vengroff

Weekday Niciose Salad Serves 2 as Main Dishor 4 as Salad. I made this salad one weekday evening after a discussion on the Washington Post thread about food articles for people who don't want to spend any time cooking. The idea is that something quick can still use quality ingredients and not cost a lot. Technically, there should be olives in this, but I didn't have any. Feel free to add them when you make it. For the salad 500 g small Yukon gold potatoes, about 5cm across. 200 g green beans, cut into bite-size lengths 75 g red onion, sliced then cut into bite-size stips 200 g Roma (plum) tomatoes, quartered lengthwise 2 large eggs 6 oz canned Italian tuna packed in olive oil salt and pepper to taste For the dressing 50 ml champagne vinegar 1 T dijon mustard 150 ml extra virgin olive oil salt and pepper to taste Bring a large pot of water to a boil. If you have a pot with a steamer insert that stays at the top of the pot, even better. Cut the potatoes into quarters and add to the boiling water. Boil until tender, about 15 minutes. After 5 minutes, put the eggs in along with them. In the mean time, make the dressing. Combine the vinegar and mustard in a bowl. Whisk vigorously, and while wisking, slowly drizzle the oil into the vinegar. The dressing should emulsify as you add the oil. The whole process will take just about two minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. When the potatoes are tender, remove them and the eggs. Transfer both to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process. Now put the steamer insert into the pot and steam the beans until just tender, about 3 minutes. If you really want to save time, you can steam the beans over the potatoes as they boil. When the beans are done, shock them in a bowl of cold water, just as you did the potatoes. Drain the potatoes and beans thoroughly, then combine them with the onions. Season with salt and pepper. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with about 2/3 of the dressing. Quarter the eggs and decorate the salad with them and the tomatoes. Heap the tuna in the center, and pour the remaining dressing over it. Serve with crusty French bread. Keywords: Salad, Main Dish, Easy, Fish, Potatoes, French ( RG319 )

The New York Board of Trade offers a futures contact on cocao for delivery to various east coast ports. Here's a partial description of the contract. Upcoming contracts are trading around $2K for a 10 metric ton contract, enough for several months of small scale production at reasonable yields. Does anyone here know: Who are the players in this market, particularly the ones taking physical delivery? What's the quality of the product involved? The contract states it has to meet F.D.A. standards for importation, and mentions that there are standards for defects, bean count, and bean size. Unless this stuff is bottom of the barrel quality-wise or the standards are unreliable, the exchange seems to limit the need for a small player to have an agent on site in the producing country. Interesting to note that the U.S. intervenes to secure a stable supply of crude oil, whereas the French do so for chocolate.

Gotta love the 'ners. I was with them through the tough times in the pre-Jr. days, and still am. Too bad they only come to Baltimore once this season. See the Baltimore Get-together thread for a right-coast take on baseball and dining.

So, what's good to eat on the Hill? I like La Loma for Mexican and decent Tex-Mex if you crave it. They'll give you pintos instead of black beans if you ask, which is a big plus in my book. I though I liked Kenny's BBQ, but it has since proven to be inconsistent. White Tiger has some interesting Indian food. I don't think there's much at the high end on the Hill, or at least I haven't tried any. I also have yet to try most of the places on the Pennsylvania Ave strip. What are your favorites?

I recently got ahold of a copy of Stephen T. Beckett's The Science of Chocolate. This is more or less an overview of his magnum opus Industrial Chocolate Manufacture and Use, which it seems is now out of print. After reading the book, I now have a good theoretical understanding of how chocolate is made. Of course, I still have no practical experience whatsoever. What I'm left wondering is, how small a scale is still practical for the end-to-end process, starting with dried fermented beans and ending with edible couverture? How much room would there be for custom production runs in a small shop? I see a lot of talk in this forum about the relative merits of different chocolates from different vendors, but don't recall anyone ever mentioning a supplier willing to work with pastry chefs to custom formulate a product with exactly the desired characteristics for a particular use. Is it simply not economically feasible to try to work in this niche? I'm guessing that the lower limit for a viable production line would be around five hundred pounds a week. Note, I have no personal interest in entering this line of business; I am just curious whether it exists, and if not, why not.

Thanks, mamster. Now that the overall layout of our kitchen remodel is in place, it's time to attack the storage containers within the cabinets. I don't have a label printer. Instead, I use the low-tech approach of cutting out part of the original bag or box and tossing it in the container with the goods being stored. Yet another reason for clear containers. FG, how much do those Bourgeat Modulus containers run? Are they bulletproof too?

I should add that deep down, I'm still a Dungeness guy. I'll have to sample more of this blue crab as the season goes on.

I agree with the no-sandwich approach. If the crabcake doesn't need bread in it, it doesn't need bread around it, especially the slices of wonder-looking bread they offered. As for holding together, the cake flaked nicely into fork-sized portions of a couple of lumps each.

