didn't capture. Otello showed up with a whole crew of friends, for example.

Baja Fresh is not too far away, but you're better off with the Well-Dressed Burrito. (Call ahead for quick in-and-out.) You could probably make it to Ben's Chili Bowl, the P Street Whole Paycheck, the Safeway on 17th easily from there. If Bistro du Coin serves lunch they're a natural choice. I like the lunch at Firefly too.

Chef Sudhir Seth came out to talk to us a little bit about the meal's setup before dinner started. (Monica played a funny trick on us beforehand to break the ice, but I won't ruin it by posting it here. Suffice it to say she got us all to say something in unison that was blatantly wrong and absolutely hilarious.) We started off with ambi panna, a sweet, minty-tasting green mango drink seasoned with black salt. The first food we ate came from the "chaat counter," where Chef Sudhir and staff assembled bhelpuri, dahibhalla, gol gappas, and papri chaat before our eyes. It was hard not to load up on all these wonderful treats; my plate is an attempt at restraint in light of the many many courses to come. Ragda pattice followed, some pan-fried potato cutllets drizzled with tamarind and hot green sauces. A white pea curry was served on the side; many of the folks at my table thought it was one of the top three items they ate last night. Salty lassi, a yogurt drink spiked with roasted cumin, helped cool the mouth from the spicy potato patties. I believe this was the nimbu pani, or Indian style lemonade. (Things got a little confusing at times with the beverages and the foods for me, as I am mostly unfamiliar with Indian street foods. Apologies if I get names mixed up as a result.) In any case, this was a sweet. refreshing, fruity drink--just what I'd like on a hot summer day. Pao bhaji and some bread to go with it followed. This vegetable curry was a particular favorite of mine--the vegetables were cooked to the point where maximum flavor was extracted without losing the texture of their components. Plus the copper dishes, especially the bread holder with a little candle underneath, were really cool. I think Chef Sudhir's wife told me this was called Tandai, but I'm not sure. This particular drink was a special gift to us from DonRocks...thanks Don! Traditionally this beverage is, uh, chemically enhanced and served during an Indian festival of colors. Ours was not spiked but it was richly textured and flavored with assorted nuts (including pistachios and almonds), cardamom, and a rose petal on top. The aroma alone was killer. This is what eggnog wishes it could be when it grows up. Onion bhajia and masala wada, with a cooling pale green sauce, came out next. The onion bhajia were probably my favorite dish of the entire meal: lacy, crisp fried little nests of peppers and onions. The lentil fritters (masala wada) were small, dense little patties with cracked pepper flavor. I think this was the Jal Jeera beverage, but I'm not entirely certain. Samosas, filled with potato and drizzled with yogurt sauce and chutneys. The action picked up again when Chef Sudhir brought out his little porta-tandoor and started cooking things on it. Tawa and tandoori meats came off this makeshift griddle, and lamb kebabs and fried fish amristari (which I regarded as a sort of an Indian fish stick) were set out. There was puffed bread and chole bhature (a dark chickpea curry with a mysterious muddy-cinnamon undertone). The tandoor meats were extremely tender from their yogurt marinade, aromatic and beautifully charred around the edges. Some bread pakoras (which I didn't get an image of) were brought to our table as a sort of sidelight. Roohafza, or rose milk, was a sweet, floral counterpoint to all the hot grilled food. At this point some people were so nervous about making room for dessert that they left the meal and took a short walk. We were all pretty stuffed, but then the desserts came out... Jalebis (the squiggly orange things), rasbhari, besan laddoo, kalakand and shreekhand comprised a dessert course. I especially liked the jalebis, which are sort of like an Indian funnel cake (and which Txaggie was especially excited to see on the menu.) Some of the desserts were a little too sweet for my palate, but the milk cake (kalakand) had a gentle almond flavor that I really enjoyed and the shreekhand (saffron yogurt) was a welcome tart contrast. Masala chai and coffee followed. Edward (right) and friend looked a little beat after all that food. I suspect we all slept well last night. Chef Sudhir looked amazingly chipper after cranking out so much food for all of us. Special thanks to Monica Bhide, Chef Sudhir's wife, and especially Chef Sudhir Seth himself for a wonderful night!

Wow, that looks great!

Amen. What a great showcase for the beauty of Indian street food. Special thanks to the chef and especially his lovely wife, who kept coming over and talking to me about the dishes we enjoyed. Also thanks Don for the special treat you sent us...the nutty milk with cardamom and rose petals was particularly delectable. I really enjoyed the company at my table...JPW and his lovely wife, Mdt, Cjsadler, Txaggie, and Squids. It was great to share such a meal with people as interested and interesting as these. My only regret is that I didn't get as much time to spend with the people I hadn't met before as I'd like...I particularly enjoyed talking to Edward, and I would have liked to have gotten to know folks like Laniola, Otello, and Mnebergall. Hopefully next time we can circulate more. Thanks Monica for putting this together--what a great event! I will try to get my photos up by tomorrow.

