bbq4meanytime

Use the store roasted (hot food) chicken or chicken breast for ease and good chicken flavor.

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Jenny, you had to dig up this thread...so I'll add my 2 cents I needed some ducks, Maple Leaf Farms Peking frozen ducks to be exact. My Shoppers FW has them regularly, but I got there and they have only 2: one for $1.78 lb and one for $2.79 lb, a $6 difference between ducks. Go figure. I take the $12 bird and move on (I need 3). Giant has NADA, but I pick up some cooking sake. So then I go to Safeway and SCORE. For some reason Maple Leaf Ducks are $0.99 lb, yes $5.75 per duck. I grab all 5 in the bin. I don't get the price discrepancy between stores, buts that why I shop at around.

Either I have a juvenile sense of humor (very possible) or I think it's really brave of the chef to have the phrase "pea sauce" on a menu. tee hee Your worse than me I should also add that service was spot on (but lunch wasn't very busy either).

We hit this for lunch today. I had the halibut with pea sauce and my firend had the butterfish (pacific fish very similar in taste and texture to halibut). Nice presentation, the fish was perfectly cooked. We split the smoked trout arugula salad (enough for 2 to split for lunch). Very tasty citus vinegarette. I wouldn't say it was an inexpensive lunch ($60 for 2, incl tip), but at least it was worth it in the end. Food was fresher and better prepared than Johnny's Half Shell, though.

"Coconut butter is the same as coconut oil. Its melting point is 78 degrees Fahrenheit. When it is solid, it is referred to as coconut butter and when it is melted it is referred to as coconut oil. " No, kerisik is not coconut butter. You make coconut oil from coconut milk. Simmer long enough, coconut milk will separate into two things - oil and 'oil-waste' which looks not unlike curds. Kerisik is essentially the coconut meat with contains coconut milk within. When coconut meat is toasted and grounded, some oil (milk) will come out of it. Both the grounded toasted coconut meat as well as the oil makes up what is called kerisik. I hope that explains kerisik further. (Sorry about your not being well. Wishing you a speedy recovery.) edited to add: how to make coconut oil Interesting .... the 'oil-waste' I mentioned above is a direct translation from the Malay language but in this site it is referred to as 'coconut sugar'. It doesn't taste sweet though, but rather creamy. It is usually left to brown in the coconut oil itself and used as a topping on Malay 'cakes'. I actually just off the phone with my mom about the coconut oil thing . On the island, they extract the milk and heat it until the oil separates out, just like you describe. She didn't have a name for the "oil-waste" (as you call it), but said they strained it out. There is another way to make "cold-pressed" coconut oil by allowing the unheated milk to ferment and separate out. The oil base is then heated slightly to remove any moisture. Some pacific cultures use this method, but the peeps of the motherland island didn't use this approach.

I'm fortunate that my mom recently gave me an island-style (polynesian-micronesian) coconut grater. It has a metal flattened head about 1.5" in diameter with a very sharp metal serrated edge and is attached to a plank. You sit on the plank (on a chair or stool) and grate the coconut over a bowl. Extremely efficient. So I attempted kerisik this weekend. It seems that you have pound the toasted coconut in small batches (my mortar is small). Any way around this? Can you store the unpounded toasted coconut (so I can pound only the amount that I need). Is there an advantage to to pounding the coconut as needed as opposed to pounding all of it and storing the kerisik? Thanks.

Having just returned from there over Memorial Day, I can tell you we had some really good whole belly clams and chowder at Sam's up in Sandwich @ the marina. I did talk with my relatives about good restaurants be we didn't get out much to eat (the other places we tried were pretty bad, in particular another "seafood restaurant" at the marina). Cooked up a lot of lobster and scallops at home instead

I tried injecting but the injector clogged, and clogged and clogged and the liquid shot out the back end of the injector, butter was all over the counter and my hands and the end result didn't nearly justify my anguish. I brine now.

So I guess the high prices we pay at some of these restaurants are not for the marquee chefs but for the debt service on the loan?

Why all this defense of absentee-chefs? I think its a matter of perspective: some people expect the chef to have a physical hand in the preparation of their meal, some apparently don't care. I think that if the price of dinner reflects, at least to some degree, the chef's name and reputation, then the chef should have some direct role in its preparation. If pricing is not a factor, then I don't care who cooks my food as long as it lives up to the restaurant's reputation. On a side note, we once dined at an "acclaimed chef's" restaurant and the food was sub-par. The chef normally is in the kitchen along side his crew but was not that evening. A friend suggested that perhaps that was the reason for our disappointment but I disagreed - food quality shouldn't matter at a restaurant of that caliber merely because the chef took a night off.