Here's that Boog's BBG Pork Sandwich and the mega-Weber it came from Foot-long dog on the club level was a disappointment. Despite the fact that they were purchased before the game even began, both the bun and the dog had been sitting around to long and dried out. Peanuts purchased by hjshorter from a vendor outside the park were very good. We didn't have any from in the park, but hjshorter assured us they are inferior.

Start with any recipe that calls for chicken breasts. It will be better with thighs.

Thanks to all who attended. A great culinary time was had by all. It made up for the fact that there was only one decent half-inning of baseball in one of the shortest (2:14) full-length games I have ever attended. For those of you who were not able to make it, some pics will follow. The theme was crab and baseball, but it may as well have been crab baseball. The Fraidley's lump crabcake ($12.95) is about the size and shape of a baseball. Almost purely crab, with just a light crust on the outside. It's served up simply with a small salad garnish and tarter sauce that should be skipped. There was another place in Lexington Market selling "lump" crabcakes for $5.98, but they looked like a lump or two plus much filler. Stick to Fraidley's. Also in the market, there were plenty of pork products and some good looking fresh fish. We were also shocked to run into eGullet's very own awbrig, cooling his heels in one of the vendor's display cases.

Today's WSJ Tastings column by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher tackles kosher carbernets and chardonnays. Best of tasting goes to a 99 Hagafen Cellars Cab from Napa for $37.99. They also really liked the Baron Herzog Cellars Cab for $14.39 and the Blacksberg Estate chardonnay from South Africa at $13.99, especially for the prices. It's on the web, but for paid subscribers only.

Due to a last-minute recovery, the ticket is taken. Thanks.

Due to a last minute illness, we have one spot open for crab cakes and baseball tonite. Actually, we could have many spots open for crab, but we only have one extra baseball ticket. PM me if you are interested. Crab is at 4:30, baseball at 7.

That adds up to 132%, which sounds like a great meal to me. Seriously, though, would the strong advocates of the importance of visual presentation in taste argue that a blind person is not capable of fully experiencing the flavor of a top dish?

I don't think most of the posts here were saying there is no place for TVP. I think the point of the discussion is that if you are fortunate enough to have a choice there are tastier options out there. These include real meat or soy prepared in other ways. Isn't the pursuit of tasty options the main point of most of the threads here on eGullet? I'll look out for some TVP products next time I go to the supermarket, and given them another try.

Lately at breakfast time I've been juicing two juice oranges together with half of a medium sized lime. It's nothing remotely exotic, but I really like the way the lime adds some tanginess to the orange. What combinations do you particuarly like, and what proportions do you use? I've long since given up on juice bars since most of them are so wildly inconsistent in the proportions they use.

Excellent. I will have to stop in. Did they have boar?

The menu is clearly missing: Trio (3oz each of 3 different flavors) $5 They need to give customers a chance to sample several of these flavors at once.

TVP is made from soy. It is processed in such a way as to have a texture that is said to resemble meat. It can be found in meatless burgers, hot dogs, and the like. In my opinion, if you don't want to eat meat, don't eat meat, but don't waste your time with the fake stuff. It's awful.

Is this the basic idea?

At the peak of their populatity, the California Rasin themed dolls, toys, and collectables were generating more revenue per year than the rasins they represented. I suppose it's safe to assume JAZ has no love for them either.

I keep mine in a block with horizontal slits, so the knives rest on their sides instead of their edges. My 12" chef knives are too big for the block, so they go in a drawer in sheaths. The Fat Guy method seems good, and I have been tempted by this approach in the past. However, I wonder how he keeps Momo and other young visitors from developing an interest in the exposed blades.

Despite being the author of the lunch report that inspired this thread, I'm with the Steves. If a reviewer can only have a single meal, it should be dinner. Obviously, three or four visits, including at least one lunch, is going to give the reviewer a broader collection of data to work with. I think the question of dinner-only reviews becomes more interesting if you turn it on its head. What if a reviewer went the opposite direction, and built him or herself a niche reviewing lunches only? It's not unreasonable to believe that there is a place for this in a large city. There are a lot of people who dine out more at midday than they do in the evenings. The audience is probably mostly office workers and businesspeople, but also includes city visitors, bargain hunters, and those who enjoy dining in the city but have family obligations that force them to retreat to the suburbs most evenings. Think of how many times the lunch at Bouley is recommended on the New York forum. Clearly there is interest in lunch. Maybe one of eGullet's own aspiring food writers could give the lunch beat a shot in their city?

I went to Curacao a few years ago and for some reason ended up coming back with six different colors of the stuff. Probably because I sampled them all at the end of the distillery tour and was then easily seperated from my money. Still have most of it.