eunny jang

You should have seen me last night, running on the balls of my feet in skinny heels across uneven sidewalks, late getting home, pissed off about my day, annoyed by the man in front of me in the express line at Whole Foods who had 27 items and then wanted to pay with exact change. I was planning to make rough-puff pastry, so grimly started calculating how much time it would take to cut together, how long to fold and roll, how long to chill, and concluded that we'd be eating dinner at 10:00pm. Again. So I get to my apartment, plonk down my groceries, immediately pour out flour and salt on my countertop, and smash up a little sage to put in the crust. A stick of butter, a cup of flour - easy rule of thumb for those of you playing at home. I tear the strip off the carton of Horizon Organic Sweet Butter and turn it to slide the sticks of cold butter out. Nothing happens. I shake it, nothing happens. I take a knife and slit the carton longways and peel it away - it makes a sticky clucking sound, like peeling the duct tape from your "date's" mouth. The butter has at some point melted completely and then been let chill again. It's a greasy, awful mess in there, the interior flooded with now-solid, spongy, bubbly butter, separated in places, totally disgusting. What is it about Whole Foods and dairy, man? I've had such bad luck with milk, the cheeses pitifully sweating away in their display cases, and now butter. I mean, butter, people! Can it really be that hard? My hatred for Whole Foods is threatening to consume me.

Ahhh. Our Thanksgiving table looks like this, and has for as long as I can remember: Gargantuan roasted turkey with sage dressing Ham Kimchi Mashed potatoes with boatloads of butter and milk Jap Chae (glass noodles with meat and veggies; a traditional Korean celebration food) Gravy out of a can, thickened with drippings if we're lucky Pickled raw blue crab Sweet potato/marshmallow travesty-of-a-casserole thing Sesame oil-marinated spinach Cranberry sauce More kimchi Green bean casserole with French's onion things Various other banchan - Korean pickles and side dishes Creamed corn For dessert: Store-bought pumpkin pie and sujongwa, a sweet Korean punch of cinnamon and pine nuts. Isn't this what everyone has for Thanksgiving?

www.engrish.com :laugh: edit: html tags exist for a reason

Susan and Jake - You guys are sweet Definite snap in the air lately. Was going to go out but plans changed at the last minute. Leftovers for dinner: Chicken pot pie Quick sage-flecked rough-puff pastry, last night's chicken, a thick roux with lots of wine and stock whisked in, pearl onions, a few sad carrots, peas, oyster mushrooms bolstered with some creminis. The cinnamon-scented chicken actually worked really well here - a very vague autumnal note behind all the vegetable-chickeny stuff going on up front. Green beans with a balsamic-shallot beurre blanc and some woefully underripe butternut squash, roasted in cubes, tossed with sagey olive oil and cheese, and left untouched on the plate. I love making pastry, and insane as it might be, make it on weeknights all the time - it's so gratifying to look at the crumbly, gummy, hopeless mess on the counter and work it into a smooth slab that reveals hairline-thin layers when sliced. I have been guilty of crouching in front of the oven and watching it rise and brown - kind of like watching a pot poil, or paint dry, but it smells delicious at the same time

Hmmm, I always thought of chowchow as a Lancaster Pennsylvania-Dutch thing (end-of-the-garden pickles). Conventional wisdom is the name is borrowed from a sweet Chinese condiment of ginger and citrus preserved in syrup.

Don - why would you have expected Gordon Biersch to be any different from any other Rocky-Run-Cap-City-Tavern-Brewpub-Micro-Whatsit? Shoulda glared at the bartender and demanded a Budweiser.

This is so wonderful! I loved last year's New Year's blog and am looking forward immensely to this one.

Isn't Starfish Cafe the group that made a big hullaballo about Tom Sietsema's review of them? Something about a sweeping slam on Capitol Hill restaurants.... Ahh. Read all about it here. Lame.

I think stock made from a smoked or barbecued carcass is always going to have a smoky taste (not necessarily a bad thing). It might have helped to start the stock with the skin and fat carefully removed from the carcass, the meat detached and saved, the bones carefully roasted, and a few fresh parts - whole wings (I don't like using just backs and necks for stock; they impart a murky taste I don't like) - to give the stock some fresh flaver and a little body. Pot pie is usually what I do with leftover chicken, or I make enchiladas with a pumpkin or tomatillo sauce....or I just eat the chicken at midnight standing in fromt of the fridge

I have a tiny postage-stamp kitchen, and not enough mixing bowls/pots/pans/utensils, so I HAVE to clean as I go; otherwise, I'd never finish cooking anything. After dinner, I usually have only the dinner plates, utensils, and any serving dishes to chuck in the dishwasher. A quick wipe-down of the counters, and I'm outta there.