Jason, I'd like to branch out into making cured sausages. I'll look at the website more closely too. The only cured meat I've made is the duck breast (pictures above). What basic set up do I need for stuffing casings?

I've read that nitriates/nitrates are necessary when making cured sausages because of the high potential for the introdcuiton of bacteria since the meat is chopped (as opposed to left whole). I'd be interested in learing more about your techinique and results making sausages.

Yes, reconstituted with home-made chicken stock (made according to the eGCI lesson). Well then I'm afraid that's as good as Dona Maria's will get. Actually, if you make the whole jar and simmer some turkey or chicken thighs in it for an hour or so, it will get better, but only a little.

I promised a report - dull, dull, dull! It had none of the freshness or complexity I recall from my first attempt at a mole dish from scratch. I keep thinking "muddy" - I guess I need a vocabulary to describe taste experiences but maybe "mole" (the animal) and muddy connect reasonably well Did you reconstitute it with stock? Stock will make a big difference in the end result. I think Dona Maria is passable, but certainly not in comparison to homemade, which is a task. But I freeze several jars after making it and it holds well that way. A friend who grew up in Mexico swears by Dona Maria mole. I did not like the Dona Maria Pipian, though.

I saw some frozen ones in Cape Cod over the weekend, but with live lobsters @$6 per lb. sloshing around in the tank next to me, I didn't think twice about it.

Personally I'd stay and eat at the Flint Hill Public House in Flint Hill, VA on a sat night and then catch Sunday brunch at Four & Twenty Blackbirds across the street. The Ashby Inn is in Paris, VA, nice location but the meal is so-so. L'Auberge Provencal is very nice B&B, but we were thoroughly unimpressed and downright disappointed with the meal (plus it set us back about $300+ for 2 people to add insult to injury). There are lots of places in Fauquier, Rappahanock and Loudoun counties. You can do it for $400, but you'll have to either settle for a less expensive meal or a less expensive B&B.

I've only been to the DC location once and given the geographic scope of the menu, I was careful to pick out something I thought was unique (i.e. I wouldn't order sushi from there because I assume a busy sushi bar would have more turnover and hence fresher sushi). But I did order trout in a banana leaf or something like that that was pretty good, along with an appetizer that was good.

The salvadorean street food/appetizer: two thick tortillas (2-3x thicker than a mexican one)' date=' sandwiched together with melted cheese in the middle. If you eat pork, try the pupusa [i']revueltas, which is cheese and little bits of pork. Served with a little salsa and salvadorean cole slaw

Nice post. Maybe next time you make some you can post some pictures? Pictures of the kerisik and paste stages would be helpful. But I found the instructions clear enough to try out. Edit: question, when you say marinate the beef with the "blended ingredients", do you mean the paste? All of the paste or just some?

Count me in as a new carnitas recruit. I picked up a small shoulder (5.5lbs) cut it into large chuncks, an not having any tequila or OJ around, poached it in 2 cans of beer, 1 can of chicken broth and some aromatics. I was really surpised at the wonderful aromas that permeated the kitchen. Afterwards, a full fry in hot oil Fresh tortillas and roasted tomatillo salsa finished it off. Thanks all for the inspiration!

That language is strangely reminiscent of Rocks' rant re: Rosa Mexicano, no? Maybe I'm missing something (again). Indeed. Unless of course the mysterious Rocks=Kliman

Great thread, I know what I'll be eating for the next few weeks. Now if I could only find some fresh masa for tortillas I'd be set.

Monica,I'm a little confused. I thought the chickpea dish is called chana masala. What is technically chole & chana masala?

Chipotle is good for that new-fresh-mexi food, but I prefer Baja Fresh. Even in California (where mexican joints abound like cicadas in DC) the locals were impressed with Baja Fresh when it debuted in the mid-90s. Wendy's may have some ownership in Baja Fresh, but you can franchise a store for a cool $2M+ (at last check 2 years ago). There's local taco joint called Teocalli Tamale in Herndon that is very similar to Chipotle but 10x better in flavor.