Malawry

If ya'll want to grab a Bawlmor bite and hit the game, you should! It sounds like a fun night. I won't be able to join you if you do this though, due to budgetary and time constraints.

Roasted herb-crusted salmon filet Rice pilau Red wine-braised ruby swiss chard Sometimes it's satisfying to make fairly ordinary food for dinner.

Ms. Shorter, if you happen to be in Northern Virginia sometime, stop by one of their TJs. NoVa (indeed, AllVa) allows wine and beer sales in convenience stores, supermarkets, and gourmet markets...just not hard liquor.

We had some neighbors over for an Americanized Asian dinner and game-playing: Potstickers Tofu satays with peanut sauce Sesame stir-fried green beans Broccoli/mushroom/carrot stir-fry Steamed rice They brought chocolate-peanut butter cookies and blondies with soy granules (they were good! ) for dessert. We successfully avoided thinking about snow for a few hours. Not bad!

Comfort food for a snowed-in day today. Brunch: challah french toast, jam, maple syrup, sliced apples, bananas Snack: chocolate chunk cookies, using a bunch of odds and ends of chocolate I had hanging around. Dinner: Three pizzas, one plain cheese, one spinach, one mushroom-red onion. Plenty of salad. Then I enjoyed a Citron sour while we played mah jongg. Wow, I didn't realize how much I could enjoy being snowed in.

Oh, I believe you when you say it can be done without acid. I just wondered idly what an acid-free gravlax would taste like as compared to the acid cures I've tasted. I don't think anything bad will happen if you open it up and check it out. Just wrap it tightly and reweight it when you're done, if it's not done.

I've made gravlax a few times, including a whole side that I split with my housemate for our respective Thanksgiving family gatherings. I cure mine for 3 days, flipping the filet every 12 hours. Thinner filets can indeed be done in 24-36 hours quite easily. I use a cure that includes red wine vinegar, and I'm curious as to how a cure without acid comes out. At school, when we learned about gravlax we were told that it's done when it's stiffened up like cooked flesh. The tail is usually done before the main body if you cure a whole filet, since the tail is thinner.

Pavarotti was in Sing Sing? Maestro is in Tyson's. What I've read and heard about it (one of my classmates is externing at the Ritz-Carlton property where Maestro is situated) is that I Ricchi is not a comparable restaurant, and Laboratorio is probably the closest comparison. There is no Metro in Tyson's Corner. There is the stop on the Orange line at Dunn Loring, and there are probably buses and cabs from there to the Ritz-Carlton...and buses and cabs back as well. If you really don't want to drive and your company all wants to drink that may be the most economical route...but if you're dining at Maestro's price points perhaps this is silly. A cab from the city will indeed be quite expensive. I don't dine out like I used to (and indeed, I am quite jealous of how quickly you've gotten around the hot spots in our fair city Vengroff...) but when I did I either took my partner with me or stuck to no more than two glasses of whatever. My partner doesn't drink but also is not a serious diner like I am, so he's not always along with me. I've not relied on cabs since I bought my house in Maryland a few years ago, as they're just too expensive if you don't start and end your trip in the District.

You may want to sit down with the mashgiach (person who supervises the bakery and certifies it as kosher-pareve) and iron out some of those questions. They can tell you better than we can what is and is not acceptable. When you talk to the mashgiach, here are some questions to ask: 1. How do I recognize a hechsher (symbol on a product certifying it is Kosher)? Which hechshers are acceptable to this bakery? (Different types of symbols represent different overseeing authorities, and not all mashgiachs accept all hechshers.) 2. How do I source Kosher products that are acceptable to the bakery? 3. What kinds of storage and equipment separations do I need to follow? Especially important if you work in an operation that is not entirely Kosher-pareve (if they sell meat or dairy in any form, this is the case). 4. How often do you visit? What are you looking for when you do visit? 5. What questions might patrons of the bakery be asking me, and how do I respond to them?

Cheddar mashed potatoes Braeburn apples dipped in horseradish mustard

Just plain, relatively mild Coach goat cheese from Fresh Fields. It's a little round piece. I didn't want something super-goaty. Plating: Three endive leaves with a small hunk of the cheese at the bottom fanned at the top of the plate. Sliced endive and the trout tossed with the dressing in the center. Sliced pear fanned at the bottom of the plate. Drizzled dressing on the endive and pear fans. Scrape of black pepper over the trout-endive mixture. I wanted to combine the pear with the trout and sliced endive mixture but our guest is opposed to fruit in savory dishes and I wasn't sure if she'd go for pear in the salad...so I wanted to make sure she could pick around it if desired. Turned out she had no issue with it and ate it all up.

