ellencho

Ellen, do you do anything special when you age the beef in your fridge (I have often wondered about aging beef myself instead of buying prime aged beef)? Thanks Percy ← Hi Percy, aging meat in the fridge is really quite effortless.. These are my recommendations: #1, don't trim anything off beforehand because you'll be trimming it off later (duh) #2 place the meat atop a rack to catch any drippings, #3, keep the meat where ever your fridge is coolest with an open box of baking soda nearby because aging meat smells funky, and lastly make sure you age a bone-in roast, as opposed to a boneless one. I'm not 100% sure of why the bone-in ones taste better, but if that's how Peter Luger's ages their meat, that's how ellencho will age hers! Good luck, and don't forget the pics!

Allura your steak turned out perfect! Last night was a 3 bone rib roast that I aged for 6 days in my fridge served with sauteed broccoli rabe and fingerling potatoes roasted in some of the fat rendered from the beef. Here's a pic of the rib roast straight from the fridge: Here it is all roasted and ready to eat - it was tender and flavorful, it took 2.5 hrs to cook: Here's a slice of it with the rabe and the potatoes: And if you haven't seen this pic from the chocolate cake thread, this was for dessert.

Ok, so I know I didn't wrap up my cake immediately after taking it out of the oven out of fear that the cake would clump up and stick to the plastic but regardless of that, I think it turned out pretty good. It was chocolate-y tasting enough for my liking, and the crumb was nice and moist. I served it with a half milk half dark chocolate ganache and I think the sweetness of the ganache complemented the chocolatey-ness of the cake.

Does it still count as an amuse bouche if they are mini desserts that you receive before and after your main dessert? Fiamma's in NYC did this for us, and good lord I'm glad they did.

Oh I know! Well the lack of peanuts were on behalf of the boyfriend who only likes peanuts in butter form. I don't think nuts are 100% necessary in this recipe. It's a good "extra" IMO but if it isn't there it's not the biggest deal. The lack of cilantro was an error on my part - I simply forgot to pick up a bunch from the market. It still tasted good though but I agree that cilantro and lime definitely brightens up the dish.

I'm a gas stove fryer too, and what I try to do is not overload my dutch ovens with oil because the weight of the chicken parts will displace the oil and you don't want to cause a spill over. If you have some sort of reliable thermometer that you can keep in the oil during frying that would help too. That way you can jack up or lower your heat as you need to to keep your chicken happy.

Hi all. I used this cook off as an excuse to use up my many leftovers in my refrigerator. The pad thai that I made tonight was loosely based on the David Thompson recipe and contains an obscene amount of protein - pork, chicken, shrimp, fried tofu and eggs. First I soaked my noodles in water for a couple of hours. I then made up my sauce which consisted of fish sauce, sugar, palm sugar and tamarind pulp. I allowed the ingredients to dissolve on low heat for a couple minutes. Then I fried up two scrambled eggs (I don't like to mix the shallots directly into the eggs). After that I softened 2 shallots and then added a bunch of oyster mushroom that I had been wanting to use up lately. Next I added fried tofu, and once that warmed through, an obscene amount of meat that I wanted to empty from my freezer. Once the meat was cooked through I added the pickled radish, sprouts, and the drained noodles and allowed them all to soften a bit. Then I added the sauce, sliced up snow peas, and added the eggs back in. This is my final product minus the lime wedges that I forgot to add to the photograph before we devoured this mess. The noodles were topped with the remaining bean sprouts and some scallion. If anyone is interested in the recipe PM me, it's really easy and once your noodles are soaked thoroughly it's quick too.

I enjoy bibimbap but I can't justify paying for it in restaurants since it's essentially a clever way of using leftovers. For the most part, in Korean restaurants, I won't order anything that I can easily make at home, but I make an exception for bokkum bap because for some reason mine at home never turns out as good as what they make in restaurants. But my favorite thing to do with rice is taking leftover bap, boiling up some water, and then pouring the boiled water over the bap and then eating that with leftovers. When I went to college, I developed a taste for Rice Dream because it reminded me of the taste of eating the watered down rice.

You know, I was thinking about that same exact thing today. I was wondering if I should wrap the cakes while they're warm, and if I did, whether the steam would cause the cake to stay moist, or if the cake would just stick to the plastic wrap and leave me with a gummy mess when I unwrapped them. So I compromised, and I let the cakes cool about half an hour, and wrapped them up while still warm. They weren't blazing hot when I wrapped them but they still had plenty of heat still in them since I had cooled them in their pans. Thanks for the advice Wendy!