Hurrah - finally cooked again. Spice-roasted chicken A small chicken clobbered up and stuck in a runny paste of cinnamon, garlic, ginger (got to break out the mortar and pestle for the first time, yeah!), a little cumin, coriander, and cayenne. Dredged in flour, browned and roasted. Plain pearl couscous with onions, a quick, blazing-hot harissa of charred peppers, coriander and caraway, and a tangle of sumac-spiced parsley and preserved lemon salad to cool things down, given some substance with plenty of blanched red onion, chopped cucumber and some tomato. Man, was it good.

Not really a sandwich kind of girl. That said, I am unfortunately partial to the sandwiches the little Korean-run deli below my old office made - at the end of the day, it's just lunch food from an anonymous little store front like ten thousand others in the city, but they took the trouble to get real mozzarella, come up with interesting combinations each day (I particularly liked the proscuitto - with decent ham! No day-glo salty stuff! - with arugula and robiola), watch out for the doddering patriarch of the family, who was kept occupied by busily pulling espresso shots and chatting up customers in broken English, and yet always ask about my sister, who they thought would be a great match for their son Re: CK I had a dream that I went there last night (though I've never been there). My high school boyfriend was canoodling with Gisele Bundchen in a corner in his dress whites, and Gillian Clark gave me a milkshake that had a raw egg yolk bobbing on the surface.

does it count if you go to the peruvian chicken joint around the corner and stuff a bunch of skin and meat and green sauce and beans inside the biggest yucca fry in the box? no? you guys are no fun

Ooops, I didn't mean "toss" so much like you'd toss potatoes in fat before roasting - just my flippant way of saying "put them in some preheated butter/oil". Dave's reply reminded me that another way to do this is to brush the tops of the pieces very well with butter or oil and run under the broiler. Maybe you could do this in greased ramekins if the stuff is too gooey? Hmmm....

Coffee. A chicken roasting away with nothing but salt, pepper and herb. I love lamb and make it every chance I get, but the smell of it while cooking always makes my gorge rise just a litte

hrmm. When I griddle polenta, I do the following: - make polenta as usual, with less water (you want it to pull away from the sides of the pan as you're stirring), plenty of hard cheese, and only a little butter - spread it in a greased pan to chill and firm up: this is what I cut into triangles and fry. You might want to spread to the thickness you want, chill and cut cookie-cutter disks. - cut and toss the chilled pieces in oil and butter, preheated in a cast iron griddle. Chilling the polenta really helps with firmness and shaping; preheating the oil and butter to medium-this-side-of-hot gets a crust on there fast (I've never used just butter; I'd think it would burn before you got a proper crust on there); the cast iron griddle is well-seasoned and pretty slick. I'd try a cast iron or non-stick pan and use a mix of olive oil and butter. Put your chilled disks in and let them sit undisturbed until they have a firm crust and pull away from the pan easily. I think the creaminess of the marscapone might be hurting you here too - adds a lot of extra water to the mix. Good luck! Stew-y things spooned on top of and soaking into sage-y. crisp polenta squares is one of the best things in the world to eat during the winter.

More beer, more peanuts, and a rather unfortunate amount of canned tuna for dinner last night. Back to cooking this week. A pretty chicken and some preserved lemons waiting in my fridge

Do we know yet what the final cost will be? I would love to go to this (actually had a tiny little plate at Corduroy last week, and would LOVE to see what else the very affable Tom Power is up to in his kitchen), but unfortunately don't think i can commit without the $$ commitment....

Pictures, people, pictures!

I always really want to like California Tortilla - friendly, small local chain with nice people running things - but nothing there tastes good to me. Sloppy novelty burritos - ceaser salad roll-up with Mexican rice and mango salsa anyone? - that aren't particularly coherent OR tasty; chips that, sadly, suck like my boss' secretary, and the pico de gallo in the little plastic ramekins is always oddly frothy and tangy-verging-on-sour in a weird way. I have probably eaten thirty of their burritos (29 of them against my will) and not liked a single one edit: punctuation is a good thing

Whoa. I didn't know this. This might change my life, seriously.

Can you get a whole rack and do a crown roast? Retro, but a lot of fun for a big group of people.

Greek festival. Not 'cause it's so awesome or anything, but because we ran into some poor NIH lawyer-type last week while out and about, got silly shitfaced with him, and drunkenly promised we'd come and see him at his booth at St. Sophia's. Galatobourekos, here I come.

cracklings

No timers. I don't even have a clock in my apartment, aside from the clock radio by my bed. I usually glance at the time on my cell phone every once in a while.