Benchley apricot tea with local honey while getting things together. Endive, smoked trout, goat cheese and pear salad with mustard-apple cider vinaigrette Wild mushroom thyme frittata Pommes parmentier Cherry scones Blueberry muffins Bitter orange marmalade Plugra Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

Yes, thank you Sara for all the wonderful detail. Makes my mouth water. Please let us know what you sampled if you make it there for brunch.

Chickpeas curry-style, with garam masala from the Indian market, tomatoes and carrots Basmati rice Leftover stir-fried broccoli I wanted to do a platter of condiments with the chickpeas but ran out of time.

Sorry, that is where Wagshal's is. (Where Damian said.) Technically not "west end" at all although in my mind I sometimes confuse the areas. Thanks for the correction.

Meanwhile I have been trying to figure out where you can purchase a Smithfield ham in the District. (Can't help you on the smuggling end...) I think your best shot may be Wagshal's in the West End. It's not centrally located but you could easily get there and back during a short cab ride. I wonder if Dean and Deluca carries hams? If so they'll charge you handsomely for them. They're in Georgetown, a little more central but you still may need a cab or some walking shoes to get you there and back.

I beheaded a case of squabs for the Christmas Great dinners at school. After a while I got to enjoy the satisfying crunch of my chef's knife through the upper vertebrae. Dude, I used to be a vegetarian. What happened? I do cases of U-10 shrimp at work now, Dave. I dunno which are weirder: the ones that look like they went on a hunger strike (so I have to hunt to find the vein) or the ones who look like they dined on Plutonium (with the safety orange veins to prove it). I wear gloves when I do them. No desire to develop a shellfish intolerance. That seems to happen to a lot of people.

Could be worse. Chef Peter once tossed a squab head at me after we were teasing him about beheading the poor creatures. I've heard Chef Susan's classes are pretty good. Will you be assisting this class for its entire run? (*mutters "sucker" under breath*) Lots of people who assist do so because they want to take the classes but don't feel the expense is justifiable. It used to be possible to volunteer your way through the full-time program (I know at least one person who completed the program this way a long time ago) but I don't think they do this anymore. Fulltime students clean their own chicken backs. Did you by any chance attend the party for assistants in Gaithersburg on Sunday, December 8? If so, I was the chick hawking Chef Somchet's egg rolls. If not, well, you'll get invited to the same party next December but I will not be there.

Chicken backs really bothered me initially, but now I don't even pay attention to what they are when I'm working on them. It would be silly to get upset about it, especially since I now eat things like chicken on a somewhat regular basis. Were you at the Gaithersburg school? Or the Bethesda one?

Since you have alluded to the veg dining scene in DC, I thought you might be interested in talking about it directly. What are some of your favorites? I'm especially interested in your experiences eating vegetarian at the higher end, and wonder what you make of the selections at places like Nora, Vidalia, and the like. What do you think makes a restaurant vegetarian friendly? Do you think it's possible for a city like DC to support a fine dining vegetarian restaurant like Joia in Milan, Italy or perhaps Millennium in San Francisco? Why or why not? Do you think chefs in DC "get" vegetarian food?

I'm a big fan of beans. I keep several kinds in the freezer and I love making soups, stews, and so on out of them. I think beans have a somewhat peasant nature, though. How would you dress them up for a more formal meal? What about other vegetable proteins like tofu and tempeh?

How do you define vegetarian and vegan? And are these definitions important?

Pie crust can be made with just Crisco. It's not as good as half Crisco/half butter imo but it's all right, especially if you use really good fruit or vegs in the pie. American Pie Crust 12oz flour 1 ½ oz sugar 1 tsp salt 8oz Crisco 1/3 cup cold water Drop of lemon juice Combine flour, sugar and salt in mixer with paddle attachment. Run on low speed and add small pieces of Crisco until combined. Run in water combined with lemon juice very slowly until doughy. Knead briefly, divide in half, press into disks, wrap and chill at least 30 minutes before using.

Pizza must be in the air. I'm making it tonight, got the dough going yesterday. With cremini mushrooms, fresh spinach, red onion and anchovies. Mmmmmmm. Tossed salad and Beacon Hill cookies, take 1. Last night: Soft polenta, garlicky Swiss chard, and some mock chicken-type stuff. I still eat fake meat somewhat regularly.

Oh, yes. The Well-Dressed Burrito. How could I have forgotten about them? They're run by the same good people who run CF Folks (and the kitchen for Well-Dressed Burrito also functions as the catering kitchen for CF Folks). If I ordered from Well-Dressed I'd have to cut whatever I ordered in half and put it away so I wouldn't eat it until the next day...the food was so filling yet addictive that I'd eat it all if I sat down with it. I really liked their pinto beans, which are silky-rich on the tongue yet are not completely mushed...there's some whole beans in there with them. Good quesadillas too. Thanks for mentioning them. They are indeed in the alley running between 19th and 20th Streets, NW, just north of M Street.