Friends go great with salad!

Creamy tomato soup Slow-braised chicken thighs with onions A very crisp salad with romaine, bacon and friends Strawberries

My spouse is a huge fan of chicken parm, and we both are doing the low-carb thing. I make tomato sauce for chicken parm this way: Sweat a half a medium onion (diced) in EVOO with S&P. Add two or three smashed cloves of garlic, and dashes of oregano and thyme. Add two regular cans of diced, peeled tomatoes. Cook until most of the juices have concentrated and thickened up and it's sweetened up from reduction. (I usually start it over fairly high heat and then reduce the heat as the sauce thickens.) It usually takes 10-15 minutes to cook down, long enough for me to assemble a salad and cook off the chicken breasts. I then spoon the sauce over hot cooked chicken breast, top with cheese, and pop in an oven until the cheese melts. This makes a fairly chunky sauce, but if you want it more like what I usually see on chicken parm in your referenced dime-a-dozen joints, you can try pulsing it briefly in the food processor to break down the chunks. Or mash the sauce with the back of a wooden spoon while it's cooking. Or whatever. A lot of cheapie restaurants use canned tomato sauce instead of making their own, and sauces in these places may be augmented by things like dried basil and corn syrup that I believe distract from the tomato flavor of a really good sauce. Sometimes, I'd add a tiny pinch of sugar to my sauce, but on the low-carb diet you probably want to avoid that--and it's usually not necessary anyway. And fresh basil is always best...chiffonaded and stirred in at the very end or, better, sprinkled over the top of the cheese after it comes out of the oven. I am interested in hearing about how you are breading your chicken and what kind of bread you are using for sandwiches.

If it's the size that's the problem, yes, I think you will be unable to sample chard anytime soon. Sorry for the exposition; I wrote a paper on chard in culinary school.

Swiss chard is almost two vegetables in one. The stems take much longer to cook than the leaves. I almost always cook both stems and leaves for the same dish, but I cook the stems first and add the leaves later. The stems will get kind of woody and dried-out if stripped in advance, so no, I wouldn't prep the vegetable in advance of cooking it by more than an hour or two. I do find most chard can last in my fridge for 2-3 days before becoming wilted and tired. When it's time to eat, wash it, strip the leaves from the stems, and cut the stems and leaves as desired before cooking. The leaves will cook down quite a lot, though not so much as spinach leaves. I absolutely love swiss chard, especially as a ravioli filling or sauteed with pancetta as a base for a balsamic-glazed piece of roasted salmon. Mmmm!

I do the same thing, fifi. A batch of chicken stock at work is made with four whole chickens. The meat from the four chickens is just enough to serve everybody chicken salad for one lunch. Works out great.

I like to make it with celery, onion, mayo, chopped pecans and some raisins (which I soften and plump up by pouring boiling water over them and then letting them cool). Very popular with my girls.

I have a life policy of always behaving with a sense of urgency when I enter the kitchen. It's a hard one to engender, but it's important. I'm still slow compared to most professional cooks, but I'm catching up. Here are some things I do to increase my speed: Efficiency is key. Your mental planning is a big help. I'm always thinking of what I can do while other things are working, and try hard to maximize my time. I clean as I work as much as possible. By the time I serve dinner, I like to have nothing left to wash but the dishes on the table and the pot dinner just came out of. Develop good knife skills. Push yourself to cut faster and more precisely. If you use proper techniques and hustle yourself you'll get faster in no time. If you gather all your ingredients, prep them all, then lay them out in order, IMO you're wasting a lot of your time. Yes, you do need to be sure you have everything, but you should be able to prep as you're cooking too. If you're standing over the pot stirring and waiting until the onions are done enough to add the chicken, you're wasting time. You should be able to cut the chicken while the onions are going. Onions will cook just fine without you standing over them. For that matter, most people nudge their food around the pan far more often than necessary. And if you can do the pan-flipping thing you will spend even less time over the stove, you won't have to wash as many spatulas and spoons, and you'll impress your family and friends to boot.

I think there's nothing wrong with your technique, or with using milk (though I have not personally tried it). Your pan may be a little too hot. If your catfish coating starts to color too much on both sides before the fish is done, stick the whole pan in the oven at 400 degrees or so and finish cooking the fish in there. It shouldn't take more than three minutes in the oven and the fish contents will catch up to that delicious coating.

When I cut pasta, I toss it with cornmeal. This helps to keep the noodles separate. The cornmeal falls away to the bottom of the pot when I boil the noodles. I have successfully kept fresh egg pasta for a couple of days before boiling with no stickage and no cornmeal in the finished dish. (Caveat: This does mean you have to fish the pasta out of the pot rather than dunking the contents of the pot, water and all, into a colander when the pasta is complete. If you use the colander technique you'll deposit the cornmeal right back on the pasta!)