I'm late to the party (as usual), but I pretty much followed Nightscotsman's protocol of mixing the ingredients because it made the most sense to me. This is how I differed from the original recipe: I added 2 Tbs of corn syrup like tejon used in the original Chocolate cake thread. I also added a teaspoon of some chocolate extract that I picked up a couple months ago at a random kitchen supply shop. I think I should have added two tsps instead of 1 since there were 2 tsps of vanilla but I wimped out because I was worried about how strong the extract would be. Oh well that's what I get for being a wimp. Here's a pic of the extract if anyone is curious. This is a pic of everything set up before I combined them into the batter. Dry ingredients, creamed butter and sugar, and wet ingredients - duh :) Here is the batter all mixed up and ready to go. I used two 9 inch pans and managed to fill them with about 2 lbs 12 oz of batter. Here they are cooling after 55 minutes in my 300 degree oven. They domed a bit during baking and one of them cracked even though I used cakestrips. But they went down as you'll see in the next pic after this one. This is the side view of the two cakes cooling. See? They ended up sinking a bit after I took them out of the oven. So I'm going to let these babies cool before I wrap em up and stick them in my freezer overnight. Tomorrow I shall frost them with a nice whipped ganache. I'll try to remember to post pics tomorrow.

For me it's usually meat. Even meat I don't particularly care for, like duck, or lamb.

Hi ghostrider, I'm awfully sorry to hear about your greasy food experience at Rangoon. I too have a system that is sensitive to excess grease and I can understand the discomfort you probably felt afterwards. Oddly enough, I've never had a unpleasantly greasy meal at Rangoon. I've eaten there several times, and the owner always recognises us and is really kind to us and we always enjoy the food. The only thing that I've had there that was greasy was their thousand layer bread. But from what I understand, it's supposed to be somewhat greasy. I'm sorry you had a bad experience there, I wonder if perhaps the cook had an off night? Or maybe they've hired a new cook?

^^ Looks like a little tea strainer ball to me.

^^ My bad The types of tripe I saw was the kind with the honeycomb pattern and the really thin kind with the tiny nubbies on it. I did see intestine cut into tubes, does that count as tripe? Or maybe they had a different variety of meats the night your friend visited?

I once saw Bob Blumer, the Surreal Gourmet, make sunny side up "eggs" using cheesecake and apricot halves. The recipe is at the very bottom of the page. There's another illusion type recipe on that page too, for making a painter's palate with a different dish for each color.

Ooh! I've been a long time browser here, but I just got a digital camera last week so now I can participate. For dinner tonight we had a salad that I adapted from an Alfred Portale recipe I once saw him make on Martha Stewart. The bleu cheese crostini is something that I adapted from Tyler Florence. It's a pear and mixed greens served with a bleu cheese crostini. Here's a pic of the salad without the crostini - I apologize for the gluetrap in the background - not very appetizing huh? Sorry about that :( And here's a pic of the crostini -

So far the one who bugs the least is Giada diLaurentiis.

I'm a big fan of Green's babka, especially the chocolate kind, all swirled up and melt in your mouth delicious. It looks similar to this (sorry, I was unable to find pics of Green's babka): http://www.challahconnection.com/store/ima...%20breakmed.jpg Does anyone have a recipe out there that makes a babka that anything like what I posted? They DO sell Green's chocolate babka around here but the prices are outrageous. Thanks in advance.

Ah, thanks for posting your article Dan. You're right about there being way too much Rachael Ray on the food network. Overexposure seems to be a speciality of Food Network - before Rachael Ray it was Tyler Florence and Bobby Flay, before them it was Sara Moulton and Emeril. IMO, the dumbing down of Food network programming is really insulting. Look at the PBS shows for example. Most of them have likeable hosts, good production quality and are entertaining, but make you want to cook. Lidia Bastianich comes to mind when I think of a quality food show host. Same with Jacques Pepin or Colameco. They know what they're talking about, show how to make food in such a way that both beginner and experienced chefs don't feel overwhelmed or talked down to, and all the while encourage people to enjoy good food.

I've been watching a lot less Food Network lately, and mainly watching the food shows that they show on PBS during the weekends. I have to admit I'm not the biggest Sara Moulton fan, but I certainly respect her and her accomplishments. All I hope is that they do not use Sandra Lee as her replacement. For the love of god, do not give that woman more air time!

Good question. We didn't booze last night but I do recall seeing a bar there so I'm assuming they have OB :)

I'll post the phone number and actual addy when I get it, but for now I can tell you it's on the corner of 11th and Washington in South Philly, a block down from the shopping center that has pho75 in it. They're next to the 7-11 on the corner. So don't be fooled by the name, it's a Korean bbq buffet joint. I think they have an a la carte menu, but most folks are there for bbq buffet. It's one of those "cook your food at your table" places, and they have a buffet cart full of different meats. They had bulgogi, 2 types of tripe, intestines, spicy pork bulgogi, pork belly, chicken, chicken gizzards, and squid - spicy and not spicy, both seasoned very well. Over at the non-meat buffet, they had different fruits (oranges, melons, pineapple) as well as salad, inari, salad and their own veggie sushi rolls. Along with the buffet they bring you a bowl of rice and a bowl of soup (tonight was a clam soup with strands of egg floating in it). What did I think? I guess I'd give it a B but only because the meat tasted good and because it was a bargain. From my personal experience, as a Korean-American, I've definitely had better Korean bbq buffet, and I wonder if maybe this BBQ place is more for non-Koreans rather than Koreans. This place IMO did not have as many choices as the other ones that I have visited, and it's not necessarily the meat that I was disappointed in, but I was disappointed in the lack of the side dishes that one encounters at Korean bbqs. They give you a couple little plates of banchan - kimchee, sweetened dried anchovies, seaweed, some fish cake but they don't have any at the buffet, which is sort of odd. The wait staff is REALLY nice though, they are all young and good about explaining what is what at your table if you don't know. THe lunch buffet is $10 and the dinner is $15.

In asian markets I've seen two forms of pea shoots sold. The first one is the pea leaf shoots and those usually have some sort of little tendril attached and the actual stem that the leaves are attached to are hollow. THese are my personal favorites. The only problem with these are that sometimes I get lazy and don't bother to check to see if there are any older or thicker leaves on them and after they're cooked I'll get a couple bites with some extra chewy vine in them. The second form is the pea shoot. It's smaller, has a thinner white stem, and has two small green leaves attached at the same node. I guess it's more like a pea sprout. In Chinatown, if you go down tenth from Arch, towards Race, make a left at the corner, the first little market you run into, (forgive me I don't know the name) should have pea shoots for under 3 bucks a lb. They also have REALLY cheap watercress. Like 50 cents a bunch cheap. Scallions are 35 cents a bunch. The lady that owns the store is really nice. This place is very recognizable, their produce display spills out onto the street.

I've made a couple things from BBA and I took some pics of the ciabatta that I made this weekend (with a non-digital camera so please excuse the picture quality). I've made Cook's Illustrated's ciabatta recipe which uses unbleached all purpose flour and required a biga (which is very good incidentally). The BBA offers a poolish recipe and a biga recipe and I chose the poolish recipe to see the difference. This first pic is of the poolish about to be mixed into the flour/yeast/salt mixture. I was surprised at how much my kitchenaid struggled with this bread dough. It's probably because King Arthur makes such a strong protein-rich bread flour and before I was used to using all purpose KA flour. But luckily it made it through the mixing and managed to help me make an angel food cake later in the day . This second pic is of the first stretching, folding and rising This pic is of the second stretching, folding and rising This pic is of the shaping of my loaves and the third rising This is a pic of the final product. Unfortunately by then I had run out of film in my camera and was unable to take a pic of the inside of the bread, but I assure you it was nice and craggy and had a great flavor. The crust also was perfect. We dug out the inside of the bread and turned two of them into cuban sandwiches and ate the bread we dug out with French butter - very international dontcha think? I don't necessarily know if I can compare the poolish or the biga based breads because they come from different sources. I feel that I can comment on what recipe I like better and I do have a slight inclination towards the Cook's Illustrated ciabatta recipe mainly because it was gentler on my Kitchenaid and I did happen to notice a slightly better texture to the inside of the bread. Both breads however, had excellent crusts, beautiful craggy insides and tasted great.

I had no idea Debreaux's sold bbq! I've had their wings and they were pretty forking impressive. The lady who owns it (Mrs Debreaux?) is awfully nice but you're right, their service is horribly slow, and IMO a bit pricey. And I've been living near the Main Line for years now and I had no idea that Zeke's existed. Do you have an address?